"Margot--p'tite Truite--"...
Thus, after six and forty years of silence, Love spoke once; that Love,
greater than State and Church because it is the foundation of both, and
without it neither could exist; that Love--co-eval with all life, the
Love which defies time, sustains absence, glorifies loss--remains, thank
God! a deathless legacy to the toiling Race of the Human, and, because
deathless, triumphant in death.
It triumphed now....
The ponderous crash of the derrick followed by the screams of the two
boys, brought the quarrymen, the women and children, rushing in
terrified haste from their evening meal. But when they reached the spot,
and before Champney Googe, running over the granite slopes, as once
years before he ran from pursuing justice, could satisfy himself that
his boy was uninjured, at what a sacrifice he knew only when he knelt by
the prostrate form, before Jim McCann, seizing a lever, could shout to
the men to "lift all together," the life-blood ebbed, carrying with it
on the hurrying out-going tide the priest's loving undaunted spirit.
* * * * *
All work at the quarries and the sheds was suspended during the
following Saturday; the final service was to be held on Sunday.
All Saturday afternoon, while the bier rested before the altar in the
stone chapel by the lake shore, a silent motley procession filed under
the granite lintel:--stalwart Swede, blue-eyed German, sallow-cheeked
Pole, dark-eyed Italian, burly Irish, low-browed Czechs, French
Canadians, stolid English and Scotch, Henry Van Ostend and three of the
directors of the Flamsted Quarries Company, rivermen from the Penobscot,
lumbermen from farther north, the Colonel and three of his sons, the
rector from The Bow, a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church from New
York, the little choir boys--children of the quarrymen--and Augustus
Buzzby, members of the Paulist Order, Elmer Wiggins, Octavius Buzzby
supporting old Joel Quimber, Nonna Lisa--in all, over three thousand
souls one by one passed up the aisle to stand with bared bowed head by
that bier; to look their last upon the mask of the soul; to render, in
spirit, homage to the spirit that had wrought among its fellows,
manfully, unceasingly, to realize among them on this earth a
long-striven-for ideal.
Many a one knelt in prayer. Many a mother, not of English tongue,
placing her hand upon the head of her little child forced him to kneel
beside her; her tears wet the stone slabs of the chancel floor.
Just before sunset, the Daughters of the Mystic Rose passed into the
church; they bore tapers to set upon the altar, and at the head and
foot of the bier. Two of them remained throughout the night to pray by
the chancel rail; one of them was Sister Ste. Croix. Silent, immovable
she knelt there throughout the short June night. Her secret remained
with her and the one at whose feet she was kneeling.
The little group of special friends from The Gore came last, just a
little while before the face they loved was to be covered forever from
human gaze: Aileen with her four-months' babe in her arms, Aurora Googe
leading little Honore by the hand, Margaret McCann with her boy, Elvira
Caukins and her two daughters. Silent, their tears raining upon the awed
and upturned faces of the children, they, too, knelt; but no sound of
sobbing profaned the great peaceful silence that was broken only by the
faint _chip-chip-chipping_ monotone from Shed Number Two. In that four
men were at work. Champney Googe was one of them.
He was expecting them at this appointed time. When he saw them enter the
chapel, he put aside hammer and chisel and went across the meadow to
join them. He waited for them to come out; then, taking the babe from
his wife's arms, he gave her into his mother's keeping. He looked
significantly at his wife. The others passed on and out; but Aileen
turned and with her husband retraced her steps to the altar. They knelt,
hand clasped in hand....
When they rose to look their last upon that loved face, they knew that
their lives had received through his spirit the benediction of God.
* * * * *
Champney returned to his work, for time pressed. The quarrymen in The
Gore had asked permission the day before to quarry a single stone in
which their priest should find his final resting place. Many of them
were Italians, and Luigi Poggi was spokesman. Permission being given, he
turned to the men:
"For the love of God and the man who stood to us for Him, let us quarry
the stone nearest heaven. Look to the ridge yonder; that has not been
opened up--who will work with me to open up the highest ridge in The
Gore, and quarry the stone to-night."
The volunteers were practically all the men in the Upper and Lower
Quarries; the foreman was obliged to draw lots. The men worked in
shifts--worked during that entire night; they bared a space of sod;
cleared off the surface layer; quarried the rock, using the hand drill
entirely. Towards morning the thick granite slab, that lay nearest to
the crimsoning sky among the Flamsted Hills, was hoisted from its
primeval bed and lowered to its place on the car.
It was then that four men, Champney Googe, Antoine, Jim McCann, and
Luigi Poggi asserted their right, by reason of what the dead had been to
them, to cut and chisel the rock into sarcophagus shape. Luigi and
Antoine asked to cut the cover of the stone coffin.
All Saturday afternoon, the four men in Shed Number Two worked at their
work of love, of unspeakable gratitude, of passionate devotion to a
sacrificed manhood. They wrought in silence. All that afternoon, they
could see, by glancing up from their work and looking out through the
shed doors across the field, the silent procession entering and leaving
the chapel. Sometimes Jim McCann would strike wild in his feverish haste
to ease, by mere physical exertion, his great over-charged heart of its
load of grief; a muttered curse on his clumsiness followed. Now and
then Champney caught his eye turned upon him half-appealingly; but they
spoke no word; _chip-chip-chipping_, they worked on.
The sun set; electricity illumined the shed. Antoine worked with
desperation; Luigi wrought steadily, carefully, beautifully--his heart
seeking expression in every stroke. When the dawn paled the electric
lights, he laid aside his tools, took off his canvas apron, and stepped
back to view the cover as a whole. The others, also, brought their stone
to completion. As with one accord they went over to look at the
Italian's finished work, and saw--no carving of archbishop's mitre, no
sculpture of cardinal's hat (O mother, where were the day-dreams for
your boy!), but a rough slab, in the centre of which was a raised heart
of polished granite, and, beneath it, cut deep into the rock--which,
although lying yesterday nearest the skies above The Gore, was in past
aeons the foundation stone of our present world--the words: