About four, Octavius drove Aileen up to the Colonel's. He said nothing
to her of the coming crucial night, but Aileen had her thoughts. The
Colonel's absence from home, but not from town, coupled with yesterday's
New York despatch which said that there was no trace of the guilty man
in New York, and affirmed on good authority that the statement that he
had not left the country was true, convinced her that something
unforeseen was expected in the immediate vicinity of Flamsted. But he
would never attempt to come here!--She shivered at the thought.
Octavius, noticing this movement, remarked that he thought there was
going to be a black frost. Aileen maintained that the rising wind and
the want of a moon would keep it off.
Although Octavius was inclined to take exception to the feminine
statement that the moon, or the want of it, had an effect on frost,
nevertheless this apparently innocent remark on Aileen's part recalled
to him the fact that the night was moonless--he wondered if the Colonel
had thought of this--and he hoped with all his soul that it would prove
to be starless as well. "Champney knows the Maine woods--knows 'em from
the Bay to the head of Moosehead as well as an Oldtown Indian, yes and
beyond." So he comforted himself in thought.
Mrs. Caukins met them with effusion.
"I declare, Aileen, I don't know what I should have done if you couldn't
have come up; I'm all of a-tremble now and I've got such a nervous
headache from all I've been through, and all I've got to, that I can't
see straight out of my eyes.--Won't you stop to supper, Tave?"
"I can't to-night, Elvira, I--"
"I'd no business to ask you, I know," she said, interrupting him; "I
might have known you'd want to be on hand for any new developments. I
don't know how we're going to live through it up here; you don't feel it
so much down in the town--I don't believe I could go through it without
Aileen up here with me, for the twins aren't old enough to depend on or
to be told everything; they're no company at such times, and of course I
sha'n't tell them, they wouldn't sleep a wink; I miss my boys
dreadfully--"
"Tell them what? What do you mean by 'to-night'?" Aileen demanded, a
sudden sharpness in her voice.
"Why, don't you know?"--She turned to Octavius, "Haven't you told her?"
Her appeal fell on departing and intentionally deaf ears; for Octavius,
upon hearing Aileen's sudden and amazed question, abruptly bade them
good-night, spoke to the mare and was off at a rapid pace before Mrs.
Caukins comprehended that the telling of the latest development was left
to her.
She set about it quickly enough, and what with her nervousness, her
sympathy for that mother across the Rothel, her anxiety for the Colonel,
her fear of the trial to which his powers of endurance were about to be
put, and the description of his silent suffering during the last week,
she failed to notice that Aileen said nothing. The girl busied herself
with setting the table and preparing tea, Mrs. Caukins, meanwhile,
rocking comfortably in her chair and easing her heart of its heavy
burden by continual drippings of talk after the main flow of her tale
was exhausted.
Presently, just after sunset, the twins came rushing in. Evidently they
were full of secrets--they were always a close corporation of two--and
their inane giggles and breathless suppression of what they were
obviously longing to impart to their mother and Aileen, told on Mrs.
Caukins' already much worn nerves.
"I wish you wouldn't stay out so long after sundown, children, you worry
me to death. I don't say but the quarries are safe enough, but I do say
you never can tell who's round after dusk, and growing girls like you
belong at home."
She spoke fretfully. The twins exchanged meaning glances that were lost
on their mother, who was used to their ways, but not on Aileen.
"Where have you been all this time, Dulcie?" she asked rather
indifferently. Her short teaching experience had shown her that the only
way to gain children's confidence is not to display too great a
curiosity in regard to their comings and goings, their doings and
undoings. "Tave and I didn't see you anywhere when we drove up."
The twins looked at each other and screwed their lips into a violently
repressive contortion.
"We've been over to the sheepfolds with 'Lias."
"Why, 'Lias has been out in the barn for the last half hour--what were
you doing over there, I'd like to know?" Their mother spoke sharply, for
untruth she would not tolerate.
"We did stay with 'Lias till he got through, then we played ranchmen and
made believe round up the cattle the way the boys wrote us they do." Two
of their brothers were in the West trying their fortune on a ranch and
incidentally "dovetailing into the home business," as the Colonel
defined their united efforts along the line of mutton raising.
"Well, I never!" their mother ejaculated; "I suppose now you'll be
making believe you're everything the other boys are going to be."
The little girls giggled and nodded emphatically.
"Well, Aileen," she said as she took her seat at the table, "times have
changed since I was a girl, and that isn't so very long ago. Then we
used to content ourselves with sewing, and housework, and reading all
the books in the Sunday school library, and making our own clothes, and
enjoying ourselves as much as anybody nowadays for all I see, what with
our picnics and excursions down the Bay and the clam bakes and winter
lecture course and the young folks 'Circle' and two or three dances to
help out--and now here are my girls that can't be satisfied to sit down
and hem good crash towels for their mother, but must turn themselves
into boys, and play ranchmen and baseball and hockey on the ice, and
Wild West shows with the dogs and the pony--and even riding him
a-straddle--and want to go to college just because their two brothers
are going, and, for all I know, join a fraternity and have secrets from
their own mother and a football team!" She paused long enough to help
the twins bountifully.
"Sometimes I think it's their being brought up with so many boys, and
then again I'm convinced it's the times, for all girls seem to have
caught the male fever. What with divided skirts, and no petticoats, and
racing and running and tumbling in basket ball, and rowing races, and
entering for prize championships in golf and the dear knows what, it'll
be lucky if a mother of the next generation can tell whether she's
borned girls or boys by the time her children are ten years old. The
land knows it's hard enough for a married woman to try to keep up with
one man in a few things, but when it comes to a lot of old maids and
unmarried girls trying to catch up all the time with the men in
_everything_, and catch on too, I must say _I_, for one, draw the line."
Aileen could not help smiling at this diatribe on "the times." The twins
laughed outright; they were used to their mother by this time, and
patronized her in a loving way.
"We weren't there _all_ the time," Doosie said meaningly, and Dulcie
added her little word, which she intended should tantalize her mother
and Aileen to the extent that many pertinent questions should be
forthcoming, and the news they were burning to impart would, to all
appearance, be dragged out of them--a process in which the twins
revelled.
"We met Luigi on the road near the bridge."
"What do you suppose Luigi's doing up here at this time, I'd like to
know," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to Aileen and ignoring the children.
"He come up on an errand to see some of the quarrymen," piped up both
the girls at the same time.
"Oh, is that all?" said their mother indifferently; then, much to the
twins' chagrin, she suddenly changed the subject. "I want you to take
the glass of wine jell on the second shelf in the pantry over to Mrs.
Googe's after you finish your supper--you can leave it with the girl and
tell her not to say anything to Mrs. Googe about it, but just put some
in a saucer and give it to her with her supper. Maybe it'll tempt her to
taste it, poor soul!"
The twins sat up very straight on their chairs. A look of consternation
came into their faces.
"We don't want to go," murmured Dulcie.
"Don't want to go!" their mother exclaimed; decided irritation was
audible in her voice. "For pity's sake, what is the matter now, that you
can't run on an errand for me just over the bridge, and here you've been
prowling about in the dusk for the last hour around those lonesome
sheepfolds and 'Lias nowheres near--I declare, I could understand my six
boys even if they were terrors when they were little. You could always
count on their being somewheres anyway, even if 't was on the top of
freight cars at The Corners or at the bottom of the pond diving for
pebbles that they brought up between their lips and run the risk of
choking besides drowning; and they did think the same thoughts for at
least twenty-four hours on a stretch, when they were set on having
things--but when it come to my having two girls, and I forty at the
time, I give it up! They don't know their own minds from one six minutes
to the next.--Why don't you want to go?" she demanded, coming at last to
the point. Aileen was listening in amused silence.
"'Coz we got scared--awful scared," said Dulcie under her breath.
"Scared most to death," Doosie added solemnly.
Both Mrs. Caukins and Aileen saw at once that the children were in
earnest.
"You look scared!" said Mrs. Caukins with withering scorn; "you've eaten
a good supper if you were 'scared' as you say.--What scared you?"
The twins looked down into their plates, the generally cleared-up
appearance of which seemed fully to warrant their mother's sarcasm.
"Luigi told us not to tell," said Dulcie in a low voice.
"Luigi told you not to tell!" echoed their mother. "I'd like to know
what right Luigi Poggi has to tell my children not to tell their mother
anything and everything!" She spoke with waxing excitement; every
motherly pin-feather was erect.
"He was 'fraid it would scare you," ventured Doosie.
"Scare me! He must have a pretty poor opinion of a woman that can raise
six boys of her own and then be 'scared' at what two snips of girls can
tell her. You'll tell me now, this very minute, what scared you--this
all comes of your being away from the house so far and so late--and I
won't have it."
"We saw a bear--"
"A big one--"
"He was crawling on all fours--"
"Back of the sheepfold wall--"
"He scrooched down as if he was nosing for something--"
"Just where the trees are so thick you can't see into the woods--"
"And we jumped over the wall and right down into the sheep, and they
made an awful fuss they were so scared too, huddling and rushing round
to get out--"
"Then we found the gate--"
"But I _heard_ him--" Dulcie's eyes were very big and bright with
remembered terror.
"And then we climbed over the gate--'Lias had locked it--and run home
lickety-split and most run into Luigi at the bridge--"
"'Coz we come down the road after we got through the last pasture--"
"Oh, he was so big!" Doosie shuddered as her imagination began to work
more vigorously with the recital--"bigger'n a man--"
"What nonsense."
The twins had been telling all this at the same time, and their mother's
common sense and downright exclamation brought them to a full stop. They
looked crestfallen.
"You needn't tell me there's a bear between here and Moosehead--I know
better. Did you tell Luigi all this?" she questioned sharply.
The two nodded affirmatively.
"And he told you not to tell me?"
Another nod.
"Did he say anything more?"
"He said he'd go up and see."
"Hm--m--"
Mrs. Caukins turned a rather white face to Aileen; the two, looking into
each other's eyes, read there a common fear.
"Perhaps you'll take the jelly over for me, Aileen; I'll just step to
the back door and holler to 'Lias to bring in the collie and the
hound--'t isn't always safe to let the dogs out after dark if there
_should_ happen to be anything stirring in the quarry woods."
"I'll go," said Aileen. She went into the pantry to get the glass of
jelly.
"We'll go with you, we won't mind a bit with you or Luigi," chorussed
the twins.
"You don't go one step," said their mother, entering at that moment from
the kitchen, and followed by the two dogs; "you'll stay right where you
are, and what's more, you'll both go to bed early to make you remember
that I mean what I say about your being out so long another time after
sundown--no good comes of it," she muttered.
The twins knew by the tone of her voice that there was no further appeal
to be made.
"You can wash up the dishes while Aileen's gone; my head is so
bad.--Don't be gone too long, Aileen," she said, going to the door with
her.
"I sha'n't stay unless I can do something--but I'll stop a little while
with Ellen, poor girl; she must be tired of all this excitement, sitting
there alone so much as she has this last week."
"Of course, but Aurora won't see you; it's as much as ever I can do to
get a look at her, and as to speaking a word of comfort, it's out of the
question.--Why!" she exclaimed, looking out into the dusk that was
settling into night, "they never light the quarries so early, not with
all the arc-lights, I wonder--Oh, Aileen!" she cried, as the meaning of
the great illumination in The Gore dawned upon her.
The girl did not answer. She ran down the road to the bridge with every
nerve in her strained to its utmost.