Flamsted quarries Part 11

"I'll tell yer 'bout 'em. The lords have guitars and go out in the moonlight and stand under the ladies' windys and play, and the ladies make believe they haven't heard; then they look up all round at the moon and sigh _awful_,--" she sighed in sympathy,--"and then the lords begin to sing and tell 'em they love 'em and can't live without a--a token.

I'll bet yer don't know wot that is?"

"No, of course I don't; I'm not a lord, and I don't live in Italy."

"Well, I'll tell yer." Her tone was one of relenting indulgence for his ignorance. "Sometimes it's a bow that they make out of the ribbon their dresses is trimmed with, and sometimes it's a flower, a rose, yer know; and the lord sings again--can yer sing?"

Her companion repressed a smile. "I can manage a tune or two at a pinch."

"And the lady comes out on the balcony and leans over--like this, yer know;" she jumped up and leaned over the rail of the float, keeping her hands well in front of her to save her ap.r.o.n; "and she listens and keeps looking, and when he sings he's going to die because he loves her so, she throws the token down to him to let him know he mustn't die 'coz she loves him too; and he catches it, the rose, yer know, and smells it and then he kisses it and squeezes it against his heart--" she forgot her greasy hands in the rapture of this imaginative flight, and pressed them theatrically over her gingham ap.r.o.n beneath which her own little organ was pulsing quick with the excitement of this telling moment; "--and then the moon s.h.i.+nes just as bright as silver and--and she marries him."

She drew a deep breath. During the recital she had lost herself in the personating of the favorite characters from her one novel. While she stood there looking out on the lake and the Flamsted Hills with eyes that were still seeing the gardens and marble terraces of Isola Bella, Champney Googe had time to fix that picture on his mental retina and, recalling it in after years, knew that the impression was "more lasting than bronze."

She came rather suddenly to herself when she grew aware of her larded hands pressed against her clean ap.r.o.n.

"Oh, gracious, but I'll catch it!" she exclaimed ruefully. "Wot'll I do now? She said I'd got to keep it clean till she got back, and she'll fire me and--and I want to stay awful; it's just like the story, yer know." She raised her gray eyes appealingly to his, and he saw at once that her childish fear was real. He comforted her.

"I'll tell you what: we'll go back to Hannah and she'll fix it for you; and if it's spoiled I'll go down and get some like it in the village and my mother will make you a new one. So, cheer up, Miss Aileen Armagh and-don't-yer-forget-it! And to-morrow evening, if the moon is out, we'll have a serenade all by ourselves; what do you say to that?"

"D' yer mane it?" she demanded, half breathless in her earnestness.

He nodded.

Aileen clapped her hands and began to dance; then she stopped suddenly to say: "I ain't going to dance for yer now; but I will sometime," she added graciously. "I've got to go now and help Ann. What time are yer coming for the serenade?"

"I'll be here about eight; the moon will be out by then and we must have a moon."

She started away on the run, beckoning to him with her unwashed hands: "Come on, then, till I show yer my windy. It's the little one over the dining-room. There ain't a balcony, but--see there! there's the top of the bay windy and I can lean out--why didn't yer tell me yer could play the guitar?"

"Because I can't."

"A harp, belike?"

"No; guess again."

"Yer no good;--but yer'll come?"

"Shurre; an' more be token it's at eight 'o the clock Oi'll be under yer windy." He gave the accent with such Celtic gusto that the little girl was captivated.

"Ain't you a corker!" she said admiringly and, waving her hand again to him, ran to the house. Champney followed more slowly to lay the case before Ann and Hannah.

On his way homeward he found himself wondering if he had ever seen the child before. As she leaned on the rail and looked out over the lake, a certain grace of att.i.tude, which the coa.r.s.e clothing failed to conceal, the rapt expression in the eyes, the _timbre_ of her voice, all awakened a dim certainty that he had seen her before at some time and place distinctly unusual; but where? He turned the search-light of concentrated thought upon his comings and goings and doings during the last year and more. Where had he seen just such a child?

He looked up from the roadway, on which his eyes had been fixed while his absent thought was making back tracks over the last twelve months, and saw before him the high pastures of The Gore. In the long afterglow of the July sunset they enamelled the barren heights with a rich, yellowish green. In a flash it came to him: "The green hill far away without a city wall"; the child singing on the vaudeville stage; the hush in the audience. He smiled to himself. He was experiencing that satisfaction which is common to all who have run down the quarry of a long-hunted recollection.

"She's the very one," he said to himself; "I wonder if Aunt Meda knows."

VI

That which proves momentous in our lives is rarely antic.i.p.ated, seldom calculated. Its factors are for the most part unknown quant.i.ties; if not prime in themselves they are, at least, prime to each other. It cannot be measured in terms of time, for often it lies between two infinities.

But the momentous decision, event, action, which reacts upon the life of a man or woman and influences that life so long as it is lived here on earth, is on the surface sufficiently finite for us to say: It was on such a day I made my decision; to such and such an event I can look back as the cause of all that has followed. The How thereof remains traceable to our purblind eyes for a month, a term of years, one generation, possibly two; the Where and When can generally be defined; but the _Why_ we ask blindly, and are rarely answered satisfactorily.

Had young Googe been told, while he was walking homewards up The Gore, that his life line, like the antenna of the wireless, was even then the recipient and transmitter of multiple influences that had been, as it were, latent in the storage batteries of a generation; that what he was to be in the future was at this very hour in germ for development, he would have scouted the idea. His young self-sufficiency would have laughed the teller to scorn. He would have maintained as a man his masters.h.i.+p of his fate and fortunes, and whistled as carelessly as he whistled now for the puppy, an Irish terrier which he had brought home with him, for training, to come and meet him.

And the puppy, whose name was Ragam.u.f.fin and called Rag for short, came duly, unknowing, like his young master, to meet his fate. He wriggled broad-side down the walk as a puppy will in his first joy till, overpowered by his emotions, he rolled over on his back at Champney's feet, the fringes of his four legs waving madly in air.

"Champney, I'm waiting for you." It was his mother calling from the door. He ran in through the kitchen, and hurried to make himself presentable for the table and their guest whom he saw on the front porch.

As he entered the dining-room, his mother introduced him: "Father Honore, my son, Champney."

The two men shook hands, and Mrs. Googe took her seat. The priest bowed his head momentarily to make the sign of the cross. Champney Googe shot one keen, amazed look in his direction. When that head was lifted Champney "opened fire," so he termed it to himself.

"I think I've seen you before, sir." It was hard for him to give the t.i.tle "Father." "I got in your way, didn't I, at the theatre one evening over a year ago?"

His mother looked at him in amazement and something of anxiety. Was her son in his prejudice forgetting himself?

"Indeed, I think it was the other way round, I was in your way, for I remember thinking when you ran up against me 'that young fellow has been half-back on a football team.'"

Champney laughed. There was no withstanding this man's voice and the veiled humor of his introductory remarks.

"Did I hit hard? I didn't think for a moment that you would recognize me; but I knew you as soon as mother introduced us. I see by your face, mother, that you need enlightening. It was only that I met Father Honore"--he brought that out with no hesitation--"at the entrance to one of the New York theatres over a year ago, and in the crowd nearly ran him down. No wonder, sir, you sized me up by the pressure as a football fiend. That's rich!" His merry laugh rea.s.sured his mother; she turned to Father Honore.

"I don't know whether all my son's acquaintances are made at the theatre or not, but it is a coincidence that the other day he happened to mention the fact that the first time he saw Mr. Van Ostend he saw him there."

"It's my strong impression, Mrs. Googe, that Mr. Googe saw us both at the same place, at the same time. Mr. Van Ostend spoke to me of your son just a few days before I left New York."

"Did he?" Champney's eager blue eyes sought the priest's. "Do you know him well?"

"As we all know him through his place in the world of affairs.

Personally I have met him only a few times. You may know, perhaps, that he was instrumental in placing little Aileen Armagh, the orphan child,--you know whom I mean?--at Mrs. Champney's, your aunt, Mrs. Googe tells me."

"I was just going to ask you if you would be willing to tell us something about her," said Mrs. Googe. "I've not seen her, but from all I hear she is a most unusual child, most interesting--"

"Interesting, mother!" Champney interrupted her rather explosively; "she's unique, the only and ever Aileen Armagh." He turned again to Father Honore. "Do tell us about her; I've been so blockheaded I couldn't put two and two together, but I'm beginning to see daylight at last. I made her acquaintance this afternoon. That's why I was a little late, mother."

How we tell, even the best of us, with reserves! Father Honore told of his interest being roused, as well as his suspicions, by the wording of the poster, and of his determination to see for himself to what extent the child was being exploited. But of the thought-lever, the "Little Trout", that raised that interest, he made no mention; nor, indeed, was it necessary.

"You see there is a cla.s.s of foreigners on the East side that receive commissions for exploiting precocious children on the stage; they are very clever in evading the law. The children themselves are helpless. I had looked up a good many cases before this because it was in my line of work, and in this particular one I found that the child had been orphaned in Ireland almost from her birth; that an aunt, without relatives, had emigrated with her only a few months before I saw her on the stage, and the two had lived in an east side tenement with an old Italian. The child's aunt, a young woman about twenty-eight, developed quick consumption during the winter and died in the care of the Italian, Nonna Lisa they call her. This woman cared for the little girl, and began to take her out with her early in March on the avenues and streets of the upper west side. The old woman is an itinerant musician and plays the guitar with real feeling--I've heard her--and, by the way, makes a decent little living of her own. She found that Aileen had a good voice and could sing several Irish songs. She learned the accompaniments, and the two led, so far as I can discover, a delightful life of vagabondage for several weeks. It seems the old Italian has a grandson, Luigi, who sings in vaudeville with a travelling troop. He was in the west and south during the entire time that Aileen was with his grandmother; and through her letters he learned of the little girl's voice. He spoke of this to his manager, and he communicated with the manager of a Broadway vaudeville--they are both in the vaudeville trust--and asked him to engage her, and retain her for the troop when they should start on their annual autumn tour. But Nonna Lisa was shrewd.--It's wonderful, Mrs.

Googe, how quickly they develop the sixth sense of cautious speculation after landing! She made a contract for six weeks only, hoping to raise her price in the autumn. So I found that the child was not being exploited, except legitimately, by the old Italian who was caring for her and guarding her from all contamination. But, of course, that could not go on, and I had the little girl placed in the orphan asylum on ----nd Street--" He interrupted himself to say half apologetically:

"I am prolix, I fear, but I am hoping you will be personally interested in this child whose future life will, I trust, be spent here far away from the metropolitan snares. I am sure she is worth your interest."

"I know she is," said Champney emphatically; "and the more we know of her the better. You'll laugh at my experience when you have heard it; but first let us have the whole of yours."

"You know, of course, where Mr. Van Ostend lives?" Champney nodded. "Did you happen to notice the orphan asylum just opposite on ----nd Street?"

"No; I don't recall any building of that sort."

He smiled. "Probably not; that is not in your line and we men are apt to see only what is in the line of our working vision. It seems that Mr.