Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  But the continuously pattering rain and the soft drip-drop from the roof, though as mournful as she chose to find them, began, afterwhile, to weave their somnolent spells, and she slowly drifted from reveries of unhappy sorts, into half-dreams, in which she was still aware she was awake; yet slumber, heavy-eyed, stirring from the curtains beside her with the small night breeze, breathed strange distortions upon familiar things, and drowsy impossibilities moved upon the surface of her thoughts. Her chin, resting upon her hand, sank gently, until her head almost lay upon her relaxed arms.

  “That is mine, Crailey Gray!”

  She sprang to her feet, immeasurably startled, one hand clutching the back of her chair, the other tremulously pressed to her cheek, convinced that her father had stooped over her and shouted the sentence in her ear. For it was his voice, and the house rang with the words; all the rooms, halls, and even the walls, seemed still murmurous with the sudden sound, like the tingling of a bell after it had been struck. And yet — everything was quiet.

  She pressed her fingers to her forehead, trying to untangle the maze of dreams which had evolved this shock for her, the sudden clamor in her father’s voice of a name she hated and hoped never to hear again, a name she was trying to forget. But as she was unable to trace anything which had led to it, there remained only the conclusion that her nerves were not what they should be. The vapors having become obsolete for young ladies as an explanation for all unpleasant sensations, they were instructed to have “nerves.” This was Miss Betty’s first consciousness of her own, and, desiring no greater acquaintance with them, she told herself it was unwholesome to fall asleep in a chair by an open window when the night was as sad as she.

  Turning to a chair in front of the small oval mirror of her bureau, she unclasped the brooch which held her lace collar, and, seating herself, began to unfasten her hair. Suddenly she paused, her uplifted arms falling mechanically to her sides.

  Someone was coming through the long hall with a soft, almost inaudible step, a step which was not her father’s. She knew at once, with instinctive certainty, that it was not he. Nor was it Nelson, who would have shuffled; nor could it be the vain Mamie, nor one of the other servants, for they did not sleep in the house. It was a step more like a woman’s, though certainly it was not Mrs. Tanberry’s.

  Betty rose, took a candle, and stood silent for a moment, the heavy tresses of her hair, half-unloosed, falling upon her neck and left shoulder like the folds of a dark drapery.

  At the slight rustle of her rising, the steps ceased instantly. Her heart set up a wild beating and the candle shook in her hand. But she was brave and young, and, following an irresistible impulse, she ran across the room, flung open the door, and threw the light of the candle into the hall, holding it at arm’s length before her.

  She came almost face to face with Crailey Gray.

  The blood went from his cheeks as a swallow flies down from a roof; he started back against the opposite wall with a stifled groan, while she stared at him blankly, and grew as deathly pale as he.

  He was a man of great resource in all emergencies which required a quick tongue, but, for the moment, this was beyond him. He felt himself lost, toppling backward into an abyss, and the uselessness of his destruction made him physically sick. For he need not have been there; he had not wished to come; he had well counted the danger to himself, and this one time in his life had gone to the cupola-room out of good-nature. But Bareaud had been obstinate and Crailey had come away alone, hoping that Jefferson might follow. And here he was, poor trapped rat, convicted and ruined because of a good action! At last he knew consistency to be a jewel, and that a greedy boy should never give a crust; that a fool should stick to his folly, a villain to his deviltry, and each hold his own; for the man who thrusts a good deed into a life of lies is wound about with perilous passes, and in his devious ways a thousand unexpected damnations spring.

  Beaten, stunned, hang-jawed with despair, he returned her long, dumfounded gaze hopelessly and told the truth like an inspired dunce.

  “I came — I came — to bring another man away,” he whispered brokenly; and, at the very moment, several heavy, half-suppressed voices broke into eager talk overhead.

  The white hand that held the candle wavered, and the shadows glided in a huge, grotesque dance. Twice she essayed to speak before she could do so, at the same moment motioning him back, for he had made a vague gesture toward her.

  “I am not faint. Do you mean, away from up there?” She pointed to the cupola-stairs.

  “Yes.”

  “Have-have you seen my father?”

  The question came out of such a depth of incredulousness that it was more an articulation of the lips than a sound, but he caught it; and, with it not hope, but the shadow of a shadow of hope, a hand waving from the far shore to the swimmer who has been down twice. Did she fear for his sake?

  “No — I have not seen him.” He was groping blindly.

  “You did not come from that”

  “How did you enter the house?”

  The draught through the hall was blowing upon him; the double doors upon the veranda had been left open for coolness. “There,” he said, pointing to them.

  “But — I heard you come from the other direction.”

  He was breathing quickly; he saw his chance — if Jefferson Bareaud did not come now.

  “You did not hear me come down the stairs.” He leaned toward her, risking it all on that.

  “Ah!” A sigh too like a gasp burst from Crailey. His head lifted a little, and his eyes were luminous with an eagerness that was almost anguish. He set his utmost will at work to collect himself and to think hard and fast.

  “I came here resolved to take a man away, come what would!” he said. “I found the door open, went to the foot of that stairway; then I stopped. I remembered something; I turned, and was going away when you opened the door.”

  “You remembered what?”

  Her strained attitude did not relax, nor, to his utmost scrutiny, was the complete astonishment of her distended gaze altered one whit, but a hint of her accustomed high color was again upon her cheek and her lip trembled a little, like that of a child about to weep. The flicker of hope in his breast increased prodigiously, and the rush of it took the breath from his throat and choked him. Good God! was she going to believe him?

  “I remembered — you!”

  “What?” she said, wonderingly.

  Art returned with a splendid bound, full-pinioned, his beautiful and treacherous Familiar who had deserted him at the crucial instant; but she made up for it now, folding him in protective wings and breathing through his spirit. In rapid and vehement whispers he poured out the words upon the girl in the doorway.

  “I have a friend, and I would lay down my life to make him what he could be. He has always thrown everything away, his life, his talents, all his money and all of mine, for the sake of — throwing them away! Some other must tell you about that room; but it has ruined my friend. Tonight I discovered that he had been summoned here, and I made up my mind to come and take him away. Your father has sworn to shoot me if I set foot in his house or on ground of his. Well, my duty was clear and I came to do it. And yet — I stopped at the foot of the stair — because — because I remembered that you were Robert Carewe’s daughter. What of you, if I went up and harm came to me from your father? For I swear I would not have touched him! You asked me not to speak of ‘personal’ things, and I have obeyed you; but you see I must tell you one thing now: I have cared for this friend of mine more than for all else under heaven, but I turned and left him to his ruin, and would a thousand times, rather than bring trouble upon you! ‘A thousand times?’ Ah! I swear it should be a thousand times a thousand!”

  He had paraded in one speech from the prisoner’s dock to Capulet’s garden, and her eyes were shining into his like a great light when he finished.

  “Go quickly,” she whispered. “Go quickly! Go quickly!”

  “But do you und
erstand?”

  “Not yet, but I shall. Will you go? They might come-my father might come-at any moment.”

  “But—”

  “Do you want to drive me quite mad? Please go!” She laid a trembling, urgent hand upon his sleeve.

  “Never, until you tell me that you understand,” replied Crailey firmly, listening keenly for the slightest sound from overhead. “Never — until then!”

  “When I do I shall tell you; now I only know that you must go.”

  “But tell me—”

  “You must go!”

  There was a shuffling of chairs on the floor overhead, and Crailey went. He went even more hastily than might have been expected from the adaman-tine attitude he had just previously assumed. Realizing this as he reached the wet path, he risked stealing round to her window:

  “For your sake!” he breathed; and having thus forestalled any trifling imperfection which might arise in her recollection of his exit from the house, he disappeared, kissing his hand to the rain as he ran down the street.

  Miss Betty locked her door and pulled close the curtains of her window. A numerous but careful sound of footsteps came from the hall, went by her door and out across the veranda. Silently she waited until she heard her father go alone to his room.

  She took the candle and went in to Mrs. Tanberry. She set the light upon a table, pulled a chair close to the bedside, and placed her cool hand lightly on the great lady’s forehead.

  “Isn’t it very late, child? Why are you not asleep?”

  “Mrs. Tanberry, I want to know why there was a light in the cupola-room tonight?”

  “What?” Mrs. Tanberry rolled herself as upright as possible, and sat with blinking eyes.

  “I want to know what I am sure you know, and what I am sure everybody knows, except me. What were they doing there tonight, and what was the quarrel between Mr. Vanrevel and my father that had to do with Mr. Gray?”

  Mrs. Tanberry gazed earnestly into the girl’s face. After a long time she said in a gentle voice:

  “Child, has it come to matter that much?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Betty.

  CHAPTER XIII. The Tocsin

  TOM VANREVEL ALWAYS went to the post-office soon after the morning distribution of the mail; that is to say, about ten o’clock, and returned with the letters for the firm of Gray and Vanrevel, both personal and official. Crailey and he shared everything, even a box at the post-office; and in front of this box, one morning, after a night of rain, Tom stood staring at a white envelope bearing a small, black seal. The address was in a writing he had never seen before, but the instant it fell under his eye he was struck with a distinctly pleasurable excitement.

  Whether through some spiritual exhalation of the writer fragrant on any missive, or because of a hundred microscopic impressions, there are analysts who are able to select, from a pile of letters written by women (for the writing of women exhibits certain phenomena more determinably than that of men) those of the prettiest or otherwise most attractive. And out upon the lover who does not recognize his mistress’s hand at the first glimpse ever he has of it, without post-mark or other information to aid him! Thus Vanrevel, worn, hollow-eyed, and sallow, in the Rouen post-office, held the one letter separate from a dozen (the latter not, indeed, from women), and stared at it until a little color came back to his dark skin and a great deal of brightness to his eye. He was no analyst of handwritings, yet it came to him instantly that this note was from a pretty woman. To see that it was from a woman was simple, but that he knew — and he did know — that she was pretty, savors of the occult. More than this: there was something about it that thrilled him. Suddenly, and without reason, he knew that it came from Elizabeth Carewe.

  He walked back quickly to his office with the letter in the left pocket of his coat, threw the bundle of general correspondence upon his desk, went up to the floor above, and paused at his own door to listen. Deep breathing from across the hall indicated that Mr. Gray’s soul was still encased in slumber, and great was its need, as Tom had found his partner, that morning at five, stretched upon the horsehair sofa in the office, lamenting the emptiness of a bottle which had been filled with fiery Bourbon in the afternoon.

  Vanrevel went to his own room, locked the door, and took the letter from his pocket. He held it between his fingers carefully, as though it were alive and very fragile, and he looked at it a long time, holding it first in one hand, then in the other, before he opened it. At last, however, after examining all the blades of his pocketknife, he selected one brighter than the others, and loosened the flap of the envelope as gently and carefully as if it had been the petal of a rose-bud that he was opening.

  “Dear Mr. Vanrevel:

  “I believed you last night, though I did not understand. But I understand, now — everything — and, bitter to me as the truth is, I must show you plainly that I know all of it, nor can I rest until I do show you. I want you to answer this letter — though I must not see you again for a long time — and in your answer you must set me right if I am anywhere mistaken in what I have learned.

  “At first, and until after the second time we met, I did not believe in your heart, though I did in your mind and humor. Even since then, there have come strange, small, inexplicable mistrustings of you, but now I throw them all away and trust you wholly, Monsieur Citizen Georges Meilbac! — I shall always think of you in those impossible garnishments of my poor great-uncle, and I persuade myself that he must have been a little like you.

  “I trust you because I have heard the story of your profound goodness. The first reason for my father’s dislike was your belief in freedom as the right of all men. Ah, it is not your pretty exaggerations and flatteries (I laugh at them!) that speak for you, but your career, itself, and the brave things you have done. My father’s dislike flared into hatred because you worsted him when he discovered that he could not successfully defend the wrong against you and fell back upon sheer insult.

  “He is a man whom I do not know — strange as that seems as I write it. It is only to you, who have taught me so much, that I could write it. I have tried to know him and to realize that I am his daughter, but we are the coldest acquaintances, that is all; and I cannot see how a change could come. I do not understand him; least of all do I understand why he is a gambler. It has been explained to me that it is his great passion, but all I comprehend in these words is that they are full of shame for his daughter.

  “This is what was told me: he has always played heavily and skillfully — adding much to his estate in that way — and in Rouen always with a certain coterie, which was joined, several years ago, by the man you came to save last night.

  “Your devotion to Mr. Gray has been the most beautiful thing in your life. I know all that the town knows of that, except the thousand hidden sacrifices you have made for him, those things which no one will ever know. (And yet, you see, I know them after all!) For your sake, because you love him, I will not even call him unworthy.

  “I have heard — from one who told unwillingly — the story of the night two years ago, when the play ran so terribly high; and how, in the morning when they went away, all were poorer except one, their host! — how Mr. Gray had nothing left in the world, and owed my father a great sum which was to be paid in twenty-four hours; how you took everything you had saved in the years of hard work at your profession, and borrowed the rest on your word, and brought it to my father that afternoon; how, when you had paid your friend’s debt, you asked my father not to play with Mr. Gray again; and my father made that his excuse to send you a challenge. You laughed at the challenge — and you could afford to laugh at it.

  “But this is all shame, shame for Robert Carewe’s daughter. It seems to me that I should hide and not lift my head; that I, being of my father’s blood, could never look you in the face again. It is so unspeakably painful and ugly. I think of my father’s stiff pride and his look of the eagle, — and he still plays with your friend, almost always ‘successfully!’ And yo
ur friend still comes to play! — but I will not speak of that side of it.

  “Mr. Gray has made you poor, but I know it was not that which made you come seeking him last night, when I found you there in the hail. It was for his sake you came — and you went away for mine. Now that I know, at last — now that I have heard what your life has been (and oh I heard so much more than I have written!) — now that my eyes have been opened to see you as you are, I am proud, and glad and humble that I can believe that you felt a friendship for me strong enough to have made you go ‘for my sake.’ You will write to me just once, won’t you? and tell me if there was any error in what I listened to; but you must not come to the garden. Now that I know you, I cannot meet you clandestinely again. It would hurt the dignity which I feel in you now, and my own poor dignity — such as it is! I have been earnestly warned of the danger to you. Besides, you must let me test myself. I am all fluttering and frightened and excited. You will obey me, won’t you? — do not come until I send for you. Elizabeth Carewe.”

  Mr. Gray, occupied with his toilet about noon, heard his partner descending to the office with a heavy step, and issued from his room to call a hearty greeting. Tom looked back over his shoulder and replied cheerily, though with a certain embarrassment; but Crailey, catching sight of his face, uttered a sharp ejaculation and came down to him.

  “Why, what’s the matter, Tom? You’re not going to be sick? You look like the devil and all!”

  “I’m all right, never fear!” Tom laughed, evading the other’s eye. “I’m going out in the country on some business, and I dare say I shall not be back for a couple of days; it will be all up and down the county.” He set down a travelling-bag he was carrying, and offered the other his hand. “Good-by.”