Mr. Carewe produced a bank-bill about which the boy beheld a halo. Clearly this was his day; heaven showed its approval of his conduct by an outpouring of imperishable riches. And yet the oath misliked him; there was a savor of the demoniacal contract; still that was to be borne and the plunge taken, for there fluttered the huge sum before his dazzled eyes. He took a deep breath. “'God strike me dead' “—he began, slowly—“' if I ever '—”
“No. 'And condemn me to the everlasting flames of hell '—”
“Have I got to?”
“Yes.”—“'And condemn me to—to the everlasting flames of—of hell, if I ever tell!'”
He ran off, pale with the fear that he might grow up, take to drink and some day tell in his cups, but so resolved not to coquet with temptation that he went round a block to avoid the door of the Rouen House bar. Nevertheless, the note was in his hand and the fortune in his pocket.
And Mr. Carewe was safe. He knew that the boy would never tell, and he knew another thing, for he had read the Journal, though it came no more to his house: he knew that Tom Vanrevel wore his uniform that evening, and that, even in the dusk, the brass buttons on an officer's breast make a good mark for a gun steadied along the ledge of a window. As he entered the gates and went toward the house he glanced up at the window which overlooked his garden from the cupola.
CHAPTER XVIII. The Uniform
Crailey 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 the dusty office, where he had dreamed through many sun-sets in summers past, and now took his leave of this old habit of his in silence, with a long cigar, considering the chances largely against his ever seeing the sun go down behind the long wooden bridge at the foot of Main Street again.
The ruins of the warehouses had been removed, and the river was laid clear to his sight; it ran between brown banks like a river of rubies, and, at the wharf, the small evening steamboat, ugly and grim enough to behold from near by, lay pink and lovely in that broad glow, tooting imminent departure, although an hour might elapse before it would back into the current. The sun widened, clung briefly to the horizon, and dropped behind the low hills beyond the bottom lands; the stream grew purple, then took on a lustre of pearl as the stars came out, while rosy distances changed to misty blue; the chatter of the birds in the Main Street maples became quieter, and, through lessening little choruses of twittering, fell gradually to silence. And now the blue dusk crept on the town, and the corner drug-store window-lights threw mottled colors on the pavement. From the hall, outside the closed office-door, came the sound of quick, light footsteps; it was Crailey going out; but Tom only sighed to himself, and did not hail him. So these light footsteps of Crailey Gray echoed but a moment in the stairway and were heard no more.