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                          Flamsted Quarries

                          BY MARY E. WALLER

Author of "The Wood Carver of Lympus," "The Daughter of the Rich," "The
Little Citizen," etc.




WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
BY G. PATRICK NELSON

A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

_Copyright, 1910_,
BY MARY E. WALLER
Published September, 1910

Reprinted, September, 1910; November, 1910; December, 1910




TO THOSE WHO TOIL




[Illustration: "She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause"]




Contents


THE BATTERY IN LIEU OF A PREFACE

PART FIRST, A CHILD FROM THE VAUDEVILLE

PART SECOND, HOME SOIL

PART THIRD, IN THE STREAM

PART FOURTH, OBLIVION

PART FIFTH, SHED NUMBER TWO

THE LAST WORD




Illustrations


"She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause"

"Those present loved in after years to recall this scene"

"What a picture she made leaning caressingly against the charmed and
patient Bess"

"'Unworthy--unworthy!' was Champney Googe's cry, as he knelt before
Aileen"




FLAMSTED QUARRIES




                       "_Abysmal deeps repose
    Beneath the stout ship's keel whereon we glide;
    And if a diver plunge far down within
    Those depths and to the surface safe return,
    His smile, if so it chance he smile again,
    Outweighs in worth all gold._"




The Battery in Lieu of a Preface


A few years ago, at the very tip of that narrow rocky strip of land that
has been well named "the Tongue that laps the Commerce of the World,"
the million-teeming Island of Manhattan, there was daily presented a
scene in the life-drama of our land that held in itself, as in solution,
a great national ideal. The old heroic "Epic of the Nations" was still
visible to the naked eye, and masquerading here among us of the then
nineteenth century in the guise of the arrival of the immigrant ship.

The scenic setting is in this instance incomparably fine. As we lean on
the coping of the sea wall at the end of the green-swarded Battery, in
the flush of a May sunset that, on the right, throws the Highlands of
the Navesink into dark purple relief and lights the waters of Harbor,
River, and Sound into a softly swelling roseate flood, we may fix our
eyes on the approach to The Narrows and watch the incoming shipping of
the world: the fruit-laden steamer from the Bermudas, the black East
Indiaman heavy with teakwood and spices, the lumberman's barge awash
behind the tow, the old three-masted schooner, low in the water, her
decks loaded with granite from the far-away quarries of Maine. We may
see, if we linger, the swift approach of a curiously foreshortened
ocean steamship, her smokestack belching blackness, and the slower
on-coming of a Norwegian bark, her sails catching the sunset light and
gleaming opaline against the clear blue of the southern horizon. These
last are the immigrant ships.

An hour later in old Castle Garden the North and South of Europe clasp
hands on the very threshold of America. Four thousand feet are planted
on the soil of the New World. Four thousand hands are knocking at its
portals. Two thousand hearts are beating high with hope at prospect of
the New, or palpitating with terror at contact with the Strange.

A thousand tragedies, a thousand comedies are here enacted before our
very eyes: hopes, fears, tears, laughter, shrieks, groans, wailings,
exultant cries, welcoming words, silent all-expressing hand-clasp,
embrace, despairing wide-eyed search, hopeless isolation, the
befriended, the friendless, the home-welcomed, the homeless--all
commingled.

But an official routine soon sorts, separates, pairs, locates; speaks in
Norwegian, speaks in Neapolitan. An hour passes; the dusk falls; the
doors are opened; the two thousand, ticketed, labelled, are to enter
upon the new life. The confusing chatter grows less and less. A child
wails, and is hushed in soft Italian--a Neapolitan lullaby--by its
mother as she sits on a convenient bench and for the first time gives
her little one the breast in a strange land. An old Norwegian, perhaps a
lineal descendant of our Viking visitors some thousand years ago, makes
his way to the door, bent beneath a sack-load of bedding; his right hand
holds his old wife's left. They are the last to leave.

The dusk has fallen. To the sea wall again for air after the thousands
of garlic-reeking breaths in old Castle Garden. The sea is dark. The
heavens are deep indigo; against them flashes the Liberty beacon; within
them are set the Eternal Lights. Upon the waters of the harbor the
illumined cabin windows of a multitude of river craft throw quivering
rays along the slow glassy swell.

For a moment on River, and Harbor, and Sound, there is silence. But
behind us we hear the subdued roar and beat of the metropolis, a sound
comparable to naught else on earth or in heaven: the mighty systole and
dyastole of a city's heart, and the tramp, tramp of a million homeward
bound toilers--the marching tune of Civilization's hosts, to which the
feet of the newly arrived immigrants are already keeping time, for they
have crossed the threshold of old Castle Garden and entered the New
World.




PART FIRST

A Child from the Vaudeville


I

The performance in itself was crude and commonplace, but the
demonstration in regard to it was unusual. Although this scene had been
enacted both afternoon and evening for the past six weeks, the audience
at the Vaudeville was showing its appreciation by an intent silence.

The curtain had risen upon a street scene in the metropolis at night.
Snow was falling, dimming the gas jets at the corner and half-veiling,
half-disclosing the imposing entrance-porch of a marble church. The
doors were closed; the edifice dark. As the eyes of the onlookers became
accustomed to the half-lights, they were aware of a huddle of clothes
against the iron railing that outlined the curve of the three broad
entrance-steps. As vision grew keener the form of a child was
discernible, a little match girl who was lighting one by one a few
matches and shielding the flame with both hands from the draught.
Suddenly she looked up and around. The rose window above the porch was
softly illumined; the light it emitted transfused the thickly falling
snow. Low organ tones became audible, although distant and muffled.

The child rose; came down the centre of the stage to the lowered
footlights and looked about her, first at the orchestra, then around
and up at the darkened house that was looking intently at her--a small
ill-clad human, a spiritual entity, the only reality in this artificial
setting. She grasped her package of matches in both hands; listened a
moment as if to catch the low organ tones, then began to sing.

She sang as a bird sings, every part of her in motion: throat, eyes,
head, body. The voice was clear, loud, full, strident, at times, on the
higher notes from over-exertion, but always childishly appealing. The
gallery leaned to catch every word of "The Holy City."

She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause. There was no
modulation, no phrasing, no interpretation; it was merely a steady
fortissimo outpouring of a remarkable volume of tone for so small an
instrument. And the full power of it was, to all appearance, sent
upwards with intent to the gallery. In any case, the gallery took the
song unto itself, and as the last words, "_Hosanna for evermore_" rang
upward, there was audible from above a long-drawn universal "Ah!" of
satisfaction.

It was followed by a half minute of silence that was expressive of
latent enthusiasm. The child was still waiting at the footlights,
evidently for the expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the
gallery responded--how heartily, those who were present have never
forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of
applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine
stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an
irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more.
The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies,
boxes; they answered, as it were, antiphonally. Faces were seen peeking
from the wings; hands were visible there, clapping frantically. In the
midst of the tumultuous uproar the little girl smiled brightly and ran
off the stage.

The lights were turned on. A drop-scene fell; the stage was transformed,
for, in the middle distance, swelling green hills rose against a soft
blue sky seen between trees in the foreground. Sunshine lay on the
landscape, enhancing the haze in the distance and throwing up the hills
more prominently against it. The cries and uproar continued.

Meanwhile, in the common dressing-room beyond the wings, there was being
enacted a scene which if slightly less tumultuous in expression was
considerably more dangerous in quality. A quick word went the round of
the stars' private rooms; it penetrated to the sanctum of the Japanese
wrestlers; it came to the ear of the manager himself: "The Little
Patti's struck!" It sounded ominous, and, thereupon, the Vaudeville
flocked to the dressing-room door to see--what? Merely a child in a
tantrum, a heap of rags on the floor, a little girl in white petticoats
stamping, dancing, pulling away from an old Italian woman who was trying
to robe her and exhorting, imploring, threatening the child in almost
one and the same breath.

The manager rushed to the rescue for the house was losing its head. He
seized the child by the arm. "What's the matter here, Aileen?"

"I ain't goin' ter dance a <DW53> ter-night--not ter-night!" she cried
defiantly and in intense excitement; "he's in the box again, an' I'm
goin' to give him the Sunday-night song, like as I did before when he
give me the flowers, so now!"

Nonna Lisa, the old Italian, slipped the white dress deftly over the
mutinous head, so muffling the half-shriek. The manager laughed. "Hurry
up then--on with you!" The child sprang away with a bound. "I've seen
this too many times before," he added; "it's an attack of 'the last
night's nerves.'--Hark!"

The tumult was drowning the last notes of the orchestral intermezzo, as
the little girl, clad now wholly in white, ran in upon the stage and
coming again down the centre raised her hand as if to command silence.
With the gallery to see was to obey; the floor and balconies having
subsided the applause from above died away.

The child, standing in the full glare of the footlights with the sunny
skyey spaces and overlapping blue hills behind her, half-faced the
brilliant house as, without accompaniment, she began to sing:

    "There is a green hill far away
      Without a city wall."

The childish voice sustained the simple melody perfectly, and it was
evident when the little girl began the second verse that she was singing
wholly to please herself and some one in a proscenium box. Before the
close of the first stanza the gallery