Flamsted quarries Part 37

"Offer! Almeda Champney offer to help any one with her money that was Louis Champney's!"

"But she has enough of her own, Tave; the money that was my boy's grandfather's."

"You don't know her, Aurora, not yet, after all you've suffered from her. If you'd seen her and lived with her as I have, year out and year in, you'd know her love of money has eat into her soul and gangrened it.

'T ain't no use to go, I tell you, Aurora." He put out his hand to detain her, for she had thrown on her cloak and was winding the burnous about her head.

"Tave, I'm going; don't say another word against it; and you must take me down. She isn't the only one who has loved money till it blinded them to duty--I can't throw stones--and after all she's a woman; I am going to ask her to help with the money that is rightfully my boy's--and if she gives it, I will take your twenty thousand to make up the amount."

She pressed the package into his hand.

"But what if she doesn't?"

"Then I'll ask Father Honore to do what he proposed to do last week: go to Mr. Van Ostend and ask him for the money--there's nothing left but that." She drew her breath hard and led the way from the room, hurriedly, as if there were not a moment to lose. Octavius followed her, protesting:

"Try Mr. Van Ostend first, Aurora; don't go to Mrs. Champney now."

"Now is the only time. If I hadn't asked my own relation, Mr. Van Ostend would have every reason to say, 'Why didn't you try in your own family first?'"

"But, Aurora, I'm afraid to have you."

"Afraid! I, of Almeda Champney?"

She stopped short on the stairs to look back at him. There was a trace of the old-time haughtiness in her bearing. Octavius welcomed it, for he was realizing that he could not move her from her decision, and as for the message from Almeda Champney, he knew he never could deliver it--he had no courage.

"You needn't sit up for me, Ellen," she said to the surprised girl as they went out; "it may be late before I get home; bolt the back door, I'll take the key to the front."

He helped her into the trap, and in silence they drove down to The Bow.

XVI

Aurora Googe spoke for the first time when Octavius left her at the door of Champ-au-Haut.

"Tave, don't leave me; I want you to be near, somewhere in the hall, if she is in the library. I want a witness to what I must say and--I trust you. But don't come into the room no matter what is said."

"I won't, Aurora, and I'll be there in a few minutes. I'm just going to drive to the stable and send the boy down for the mail, and I'll be right back. There's Aileen."

The girl answered the knock, and on recognizing who it was caught her breath sharply. She had not seen Mrs. Googe during the past month of misery and shame and excitement, and previous to that she had avoided Champney Googe's mother on account of the humiliation her love for the son had suffered at that son's hands--a humiliation which struck at the roots of all that was truest and purest in that womanhood, which was drying up the clear-welling spring of her buoyant temperament, her young enjoyment in life and living and all that life offers of best to youth--offers once only.

She started back at the sight of those dark eyes glowing with an unnatural fire, at the haggard face, its pallor accentuated by the white burnous. One thought had time to flash into consciousness before the woman standing on the threshold could speak: here was suffering to which her own was as a candle light to furnace flame.

"I've come to see Mrs. Champney, Aileen; is she in the library?"

"Yes,"--the girl's lips trembled,--"shall I tell her you are here?"

"No." She threw aside her cloak as if in great haste; Aileen took it and laid it on a chair. Mrs. Googe went swiftly to the library door and rapped. Aileen heard the "Come in," and the exclamation that followed: "So you've come at last, have you!"

She knew that tone of voice and what it portended. She put her fingers in her ears to shut out further sound of it, and ran down the hall to the back pa.s.sageway, closed the door behind her and stood there trembling from nervousness.--Had Mrs. Googe obtained some inkling that she had a message to deliver from that son?--a message she neither could nor would deliver? Did Champney Googe's mother know that she had seen that son in the quarry woods? Mrs. Googe's friends had told her the truth of the affair at the sheepfold, when it was found that her unanswered suspicions were liable to unsettle her reason.--Could she know of that message? Could any one?

The mere presence in the house of this suffering woman set Aileen's every nerve tingling with sickening despair. She determined to wait there in the dimly lighted back hall until Octavius should make his appearance, be it soon or late; he always came through here on his way to the ell.

Aurora Googe looked neither to right nor left on entering the room. She went straight to the library table, on the opposite side of which Mrs.

Champney was still sitting where Octavius had left her nearly two hours before. She stemmed both hands on it as if finding the support necessary. Fixing her eyes, already beginning to glaze with the increasing fever, upon her sister-in-law, she spoke, but with apparent effort:

"Yes, I've come, at last, Almeda--I've come to ask help for my boy--"

Mrs. Champney interrupted her; she was trembling visibly, even Aurora Googe saw that.

"I suppose this is Octavius Buzzby's doings. When I gave him that message it was final--_final_, do you hear?"

She raised her voice almost an octave in the intense excitement she was evidently trying to combat. The sound penetrated to Aileen, shut in the back hall, and again she thrust her fingers into her ears. At that moment Octavius entered from the outer door.

"What are you doing here, Aileen?" For the first time in his life he spoke roughly to her.

She turned upon him her white scared face. "What is _she_ doing?" she managed to say through chattering teeth.

Octavius repented him, that under the strain of the situation he had spoken to her as he had. "Go to bed, Aileen," he said firmly, but gently; "this ain't no place for you now."

She needed but that word; she was half way up the stairs before he had finished. He heard her shut herself into the room. He hung up his coat, noiselessly opened the door into the main hall, closed it softly behind him and took his stand half way to the library door. He saw nothing, but he heard all.

For a moment there was silence in the room; then Aurora spoke in a dull strained voice:

"I don't know what you mean--I haven't had any message, and--and"--she swallowed hard--"nothing is final--nothing--not yet--that's why I've come. You must help me, Almeda--help me to save Champney; there is no one else in our family I can call upon or who can do it--and there is a chance--"

"What chance?"

"The chance to save him from--from imprisonment--from a living death--"

"Has he been taken?"

"Taken!"--she swayed back from the table, clutching convulsively the edge to preserve her balance--"don't--don't, Almeda; it will kill me. I am afraid for him--afraid--don't you understand?--Help me--let me have the money, the amount that will save my son--free him--"

She swayed back towards the table and leaned heavily upon it, as fearing to lose her hold lest she should sink to her knees. Mrs. Champney was recovering in a measure from the first excitement consequent upon the shock of seeing the woman she hated standing so suddenly in her presence. She spoke with cutting sarcasm:

"What amount, may I inquire, do you deem necessary for the present to insure prospective freedom for your son?"

"You know well enough, Almeda; I must have eighty thousand at least."

Mrs. Champney laughed aloud--the same mocking laugh of a miserable old age that had raised Octavius Buzzby's anger to a white heat of rage.

Hearing it again, the man of Maine, without fully realizing what he was doing, turned back his cuffs. He could scarce restrain himself sufficiently to keep his promise to Aurora.

"Eighty thousand?--hm--m; between you and Octavius Buzzby there would be precious little left either at Champ-au-Haut or of it." She turned in her chair in order to look squarely up into the face of the woman on the opposite side of the table. "And you expect me to impoverish myself for the sake of Champney Googe?"

"It wouldn't impoverish you--you have your father's property and more too; he is of your own blood--why not?"

"Why not?" she repeated and laughed out again in her scorn; "why should I, answer me that?"

"He is your brother, Warren Googe's son--don't make me say any more, Almeda Champney; you know that nothing but this, nothing on earth--could have brought me here to ask anything of _you_!"

There was a ring of the old-time haughty independence in her voice; Octavius rejoiced to hear it. "She's getting a grip on herself," he said to himself; "I hope she'll give her one 'fore she gets through with her."