Mary E. Waller

“ Octavius waited for her weeping to spend itself. His heart was wrung with pity, but he was thankful for every tear she shed; his gratefulness, however, found a curious inner expression.
"Damn her—damn her—damn her—" he kept saying over and over to himself, and the mere repetition seemed to ease him of his over-powering surcharge of pity. But it was Almeda Champney he had in mind, and, after all, his unuttered inner curses were only a prayer for help, read backwards.
At last, Aurora Googe lifted her face from her hands and looked at Octavius Buzzby. He reddened and rose to go. ”

“ Why must he suffer such indignities from a man like Jim McCann! How dared a man, that was a man, taunt another like that! The hand holding her sun umbrella gripped the handle tightly, and through set teeth she said to herself: "I hate them all—hate them!"
The declining July sun was hot upon her; the road-bed, gleaming white with granite dust, blinded her. She looked about for some shelter where she could wait for the down car; there was none in sight, except the pines over by Father Honoré's and the sisterhood house an eighth of a mile beyond. ”

“ Love was claiming her wholly, possessing her soul and body—but no longer that idealizing love of her young girlhood and womanhood. Rather it was that love which is akin to the divine rapture of maternity—the love that gives all, that sacrifices all, which demands nothing of the loved one save to love, to shield, to comfort—the love that makes of a true woman's breast not only a rest whereon a man, as well as his babe, may pillow a weary head, but a round tower of strength within which there beats a heart of high courage for him who goes forth to the daily battlefield of Life. ”

“ Do you, in your supreme egotism, suppose that you, Champney Googe, are the only man in this world who has sinned, suffered, gone under for a time? Are you going to lie down in the ditch like a craven, simply because you have failed to withstand the first assaults of the devil that is in you? Do you think, because you have sinned, there is no longer a place for you and your work in this world where all men are sinners at some time in their lives? I tell you, Champney Googe,—and mark well what I say,—your sin, as sin, is not so despicable as your attitude towards your own life. ”

“ Oh, if he hadn't been put there, I could have conquered this weakness—"
"Aileen, no! It is no weakness, it is strength."
Father Honoré withdrew his hand, that had been to the broken woman a silent benediction, and walked up and down the long room. "You would never have conquered; there was—there is no need to conquer. Such love is of God—trust it, my child; don't try any longer to thrust it forth from your heart, your life; for if you do, your life will be but a poor maimed thing, beneficial neither to yourself nor to others. ”

“ Mrs. Champney walked swiftly down the broad main hall, that ran through the house, to the door opening on the north terrace whence there was an unobstructed view up the three miles' length of Lake Mesantic to the Flamsted Hills; and just there, through a deep depression in their midst, the Rothel, a rushing brook, makes its way to the calm waters at their gates. At this point, where the hills separate like the opening sepals of a gigantic calyx, the rugged might of Katahdin heaves head and shoulder into the blue.
The irregular margin of the lake is fringed with pines of magnificent growth. ”

“ Van Ostend told him she had applied to him for some working position for Romanzo in the Flamsted office, and not in vain; he was about to be put in as pay-master.
As he drove slowly up the highroad towards The Gore, he saw the stone-cutters' sheds stretching dim and gray in the moonlight along the farther shore. A standing train of loaded flat-cars gleamed in the electric light like a long high-piled drift of new-fallen snow. Here and there, on approaching The Gore, an arc-light darkened the hills round about and sent its blinding glare into the traveller's eyes. ”

“ Father Honoré had a vision at that moment of Champney Googe's face when he said, "But you loved her with your whole manhood." He made no reply, but waited for Aileen to say more if she should so choose.
"I believed he loved me—and so I told him my love—I shall never, never get over that!" she exclaimed passionately. "But I know now—I knew before he went away the last time, that I was mistaken; no man could say what he did and know even the first letter of love." ”

“ Many a man coming in from the quarries or the sheds with a grievance, a burden, or a joy, felt the influence of this simple room. Many a woman brought here her heavy over-charged heart and was eased in its fire-lighted atmosphere of welcome. Many a child brought hither its spring offering of the first mitchella, or its autumn gift of checkerberries. Many a girl, many a boy had met here to rehearse a Christmas glee or an Easter anthem. Many a night these walls echoed to the strains of the priest's violin, when he sat alone by the fireside with only the Past for a guest. ”

“ All her rebellion at such thraldom, all her disgust at her weakness, as she termed it, all her hatred, engendered by the unpalatable method he had used to enthrall her, all her struggle to forget, to live again her life free of any entanglement with Champney Googe, all her endeavors to care for other men, had availed her naught. Love she must—and Champney Googe remained the object of that love. Father Honoré's words gave her courage to live on—loving. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She looked squarely at the priest for the first time since his entrance. Father Honoré could but wonder if the thought behind that look would find adequate expression.
"You haven't said 'God' to me once since that—that night. Don't speak to me about Him now, will you? He's too far away—it doesn't mean anything to me."
"Mrs. Googe, there comes a time in most lives when God seems so far away that we can find Him only through the Human;—perhaps such a time has come in your life."
"I don't know; I never thought much about that. But—my god was human, oh, for so many years!—I loved Louis Champney." ”

“ Octavius saw by that one movement that she had regained her usual control. He, too, felt relieved, and spoke more freely:
"I said I want you to make good that eighty thousand dollars—"
"Don't be a fool, Octavius Buzzby,"—she broke in upon him coldly, a world of scornful pity in her voice,—"you mean well, but you're a fool to think that at my time of life I'm going to impoverish myself and my estate for Champney Googe. You've had your pains for nothing. Let him take his punishment like any other man—he's no better, no worse; it's the fault of his bringing up; Aurora has only herself to thank." ”

“ When the soil is turned over carefully, enriched and prepared perfectly for the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, the bud forms quickly, and unexpectedly spreads its petal-star to the sunlight which enhances its beauty and fructifies its work of reproduction? The natural laws, in this case, work to their prescribed end along lines of favoring circumstance—and Love is but the working out of the greatest of all Nature's laws. ”

“ Count this life as yours to make the best of. Live, I say; live, work, make good; it is in any man's power who has received a reprieve like yours. I know whereof I am speaking. I'll go further: it would be in your power even if you had been judged and committed."
The man, to whom he was appealing, shuddered as he heard the word "committed."
"That would be death," he said under his breath; "last night was nothing, nothing to that—but you can't understand—"
"Better, perhaps, than you think. But what I want you to see is that there is something left to live for; Champney—your mother." ”

“ Aileen spoke without further questioning. Evidently she was desirous of making her position as well as Champney's plain to him and to herself. Her voice grew more gentle as she continued:—
"Father Honoré, I've loved him so long—and so truly, without hope, you know—never any hope, and hating myself for loving where I was not loved—that I think I do know what love is—"
Father Honoré smiled to himself in the half-dark; this voice was still young, and its love-wisdom was young-wise, also. There was hope, he told himself, that all would come right in the end—work together for good. ”

“ Champney sat down on the thick rusty-red matting of pine needles and turned to him, a question in his eyes. Father Honoré smiled. "What is it?" he said.
"May I ask if it was your own choice coming up here to us?"
"Yes, my deliberate choice. I had to work for it, though. The superior of my order was against my coming. It took moral suasion to get the appointment."
"I don't suppose they wanted to lose a valuable man from the city," said Champney bluntly.
"The question of value is not, happily, a question of environment. I simply felt I could do my best work here in the best way." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Aileen Armagh heard that call, and doubt, suspicion, anger dropped away from her. Instead, trust, devotion, anticipation clothed her thought of him; he was coming to speak the "word" that was to make her future fair and plain—the one "word" that should set him forever in her heart, enthrone him in her life. That word was not "love", but the sacrament of love; the word of four letters which a woman writes large with legitimate loving pride in the face of the world. ”

“ But Aileen spoke the truth. Her vivid imagination, a factor in the true Celtic temperament, provided her with another life, apart from the busy practical one which Mrs. Champney laid out for her. All her childish delights of day-dreaming and joyous romancing, fostered by that first novel which Luigi Poggi thrust through the knothole in the orphan asylum fence, was at once transferred to Alice Van Ostend and her surroundings so soon as the two children established their across-street acquaintance. ”

“ For a while the two worked in silence, broken only by little Billy McCann, who was blissfully gurgling emphatic endorsement of everything his mother said. The bright sunshine of February filled the barren Gore full to the brim with sparkling light. From time to time the sharp crescendo sz-szz-szzz of the trolleys, that now ran from The Corners to Quarry End Park at the head of The Gore, teased the still cold air. Maggie was in a reminiscent mood, being wrought upon unwittingly by the sunny quiet and homey kitchen warmth. She looked over the head of her baby to Aileen. ”

“ Father Honoré spoke in a low voice.
"I saw a vision of human love that was forgiving, and loving, and saving by nothing but love, like the divine love of the Christ you preach about—Father Honoré, I saw Aileen Armagh sitting on a block of granite and Champney Googe kneeling before her, his head in the very dust at her feet—and she raising it with her two arms—and her face was like an angel's—"
The two men drove on in silence to Champ-au-Haut. ”

“ Her nature was so absorbingly tenacious of whatever held her narrow interests, that a child at Champ-au-Haut would have broken, in a measure, her domination of her weaker-willed husband, because it would have centred in itself his love and ambition to "keep up the name." That now, eleven years after Louis Champney's death, she should contemplate the introduction into her perfectly ordered household of a child, an alien, was a revelation of appalling moment to Octavius. ”

“ But as he could not know what answer might or might not affect Aileen's future, he decided to speak the whole truth—let come what might.
"I sincerely hope so," he replied.
"Do—you know?" with a slight emphasis on the "know."
"I know they love each other—have loved each other for many years."
"If she does—she—won't get anything from me—you tell her—so."
"That will make no difference to Aileen, Mrs. Champney. Love outweighs all else with her."
She continued to look at him unwaveringly.
"Love—fools—" she murmured. ”

“ Upon her arrival in Flamsted, the child's adaptability to changed circumstances and new environment was furthered by the play of this imagination that fed itself on what others, who lack it, might call the commonplace of life: the house at Champ-au-Haut became her lordly palace; the estate a park; she herself a princess guarded only too well by an aged duenna; Octavius Buzzby and Romanzo Caukins she looked upon as life-servitors. ”

“ Has every man, who was present then, said since, when hewing a foundation stone, a block for a bridge abutment, a corner-stone for a cathedral or a railroad station, a cap-stone for a monument, a milestone, a lintel for a door, a hearthstone or a step for an altar, 'I belong to the great guild of the makers of this country; I quarry and hew the rock that lays the enduring bed for the iron or electric horses which rush from sea to sea and carry the burden of humanity'?—Think of it, men! ”

“ Champney had come to depend more and more on the girl's strong youth; to demand more and more from her abundant vitality and lively spirits; and Aileen, although recognizing the anomalous position she held in the Champ-au-Haut household—neither servant nor child, neither companion nor friend—gave of herself; gave as her Irish inheritance prompted her to give: ungrudgingly, faithfully, without reward save the knowledge of a duty performed towards the woman who, in taking her into her household and maintaining her there, had placed her in a position to make friends—such friends! ”

“ Father Honoré smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps you may recall that old saying of the Jew, Nathan the Wise: 'A man is a man before he is either Christian or Jew.' And we are men, Mr. Van Ostend; men primarily before we are either financier or priest. Let us speak as man to man; put aside all points of view entailed by difference of training, and meet on the common ground of our manhood, I am sure the perspective and retrospective ought to be in the same line of vision from that standpoint." ”