Читать книгу Flamsted quarries - Mary E. Waller - Страница 21

"But, mother—"

There was an intonation in the protest that hinted at some irritation. Champney Googe emptied his pipe on the grass and knocked it clean against the porch rail before he continued.

"Won't it make a lot of talk? Of course, I can see your side of it; it's hospitable and neighborly and all that, to give the priest his meals for a while, but—" he hesitated, and his mother answered his thought.

"A little talk more or less after all there has been about the quarry won't do any harm, and I'm used to it." She spoke with some bitterness.

"It has stirred up a hornet's nest about your ears, that's a fact. How does Aunt Meda take this latest move? Meat-axey as usual? I didn't see her when I went there yesterday; she's in Hallsport for two days on business, so Tave says."

His mother smiled. "I haven't seen her since the sale was concluded, but I hear she has strengthened the opposition in consequence. I get my information from Mrs. Caukins."

At the mention of that name Champney laughed out. "Good authority, mother. I must run over and see her to-night. Well, we don't care, do we? I mean about the feeling. Mother, I just wish you were a man for one minute."

"Why?"

"Because I'd like to go up to you, man fashion, grip your hand, slap you on the back, and shout 'By Jove, old man, you've made a deal that would turn the sunny side of Wall Street green with envy!' How did you do it, mother? And without a lawyer! I'll bet Emlie is mad because he didn't get a chance to put his finger in your pie."

"I was thinking of you, of your future, and how you have been used by Almeda Champney; and that gave me the confidence, almost the push of a man—and I dealt with them as a man with men; but I felt unsexed in doing it. I've wondered what they think of me."

"Think of you! I can tell you what one man thinks of you, and that's Mr. Van Ostend. I had a note from him at the time of the sale asking me to come to his office, an affidavit was necessary, and I found he had had eyes in his head for the most beautiful woman in the world—"

"Champney!"

"Fact; and, what's more, I got an invitation to his house on the strength of his recognition of that fact. I dined with him there; his sister is a stunning girl."

"I'm glad such homes are open to you; it is your right and—it compensates."

"For what, mother?"

"Oh, a good many things. How do they live?"

"The Van Ostends?"

"Yes."

Champney Googe hugged his knees and rocked back and forth on the step before he answered. His merry face seemed to lengthen in feature, to harden in line. His mother left her chair and sewing to sit down on the step beside him. She looked up inquiringly.

"Just as I mean to live sometime, mother,"—his fresh young voice rang determined and almost hard; his mother's eyes kindled;—"in a way that expresses Life—as you and I understand it, and don't live it, mother; as you and I have conceived of it while up here among these sheep pastures." He glanced inimically for a moment at the barren slopes above them. "I have you to thank for making me comprehend the difference." He continued the rocking movement for a while, his hands still clasping his knees. Then he went on:

"As for his home on the Avenue, there isn't its like in the city, and as a storehouse of the best in art it hasn't its equal in the country; it's just perfect from picture gallery to billiard room. As for adjuncts, there's a shooting box and a bona fide castle in the Scottish Highlands, a cottage at Bar Harbor with the accessory of a steam yacht, and a racing stud on a Long Island farm. As a financier he's great!"

He sat up straight, and freely used his fists, first on one knee then on the other, to emphasize his words; "His right hand is on one great lever of interstate traffic, his left on the other of foreign trade, and two continents obey his manipulations. His eye exacts trained efficiency from thousands; his word is a world event; Wall Street is his automaton. Oh, the power of it all! I can't wait to get out into the stream, mother! I'm only hugging the shore at present; that's what has made me kick against this last year in college; it has been lost time, for I want to get rich quick."

His mother laid her hand on his knee. "No, Champney, it's not lost time; it's one of your assets as a gentleman."

He looked up at her, his blue eyes smiling into her dark ones.

"I can be a gentleman all right without that asset; you said father didn't go."

"No, but the man for whom you are named went, and he told me once a college education was a 'gentleman's asset.' That expression was his."

"Well, I don't see that the asset did him much good. It didn't seem to discount his liabilities in other ways. Queer, how Uncle Louis went to seed—I mean, didn't amount to anything along any business or professional line. Only last spring I met the father of a second-year man who remembers Uncle Louis well, said he was a classmate of his. He told me he was banner man every time and no end popular; the others didn't have a show with him."

His mother was silent. Champney, apparently unheeding her unresponsiveness, rose quickly, shook himself together, and suddenly burst into a mighty laughter that is best comparable to the inextinguishable species of the blessed gods. He laughed in arpeggios, peal on peal, crescendo and diminuendo, until, finally, he flung himself down on the short turf and in his merriment rolled over and over. He brought himself right side up at last, tears in his eyes and a sigh of satisfying exhaustion on his lips. To his mother's laughing query:

"What is it now, Champney?" He shook his head as if words failed him; then he said huskily:

"It's Aunt Meda's protégée. Oh, Great Scott! She'll be the death by shock of some of the Champo people if she stays another three months. I hear Aunt Meda has had her Waterloo. Tavy buttonholed me out in the carriage house yesterday, and told me the whole thing—oh, but it's rich!" He chuckled again. "He got me to feel his vest; says he can lap it three inches already and she has only been here two weeks; and as for Romanzo, he's neither to have nor to hold when the girl's in sight—wits topsy-turvy, actually, oh, Lord!"—he rolled over again on the grass—"what do you think, mother! She got Roman to scour down Jim—you know, the white cart-horse, the Percheron—with Hannah's cleaning powder, and the girl helped him, and together they got one side done and then waited for it to dry to see how it worked. Result: Tave dead ashamed to drive him in the cart for fear some one will see the yellow-white calico-circus horse, that the two rapscallions have left on his hands, and doesn't want Aunt Meda to know it for fear she'll turn down Roman. He says he's going to put Jim out to grass in the Colonel's back sheep pasture, and when Aunt Meda comes home lie about sudden spavin or something. And the joke of it is Roman takes it all as a part of the play, and has owned up to Tave that, by mistake, he blacked Aunt Meda's walking boots, before she went to Hallsport, with axle grease, while the girl was 'telling novels' to him! Tave said Roman told him she knew a lot of the nobility, marchionesses and 'sich'; and now Roman struts around cocksure, high and mighty as if he'd just been made K.C.B., and there's no getting any steady work out of him. You should have seen Tave's face when he was telling me!"

His mother laughed. "I can imagine it; he's worried over this new move of Almeda's. I confess it puzzles me."

"Well, I'm off to see some of the fun—and the girl. Tave said he didn't expect Aunt Meda before to-morrow night, and it's a good time for me to rubber round the old place a little on my own hook;—and, mother,"—he stooped to her; Aurora Googe raised her still beautiful eyes to the frank if somewhat hard blue ones that looked down into hers; a fine color mounted into her cheeks—"take the priest for his meals, for all me. It's an invasion, but, of course, I recognize that we're responsible for it on account of the quarry business. I suppose we shall have to make some concessions to all classes till we get away from here for good and all—then we'll have our fling, won't we, mother?"

He was off without waiting for a reply. Aurora Googe watched him out of sight, then turned to her work, the flush still upon her cheeks.