The Two Vanrevels
CHAPTER I
A Cat Can Do More than Look at a King
It was long ago in the days when men sighed when they fell in love; when
people danced by candle and lamp, and did dance, too, instead of solemnly
gliding about; in that mellow time so long ago, when the young were romantic and
summer was roses and wine, old Carewe brought his lovely daughter home from the
convent to wreck the hearts of the youth of Rouen.
That was not a far journey; only an afternoon's drive through the woods and
by the river, in an April, long ago; Miss Betty's harp carefully strapped behind
the great lumbering carriage, her guitar on the front seat, half-buried under a
mound of bouquets and oddly shaped little bundles, farewell gifts of her
comrades and the good Sisters. In her left hand she clutched a small lace
handkerchief, with which she now and then touched her eyes, brimmed with the
parting from Sister Cecilia, Sister Mary Bazilede, the old stone steps and all
the girls: but for every time that she lifted the dainty kerchief to brush away
the edge of a tear, she took a deep breath of the Western woodland air and
smiled at least twice; for the years of strict inclosure within St. Mary's walls
and still gardens were finished and done with, and at last the many-colored
world flashed and danced in a mystery before her. This mystery was brilliant to
the convent-girl because it contained men; she was eager to behold it.
They rumbled into town after sunset, in the fair twilight, the dogs barking
before them, and everyone would have been surprised to know that Tom Vanrevel,
instead of Mr. Crailey Gray, was the first to see her. By the merest accident,
Tom was strolling near the Carewe place at the time; and when the carriage swung
into the gates, with rattle and clink and clouds of dust at the finish, it was
not too soon lost behind the shrubbery and trees for Tom to catch something more
than a glimpse of a gray skirt behind a mound of flowers, and of a charming face
with parted lips and dark eyes beneath the scuttle of an enormous bonnet. It
happened—perhaps it is more accurate to say that Tom thought it happened—that
she was just clearing away her veil when he turned to look. She blushed
suddenly, so much was not to be mistaken; and the eyes that met his were
remarkable for other reasons than the sheer loveliness of them, in that, even in
the one flash of them he caught, they meant so many things at one time. They
were sparkling, yet mournful; and they were wistful, although undeniably lively
with the gayest comprehension of the recipient of their glance, seeming to say,
"Oh, it's you, young man, is it!" And they were shy and mysterious with youth,
full of that wonder at the world which has the appearance, sometimes, of wisdom
gathered in the unknown out of which we came. But, above all, these eyes were
fully conscious of Tom Vanrevel.
Without realizing what he did, Mr. Vanrevel stopped short. He had been
swinging a walkingstick, which, describing a brief arc, remained poised half-way
in its descent. There was only that one glance between them; and the carriage
disappeared, leaving a scent of spring flowers in the air.
The young man was left standing on the wooden pavement in the midst of a
great loneliness, yet enveloped in the afterglow, his soul roseate, his being
quavering, his expression, like his cane, instantaneously arrested. With such
promptitude and finish was he disposed of, that, had Miss Carewe been aware of
his name and the condition wrought in him by the single stroke, she could have
sought only the terse Richard of England for a like executive ability, "Off with
his head! So much for Vanrevel!"
She had lifted a slender hand to the fluttering veil, a hand in a white glove
with a small lace gauntlet at the wrist. This gesture was the final divinity of
the radiant vision which remained with the dazed young man as he went down the
street; and it may have been three-quarters of an hour later when the background
of the picture became vivid to him: a carefully dressed gentleman with heavy
brows and a handsome high nose, who sat stiffly upright beside the girl, his
very bright eyes quite as conscious of the stricken pedestrian as were hers,
vastly different, however, in this: that they glittered, nay, almost bristled,
with hostility; while every polished button of his blue coat seemed to reflect
their malignancy, and to dart little echoing shafts of venom at Mr. Vanrevel.
Tom was dismayed by the acuteness of his perception that a man who does not
speak to you has no right to have a daughter like the lady in the carriage; and,
the moment of this realization occurring as he sat making a poor pretence to eat
his evening meal at the "Rouen House," he dropped his fork rattling upon his
plate and leaned back, staring at nothing, a proceeding of which his table-mate,
Mr. William Cummings, the editor of the Rouen Journal, was too busy over his
river bass to take note.
"Have you heard what's new in town?" asked Cummings presently, looking up.
"No," said Tom truthfully, for he had seen what was new, but not heard it.
"Old Carewe's brought his daughter home. Fanchon Bareaud was with her at St.
Mary's until last year and Fanchon says she's not only a great beauty but a
great dear."
"Ah!" rejoined the other with masterly indifference. "Dare say—dare say."
"No wonder you're not interested," said Cummings cheerfully, returning to the
discussion of his bass. "The old villain will take precious good care you don't
come near her."
Mr. Vanrevel already possessed a profound conviction to the same effect.
Robert Meilhac Carewe was known not only as the wealthiest citizen of Rouen, but
also as its heartiest and most steadfast hater: and, although there were only
five or six thousand inhabitants, neither was a small distinction. For Rouen was
ranked, in those easy days, as a wealthy town; even as it was called an old
town; proud of its age and its riches, and bitter in its politics, of course.
The French had built a fort there, soon after LaSalle's last voyage, and, as
Crailey Gray said, had settled the place, and had then been settled themselves
by the pioneer militia. After the Revolution, Carolinians and Virginians had
come, by way of Tennessee and Kentucky; while the adventurous countrymen from
Connecticut, travelling thither to sell, remained to buy—and then sell—when the
country was in its teens. In course of time the little trading-post of the
Northwest Territory had grown to be the leading centre of elegance and culture
in the Ohio Valley—at least they said so in Rouen; only a few people in the
country, such as Mr. Irving of Tarrytown, for instance, questioning whether a
centre could lead.
The pivotal figure, though perhaps not the heart, of this centre, was
unquestionably Mr. Carewe, and about him the neat and tight aristocracy of the
place revolved; the old French remnant, having liberally intermarried, forming
the nucleus, together with descendants of the Cavaliers (and those who said they
were) and the industrious Yankees, by virtue (if not by the virtues) of all
whom, the town grew and prospered. Robert Carewe was Rouen's magnate,
commercially and socially, and, until an upstart young lawyer named Vanrevel
struck into his power with a broad-axe, politically. The wharves were Carewe's;
the warehouses that stood by the river, and the line of packets which plied upon
it, were his; half the town was his, and in Rouen this meant that he was
possessed of the Middle Justice, the High and the Low. His mother was a
Frenchwoman, and, in those days, when to go abroad was a ponderous and
venturesome undertaking, the fact that he had spent most of his youth in the
French capital wrought a certain glamour about him; for to the American, Paris
was Europe, and it lay shimmering on the far horizon of every imagination, a
golden city. Scarce a drawing-room in Rouen lacked its fearsome engraving
entitled "Grand Ball at the Tuileries," nor was Godey's Magazine ever more
popular than when it contained articles elaborate of similar scenes of festal
light, where brilliant uniforms mingled with shining jewels, fair locks, and the
white shoulders of magnificently dressed duchesses, countesses, and ladies.
Credit for this description should be given entirely to the above-mentioned
periodical. Furthermore, a sojourn in Paris was held to confer a "certain
nameless and indescribable polish" upon the manners of the visitor; also, there
was something called "an air of foreign travel."
They talked a great deal about polish in those days; and some examples still
extant do not deny their justification; but in the case of Mr. Carewe, there
existed a citizen of Rouen, one already quoted, who had the temerity to declare
the polish to be in truth quite nameless and indescribable for the reason that
one cannot paint a vacuum. However, subscription to this opinion should not be
over-hasty, since Mr. Crailey Gray had been notoriously a rival of Carewe's with
every pretty woman in town, both having the same eye in such matters, and also
because the slandered gentleman could assume a manner when he chose to, whether
or not he possessed it. At his own table he exhaled a hospitable graciousness
which, from a man of known evil temper, carried the winsomeness of surprise.
When he wooed, it was with an air of stately devotion, combined with that
knowingness which sometimes offsets for a widower the tendency a girl has to
giggle at him; and the combination had been, once or twice, too much for even
the alluring Crailey.
Mr. Carewe lived in an old-fashioned house on the broad, quiet, shady street
which bore his name. There was a wide lawn in front, shadowy under elm and
locust trees, and bounded by thick shrubberies. A long garden, fair with roses
and hollyhocks, lay outside the library windows, an old-time garden, with fine
gravel paths and green arbors; drowsed over in summer-time by the bees, while
overhead the locust rasped his rusty cadences the livelong day; and a faraway
sounding love-note from the high branches brought to mind the line, like an old
refrain:
"The voice of the turtle was heard in the land."
Between the garden and the carriage gates there was a fountain where a bronze
boy with the dropsy (but not minding it) lived in a perpetual bath from a green
goblet held over his head. Nearby, a stone sun-dial gleamed against a clump of
lilac bushes; and it was upon this spot that the white kitten introduced Thomas
Vanrevel to Miss Carewe.
Upon the morning after her arrival, having finished her piano-forte practice,
touched her harp twice, and arpeggioed the Spanish Fandango on her guitar, Miss
Betty read two paragraphs of "Gilbert" (for she was profoundly determined to
pursue her tasks with diligence), but the open windows disclosing a world all
sunshine and green leaves, she threw the book aside with a good conscience, and
danced out to the garden. There, coming upon a fuzzy, white ball rolling into
itself spirally on a lazy pathway, she pounced at it, whereupon the thing
uncurled with lightning swiftness, and fled, more like a streak than a kitten,
down the drive, through the open gates and into the street, Miss Betty in full
cry.
Across the way there chanced to be strolling a young lady in blue,
accompanied by a gentleman whose leisurely gait gave no indication of the
maneuvering he had done to hasten their walk into its present direction. He was
apparently thirty or thirty-one, tall, very straight, dark, smooth-shaven, his
eyes keen, deep-set, and thoughtful, and his high white hat, white satin cravat,
and careful collar, were evidence of an elaboration of toilet somewhat unusual
in Rouen for the morning; also, he was carrying a pair of white gloves in his
hand and dangled a slender ebony cane from his wrist. The flying kitten headed
toward the couple, when, with a celerity only to be accounted for on the theory
that his eye had been fixed on the Carewe gateway for some time previous to this
sudden apparition, the gentleman leaped in front of the fugitive.
The kitten attempted a dodge to pass; the gentleman was there before it. The
kitten feinted; the gentleman was altogether too much on the spot.
Immediately—and just as Miss Carewe, flushed and glowing, ran into the
street—the small animal doubled, evaded Miss Betty's frantic clutch, re-entered
the gateway, and attempted a disappearance into the lilac bushes, instead of
going round them, only to find itself, for a fatal two seconds, in difficulties
with the close-set thicket of stems.
In regard to the extraordinary agility of which the pursuing gentleman as
capable, it is enough to say that he caught the cat. He emerged from the lilacs
holding it in one hand, his gloves and white hat in the other, and presented
himself before Miss Betty with a breathlessness not entirely attributable to his
exertions.
For a moment, as she came running toward him and he met her flashing look,
bright with laughter and recognition and haste, he stammered. A thrill nothing
less than delirious sent the blood up behind his brown cheeks, for he saw that
she, too, knew that this was the second time their eyes had met. Naturally, at
that time he could not know how many other gentlemen were to feel that same
thrill (in their cases, also, delirious, no less) with the same, accompanying,
mysterious feeling, which came just before Miss Betty's lashes fell, that one
had found, at last, a precious thing, lost long since in childhood, or left,
perhaps, upon some other planet in a life ten thousand years ago.
He could not speak at once, but when he could, "Permit me, madam," he said
solemnly, offering the captive, "to restore your kitten."
An agitated kitten should not be detained by clasping its waist, and already
the conqueror was paying for his victory. There ensued a final, outrageous
squirm of despair; two frantic claws, extended, drew one long red mark across
the stranger's wrist and another down the back of his hand to the knuckles. They
were good, hearty scratches, and the blood followed the artist's lines rapidly;
but of this the young man took no note, for he knew that he was about to hear
Miss Carewe's voice for the first time.
"They say the best way to hold them," he observed, "is by the scruff of the
neck."
Beholding his wounds, suffered in her cause, she gave a pitying cry that made
his heart leap with the richness and sweetness of it. Catching the kitten from
him, she dropped it to the ground in such wise as to prove nature's foresight
most kind in cushioning the feet of cats.
"Ah! I didn't want it that much!"
"A cat in the hand is worth two nightingales in the bush," he said boldly,
and laughed. "I would shed more blood than that!"
Miss Betty blushed like a southern dawn, and started back from him. From the
convent but yesterday—and she had taken a man's hand in both of hers!
It was to this tableau that the lady in blue entered, following the hunt
through the gates, where she stopped with a discomposed countenance. At once,
however, she advanced, and with a cry of greeting, enveloped Miss Betty in a
brief embrace, to the relief of the latter's confusion. It was Fanchon Bareaud,
now two years emancipated from St. Mary's, and far gone in taffeta. With her
lustreful light hair, absent blue eyes, and her gentle voice, as small and
pretty as her face and figure, it was not too difficult to justify Crailey
Gray's characterization of her as one of those winsome baggages who had made an
air of feminine helplessness the fashion of the day.
It is a wicked thing that some women should kiss when a man is by; in the
present instance the gentleman became somewhat faint.
"I'm so glad—glad!" exclaimed Betty. "You were just coming to see me, weren't
you? My father is in the library. Let me—"
Miss Bareaud drew back. "No, no!" she interrupted hastily and with evident
perturbation. "I—we must be on our way immediately." She threw a glance at the
gentleman, which let him know that she now comprehended his gloves, and why
their stroll had trended toward Carewe Street. "Come at once!" she commanded him
quickly, in an undertone.
"But now that you're here," said Miss Betty, wondering very much why he was
not presented to her, "won't you wait and let me gather a nosegay for you? Our
pansies and violets—"
"I could help," the gentleman suggested, with the look of a lame dog at Miss
Bareaud. "I have been considered useful about a garden."
"Fool!" Betty did not hear the word that came from Miss Bareaud's closed
teeth, though she was mightily surprised at the visible agitation of her
schoolmate, for the latter's face was pale and excited. And Miss Carewe's
amazement was complete when Fanchon, without more words, cavalierly seized the
gentleman's arm and moved toward the street with him as rapidly as his
perceptible reluctance to leave permitted. But at the gate Miss Bareaud turned
and called back over her shoulder, as if remembering the necessity of offering
an excuse for so remarkable a proceeding: "I shall come again very soon. Just
now we are upon an errand of great importance. Good-day!"
Miss Betty waved her hand, staring after them, her eyes large with wonder.
She compressed her lips tightly: "Errand!" This was the friend of childhood's
happy hour, and they had not met in two years!
"Errand!" She ran to the hedge, along the top of which a high white hat was
now seen perambulating; she pressed down a loose branch, and called in a tender
voice to the stranger whom Fanchon had chosen should remain nameless:
"Be sure to put some salve on your hand!"
He made a bow which just missed being too low, but did miss it.
"It is there—already," he said; and, losing his courage after the bow, made
his speech with so palpable a gasp before the last word that the dullest person
in the world could have seen that he meant it.
Miss Betty disappeared.
There was a rigidity of expression about the gentle mouth of Fanchon Bareaud,
which her companion did not enjoy, as they went on their way, each preserving an
uneasy silence, until at her own door, she turned sharply upon him. "Tom
Vanrevel, I thought you were the steadiest—and now you've proved yourself the
craziest—soul in Rouen!" she burst out. "And I couldn't say worse!"
"Why didn't you present me to her?" asked Vanrevel.
"Because I thought a man of your gallantry might prefer not to face a shotgun
in the presence of ladies!"
"Pooh!"
"Pooh!" mimicked Miss Bareaud. "You can 'pooh' as much as you like, but if he
had seen us from the window—" She covered her face with her hands for a moment,
then dropped them and smiled upon him. "I understand perfectly to what I owe the
pleasure of a stroll with you this morning, and your casual insistence on the
shadiness of Carewe Street!" He laughed nervously, but her smile vanished, and
she continued, "Keep away, Tom. She is beautiful, and at St. Mary's I always
thought she had spirit and wit, too. I only hope Crailey won't see her before
the wedding! But it isn't safe for you. Go along, now, and ask Crailey please to
come at three this afternoon."
This message from Mr. Gray's betrothed was not all the ill-starred Tom
conveyed to his friend. Mr. Vanrevel was ordinarily esteemed a person of great
reserve and discretion; nevertheless there was one man to whom he told
everything, and from whom he had no secrets. He spent the noon hour in feeble
attempts to describe to Crailey Gray the outward appearance of Miss Elizabeth
Carewe; how she ran like a young Diana; what one felt upon hearing her voice;
and he presented in himself an example exhibiting something of the cost of
looking in her eyes. His conversation was more or less incoherent, but the
effect of it was complete.