XIXThe Human Equation
ON the Tuesday after Tregarvon’s return to Coalville the arrival of the new equipment was the signal for a brisk renewal of the activities. Tregarvon had spent the day scouring the valley for men and teams, and by Wednesday morning he had a small army at his command. Many hands made light work, and by noon the machinery was unloaded, and all was ready for the beginning of the toilsome haul up the mountain.
“I suppose you know how you are going to do it,” Carfax remarked, dallying over his luncheon in the office-building dining-room while Tregarvon was hastily bolting his meal as fast as Uncle William could serve it. “Where did you learn? The university didn’t teach you, I’m sure.”
“Experience,” mumbled the working-man. “I learned the trade getting the other boiler and engine up the hill.”
Carfax was apparently in a reflective mood.“This rough-and-tumble game down here is making a different man of you,” he offered. “Don’t you realize the change?”
“I’ve never been afraid of work, if that is what you mean.”
“Yes, I know; but the kind of work that implies the wearing of corduroys and a flannel shirt, and builds horny lumps on the palms of your hands, and makes you talk to a mule in the only language a mule understands—I never used to dream it of you in the old days, Vance.”
“I work for the same reason that other men do—because it’s up to me. This would be a damned lazy world if necessity didn’t crack the whip.”
“There it is again,” Carfax smiled; “you even let bits of the mule language come to the table with you. It runs in my mind that Elizabeth is going to have her hands full recivilizing you.”
“Perhaps she won’t care to. Quite likely she won’t need to. If the Ocoee should turn out to be a real mine with a dividend attachment, it is altogether probable that I shall become again what I have been heretofore—an ornament to polite society and a wart on the body economic.”
Carfax shook his head as one who refuses to be convinced.
“That will never happen in the wide, wideworld, my dear Vance. We may go around, but we never go back. I have heard you spoken of, in times past, as a woman’s man: you’ll never be that again.”
“That is the kindest thing you’ve said in a week,” Tregarvon averred. Whereupon he bolted the final mouthful and left the prophet to his own devices.
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 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-heartedflâneurof 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. Being a good friend, he proceeded to administer an additional dose of the tonic, dragging Tregarvonaside while the mules were catching their breath.
“I like your nerve,” he began, with the drawl more than usually pronounced. “You are taking up the entire road with your beastly contrivances. How am I going to get past all this clutter with the motor-car, I’d like to know?”
“That’s your lookout,” growled the man-of-all-work. “The road is mine while I’m using it.”
“But I have an engagement,” was the mild protest. “I’m to take Richardia out for a drive after three o’clock.”
“Well, I can’t help that, can I? You’ve got all the time there is for your courting, and then some. My job is to get this engine up the mountain.”
Carfax chuckled softly. “In another minute or so you’ll be mistaking me for one of the mules. I suppose I can take the other road, from Hesterville; but as likely as not it will make me late—it’s such a long way around.”
“Can’t you send a note up by one of Tryon’s boys explaining the situation?”
“Why, my dear Vance! Can it be possible that you are suggesting that I should break an engagement with a young lady?—you who just a few weeks ago would have broken your neck to——”
“Cut it out,” was the gruff interruption. “I’m busy now, and you are delaying the game. Tag along behind us when you are ready to drive up, and we’ll make room for you if we can.” Then to his farmer helpers: “Now, then—are you fellows going to let those mules rest all day? Push ’em into the collars and let’s go somewhere!Hi!you fellows up ahead—straighten out those leaders!”
The cherubic smile was at its shining best when Carfax turned away and sauntered back toward the coke-ovens. Human atoms are among the most interesting things in the world, once the study of them has passed the elementary stages. Carfax, deep in the contemplation of the subject, had reached the ovens themselves before he saw two men coming toward him, stopping at each stoke-door to allow the taller of the two to go on his hands and knees to inspect the cavern-like interiors. Carfax recognized the shorter of the pair at once. It was Thaxter.
“Mr. Carfax, shake hands with Mr. Thirlwall, our consulting engineer—or rather, you’d better not, because his hands are dirty: Mr. Thirlwall, this is Mr. Poictiers Carfax, Mr. Tregarvon’s friend and financial backer.” Thus the bookkeeper, when Carfax came up.
Carfax acknowledged the introduction and shook hands with the tall man, in spite of the warning.
“Delighted,” he murmured; “always delighted to meet any friend of Mr. Thaxter’s. Tregarvon is up the road a bit, wrestling with a transportation problem. Shall I send for him?”
Thaxter negatived the suggestion at once. “It isn’t at all necessary to take him away from his work,” he protested genially. “Mr. Thirlwall was with us for the day, and we thought we would run down and have a look at your coking-plant. It’s in rather bad repair, isn’t it?”
Now what Carfax did not know about coking-plants would have filled volumes, but he was careful not to betray his ignorance.
“There are years of service in these old ovens yet,” he asserted confidently. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Thirlwall? But as to that, we should expect to put them in good repair if any one wished to buy them.”
“Mr. Tregarvon is still in the mind to sell?” queried the round-faced bookkeeper.
“Candidly, Vance doesn’t know his own mind from one day to another,” said Carfax, parrying nimbly. “But I guess we are all that way, more or less; up one day and down the next.”
The tall engineer smiled because it seemed obvious that he was expected to. “You have been having some more bad luck up on the mountain, so Mr. Thaxter tells me,” he put in. “It seems rather a pity that you and your friend won’t take the word of those who know, and stop throwing good money away.”
“It is a pity, isn’t it?” 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.”
“I hope you and Mr. 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’tthought 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.”
“That is so,” 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?”
Thirlwall looked at his watch.
“I can hardly spare the time this afternoon,” he demurred. “Besides, if I know anything about such things, Mr. Tregarvon wouldn’t care to leave his machinery blocking a public road while he was showing us around.”
Carfax had learned all he wished to know, andnow he became urgently hospitable. Wouldn’t the visitors stop and rest awhile in the office-building? True, there was little to offer in the way of refreshment, but the old negro cook could make a passable pot of tea. To all of this, Thaxter made excuses for both and said they must be driving back to Whitlow.
Carfax let them go, apparently with the greatest reluctance, walking with them to the post where Thaxter’s horse was hitched. But after the natty side-bar buggy had disappeared over the small rise in the northward road, he smiled like an angelic understudy of the villain in a play.
“Not much, you didn’t drive down here to tell us that our coke-ovens are out of repair, Mr. Thaxter!” he derided joyously, apostrophizing the vanished bookkeeper. “You came to see if it were really true that we had bought a new engine and were going on with the game! And you are jolly well welcome to all that you found out!”
At a little past two o’clock, Carfax, driving the yellow car, tailed in behind the machinery procession on the mountain road. Tregarvon had been having good luck and was correspondingly jubilant; but the sight of Carfax going to keep an appointment with Richardia Birrell gave him another set back.
“That’s right; go on and enjoy yourself,” he grumbled sourly, as Carfax came up to edge his way past the obstructing raffle of teams and machinery. “If you knew how to chock a wheel or handle a pinch-bar, I’d pull you out of that joy wagon and set you at work. Since you don’t, you’d better trundle along and get out of our way.”
“I shall tell Miss Richardia that I left you in a heavenly temper,” threatened the gentle mocker in the driving-seat.
“The less you say about me in that quarter, the better,” was the surly rejoinder; and with that, Tregarvon began to shout again at his teamsters.
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 thingcalled conscience? The bird of the air, the beast of the field, was free to choose its mate; the savage stood aside only when some bigger savage compelled him. Environment and the stress of the moment have shaping influences mighty in proportion to the strenuosities. 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?
The materialistic afternoon had done its worst for Tregarvon by the time Tryon’s boy, who had been stationed on ahead to give warning of the approach of descending teams, waved his hat as a signal that some one was driving down the mountain. The moment was inauspicious. A pulling-rope had just broken; the heavy load of machinery was stalled in a crooked bend in the road, and was for the time immovable. Tregarvon yelped out a string of orders to his helpers, and then went on past the tangle of mules andrope 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?”
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. Miss Richardia slipped out of the mechanician’s seat on her own side of the car, unassisted, but when thesight-seeing contingent marshalled itself for the descent into the tangle, she did not join it.
“You are not going with the others?” said Tregarvon ungraciously.
“There are enough of them for you to be spiteful at, without adding me to the number,” she returned, adding: “Besides, I wanted to speak to you. It was I who asked Mr. Carfax to drive down here.”
She had come around to his side of the car and he looked her squarely in the eyes.
“Be careful what you say to me to-day, Richardia: I am not the same man that I was a few days ago.”
“Boo!” she said, with the little grimace that always set his blood afire; “you make me shivery when you look and talk that way. I came to try to help you—not to be frozen.”
“Say it,” he commanded.
“How can I, when you won’t let me? I have a piece of news for you—something that I imagine you’d like to know. Have you written to Miss Wardwell lately?”
“Yes; Sunday night in Chattanooga.”
“And this is Wednesday: have you had a reply?”
“No; not yet. What is your news?”
“I was just wondering whether I’d better not keep it to myself, after all. Mr. Carfax said you were in a bad temper, but he didn’t tell me that you were utterly impossible.”
Tregarvon’s scowl deepened.
“Impossible? Of course, I am impossible. What would you expect, in the circumstances?”
At this, she smiled up at him and said: “I’m beginning to be a little deaf now—charitably deaf.”
“I don’t need charity,” he broke out hotly. “All I need is a chance to fight for my own hand. Tell me one thing: have you promised to marry Poictiers yet?”
“Have you any right to ask me such a question as that?”
“I have; the best right in the world: you know I have.”
She met his half-angry, half-passionate gaze calmly.
“I know that you are about to make a shipwreck of your better self,” she averred. Then: “Don’t you know that there are some things that are hard for a woman to forgive—or, having forgiven them, to forget?”
“I am in no mood to split hairs with you to-day,” he grated. “You are thinking of Elizabeth:she knows already what she will have to forgive. I told her in the letter I wrote Sunday night.”
She shook her head sorrowfully.
“You are tearing the anchors loose, one by one. Will nothing make you realize what you are doing?”
“What would you have me do? It has come to that, Richardia: I don’t care for anything else. A little further along, you may be another man’s wife, and I may be another woman’s husband; but it will make no difference——”
“Don’t!” she cried sharply; and then, before he could add another word, she had left him and was walking down the road to meet the tonneau party which was stringing along on its return to the car, with Carfax in the lead.
Tregarvon tramped moodily away when Carfax began to help his charges into the car, going back to the tangle which Tryon had finally contrived to straighten out. Taking over the command, he flung himself once more into the work, but the fine fire was gone, and when evening came and the machinery truck was left blocked at the roadside to wait for another day, he trudged back to Coalville at the tail of the mule cavalcade, sodden with weariness.
Carfax had not returned when Uncle William served dinner, and Tregarvon ate alone, morosely thankful for the solitude. Afterward he went directly to his room on the second floor; and Carfax, coming in a little after nine o’clock, had no chance to tell him of Thaxter’s visit and its probable object.