Part 15 (1/2)

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 att.i.tude he had just previously a.s.sumed. 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 a.n.a.lysts 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 a.n.a.lyst 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 pa.s.sion, 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.