Part 16

Tregarvon grasped the new obstacle--and his own fierce impatience--firmly by the neck and refused to make a profane show of himself for Thaxter’s benefit.

“I suppose there is only one thing to do, Billy; to go down to the railroad office and wire the machinery people to make good,” he answered placably. Then to Thaxter: “We have hit so many of these knock-outs that we are beginning to learn that we must take them as they come.” And with that, he scribbled a telegram on a leaf of his note-book, tore it out, and gave it to Rucker.

“There is the message,” he said. “Tell Tryon and the men that the jig is up for to-day, and that I’ll be down a little later on to pay them off. You’d better go down yourself and send that wire. If you can persuade the railroad agent to hustle it, we may catch the machinery shop before it closes.”

Thaxter sat quite silent during the dispersal of the working gang; did not speak again until after the last of the men had disappeared in the direction of the tramhead. Then he said: “Well, you are hung up until next week safely enough now. Your wire won’t get an answer this late Saturday afternoon.”

“No, I suppose not,” Tregarvon agreed. “The order will be filled Monday, and the new throttle will get here Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, at the pleasure of the railroad people. Cheerful layout, isn’t it?”

“You certainly have bad luck enough to discourage most young men,” said the bookkeeper, as one who would not withhold sympathy where sympathy is due. “Do you know, it simply grinds me to be the one to add my bit to the aggregation. I’ve half a mind to take a chance on the thunder and lightning and ask New York for that extension of time for you. You might reasonably hope to hear from your Philadelphia attorneys by Monday or Tuesday, don’t you think?”

Tregarvon snatched at the concession avidly. “I’ll wire them to-night,” he promised, as if his decision depended entirely upon the result of the long-range consultation. But after Thaxter had driven away, excusing his haste on the plea that no time must be lost in reaching a telegraph office, Tregarvon wondered again; this time half-suspiciously. Why had Thaxter changed his tune so suddenly? Was it because he had just been given ocular proof that the test-drilling was again postponed? The more Tregarvon thought of it, the more plausible the assumption grew; and he was almost ready to call it a fact when, an hour later, Carfax put in an appearance with the motor-car.

In a few words Tregarvon told the story of the afternoon’s happenings, giving the suspicion due standing.

“It is only a guess, as usual,” he offered in conclusion. “But, in any event, the strain is off for the present. Thaxter will get the extension, and in the meantime we can take our chance to draw a comfortable breath or two. After Rucker comes back, we’ll go down the hill and get ready to enjoy an old-fashioned restful Sunday. I don’t mind confessing that the strain has been getting next to me, Poictiers. I’m going to push the whole wretched tangle into the background, for one day, at least, and try to catch up with my nerve.”

“Good medicine!” laughed the one who had no nerves; and Rucker returning a few minutes later to resume his duties as resident watchman, they climbed into the yellow car and Tregarvon took the wheel to drive to the valley.

XXII

Out of a Clear Sky

The event of the day for Coalville--the arrival of the afternoon passenger-train from Chattanooga--was in the near prospect when the yellow car rolled down the last of the grades and swept a wide circle around the coke-ovens and past the unloading platforms.

The train-time signs were always unmistakable. A little while before the hour, and always as if warned by some signal inaudible to alien ears, the loungers under Tait’s porch rose, shook their legs to settle wrinkled trousers, and filed slowly over to the railroad station. Tregarvon’s motor-car, no longer a nine days’ wonder to the army of leisure, was slowing to cross the rails of the Ocoee siding when the station agent ran out of his office to wave the motorists down with a telegram. The message was for Carfax, and the agent explained that it had been delayed in transmission by some trouble with the wire on the branch line.

While Carfax was opening the envelope, Tregarvon got out and went around to see if the brakes had been running cool in the swift drop from the summit of Pisgah. For this cause he did not hear Carfax’s, “Ye gods and little fishes!” basing itself upon a glance at the delayed telegram.

“Vance!” he called, turning in his place to see what had become of Tregarvon. But Tregarvon did not hear. A canopy-topped surrey, venerable with age and drawn by a great-boned horse of dapple gray, was turning out of the Hesterville road to cross the tracks to the station. Miss Richardia Birrell was holding the reins over the dapple gray, and in the seat beside her was an old man, erect, white-haired, handsome as an ancestral portrait.

“Jehu!” said Tregarvon under his breath. “So that is her father. If looks count for anything, he is worthy of her; which is more than I would say for any other Tennesseean I’ve met.” Then Carfax’s anxious call was repeated, and this time Tregarvon answered.

“Not lost--only mislaid,” he returned. Then he saw Carfax’s face: “Why, Poictiers!--who is dead?”

Carfax was standing up in his place, clinging to the steering-wheel with one hand and waving the telegram like a flag of distress in the other.

“Read that!” he commanded tragically, when the inspector of brakes came within passing reach.

Tregarvon glanced at the message and became, in his turn, a man stricken down without warning. The bolt was dated at Chattanooga, and it had been filed for sending at nine in the forenoon. It was addressed to Carfax, and it read:

“Here with papa and mamma, and the Pennsylvania battle-monument dedicators. If I should run over to Coalville with Clotilde this afternoon, will you and Vance put me up at the hotel and show me your mine? But, of course, you will.

“ELIZABETH.”

“Oh, good heavens!” groaned Tregarvon, when the paralyzing effect of the announcement gave place to the panic of dismay; “E-Elizabeth and her maid?--coming here?”

Carfax laughed rather wildly. “Yes; coming here to stop at--at the hotel!”

Tregarvon read the message again. “She says ‘this afternoon.’ That means to-day--now--this minute; she’s on this train! Poictiers, if you are any friend of mine, you’ll climb down here and find a club and put me out of my misery!”

Carfax stopped laughing suddenly and sprang out of the car. “It’s no joke!” he snapped. “It’s up to us, you wild ass of the desert--do you hear? Stop your braying and listen to me: we’ve got to meet her over there on that platform just as if we had been watching every train for a week! There is the whistle: come along and invent your fairy-tale on the run!”

They did not crowd too eagerly to the front when the three-car train drew up to the platform. There were terms to be agreed upon; things which might be said, and things which must not be said. Thus it happened that an exceedingly handsome young woman, in a modish travelling hat and a brown coat, and followed by a French maid bearing impedimenta, was helped from the car-step by the brakeman.

“Charge!” Carfax commanded, in a hoarse whisper; but before they could do it, Miss Richardia slipped through the ranks of the platform loungers, put her arms quickly about the handsome young woman and kissed her, with an “Oh, you dear thing!” to go with the affectionate welcome.

Tregarvon saw, gasped, swallowed hard, and the smile of greeting which he had called up for the emergency turned into a shocked grin.

“Get out in the road there and chunk me!” he whispered to Carfax. And then: “Poictiers, I’m a ruined man! They were together in the Boston music factory. Elizabeth has told me a hundred times how she chummed with a charming little Southerner--without naming any names! And I’ve been writing her--oh, I tell you, I’m a dead man. All you have to do now is to get a wreath to lay on my coffin!”

“You’ll be needing the coffin if you don’t buck up and catch the step!” hissed Carfax. Wherewith he dragged his companion masterfully into the circle of welcomings.

The golden youth neither gave nor received the kiss of greeting; and he pointedly looked another way when Miss Wardwell offered her cheek for Tregarvon’s cousinly salute. Then he found himself shaking hands with Richardia’s father; realized vaguely that the judge was taxing him reproachfully for not having consented to occupy one of the many bed-rooms at Westwood House the night before, instead of returning to Highmount; realized also that Miss Wardwell was rallying Tregarvon gayly upon his discomfiture accomplished by means of the jesting telegram.

“Surely, it didn’t mislead you, too, did it, Poictiers?” she questioned, turning to Tregarvon’s accomplice. “Vance is trying to tell me that you took it harder than he did.” Then she explained to Judge Birrell: “I sent a wire to these two from Chattanooga, you know, asking them if they could put me and Clotilde up at the Coalville hotel--by the way, Cousin Vance, where _is_ the hotel?” Then again to the judge: “You see, I guessed, from what Richardia said in her last letter, that they didn’t know I was invited to Westwood House. Fancy it! they got the telegram only a few minutes ago!”

Tregarvon backed out of the group and fanned himself with his hat. There were still traces of the shocked grin to temper the mask of feverish anxiety which was slowly displacing it. Everything he had ever written to Elizabeth about Richardia--everything he had ever told Richardia about Elizabeth--clamored for instant recollection and revision in the light of the unnerving fact that the two of them were here on the Coalville platform, together, as friends of long standing.

The train had moved on, the loungers were dispersing, and Miss Birrell was leading the way to the venerable surrey.

“Mr. Carfax has promised me that he will drive you up to Westwood House to-morrow. I think you will be very sure to come, now,” she said, after Tregarvon had flogged himself into some livelier sense of the requirements of the moment. Then she added: “You may come as early as you please.”

“I think I shall be very ill to-morrow,” he returned gravely, as he handed her into the carriage. “These sudden shocks are very bad--for the heart.” Then, while Carfax was helping Miss Wardwell to the front seat with the judge: “I didn’t believe you could be so wicked!”

“I am not the wicked one,” was the quick retort. “I tried to tell you last Wednesday; that was why I asked Mr. Carfax to drive down to where you were working. But you wouldn’t let me.”

“If I am not too ill to come, you must let me see you first, before I--” Tregarvon was beginning; but Miss Richardia was not willing to be dragged even into the vicinity of things confidential.

“Hear him!” she said to Miss Wardwell; “Mr. Tregarvon is intimating that we have made him ill, between us!” Then she spoke to her father: “Judge Birrell, you will please command these two young gentlemen to report to you to-morrow at Westwood House--do you hear?”

The judge gave the invitation in due and courteous form, and Carfax accepted promptly for himself and for Tregarvon. After which the big dapple gray, mildly urged by his master, began to jog up and down and the age-worn surrey crept out of sight around the barrier rank of coke-ovens.

“We might have offered to take them up in the motor,” said Carfax, when the afterthought had been given time to come to the surface.

“_You_ might have,” Tregarvon returned moodily. “I wouldn’t trust myself to drive a wheel-barrow in the present state of things.”

Carfax was about to swing himself behind the wheel to drive the car over to its shed and he paused with a foot on the running-board.

“When it comes to wrestling with the fateful tangles, you haven’t so much the best of me as you may think you have--thanks to your little gift of letter-writing,” he remarked darkly.

Tregarvon walked across to the office-building while Carfax was housing the car, went to his room, and was visible no more until Uncle William called him to dinner. At table he ate like an ogre--a sure sign of disturbment--and refused to rise to any of the small conversational baits flung out by Carfax. But afterward, over the tobacco-jar, there were things to be said and he said them.

“Poictiers, I believe I’ll write my will to-night and let you witness it,” he began. “The easiest thing for me to do now is to go and offer myself to the chief of the bureau of tests as a candidate for the poison squad.”

“Meaning that Elizabeth is here to answer your letter in person?” queried Carfax. “There is nothing so very deadly about that, is there?”

“That remark shows how little you know women. I was perfectly frank with Elizabeth, as I told you, but of course I didn’t write as I should have written if I had known that she and Richardia were bosom friends. Now they will proceed to exchange confidences and compare notes--if they haven’t already done both in their letters to each other. And what the comparison will leave of me won’t be fit to fling to a starved puppy.”

Carfax smoked in silence for quite some time before he said: “How they may stick pins into you, to your face or behind your back, seems a very inconsiderable factor in the case to me, Vance. The deadly part of it is that you are still in love--or you think you are--with Richardia Birrell, while you are going to marry Elizabeth Wardwell.”

“No,” Tregarvon objected, staring gloomily into the fire; “that isn’t the worst of it. There is a still deeper depth: I can’t help being the one or doing the other.”

Carfax began to show signs of becoming restive.

“If Elizabeth only didn’t care so much for you....” Then he took a new tack. “You didn’t tell her all you ought to have told her in that letter, Vance; if you had, you wouldn’t be dreading the actual show-down as you are now. Which means that you still have it to do.”

“That is it, exactly,” said the dejected one. “And I’d much rather be shot full of holes.”

Carfax took another dose of his own prescription of silence. Then he said: “What is going to come of it?--after you have made her understand?”

“The only thing that can come of it. While I have insisted, and still insist, that there has never been any sentiment wasted between us, the fact remains that Elizabeth is a woman, and she isn’t going to sit down meekly and say, ‘All right, Vance, dear; never mind,’ when I make her understand that I have been trying my hardest to make love to another woman. She has plenty of spirit; she can fairly set you afire with those brown eyes of hers when the occasion demands it.”

“Well?” said Carfax.

“It will be all over but the shouting, then. She will doubtless tell me what she thinks of me and break the engagement, there and then--or try to. But that is the one thing I can’t let her do, Poictiers. She needs the Uncle Byrd legacy, and I mustn’t let her lose it.”

Carfax got up and reached for the matches and his bed-room candle. “No,” he said slowly; “you mustn’t let her lose the legacy. To a man up a tree it would seem that the money is about all she is going to salvage out of the wreck.” With which unkind daggering of the sinner whose sin had found him out, he went to bed.

XXIII

At Westwood House

The autumn Sunday afternoon figured as the flawless half of a day of perfection, with the sky a vivid blue and the hardwood forest of the mountain top, lately touched by the first sharp frosts, a riot of gorgeous coloring. On the broad veranda of the ancient manor-house of Westwood the conversation, which had been desultory at best, languished in sympathy with the reposeful spell of time and place and the peaceful surroundings.

With a gently worded phrase of apology to his daughter’s guest, the judge had pleaded an old man’s privilege, dragging his chair to the farther end of the veranda and lighting his corn-cob pipe in courteous isolation. Tregarvon marked the bit of old-fashioned chivalric deference to Elizabeth, and wondered how many men of his own generation would be as thoughtfully considerate of the small amenities.

The thought was one of a series emphasizing the gross incredibility of the theory involving Richardia’s father in the conspiracy against the Ocoee. That the white-haired, ruddy-faced Chesterfield of Westwood House might challenge an antagonist, give him the choice of weapons, and afterward kill him unflinchingly, was easily conceivable. But that he would descend to the methods of the dynamiter or the midnight assassin was momently growing more and more unbelievable.

With Elizabeth for his _vis-à-vis_ in her broad-armed veranda chair, Tregarvon was finding it increasingly difficult to fix his attention upon the Ocoeean mysteries. For some reasons--the unfamiliar surroundings, the gap of absence so suddenly and unexpectedly bridged, or because there was some subtle change in her--his cousin was singularly reticent. While the talk remained general she took her part in it; but whenever it threatened to become a dialogue, Tregarvon was instantly made to feel the raising of the barrier.

Since the guilty flee when no man pursueth, Tregarvon fancied he need be at no loss to account for Miss Wardwell’s attitude. She had doubtless received his confession letter--though no mention had been made of it--and beyond that, she and Richardia had in all probability been comparing notes. He could feel the presence of the Damoclean sword suspended above his head, and was looking forward unjoyously to the moment when chance, or design on the part of Carfax and Richardia, would give Miss Wardwell her reproachful opportunity.

The dreaded moment came when Miss Richardia, who had been discussing autumn flowers with Carfax, asked the golden youth if he would like to see her chrysanthemums and asters in the sheltered posy-patch in the rear of the manor-house. And when they were gone, Tregarvon was left alone with his responsibilities.

It was Miss Wardwell who first broke the little silence which followed the departure of the flower seekers, and her manner was distinctly at variance with her accustomed attitude of serenity and self-possession; was rather the manner of one marching reluctantly but firmly up to the mouth of a loaded cannon.

“Were you tremendously shocked yesterday afternoon when you learned that I was coming?” she asked.

“It is no use to deny it,” he confessed bravely. “It was a complete surprise--as you probably intended it to be.”

“No; I didn’t intend it--until just at the last. Richardia has been asking me to come down, and she knew a week or more ago that I was coming. I supposed, of course, she would tell you, and didn’t know that she hadn’t told you until I received her last letter, just as we were leaving.”

“You came with your father and mother?”

“Yes. Pennsylvania has been building some monuments on the old battle-fields, and papa is one of the commissioners. He and mamma didn’t particularly wish to be bothered with me, I imagine, but I had to come. Have you guessed why, Vance?”

Tregarvon thought he knew the constraining reason very well, indeed, but he was not quite courageous enough to say so. Instead, he temporized, as a man will, postponing the instant when the hair-hung sword must fall.

“I’m the poorest of mind-readers,” he protested. “I can’t even read my own, at times. But I suppose you have my letter, and you thought it ought to be answered in person.”

“I have had many letters from you: which one do you mean?”

“The one I wrote a week ago to-day in the hotel in Chattanooga.”

She shook her head slowly. “No; your last letter was written two weeks ago, and it was postmarked ‘Coalville.’ I remember you said you were writing after Poictiers had gone to bed.”

Tregarvon groaned inwardly. The thing which he thought had been safely done had not been done at all; it still remained to be done. He was bracing himself to take the plunge when she went on hurriedly:

“You were saying just now that you couldn’t read your own mind--sometimes. I wish I might read it now--this moment, Cousin Vance!” She was trying to look him fairly in the eyes and was not succeeding very well.

“Read my mind?--heaven forbid!” he gasped. Then he came to his senses and tried to repair the terrible misstep. “You know--er--you know what I mean; a man’s mind is seldom fit for a--a good woman to look into, Elizabeth.”

“Yours is, always,” she asserted loyally, and he winced as if she had struck him a blow. “I assure you I haven’t known you all my life for nothing, Vance. And it was because I had known you as no other woman ever will, that I was willing to try to make you happy.”

He was wondering dumbly how much of this he could stand when she continued, quite calmly, though the brown eyes were looking past him.

“As I have said, I had to come: there is a crisis; and with your letters before me, I couldn’t write. We agreed once, you remember, to go around the sentimental field instead of going through it; but--but you haven’t been living up to the spirit of that agreement in your letters.”

Tregarvon found his handkerchief and mopped his face. The matchless autumn afternoon had grown suddenly sweltering for him.

“You mean that I’ve been writing you love-letters? I’m a brute, Elizabeth. I----”

“Please don’t make it any harder for me than you are obliged to,” she pleaded gently. “If you stop me now, I shall never be able to go on. I have come all the way down here to say something to you; something that I couldn’t write, and a thing that every added letter of yours was making more difficult to say. But one word from you now will make it easier--if it is the right word. Tell me, Vance; hasn’t this separation proved to you that we couldn’t--that cousins ought not to marry?”

Slowly it ground its way into his brain that the worst had befallen; that Elizabeth, really and truly in love with him, now, had guessed, either from his letters or from Richardia’s, the true state of affairs; and that womanly pride and affection had brought her to the scene of action to commit martyrdom.

“Oh, by Jove!--you mustn’t, Elizabeth!” he broke out in a sudden access of contrition. “I can’t allow you to outdo me in pure generosity that way! And, besides, there is Uncle Byrd’s money.”

“I have thought of that, too,” she said, quite judicially. “But, Vance, dear, we must simply rise superior to all the mere money considerations. Richardia has been telling me about your prospects here--your mine--and your brave struggle to make something out of nothing. You will need Uncle Byrd’s money; you are needing it now. And I--if we--well, I shall not need it, anyhow,” she ended rather incoherently.

“The Lord help me, Elizabeth!” he groaned, entirely ignoring the white-haired, white-mustached figure smoking peacefully at the farther end of the veranda. “I don’t deserve----”

“I know you don’t,” she agreed instantly; “you deserve ... well, you deserve something quite different. But whatever happens, and whatever you say, I must do what I came here to do. I--I have made a discovery, Cousin Vance.”

“Of course you have,” he said desperately. “I knew you would, sooner or later, though I have tried awfully hard to make myself believe that there wasn’t any discovery to be made.”

“I know: but seriously, Vance; deep down in your heart, you don’t really care, do you?”

“Why, Elizabeth! Of course I care. And I have blamed myself straight through from the first.”

“Oh, but you mustn’t do that!” she protested quickly. “It is all my fault, or my--no, I simply _won’t_ call it a misfortune.”

“Your fault?” he queried. “You mean because you didn’t suspect it and choke it off right at the beginning. But I haven’t give you a chance to do that, have I?”