XXVI
Tryon’s News
TREGARVON awoke on the Monday morning with the feeling of the putative bankrupt who is facing his final day of grace. Before midnight the bargain-and-sale decision must be made; and he knew perfectly well that there would be no chance in the short interval which still remained of adding to the facts as they stood. Nevertheless, after Carfax had disappeared, walking, in the direction of Hesterville, Tregarvon plunged into the routine, entering into a wire correspondence with the Chattanooga machinery firm and trying to extort a promise that the needed valve and steam-pipe should be shipped without fail by the afternoon train.
Since Carfax did not put in an appearance for the noon meal, Tregarvon ate alone. While he was at table Tryon came in to report. Early in the morning the man Sawyer had turned up at the drilling ground with a one-horse wagon and had taken his belongings, including the working-coat, and the tool-box, containing among other things the reserve supply of steel cubes. Tryon was of the opinion that the drill boss was preparing to vanish, and suggested the taking of preventive measures. Though Sawyer would doubtless be a most unwilling witness, it might be needful to make sure that he could be found when wanted.
Tregarvon concurred mechanically, telling the foreman to spread an unofficial drag-net for Sawyer, and agreeing to swear out a warrant for the man’s arrest if he should attempt to run away. Beyond this, he sent one of the laborers up to the drilling-stand to give Rucker a chance to sleep; and, later in the afternoon, sent word to Tryon’s house directing the foreman to share the coming night-watch with the mechanician; all this also as a matter of routine, since, with the suspension of working operations, there had been no threats of further aggressions.
Just before the evening meal Carfax returned abstracted and silent, and saying nothing as to the manner in which he had spent the day. Immediately after dinner he asked Tregarvon if he might have the motor-car.
“Going up to Westwood House to try again?” queried the motor-car’s owner, not too sympathetically.
“I’m no good to you here,” was the non-committal rejoinder; and a little later Tregarvon found himself facing the approaching crisis alone and still undecided.
Thaxter had telephoned during the afternoon, calling attention once more to the terms of the offer to purchase. The message had taken the tone of a friendly warning. There was no hope of securing further delay, but the bookkeeper would give Tregarvon the benefit of all the time that remained. He would stay in his Whitlow office, or be within call, up to midnight, and he hoped that Tregarvon would be sensible and remember the old saw about the bird in the hand.
Tregarvon was remembering the canny proverb—and a good many other things—when he lighted his after-dinner pipe. Throughout the entire day he had been wavering and postponing the moment of action. One hundred thousand dollars, judiciously invested, would provide an income for his mother and sister, which, however far it might fall short of the former Tregarvon lavishnesses, would still place them securely beyond the hazard of want. On the other hand, a certain innate obstinacy, grown now to a passion which threatened to drive cool-blood reason to the wall, refused to yield.
Apart from this, there was a question of pure ethics to be considered. Quite early in the attempt to develop the Ocoee he had secretly determined, if his efforts should prove successful, to reorganize the company, taking in those who had suffered loss; in other words, to make restitution to Parker’s victims. But if the property should be sold to the trust there was an end of the generous intention, and the nail of injustice driven by Parker would be irrevocably clinched.
These were some of the perplexities, but there was another which also demanded a hearing. Carfax had been most generous and loyal, spending not only his money but himself. But now the conditions were changed—or changing. Carfax had another interest, suddenly grown imperative. Would it not be most unfair to drag him still deeper into the discouraging fight, allowing him to spend more money which might never be repaid?
At this point in the reflective probings Tregarvon began to argue that he must see and talk with Carfax again before he could decide finally and definitely; and he had no sooner reached this conclusion, and was casting about for the means to translate it into action, when Wilmerding appeared—a veritable god-in-the-machine, since he was driving his new car.
“Thaxter was telling me that you’d most likely be making him a business call this evening, and I thought I’d drive over and take you back in my car,” said the newly made motor enthusiast. “If I’m butting in, don’t scruple to chase me away.”
Tregarvon was already taking his driving-coat from its closet in the fireplace corner. “You have come precisely in the nick of time,” he returned. “Carfax has taken my car to drive to Westwood House, and I must have a few minutes’ talk with him before I fight the final round with Thaxter. Will your car climb the big hill?”
“If it won’t, I’ll scrap it and buy another,” laughed the Pittsburgher; and five minutes later the new, high-powered roadster was storming up the Pisgah grades.
Eight minutes was the time to the Highmount gates, and Tregarvon called it a beat, though he had never timed his own car over the same distance. Eight other minutes covered the cross-mountain run to the western brow; and it was not until Wilmerding had tooled the roadster up the Westwood House driveway and was parking it beside the yellow touring-car that Tregarvon began to wonder if, with Elizabeth as her guest, Richardia would not be breaking her school routine by spending her evenings at home. In that case ... but it was now too late to retreat, and, with Wilmerding at his elbow, he ran up the steps to set the old-fashioned knocker of the great door clanging its drumbeat through the echoing interiors.
When Aunt Phyllis, the solemn-faced old negress who was the sole survivor of the once numerous household retinue, opened the drawing-room doors for the two callers, the judge’s daughter was at the piano, the judge was listening luxuriously in a deep, calico-covered armchair, and Carfax was sitting with Miss Wardwell in a window-seat at the farther end of the room.
Wilmerding made his own and Tregarvon’s apologies when the judge got upon his feet to welcome the newcomers.
“We were taking a spin in my new car,” he explained, tactfully leaving Tregarvon’s errand unmentioned. “Of course, we couldn’t pass your hospitable door, Judge Birrell.”
“No, suh; most suttainly you couldn’t,” was the ready response. “The do-ahs of old Westwood House may creak a little on thei-uh hinges, suh, but they still swing wide enough to let the guest enter at his pleas-yuh. Find yo-uh places, gentlemen, if you please; my daughtuh is giving us a little music.”
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. This was Tregarvon’s opportunity to say the needed word to the golden youth, but at its offering a sudden passionate impulse seized him and he crossed quickly to the piano alcove. “I see you have my nocturne,” he whispered, bending over the pianist and indicating the Chopin on the piano-desk; “please play it for me.”
As if his masterful mood were not to be safely denied, her fingers fell upon the keys in the opening chords of the nocturne; and this was the beginning of what gradually grew to be an interval of suspended possibilities. Almost at once, Tregarvon realized that Richardia was playing only from the fingers outward—faultlessly, but mechanically; that Carfax was wandering from one window to another in a sort of aimless unrest; that Elizabeth was setting all her serene traditions at defiance by chatting eagerly, like an escaped school-girl, with Wilmerding.
A few minutes further along, when Carfax dragged a chair into the window recess and deliberately broke in upon Miss Wardwell and her companion, the spirit of disquietude seemed to seize upon the judge, also, since he wheeled his armchair to face the window group and did violence to all the Westwood House musical unities by joining in the low-toned conversation. This gave Tregarvon his excuse; and when the nocturne ran away at its close into delicate little improvisations, he spoke again in the guarded undertone.
“Hartridge may have told you that I accidentally surprised your secret yesterday afternoon. I did, you know; but I want you to be assured that it is as safe with me as it is with the professor, or with any of your friends who know it.”
If he were expecting any manifestation of surprise it was not forthcoming. So far from it, there was no break in the improvisation harmonies.
“Some day I hope it won’t be necessary to make a secret of it,” she replied evenly, matching his low tone.
“Does Elizabeth know?”
“Not yet. But I shall tell her.”
“Has she told you that our engagement is broken?”
Her nod was barely perceptible.
“I hope she told you that I didn’t break it.”
“Yes; she told me that, too.”
“You are not saying it, but deep down in your heart you are telling yourself that I have got only what was coming to me. Isn’t that true?”
The answer came from lips that were paling a little. “Ask yourself.”
“It is true. And it is also true, perhaps, that I should have had this other whipping; the one I got yesterday afternoon when I was trying to meet Hartridge on his way back from the ‘Pocket.’”
She was still keeping her face averted.
“I can’t talk about that now, to any one—least of all, to you.”
He bent lower to make sure that the group at the other end of the room should not overhear.
“I want to meet the man. If I stay here on Mount Pisgah—if I don’t throw it all up and go home—I mean to do what I can to help. Once I shouldn’t have been big enough to say such a thing, Richardia; but—thank God—I’ve grown a little in the past few months. May I add that it is you who have shown me how to grow?”
She ignored the query and for the first time let him see her eyes: they were swimming, and there was a note in her voice that he had never heard before when she said: “You must not talk of giving up and going away; you are the one who can do the most to help when the time comes—if only——”
A clamorous banging of the door-knocker interrupted, and Aunt Phyllis put her turbaned head into the drawing-room to say, with her fat chin in the air and a fine scorn in her tone: “Po’ white man at de front do’, comed to ast faw Mistoo Tregarbin.”
Tregarvon obeyed the summons rather reluctantly and found Tryon on the veranda. The foreman had been running and was short of breath.
“You’d better come over—you an’ Mr. Carfax,” he broke out hurriedly. “We’ve done caught the dannymiter. He was aimin’ to blow us all to kingdom come, this time!”
“Who is it?” Tregarvon grated.
Tryon wagged his head mysteriously. “Hit ain’t Sawyer; hit’s the same skunk I been a-suspicionin’ ever sense we had that talk yisterday. You’ll see when you get thar’.”
Tregarvon went back to the drawing-room, meaning to cut Carfax out if possible without giving a general alarm. But Wilmerding overheard his whispered explanation to Carfax and so did Miss Wardwell; whereupon he spoke up quickly, briefing the story of the Ocoee troubles, and adding its latest sequel. The effect upon the master of Westwood House was instantaneous and militant.
“What’s that, suh? Tryin’ to dynamite yo-uh machinery whilst you and Mistuh Carfax are makin’ us a friendly visit heah at Westwood House?” he demanded, his deep voice rumbling in the wrath of outraged hospitality. “Richa’dia, daughtuh, get me my coat and hat; I’m goin’ oveh yondeh with these young gentlemen. No, Mistuh Tregarvon; don’t deny me that privilege, suh; yo-uh bein’ undeh my roof at the precise moment makes yo-uh quarrel my quarrel, suh! You’ll give me a seat in yo-uh steam-wagon, and—daughtuh, my coat and hat, immediately, if you please. And fetch me the old shot-gun, too, my deah.”
By this time Wilmerding was declaring that he must not be left out; and in the momentary confusion Tregarvon saw that the judge’s daughter, while she was obeying her father’s commands, was pitiably agitated. Assuming that her anxiety was for her father’s safety, he ventured a word of assurance while she was holding the overcoat for the sleeves of which the judge was hastily fumbling.
“You mustn’t distress yourself—we are not going to let your father get hurt,” he protested.
“It’s—it’s not that!” she gasped; “it is something far worse.” Then, in an agonized whisper that he had to bend lower to hear: “This man they have taken; promise me that you will let him go before my—before any one else has seen him!”
Tregarvon promised blindly, striving to ignore this last of the maddening mysteries in an effort to be wholly loyal to the woman he loved. But as he committed himself the difficulties in the way of performance suddenly magnified themselves. With the judge taking part in the descent upon the scene of the capture, how was he to be kept from seeing and questioning the culprit? Tregarvon saw that he had promised that which he would most probably be unable to perform, but in the confusion of the hurried departure there was no chance to add the qualifying word, and it was left unspoken.