Part 22

“You knew all the time that Poictiers and Elizabeth were held apart only by Elizabeth’s engagement to me?”

“I guessed it. But that didn’t excuse you for--for----”

“For making love to you? I know it didn’t. But I had my punishment the Sunday afternoon when you met your brother in the wood above the ‘Pocket.’ I had gone out to meet Hartridge, and I saw you two together. I took it for granted that the man was your lover who, for some reason, couldn’t come here to Westwood House to meet you.”

“Others took it for granted, too, and I did not deny it--for Richard’s sake.”

“Is his name Richard?”

“Yes; Richard and Richardia. My father named us so, after a brother and sister of his own who were twins.”

Tregarvon glanced at his watch. There were other things to be said--many of them, but a suddenly recrudescent sense of the fitness of things told him that the moment was unauspicious.

“I suppose I’ll have to consider Hartridge and take him back to Highmount,” he offered. Then he added quite irrelevantly: “He’s in love with you, too. Speaking of accomplices, how much or how little did he have to do with the bushwhacking?”

“Nothing at all. It was only on the day of the explosion that he learned that Richard had come back, and was hiding with the McNabbs in the ‘Pocket,’ and heard, through Sill McNabb, that something was going to happen that night at your drilling plant. He suspected Richard at once, and went over to try to prevent the happening. Then your men caught Morgan McNabb, and Professor Billy hardly knew what to do. He guessed that Tryon had come over here after you and Mr. Carfax, and when you took father back with you he was afraid Morgan would be made to confess, and so make a bad matter infinitely worse. His idea in lighting the leaf fire was to give Morgan McNabb a chance to escape. Of course, he supposed the dynamite had been removed.”

“It has been a tragedy of errors from the beginning,” said Tregarvon soberly. “But I am going to expiate my part of it. Has Poictiers told you anything about my plans?”

“No.”

“I made them while I was lying in bed in the old office-building at Coalville, trying to get well enough to crawl out and take hold with my hands. It came to me then what an egregious ass I had made of myself, all the way round. I had blundered in ahead of Poictiers and didn’t have sense enough even to suspect it; and I had deliberately killed any little regard you might have had for me by showing myself up as a man who would make love to one woman while he was engaged to another. I was eaten up with shame, Richardia, and I am yet.”

“It hurt me; I think you will never know how much it hurt,” she said slowly. “A man asks utter and absolute loyalty of the woman he loves.”

“And the woman can ask no less of the man, you would say. That is true. I am no defender of the double standard; still less an apologist for my sex. I have only one excuse, Richardia; it wasn’t merely propinquity--as you and Poictiers seemed to think. I had never known what love was until I met you. Elizabeth is going to marry Poictiers, and you must believe me when I say that I think just as much of her--and in the same way--as I did before. But let that pass. I had found my coal mine, and had lost pretty nearly everything else, including my own self-respect. You were lost to me; doubly lost, as I thought then; so it seemed that the only thing for me to do was to set the Ocoee house in order, and after that was done to go away and try to forget.”

“You are still meaning to go away?”

“Yes. I meant to stay long enough to make somebody suffer for the bushwhackings, but that is past. I have sent for Peters, our family lawyer, and when he comes we shall settle the property affair. Three-fifths of the stock in the mine will go to my mother and sister, and the remainder will be turned over to your father to be distributed among the Parker victims. This is what I have been meaning to do all along, if I should be fortunate enough to discover the coal.”

She shook her head. “You are reckoning without my father. He won’t take the money.”

“He must be made to take it. It is only just and fair. When it comes to that, you must help me, Richardia; for his sake and for your brother’s.”

“Poor Dick!” she murmured. “He needs a friend much more than he needs the money; some one who would care enough for him to stand by and hold him up to the best there is in him. There _is_ good in him; you may not believe it now, but there is, really--lots of it.”

“I can very readily believe it, since he is your brother and the son of your father. And he has proved it to-night by climbing into the breach for McNabb. He will have his chance on the Ocoee, and Wilmerding will be his friend.”

“Then you are determined to go away?”

“Yes. I owe it to you and to everybody else, not less than to myself. But some day, Richardia, after I have done penance for the sin of loving you before I had a right to I am coming back. But I had forgotten; your brother wished me to ask you to play for him; something that would drive the devil away. He said he wanted to think.”

She went to the piano at once. Alone among the old-fashioned house furnishings it was modern; an artist’s instrument, full-toned and responsive. Tregarvon sank into an armchair before the blazing logs and gave himself up to the quiet ecstasies of the music-lover. From the first her playing had stirred him as no other chamber-music ever had. For a time he knew that she was improvising; then there were gentle themes from Mendelssohn, shading one into another so deftly that he could never mark the changes. And at the last there was the Chopin nocturne.

While the closing chords of the night-song were still lingering in the air she came to sit in a chair at the opposite corner of the hearth.

“You played the Chopin for me; was that your way of telling me that I might come back some day, Richardia?” he asked quite humbly.

Her hands were clasped over one knee and her gaze was fixed upon the blue and yellow flames in the great fireplace, when she said softly: “You are very human--and very blind; so blind that you haven’t seen that I have had to fight for two--for myself no less than for you. And there have been times when--when I almost _hated_ Elizabeth!”

The Tregarvon blood was not sluggish; at least, he had never found it so before; but for the moment he was like a man stricken suddenly dumb. Then the gift of speech came back, laboring as it could in the turmoil of new ecstasies.

“_You had to fight for two_; God help me, Richardia--if I had known that----”

She rose quickly and came to stand beside his chair.

“If you had known it, you would have been the strong one, Vance, dear. I know it; I knew it all the time; but I--was afraid--to trust--myself. You are not going away, now, are you?”

There was the sound of an opening and closing door and the stumping of the professor’s crutch on the bare floor of the hall. Tregarvon sprang up and took the small black-gowned figure in his arms.

“Going away?” he broke out passionately; “you couldn’t drive me away with an axe! I’m going to stay forever, and let you make a complete man of me. We’ll _marry_ your father’s share of the Ocoee back to him, and together we’ll make a man of your brother. There are a million other things to say, but Hartridge is coming to look for his chauffeur and I must take him back to Highmount. Richardia--sweetheart!... If I don’t wreck the car on the way it will be a miracle.”

Very gently she disengaged herself. “You--you needn’t smother a person,” she protested, with the quaint little grimace that he loved. And then: “That is father, calling me to go to brother. Please heap some more coals of fire and be good to Professor Billy--for the sake of his loyalty to me and mine.... Yes, daddy, dear; I’m coming.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been corrected.