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"I think I shall not play it soon again." Crailey swung his long legs off the sofa and abruptly sat upright. "What's this?" he asked gravely. Tom pushed his papers away from him, rose and went to the dusty window that looked to the west, where, at the end of the long street, the sun was setting behind the ruin of charred timbers on the bank of the shining river.
They rumbled into town after sunset, in the fair twilight, the dogs barking before them, and everyone would have been surprised to know that Tom Vanrevel, instead of Mr. Crailey Gray, was the first to see her.
Vanrevel was ordinarily so steady and cool that this was worth seeing, this berserker gesture; worth hearing, this wonderful profanity, like Washington's one fit of cursing; and Crailey, knowing Tom, knew, too, that it had not come upon him because Carewe had a daughter into whose eyes Tom had looked; nor did he rage because he believed that Crailey's life and his were in the greater hazard for the lack of every drop of water that should have issued from the empty nozzle.
"There's not a man here to stand by your infernal doctrines. You sneer at your own State, you sneer at your own country, you defile the sacred ground! What are you, by the Almighty, who attack your native land in this, her hour of peril!" "Peril to my native land!" laughed Crailey. "From Santa Anna?"
To the vision of the lookers-on in Rouen, quiet souls who hovered along the walls at merry-makings and cheerfully counted themselves spectators at the play, Crailey Gray held the centre of the stage and was the chief comedian of the place.
"It's the poor vagabond that you loved so well." Together they ran through the hall to the library. Crailey was lying on the long sofa, his eyes closed, his head like a piece of carven marble, the gay uniform, in which he had tricked himself out so gallantly, open at the throat, and his white linen stained with a few little splotches of red.
Crailey emerged instantaneously from the general throng and mounted a chair, tossing his light hair back from his forehead, his eyes sparkling and happy. "You find your own friends already occupying the place you mentioned, do you, General?" he asked. General Trumble stamped and shook his fist. "You're a spawn of Aaron Burr!" he vociferated.
So, by degrees the firm of Gray & Vanrevel, young as it was, and in spite of the idle apprentice, had grown to be the most prosperous in the district. For this eminence Crailey was never accused of assuming the credit. Nor did he ever miss an opportunity of making known how much he owed to his partner. What he owed, in brief, was everything.
He and Virginia were the best of friends, and accepted their new relation with a preposterous lack of embarrassment. To be in love with Crailey became Fanchon's vocation; she spent all her time at it, and produced a blurred effect upon strangers.
Yet there was a mark upon him, never more vivid than as he sat waiting in the loneliness of that night for Tom Vanrevel; though what the mark was and what its significance might have been puzzling to define. Perhaps, after all, Fanchon Bareaud had described it best when she told Crailey one day, with a sudden hint of apprehensive tears, that he had a "look of fate."
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