The Two Vanrevels. Booth Tarkington
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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.
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, the 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,