"It's very simple--all that I know about it. I went there first on the evening of the Madrillon masquerade and played a little comedy for her, so that some of my theatrical allusions--they weren't very illuminating!--to my engagement to Fanchon, made her believe I was Vanrevel when her father told her about the pair of us. I discovered that the night his warehouses burned--and I saw something more, because I can't help seeing such things: that yours was just the character to appeal to a young girl fresh from the convent and full of honesty and fine dreams and fire. Nobody could arrange a more fatal fascination for a girl of nineteen than to have a deadly quarrel with her father. And that's especially true when the father's like that mad brute of a Bob Carewe! Then, too, you're more or less the town model of virtue and popular hero, in spite of the Abolitionism, just as I am the town scamp. So I let it go on, and played a little at being you, saying the things that you only think--that was all. It isn't strange that it's lasted until now, not more than three weeks, after all. She's only seen you four or five times, and me not much oftener. No one speaks of you to her, and I've kept out of sight when others were about. Mrs. Tanberry is her only close friend, and, naturally, wouldn't be apt to mention that you are dark and I am fair, or to describe us personally, any more than you and I would mention the general appearance of people we both meet about town. But you needn't tell me that it can't last much longer. Some petty, unexpected trifle will turn up, of course. All that I want to know is what you mean to do."
"To do?" repeated Tom softly, and blew a long scarf of smoke out of the window.
"Ah!" Crailey's voice grew sharp and loud. "There are many things you needn't tell me! You need not tell me what I've done to you--nor what you think of me! You need not tell me that you have others to consider, that you have Miss Carewe to think of. Don't you suppose I know that? And you need not tell me that you have a duty to Fanchon--"
"Yes," Tom broke in, his tone not quite steady. "Yes, I've thought of that."
"Well?"
"Have you--did you--" he hesitated, but Crailey understood immediately.
"No; I haven't seen her again."
"But you--"
"Yes--I wrote. I answered the letter."
"As-"
"Yes; I signed your name. I told you that I had just let things go on,"
Crailey answered, with an impatient movement of his hands. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going over to see the Governor in the morning. I'll be away two or three days, I imagine."
"Vanrevel!" exclaimed Crailey hotly, "Will you give me an answer and not beat about the bush any longer? Or do you mean that you refuse to answer?"
Tom dropped his cigar upon the brick window-ledge with an abysmal sigh.
"Oh, no, it isn't that," he answered mildly "I've been thinking it all over for three days in the country, and when I got back tonight I found that I had come to a decision without knowing it, and that I had come to it even before I started; my leaving the letter for you proved it. It's a little like this Mexican war, a mixed-up problem and only one thing clear.
A few schemers have led the country into it to increase the slave-power and make us forget that we threatened England when we couldn't carry out the threat. And yet, if you look at it broadly, these are the smaller things and they do not last. The means by which the country grows may be wrong, but its growth is right; it is only destiny, working out through lies and blood, but the end will be good. It is bound to happen and you can't stop it. I believe the men who make this war for their own uses will suffer in hell-fire for it; but it is made, and there's only one thing I can see as the thing for me to do. They've called me every name on earth--and the same with you, too, Crailey--because I'm an Abolitionist, but now, whether the country has sinned or not, a good many thousand men have got to do the bleeding for her, and I want to be one of them. That's the one thing that is plain to me."
"Yes," returned Crailey. "You know I'm with you; and I think you're always right. Yes; we'll all be on the way in a fortnight or so. Do you mean you won't quarrel with me because of that? Do you mean it would be a poor time now, when we're all going out to take our chances together?"
"Quarrel with you!" Tom rose and came to the desk, looking across it at his friend. "Did you think I might do that?"
"Yes--I thought so."
"Crailey!" And now Tom's expression showed desperation; it was that of a man whose apprehensions have culminated and who is forced to face a crisis long expected, long averted, but imminent at last. His eyes fell from Crailey's clear gaze and his hand fidgeted among the papers on the desk.
"No," he began with a painful lameness and hesitation. "I did not mean it--no; I meant, that, in the same way, only one thing in this other--this other affair that seems so confused and is such a problem--only one thing has grown clear. It doesn't seem to me that--that--" here he drew a deep breath, before he went on with increasing nervousness--" that if you like a man and have lived with him a good many years; that is to say, if you're really much of a friend to him, I don't believe you sit on a high seat and judge him. Judging, and all that, haven't much part in it. And it seems to me that you've got yourself into a pretty bad mix-up, Crailey."
"Yes," said Crailey. "It's pretty bad."
"Well," Tom looked up now, with an almost tremulous smile, "I believe that is about all I can make of it. Do you think it's the part of your best friend to expose you? It seems to me that if there ever was a time when I ought to stand by you, it's now."
There was a silence while they looked at each other across the desk in the faint light. Tom's eye fell again as Crailey opened his lips.
"And in spite of everything," Crailey said breathlessly, "you mean that you won't tell?"
"How could I, Crailey?" said Tom Vanrevel as be turned away.
