The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 14, 1904, Page 2

This is the Third In- stallment of the “Two Vanrevels,” which in view | of the dearth ofreallygood | new books during the past season has suddenly at- | tained new vogue, for which reason too it is now being published in The | Sunday Call. It will be | completed next Sunday. ‘ You can't get this book | elsewhere in any form for five times what it costs in The Sunday Call. & Copyright by McClure, Phillips & Co. H, it's you, is it!” was Mrs. Tanberry's courteous observa- tion as she canted the vehicle her descent. She looked sharply at Miss Betty, and 1 glow of the carriage rat the girl's cheeks had Vanrevel, on the in even the was pale, d for a moment in awkward , from the lighted house where the fiylng figures circled, came I dreamt that I dwe-helt They st silence, w the w in a-har-ble halis Tom’'s own dreams were much wilder than the gypsy girl's; he knew that; yet he &p e 3 you dance the two first with Miss Betty bit her Up, frowned, away, and, vouchsafing no re- ply. walked toward the house with her eye fixed the gr d: but just as hey r she flashed over from head rits down »0ots to exca- pths of the earth, s = vas with wrathful pity abruptly, and fol- rry to the dressing- greztest 3 £ 2 Tanberry £ needed to s of this sere- was the prop- away, I think,” gent! her and said shz please let other’s turbaned gravest us f th the hispering, like a July d Miss Carewe and her m during the next Tom managed it? er told her? Who uce them? Fanchon new, and as she ummings, she glance long enough flectionate and warn- t the ro. this: Miss Carewe d upon him in- »ep into his eyes. ce and for- venge both 3 it a haz- iercing of eye with 1t which seeks to 1 and melt, leaving perhaps ten sec- lasted, while it clear into to behold it, g magic, as trus, as his phave made e him; for gs: she ad- he had an air rce beyond any in the wild d not lost ch may be A man such as she not believe no desire to others, to be as t poor Fanchon! his own feet that she read and cent stra looked and is, wh on mountains, ~and, ng the heights with airy steps, himself wonderful and was waltz with Miss breathed the rancing elf, over and over; it was true, he was waltzing with Miss Betty Carewe! Her glove lay warm and light hin his own; his fingers clasped that neffable lilac and white brocade waist. Sometimes her hair came within an inch of his cheek, and then he rose out- right from the hilltops and ficated in a golden mist. The glamour of which the Incroyable had planned to tell her some day surrounded Tom, and it seemed to him that the whole world was covered with beautiful light like a carpet. which was but the radiance of this able girl whom his gloves and coat- were permitted tc touch. When stopped, they followed in the of other couples seeking the cool- of out-of-doors for the interval, Tom, in his soul, laughed at all and other men with illimitable condescen- sion. “Stop here,” she sald, as they reached the open gate. He was walking out of it, his head in the air, and Miss Betty on his arm. Apparently, he would have walked straight across the State. It was the happiest moment he had ever known. He wanted to say something wonder- ful to her; his speech should be like the music and glory and fire that was in him; therefore he was shocked to hear himself remarking, with an inanity of utterance that sickened him: “Oh, here’s the gate, fsn't it?” Her answer wzs a short laugh. “You mean you wish to persuade me that you had forgotten it was there?” “I did not see it,” he protested, la- mentably. H “No? T wasn't thinking of 1t.” “Indeed! You were ‘lost in thoughts of —* % “Of wvou!" he said, before he could check himself. “Yes?” Her tone was as quietly con- temptuous as she could make it. “How very frank of you! May I ask: Are you convinced that speeches of that sort are always to a lady’s liking?” “No,” he answered humbly, and hung his head. Then she threw the question at him abruptiy: “Was it you who came to sing in our garden?” There was a long pause before a pro- found sigh came tremulously from the darkness, like a sad and tender confes- sion. “Yes.” I thought so!” she exclaimed. “Mrs. Tanberry thought it was some one else; tut I knew that it was you.” “Yes, you are right,” he said, quietly. “It was I. It was my only way to tell you what you know now.” . “Of course!” She set it all aside with those two words and the slightest ges- ture of her hand. “It was a song made for another girl, I believe?” she asked lightly, and with an icy smile, inquired farther: “For the one—the one before the last, T understand?” He lifted his head, surprised. “What has that to do with it? The music was made for you—but then, I think all music was made for you.' music impati make you me der it unmaidenly in to ed to the serenade before you spoke of it; but I am not one to cast down my eyes and le No nor one too truth, the “Leave please,’ talents of it, if you ntly. doubt me sweet to either!” “To sing that sor vou t What rig h a song to me rtended that her attack v xplicable imp! a con- began un- T think ‘you have com- misunderstood: you tho something I did meant all, and—" “What!" she said, h: now she beheld him as the arrant of the werld. He, the lady-killer, with his hypocritic v strength and melanchol sW the leader of T and, by reputation, the town Lot o and Li L , un- der promise of mar I Bareaud, had tried to make love tc other girl, and now his ccwar in trying to disclaim what he had done lent him the in nce to say this to other: “My child, you are betrayed by your youth and conceit; you exa ate my meaning. I had no intention to distinguish you by coquetting with you!” This was her interpretation cf him; and her indignation was not les- sened by the inevitable conclusion that he, who had been through so many scenes with women, secretly found her simplicity diverting. Miss Betty had a little of her father in her; ywhile it was part of her youth, too,@hat, of all things she could least endure the shadow of a smile at her own expense. “Oh, oh!” she cried, her voice shak- ing with anger. “I suppose your bad heart is half-choked with your laughter at me.” She turned from him swiftly, and left Lim. Almost running, she entered the house, and hurried to a seat by Mrs. Tanberry, nestling to her like a young sapilng on a hillside. Instantaneously, several gentlemen, who had hastily ac- quitted themselves of various obliga- tions in order to seek her sprang for- ger- ward with eager greetings, so that when the stricken Tom, dazed and confounded by his evil luck, followed her at about five paces, he found him- gelf confronted by an impenetrable ab- atis formed by the spiked tails of the coats of General Trumble, Madrillon, Tappingham Marsh, Cummings and Jefferson Bareaud. Within this forti- fication rang out laughter and sally from Miss Carewe; her color was high and her eyes sparkled never more brightly. Flourish and alarums sounded for a quadrille. Each of the semicircle, firmly elbowing his neighbor, begged the dance of Miss Betty; but Tom was himself again, and laid a long, strong hand on Madrillon’s shoulder, pressed him gently aside, and said: “Forgive me, Miss Carewe has hon- ored me by the promise of this qua- drille.” He bowed, cffering his arm, and none of them was too vain to envy that bow and gesture. For a moment he remained waiting. Miss Carewe rose slowly, and, directly. facing him, said in composed and even voice: “You force me to beg you never to address me again.” She placed her hand on the general's arm, turning her back squarely upon Tom. In addition to those who heard, many persons in that part of the room saw the affront and paused in arrested at- titudes; others, observing these, turned inquiringly, so that sudden silence fell, broken only by the voice of Miss Betty as she moved away, talking cheerily to the gereral. Tom was left standing alone in the broken semi- circle. All the eyes swept from her to him and back; then every one began to talk hastily about nothing. The young man's humiliation was public. He went to the door under cover of the movement of the various couples te flud places in the quadrille, yet every sidelong glance in the room still rested upen him, and he knew it. .He re- mained in the hall, ‘alone, through that dance, and at its conclusion, walked. slowly through-the rooms, speaking to people, here and there, as though nothing had happened, but when the music sounded again, he went to the dréssing-room, found his hat and cloak, and left the house. For a while he stood on the opposite side of the street, watching the lighted windows, and twice he caught sight of the lilac and white brocade, the dark halr, and the wreath of marguerites. Then, with a hot pain in his breast, and the step of a grenadier, he marched down the street. In the carriage Mrs, Tanberry took Betty's hand in hers. “I'll do as you wish, child,” she sald, ‘and never speak to you of him again as long as I live, except this once.” I think it was best for his own sake as well as yours, but—" “He needed a lesson,” interruqted Miss Betty, wearily. She had danged long and hard, and she was very tired. Mrs. Tanberry's staccato laugh came out irrepressibly. “All the vagabonds do, Princess!” sghe eried. “And I think they are getting it."” “No, no, 1 don’t mean—" “We've turned their heads, my dear, between us, you and I; and we'll have to turn 'ém again, or they'll break their necks looking over their shoulders at the owls!” She pressed the girl's d affectionately. “But you'll let me us, say something just once, and forgive me beca we're the same foolish age, you know. It's only this: The next young man-you suppress take him off in a corner! Lead him away from the crowd where he won't have to stand and lef them look at him afterward. That's all, my dear, and you mustn't mind.” “I'm not hotl sOrT; sald “I'm not sorry! Tanberry, sooth- Miss Betty, No, no,” said Mrs. ingly “It was better this time to do just I'd have done it what you did. myself, to make quite sure he would keep away—because I like him.” “I'm ‘nct sorry!” said:Miss Betty again, “I'm not sorr: she repeated and re- iterated to herself after Mrs. Tanberry had gone to bed. he had sunk into a chair in the If ry with a book, and “I'm not sorry!” she whispered as ths CANME HOME WITH & NEW POEM, BUT MO = = FISH . open unread page blurred before her, “I'm not sorry!" He had needed his lesson; but she had to bear the recol- lection of how white his face went when he received it. Her affront had put about him a strange loneliness; the one figure with the stilled crowd staring; it had made a picture from which her mind's eye had been unable to escape, danced she never so hard and late. Un- consciously, /Robert Carewe’s daughter had avenged the other figure which had stood in lonely humiliation before the staring eyes. “I'm not sorry!"™ Ah, did they think it was in her to hurt any living thing in the world? The book dropped from* her lap, and she bowed her head upon her hands. “I'm not sorry!”—and tears upon the small lace gauntlets! She saw them, with an incoherent ex- ciamation, half self-pitying, half im- patient, ran out to the stars above her garden. 3 She was there for perhaps half an hour, and just before sh: returned to the house she did a singular thing. Standing where all was clear to the sky, where she had stood after her tall: with the Incroyable, when he had bid her look to.the stars, she raised her « arms to them again, her face, pale with a great tenderness, uplifted. . “You, you, you!" she whispered. “I love you!" °* And yet it was to nothing definite, to no man, nor outline of a man, to no phantom nor dream lover, that she spoke; neither to him she had af- fronted, nor to him who had bidden her look to the stars. Nor was it to the stars themselves. She returned slowly and thoughtfully to the house, wondering what she had meant. 7 “Your’ SHE- HISPERED. CHAPTER XL A’ VOICE IN A GARDEN. Crailey came home the next day with a new poem, but no fish. He louhged up the stairs, late in the afternoon, humming cheerfully . to himself, and Gropping his rod in a corner of Tom's office, laid the poem on the desk before his partner, prcduced a large, newly replenished flask, opened It, stretched himself comfortably upon a capacious horse-hair sofa, drank a deep draught, chuckled softly, and reques Mr. Vanrevel to set the rhymes to music immediately. “l LOVE You'» THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. ~ “Try it on your instrument,” he said. “It's a simple verse about nothing but star: nd you can work it out in twen- ty minutes with the guitar.” “It is broken,” said Tem, not looking up from his work. “Broken! When?"” “Last night.” “Who broke it?"” “It fell from the table in my room.” “How? Easily mended, isn't it?" “1 think I shall not play It scon again.” Cralley swung his long legs off the sofa and abruptly sat upright. “What's this?” he asked, gravely. Tom pushed his pepers away from him, rose and went tc the dusty win- dow that looked to the west, where, at ‘the end of the long street, the sun was setting behind the ruin of charred tim- bers on the bank of the shining river, “It seems that I played once too of- ten," he said. Crailey was thoroughly astonished. He tcok a long. affectionate pull at the flask and offered it to his partner. “No,” sald Tom, turning to him with a troubled face, “and ff I were you, I wouldn't elther. These fishing trips of yours—" - “Fishing!" Crailey laughed. ‘‘Trips of a poetaster! It's then I write best, and write I will! There's a poem, and 2 damned good one, tov, old preacher, In every gill of whisky, and I'm the iad that can extract it! Lord! what's better than to be out in the open, all by yourself in the woods, or on the river? Think of the long nights alone with the glery of hegven and a good demijohn. Why, & man's thoughts are like actors performing in the air. and all the crowding stars for ice! Yeu know In your soul you'd rather have me ou there, going it all by myself, than- raising thunder over town. Apd you know, toc, it doesn’t tell on me; it doesn’t show! You couldn’t guess, to “save your life, how much I've had te- day, now, could you?” “Yes," returned the other, “I could.” “Well, well,” sald Crafley, good-na- turedly, “we weren't talking of me.” He set down the flask, went to his friend and dropped a hand on his shouldér. “What made you break the guitar? Tell me.” ‘“What makes you think I broke it?" asked his partner sharply. “Tell me why you did it,” Cralley. ¢ And Tom, pacing the room, told him, while Crailey stood in sllence, looking said " served Crailey, him eagerly in the eye whenever Tom turned his way. The listener inter- rupted seldom; once it was to exclaim: “But 'you haven't sald why you broke the guitar?” “‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out!’ I ought to have cut off the hands that played to her.” “And cut your throat for singing to her?” “She was right!” the other answered, triding up and down the room. ‘Right—a thousand times!—in every- thing she did. That I should even ap- -proach her, was an unspeakabie inso- fence. .I had forgotten, and so, possi- bly, had she, but I had not even been properly introduced to her.” ~ “No, you hadn’t, that's true,” ob- reflectively. “You don'tiseem to have much to reproach her with, Tom.” “Reproach her!” cried the other. “That I should dream she would speak to me or have anything to do with me ‘was to cast & doubt upon her loyalty as a daughter. She was right, I say! And she did the only thing she could do; rebuked me before them all. No one ever merited what he got more roundly than I deserved that. Whe was I, in her eyes, that I should be- _siege her with my importunities, who but her father’s worst enerhy ?” Déep anxiety knitted Crailey's brow. “I understood she knew of the quar- rel,” he saild, thoughtfully. “I saw that, the other evening when I helped her out of the crowd. She spoke of it on the way home, I remember; but how did she know that you were Vanrevel? No one in town would be apt to men- tica vou to her.” “No, but she did know, ybu see.” “Yes,” returned Mr. Gray slowly. “80 it seems! Probably her father told her to avoid you, and described you so that she recosnized you as the man who caught the kitten.” . He paused, picked up the flask, and again applied himself to its contents, his eves peering over the uptillted vessel at Tom, who continued to pace up and down the length of the office. After & time, Crailey, tumbling in his coat, found a long cheroot, and, as he 1t it, inquired casuziiy: “Do you remember if she addressed you by name?” “1 think not,” Tom answered, halting. “What dees it matter?” Crailey drew a deep breath. “It deesn’t,” he returned. “She knew me well enough,” said Tom, sadly, a8 he resumed his sentry E’n-." repeated Crailey, deliberately. “So 1t utm:o!m it seems!" He blew 1& iol smoke out into the air i.‘;!umum. and softly murmured again: “So it seems, so it seems.” Silence fell, broken only by the sound of Tem's footsteps, until, presently, some one informally shouted his name from the street below. It was anly Will Cummings, passing the time of day, but when Tom turned from the window af- ter answering him. Crailey, his poem, and his flask were gone. That evening Vanrevel sat in the dusty office, ' driving himseif to his wark with a sharp goad, for there was a face that came between him and all else in the world, and a voice that sounded always in his ears. But the work was done before he rose from his chair, though he showed a haggard vis- age as he bent above his candles to blow them out. It was eleven o'clock; Crailey had not come back, and Tom K that his light-hearted friend would not return for many hours; and so, having no mind to read, and no belfef that he could if he tried, he went out to walk the streets. He went down to the river first, and stocd for a little while gazing at the rulns of the two ware- houses, and that was like a2 man with a headache beating his skull against a wall. As he stood on the blackened wharf, he saw how the eharred beams Tose above him agaipst the sky like a gallows, and it seemed !gehlm that thing have Been a better sym- ::L for c";ul’: he nn'd"h-nm his self- respect. “ proach her!” He, who had so displayed his lmber‘fl!ty.be!nr-_ her! Had he been her father's best friend, he should have had too great a sense of shame to dare to speak to h_e— after that night when her quiet intelli- gence had exhibited him to hlm:ullf. and to all the world, as mought else than a fool—and a noisy one at that Suddenly a shudder convulsed him: he struck his open palm across his fore- head and spoke aloud, while, from horizon to horizen, the night air grew thick with the whispered laughter of observing "hobgoblins: “And even if there had been no stair- way, we couid have slid down the hose line He retraced his steps, a tall, gray figure moving slowly through the biue darkness. and his lips formed the heart sick shadow of a smile when he found that he had unconsciously turmed into Carewe street. Presently he came to a gap in a hedge, through which he had sometimes stolen to hear the sound of a harp and a girl's voice singing; but he did not enter there to-night, though he paused a moment, his head Bowed on his breast. There came a sound of volces; they seemed to be moving toward the hedgp, toward the gap where he stood; one a man’s eager, quick, but very musical the other, a girl’s, a rich and clear con- tralto that passed into Tom's soul like a psalm of rejoicing and like a scimitar of flame. He shivered, and moved away quickly, but not before the man's voice, somewhat louder for the moment, came distinctly from the other side of the hedge: “After all,” said the voice, with a ripple of laughter, “after all, weren't you a little hard on that poor Mr. Gray” Tom did not understand, but he knew the voice. It was that of Cralley Gray: He heard the same voice again that night, and again stood unseen. Long after midnight he was still tramping the streets on his lonely rounds, when he chanced to pass the Rouen House which hostelry bore, to the uninitiated eye, the appearance of having closed its docrs upon all hospitalities for the night. in strict compliance with the law of the city fathers, yet a siender wand of bright light might be discovered un- derncath the street door of the bar- room. From within the merry retreat issued an uproar of shouting, raucous laughter and the pounding of glasses on tables, heralding all too plainly the hypoerisy of the landiord. and possibly that of the city fathers also. Tom know what com- pany was gathered there: gamblers, truckmen, drunken farmers, men from the river steamers making riot while their boats lay at the whart, with a mot- ley gathering of good-for-nothings of the back alleys, and tippling elerks from the Main street steres. There dame loud cries for a song, and, in answer, the vojce of Crailey rose over the gen- eral din, somewhat hoarse, and never so musical when he sang as when he spoke, vet so touching in its dramatic tenderness that soon the noise fell away, and the roisterers sat quietly to listen. It was not the first time Ben Jonson’s song had stilled a disrepu- table company. 1 sent thec late a rosy wreath, Not 0 much homoring thee, As giving it the hove that there It might not withered be. Perhaps, just then, Vanrevel would have wished to hear him sing anything in the world rather than that, for on Crailey’s lips it carried too much mean- ing to-night, after the voice in the gar- den. And Tom lingered no more near the betraying sliver of light bemeath the door than he had by the gap in the hedge, but went steadily on his way. Not far from the hotel he passed a small building brightly lighted and