CHAPTER XX. "Goodby"It was between twilight and candlelight, the gentle half-hour when the kind old Sand Man steals up the stairs of houses where children are; when rustic lovers stroll with slow and quiet steps down country lanes, and old bachelors are loneliest and dream of the things that might have been. Through the silence of the clear dusk came the whistle of the evening boat that was to bear Tom Vanrevel through the first stage of his long journey to the front of war, and the sound fell cheerlessly upon Miss Betty's ear, as she stood leaning against the sun-dial...
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CHAPTER XIX. The Flag Goes Marching ByWill Cummings had abandoned the pen for the sword until such time as Santa Anna should cry for quarter, and had left the office in charge of an imported substitute; but late that night he came to his desk once more, to write the story of the accident to Corporal Gray; and the tale that he wrote had been already put into writing by Tom Vanrevel as it fell from Crailey's lips, after the doctor had, come, so that none might doubt it. No one did doubt it. What reason had Mr. Carewe to injure...
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CHAPTER XVIII. The UniformCrailey was not the only man in Rouen who had been saying to himself all day that each accustomed thing he did was done for the last time. Many of his comrades went about with "Farewell, old friend," in their hearts, not only for the people, but for the usual things of life and the actions of habit, now become unexpectedly dear and sweet to know or to perform. So Tom Vanrevel, relieved of his hot uniform, loose as to collar, wearing a big dressing-gown, and stretched in a chair, watched the sunset from the western window of...
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CHAPTER XVII. The Price of SilenceIt was the misfortune of Mr. Cummings's first literary offering to annoy one of the editor's friends. The Journal was brought to the corporal at noon, while he was considering whether he should rise from his couch or sleep another hour. Reclining among his pillows, he glanced through Cummings's description with the subdued giggle he always had for the good William's style but as his eye fell upon one paragraph he started sat upright, and proceeded to read the passage several times with anxious attention. "Only two or three sources of regret occurred to mar the...
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CHAPTER XVI. "Those Endearing Young Charms"It is a matter not of notoriety but of the happiest celebrity that Mrs. Tanberry danced that night, and not only that she danced, but that she waltzed. To the lot of Tappingham Marsh (whom she pronounced the most wheedlmg vagabond, next to Crailey Gray, of her acquaintance) it fell to persuade her; and, after a quadrille with the elder Chenoweth, she was with Tappingham. More extraordinary to relate, she danced down both her partner and music. Thereupon did Mr. Bareaud, stung with envy, dare emulation and essay a schottische with Miss Trixie Chenoweth, performing marvelously...
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CHAPTER XV. When June Came"Methought I met a Damsel Fair And tears were in her eyes; Her head and arms were bare, I heard her bursting sighs. "I stopp'd and looked her in the face, 'Twas then she sweetly smiled. Her features shone with mournful grace, Far more than Nature's child. "With diffident and downcast eye, In modest tones she spoke; She wiped a tear and gave a sigh, And then her silence broke--" So sang Mrs. Tanberry at the piano, relieving the melancholy which possessed her; but Nelson, pausing in the hail to listen, and exceedingly curious concerning the promised...
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CHAPTER XIV. The Firm of Gray and VanrevelFor the first time it was Crailey who sat waiting for Tom to come home. In a chair drawn to his partner's desk in the dusty office, he half-reclined, arms on the desk, his chin on his clenched fists. To redeem the gloom he had lit a single candle, which painted him dimly against the complete darkness of his own shadow, like a very old portrait whose background time has solidified into shapeless browns; the portrait of a fair-haired gentleman, the cavalier, or the Marquis, one might have said at first glance; not describing...
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CHAPTER X. Echoes of a SerenadeMore than three gentlemen of Rouen wore their hearts in their eyes for any fool to gaze upon; but three was the number of those who told their love before the end of the first week of Mr. Carewe's absence, and told it in spite of Mrs. Tanberry's utmost effort to preserve, at all times, a conjunction between herself and Miss Betty. For the good lady, foreseeing these declarations much more surely than did the subject of them, wished to spare her lovely charge the pain of listening to them. Miss Carewe honored each of the...
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CHAPTER IX. The Rule of the RegentBetty never forgot her first sight of the old friend of her family. Returning with a sad heart, she was walking the colt slowly through the carriage-gates, when an extravagantly stout lady, in green muslin illustrated with huge red flowers, came out upon the porch and waved a fat arm to the girl. The visitor wore a dark-green turban and a Cashmere shawl, while the expanse of her skirts was nothing short of magnificent: some cathedral-dome seemed to have been misplaced and the lady dropped into it. Her outstretched hand terrified Betty: how was she...
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CHAPTER VIII. A Tale of a Political DifferenceMr. Carewe was already at the breakfast-table, but the light of his countenance, hidden behind the Rouen Journal, was not vouchsafed to his daughter when she took her place opposite him, nor did he see fit to return her morning greeting, from which she generously concluded that the burning of the two warehouses had meant a severe loss to him. "I am so sorry, father," she said gently. (She had not called him "papa" since the morning after her ball.) "I hope it isn't to be a great trouble to you." There was no...
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CHAPTER VII. The ComedianNot savage Hun, nor "barbarous Vandyke," nor demon Apache, could wish to dwell upon the state of mind of the Chief of the Rouen Volunteer Fire Department; therefore, let the curtain of mercy descend. Without a word, he turned and dragged the nozzle to the eastern eaves, whence, after a warning gesture to those below, he dropped it to the ground. And, out of compassion, it should be little more than hinted that the gesture of warning was very slight. When the rescued band reached the foot of the last flight of stairs, they beheld the open doorway...
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CHAPTER VI. The Ever Unpractical FeminineIt was an investigating negro child of tender years, who, possessed of a petty sense of cause and effect, brought an illuminative simplicity to bear upon the problem of the force-pump; and a multitudinous agitation greeted his discovery that the engineers had forgotten to connect their pipes with the river. This naive omission was fatal to the second warehouse; the wall burst into flame below Crailey Gray, who clung to the top of the ladder, choking, stifled, and dizzily fighting the sparks that covered him, yet still clutching the nozzle of the hose-line they had passed...
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CHAPTER V. Nero not the Last Violinist of his KindMiss Carewe was at her desk, writing to Sister Cecilia, whom she most loved of all the world, when the bells startled her with their sudden clangor. The quill dropped from her hand; she started to her feet, wide-eyed, not understanding; while the whole town, drowsing peacefully a moment ago, resounded immediately with a loud confusion. She ran to the front door and looked out, her heart beating wildly. The western sky was touched with a soft rose-color, which quickly became a warm glow, fluctuated, and, in the instant, shot up like...
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CHAPTER IV. "But Spare Your Country's Flag"If it be true that love is the great incentive to the useless arts, the number of gentlemen who became poets for the sake of Miss Betty Carewe need not be considered extraordinary. Of all that was written of her dancing, Tom Vanrevel's lines, "I Danced with Her beneath the Lights" (which he certainly had not done when he wrote them) were, perhaps, next to Crailey Gray's in merit, though Tom burned his rhymes after reading them to Crailey. Other troubadours were not so modest, and the Rouen Journal found no lack of tuneful offering,...
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Chapter XIXIt was easy enough for him to evade Fred Mitchell's rallyings these days; the sprig's mood was truculent, not toward his roommate but toward Congress, which was less in fiery haste than he to be definitely at war with Germany. All through the university the change had come: athletics, in other years spotlighted at the centre of the stage, languished suddenly, threatened with abandonment; students working for senior honours forgot them; everything was forgotten except that growing thunder in the soil. Several weeks elapsed after Dora's bitter dismissal of Ramsey before she was mentioned between the comrades. Then, one evening,...
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Chapter XVIIISo everywhere over the country, that winter of 1916, there were light-hearted boys skylarking--at college, or on the farms; and in the towns the young machinists snowballed one another as they came from the shops; while on this Sunday of the "frat" snow fight probably several hundreds of thousands of youthful bachelors, between the two oceans, went walking, like Ramsey, each with a girl who could forget the weather. Yet boys of nineteen and in the twenties were not light-hearted all the time that winter and that spring and that summer. Most of them knew long, thoughtful moments, as Ramsey...
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Chapter XVIIThroughout the term Ramsey's calculation of probabilities against the happening of another interview with Dora seemed to be well founded, but at the beginning of the second "semester" he found her to be a fellow member of a class in biology. More than that, this class had every week a two-hour session in the botanical laboratory the structure of plants was studied under microscopic dissection. The students worked in pairs, a special family of plants being assigned to each couple; and the instructor selected the couples with an eye to combinations of the quick with the slow. D. Yocum...
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Chapter XVIRamsey was not quite athlete enough for any of the 'varsity teams; neither was he an antagonist safely encountered, whether in play or in earnest, and during the next few days he taught Fred Mitchell to be cautious. The chaffer learned that his own agility could not save him from Ramsey, and so found it wiser to contain an effervescence which sometimes threatened to burst him. Ramsey as a victim was a continuous temptation, he was so good-natured and yet so furious. After Commencement, when the roommates had gone home, Mr. Mitchell's caution extended over the long sunshiny months of...
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Chapter XVRamsey kept very few things from Fred Mitchell, and usually his confidences were immediate upon the occasion of them; but allowed several weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the outlines of this adventure. "One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred," he said, "I didn't know what to call her." Mr. Mitchell, stretched upon the window seat in their "study," and looking out over the town street below and the campus beyond the street, had already thought it tactful to ambush his profound amusement by turning upon his side, so that his face was toward the...
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Chapter XIVThat early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the subject was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders and France were still of the immense, remote distance. By no stretch of imagination could these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern the "frat," the Lumen, or the university. Really important matters were the doings of the "Track Team," now training in the "Gym" and on the 'Varsity Field, and, more vital still, the prospects of the Nine. But in...
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The Two Vanrevels - Chapter 20. "Goodby"
