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 want 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.”
“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.