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The Two Vanrevels

B >> Booth Tarkington >> The Two Vanrevels



The Two Vanrevels

by Booth Tarkington



Table of Contents

A Cat Can Do More than Look at A King
Surviving Evils of the Reign of Terror
The Rogue's Gallery of a Father Should be Exhibited to a Daughter with
Particular Care
"But Spare Your Country's Flag"
Nero not the Last Violinist of his Kind
The Ever Unpractical Feminine
The Comedian
A Tale of a Political Difference
The Rule of the Regent
Echoes of a Serenade
A Voice in a Garden
The Room in the Cupola
The Tocsin
The Firm of Gray and Vanrevel
When June Came
"Those Endearing Young Charms"
The Price of Silence
The Uniform
The Flag Goes Marching By
"Good-by"




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 be 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.



Chapter II

Surviving Evils of the Reign of Terror

Does there exist an incredulous, or jealous, denizen of another portion of
our country who, knowing that the room in the wooden cupola over Mr.
Carewe's library was commonly alluded to by Rouen as the "Tower Chamber,"
will prove himself so sectionally prejudiced as to deny that the town was
a veritable hotbed of literary interest, or that Sir `Walter Scott was
ill-appreciated there? Some of the men looked sly, and others grinned, at
mention of this apartment; but the romantic were not lacking who spoke of
it in whispers: how the lights sometimes shone there all night long, and
the gentlemen drove away, whitefaced, in the dawn. The cupola, rising
above the library, overlooked the garden; and the house, save for that,
was of a single story, with a low veranda running the length of its front.
The windows of the library and of a row of bedrooms---one of which was
Miss Betty's--lined the veranda, "steamboat fashion;" the inner doors of
these rooms all opening upon a long hail which bisected the house. he
stairway leading to the room in the cupola rose the library itself, while
the bisecting hail afforded be only access to the library; hence, the
gossips, `eli acquainted with the geography of the place, conferred
seriously together upon what effect Miss Betty's homecoming would have in
this connection:

Dr anyone going to the stairway must needs pass her door; and, what was
more to the point, a party C gentlemen descending late from the mysterious
garret might be not so quiet as they intended, and the young lady
sufficiently disturbed to inquire of her father what entertainment he
provided that should keep his guests until four in the morning.

But at present it was with the opposite end of the house that the town was
occupied, for there, workmen were hammering and sawing and painting day
long, finishing the addition Mr. Carewe was building for his daughter's
debut. This hammering disturbed Miss Betty, who had become almost as busy
with the French Revolution as with her mantua-maker. For she had found in
her father's library many books not for convent-shelves; and she had
become a Girondin.
She found memoirs, histories, and tales of that delectable period, then
not so dim with time but that the figures of it were more than tragic
shadows; and for a week there was no meal in that house to which she sat
down earlier than half an hour Jate. She had a rightful property-interest
in the Revolution, her own great-uncle having been one of those who
"suffered;" not, however, under the guillotine; for to Georges Meilhac
appertained the rare distinction of death by accident on the day when the
business-like young Bonaparte played upon the mob with his cannon.

There were some yellow letters of this great uncle's in a box which had
belonged to her grandmother, a rich discovery for Miss Betty, who read and
re-read them with eager and excited eyes, living more in Paris with
Georges and his friends than in Rouen with her father. Indeed, she had
little else to do. Mr. Carewe was no comrade for her, by far the reverse.
She seldom saw him, except at the table, when he sat with averted eyes,
and talked to her very little; and, while making elaborate preparation for
her introduction to his friends (such was his phrase) he treated her with
a perfunctory civility which made her wonder if her advent was altogether
welcome to him; bat when she noticed that his hair looked darker than
usual about every fourth day, she began to understand Why he appeared
ungrateful to her for growing up. He went out a great deal, though no
visitors came to the house; for it was known that Mr. Carewe desired to
present his daughter to no one until he presented her to all. Fanchon
Bareaud, indeed, made one hurried and embarrassed call, evading Miss
Betty's reference to the chevalier of the kitten with a dexterity too
nimble to be thought unintentional. Miss Carewe was forbidden to return
her friend's visit until after her debut; and Mr. Carewe explained that
there was always some worthless Young men hanging about the Bareaud's,
where (he did not add) they interfered with a worthy oh one who desired to
honor Fanchon's older sister, Virginia, with his attentions.

This was no great hardship for Miss Betty, as, since plunging into the
Revolution with her great-uncle, she had lost some curiosity concerning
the men of to-day, doubting that they would show forth as heroic, as
debonnair, gay and tragic as he. He was the legendary hero of her
childhood; she remembered her mother's stories of him perhaps more clearly
than she remembered her mother; and one of the older Sisters had known him
in Paris and had talked of him at length, giving the flavor of his
dandyism and his beauty at first hand to his young relative. He had been
one of those hardy young men wearing unbelievable garments, who began to
appear in the garden of the Tuileries with knives in their sleeves and
cudgels in their hands, about April, 1794, and whose dash and recklessness
in many matters were the first intimations that the Citizen Tallien was
about to cause the Citizen Robespierre to shoot himself through the jaw.

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