The Two Vanrevels Part 17

"But you--"

"Yes--I wrote. I answered the letter."

"As-"

"Yes; I signed your name. I told you that I had just let things go on,"

Crailey answered, with an impatient movement of his hands. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going over to see the Governor in the morning. I'll be away two or three days, I imagine."

"Vanrevel!" exclaimed Crailey hotly, "Will you give me an answer and not beat about the bush any longer? Or do you mean that you refuse to answer?"

Tom dropped his cigar upon the brick window-ledge with an abysmal sigh.

"Oh, no, it isn't that," he answered mildly "I've been thinking it all over for three days in the country, and when I got back tonight I found that I had come to a decision without knowing it, and that I had come to it even before I started; my leaving the letter for you proved it. It's a little like this Mexican war, a mixed-up problem and only one thing clear. A few schemers have led the country into it to increase the slave-power and make us forget that we threatened England when we couldn't carry out the threat. And yet, if you look at it broadly, these are the smaller things and they do not last. The means by which the country grows may be wrong, but its growth is right; it is only destiny, working out through lies and blood, but the end will be good. It is bound to happen and you can't stop it. I believe the men who make this war for their own uses will suffer in h.e.l.l-fire for it; but it is made, and there's only one thing I can see as the thing for me to do.

They've called me every name on earth--and the same with you, too, Crailey--because I'm an Abolitionist, but now, whether the country has sinned or not, a good many thousand men have got to do the bleeding for her, and I want to be one of them. That's the one thing that is plain to me."

"Yes," returned Crailey. "You know I'm with you; and I think you're always right. Yes; we'll all be on the way in a fortnight or so. Do you mean you won't quarrel with me because of that? Do you mean it would be a poor time now, when we're all going out to take our chances together?"

"Quarrel with you!" Tom rose and came to the desk, looking across it at his friend. "Did you think I might do that?"

"Yes--I thought so."

"Crailey!" And now Tom's expression showed desperation; it was that of a man whose apprehensions have culminated and who is forced to face a crisis long expected, long averted, but imminent at last. His eyes fell from Crailey's clear gaze and his hand fidgeted among the papers on the desk.

"No," he began with a painful lameness and hesitation. "I did not mean it--no; I meant, that, in the same way, only one thing in this other--this other affair that seems so confused and is such a problem--only one thing has grown clear. It doesn't seem to me that--that--" here he drew a deep breath, before he went on with increasing nervousness--"that if you like a man and have lived with him a good many years; that is to say, if you're really much of a friend to him, I don't believe you sit on a high seat and judge him. Judging, and all that, haven't much part in it. And it seems to me that you've got yourself into a pretty bad mix-up, Crailey."

"Yes," said Crailey. "It's pretty bad."

"Well," Tom looked up now, with an almost tremulous smile, "I believe that is about all I can make of it. Do you think it's the part of your best friend to expose you? It seems to me that if there ever was a time when I ought to stand by you, it's now."

There was a silence while they looked at each other across the desk in the faint light. Tom's eye fell again as Crailey opened his lips.

"And in spite of everything," Crailey said breathlessly, "you mean that you won't tell?"

"How could I, Crailey?" said Tom Vanrevel as he turned away.

CHAPTER XV. When June Came

"Methought I met a Damsel Fair And tears were in her eyes; Her head and arms were bare, I heard her bursting sighs.

"I stopp'd and looked her in the face, 'Twas then she sweetly smiled.

Her features shone with mournful grace, Far more than Nature's child.

"With diffident and downcast eye, In modest tones she spoke; She wiped a tear and gave a sigh, And then her silence broke--"

So sang Mrs. Tanberry at the piano, relieving the melancholy which possessed her; but Nelson, pausing in the hail to listen, and exceedingly curious concerning the promised utterance of the Damsel Fair, was to suffer disappointment, as the ballad was broken off abruptly and the songstress closed the piano with a monstrous clatter.

Little doubt may be entertained that the noise was designed to disturb Mr. Carewe, who sat upon the veranda consulting a brown Principe, and less that the intended insult was accomplished. For an expression of a vindictive nature was precipitated in that quarter so simultaneously that the bang of the piano-lid and the curse were even as the report of a musket and the immediate cry of the wounded.

Mrs. Tanberry at once debouched upon the piazza, showing a vast, clouded countenance. "And I hope to heaven you already had a headache!" she exclaimed.

"The courtesy of your wish, madam," Carewe replied, with an angry flash of his eye, "is only equaled by the kindness of heaven in answering it.

I have, in fact, a headache. I always have, nowadays."

"That's good news," returned the lady heartily.

"I thank you," retorted her host.

"Perhaps if you treated your daughter even a decent Indian's kind of politeness, you'd enjoy better health."

"Ah! And in what failure to perform my duty toward her have I incurred your displeasure?"

"Where is she now?" exclaimed the other excitably. "Where is she now?"

"I cannot say."

"Yes, you can, Robert Carewe!" Mrs. Tanberry retorted, with a wrathful gesture. "You know well enough she's in her own room, and so do I--for I tried to get in to comfort her when I heard her crying. She's in there with the door bolted, where you drove her!"

"I drove her!" he sneered.

"Yes, you did, and I heard you. Do you think I couldn't hear you raging and storming at her like a crazy man? When you get in a temper do you dream there's a soul in the neighborhood who doesn't know it? You're a fool if you do, because they could have heard you swearing down on Main Street, if they'd listened. What are you trying to do to her?--break her spirit?--or what? Because you'll do it, or kill her. I never heard anybody cry so heart-brokenly." Here the good woman's own eyes filled.

"What's the use of pretending?" she went on sorrowfully. "You haven't spoken to her kindly since you came home. Do you suppose I'm blind to that? You weren't a bad husband to the poor child's mother; why can't you be a good father to her?"

"Perhaps you might begin by asking her to be a good daughter to me."

"What has she done?"

"The night before I went away she ran to a fire and behaved there like a common street hoyden. The ladies of the Carewe family have not formerly acquired a notoriety of that kind."

"Bah!" said Mrs. Tanberry.

"The next morning, when I taxed her with it, she dutifully defied and insulted me."

"I can imagine the delicacy with which you 'taxed' her. What has that to do with your devilish tantrums of this afternoon, Robert Carewe?"

"I am obliged to you for the expression," he returned. "When I came home, this afternoon, I found her reading that thing." He pointed to many very small fragments of Mr. c.u.mmings's newspaper, which were scattered about the lawn near the veranda. "She was out here, reading an article which I had read downtown and which appeared in a special edition of that rotten sheet, sent out two hours ago."

"Well?"

"Do you know what that article was, madam, do you know what it was?"

Although breathing heavily, Mr. Carewe had compelled himself to a certain outward calmness, but now, in the uncontrollable agitation of his anger, he sprang to his feet and struck one of the wooden pillars of the porch a shocking blow with the bare knuckles of his clenched hand.

"Do you know what it was? It was a eulogy of that d.a.m.ned Vanrevel! It pretended to be an account of the enrollment of his infernal company, but it was nothing more than a glorification of that n.i.g.g.e.r-loving hound! His company--a lot of sneaks, who'll run like sheep from the first Greaser--elected him captain yesterday, and today he received an appointment as major! It dries the blood in my veins to think of it!--that black dog a major! Good G.o.d! am I never to hear the last of him? c.u.mmings wrote it, the fool, the lying, fawning, s...o...b..ring fool; he ought to be shot for it! Neither he nor his paper ever enter my doors again! And I took the dirty sheet from her hands and tore it to pieces--"

"Yes," interposed Mrs. Tanberry, "it looks as if you had done it with your teeth."

"--And stamped it into the ground!"

"Oh, I heard you!" she said.