XXVThe Mangling of Poictiers
UPON leaving Highmount, Tregarvon took the short-cut path down the mountain, and was only a few minutes late for the dinner for two served by Uncle William in the office dining-room at Coalville. Though he had plenty of thought material of his own to work upon, he could hardly help observing that Carfax ate abstractedly and was unusually silent. While the old negro was coming and going, the talk, what little there was of it, touched lightly upon the visit to Westwood House; but after the table was cleared Carfax got up to stand with his back to the open fire and the commonplaces were thrust aside.
“When is it to be?” he asked abruptly.
Tregarvon, who was still dallying with the black coffee, looked up with a crooked smile.
“When is what to be?” he asked.
“You know what I mean. We gave you your chance with Elizabeth—Miss Richardia and I. I hope you’re not going to tell me that you flunked it.”
The wry smile broke into a short laugh. “Oh, no; I didn’t flunk it. But it’s all over, Poictiers. I’m down and out.”
Carfax was trying to light a cigarette, but the match went black and he did not seem to realize that he had no fire.
“So your crime has found you out, has it?” he said, and the gentle tone seemed to accentuate rather than to soften the accusing assumption.
Tregarvon shook his head. “It was the other way about. Elizabeth came down here for the express purpose of asking my permission to fall in love with some other fellow—no names named.”
“Wh-what!”
“It is even so.”
“And—and you believed her? You didn’t have sense enough in that thick head of yours to know that she was merely trying to save your face?”
“Oh, no; you’re off on the wrong foot altogether. She didn’t get that letter I wrote her from Chattanooga, and she hadn’t given me a chance to tell her about Richardia. It was perfectly straight. She has simply found the other man—the right man—and she is honest enough to say so.”
“Do you mean to say that you didn’t tell her anything about your crookedness down here?”
“Oh, yes; we talked about that later on, though, again, there were no names named. She jumped to the conclusion that my ‘crookedness’, as you call it, was with one of the pretty undergraduates at Highmount, and I let it go at that. There was no use of making a bad matter worse by dragging Richardia’s name into it.”
Carfax took a pacing turn up and down the room, broke it to go and stand for a full minute staring out of a window at Uncle William’s cook-house, and then faced about to say, almost pleadingly: “You aresureshe meant it, Vance?”
“Of course she meant it. She wouldn’t tell me much about the other fellow, except to say that it was some one whom I knew, and who was too decent to try to break in while our engagement still held good.”
“And she—she really would give the—the other fellow a chance, if—if he had the nerve to ask for it?”
“It would be something better than ‘a chance’, I should say.”
Again Carfax took a pacing turn, coming back from it to drop into the chair opposite Tregarvon.
“Vance,Iam the ‘other fellow,’” he said softly. “You didn’t suspect it, did you? Itbegan last summer when we were at Lake Placid together. I thought it was all on my side of the house; I didn’t dream that she wasn’t in love with you in the—in the way she ought to have been. But——”
The interruption was the entrance of a softly padding Uncle William, bearing a neatly tied packet of letters.
“Dey’s for dat lily-white missy fr’m de Norf what’s staying with Miss Dick up at de ol’ place,” he explained. “Mistoo Tait, he brung ’em over, an’ ast would you-all gemmen please to send ’em up when you had de chanst.”
Tregarvon had found the wry smile again by the time the old negro had shuffled away.
“I suppose I ought to congratulate you, Poictiers, but I can’t just now; I’m too new a widower. You’ll have to hug your happiness alone for the present. You’ll excuse me, won’t you? But, see here—how about this little side-play with Richardia? You’re not going to be allowed to play fast and loose with her—not while I’m here to prevent it.”
Carfax was absently fingering the packet of letters.
“Hold on, Vance,” he broke in, “you’ve been saying, all along, that this last attack of yours—withRichardia—was the real thing; that there was no sentiment between you and Elizabeth.”
“That’s all very well,” said the attacked one, in a fresh thrill of self-pityings; “but I’m like the little kiddie who dropped his candy to reach for another piece and lost both. Just the same, it seems that you are due to get yours, too; you’ve proposed to one woman when you were in love with another. What did Richardia say to you when you asked her to marry you? That’s what I want to know now.”
The cherubic smile which was waiting for its chance in Carfax’s eyes turned slowly into an impish grin.
“As nearly as I can recall it, she said: ‘Most certainly not. Why should I?’ Of course, you have guessed that I asked her merely to give you a chance to be decently loyal to Elizabeth. Miss Richardia took it as it was meant, and we have been very good friends, playing the game at odd moments for your benefit when you seemed to be needing a bit of help.”
“Oh, yes; you were very kind; you are all very kind. But that doesn’t mend any broken bridges for me now. Do you want me to tell you why Richardia turned you and your ridiculous fortune down so easily? I can, you know,”and with that he told the story of his chance surprising of Miss Birrell’s secret.
Carfax heard him through patiently and did not seem unduly surprised at the new development.
“That accounts for a good many things,” he commented. “I have had a feeling for some time that Miss Richardia had something on her mind—something not altogether joyous. Once or twice she has seemed on the verge of confiding in me. It’s a case of the obdurate father, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so; though Hartridge didn’t hint at anything of that sort.”
“So Hartridge knows, too, does he?”
“They all know at Highmount, I fancy. And that reminds me: I’ve done it again—talked too much, as usual. I met Hartridge after I had seen the pair of them together, and we spoke of the love affair. Hartridge said it was Richardia’s secret, and that her friends had been carefully keeping it for her. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“It is safe enough with me, as you ought to know: you will be the one to go and tell it all over the lot,” was the unkind retort. And then: “These letters of Elizabeth’s; she ought to have them, don’t you think? Do you suppose I might——?”
Tregarvon waved him away.
“The letters will be all the excuse you will need for making two calls in the same half-day. Take the car and go and do what you’re aching to do. After you have sung your little song, you may give Elizabeth my love and my blessing. No, don’t stop to talk any more; just make your little bow and vanish, before I get to thinking too pointedly of all the things you’ve done to me.”
Carfax took his cue promptly, and before Tregarvon had finished filling his pipe the roar of the yellow car’s motor told him that the golden youth had begun his flight to the mountain top. A short half-hour later, at a second filling of the pipe, the motor roar was repeated, and while the solitary smoker was wondering what had brought Carfax back so soon, the dining-room door opened to admit Wilmerding.
“You are responsible,” said the young superintendent, explaining the motor-car clamor. “You gave me the fever, flaunting that big yellow devil of yours in my face, and I was obliged to go and buy. Want to take a little spin in the new wagon to see how she handles?”
Tregarvon pushed a chair into the fire-warmed semicircle for his visitor and shook his head.
“Some other time—if you’ll be good enough to let the invitation hang over. To-night I’d rather sit here before the fire with you and have a little heart-to-heart talk, Wilmerding. Will you indulge me?”
“Sure,” was the ready response. “The joy-ride can wait. Can you find me another pipe?”
The pipe was found and filled, and at its lighting Tregarvon began without preface, giving the steel-cube facts as they had been developed by Tryon and linking them up with Thaxter’s apparently disinterested effort to promote the sale of the Ocoee to Consolidated Coal. “I’m telling you this, Wilmerding, because I know you’re not implicated,” he said in conclusion. “Also, because it seems no more than fair that you should know. I’m not specially vindictive, you understand. I suppose Thaxter and the men behind him are calling it nothing more than a bit of sharp practice on purely legitimate business lines.”
“That might do for the drill-dulling,” the superintendent conceded thoughtfully, “though I’d take pretty violent exceptions to that, if I were you. But doesn’t this one proved rascality imply the authorship of all the others?”
“No. Hartridge thinks not, and so do I. By a good, vigorous stretch of imagination you couldcall the drill-dulling something less than criminal. But that can’t be said of the attempt to wreck my motor-car, or of the risk taken of killing somebody by the smashing of the machinery and the planting of a dynamite cartridge in the engine-boiler.”
While the evening lengthened they discussed the various phases of the mystery in all their bearings, and in the end Wilmerding came around to the Tryon-Hartridge hypothesis, namely, that Thaxter, unscrupulous as he may have been in bribing Sawyer, was not the instigator of the more serious barbarities.
“Not that I’m excusing Thaxter or the New York office from which he has his instructions,” he added. “The ‘Big Business’ methods are all more or less crooked, and I’d give half of my salary if I didn’t have to work for an outfit that simply won’t fight in the open, as men ought to fight. Do you know, Tregarvon, I’ve been hoping against hope that you’d strike it, and strike it rich, on the Ocoee. In that case, I had made up my mind to ask you to hire me.”
“If I had a mine, you couldn’t ask anything that would please me better,” said Tregarvon, warming to this expression of friendly loyalty. “But the thing looks pretty hopeless just now. As I have said, Professor Hartridge knows moreabout the Ocoee than anybody else seems to—and he won’t tell all he knows. But he did assure me this afternoon that we are not going to find the big vein where we are drilling in the old burying-ground, and I have every reason to believe that he was telling the truth. That lets me out. Thaxter ’phoned me this morning that he had got the option extended until to-morrow midnight. I stand to lose a hundred thousand dollars if I take the time to move the drilling plant and try again.”
Wilmerding rose to go, returning the borrowed pipe to its place on the mantel.
“It’s a hard proposition,” he admitted. “I’m not going to advise you to throw up the chance to get the hundred thousand. But if I were in your shoes, I’d be just reckless enough to gamble another throw or two. In this talk we’ve had, you have convinced me of one thing, Tregarvon, and that is that the Ocoee has a workable vein somewhere in the property. Hartridge knows it, and Consolidated Coal knows it. And what they know, some other fellow can find out. You have twenty-four hours, and a little better, in which to think it over. I said I wouldn’t advise, but I shall: don’t close with Thaxter one minute before you are obliged to.”
Tregarvon got out of his chair to shake hands with the departing visitor.
“You’re a man, Wilmerding, and I wish I had your nerve. But a couple of things have happened to-day—things that I can’t talk about, even to so good a friend as you are—and they have knocked me out. At the end of the ends, I’m afraid I shall weaken and sell out to your hog of a trust. It was good of you to come down and let me unload on you. If anything new turns up I’ll get you on the wire. Good night, and good luck to you.”
After Wilmerding had gone, Tregarvon sat for another hour before the fire, smoking abstractedly and hardly noting the passing of time. 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, “youdeserve to be murdered in cold blood. You told me that Elizabeth hadn’t gotten that frenzied letter you wrote her the day you were in Chattanooga. She hadn’t, but it was merely delayed; it was in that lot of forwarded mail that I took up to-night, and I—Igave it to her!”
“So that’s the latest, is it? Where does the tragedy come in?”
“Don’t say another word or I shall explode! You have probably forgotten that you wrote her that I was as good as engaged to Richardia Birrell—it would be quite like you to forget. She excused herself to go and read her letters, and when she came back I knew that the heavens had fallen. Oh, no; there wasn’t any scene; she just simply wouldn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgewise, though I tried for a solid hour to make the chance. I’m ruined for life—and you, with your nimble little pen and your neat facility for telling all you know, and then some,youhad to be the one to mangle me!”