Carfax

“ 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. ”

“ Wraythwaite knows it or not, his meeting with Harborough on the moors that particular night was witnessed."
[Pg 268] "Capital—capital!" exclaimed Carfax. "By a credible—and creditable—witness?"
"An old woman of exceptional character," answered Brereton, "except that she indulges herself in a little night-poaching now and then."
"Ah, well, we needn't tell that when she goes into the witness-box," said Carfax. "But that's most satisfactory. My dear young lady!" he added, turning to Avice, "your father will be released like—like one o'clock! ”

“ They, at least, were real. Had he really found a spot where the terrific gale had shifted the sand and laid bare a treasure and tragedy of long ago? Such things might be. I had seen dead men in the dunes myself, and the overwrought state of Carfax, due to his sufferings, would account for the rest. If only he could find his way back when he came to his proper senses again.
"Thus musing I paced up and down outside the tent in the bright moonlight. Carfax was still sleeping, but uneasily, and muttering a lot in his sleep. There across the dunes the diamonds must be there somewhere. ”

“ There was silence for a moment and then Carfax said: “Miss Richardia is trying to tell you to postpone your decision as long as you can, only [302] she can’t find the words. That is my advice, too. One can never tell what a day may bring forth. Wait a minute until I can drive back to the college, and then I’ll take you down the hill.”
Tregarvon stood aside while Carfax turned the car and sent it swiftly up to and through the Highmount gateway. A few minutes later the golden youth came sauntering back, alone and afoot. ”

“ These things Olva liked in him, and had the boy not been so intimate with Cardillac and Carfax, Olva might have made advances, Craven took a man of the Carfax type with extreme simplicity; he thought his geniality and physical strength excused much coarseness and vulgarity. He was still young enough to have the Public School code—the most amazing thing in the history of the British nation—and because Carfax bruised his way as a forward through many football matches, and fought a policeman on Parker's Piece one summer evening, Rupert Craven thought him a jolly good fellow. ”

“ Craven sprang up. "Carfax may have done things, but he was a friend of mine, and a good friend. They must catch the man, they must. It's a duty they owe us all. To have such a man as that hanging about. Why, it might happen to any of us. You must help me, Dune." ”

“ In Which Carfax Enlists ON the broad veranda of the administration building at Highmount, which looked down sidewise upon the twinkling light or two of Coalville and faced on even terms an opposing shoulder of the mountain where the newly erected drill derrick stood, Carfax was holding Miss Farron and four privileged members of the senior class at bay, while Tregarvon contentedly monopolized Miss Richardia Birrell. ”

“ Instead of turning in at the campus gates, it came on, and Carfax braked it to a stop opposite the loaded truck. “Is that you, Vance?” he called to the figure standing in the shadow of the pines.
“Yes.” Tregarvon stepped out of the shadows and crossed to the automobile, though the nearer approach was not needed to assure him that Carfax’s companion was Richardia Birrell.
[298] “You are coming along beautifully!” Carfax praised, speaking as one who holds himself delicately aloof from the toilsome details. “It’s great to be a working-man and able to do things. ”

“ It was five years ago that Crosby took his first holiday. He came to this very inn, "The Dog and Duck," and when they asked him his name he replied "Geoffrey Carfax." It had been an inspiration in the train. To be Geoffrey Carfax for three weeks seemed to cut him off more definitely from the Fenchurch Street office and the Islington boarding-house. George Crosby was in prison, working a life sentence; Geoffrey Carfax was a free man in search of the woman. Romance might come to Geoffrey, but it could never come to George. They were two different persons; then let them be two different persons. ”

“ Carfax yielded gracefully. “You people have the age on us, in both meanings of the word. Have you heard anything from New York, Mr. Thaxter?”
“Nothing positive, as yet; there has scarcely been time. But I believe Mr. Thirlwall has been asked to make a report on the present condition of the equipment.”
The engineer confirmed the supposition with a nod, and Carfax said: “Tregarvon will be glad to show you everything he has, I’m sure. Will you make the inspection to-day?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Tregarvon was in the thick of it, and the young purse-holder stood aside and tried to realize that this sweating, bullying gang boss and man-of-all-work was the light-hearted flâneur of whom his best friends had predicted nothing either very good or very bad, and certainly nothing strenuous. Carfax was given to nice weighings and measurings of the human atom, and he wondered if the roughing-out process owed anything to sentimental reactions. Disappointments are rude tonics to some natures, and defeat in one field may be the germ of victory in another. ”

“ Carfax permitted himself a subdued chuckle.
“You are beautifully on edge,” he asserted. “A few inches more may mean a lot to you, but it’s all in the day’s work for the men. They’re not going to get rich out of your coal mine.”
They had brought some of Uncle William’s biscuits and cold chicken for the midday snack, and Carfax went to the motor-car, which had [253] been left standing in the wood road, for the basket. When he returned, Tregarvon was pacing back and forth impatiently before the tool-house door, and Rucker was sitting on the step, eating his luncheon. ”

“ Froggy was to be the medium of his communication also.
She made no mention of Carfax to her father. He had hurt her far too deeply for any confidence to be possible. Moreover, it seemed to her that she had no right to speak until Carfax himself gave her leave.
She did not see her stepmother till the following day. The greeting between them was of the coolest, though Lady Raffold, being triumphant, sought to infuse a little sentiment into hers.
"I am really worn out, Priscilla," she said. "It is my turn now to have a little rest. I am going to leave all the hard work to you. ”

“ In due course there was another flurry of gas-engine noises, and when the clamor died away, Carfax came in to fling himself into the chair where Wilmerding had been sitting.
Tregarvon broke the silence morosely.
“Well? You are not measuring up very strikingly with the commonly accepted idea of the happy lover. What’s the latest?”
Carfax had taken a cork-tipped cigarette from his case and was absently trying to set fire to the wrong end of it.
“Vance,” he said, in his gentlest tone, “you [376] deserve to be murdered in cold blood. ”

“ Carfax laughed and turned to his seat-mate. “You see how inhospitable he really is when he isn’t parading his company manners.” Then to the young women behind him: “Mr. Tregarvon won’t let us drive down, but if you young ladies would care to see the wheels go round at a moment when, as it seems, they have just stopped going round, we can walk.”
There was an instant chorus of walking votes, and Carfax got out to open the tonneau door. Tregarvon stood aside, scowling as any working-boss might when his difficulties are about to be made a raree-show for the frivolous. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Tryon had taken over the bossing of the gang, with Rucker for his able second, and Tregarvon [310] was free to stand aside and talk with Carfax about the miracle.
“You say Richardia went home after dinner?” he queried. Then: “I can’t help thinking that this is her doing. These men are all mountaineers.”
Carfax’s chuckle was frankly derisive. “That is mere sentiment on your part; the wish the father to the thought. You’d rather like to feel that you are indebted to her, wouldn’t you? ”

“ Miss Wardwell had risen, with Carfax backgrounding her because he was obliged to, and Tregarvon introduced Wilmerding as a fellow Pennsylvanian from the Pittsburgh end of the State. Elizabeth was pleasantly gracious to the young superintendent of coal mines, seeming to welcome him as in some sort a saver of situations; at least, so it appeared to Tregarvon. In the readjustment the judge sank back into the depths of his armchair, and Carfax surrendered his place in the window-seat to Wilmerding and wandered to another window to stand with his back to the room and his hands in his pockets. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Carfax.”
Carfax took the surrendered coat and, feeling in the right-hand pocket, drew out one of the little steel cubes; quite evidently the one which Hartridge had had in his hand at the moment of surprises.
“Thank you; that is all,” said the searcher, returning the coat, or rather holding it thoughtfully while Hartridge put it on. And then: “You will hardly deny that we have sufficient evidence now, I take it?”
The professor of mathematics spread his hands as one who has done his best and is only regretful that he can do no more. ”

“ But he is evidently an old house servant of the judge’s, and he was sent straight to me from Westwood. That is beyond question.”
“As a spy?—perish the thought!” ranted Carfax, carefully concealing his earnestness with an overlaying of extravagance, as his habit was. “With the memory of Uncle William’s unapproachable dinners in my mind—or mouth—I’ll defend him to the last gasp.”
“He is negligible,” said Tregarvon briefly. “But this dynamiting emissary of Hartridge’s, or the judge’s, isn’t. We must contrive to trap him in some way. If we don’t, he will fool around until he hurts somebody.” ”