XIIIThe Burnt Child
THE dinner in the president’s dining-room at Highmount College was anything but formal. By this time the two young men from the North were on a footing which lacked little of the household relation, Mrs. Caswell having said hospitably, more than once, that their plates were always laid at the faculty table.
Quite naturally, the Ocoee experiment came in for a share of the table-talk, and in this field Tregarvon let Carfax do most of the ploughing. For one reason, Miss Richardia had changed her place and was sitting on the other side of the golden one; and for another, his own companion was the French teacher, who persisted in talking, and making him talk, of things trans-atlantic and Parisian.
Later, however, he was tempted—and fell. The night was too cool for the veranda, and the after-dinner dispersal was to the music-room. Richardia played, and for a time Tregarvon sat beside Miss Farron and said “Yes” and “No,” as the occasion demanded, coming always afterwardto a rapt and regretful contemplation of the pearl of great price on the piano-bench.
Being an artist to her finger-tips, Miss Birrell at the piano became a breaker of hearts by just so much more as the mask of self-consciousness fell away, leaving the true art soul free to express itself in the musician’s ecstasy of detachment. In such moments Tregarvon saw her as the embodied spirit of all that was most desirable in the world of women; gazed spellbound, sinned, repented, and sinned again; calling himself hard names in one breath, and rhapsodizing deliriously over the supernal charm of her in the next.
Again and again he told himself in caustic self-derision that his infatuation was merely the result of propinquity—the nearness of Richardia coupled with the remoteness of Elizabeth. But as often as he pleaded this excuse, the merciless inner and final court of appeals assured him that the evasion was but the adding of self-deception to unfaithfulness, and insisted upon a restatement of the humiliating facts: that he had promised to marry a woman whom he did not love, when he knew he did not love her; and that he was now adding to this baseness by admitting his love for another.
This restatement of the case was dinning itselfinto his ears for the hundredth time while he was saying “Yes” and “No” to the pretty assistant in mathematics, and praying in his more lucid intervals that Rucker might come early with the motor-car and so forestall any chance of deeper mirings. But Rucker was apparently in no hurry. Miss Richardia played until she was tired; Madame Fortier and Miss Farron excused themselves and went to their duties in the dormitories; Hartridge and Miss Longstreet went to brave the chill of the evening in a pacing constitutional on the veranda; and the group in the music-room was cut down to the Caswells, their guests, and Miss Birrell.
At this conjuncture Tregarvon saw that Carfax was about to add insult to injury by leaving him alone with Richardia. The president was talking about some improvements he wished to make in the school gymnasium: would Mr. Carfax be good enough to look the plans over and give a country schoolmaster the benefit of his advice? Tregarvon turned to the nearest window to watch for the headlamps of the expected auto. They were not yet in sight; and when the silence behind him gave token that Carfax and the Caswells had gone, he knew that he had been basely deserted.
Miss Richardia was still at the piano, letting her fingers run in delicate little harmonies up and down the keyboard. Tregarvon meant to keep his distance, but she drew him so irresistibly that he was beside her before he realized that he was once more breaking all the good resolutions.
“Don’t go just yet,” he pleaded, when she looked around, saw that the others were gone, and made as if she would rise. Then he added: “It isn’t my fault this time: I didn’t wish to come, but Poictiers had accepted for me. You mustn’t punish me when I don’t deserve it.”
She looked up at him with the air of detachment which he had always found more trying than her sharpest accusations.
“Why should I punish you at all? Hasn’t your conscience been doing that much for you?”
“Don’t!” he begged again. “Now that it is all over, I am going to tell you that I have been a liar and a hypocrite.”
She stopped him with a quick little gesture of dismay.
“Please don’t spoil it all now—just because we happen to be alone together for a minute or two. When are you going home to marry Miss Wardwell?”
“You are perfectly merciless,” he complained. “Must we talk about Elizabeth?”
“Ask your conscience,” she retorted.
“My conscience is busy and doesn’t want to be disturbed. One would think you had been born and bred in New England!”
“I wasn’t; I was born on this mountain.”
He sat down in the nearest chair and tried to remember that he was talking to the woman who was as good as promised to Poictiers Carfax.
“I know,” he offered; “in a rambling old house with a groved lawn. It has a box-bordered carriage drive, and a big, pillared veranda fronting the west.”
“Yes; when have you ever seen Westwood House?”
“Perhaps I haven’t seen it; perhaps I am only imagining how it ought to look. But the name ‘Westwood’ is familiar enough. It is written all over the Ocoee maps.”
Her smile, on any other lips, would have had more than a hint of bitterness in it.
“I suppose we ought to be proud of the distinction. The printing of the home name on the maps was the only return my father ever had for what he did for Mr. Parker. But, of course, you know all about that.”
“Not so much as I’d like to know. I have understood that your father was a heavy investor in the original Ocoee company, and that Parker contrived to give him the hot end of things in the reorganization.”
“It is all true.”
“It makes me feel as if I had been caught stealing sheep,” he volunteered. “Ethically, I suppose the Ocoee doesn’t belong to me at all, though I hope it is clear to everybody that neither I nor my father had any part in the crookedness. So far as that goes, my father never knew anything about the early history of the mine; and neither did I before I came down here. How does your father feel about it?”
It did not strike him at the moment as being particularly significant that she did not answer the question categorically.
“Those things are all past and gone,” she said half-absently. And then: “I wish you might meet my father; you and Mr. Carfax.”
The mention of Carfax’s name was as salt to a fresh wound.
“You’ve changed your mind about Poictiers, haven’t you?” he said, and he tried to make the saying of it entirely judicial. “You made fun of him at first, you know.”
“Not of him, but of some of the things that he said and did,” she corrected quickly. “And that was only because I didn’t know him; because I was so stupid as not to recognize the real man under the transparent little mask of affectation that he delights in holding up between himself and all the rest of the world.”
Tregarvon made a loud call upon his magnanimity, and concurred heartily.
“He is the finest there is, Richardia. I—I hope he will be able to make you as happy as you deserve to be.”
For the moment he was puzzled. Sheer maiden modesty might have accounted for the blush, but why should the slate-blue eyes grow suspiciously bright, as with tears?
“Then he has told you?” She had turned away from him and there was a little catch in her voice.
“Yes. It broke my heart, Richardia—which shows you how far I had gone on the road to depravity. Poictiers said to me once that I was playing the dog in the manger, and so I was. There was no excuse, of course; there never is an excuse for dishonor. But you were heart and soul and conscience to me, and I seemed to need you so much more than anybody else ever could.I can say all this without blame now, can’t I? You are going to marry Poictiers, and I am going to marry Elizabeth.”
She had turned farther away, as if to conceal emotions too profound to be shared. At first he thought she was crying, and wondered why. Then it was borne in upon him that she was laughing, and he became instantly and hotly resentful.
“If you are laughing at me and my little lunacy, it is all right,” he exploded. “But if it’s at Poictiers——”
When she let him see her face again it was perfectly straight, but there were twin imps of mockery dancing in the eyes of desire.
“Between you and Mr. Carfax it is hard for a poor country mouse to find breathing space,” she asserted. “Am I to understand that you are trying to congratulate me?”
Tregarvon frowned heavily. “No; Poictiers is the one to be congratulated—if you were not laughing at him.”
“I wasn’t,” she denied promptly. “He is much too splendid to be laughed at. Don’t criticise the word; it is the only one that fits him.”
“Then you were laughing at me?”
“No.”
“At what I said, then? that is just as cruel.”
“Why will you insist upon being so quarrelsome? I was laughing because I couldn’t help it. Let us talk about something else; about your mine. Have you been having any more of the mysterious trouble?”
“Yes; it is one thing after another. You heard what Poictiers was telling at the table this evening. He made it sound like hard luck, but it isn’t luck; it’s design. Some one is making the trouble for us.”
“Who would do such a thing as that?”
“For a long time we were totally in the dark. But now we know the man.”
Miss Richardia had the translucent complexion that harmonizes perfectly with cloudy blue eyes and masses of light-brown hair brightened by touches of warmer tints; hence there was no telltale pink to vanish at the command of sudden emotion. Yet Tregarvon saw she was startled, and that the exciting cause was quick-springing anxiety.
“You have seen him?” she asked.
“Rucker, the machinist, has.” Tregarvon was always making good resolutions about not talking too much, and always breaking them. It had been no part of his intention to refer to theincriminating incident in which Richardia herself figured as one of the two actors, but the inexpedient thing was said and he could only hope that Richardia would not ask for more.
She was looking away again when she said: “Now that you know, I suppose you will defend your rights?”
“Take legal steps, you mean? I don’t wish to do that, if it can be avoided.”
“No; anything but that!” she pleaded in low tones. “You must remember the provocation.”
“I didn’t give the provocation.”
“No; but you are associated, in a way, with those who did. You have inherited a legacy of ill will.”
“I might be able to understand that, if the man who is making the trouble were one of the ignorant natives. But he is not.”
“No,” she agreed half-absently; “he is not.”
“Then you know who it is?” said Tregarvon, again permitting himself to say one of the things which might better have been left unsaid.
She nodded slowly. “I—I am afraid I do. And I am going to plead for him, if you will let me. There are mitigating circumstances—prejudices against all NorthernersasNortherners. You can’t understand that, because the Northdidn’t suffer as the South did in the war between the States—at least, not in the same way. And the South has suffered bitterly since the war; from such men as Mr. Parker. There was a disposition on our part to let bygones be bygones, after the great struggle; but a few unprincipled promoters have done much to keep the old sectional animosities alive.”
Tregarvon was regarding her thoughtfully.
“You are wise beyond your years and your sex,” he said soberly. “What do you think I ought to do to this anachronistic gentleman who is visiting the sins of other people upon my poor head?”
“I can only beg of you to be broad-minded and charitable and slow to anger for the sake of all concerned—for my sake, if you must put it upon narrower ground.”
At this appeal, the earnestness of which could not be questioned, Tregarvon was frankly puzzled. A little earlier in the adventure he would not have been surprised to find Richardia Birrell pleading for Hartridge; but now, with Carfax apparently elbowing the professor aside in the sentimental field, there seemed to be less reason for the plea, unless pure friendship might account for it.
“I shall put it wholly upon ‘narrower ground,’ as you call it,” he maintained. “If you tell me that you care enough for the man you are pleading for to ask me to spare him for your sake——”
“Care enough?” she exclaimed, wide-eyed. “I should be singularly inhuman if I didn’t care!”
As in a flash of revealing lightning Tregarvon saw and thought he understood. It was not Hartridge for whom she was interceding; the professor of mathematics was not the man who had driven with her to the glade on the night of strange happenings—who had stood with her in the shadow of the drill derrick, shaking his fist at the inanimate symbol of the renewed Ocoee activities. The moving spirit in all the enmities and antagonisms was her father!
For a moment the thing seemed unbelievable. That a man who had formerly been a judge and a champion of the law should become a feudist, carrying his vindictiveness over from those who had defrauded him to the defrauders’ innocent successor, appeared blankly incredible. Yet Tregarvon remembered that the South still held many archaic well-springs of thought and action—he had to fight anachronisms daily in his laborers—and that the older generation was not to bejudged by the standards of the new. Judge Birrell had felt the heel of the invader, not only in the great conflict between the States, but afterward, when the invader came as a friend and robbed him in the name of business.
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.”
He had his reward in a quick little grasp of the hand, in eyes filling this time with real tears, and in a low-toned outpouring of gratitude.
“I knew you would say that,” she avouched. “It is what you have taught me to expect of you. I am doing all I can to—to bring about a better understanding, and if you will only be patient and wait a little while——”
Carfax and the two Caswells were entering themusic-room, and Tregarvon turned quickly and made a pretense of rearranging the music on the piano desk. The small diversion gave him a chance for another whispered word of assurance. “I’ve been advertising myself to you as all kinds of a graceless wretch, but now I’ll show you that I can rise to the occasion. Don’t be afraid: there will be no scandal—no tragedy, so far as you and yours are concerned.”
She caught instantly at the qualification. “Then there are others?” she queried.
“One other, at least. And after what you have just told me I am quite sure he is acting entirely upon his own responsibility. I’ll tell you more about him some other time.”
Carfax was already taking leave, and Tregarvon joined him. The host and hostess went no farther than the door with the departing guests, and Miss Richardia remained in the music-room. At the veranda steps there was a little delay while Rucker was doing something to the motor. In the waiting interval Tregarvon found himself answering a question of Hartridge’s about the progress of the test-drilling, the professor having outstayed his art-teacher companion in their retreat to the open air.
“No,” said Tregarvon, “we are not gettingalong as well as we might. There seems to be a curious obstructive fatality dogging us. If you were in the chair of psychology instead of that of mathematics, we might give you a very handsome little problem to work on, Mr. Hartridge. I wonder if you would attack it?”
The mild-eyed professor’s smile was blandly incommunicative.
“You mustn’t expect any sympathy from me,” he returned genially. “The proverb tells us specifically that the burnt child dreads the fire; but it doesn’t add the corollary, which is equally true, and as old as human nature—namely, that the burnt child experiences an unholy joy when his playmate attempts to pick up the same hot nail.”
“Ah?” said Tregarvon. And then: “I had forgotten, if, indeed, I ever knew. You were one of the original stockholders in the Ocoee?”
“To the extent of my entire savings account; which was a mere drop in the promoter’s bucket, after all. Nevertheless, I can still be magnanimous enough to wish you all success.” Then, abruptly: “You have a delightful night for your drive to Coalville. I could almost envy you.”
Tregarvon did not undeceive him about the destination of the drive; for good and sufficientreasons it did not seem necessary to tell Hartridge that the drilling plant would have two watchers that night, instead of none. With a word of leave-taking he joined Carfax in the tonneau seat, and the yellow car rolled away down the drive, with Rucker at the wheel.
It was less than an eighth of a mile from the college gates to the point where the glade road turned to the left out of the downward pike, and when Rucker would have taken the left-hand road, Tregarvon made him stop the car.
“We can walk in from here, Billy,” he explained, and the two volunteer watchers got out to do it while the car, lightened of two-thirds of its load, coasted noiselessly on down the steep mountain road and out of sight around the first curve.
On the short walk over to the drilling plant Tregarvon spoke but once, and that was to say: “Your guess about Hartridge was right, Poictiers. He was one of the native crowd which was pinched out in the first reorganization of the Ocoee.”
“Did Richardia tell you that?”
“No; he told me himself, just as we were leaving. And he is still sore about it, though he tried to turn it off as a joke.”
“Um,” said Carfax reflectively. “If he is the man who is putting a finger into your pie, we’ll be likely to see him within the next half-hour or so, don’t you think? He supposes we are on the road to Coalville, and he knows that Rucker is driving. Which presumably leaves the plant unguarded. What will you do if we should happen to catch him red-handed?”
“That remains to be seen,” said Tregarvon moodily. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” And for the remainder of the walk he was silent; it being no part of his intention to tell Carfax that Richardia’s father was the one who, arguing from conclusions which seemed to be well-founded in inference, if not in fact, was most likely to be caught red-handed.