I
Mrs. Milton Caukins had her trials, but they were of a kind some people
would call "blessed torments." The middle-aged mother of eight children,
six boys, of whom Romanzo was the eldest, and twin girls, Elvira Caukins
might with justice lay claim to a superabundance of a certain kind of
trial. Every Sunday morning proved the crux of her experience, and Mrs.
Caukins' nerves were correspondingly shaken. To use her own words, she
"was all of a tremble" by the time she was dressed for church.
On such occasions she was apt to speak her mind, preferably to the
Colonel; but lacking his presence, to her family severally and
collectively, to 'Lias, the hired man, or aloud to herself when busy
about her work. She had been known, on occasion, to acquaint even the
collie with her state of mind, and had assured the head of the family
afterwards that there was more sense of understanding of a woman's
trials in one wag of a dog's tail than in most men's head-pieces.
"Mr. Caukins!" she called up the stairway. She never addressed her
husband in the publicity of domestic life without this prefix; to her
children she spoke of him as "your pa"; to all others as "the Colonel."
"Yes, Elvira."
The Colonel's voice was leisurely, but muffled owing to the extra heavy
lather he was laying about his mouth for the Sunday morning shave. His
wife's voice shrilled again up the staircase:
"It's going on nine o'clock and the boys are nowheres near ready; I
haven't dressed the twins yet, and the boys are trying to shampoo each
other--they've got your bottle of bay rum, and not a single shoe have
they greased. I wish you'd hurry up and come down; for if there's one
thing you know I hate it's to go into church after the beginning of the
first lesson with those boys squeaking and scrunching up the aisle
behind me. It makes me nervous and upsets me so I can't find the place
in my prayer book half the time."
"I'll be down shortly." The tone was intended to be conciliatory, but it
irritated Mrs. Caukins beyond measure.
"I know all about your 'shortlies,' Mr. Caukins; they're as long as the
rector's sermon this very Whit-sunday--the one day in the whole year
when the children can't keep still any more than cows in fly time. Did
you get their peppermints last night?"
"'Gad, my dear, I forgot them! But really--", his voice was degenerating
into a mumble owing to the pressure of circumstances, "--matters of
such--er--supreme importance--came--er--to my knowledge last evening
that--that--"
"That what?"
"--That--that--mm--mm--" there followed the peculiar noise attendant
upon a general clearing up of much lathered cuticle, "--I forgot them."
"What matters were they? You didn't say anything about 'supreme
importance' last night, Mr. Caukins."
"I'll tell you later, Elvira; just at present I--"
"Was it anything about the quarries?"
"Mm--"
"_What_ was it?"
"I heard young Googe was expected next week."
"Well, I declare! I could have told you that much myself if you'd been
at home in any decent season. It seems pretty poor planning to have to
run down three miles to The Greenbush every Saturday evening to find out
what you could know by just stepping across the bridge to Aurora's. She
told me yesterday. Was that all?"
"N--no--"
"For mercy's sake, Mr. Caukins, don't keep me waiting here any longer!
It's almost church time."
"I wasn't aware that I was detaining you, Elvira." The Colonel's protest
was mild but dignified. There were sounds above of renewed activity.
"Dulcie," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to a little girl who was standing
beside her, listening with erected ears to her mother's questions and
father's answers, "go up stairs into mother's room and see if Doosie's
getting ready, there's a good girl."
"Doosie is with me, Elvira; I would let well enough alone for the
present, if I were you," said the Colonel admonishingly. His wife wisely
took the hint. "Come up, Dulcie," he called, "father's ready." Dulcie
hopped up stairs.
"You haven't said what matters of importance kept you last night." Mrs.
Caukins returned to her muttons with redoubled energy.
"Champney came home unexpectedly last evening, and the syndicate has
offered him a position, a big one, in New York--treasurer of the
Flamsted Quarries Company; and our Romanzo's got a chance too--"
"You don't say! What is it?" Mrs. Caukins started up stairs whence came
sounds of an obstreperous bootjack.
"Paymaster, here in town; I'll explain in more propitious circumstances.
Has 'Lias harnessed yet, Elvira?"
Without deigning to answer, Mrs. Caukins freed her mind.
"Well, Mr. Caukins, I must say you grow more and more like that old ram
of 'Lias's that has learned to butt backwards just for the sake of going
contrary to nature. I believe you'd rather tell a piece of news
backwards than forwards any day! Why didn't you begin by telling me
about Romanzo? If your own child that's your flesh and blood and bone
isn't of most interest to you, I'd like to know what is!"
The Colonel's reply was partly inaudible owing to a sudden outbreak of
altercation among the boys in the room below. Mrs. Caukins, who had just
reached the landing, turned in her tracks and hurried to the rescue.
The Colonel smiled at the rosy, freshly-shaved face reflected in the
mirror of the old-fashioned dressing-case, and, at the same time, caught
the reflection of another image--that of his hired man, 'Lias, who was
crossing the yard. He went to the window and leaned out, stemming his
hands on the sill.
"There seems to be the usual Sunday morning row going on below, 'Lias. I
fear the boys are shampooing each other's heads with the backs of their
brushes from the sounds."
'Lias smiled, and nodded understandingly.
"Just look in and lend a hand in case Mrs. Caukins should be
outnumbered, will you? I'm engaged at present." And deeply engaged he
was to the twins' unspeakable delight. Whistling softly an air from "Il
Trovatore," he rubbed some orange-flower water on his chin and cheeks;
then taking a fresh handkerchief, dabbed several drops on the two little
noses that waited upon him weekly in expectation of this fragrant boon.
He was rewarded by a few satisfactory kisses.
"Now run away and help mother--coach leaves at nine forty-five
_pre_-cisely. I forgot the peppermints, but--" he slapped his trousers'
pockets significantly.
The twins shouted with delight and rushed away to impart the news to the
boys.
"I wish you would tell me the secret of your boys' conduct in church,
Colonel Caukins; it's exemplary. I don't understand it, for boys will be
boys," said the rector one Sunday several years before when all the boys
were young. He had taken note of their want of restlessness throughout
the sermon.
The Colonel's mouth twitched; he answered promptly, but avoided his
wife's eyes.
"All in the method, I assure you. We Americans have spent a generation
in experimenting with the inductive, the subjective method in education,
and the result is, to all intents and purposes, a dismal failure. The
future will prove the value of the objective, the deductive--which is
mine," he added with a sententious emphasis that left the puzzled rector
no wiser than before.
"Whatever the method, Colonel, you have a fine family; there is no
mistake about that," he said heartily.
The Colonel beamed and responded at once:
"'Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full'--"
At this point Mrs. Caukins surreptitiously poked the admonitory end of
her sunshade between the Colonel's shoulder blades, and the Colonel,
comprehending, desisted from further quotation of scripture. It was not
his strong point. Once he had been known to quote, not only unblushingly
but triumphantly, during a touch-and-go discussion of the labor question
in the town hall:--"The ass, gentlemen, is worthy of his hire"; and in
so doing had covered Mrs. Caukins with confusion and made a transient
enemy of every wage-earner in the audience.
But his boys behaved--that was the point. What boys wouldn't when their
heart's desire was conveyed to them at the beginning of the sermon by a
secret-service-under-the-pew process wholly delightful to the young
human male? Who wouldn't be quiet for the sake of the peppermints, a
keen three-bladed knife, or a few gelatine fishes that squirmed on his
warm moist palm in as lively a manner as if just landed on the lake
shore? Their father had been a boy, and at fifty had a boy's heart
within him--this was the secret of his success.
Mrs. Caukins appeared at last, radiant in the consciousness of a new
chip hat and silk blouse. Dulcie and Doosie in white lawn did their
pains-taking mother credit in every respect. The Colonel gallantly
presented his wife with a small bunch of early roses--an attention which
called up a fine bit of color into her still pretty face. 'Lias helped
her into the three-seated wagon, then lifted in the twins; the boys
piled in afterwards; the Colonel took the reins. Mrs. Caukins waved her
sunshade vigorously at 'Lias and gave a long sigh of relief and
satisfaction.
"Well, we're off at last! I declare I miss Maggie every hour in the day.
I don't know what I should have done all these years without that girl!"
The mention of "Maggie" emphasizes one of the many changes in Flamsted
during the six years of Champney Googe's absence. Mrs. Caukins, urged by
her favorite, Aileen, and advised by Mrs. Googe and Father Honore, had
imported Margaret O'Dowd, the "Freckles" of the asylum, as mother's
helper six months after Aileen's arrival in Flamsted. For nearly six
years Maggie loyally seconded Mrs. Caukins in the care of her children
and her household. Slow, but sure and dependable, strong and willing,
she made herself invaluable in the stone house among the sheep pastures;
her stunted affections revived and flourished apace in that household of
well-cared-for children to whom both parents were devoted. It cost her a
heartache to leave them; but six months ago burly Jim McCann, one of the
best workmen in the sheds--although of unruly spirit and a source of
perennial trouble among the men--began to make such determined love to
the mother's helper that the Caukinses found themselves facing
inevitable loss. Maggie had been married three months; and already
McCann had quarrelled with the foreman, and, in a huff, despite his
wife's tears and prayers, sought of his own accord work in another and
far distant quarry.
"Maggie told me she'd never leave off teasing Jim to bring her back,"
said the fifth eldest Caukins.--"Oh, look!" he cried as they rumbled
over the bridge; "there's Mrs. Googe and Champney on the porch waving to
us!"
The Colonel took off his hat with a flourish; the boys swung theirs;
Mrs. Caukins waved her sunshade to mother and son.
"I declare, I'd like to stop just a minute," she said regretfully, for
the Colonel continued to drive straight on. "I'm so glad for Aurora's
sake that he's come home; I only hope our Romanzo will do as well."
"It would be an intrusion at such a time, Elvira. The effusions of even
the best-intentioned friends are injudicious at the inopportune moment
of domestic reunion."
Mrs. Caukins subsided on that point. She was always depressed by the
Colonel's grandiloquence, which he usually reserved for The Greenbush
and the town-meeting, without being able to account for it.
"He'll see a good many changes here; it's another Flamsted we're living
in," she remarked later on when they passed the first stone-cutters'
shed on the opposite shore of the lake; and the family proceeded to
comment all the way to church on the various changes along the route.
* * * * *
It was in truth another Flamsted, the industrial Flamsted which the
Colonel predicted six years before on that memorable evening in the
office of The Greenbush.
To watch the transformation of a quiet back-country New England village
into the life-centre of a great and far-reaching industry, is in itself
a liberal education, not only in economics, but in inherited
characteristics of the human race. Those first drops of "the deluge,"
the French priest and the Irish orphan, were followed by an influx of
foreigners of many nationalities: Scotch, Irish, Italians, Poles,
Swedes, Canadian French; and with these were associated a few
American-born.
Their life-problem, the earning of wages for the sustenance of
themselves and their families, was one they had in common. Its solution
was centred for one and all in their work among the granite quarries of
The Gore and in the stone-cutters' sheds on the north shore of Lake
Mesantic. These two things the hundreds belonging to a half-dozen
nationalities possessed in common--these, and their common humanity
together with the laws to which it is subject. But aside from this,
their speech, habits, customs, religions, food, and pastimes were
polyglot; on this account the lines of racial demarkation were apt, at
times, to be drawn all too sharply. Yet this very fact of
differentiation provided hundreds of others--farmers, shopkeepers,
jobbers, machinists, mechanics, blacksmiths, small restaurant-keepers,
pool and billiard room owners--with ample sources of livelihood.
This internal change in the community of Flamsted corresponded to the
external. During those six years the very face of nature underwent
transformation. The hills in the apex of The Gore were shaved clean of
the thin layer of turf, and acres of granite laid bare to the drill.
Monster derricks, flat stone-cars, dummy engines, electric motors, were
everywhere in evidence. Two glittering steel tracks wound downwards
through old watercourses to the level of the lake, and to the huge
stone-cutting sheds that stretched their gray length along the northern
shore. Here the quarried stones, tons in weight, were unloaded by the
great electric travelling crane which picks up one after the other with
automatic perfection of silence and accuracy, and deposits them wherever
needed by the workmen.
A colony of substantial three-room houses, two large boarding-houses, a
power house and, farther up beyond the pines, a stone house and a long
low building, partly of wood, partly of granite waste cemented, circled
the edges of the quarry.
The usual tale of workmen in the fat years was five hundred quarrymen
and three hundred stone-cutters. This population of working-men, swelled
to three thousand by the addition of their families, increased or
diminished according as the years and seasons proved fat or lean. A
ticker on Wall Street was sufficient to give to the great industry
abnormal life and activity, and draw to the town a surplus working
population. A feeling of unrest and depression, long-continued in
metropolitan financial circles, was responded to with sensitive pulse on
these far-away hills of Maine and resulted in migratory flights, by tens
and twenties, of Irish and Poles, of Swedes, Italians, French Canucks,
and American-born to more favorable conditions. "Here one day and gone
the next"; even the union did not make for stability of tenure.
In this ceaseless tidal ebb and flow of industrials, the original
population of Flamsted managed at times to come to the surface to
breathe; to look about them; to speculate as to "what next?" for the
changes were rapid and curiosity was fed almost to satiety. A fruitful
source of speculation was Champney Googe's long absence from home,
already six years, and his prospects when he should have returned.
Speculation was also rife when Aurora Googe crossed the ocean to spend a
summer with her son; at one time rumors were afloat that Champney's
prospective marriage with a relation of the Van Ostends was near at
hand, and this was said to be the cause of his mother's rather sudden
departure. But on her return, Mrs. Googe set all speculation in this
direction at rest by denying the rumor most emphatically, and adding the
information for every one's benefit that she had gone over to be with
Champney because he did not wish to come home at the time his contract
with Mr. Van Ostend permitted.
Once during the past year, the village wise heads foregathered in the
office of The Greenbush to discuss the very latest:--the coming to
Flamsted of seven Sisters, Daughters of the Mystic Rose, who, foreseeing
the suppression of their home institution in France, had come to prepare
a refuge for their order on the shores of America and found another home
and school among the quarrymen in this distant hill-country of the new
Maine--an echo of the old France of their ancestors. This was looked
upon as an undreamed-of innovation exceeding all others that had come to
their knowledge; it remained for old Joel Quimber to enter the lists as
champion of the newcomers, their cause, and their school which, with
Father Honore's aid, they at once established among the barren hills of
The Gore.
"Hounded out er France, poor souls, just like my own
great-great-great-granther's father!" he said, referring to the subject
again on that last Saturday evening when the frequenters of The
Greenbush were to be stirred shortly by the news they considered best of
all: Champney Googe's unexpected arrival. "I was up thar yisterd'y an'
it beats all how snug they're fixed! The schoolroom's ez neat as a pin,
an' pitchers on the walls wuth a day's journey to see. They're havin' a
room built onto the farther end--a kind of er relief hospital, so
Father Honore told me--ter help out when the quarrymen git a jammed foot
er finger, so's they needn't be took home to muss up their little cabins
an' worrit their wives an' little 'uns. I heerd Aileen hed ben goin' up
thar purty reg'lar lately for French an' sich; guess Mis' Champney's
done 'bout the right thing by her, eh, Tave?"
Octavius nodded. "And Aileen's done the right thing by Mrs. Champney. 'T
isn't every young girl that would stick to it as Aileen's done the last
six years--not in the circumstances."
"You're right, Tave. I heerd not long ago thet she was a-goin' on the
stage when she'd worked out her freedom, and by A. J. she's got the
voice for it! But I'd hate ter see _her_ thar. She's made a lot er
sunshine in this place, and I guess from all I hear there's them thet
would stan' out purty stiff agin it; they say Luigi Poggi an' Romanzo
Caukins purty near fit over her t' other night."
"You needn't believe all you hear, Joel, but you can believe me when I
tell you there'll be no going on the stage for Aileen--not if I know it,
or Father Honore either."
He spoke so emphatically that his brother Augustus looked at him in
surprise.
"What's up, Tave?" he inquired.
"I mean Aileen's got a level head and isn't going to leave just as
things are beginning to get interesting. She's stood it six year and she
can stand it six more if she makes up her mind to it, and I'd ought to
know, seeing as I've lived with her ever since she come to Flamsted."
"To be sure, Tave, to be sure; nobody knows better'n you, 'bout Aileen,
an' I guess she's come to look on you, from all I hear, as her special
piece of property." His brother spoke appeasingly.
Octavius smiled. "Well, I don't deny but she lays claim to me most of
the time; it's 'Octavius' here and 'Octavius' there all day long.
Sometimes Mrs. Champney ruffs up about it, but Aileen has a way of
smoothing her down, generally laughs her out of it. Is that the
Colonel?" He listened to a step on the veranda. "Don't let on 'bout
anything 'twixt Romanzo and Aileen before the Colonel, Joel."
"You don't hev ter say thet to me," said old Quimber resentfully;
"anybody can see through a barn door when thar's a hole in it. All on us
know Mis' Champney's a-breakin'; they do say she's hed a shock,
leastwise I heerd so, an' Aileen'll look out for A No. 1. I ain't lived
to be most eighty in Flamsted for nothin', an' I've seen an' heerd
more'n I've ever told, Tave; more'n even you know 'bout some things. You
don't remember the time old Square Googe took Aurory inter his home to
bring up an' Judge Champney said he was sorry he'd got ahead of him for
he wanted to adopt her for a daughter himself; them's his words; I heerd
him. An' I can tell more'n--"
"Shut up, Quimber," said Octavius shortly; and Joel Quimber "shut up,"
but, winking knowingly at Augustus Buzzby, continued to chuckle to
himself till the Colonel entered who, beginning to expatiate upon the
subject of Champney Googe's prospects when he should have returned to
the home-welcome awaiting him, was happily interrupted by the
announcement of that young man's unexpected arrival on the evening
train.