“What he doin’ wid dat gun, suh? Nobody goin’ play cyahds ner frow dice wid a gun, is dey?” asked Mamie, as she rose and walked toward the door.
“Oh, that was probably by chance.”
“No, suh!” she cried, vehemently. “An’ dem gelmun wouldn’ play t’-night, no way; mos’ on ’em goin’ wid you to-morrer an’ dey sayin’ goodby to de’r folks dis evenin’, not gamblin’! Miz Tanberry’ll be in a state er mine ontel she hyuh f’um me, an’ I goin’ hurry back. You won’ come dah, suh? I kin tell her dat you say you sutney ain’ comin’ nigh our neighborhood dis night?”
“I had not dreamed of coming, tell her, please. Probably I shall not go out at all this evening. But it was kind of you to come. Good-night.”
He stood with a candle to light her down the stairs, but after she had gone he did not return to the office. Instead, he went slowly up to his own room, glancing first into Crailey’s — the doors of neither were often locked — to behold a chaos of disorder and unfinished packing. In his own chamber it only remained for him to close the lids of a few big boxes, and to pack a small trunk which he meant to take with him to the camp of the State troops, and he would be ready for departure. He set about this task, and, concluding that there was no necessity to wear his uniform on the steamboat, decided to place it in the trunk, and went to the bed where he had folded and left it. It was not there. Nor did a thorough search reveal it anywhere in the room. Yet no one could have stolen it, for when he had gone down to the office Crailey had remained on this floor. Mamie had come within a few minutes after Crailey went out, and during his conversation with her the office-door had been open; no one could have passed without being seen. Also, a thief would have taken other things as well as the uniform; and surely Crailey must have heard; Crailey would — Crailey — !
Then Tom remembered the figure in the long cloak and the military cap, and, with a sick heart, began to understand. He had read the Journal, and he knew why Crailey might wish to masquerade in a major’s uniform that night. If Miss Carewe read it too, and a strange wonder rose in her mind, this and a word would convince her. Tom considered it improbable that the wonder would rise, for circumstances had too well established her in a mistake, trivial and ordinary enough at first, merely the confusing of two names by a girl new to the town, but so strengthened by every confirmation Crailey’s wit could compass that she would, no doubt, only set Cummings’s paragraph aside as a newspaper error. Still, Crailey had wished to be on the safe side!
Tom sighed rather bitterly. He was convinced that the harlequin would come home soon, replace the uniform (which was probably extremely becoming to him, as they were of a height and figure much the same), and afterward, in his ordinary dress, would sally forth to spend his last evening with Fanchon. Tom wondered how Crailey would feel and what he would think about himself while he was changing his clothes, but he remembered his partner’s extraordinary powers of mental adjustment — and for the first time in his life Vanrevel made no allowance for the other’s temperament, and there came to him a moment when he felt that he could almost dislike Crailey Gray.
At all events, he would go out until Crailey had come and left again, for he had no desire to behold the masquerader’s return. So he exchanged his dressing-gown for a coat, fastened his collar, and had begun to arrange his cravat at the mirror, when, suddenly, the voice of the old negress seemed to sound close beside him in the room.
“He’s settin’ dah — waitin’!”
The cravat was never tied; Tom’s hands dropped to his sides as he started back from the staring face in the mirror. Robert Carewe was waiting — and Crailey —— All at once there was but one vital necessity in the world for Tom Vanrevel, that was to find Crailey; he must go to Crailey — even in Carewe’s own house — he must go to Crailey!
He dashed down the stairs and into the street. The people were making a great uproar in front of the hotel, exploding bombs, firing muskets in the air, sending up rockets; and rapidly crossing the outskirts of the crowd, he passed into Carewe Street, unnoticed. Here the detonations were not so deafening, though the little steamboat at the wharf was contributing to the confusion with all in her power, screeching simultaneously approval of the celebration and her last signals of departure.
At the first corner Tom had no more than left the sidewalk when he came within a foot of being ridden down by two horsemen who rode at so desperate a gallop that (the sound of their hoof-beats being lost in the uproar from Main Street) they were upon him before he was aware of them.
He leaped back with an angry shout to know who they were that they rode so wildly. At the same time a sharp explosion at the foot of the street sent a red flare over the scene, a flash, gone with such incredible swiftness into renewed darkness that he saw the flying horsemen almost as equestrian statues illumined by a flicker of lightning, but he saw them with the same distinctness that lightning gives, and recognized the foremost as Robert Carewe. And in the instant of that recognition, Tom knew what had happened to Crailey Gray, for he saw the truth in the ghastly face of his enemy.
Carewe rode stiffly, like a man frozen upon his horse, and his face was like that of a frozen man; his eyes glassy and not fixed upon his course, so that it was a deathly thing to see. Once, long ago, Tom had seen a man riding for his life, and he wore this same look. The animal bounded and swerved under Vanrevel’s enemy in the mad rush down the street, but he sat rigid, bolt upright in the saddle, his face set to that look of coldness.
The second rider was old Nelson, who rode with body crouched forward, his eyeballs like shining porcelain set in ebony, and his arm like a flail, cruelly lashing his own horse and his master’s with a heavy whip. “De steamboat!” he shouted, hoarsely, bringing down the lash on one and then on the other. “De steamboat, de steamboat — f o’ God’s sake, honey, de steamboat!”
They swept into Main Street, Nelson leaning far across to the other’s bridle, and turning both horses toward the river, but before they had made the corner, Tom Vanrevel was running with all the speed that was in him toward his enemy’s house. The one block between him and that forbidden ground seemed to him miles long, and he felt that he was running as a man in a dream, and, at the highest pitch of agonized exertion, covering no space, but only working the air in one place, like a treadmill. All that was in his mind, heart, and soul was to reach Crailey. He had known by the revelation of Carewe’s face in what case he would find his friend; but as he ran he put the knowledge from him with a great shudder, and resolved upon incredulity in spite of his certainty. All he let himself feel was the need to run, to run until he found Crailey, who was somewhere in the darkness of the trees about the long, low house on the corner. When he reached the bordering hedge, he did not stay for gate or path, but, with a loud shout, hurled himself half over, half through, the hedge, like a bolt from a catapult.
Lights shone from only one room in the house, the library; but as he ran toward the porch a candle flickered in the hall, and there came the sound of a voice weeping with terror.
At that he called more desperately upon his incredulity to aid him, for the voice was Mrs. Tan-berry’s. If it had been any other than she, who sobbed so hopelessly — she who was always steady and strong! If he could, he would have stopped to pray, now, before he faced her and the truth; but his flying feet carried him on.
“Who is it?” she gasped, brokenly, from the hall. “Mamie? Have you brought him?”
“It’s I,” he cried, as he plunged through the doorway. “It’s Vanrevel.”
Mrs. Tanberry set the iron candlestick down upon the table with a crash.
“You’ve come too late!” she sobbed. “Another man has taken your death on himself.”
He reeled back against the wall. “Oh, God!” he said. “Oh, God, God, God! Crailey!”
“Yes,” she answered. “It’s the poor vagabond that you loved so well.”
Together they ran through the hall to the library. Crailey was lying on the long sofa, his eyes
closed, his head like a piece of carven marble, the gay uniform, in which he had tricked himself out so gallantly, open at the throat, and his white linen stained with a few little splotches of red.
Beside him knelt Miss Betty, holding her lace handkerchief upon his breast; she was as white as he, and as motionless; so that, as she knelt there, immovable beside him, her arm like alabaster across his breast, they might have been a sculptor’s group. The handkerchief was stained a little, like the linen, and like it, too, stained but a little. Nearby, on the floor, stood a flask of brandy and a pitcher of water.
“You!” Miss Betty’s face showed no change, nor even a faint surprise, as her eyes fell upon Tom Vanrevel, but her lips soundlessly framed the word. “You!”
Tom flung himself on his knees beside her.
“Crailey!” he cried, in a sharp voice that had a terrible shake in it. “Crailey! Crailey, I want you to hear me!” He took one of the limp hands in his and began to chafe it, while Mrs. Tanberry grasped the other.
“There’s still a movement in the pulse,” she faltered. ..
“Still!” echoed Tom, roughly. “You’re mad! You made me think Crailey was dead! Do you think Crailey Gray is going to die? He couldn’t, I tell you — he couldn’t; you don’t know him! Who’s gone for the doctor?” He dashed some brandy upon his handkerchief and set it to the white lips.
“Mamie. She was here in the room with me when it happened.”
“‘Happened’! ‘Happened’!” he mocked her, furiously. “‘Happened’ is a beautiful word!”
“God forgive me!” sobbed Mrs. Tanberry. “I was sitting in the library, and Mamie had just come from you, when we heard Mr. Carewe shout from the cupola room: ‘Stand away from my daughter, Vanrevel, and take this like a dog!’ Only that; — and Mamie and I ran to the window, and we saw through the dusk a man in uniform leap back from Miss Betty — they were in that little open space near the hedge. He called out something and waved his hand, but the shot came at the same time, and he fell. Even then I was sure, in spite of what Mamie had said, I was as sure as Robert Carewe was, that it was you. He came and took one look — and saw — and then Nelson brought the horses and made him mount and go. Mamie ran for the doctor, and Betty and I carried Crailey in. It was hard work.”
Miss Betty’s hand had fallen from Crailey’s breast where Tom’s took its place. She rose unsteadily to her feet and pushed back the hair from her forehead, shivering convulsively as she looked down at the motionless figure on the sofa.
“Crailey!” said Tom, in the same angry, shaking voice. “Crailey, you’ve got to rouse yourself! This won’t do; you’ve got to be a man! Crailey!” He was trying to force the brandy through the tightly clenched teeth. “Crailey!”
“Crailey!” whispered Miss Betty, leaning heavily on the back of a chair. “Crailey?” She looked at Mrs. Tanberry with vague interrogation, but Mrs. Tanberry did not understand.
“Crailey!”
It was then that Crailey’s eyelids fluttered and slowly opened; and his wandering glance, dull at first, slowly grew clear and twinkling as it rested on the ashy, stricken face of his best friend.
“Tom,” he said, feebly, “it was worth the price, to wear your clothes just once!”
And then, at last, Miss Betty saw and understood. For not the honest gentleman, whom everyone except Robert Carewe held in esteem and af-fection, not her father’s enemy, Vanrevel, lay before her with the death-wound in his breast for her sake, but that other — Crailey Gray, the ne’er-do-weel and light-o’-love, Crailey Gray, wit, poet, and scapegrace, the well-beloved town scamp.
He saw that she knew, and, as his brightening eyes wandered up to her, he smiled faintly. “Even a bad dog likes to have his day,” he whispered.
CHAPTER XIX. The Flag Goes Marching By
WILL CUMMINGS HAD abandoned the pen for the sword until such time as Santa Anna should cry for quarter, and had left the office in charge of an imported substitute; but late that night he came to his desk once more, to write the story of the accident to Corporal Gray; and the tale that he wrote had been already put into writing by Tom Vanrevel as it fell from Crailey’s lips, after the doctor had, come, so that none might doubt it. No one did doubt it. What reason had Mr. Carewe to injure Crailey Gray? Only five in Rouen knew the truth; for Nelson had gone with his master, and, except Mamie, the other servants of the Carewe household had been among the crowd in front of the Rouen House when the shot was fired.
So the story went over the town: how Crailey had called to say good-by to Mrs. Tanberry; how Mr. Carewe happened to be examining the musket his father had carried in 1812, when the weapon was accidentally discharged, the ball entering Crailey’s breast; how Mr. Carewe, stricken with remorse and horror over this frightful misfortune, and suffering too severe anguish of mind to remain upon the scene, of the tragedy which his carelessness had made, had fled, attended by his servant; and how they had leaped aboard the evening boat as it was pulling out, and were now on their way down the river.
And this was the story, too, that Tom told Fanchon; for it was he who brought her to Crailey. Through the long night she knelt at Crailey’s side, his hand always pressed to her breast or cheek, her eyes always upward, and her lips moving with her prayers, not for Crailey to be spared, but that the Father would take good care of him in heaven till she came. “I had already given him up,” she said to Tom, meekly, in a small voice. “I knew it was to come, and perhaps this way is better than that — I thought it would be far away from me. Now I can be with him, and perhaps I shall have him a little longer, for he was to have gone away before noon.”
The morning sun rose upon a fair world, gay with bird-chatterings from the big trees of the Carewe place, and pleasant with the odors of Miss Betty’s garden, and Crailey, lying upon the bed of the man who had shot him, hearkened and smiled good-by to the summer he loved; and, when the day broke, asked that the bed be moved so that he might lie close by the window. It was Tom who had borne him to that room. “I have carried him before this,” he said, waving the others aside.
Not long after sunrise, when the bed had been moved near the window, Crailey begged Fanchon to bring him a miniature of his mother which he had given her, and urged her to go for it herself; he wanted no hands but hers to touch it, he said. And when she had gone he asked to be left alone with Tom.
“Give me your hand, Tom,” he said, faintly. “I’d like to keep hold of it a minute or so. I couldn’t have said that yesterday, could I, without causing us both horrible embarrassment? But I fancy I can now, because I’m done for. That’s too bad, isn’t it? I’m very young, after all. Do you remember what poor Andre Chenier said as he went up to be guillotined?—’ There were things in this head of mine!’ But I want to tell you what’s been the matter with me. It was just my being a bad sort of poet. I suppose that I’ve never loved anyone; yet I’ve cared more deeply than other men for every lovely thing I ever saw, and there’s so little that hasn’t loveliness in it. I’d be ashamed not to have cared for the beauty in all the women I’ve made love to — but about this one — the most beautiful of all — I —— — —”
“She will understand!” said Tom, quickly.
“She will — yes — she’s wise and good. If Fanchon knew, there wouldn’t be even a memory left to her — and I don’t think she’d live. And do you know, I believe I’ve done a favor for Miss Betty in getting myself shot; Carewe will never come back. Tom, was ever a man’s knavery so exactly the architect of his own destruction as mine? And for what gain? Just the excitement of the comedy from day to day! — for she was sure to despise me as soon as she knew — and the desire to hear her voice say another kindly thing to me — and the everlasting perhaps in every woman, and this one the Heart’s Desire of all the world! Ah, well! Tell me — I want to hear it from you — how many hours does the doctor say?”
“Hours, Crailey?” Tom’s hand twitched pitifully in the other’s feeble grasp.
“I know it’s only a few.”
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“They’re all fools, doctors!” exclaimed Vanrevel, fiercely.
“No, no. And I know that nothing can be done. You all see it, and you want me to go easily — or you wouldn’t let me have my own way so much! It frightens me, I own up, to think that so soon I’ll be wiser than the wisest in the world. Yet I always wanted to know. I’ve sought and I’ve sought — but now to go out alone on the search — it must be the search, for the Holy Grail — I — —”
“Please don’t talk,” begged Tom, in a broken whisper. “For mercy’s sake, lad. It wears on you so.”
Crailey laughed weakly. “Do you think I could die peacefully without talking a great deal? There’s one thing I want, Tom. I want to see all of them once more, all the old friends that are going down the river at noon. What harm could it do? I want them to come by here on their way to the boat, with the band and the new flag. But I want the band to play cheerfully! Ask ’em to play ‘Rosin the Bow,’ will you? I’ve never believed in mournfulness, and I don’t want to see any of it now. It’s the rankest impiety of all! And besides, I want to see them as they’ll be when they come marching home — they must look gay!”
“Ah, don’t, lad, don’t!” Tom flung one arm about the other’s shoulder and Crailey was silent, but rested his hand gently on his friend’s head. In that attitude Fanchon found them when she came.
The volunteers gathered at the court-house two hours before noon. They met each other dismally, speaking in undertones as they formed in lines of four, while their dispirited faces showed that the heart was out of them. Not so with the crowds of country folk and townspeople who lined the streets to see the last of them. For these, when the band came marching down the street and took its place, set up a royal cheering that grew louder as Jefferson Bareaud, the color-bearer, carried the flag to the head of the procession. With the recruits marched the veterans of 1812 and the Indian wars, the one-legged cobbler stumping along beside General Trumble, who looked very dejected and old. The lines stood in silence, and responded to the cheering by quietly removing their hats; so that the people whispered that it was more like an Odd Fellows’ Sunday funeral than the departure of enthusiastic patriots for the seat of war. General Trumble’s was not the only sad face in the ranks; all were downcast and nervous, even those of the lads from the country, who had not known the comrade they were to leave behind.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 61
