Early in the following March, on the arrival of the 3 P.M. train from
Hallsport, there was the usual crowd at The Corners' station to meet it.
They watched the passengers as they left the train and commented freely
on one and another known to them.
"I'll bet that's the new boss at the upper quarries," said one, pointing
to a short thickset man making his way up the platform.
"Yes, that's him; and they're taking on a gang of new men with him;
they're in the last car--there they come! There's going to be a regular
spring freshet of 'em coming along now--the business is booming."
They scanned the men closely as they passed, between twenty and thirty
of them of various nationalities. They were gesticulating wildly,
vociferating loudly, shouldering bundle, knapsack or tool-kit. Behind
them came a few stone-cutters, mostly Scotch and Irish. The last to
leave the train was evidently an American.
The crowd on the platform surged away to the electric car to watch
further proceedings of the newly arrived "gang." The arrival of the
immigrant workmen always afforded fun for the natives. The men shivered
and hunched their shoulders; the raw March wind was searching. The
gesticulating and vociferating increased. To any one unacquainted with
foreign ways, a complete rupture of international peace and relations
seemed imminent. They tumbled over one another into the cars and filled
them to overflowing, even to the platform where they clung to the
guards.
The man who had been the last to leave the train stood on the emptied
platform and looked about him. He carried a small bundle. He noted the
sign on the electric cars, "To Quarry End Park". A puzzled look came
into his face. He turned to the baggage-master who was wrestling with
the immigrants' baggage:--iron-bound chests, tin boxes and trunks, sacks
of heavy coarse linen filled with bedding.
"Does this car go to the sheds?"
The station master looked up. "It goes past there, but this is the
regular half-hour express for the quarries and the Park. You a stranger
in these parts?"
"This is all strange to me," the man answered.
"Any baggage?"
"No."
At that moment there was a rapid clanging of the gong; the motorman let
fly the whirling rod; the over full cars started with a jerk--there was
a howl, a shout, followed by a struggle to keep the equilibrium; an
undersized Canuck was seen to be running madly alongside with one hand
on the guard and endeavoring to get a foothold; he was hauled up
unceremoniously by a dozen hands. The crowd watching them, cheered and
jeered:
"Goin' it some, Antoine! Don't get left!"
"Keep on your pins, you Dagos!"
"Steady, Polacks--there's the strap!"
"Gee up, Johnny!" This to the motorman.
"Gosh, it's like a soda bottle fizzin' to hear them Rooshians talkin'."
"Hooray for you!"
The cars were off swiftly now; the men on the platforms waved their
hats, their white teeth flashing, their gold earrings twinkling, and
echoed the American cheer:--
"Horray!"
The station master turned away laughing.
"They look like a tough crowd, but they're O. K. in the end," he said to
the man beside him who was looking after the vanishing car and its
trailer. "There's yours coming down the switch. That'll take you up to
Flamsted and the sheds." He pushed the loaded truck up the platform.
The stranger entered the car and took a seat at the rear; there were no
other passengers. He told the conductor to leave him as near as possible
to the sheds.
"Guess you don't know these parts?" The conductor put the question.
"This here is new to me," the man answered; he seemed nothing loath to
enter into conversation. "When was this road built?"
"'Bout five years ago. You'll see what a roadway they've made clear
along the north shore of the lake; it's bein' built up with houses just
as fast as it's taken up."
He rang the starting bell. The car gathered headway and sped noisily
along the frozen road-bed. In a few minutes it stopped at the Flamsted
station; then it followed the shore of the lake for two miles until it
reached the sheds. It stopped here and the man got out.
"Can you tell me where the manager's office is?" he asked a workman who
was passing.
"Over there." He pointed with his thumb backwards across some railroad
tracks and through a stone-yard to a small two-storey office building at
the end of three huge sheds.
The man made his way across to them. Once he stopped to look at the
leaden waters of the lake, rimmed with ice; and up at the leaden sky
that seemed to be shutting down close upon them like a lid; and around
at the gray waste of frozen ground, the meadows covered lightly with
snow and pools of surface ice that here and there showed the long
bleached grass pricking through in grayish-yellow tufts. Beyond the
meadows he saw a rude stone chapel, and near by the foundations, capped
with wood, of a large church. He shivered once; he had no overcoat. Then
he went on to the manager's office. He rang and opened the door.
"Can I see the manager?"
"He's out now; gone over to the engine-house to see about the new smoke
stack; he'll be back in a few minutes. Guess you'll find a stool in the
other room."
The man entered the room, but remained standing, listening with
increasing interest to the technical talk of the other two men who were
half lying on the table as they bent over some large plans--an
architect's blue prints. Finally the man drew near.
"May I look too?" he asked.
"Sure. These are the working plans for the new Episcopal cathedral at
A.;" he named a well known city; "you've heard of it, I s'pose?"
The man shook his head.
"Here for a job?"
"Yes. Is all this work to be done by the company?"
"Every stone. We got the contract eleven months ago. We're at work on
these courses now." He turned the plates that the man might see.
He bent over to examine them, noting the wonderful detail of arch and
architrave, of keystone, cornice and foundation course. Each stone,
varying in size and shape, was drawn with utmost accuracy, dimensions
given, numbered with its own number for the place of its setting into
the perfect whole. The stability of the whole giant structure was
dependent upon the perfection and right placing of each individual stone
from lowest foundation to the keystones of the vaulting arches of the
nave; the harmony of design dependent on rightly maintained proportions
of each granite block, large or small--and all this marvellous structure
was the product of the rude granite veins in The Gore! That adamantine
mixture of gneiss and quartz, prepared in nature's laboratory throughout
millions of years, was now furnishing the rock which, beneath human
manipulation, was flowering into the great cathedral! And that perfect
whole was _ideaed_ first in the brain of man, and a sketch of it
transferred by the sun itself to the blue paper which lay on the table!
What a combination and transmutation of those forceful powers that
originate in the Unnamable!
The manager entered, passed into the next room and, sitting down at his
desk, began to make notes on a pad. At a sign from the two men, the
stranger followed him, cap in hand.