“Can’t I go for you? You don’t look able.”
“No, no. It’s something I’ll have to attend to myself.”
“Ah, I suppose,” said Crailey, gently, “I suppose it’s important, and you couldn’t trust me to handle it. Well — God knows you’re right! I’ve shown you often enough how incompetent I am to do anything but write jingles!”
“You do some more of them — without the whiskey, Crailey. They’re worth more than all the lawing Gray and Vanrevel have ever done or ever will do. Good-by — and be kind to yourself.”
He descended to the first landing, and then, “Oh, Crailey,” he called, with the air of having forgotten something he had meant to say.
“Yes, Tom?”
“This morning at the post-office I found a letter addressed to me. I opened it and—” He hesitated, and uneasily shifted his weight from one foot to the other, with a feeble, deprecatory laugh.
“Yes, what of it?”
“Well — there seemed to be a mistake. I think it must have been meant for you. Somehow, she — she’s picked up a good many wrong impressions, and, Lord knows how, but she’s mixed our names up and — and I’ve left the letter for you. It’s on my table.”
He turned and calling a final good-by over his shoulder, went clattering noisily down to the street and vanished from Crailey’s sight.
Noon found Tom far out on the National Road, creaking along over the yellow dust in a light wagon, between bordering forests that smelt spicily of wet underbrush and May-apples; and, here and there, when they would emerge from the woods to cleared fields, liberally outlined by long snake-fences of black walnut, the steady, jog-trotting old horse lifted his head and looked interested in the world, but Tom never did either. Habitually upright, walking or sitting, straight, keen, and alert, that day’s sun saw him drearily hunched over, mile after mile, his forehead laced with lines of pain. He stopped at every farm-house and cabin, and, where the young men worked in the fields, hailed them from the road, or hitched his horse to the fence and crossed the soft furrows to talk with them. At such times he stood erect again, and spoke stirringly, finding eager listeners. There was one question they asked him over and over:
“But are you sure the call will come?”
“As sure as that we stand here; and it will come before the week is out. We must be ready!”
Often, when he left them, they would turn from the work in hand, leaving it as it was, to lie unfinished in the fields, and make their way slowly and thoughtfully to their homes, while Tom climbed into his creaking little wagon once more, only to fall into the same dull, hunched-over attitude. He had many things to think out before he faced Rouen and Crailey Gray again, and more to fight through to the end with himself. Three days he took for it, three days driving through the soft May weather behind the kind, old jog-trotting horse; three days on the road, from farm-house to farm-house and from field to field, from cabin of the woods to cabin in the clearing. Tossing unhappily at night, he lay sleepless till dawn, though not because of the hard beds; and when daylight came, journeyed steadily on again, over the vagabond little hills that had gypsied it so far into the prairie-land in their wanderings from their range on the Ohio, and, passing the hills, went on through the flat forest-land, always hunched over dismally in the creaking wagon.
But on the evening of the third day he drove into town, with the stoop out of his shoulders and the lustre back in his eyes. He was haggard, gray, dusty, but he had solved his puzzle, and one thing was clear in his mind as the thing that he would do. He patted the old horse a hearty farewell as he left him with the liveryman from whom he had hired him, and strode up Main Street with the air of a man who is going somewhere. It was late, but there were more lights than usual in the windows and more people on the streets. Boys ran shouting, while, here and there, knots of men argued loudly, and in front of the little corner drug-store a noisily talkative, widely gesticulative crowd of fifty or more had gathered. An old man, a cobbler, who had left a leg at Tippecanoe and replaced it with a wooden one, chastely decorated with designs of his own carving, came stumping excitedly down the middle of the street, where he walked for fear of the cracks in the wooden pavement, which were dangerous to his art-leg when he came from the Rouen House bar, as on the present occasion. He hailed Tom by name.
“You’re the lad, Tom Vanrevel,” he shouted. “You’re the man to lead the boys out for the glory of the State! You git the whole blame Fire De-partment out and enlist ’em before morning! Take ’em down to the Rio Grande, you hear me?
“And you needn’t be afraid of their puttin’ it out, if it ketches afire, neither!”
Tom waved his hand and passed on; but at the open doors of the Catholic Church he stopped and looked up and down the street, and then, unnoticed, entered to the dim interior, where the few candles showed only a bent old woman in black kneeling at the altar. Tom knew where Elizabeth Carewe knelt each morning; he stepped softly through the shadowy silence to her place, knelt, and rested his head upon the rail of the bench before him.
The figure at the altar raised itself after a time, and the old woman limped slowly up a side aisle, mumbling her formulas, courtesying to the painted saints, on her way out. The very thinnest lingerings of incense hung on the air, seeming to Tom like the faint odor that might exhale from a heavy wreath of marguerites, worn in dark-brown hair. Yet, the place held nothing but peace and good-will. And he found nothing else in his own heart. The street was quiet when he emerged from that lorn vigil; the corner groups had dissolved; shouting youths no longer patrolled the sidewalks. Only one quarter showed signs of life: the little clubhouse, where the windows still shown brightly, and whence came the sound of many voices settling the destinies of the United States of America. Thither Tom bent his steps, thoughtfully, and with a quiet mind. There was a small veranda at the side of the house; here he stood unobserved to look in upon his noisy and agitated friends.
They were all there, from the old General and Mr. Bareaud, to the latter’s son, Jefferson, and young Frank Chenoweth. They were gathered about a big table upon which stood a punch-bowl and Trumble, his brow as angry red as the liquor in the cup he held, was proposing a health to the President in a voice of fury.
“In spite of all the Crailey Grays and traitors this side of hell!” he finished politely.
Crailey emerged instantaneously from the general throng and mounted a chair, tossing his light hair back from his forehead, his eyes sparkling and happy. “You find your own friends already occupying the place you mentioned, do you, General?” he asked.
General Trumble stamped and shook his fist.
“You’re a spawn of Aaron Burr!” he vociferated. “There’s not a man here to stand by your infernal doctrines. You sneer at your own State, you sneer at your own country, you defile the sacred ground! What are you, by the Almighty, who attack your native land in this, her hour of peril!”
“Peril to my native land!” laughed Crailey. “From Santa Anna?”
“The General’s right, sir,” exclaimed the elder Chenoweth indignantly, and most of the listeners appeared to agree with him. “It’s a poor time to abuse the President when he’s called for volunteers and our country is in danger, sir!”
“Who is in danger?” answered Crailey, lifting his hand to still the clamor of approbation that arose. “Is Polk in danger? Or Congress? But that would be too much to hope! Do you expect to see the Greasers in Washington? No, you idiots, you don’t! Yet there’ll be plenty of men to suffer and die; and the first should be those who thrust this war on us and poor little Mexico; but it won’t be they; the men who’ll do the fighting and dying will be the country boys and the like of us from the towns, while Mr. Polk sits planning at the White House how he can get elected again. I wish Tom were here, confound you! You listen to him because he always has the facts and I’m just an embroiderer, you think. What’s become of the gaudy campaign cry you were all wearing your lungs out with a few months ago? ‘Fifty-four-forty or fight
!’ Bah! Polk twisted the lion’s tail with that until after election. Then he saw he had to make you forget it, or fight England and be ruined, so he forces war on Mexico, and the country does forget it. That’s it: he asks three regiments of volunteers from this State to die of fevers and get shot, so that he can steal another country and make his own elect him again. And you ask me to drink the health of the politician who sits at home and sends his fellowmen to die to fix his rotten jobs for him?” Crailey had persuaded himself into such earnestness, that the depth of his own feeling almost choked him, but he finished roundly in his beautiful, strong voice: “I’ll drink for the good punch’s sake — but that health? — I’ll see General Trumble in heaven before I’ll drink it!”
There rose at once a roar of anger and disapproval, and Crailey became a mere storm centre amid the upraised hands gestulating madly at him as he stood, smiling again, upon his chair.
“This comes of living with Tom Vanrevel!” shouted the General furiously. “This is his damned Abolition teaching! You’re only his echo; you spend half your life playing at being Vanrevel!”
“Where is Vanrevel?” said Tappingham Marsh.
“Ay, where is he!” raged Trumble, hammering the table till the glasses rang. “Let him come and answer for his own teaching; it’s wasted time to talk to this one; he’s only the pupil. Where is the traitor?”
“Here,” answered a voice from the doorway; and though the word was spoken quietly it was nevertheless, at that juncture, silencing. Everyone turned toward the door as Vanrevel entered. But the apoplectic General, whom Crailey’s speech had stirred to a fury beyond control, almost leaped at Tom’s throat.
“Here’s the tea-sipping old Granny,” he bellowed hoarsely. (He was ordinarily very fond of Tom.) “Here’s the master! Here’s the man whose example teaches Crailey Gray to throw mud at the flag. He’ll stay here at home with Crailey, of course, and throw more, while the others boys march out to die under it.”
“On the contrary,” answered Tom, raising his voice, “I think you’ll find Crailey Gray the first to enlist, and as for myself, I’ve raised sixty men in the country, and I want forty more from Rouen, in order to offer the Governor a full company. So it’s come to ‘the King, not the man’; Polk is a pitiful trickster, but the country needs her sons; that’s enough for us to know; and while I won’t drink to James Polk “ — he plunged a cup in the bowl and drew it out brimming— “I’ll empty this to the President!”
It was then that from fifty throats the long, wild shout went up that stirred Rouen, and woke the people from their midnight beds for half a mile around.
CHAPTER XIV. The Firm of Gray and Vanrevel
FOR THE FIRST time it was Crailey who sat waiting for Tom to come home. In a chair drawn to his partner’s desk in the dusty office, he half-reclined, arms on the desk, his chin on his clenched fists. To redeem the gloom he had lit a single candle, which painted him dimly against the complete darkness of his own shadow, like a very old portrait whose background time has solidified into shapeless browns; the portrait of a fair-haired gentleman, the cavalier, or the Marquis, one might have said at first glance; not describing it immediately as that of a poet, for there was no mark of art upon Crailey, not even in his hair, for they all wore it rather long then. Yet there was a mark upon him, never more vivid than as he sat waiting in the loneliness of that night for Tom Vanrevel; though what the mark was and what its significance might have been puzzling to define. Perhaps, after all, Fanchon Bareaud had described it best when she told Crailey one day, with a sudden hint of apprehensive tears, that he had a “look of fate.”
Tom took his own time in coming; he had stayed at the club to go over his lists — so he had told Crailey — with the General and old Bareaud. His company was almost complete, and Crailey had been the first to volunteer, to the dumfounding of Trumble, who had proceeded to drink his health again and again. But the lists could not detain Tom two hours, Crailey knew, and it was two hours since the new volunteers had sung “The Star Spangled Banner” over the last of the punch, and had left the club to Tom and the two old men. Only once or twice in that time had Crailey shifted his position, or altered the direction of his set gaze at nothing. But at last he rose, went to the window and, leaning far out, looked down the street toward the little clubhouse. Its lights were extinguished and all was dark up and down the street. Abruptly Crailey went back to the desk and blew out the candle, after which he sat down again in the same position. Twenty minutes later he heard Tom’s step on the stair, coming up very softly. Crailey waited in silence until his partner reached the landing, then relit the candle.
“Tom,” he called. “Come in, please, I’ve been waiting for you.”
There was a pause before Tom answered from the hall:
“I’m very tired, Crailey. I think I’ll go up to bed.”
“No,” said Crailey, “come in.”
The door was already open, but Tom turned toward it reluctantly. He stopped at the threshold and the two looked at each other.
“I thought you wouldn’t come as long as you believed I was up,” said Crailey, “so I blew out the light. I’m sorry I kept you outside so long.”
“Crailey, I’m going away to-morrow,” the other began. “I am to go over and see the Governor and offer him this company, and to-night I need sleep, so please—”
“No,” interrupted Crailey quietly, “I want to know what you’re going to do.”
“To do about what?”
“About me.”
“Oh!” Tom’s eyes fell at once from his friend’s face and rested upon the floor. Slowly he walked to the desk and stood in embarrassed contemplation of the littered books and papers, while the other waited.
“I think it’s best for you to tell me,” said Crailey.
“You think so?” Tom’s embarrassment increased visibly, and there was mingled with it an odd appearance of apprehension, probably to relieve which he very deliberately took two long cheroots from his pocket, laid one on the desk for Crailey and lit the other himself, with extreme carefulness, at the candle. After this ceremonial he dragged a chair to the window, tilted back in it with his feet on the low sill, his back to the thin light and his friend, and said in a slow, gentle tone: “Well, Crailey?”
“I suppose you mean that I ought to offer my explanation first,” said the other, still standing. “Well, there isn’t any.” He did not speak doggedly or sullenly, as one in fault, but more with the air of a man curiously ready to throw all possible light upon a cloudy phenomenon. “It’s very simple — all that I know about it. I went there first on the evening of the Madrillon masquerade and played a little comedy for her, so that some of my theatrical allusions — they weren’t very illuminating! — to my engagement to Fanchon, made her believe I was Vanrevel when her father told her about the pair of us. I discovered that the night his warehouses burned — and I saw something more, because I can’t help seeing such things: that yours was just the character to appeal to a young girl fresh from the convent and full of honesty and fine dreams and fire. Nobody could arrange a more fatal fascination for a girl of nineteen than to have a deadly quarrel with her father. And that’s especially true when the father’s like that mad brute of a Bob Carewe! Then, too, you’re more or less the town model of virtue and popular hero, in spite of the Abolitionism, just as I am the town scamp. So I let it go on, and played a little at being you, saying the things that you only think — that was all. It isn’t strange that it’s lasted until now, not more than three weeks, after all. She’s only seen you four or five times, and me not much oftener. No one speaks of you to her, and I’ve kept out of sight when others were about. Mrs. Tanberry is her only close friend, and, naturally, wouldn’t be apt to mention that you are dark and I am fair, or to describe us personally, any more than you and I would mention the general appearance of people we both meet about town. But you needn’t tell me that it can’t last much longer. Some petty, unexpected trifle will turn up, of course. All that I wa
nt to know is what you mean to do.”
“To do?” repeated Tom softly, and blew a long scarf of smoke out of the window.
“Ah!” Crailey’s voice grew sharp and loud. “There are many things you needn’t tell me! You need not tell me what I’ve done to you — nor what you think of me! You need not tell me that you have others to consider, that you have Miss Carewe to think of. Don’t you suppose I know that? And you need not tell me that you have a duty to Fanchon—”
“Yes,” Tom broke in, his tone not quite steady. “Yes, I’ve thought of that.”
“Well?”
“Have you — did you—” he hesitated, but Crailey understood immediately.
“No; I haven’t seen her again.”
“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 hell-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.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 57