"But this is all shame, shame for Robert Carewe's daughter. It seems to me that I should hide and not lift my head; that I, being of my father's blood, could never look you in the face again. It is so unspeakably painful and ugly. I think of my father's stiff pride and his look of the eagle, --and he still plays with your friend, almost always `successfully!' And your friend still comes to play!--but I will not speak of that side of it "Mr. Gray has made you poor, but I know it was not that which made you come seeking him last night, when I found you there in the hail. It was for his sake you came--and you went away for mine. Now that I know, at last--now that I have heard what your life has been (and oh I heard so much more than I have written!)--now that my eyes have been opened to see you as you are, I am proud, and glad and humble that I can believe that you felt a friendship for me strong enough to have made you go `for my sake.' You will write to me just once, won't you? and tell me if there was any error in what I listened to; but you must not come to the garden.
Now that I know you, I cannot meet you clandestinely again. It would hurt the dignity which I feel in you now, and my own poor dignity--such as it is! I have been earnestly warned of the danger to you. Besides, you must let me test myself. I am all fluttering and frightened and excited. You will obey me, won't you ?--do not come until I send for you.
Elizabeth Carewe."
Mr. Gray, occupied with his toilet about noon, heard his partner descending to the office with a heavy step, and issued from his room to call a hearty greeting. Tom looked back over his shoulder and replied cheerily, though with a certain embarrassment; but Crailey, catching sight of his face, uttered a sharp ejaculation and came down to him.
"Why, what's the matter, Tom? You're not going to be sick? You look like the devil and all!"
"I'm all right, never fear!" Tom laughed, evading the other's eye. "I'm going out in the country on some business, and I dare say I shall not be back for a couple of days; it will be all up and down the county." He set down a travelling-bag he was carrying, and offered the other his hand.
"Good-by."
"Can't I go for you? You don't look able "
"No, no. It's something I'll have to attend to myself."
"Ah, I suppose," said Crailey, gently, "I suppose it's important, and you couldn't trust me to handle it. Well--God knows you're right! I've shown you often enough how incompetent I am to do anything but write jingles!"
"You do some more of them--without the whiskey, Crailey. They're worth more than all the lawing Gray and Vanrevel have ever done or ever will do.
Good-by---and be kind to yourself."
He descended to the first landing, and then, "Oh, Crailey," he called, with the air of having forgotten something he had meant to say.
"Yes, Tom?"
"This morning at the post-office I found a letter addressed to me. I opened it and--" He hesitated, and uneasily shifted his weight from one foot to the other, with a feeble, deprecatory laugh.
"Yes, what of it?"
"Well--there seemed to be a mistake. I think it must have been meant for you. Somehow, she--she's picked up a good many wrong impressions, and, Lord knows how, but she's mixed our names up and--and I've left the letter for you. It's on my table."
He turned and calling a final good-by over his shoulder, went clattering noisily down to the street and vanished from Crailey's sight.
Noon found Tom far out on the National Road, creaking along over the yellow dust in a light wagon, between bordering forests that smelt spicily of wet underbrush and May-apples; and, here and there, when they would emerge from the woods to cleared fields, liberally outlined by long snake- fences of black walnut, the steady, jog-trotting old horse lifted his head and looked interested in the world, but Tom never did either. Habitually upright, walking or sitting, straight, keen, and alert, that day's sun saw him drearily hunched over, mile after mile, his forehead laced with lines of pain. He stopped at every farm-house and cabin, and, where the young men worked in the fields, hailed them from the road, or hitched his horse to the fence and crossed the soft furrows to talk with them. At such times he stood erect again, and spoke stirringly, finding eager listeners.
There was one question they asked him over and over:
"But are you sure the call will come?"
"As sure as that we stand here; and it will come before the week is out.
We must be ready!"
Often, when he left them, they would turn from the work in hand, leaving it as it was, to lie unfinished in the fields, and make their way slowly and thoughtfully to their homes, while Tom climbed into his creaking little wagon once more, only to fall into the same dull, hunched-over attitude. He had many things to think out before he faced Rouen and Crailey Gray again, and more to fight through to the end with himself.
Three days he took for it, three days driving through the soft May weather behind the kind, old jog-trotting horse; three days on the road, from farm-house to farm-house and from field to field, from cabin of the woods to cabin in the clearing. Tossing unhappily at night, he lay sleepless till dawn, though not because of the hard beds; and when daylight came, journeyed steadily on again, over the vagabond little hills that had gypsied it so far into the prairie-land in their wanderings from their range on the Ohio, and, passing the hills, went on through the flat forest-land, always hunched over dismally in the creaking wagon.
