Francis Lynde

“ Every word that I have ever told you about the lack of sentiment between us is true: and yet ... well, Elizabeth is a woman, after all, Poictiers. Even in a relationship as unsentimental as ours has been there are limitations—there must be limitations.”
Carfax was gazing now into the heart of the dying fire.
“If the case were reversed, Vance, what would your answer be?”
Tregarvon gave a short laugh. “I can’t imagine the reversal,” he parried. “Elizabeth is one of those splendid, serene, élevé women who go through life without ever knowing the meaning of a grand passion.” ”

“ While Tregarvon looked, a warbling bird whistle rose shrill and clear on the windless air. The watcher saw the young man hastily pocket the pistol and heard him whistle a reply. Almost at the same instant the figure of a woman [355] appeared at the buried up-hill heel of the great boulder. She stood for a moment in the yellow light of the westering sun, long enough for Tregarvon to recognize her beyond any question of doubt. Then she ran, slipping and sliding, down the leaf-carpeted hazard slope, to be caught in the arms of the waiting man. ”

“ Tregarvon, fighting for the up-hill inches with a load a ton or so heavier than his pulling power, became immune to the gentler leadings. Why should a promise, made to a woman who had taken it serenely as a conventional matter of course, stand in the way of a passion so vital that it laid hold upon the very well-springs of life? Why should he stand aside and let Carfax, under a fantastic sense of duty, mar three lives, or possibly four, in a foolish attempt to preserve the conventional unities? ”

“ In due time Carfax negotiated his passage and the yellow car disappeared in the direction of Highmount. But the sting was left behind, and Tregarvon drank deep from the opium cup of fierce labor without being able to purchase blessed oblivion. Jagged thoughts came uppermost; repinings as old as mankind; as venerable, at least, as that prehistoric day when the first friend took it upon himself to smite his brother into the straight and narrow path.
Why must civilized man, alone of all sentient beings, be burdened with that inconsiderate thing [288] called conscience? ”

“ Tregarvon was laughing appreciatively. “You have an eye for the dramatic possibilities, always, haven’t you, Poictiers? Why should Mr. William Wilberforce Hartridge have it in for me?”
“I can only make a crude guess. Even a mild-eyed professor of sciences may turn, like the trodden worm. You umpire him out of the game pretty ruthlessly when we spend an evening at Highmount.”
“With Miss Richardia? Pshaw! you don’t suppose that dried-up old stick of a pedagogue—why, it would be Beauty and the Beast!”
Carfax’s smile was truly angelic, but it betrayed a wisdom far beyond his years. ”

“ The sun had gone behind the mountain for all the lower reaches of the valley, but its level rays were still pouring in a flood of yellow light across the flat-topped promontory crowned by the buildings of Highmount College. Pisgah, densely forested on slope and summit, loomed vast as the [36] early shadows rose like silently drawn curtains to soften its rugged detail, and on the sky-line Tregarvon’s gaze sought and found the derrick skeleton of his drilling plant struck out in rigid lines of black against the hazy blue. ”

“ Where the derrick and the new power-plant had stood there was a mass of tangled wreckage, and the burying-ground glade looked as if it had been swept by a tornado. In the wan moonlight Tregarvon caught a glimpse of something moving under the trees beyond the wreck; then the moving object erected itself into the stature of a man. ”

“ When you are older, Mr. Tregarvon, and come to know human nature a little better, you will apprehend the truth of that worldly wise beatitude, ‘Blessed are they who expect little, for, verily, they shall not be disappointed.’ Consider a moment: you came here, the legal owner of the Ocoee, to be sure, and the innocent owner, inasmuch as your father was the unsuspecting purchaser of stolen goods. ”

“ Wilmerding or Duncan, or both of them, brought these rumors to Tregarvon, and were amazed to find that he refused to be either disturbed or greatly interested. In many ways the superintendent and the old Scotch engineer were discovering daily that they had to do with a man who had developed suddenly into a master of himself and others. The light-hearted young fellow who had thrown himself so joyously into the fray at the beginning had given place to a modern captain of industry, alert, strong-willed, a bit dictatorial, perhaps, but entirely capable. ”

“ But was Carfax really in love with Judge Birrell’s daughter? Tregarvon boasted that he had summered and wintered the golden youth; yet there were depths in him that the Philadelphian suspected no one had ever fully plumbed. In Tregarvon’s knowing of him he had always been, or appeared to be, immune to sentiment; his attitude had been that of a gentle-natured [150] soul who was willing to be used, or even abused, without detriment to an impartial affection for the entire sex. Would such a man be able to make Richardia as happy as she deserved to be? ”

“ Tregarvon, still sodden with sleep, suffered Carfax to lead him to the outlook window. In the gray shadows he presently made out the figure of another intruder. Within the area of the sunken graves a man, old and black, if the uncertain light could be trusted, was squatting on the ground and rocking himself back and forth, his swaying body keeping time with the measure of a weird, crooning melody. ”

“ Obsessed by the idea that he might shortly have to resort to the hammer, the mechanician was wholly unprepared for what followed. Slowly, and as if they were materializing out of the shadows of the wood, two figures glided into the watcher’s field of vision: a man, tall, stately, wearing the long coat and the wide-brimmed soft hat which even an unobservant Rucker knew to be the garmentings of the old-fashioned Southern gentleman. And, hanging on the man’s arm, a woman, small and trimly clad. ”

“ A man, hatless and with a handkerchief [220] bound about his head, was edging his way cautiously out of the undergrowth. In the hollow of his left arm he carried a gun, and his advance was like that of the deer-stalking hunter. With the derrick frame intervening it was to be inferred that he did not see the negro.
“Somebody pot-hunting for us, this time?” queried Carfax, under his breath; but Tregarvon pressed his arm for silence. The cautious approach was not in the direction of the tool shanty; it was toward the engine of the drilling installation. ”

“ Tregarvon scoffed hardily at the suggestion, and the scorn was not thrown away upon his companion. Perhaps that was the reason why Carfax, going to bed a little later, without the ministrations of a lachrymose and whiskey-breathing Merkley, opened the back of his watch to gaze long and earnestly at a picture therein, closing the case finally with a little sigh. Millions are good things in their way, but there be pearls, trampled thoughtlessly underfoot by the millionless, which millions cannot buy. ”

“ But privacy in a Southern country hamlet, where gossip is as the breath of life to the isolated few, is only to be bought with a price. From his post of observation in Tait’s doorway, a lank, bristly-bearded man in grimy jeans that had once been butternut, marked the direction of the retreat across the railroad-tracks, made a dodging détour around the engine of the standing train, and was safely hidden behind a thick clump of althea bushes at the corner of the office-building when Tregarvon and the Scotchman came leisurely to sit on the door-stone. ”

“ Obeying the instinct of self-preservation in pure automatism, Tregarvon dropped silently behind the nearest boulder on his own side of the stream. When he looked again he saw that the man was not Hartridge; he was a much younger man; a handsome young fellow, well-built and athletic-looking, with nothing in his appearance to connect him with the mountain and its natives. ”

“ Through the open door of the tool-shack the two at the rope-coil table could see the plant, with the plume of escaping steam rising to the height of the tree-tops. As usual during the noon hour, there was not a man of the gang in sight. Tregarvon had early learned that a part of the country laborer’s reticence expressed itself in a dislike to eat under the boss’s eye. At the stopping of the machinery the drill-gang would scatter in the wood, each man to his fallen log. ”

“ But a woman as a factor in any problem is always the unknown quantity,” Carfax remarked half musingly. Then he added: “It would be a real charity, both to you and to Professor William Wilberforce, if some outsider would step in and marry Miss Richardia out of the game, don’t you think?”
Tregarvon’s frown was morose. Slowly but surely the light with the difficulties, material and mysterious, was working a change in the young man whose chief characteristic had hitherto been finding its principal expression in the light-hearted optimism of those who neither toil nor spin. ”

“ I think your perseverance is beyond praise,” said Miss Richardia, on an afternoon when Tregarvon, scamping his job and snatching a few moments for himself, had driven her and a group of the Highmount young women over in the yellow car to the new location. “I am sure you deserve to succeed—if perseverance by itself ever deserves anything.” ”

“ Tregarvon fought away from the edge of the pit into which his incorrigible ingenuousness was about to precipitate him.
“Oh, there isn’t any reason why she should consider me. Within the past hour I have had the best possible proof of that.”
Hartridge was silent for a moment. Then he said: “Mr. Tregarvon, I trust you are a gentleman in all that the much-misused word implies.”
“A man may hardly assert that of himself,” was the quick retort. “But why?”
“What you have just said implies a knowledge of a secret which has been most carefully guarded by Miss Richardia’s friends. ”

“ When it comes to that, you must help me, Richardia; for his sake and for your brother’s.”
“Poor Dick!” she murmured. “He needs a friend much more than he needs the money; some one who would care enough for him to stand by and hold him up to the best there is in him. There is good in him; you may not believe it now, but there is, really—lots of it.”
“I can very readily believe it, since he is your brother and the son of your father. And he has proved it to-night by climbing into the breach for McNabb. He will have his chance on the Ocoee, and Wilmerding will be his friend.” ”

“ With a gently worded phrase of apology to his daughter’s guest, the judge had pleaded an old man’s privilege, dragging his chair to the farther end of the veranda and lighting his corn-cob pipe in courteous isolation. Tregarvon marked the bit of old-fashioned chivalric deference to Elizabeth, and wondered how many men of his own generation would be as thoughtfully considerate of the small amenities. ”

“ Carfax concurred heartily. “But if we didn’t spend money in this way, heaven only knows in what other foolish enterprise we might be investing.”
“That is a new power-plant you are hauling up the hill?” the engineer inquired.
“Brand-new,” boasted Tregarvon’s proxy.
“The purchase doesn’t look as if you were intending to stop throwing the money away,” said Thirlwall.
“Oh, that is entirely as it may happen,” Carfax countered cheerfully. “You know the bankrupt always puts up the best front he can when he finds himself coming to the jumping-off place.” ”

“ Carfax commented.
“Oh, Thaxter is harmless; he doesn’t explode. He is like the assistant secretaries of the Departments in Washington, you know; the fellows who really have the run of the business and stay on the job while the political chiefs come and go. They are like the cat: harmless and necessary and full of wisdom. Which reminds me: I’ll bet my wind-broken old nag, here, against your gas-car, Tregarvon, that Thaxter has an analysis of these coals of yours filed away somewhere this very minute. ”

“ For the moment Tregarvon was torn by conflicting emotions; a huge thankfulness that no life had been lost and bitter disappointment that the catastrophe had come at the instant when all the doubts as to the value of the Ocoee were to be either confirmed or swept away. He held himself together long enough to tell the [256] men that they might go home—that there would be nothing more done until a new power-plant could be bought; but when Rucker had gone out to the wood road to see if the yellow car had been hit, and the disappointed one was left alone with Carfax, the flood-gates gave way. ”

“ Tregarvon could not help smiling at the audacity of the man, and the New Yorker laughed outright.
“You have a most excellent quality of nerve, Mr. Hartridge,” was Carfax’s tribute to the audacity. “As you suggest, our field is rather limited. You are perfectly well aware of the fact that Highmount and its hospitality stand as the only barrier between us and social starvation. Let us try to discover a modus vivendi. The verdict is: ‘Guilty, with a recommendation to mercy.’ We are willing to give any man’s sense of humor a chance to redeem itself. ”

“ Tregarvon yelped out a string of orders to his helpers, and then went on past the tangle of mules and [289] rope tackle to meet the descending vehicle. Being in the proper frame of mind, he swore crabbedly to the world at large when he saw that it was his own car, with Carfax at the wheel, Richardia in the mechanician’s seat, and the tonneau thickly packed with young women from Highmount.
“You can’t pass,” was his curt denial of the right of way when Carfax slowed to a stop. “We have just broken a tackle, and everything is all balled up. Couldn’t you find any other road to drive on?” ”

“ Tregarvon had little time in which to determine what he ought to say; time for nothing but a sudden and loyal resolve not to fail Richardia in her moment of need. Voices in the hall warned him that Carfax and the Caswells were returning, and at the same moment he heard the honk of the motor announcing Rucker’s approach. He was upon his feet when he said: “You have told me something that I didn’t know—didn’t suspect. I can scarcely believe it yet. But you need have no fears for anything that I shall do. You mustn’t worry for a single moment. It will all come out right in the end.” ”

“ Tregarvon sat back in his chair and listened coldly while the peace branch was getting itself waved to an accompaniment of placative speech.
“There is no such thing as personal vindictiveness in business, Mr. Tregarvon,” was the summing-up of the Thaxter argument. “Without admitting it as a fact, let us assume, for the moment, that the man Sawyer was employed as a sort of scout for our people. This is a thing that is done every day; it’s business, and good business. You might do it yourself, if you had a competitor. ”

“ Tregarvon, driving bolts into the patched derrick frame, strove dejectedly to put his own huge misfortune aside as a matter definitely settled. He admitted, with pricklings of shame, the truth, or at least the half-truth, of Carfax’s accusation—the charge of fickleness. In a light-hearted way he had been devoted to many women, for the moment, and the nearest woman had always been the loadstone. He excused the weakness by saying that it was common to all men—thereby touching a truth larger than he knew ”

“ Tregarvon had heard enough to assure him that the sentiment of the entire countryside would be with Judge Birrell in any cause he might see fit to champion; but apart from this, the one insurmountable bar to any defensive reprisals on his own part lay in Richardia’s appeal. Tregarvon felt that the appeal, and his yielding thereto, had effectually tied his hands, and he was still sufficiently infatuated to be glad. Carfax might marry Richardia and endow her with his millions; but her greatest debt would still be to the man who had refused to defend himself at her father’s expense. ”

“ Somewhat later, Carfax joined the working party—but only as an onlooker. The engine was mounted on heavy trucks, and a string of twelve mule-spans was inching it up the mountain pike to an accompaniment of cracking whips and much profanity. ”

“ Tregarvon are not trying to run a bluff on anything so unimpressible as Consolidated Coal,” laughed Thaxter.
“Much obliged for the hint,” returned the golden youth, accurately matching the bookkeeper’s laugh. “I give you my word, we hadn’t [285] thought of that. Would it astonish you beyond measure if we should?”
“Don’t try it,” the engineer advised. “We have excellent records of every acre of coal land in this region, with all the data; thickness of veins, their placement, and so on. You can’t very well run a bluff when the other fellow knows every card in your hand, Mr. Carfax.” ”

“ On the day following the evening of plain speech Tregarvon toiled manfully with Rucker and the laborers in the repairing of the damaged machinery; but he did it without prejudice to a good many sharp-pointed reflections basing themselves upon Carfax’s blunt accusation, upon the golden youth’s calm interference, and upon the fact that, late in the forenoon, Carfax, apparently tired of looking on and doing nothing at the scene of the repairing activities, had strolled away through the forest in the direction of Highmount. ”

“ It’s no disloyalty to you, or to Elizabeth. You had no business to leave me alone with her when Doctor Caswell asked you to go and look over the gymnasium things.”
Carfax chuckled softly.
[197] “You are a wild ass of the plains, Vance. It is borne in upon me that I shall have to marry her out of hand to bring you to your senses.”
“The quicker the better,” said Tregarvon gloomily. “There is no use in prolonging the agony.”
“Then you’ll admit that it is an agony?”
“I can’t joke about it, Poictiers. I have made the one crowning blunder that spoils a man’s life. Don’t look at me that way. ”