In entering on his business life in New York, Champney Googe, like many
another man, failed to take into account the "minus quantities" in his
personal equation. These he possessed in common with other men because
he, too, was human: passions in common, ambitions in common, weaknesses
in common, and last, but not least, the pursuance of a common end--the
accumulation of riches.
The sum of these minus quantities added to the total of temperamental
characteristics and inherited traits left, unfortunately, in balancing
the personal equation a minus quantity. Not that he had any realization
of such a result--what man has? On the contrary, he firmly believed that
his inherited obstinate perseverance, his buoyant temperament, his
fortunate business connection with the great financier, his position as
the meeting-point of the hitherto divided family interests in Flamsted,
his intimacy with the Van Ostends--the distant tie of blood confirming
this at all points--plus his college education and cosmopolitan business
training in the financial capitals of Europe, were potent factors in
finding the value of _x_--this representing to him an, as yet, unknown
quantity of accumulated wealth.
He had not yet asked himself how large a sum he wished to amass, but he
said to himself almost daily, "I have shown my power along certain lines
to-day," these lines converging in his consciousness always to monetary
increment.
He worked with a will. His energy was tireless. He learned constantly
and much from other men powerful in the world of affairs--of their
methods of speculation, some legitimate, others quite the contrary; of
their manipulation of stocks, weak and strong; of their strengthening
the market when the strengthening was necessary to fill a threatened
deficit in their treasury and of their weakening a line of investment to
prevent over-loading and consequent depletion of the same. He was
thoroughly interested in all he heard and saw of the development of
mines and industries for the benefit of certain banking cliques and land
syndicates. If now and then a mine proved to have no bottom and the
small investor's insignificant sums dropped out of sight in this
bottomless pit, that did not concern him--it was all in the game, and
the game was an enticing one to be played to the end. The two facts that
nothing is certain at all times, and that everything is uncertain at
some time, added the excitement of chance to his business interest.
At times, for instance when walking up the Avenue on a bracing October
day, he felt as if he owned all in sight--a condition of mind which
those who know from experience the powerful electro-magnetic current
generated by the rushing life of the New York metropolis can well
understand. He struck out into the stream with the rest, and with
overweening confidence in himself--in himself as master of circumstances
which he intended to control in his own interests, in himself as the
pivotal point of Flamsted affairs. The rapidity of the current acted as
a continual stimulus to exertion. Like all bold swimmers, he knew in a
general way that the channel might prove tortuous, the current threaten
at times to overpower him; but, carried rapidly out into mid-stream with
that gigantic propulsive force that is the resultant of the diverse
onward-pressure of the metropolitan millions, he suddenly found himself
one day in that mid-stream without its ever having occurred to him that
he might not be able to breast it. Even had he thought enough about the
matter to admit that certain untoward conditions might have to be met,
he would have failed to realize that the shore towards which he was
struggling might prove in the end a quicksand.
Another thing: he failed to take into account the influence of any cross
current, until he was made to realize the necessity of stemming his
strength against it. This influence was Aileen Armagh.
Whenever in walking up lower Broadway from the office he found himself
passing Grace Church, he realized that, despite every effort of will, he
was obliged to relive in thought the experience of that night seven
years ago at the Vaudeville. Then for the first time he saw the little
match girl crouching on the steps of the stage reproduction of this same
marble church. The child's singing of her last song had induced in him
then--wholly unawares, wholly unaccountably--a sudden mental nausea and
a physical disgust at the course of his young life, the result being
that the woman "who lay in wait for him at the corner" by appointment,
watched that night in vain for his coming.
In reliving this experience, there was always present in his thought the
Aileen Armagh as he knew her now--pure, loyal, high-spirited, helpful,
womanly in all her household ways, entertaining in her originality,
endowed with the gift of song. She was charming; this was patent to all
who knew her. It was a pleasure to dwell on this thought of her, and,
dwelling upon it too often at off-times in his business life, the desire
grew irresistible to be with her again; to chat with her; to see the
blue-gray eyes lifted to his; to find in them something he found in no
others. At such times a telegram sped over the wires, to Aurora Googe,
and her heart was rejoiced by a two days' visit from her son.
Champney Googe knew perfectly well that this cross current of influence
was diametrically opposed to his own course of life as he had marked it
out for himself; knew that this was a species of self-gratification in
which he had no business to indulge; he knew, moreover, that from the
moment he should make an earnest effort to win Alice Van Ostend and her
accompanying millions, this self-gratification must cease. He told
himself this over and over again; meanwhile he made excuse--a talk with
the manager of the quarries, a new order of weekly payments to introduce
and regulate with Romanzo Caukins, the satisfactory pay-master in the
Flamsted office, a week-end with his mother, the consideration of
contracts and the erection of a new shed on the lake shore--to visit
Flamsted several times during the autumn, winter, and early spring.
At last, however, he called a halt.
Alice Van Ostend, young, immature, amusing in her girlish abandon to the
delight of at last "coming out", was, nevertheless, rapidly growing up,
a condition of affairs that Champney was forced rather unwillingly to
admit just before her first large ball. As usual he made himself useful
to Alice, who looked upon him as a part of her goods and chattels. It
was in the selection of the favors for the german to be given in the
stone house on the occasion of the coming-out reception for its heiress,
that his eyes were suddenly opened to the value of time, so to say; for
Alice was beginning to patronize him. By this sign he recognized that
she was putting the ten years' difference in their ages at something
like a generation. It was not pleasing to contemplate, because the
winning of Alice Van Ostend was, to use his own expression, in a line
coincident with his own life lines. Till now he believed he was the
favored one; but certain signs of the times began to be provocative of
distrust in this direction.
He asked boldly for the first dance, for the cotillon, and the privilege
of giving her the flowers she was to wear that night. He assumed these
favors to be within his rights; she was by no means of his way of
thinking. It developed during their scrapping--Champney had often to
scrap with Alice to keep on a level with her immaturity--that there was
another rival for the cotillon, another, a younger man, who desired to
give her the special flowers for this special affair. The final division
of the young lady's favors was not wholly reassuring to Mr. Googe. As a
result of this awakening, he decided to remain in New York without
farther visits to Flamsted until the Van Ostends should have left the
city for the summer.
But in the course of the spring and summer he found it one thing to call
a halt and quite another to make one. The cross current of influence,
which had its source in Flamsted, was proving, against his will and
judgment, too strong for him. He knew this and deplored it, for it
threatened to carry him away from the shore towards which he was
pushing, unawares that this apparently firm ground of attainment might
prove treacherous in the end.
"Every man has his weakness, and she's mine," he told himself more than
once; yet in making this statement he was half aware that the word
"weakness" was in no sense applicable to Aileen. It remained for the
development of his growing passion for her to show him that he was
wholly in the wrong--she was his strength, but he failed to realize
this.
Champney Googe was not a man to mince matters with himself. He told
himself that he was not infatuated; infatuation was a thing to which he
had yielded but few times in his selfish life. He was ready to
acknowledge that his interest in Aileen Armagh was something deeper,
more lasting; something that, had he been willing to look the whole
matter squarely in the face instead of glancing askance at its profile,
he would have seen to be perilously like real love--that love which
first binds through passionate attachment, then holds through congenial
companionship to bless a man's life to its close.
"She suits me--suits me to a T;" such was his admission in what he
called his weak moments. Then he called himself a fool; he cursed
himself for yielding to the influence of her charming personality in so
far as to encourage what he perceived to be on her part a deep and
absorbing love for him. In yielding to his weakness, he knew he was
deviating from the life lines he had laid with such forethought for his
following. A rich marriage was the natural corollary of his
determination to advance his own interests in his chosen career. This
marriage he still intended to make, if possible with Alice Van Ostend;
and the fact that young Ben Falkenburg, an old playmate of Alice's, just
graduated from college, the "other man" of the cotillon favors, was the
first invited guest for the prospective cruise on Mr. Van Ostend's
yacht, did not dovetail with his intentions. It angered him to think of
being thwarted at this point.
"Why must such a girl cross my path just as I was getting on my feet
with Alice?" he asked himself, manlike illogically impatient with Aileen
when he should have lost patience with himself. But in the next moment
he found himself dwelling in thought on the lovely light in the eyes
raised so frankly to his, on the promises of loyalty those same eyes
would hold for him if only he were to speak the one word which she was
waiting to hear--which she had a right to hear after his last visit in
July to Flamsted.
If he had not kissed her that once! With a girl like Aileen there could
be no trifling--what then?
He cursed himself for his heedless folly, yet--he knew well enough that
he would not have denied himself that moment of bliss when the girl in
response to his whispered words of love gave him her first kiss, and
with it the unspoken pledge of her loving heart.
"I'm making another ass of myself!" he spoke aloud and continued to chew
the end of a cold cigar.
The New York office was deserted in these last days of August except for
two clerks who had just left to take an early train to the beach for a
breath of air. The treasurer of the Flamsted Quarries Company was
sitting idle at his desk. It was an off-time in business and he had
leisure to assure himself that he was without doubt the quadruped
alluded to above--"An ass that this time is in danger of choosing
thistles for fodder when he can get something better."
Only the day before he had concluded on his own account a deal, that
cost him much thought and required an extra amount of a certain kind of
courage, with a Wall Street firm. Now that this was off his hands and
there was nothing to do between Friday and Monday, when he was to start
for Bar Harbor to join the Van Ostends and a large party of invited
guests for a three weeks' cruise on the Labrador coast, he had plenty of
time to convince himself that he possessed certain asinine qualities
which did not redound to his credit as a man of sense. In his idle
moments the thought of Aileen had a curious way of coming to the surface
of consciousness. It came now. He whirled suddenly to face his desk
squarely; tossed aside the cold cigar in disgust; touched the electric
button to summon the office boy.
"I'll put an end to it--it's got to be done sometime or other--just as
well now." He wrote a note to the head clerk to say that he was leaving
two days earlier for his vacation than he intended; left his address for
the next four days in case anything should turn up that might demand his
presence before starting on the cruise; sent the office boy off with a
telegram to his mother that she might expect him Saturday morning for
two days in Flamsted; went to his apartment, packed grip and steamer
trunk for the yacht, and left on the night express for the Maine coast.