“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Tregarvon, keenly sympathetic. “Richardia has given me to understand that there is a lot of mountain land, which is practically valueless now that the tan-bark timber has all been cut off; but there is nothing to bring an income.”
“Wilmerding has told me something of the judge’s involvement with the original Ocoee promoters, and the struggle he made to keep his name good after he and his friends had been frozen out,” Carfax resumed. “He had recommended the scheme to a good many others, and when the smash came, he stripped himself bare to make good the losses of his friends, withholding nothing but a little money he had put aside for Richardia’s musical education.”
Tregarvon nodded. “That explains something that Richardia said to me one time when we were talking about people marrying and settling down; she said, in that perfectly straightforward way of hers, that she would like to marry, but that she was in debt, and couldn’t marry until after she had earned enough money to pay herself out.”
“She has said something of the same nature to me,” Carfax admitted. “But it seems that there were other troubles besides the property losses. The judge had a son, a year or so older than Richardia. He was a school-boy at the time of the big smash, but was old enough, Wilmerding says, to be hot-headed and a bit wild and ungovernable. Parker, the promoter, was foolish enough to show up here again, after the débâcle; and this boy actually tried to kill him; emptied a pistol at him, winged him with one of the shots, and then ran away. He has never been heard from since.”
“That is all new to me,” Tregarvon commented. “I didn’t know Richardia had a brother. She has never spoken of him to me.”
“Wilmerding says nobody ever speaks of him,” Carfax went on. “Parker was vindictive, and pushed the assault case. A grand jury found a true bill against young Birrell, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He couldn’t be found; has never been found. His son’s disappearance, and the struggle to keep faith with his friends, made the judge what he is now, a proud, broken-spirited old hermit who is carrying the heaviest burden a father can bear—the disgrace of a son.”
“Disgrace?” echoed Tregarvon. “It’s hardly that, is it? Haven’t we been taught that it is a part of the Southern code that a son should shoot his father’s betrayer?”
“Oh, yes; that part of it was all right. The disgrace was in showing the white feather by running away; in not staying to face the consequences. As a matter of fact, I don’t suppose there would have been any consequences. Any jury that could have been impanelled in this vicinity at that particular time would have acquitted the boy. The cowardly streak is what broke the judge’s heart.”
“This story of the boy opens up a bit of new ground,” said Tregarvon musingly. “I wonder if Richardia doesn’t know where he is? She has given me the impression, more than once, that she has a deep-buried trouble of some sort—a trouble that she never shares with anybody. Haven’t you had the same notion?”
Carfax shook his head.