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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/31372-8.txt b/31372-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0fe7d8b --- /dev/null +++ b/31372-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17554 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Crow, by Alice Brown + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Old Crow + +Author: Alice Brown + +Release Date: February 24, 2010 [EBook #31372] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CROW *** + + + + +Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + OLD CROW + + BY ALICE BROWN + + +New York +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY +1922 + +_All rights reserved_ + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. + +Copyright, 1922, +By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. + +Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1922. + + + + +OLD CROW + + + + +I + + +John Raven sat in the library of his shabby, yet dignified Boston house, +waiting for Richard Powell, his nephew, whom he had summoned for an +intimate talk. He was sitting by the fire making a pretense of reading +the evening paper, but really he was prefiguring the coming interview, +dreading it a good deal, and chiefly for the reason that there was an +argument to be presented, and for this he was insufficiently prepared, +and must be, however long it might be delayed. When he telephoned Dick +to come he was at last armed with a bold conviction of being able to +proffer a certain case to him (his own case, in fact); but, as these +last moments went on, he weakened sensibly in any hope he might have had +that Dick would be able to meet him from any illuminating viewpoint of +his own. This was mid-winter, two years after the end of the War, where +Dick and his uncle had worked in the Ambulance Corps to the limit of +their capacities--Dick, no soldier, because of what seemed to him a +diabolic eccentricity of imperfect sight, and Raven, blocked by what he +felt to be the negligible disability of age. John Raven had, with the +beginning of the War--which, as early as 1914 he had decided to be his +war--made up his mind that although he was over forty and of a business +training with inconsiderable excursions into literature, he wanted +nothing so much as to get into the thick of it and the rough of it, so +far as a man might who was past his physical best, and now he was back +again, more fit than when he went, but at this present moment breathless +at the realization that he had been up against life as it actually is, +and that he found it a brute business and hated it. And this was not so +much the horror of life in the field where, however the human heart +cried out against the argument of desecrated flesh, the spirit could +call mightily upon God, challenging Him to grant the chrism of +fulfilment in return for this wild sacrifice of blood, as the horror of +life when peace was exercising her rights in unbelievable ways. This he +was going to explain to Dick, if he could manage it, while he set forth +also his need of retreating from the active scene and leaving some of +his formerly accepted duties on Dick's shoulders. As he sat there, +gaunt, long, lean man, with a thin brown face and the eagle's look, a +fineness of aquiline curve that made him significant in a dominant type, +he fitted his room as the room fitted him. The house was old; nothing +had been changed in it since the year when, in his first-won prosperity, +he persuaded his mother up from the country and let her furnish it with +her shyly modest taste, a sense of values that bade her keep within the +boundary of the atmosphere she brought with her in good old pieces +tenderly used. The room was dim, even by day, from these shadows of the +brooding past, and the dull blue draperies at the windows, while they +touched it to a more inspiriting tone, still spoke softly of the repose +a man wanted when he escaped from the outer world to the assuagement of +silence and his books. + +To-night, when Raven had just about come to the conclusion that he could +not possibly enter upon certain things with Dick because, although Dick +elected to be a poet, there was no recognized form of words that would +make him understand, and he'd better telephone him to put the interview +off, he heard his voice in the hall, and, answering it, even breaking +over it, like bright bubbles of a vocal stream, the voice of the girl +they both loved, in ways becoming to their differences. Raven drew a +comfortable breath. The intimate conference with Dick would have to be +deferred, though he would quite as willingly have had Nan listen to it, +except for the chance of her carrying it away with her, in that +sympathetic tenderness of hers, to burden her young heart. Nan would +have made quick work of understanding. She translated you as you went, +and even ran ahead of you, in her haste, just as she sometimes cut in on +your speech, not rudely rebuking you for being too slow, but in her +eagerness to assure you she caught at the first toss. And then they came +in, she full of anticipatory delight at seeing Raven, and Dick so full +of her that he seemed not to know whether his uncle were there or not, +except as an habitual figure in the furnishing of the room. + +We must pause a dull minute, while they were projecting themselves into +the scene, to find out how they looked and whether they also fitted the +room and Raven. Nan, known to her larger world as Annette Hamilton, was +a tall, slim, yet muscular girl, graced with as many physical +contradictions as you are likely to imagine. While she stood for an +instant before, puppy-like, precipitating herself upon Raven, her eyes +crinkled up like Mary Seraskier's, and she showed a line of milk-white +teeth. Altogether nature--for she had only the most inconsiderable help +from art--had done her exceedingly well. She had the hurling +impetuosities of the puppy when she found herself anywhere near persons +familiarly dear to her; but, unlike the puppy, she was a thing of grace. +Her hands and slim arms had a girl's loveliest contours, and yet, hidden +somewhere under that satin flesh with its rose and silver lustre, were +muscles serviceably strong. Her eyes were grey like Athena's, her hair +fine and thick and pale, and her face altogether too irregular to talk +about reasonably. + +How is it possible to delineate Dick, even with all profuse generosity +of comment, without suggesting that he was not of the type to please +himself, or tagging him with a priggishness afar from him? He certainly +was not the sort of hero his dramatic poems described with a choppy +vigor of detail, and whom there is no doubt he would have chosen to +resemble. But nature had given him a slimness and an actual grace he +found, in his private self-scrutiny, almost girlish, nor could he wholly +outwit and supplement her by the athletic training he never intermitted. +Dick's face, too, he found much against him, being of a round solidity +with a nose too thick and a mouth a thought too small. How could such +despite have happened to him, he asked himself in moments of depression +when, confronting the mirror, he recognized the wrongs inheritance had +done him. But he knew. It was father's people, that was it. They were +all round and owlish, and they thickened up in middle life. If he could +have shared Uncle Jack's lean aquilinity, people would have looked at +him twice, as they did at Uncle Jack, which in itself would be a bore, +except that Nan also might look. Aware of these things and hiding them +in his soul, he held himself tight, shut his mouth close, and challenged +you with a spectacled eye, pinning you down as if to say: "I am born in +every particular as I didn't want to be, but take notice that I'll have +no light recognition of the hateful trick they did me. I am in training +for a husky fellow. I haven't let up on myself one instant since I found +out how horrible it was to be a good deal more of a fellow than I shall +ever look. I never shall let up. And don't you let me catch you letting +up either, in the way you treat me." + +Nan, to go back to the minute of their entrance, made a swift assault +upon Raven. In the old days when he was a youngish man and she a little +girl, a growing thing, elongating like Alice, she used to hurl herself +into his arms and insist on staying there. Her aunt, Miss Anne Hamilton, +who had brought her up from babyhood, was always detaching her from +Raven; but Nan clung as persistently. Raven would look at Miss Anne, +over the girl's rumpled silk poll, with whimsically imploring eyes. Why +couldn't Nan be allowed to break upon him like a salty, fragrant wave of +the sea, he seemed to ask Miss Anne, bringing all sorts of floating +richness, the outcrop of her fancies and affections? Aunt Anne would +return the glance with her sweet, immovable deprecation and go on +detaching, while Nan, with an equal obstinacy--though hers was +protesting, vocable, sometimes shrill to the point of anguish--stuck to +her self-assumed rights. It was Raven himself who involuntarily stepped +over to Aunt Anne's side and finished the detaching process. When Nan +came back after her first term at the seminary Aunt Anne preferred to +college, and was running to him with her challenge of welcome, he was +taken aback by the nymph-like grace and beauty of her, the poise of the +small head with its braided crown--the girls at the seminary told her +she might have been a Victorian by the way she wore her hair--and he +instinctively caught her arms, about to enwreath his neck, held her +still and looked at her. She could not know what vision, overwhelming in +its suddenness, she brought before him, of childhood gone and maidenhood +come and the sacredness of this new state. Aunt Anne knew and frowned a +little to herself, from her silent, savage jealousy, realizing, though +she would never, in her proud integrity, allow herself to think it, that +this hushed veneration of Raven's was worse than the old tumultuous +intercourse. What Raven really might have said was: + +"Darling, you're a woman and you're a beauty. You don't know it, but you +don't want to hug a jaded old reveler like me." + +He was not, by any means, a reveler. His life had been little more than +a series of walks to business. But those were the words that came to +him, catching her adorable freshness of body and mind, and determining +to keep it untouched by dusty old pantaloons such as he saw himself. Nan +stood for a minute paling out under his eyes, and then drew away from +him and left the room, her braid-crowned head high. She had to meet him +at dinner, and he knew she had cried and Aunt Anne knew it and was hard +on her over the little things she could reprove her for, in a silky, +affectionate way, and Raven's heart swelled until he thought they both +must know its congestion, and tried to put round it another bond of +quiet, kind affection. Since that time, Nan had never kissed him; but +now, this two months since the death of Aunt Anne, she had adopted a +greeting of her own. She put her hands on his arm and bent her forehead +for a minute to his shoulder. The first time she did it, he wanted to +kiss the bright hair, but forbade himself, and the second time he said, +he was so curious over it: + +"A rite?" + +She was ready with her answer. He suspected she must have thought it out +ingeniously beforehand. + +"It's because I'm sorry for you." + +"Sorry?" he repeated. + +"Yes," she said, "about Aunt Anne." + +Then he realized she was sorry because Aunt Anne was dead, and he was +more and more conscious of the unbecoming lightness and freedom where he +found himself at the death of Aunt Anne. He had not dared acknowledge it +to himself. He couldn't, for shame. But whereas, in the past years, when +he ventured to formulate his own life a little and see what it had done +to him and how he could go on meeting it, he had had a sense of +harassment and of being driven too hard, after Aunt Anne's death he +began to recognize the stillness of the space she had left behind. Now +to-day, before Nan had accomplished the little rite of the bowed head on +his shoulder, something queer about it seemed to strike Dick, and he +said to her: + +"He's your uncle, too, you know." + +Raven took this with composure, as signifying the length as well as the +depth of his adoptive relation toward her, but Nan met it with +resentment. She left him and turned upon Dick. + +"Now what," she said, "do you mean by that?" + +"Why, Nan," said the poor youth, keeping a stiff upper lip, because he +recognized the signs of an approaching squabble, "I've told him. I'll +tell him again. Jack, we're engaged." + +"We're nothing of the sort," said Nan, either in pure surprise or an +excellent simulation of it. + +Dick met this doggedly. + +"We are, too," he said. "You promised me." + +"Maybe I did," Nan yielded. "But it was that awful night when you were +going out. We won't talk about that. I'd have promised you anything +then. I'd have promised anybody, just as I'd have given 'em coffee or a +smoke. But when we got back and you expected to begin from there, didn't +I tell you to shut up? I've told you to ever since. And I believe," she +added, with an acumen that struck him in the center, "you're only +dragging it out now to catch me--before him." + +"I did shut up," said Dick, holding himself straight and using his mouth +tautly, "because your aunt was sick and then because she was worse. But +you needn't think I've shut up for good. Besides, it's only Jack I told. +He's nobody." + +"No," said Raven mildly, "I'm nobody. Only I wish you wouldn't come here +to fight. Why can't you get it over on the steps, and then act like +Christians after you come in?" + +Nan laughed. She was instantly and most obligingly sweet, as if wholly +bent on pleasing him. But Richard glowered. It was quite like her, he +thought, to sprinkle herself over with that May morning look of hers +when she knew she had the horrible advantage not only of being adorable +in herself, but a female to boot, within all the sanctities that still +do hedge the sex, however it behaves. + +"You see," said Nan maternally, "in France we were living at high +pressure. Now everything's different. We mustn't be silly. Run away, +Dick, just as I told you, and leave me to talk to Rookie." + +This was her name for Raven, saved over from childish days. + +"All right then," said Dick. "But I sha'n't wait for you. I shall go to +Cambridge." + +It was such an anticlimax of a threat, delivered in so determined a +voice, that he expected them to laugh, in a silly way they had of seeing +the merest foolishness always from the same angle. But, as he turned to +go, it was with the chill certainty that they had forgotten all about +him. Nan had settled herself by the fire and his uncle was bringing her +a footstool, an elderly attention, Dick floutingly thought, very well +suited to Aunt Anne, but pure silliness for a girl who flung herself +about all over the place. At any rate, he wasn't wanted, and he did go +to Cambridge and hunted up some of the fellows likely to talk sense; but +no sooner had he settled within their circle of geniality than he found +himself glooming over Nan and tempted to go back and break in on that +mysterious conclave. + +It was mysterious. Nan herself had made it so. Her face, on Dick's +going, had fallen into a grave repose, and she turned at once to Raven, +saying: + +"You see, Dick ran in on the way over here, and when he told me you'd +sent for him, I said I'd come along, because I'd got to see you instead. +Was that cheeky? I really have got to. Couldn't the other thing wait?" + +"Perfectly well," said Raven, with a ready cheerfulness he was aware she +could not understand. How should she? He had not been in the habit of +troubling Dick, or indeed any one, with his vaporings. He had lived, of +late years, as a sedate, middle-aged gentleman should, with no +implication of finding the world any less roseate than his hopes had +promised. As to Dick, the very sight of him had shown him beyond a doubt +how little disposed he was to take the lad into that area of tumultuous +discontent which was now his mind. "Fire away," he bade her. "You in +trouble, dear? You want patriarchal advice?" + +Nan might not have heard. She was looking, with a frowning gravity, into +the fire. How should she begin? He saw the question beating about in her +mind and hoped he could give her a lead. But she found the way for +herself. She turned to him with a sudden lovely smile. + +"Aunt Anne," she said, "has done something beautiful." + +He felt his heart shrinking within him as he combated the ungracious +feeling which, it seemed, would not down: that he was never to be done +with Aunt Anne's deeds, so often demanding, as they did, a reciprocal +action from him. What he wanted, he realized grimly, was to have his +cake and eat it, if he might use so homespun a simile for a woman who +had persistently lived for him and in him and then had made clear spaces +about him by going away in the dignity of death. He wanted to breathe in +the space she had left, and he also wanted to be spared the indecency of +recognizing his relief. But Nan, studying the fire persistently, to +allow his eyes all possible liberty of searching her face while she +generously avoided his, was going on in what was evidently a +preconceived task of breaking something to him. + +"Yes, she's done something beautiful, and done it for you." + +Raven's heart had shrunk so now that he wondered it could weigh so +heavily. How could a woman, his rebellious intelligence asked him, +manage to pursue a man with her benefits even from the grave? All his +grown-up life he had fought them, but still they hung about him him like +shackles. When he tore them off from one member--always wounding himself +only, and scrupulously sure of never, except by the inevitability of his +refusals, hurting her--they fastened on him somewhere else. When he was +under twenty--for he was fourteen years younger than she--had come the +question of her endowing him for the period of his apprenticeship to +literature, that he might write with a free mind. He had, tempting as +that was and safe as it seemed to his arrogant youth, found the decency +and prudence to refuse. He wondered now how he had been spared, saved +really by the prophetic gods from taking that guarantee, though he was +then so sure of his ability to justify the risk and pay it all back. +Perhaps his mother had helped him. She was a woman of rare sanity, and +though he could not remember her uttering a dissuading word, he was +sure, in the light of his own middle-aged vision, that she must have +been throwing the weight of her clear-mindedness into the scale. + +Then there was the question of a college course and of European travel: +those were among the colossal gifts Anne Hamilton had sought to lavish +on him. But again he had saved himself, accepting one thing only, a +benefit that must have hurt her heart like a stone, she was so bent on +his beautiful, bright aptitude at writing taking its place as soon as +possible, and with no dimming from a prosaic drudgery, in the world as +she knew it: the Boston world, the New England world, the court of +judgment that sits across the Atlantic. This benefit he asked for and +received, from her father: a clerk's place in the mills--Hamilton was a +wool magnate--and a chance to earn steady money for himself and his +mother, who was every year, in spite of her stout heart, slipping into +the weakness of the chronic invalid. Raven wrote his books at the fag +end of days given to his dull industry, and he succeeded in calling +attention to himself as a classical scholar, and then, as he impatiently +hit out with what he called pot-boilers in dialect, he got a popular +hearing and more money as well. All the time he was advancing in the +mills, and, as he advanced, he never failed to see before him the +flutter of Anne's discreet draperies or hear the click of her determined +heel. She never appeared in the business at all, but he was perfectly +sure there wasn't a preferment offered him by her father for which he +wasn't indebted to her manipulation of Hamilton in long, skillful hours +beforehand. Hamilton had no slightest idea he was being influenced, but, +as the years went on, he grew in appreciation of young Raven's business +abilities to such a degree that John, reading his mind like a familiar +tongue, wondered whether after all it was true, and he hadn't a genius +for the affairs of wool. Was he doing the thing that seemed so dull to +him with such mechanical and yet consummate cleverness that he was worth +all this unripe advancement, or was it indeed Anne's white hand that was +turning the wheel of power, her wand that was keeping the augmented +vision of him ever before her father's credulous eyes? But he could not +retard the wheels of his progress without making a fool of himself, and +by the time his sister had prosperously married and his mother had died, +he was a partner in the business, and then Hamilton also died and Raven +was asking Dick, hoping all the time he would refuse, if he wanted to +come in. Dick did refuse, with an instant hearty decision for which his +uncle inwardly blessed him. Raven had got so restive by this time over +the position he had himself won through Anne's generalship that he felt +the curse was going down through the family, and that Dick, if he should +come in, would wake up at forty-odd and find himself under the too heavy +shade of the Hamilton benevolence. + +"Not on your life," said Dick, when he was halfheartedly offered the +chance of battening on wool, "not while Mum's got the dough. There's +only one of me, and she's bound to keep me going." + +"You couldn't marry on it," said Raven. + +For that also Dick was cheerfully prepared. + +"By the time Nan's ready," he said, having at that point asked her +intermittently for several years, "I shall be getting barrelfuls out of +my plays." + +"'If,'" quoted Raven, "'Medina Sidonia had waited for the skin of the +bear that was not yet killed, he might have catched a great cold.'" + +"That's all right," said Dick. "You needn't worry, not till it begins to +worry me. The only thing that gets me is not pinning Nan down." + +"Yes," said Raven, "she's a difficult person to pin." + +And saying it, he had a vision of a bright butterfly with "dye-dusty +wings" in stiff, glass-covered brittleness. He wondered if marrying +might pin Nan down like that. + +Another thought troubled him a little: whether Dick had built even +obscurely in his own mind on the money Nan would have from Aunt Anne, +and the more modest sum she had now from her dead father and mother. He +concluded not. He hadn't got to worry about that. Dick had lived in the +atmosphere of money and he took its permanence for granted. + +But we are keeping Nan looking at the fire and trying to get her news +out adequately, waiting a long time for these explanatory excursions +into past history. Raven also was waiting, a good deal excited and +conscious of his apprehensive heart. And when she spoke, in a studied +quietude, he found the words were the very last he expected to hear: + +"I wanted to be the one to tell you. We've found her will." + + + + +II + + +They sat there silent for several minutes. Raven was keeping desperate +clutch on the inner self lashed by his hurrying heart, and telling it +there was no danger of his saying any of the things it was hounding him +on to say. He wanted to break out with an untempered violence: + +"Of course you've found it. And of course she's left a lot of it to me." + +He did not really believe that: only it so linked up with the chain of +her unceasing benevolences toward him that it seemed the only thing to +complete them adequately. And Nan, as if his premonition had prompted +her, too, was saying, after the minute she had left him to get his pace +even with hers, as if to assure him that, although she knew so much more +than he, she wouldn't hurry ahead: + +"Rookie, dear, she's left it all to you." + +Raven felt himself tighten up, every nerve and sinew of him, to do +something before it should be too late. He bent forward to her and said, +a sharp query: + +"Who found it?" + +"Why," said Nan, smiling as if she couldn't ask anything better, "I +found it, in a perfectly innocent looking envelope with some old deeds +and mortgages." + +"You haven't got it here, have you?" he pelted on. "You didn't bring it +with you?" + +His eyes interrogated her with his voice, and she shook her head, +wondering at him. + +"Nothing to you?" he asked sharply. "I'm the sole legatee?" + +"Oh, I have the house, of course," said Nan, "the one here and the place +at Wake Hill. She had those only for her lifetime, you know. Yes, you're +the sole legatee." + +"You haven't told anybody, have you?" he asked, in a despairing haste, +as if he were seeking about for ways to suppress the document. + +She broke into an amused giggle, the note he sometimes fancied she kept +for him alone. + +"Why, yes," she said, "of course I have. I telephoned Mr. Whitney, and +he was in a great state over it. He came round, and I gave it to him." + +"A lawyer!" said Raven, in disgust. "A damned accurate, +precedent-preaching lawyer! Well, the fat's in the fire now. What did +you have to be so confounded previous for?" + +Nan was smiling at him as if she found herself wiser than he. + +"You didn't think you could tear it up, did you, Rookie?" she inquired. +"You can't, you know, except in stories." + +"I don't know what I thought," he said. "Only I wish it hadn't been +done, that's all. It's a"--he ended blankly--"a mistake." + +She was looking at him now in a warm, sweet way, to tell him she +understood and thanked him. + +"You're afraid I sha'n't have enough," she said. "I shall. I'd ever so +much rather you had it, Rookie." + +"It isn't a question," said Raven curtly, in his disaffection, "of how +much you're worth. It's simply yours, that's all, and you've got to have +it. Well, I can refuse it, I suppose. Only that's so boorish. It drags +everybody out into the open. What made her! Oh, what made her!" + +"I think it's nice," said Nan comfortably. "It seems to make everything +so right. As to other people--why, it's telling them, don't you know, +you really were the one she cared most about, though she couldn't care +quite in the way you wanted her to." + +He sat staring at her. What did she mean? What had she made up, in her +adequate mind, about his relation to Aunt Anne? She couldn't know how he +had fought off the yearly increasing benefits Anne had showered him +with, unless indeed Anne had told her. And it wasn't like her. Anne was +dignity itself. She kept her own counsel. She took her stately course +without the least recognition that there were peculiarities in the pace +she kept or the road she chose. She had the unconscious arrogance of her +class, a class perhaps, except as surviving in individuals, almost +extinct. She never accounted for herself, because it could not have +forced its way into her mind, from birth to death, that there was +anything in her conduct save the inevitable best, as ordered as the +stars. So, Raven knew, she had probably never talked over his nebulous +relation with her to Nan; but he was suddenly alive with curiosity to +know. He couldn't coax Nan into betraying that confidence, but he was +nevertheless set on getting at it somehow. He wondered if it might be +decent to do it by direct attack. + +"Nan," said he, "just what was my relation to your Aunt Anne? What do +you assume it to have been?" + +She looked at him as if in reproach, a hurt pride flushing her cheek and +giving a sort of wounded appeal to her glance. + +"Why," she stumbled, "I know. Of course I know. Everybody did that heard +how long you'd been devoted to her." + +This gave him so sharp a pang that it might almost have seemed she had +been told off to avenge some of Aunt Anne's wrongs of omission suffered +at his hands. He had never been devoted to her, even with his decent +show of deference in return for the benefits he had to reject. And now +Nan was accusing him of having kept up the relation he had been all his +life repudiating, and since Aunt Anne was gone (in the pathetic immunity +that shuts the lips of the living as it does those of the dead), he +could not repudiate it any more. Nan was looking at him now in her +clear-eyed gravity, but still with that unconscious implication of there +being something in it all to hurt her personally. The words came as if +in spite of her, so impetuously that she might easily not have seen how +significant they were: + +"There's nothing to be ashamed of in not getting the woman you want, +especially with that reason. She adored you, Rookie. I know she did. And +it was pretty heroic in her to keep her mind fixed on all those years +between you. I wouldn't, I can tell you. Do you s'pose I'd let a matter +of fourteen years keep me from the only man? No, sir. Not me." + +They sat gazing at each other, she as self-willed as her words and he +abjectly afraid of her finding out. Why? He could not have told. But it +did seem as if he must protect Anne, in the shadows where she lived now, +from the flashing directness of this terrible young glance. It was all +he could do for her. It was bad enough to have Nan build up a beautiful +dream house of eternal love and renunciation. It was infinitely worse to +be the cause of her demolishing it. And as his eyes, in sheer terror of +leaving her to reflect any more astutely and productively on this, held +hers, and hers answered back, suddenly he saw a new knowledge dawn in +their clear depths. She had somehow read him, underneath his evasions. +She knew. And before she could turn that involuntary discovery of hers +over in her mind and blur it with some of the discretions he was trying +to maintain, she burst out, in the extremity of her wonder: + +"Good heavens! I don't believe it was so at all. You weren't in love +with her. She was with you, and that was the only way she----" Here she +saw the morass her crude candor was leading them both into, and stopped, +but not soon enough for him to miss the look of eager relief sprung into +her eyes. He turned from her and spoke roughly: + +"We don't know what we're talking about. Going into things now--why, +it's the merest folly. Haven't we enough to worry over in the matter of +the will? That's the thing we've got to meet next." + +She had now, he saw, the consciously sweet and warming smile she had for +him when she wanted to coax him into doing something or ignoring +something she had done. + +"I'm in hopes," she said, "you may feel differently after you've read +her letter." + +"Her letter?" he repeated, as if that were a superadded shock. "What +letter?" + +"It was in the envelope," said Nan soothingly, "with the will." + +"Who's it to?" + +He was a writer of English, but his extremity was such that only the +briefest slovenliness would serve. + +"To you," she said, unclasping her little bag and bringing it out, the +familiar superscription uppermost and the very size and texture of the +envelope so reminiscent of Anne's unchanging habits that he felt again +the pressure of her fine indomitable hand on his. + +"Have you," he asked bleakly, "shown that to Whitney?" + +"Why, no," said she, in a clear-eyed surprise. "Of course not. It's +addressed to you." + +She held it out to him and, after a perceptible pause, he took it from +her and sat holding it, looking over it into the fire, as if he saw his +fate there, or as if he should determine it for himself by tossing the +letter in, to be devoured. Then he became aware that Nan was gathering +herself up to go. It was rather a mental intimation than anything +tangible. She was tight furled, like all the women of that moment of +fashion, and had no flying draperies to collect. But he felt her +flitting and knew at the same instant that he could not lose her, since, +determined as he was to bar her out of the inner recesses of his +unfurnished mental prison, where he and the memory of Aunt Anne dwelt so +miserably together, it was still a comfort to keep her human presence +within call. + +"Don't go," he implored her, and she, surprised, settled back, saying: + +"No, of course not, if you don't want me to. I thought you'd like to +read it straight off. Wouldn't it be easier to read it alone?" + +"I don't know whether I can ever read it," said Raven, and then, seeing +what a great booby he must sound, he ended savagely: "I'll read it now." + +Nan took a paper-knife from the table and offered it to him. Evidently +she felt an unformulated tenderness there, a guess that if he tore it +open it would seem as if he were somehow tearing at Aunt Anne's vanished +and helpless delicacies. Then, as he did not accept the knife, or, +indeed, seem to see it, she took the letter from his hand, ran the blade +noiselessly under the flap, withdrew the folded sheets, and gave them to +him. Raven, with a little shake of the head, as if he were reminding +himself not to be a fool, opened the letter, fixed his attention on it +and, without looking up, hurried through the closely written pages. Nan +sat as still as an image of silence, and when he had done and she heard +him folding the sheets and putting them back into the envelope, she did +not look up. + +"Well," said he, his voice so harsh and dry that now she did glance at +him in a quick inquiry, "it's as bad as it can be. No, it couldn't very +well be worse." + +Harrying thoughts raced through her mind. Had Aunt Anne reproached him +for any friendliness unreturned, any old hurt time had never healed? No, +Aunt Anne was too effectually armored by an exquisite propriety. She +would have been too proud to make any egotistical demand for herself +during life. Assuredly she could not have done it after death. Raven may +have guessed what she was thinking. + +"No," he said, in the same tone of dry distaste. All at once it seemed +he could be definitely allowed to treat himself to a little wholesome +rebuttal of Anne and her ways. "It's nothing you could possibly imagine. +She leaves the money to me to be used for a certain purpose. She doesn't +leave it to any association of the people that think as she does, +because she doesn't absolutely trust them never to divert it into some +channel she wouldn't approve. She leaves it to me to administer because +I know precisely what she means and I'd feel bound to do it in her way +and no other." + +"But what is the purpose?" Nan asked him. She was thoroughly surprised +and very curious. "So it's for a cause. Aren't you glad, Rookie? A +minute ago you didn't want it. What is the cause?" + +"The cause," said Raven, with infinite distaste, as if it galled him +even to say it, "is the cause of Peace." + +"Good Lord!" said Nan breathlessly. "O my stars!" She thought of it a +moment, and he thought also, and then she gathered herself hopefully. +"But, Rookie dear, you believe in peace. You don't have to carry it out +in her way. You can carry it out in yours--and mine--and Dick's--we that +have seen things over there. Why, bless you, Rookie, it's a great idea. +It's a chance: Liberty enlightening the world! a big educational fund, +and you to administer it. Cheer up, Rookie dear. It's a chance." + +"Oh, no, it's not a chance," said Raven bitterly. "She's seen to that. +She's tied me up, hand and foot. It's got to be done in her way, the way +she'd been doing it herself since 1914." + +"The acutely sentimental?" asked Nan ruthlessly. Then the misery of his +face--a look, too, of mortification as if somebody had put him to public +shame--hurt her so that she spoke with an impetuous bitterness of her +own: "It was a cruel thing to do. Well, it was like her." + +Raven put in heavily: + +"She never meant to be cruel." + +"No," said Nan, "but the whole thing--all the things she had to do +with--came out of her being absolutely stupid and absolutely sure she +was right." + +Raven thought apathetically for a moment. His mind went plodding back +over the years of his acquaintance with Anne, as he had never meant it +should again. There had been moments, of late, when he wondered if he +need ever go back to that guiding hand of hers on his unresponsive life. +Of herself, he would have protested, he must have the decency to think. +Just now, recurring to that also, he wondered, with a grim amusement, +whether he had perhaps meant to set apart a day for it, say Thursdays +from ten to twelve, to think gratefully of Anne. But here he was again +at war with her, and the curious part of it seemed to be that he +couldn't undertake the warfare with the old, steady, hopeless +persistence he had got used to in their past; the mere thought of it had +roused him to a certain alarming wildness of revolt. + +"Well," he found himself saying to Nan, because there might be a +propriety in curbing her impetuous conclusions, "she had a way of being +right--conventionally, you might say." + +"Was she right about the War?" Nan threw back at him. + +"No," he felt obliged to own. + +"Is she right about this, trying to fetter you, hand and foot, against +what she knew you believed, and banking on your doing it because she's +crowded you and rushed you so many times and you've never failed her?" + +"Oh, yes," said Raven miserably, "I've failed her often enough." + +"But answer me that: was she right when she left you her money to do +this fool thing and give the world another kick down hill where the +sentimentalists are sending it? Now I ask you, Rookie, was she right?" + +"No," he owned again. + +"Then," said Nan triumphantly, "you mean she's right about teas and +dinners and women's clubs and old portraits and genealogy and believing +our family tree was the tree of life. That's what you mean, isn't it, +Rookie?" + +Raven looked at her, an unhappy smile dawning. He was moderately sure, +in his unspoken certainties, that this was what he did mean. She had +been the perfect product of a certain form of civilization, her +proprieties, her cruelties even--though, so civilized were they, they +seemed to rank only as spiritual necessities. + +"I'd rather see a monkey climbing our family tree," said Nan, with a +rash irrelevance she hoped might shock him into the reaction of a +wholesome disapproval, "than all those stiffs she used to hold up for me +to imitate." + +"Don't!" said Raven involuntarily. "It would hurt her like the mischief +to hear you say a thing like that." + +"Why, Rookie," said Nan, with a tenderness for him alone, he saw, not +for Aunt Anne, "you act as if she might be--in the room." She kept a +merciful restraint on herself there. She had almost said: "You act as if +you were afraid she might be in the room." + +He sat staring at her from under frowning brows. Was it possible, his +startled consciousness asked itself, that the spell of Anne's tenacity +of will had not lifted in the least and he did think she might be in the +room? Not to intimidate him: he had never feared her. He had been under +the yoke, not only of his decent gratitude, but his knowledge of the +frightful hurts he could deal her. He wondered what Nan would say if he +could tell her that, if he could paint for her the most awful hour in +his remembrance, more terrible even than that of seeing his mother +suffer under mortal disease, when Anne had actually given way before +him, the only time in her ordered life, and accused him of the cruelty +of not loving her. This had not been the thin passion of the family +portraits smiling down on them from her walls, but the terrible +nerve-destroying anguish of a woman scorned. That was one of the things +in his life he never allowed himself to think about; but it would, in +moments of physical weariness, come beating at the door. He would hear +it leave the threshold while he sat, hands clenched and lips shut tight, +and go prowling round the house, peering in at him through the windows, +bidding him waken and remember. And when he did find himself forced to +remember before he could get out of doors and walk or ride, it was +always with an incredulous amazement that he had, in that moment of her +downfall, found the courage to withstand her. When the implacable ghost +of remembrance flashed on his mind the picture of her, face wet with +streaming tears, hands outstretched to him--beautiful hands, the product +of five generations of idleness and care--why did he not meet her +passion with some decency of response, swear he did love her, and spend +the rest of his life in making good? Would a lifetime of dogged +endurance be too much for a man to give, to save all this inherited +delicacy of type from the ruin of knowing it had betrayed itself and was +delicate no more?--the keenest pang it could feel in a world made, to +that circumscribed, over-cultured intelligence, for the nurture of such +flowers of life. He felt, as he stood there looking despairingly upon +her, as if he had seen all the manufactured expensiveness of the world, +lustrous silks, bloom of velvet, filigreed jewels, in rags and ruin. Yet +there was more, and this it was that had brought enduring remorse to his +mind. It was pride. That was in ruins. If she had assaulted him with the +reproaches of an unfed passion, there would have been some savage +response of rebuttal in him, to save them both from this meager sort of +shame. But what could heal in a man's mind the vision of a woman's +murdered pride, as deep as the pride of queens, in the days when the +world itself bowed its neck for queens to set their feet on? Nan was +looking at him curiously. He became aware of it, and returned to himself +with a start. He must, he judged, have been acting queerly. It had never +happened before that he had been under other eyes when the vision rose +to plague him. + +"You've been such a long time without speaking," said Nan gently. "What +is it, Rookie dear?" + +He shook his head. His forehead was damp with the sweat of his renewed +remorses. + +"There's such a lot of things, Nan," he answered, "that can't be said." + +"Yes," she agreed, "that's true. Want me to go home?" + +He didn't want her to go home. He caught at her dear presence. Almost he +wished he might tell her how horrible it was, not only to repudiate +Anne's last request of him, but to feel he was repudiating it on the +heels of that other refusal years ago. + +"No, dear," he said, "not yet. I'll go with you when you must." + +"I don't believe," Nan ventured, "it's as bad as you think. She did do +some foolish things," she meditated, "these last years." + +"She did some hideous things," said Raven, "because they weren't normal. +They weren't decent. And so they weren't right." + +"Maybe I don't know so much as you do about them," said Nan. "You see +she was so furious with me for going to France----" + +"Oh, don't say she was furious," urged Raven, still out of that sense of +her being in the room. "It would hurt her so confoundedly." + +"Well, she was, you see," said Nan. "I thought you knew about it. But I +remember, you'd gone. And when I told her I was going over, she was +furious. Oh, she was, Rookie! You can't say anything else. I know Aunt +Anne." + +"But just cut out some of the adjectives," said Raven, still with that +sense of Anne's being in the room and the unsportsmanlike business of +putting her in her place when she could not, even from her place, defend +herself. "She never was furious. She simply didn't believe in war and +she wouldn't join any relief work and didn't want you to." + +"She wouldn't join any relief work," said Nan, relentlessly rehearsing. +"She said the most frightful things and said them publicly. She ought to +have been arrested, only they didn't take the trouble. She wasn't a +Quaker. There was nothing inbred to excuse her. We're decent folks, +Rookie, we Hamiltons. But she stood for non-resistance. She said Belgium +shouldn't have resisted, and England shouldn't have gone in, and France +shouldn't have lifted a finger or thrown a bomb, and when you told +her--that is, I told her--she was crazy, she said something awful." + +Raven was startled out of his determination to show no curiosity. + +"What did she say?" he asked. "What was it that was awful?" + +Nan seemed to have paled a little under the rose-leaf texture of her +cheek. + +"Why, you know," she said, "what they all come back to. Whatever they +believe, they come back to that. I don't see how they can. I couldn't, +it scares me so. They tell you what He said--Christ." + +Raven sat looking at her, wondering absently, in the unregarded depths +of his mind, how they could go on with a talk that was ploughing deeper +and deeper and yet could get nowhere in the end. For certainly they were +both mercifully bent on saving Anne, and Anne, under this shadow of her +latest past, herself would not let them. + +"She absolutely forbade my going to France," said Nan, this with no +special feeling, but as if she had dwelt on it until there was no +emotion left to put into it. "She said it was notoriety I wanted. I told +her I'd scrub floors over there, if they wanted me to. It proved I did, +too, you know. I did it remarkably well. And then she said she forbade +me, and I reminded her I was of age and had my own money. And I went." + +Raven nodded. He thought they had said enough, but Nan's calm +impartiality did rest him. It was something he could not himself attain. + +"And now," said Nan, "she wants you to keep on doing the fool things +she'd have done then, if they'd let her. She probably wants to get up a +big scheme of propaganda and put it into the schools. And every blessed +boy and girl in this country is to be taught not to serve the truth and +do his job but--safety first." + +"Yes," said Raven, drearily "I suppose that's about it." + +"But actually," said Nan, suddenly aware that he had not told her, "what +does she say? Does she specify? What does she say?" + +"She says," Raven answered, in a toneless voice, glancing at the letter +but making no movement toward sharing it with her more definitely, "that +her money is to build a Palace of Peace--she doesn't say where--for +lectures, demonstrations of the sort I know she approves, all the +activities possible in the lines she has been following--for the +doctrine of non-resistance and the consequent abolishment of war." + +Again he ended drearily. + +"Well," said Nan, "what are you going to do about it? going to spend +your life and the lives of a lot of more or less intelligent pacifists +teaching children to compute the number of movies they could go to for +the money spent on one battleship----" + +"But, good God, Nan!" Raven broke in, "you and I don't want to preach +war." + +"No," said Nan, "but we can't let Aunt Anne preach peace: not her brand, +as we've seen it. O Rookie! what's the use of taking the world as it +isn't? Why don't we see if we can't make something of the old thing as +it is and has been? and blest if I don't believe as it always will be?" + +Raven looked at her in a maze of interrogation. Was this the fragility +of girlhood speaking, or was it womanhood, old as time itself, with the +knowledge of good and evil? She answered the look. + +"No," she said, "I'm not a kid. Don't think it. I suppose it's because +I've seen--life." + +The pause before the last word, the drop on the word itself was not from +bitterness, he knew. But it was sad. + +"Well," he said irrepressibly, "you've seen life, and what do you think +of it?" + +She hesitated. Then she put out her hand and touched the petal of a +rose, one of a great dome of splendor in a bowl. + +"I like--roses," she said whimsically. + +She looked at him with that most moving look of a lovely face: the +knitted brows of rueful questioning, the smiling lips. Raven, staring +back at her, felt a sudden impulse to speak, to tell. It was the form of +her reply that invited him. + +"I don't believe, Nan," he said, "I even care about roses. I don't care +about the whole infernal scheme. That's what I sent for Dick for--to +tell him. Practically, you know I should have to tell Dick. And I +haven't done it and now I'm telling you." + + + + +III + + +Nan sat looking at him with an air of patient alertness, ready, he saw, +to meet what he had to say and do the best she could with it. He had an +irritated apprehension that, as her work through the last few years had +lain chiefly in meeting emergencies, so now he was an emergency. And as +Dick, poet though the inner circle of journalism had listed him, might +not understand in the least what he was driving at, so there was danger +of Nan's understanding too quickly and too much, with the resultant +embarrassment of thinking something could be done. And nothing could be +done beyond the palliatives he meant to allow himself. He would try her. +He might see how far she would insist on going with him along his dreary +way. What if she had Anne's over-developed and thwarted maternity of +helpfulness? What if she insisted on going all the way and never leaving +him to the blessed seclusion of his own soul? + +"You see, Nan," he adventured, "I'm sick of the whole show." + +She nodded. + +"Yes," she said, "I know. Coming back. Finding we aren't any better than +we were before we got frightened and said our prayers and promised God +if He'd stop the War we'd be different forever and ever, amen. That's +it, Rookie, isn't it?" + +"Why, yes," said Raven, staring at her, she seemed so accurate, +according to his own mental gauging, and so unmoved in her flippancy, +"that's pretty nearly it." + +She nodded at him again, whether to hearten him or to assure him of +their perfect unison he could not tell. + +"It was an awful jolt, wasn't it?" she inquired frankly. "You know, I +should think it might make some of them laugh, the ones they say observe +us from--where is it from? Mars? up in the heavens somewhere. It's like +reading a bitter sort of book. It is funny. Rookie, don't you think it's +funny?" + +Raven remembered a character in Mr. Owen Wister's "Virginian," the hen +crazed by her thwarted destiny. + +"Well," he said, quoting "The Virginian," "not so damned funny either. +But how the dickens did you know what I was going to say?" + +"Because it's what we've all come back to," said she, "and what +everybody that stayed at home feels, or ought to if they've got anything +inside their nuts. Just think, Rookie! we were like the great multitude +in the Bible, somewhere, praising God. We broke our idols and--I don't +know what we didn't do. And now we're not scared any more, we've set 'em +up again: same old idols. Rookie, I bet you the only reason we ever +sacrificed to God at all was because we thought He was the biggest joss +and things were so desperate and all, we'd better make a sure thing of +it. And now we think we aren't in any particular danger, seems as if the +little gods would do, same as they did before; and they're not so +expensive." + +"Goodness, Nan!" said Raven, "how naughty you are. You didn't use to run +on so." + +"I haven't talked very much to you," said Nan drily, "not since I grew +up." + +He knew it was true, and knew also that the reason was, if she had +allowed her lips to utter it, "Aunt Anne wouldn't let me." + +"But," she said, "I don't understand altogether. I know you're mad and +discouraged and all the rest of it. But I don't see what Dick has got to +do with it." + +"It's simply this," said Raven. "I'm going away." + +She looked at him in what seemed to be serious alarm. + +"Relief work?" she asked. "Reconstruction?" + +"No," said Raven. "I don't believe I should be any good to them. There +isn't a blamed thing I can do, so far as I see, except for what money +I've got. I'm no good, Nan. I shouldn't sell for my hide and horns. And +I hate the whole blamed show. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the system, +from the beasts that devour one another to the rest of us. And I'm +simply going to desert. I'm going to run away." + +"Where?" asked Nan. "You can't run away from the earth." + +"No," said Raven, "I can't jump off. So I'm going to do the next +convenient thing. I'm going up to Wake Hill and shovel snow with Jerry, +and maybe get into the woods and do some thinning out and, if I remember +anything about the millennium we've just shaved the edge of, just say to +myself there ain't a-going to be no millenium, so I can shut up." + +"You've taken advice, haven't you?" she concluded. "That's what they've +prescribed. I suppose it's all right." + +"Good God, no!" said Raven. "Do you think I've been to a doctor and +turned myself inside out? I'm going because Wake Hill is as far out of +the world as I can manage. If the whole earth hadn't gone crazy, I'd cut +stick for Tartary or some confounded place that isn't on the map. But +they're all on the map. There isn't an inch of ground that isn't under +some sort of moral searchlight. No, I'll be hanged if it's moral. It's +only the mites in the cheese getting busy and stirring up fermentation." + +Nan laughed out and then looked up at him in her rueful apology. + +"I couldn't help it," she said. "I thought of Dick, your telling him. +Dick's just got his book ready for the printer: Democracy, you know, in +three-legged verse. And they'll say it's full of insight and prophecy. +That's what they said about the other one: insight, prophecy! But Dick +won't have the least idea what you're driving at." + +"You see," said Raven, "he's thinking of doing some stiff work and +getting a degree: a sort of sop to his mother. She's as wild as a hawk, +you know, to get him to distinguish himself, doesn't much care how. I'd +meant to ask him to camp here with me this winter. I believe I did +actually ask him, now I think of it." + +"Yes, you did," said Nan. "It'll make a lot of difference to him, your +being away." + +"I don't think so," said Raven. "Anyhow, he'll have to get used to it, +especially as I'm not merely going away. I'm getting out, out of the +business and all." + +He was really surprising her now. She had grown up in the atmosphere of +belief in that particular business. When a Hamilton said his earthly +creed, he would have begun, if he had been honest, "I believe in wool." + +"You're not retiring?" she hesitated. + +"Yes." + +"Made your pile, Rookie?" + +At once they thought of Anne and the new complication she had saddled +him with. + +"That isn't the question," he evaded. "The amount of it is, I couldn't +go to the office every morning and come home and go the next day, +without--well, Nan, frankly, going off my nut. I hate it. I hate the +whole business of what we call civilized life. I even think of giving +Dick power of attorney and passing all my stuff over into his hands." + +"Oh, no," said Nan quickly, "you mustn't do that." + +He frowned at her, perplexedly. + +"Don't you trust him?" he asked. "Don't you trust Dick?" + +"Of course I trust Dick," said she impatiently, "his intentions, that +is." + +"You ought to," said Raven. "You're bound to, the man you're going to +marry." + +She kept her eyes on him, but she said nothing. And suddenly Raven +realized that he wanted to know about this business of marrying Dick. He +wanted to know tremendously. Yet, though this was the little Nan who +sometimes used to seem more his child than anybody's, he could not ask +her. She looked difficult, if not wayward. + +"Well," he compromised, "that's about where it is. I'm going into the +country, to get away from the clack of men. My income, all but the +little of it I set aside for food and taxes, will go to France. It may +go through Dick or it may----Oh, well, well," he added, seeing the +quick rebuttal again on her face, "that hasn't got to be decided in a +hurry. But ultimately it goes to France." + +"Why France?" asked Nan. "I see, though. They're all deserting her." + +"It isn't altogether that," said Raven, as if he hadn't finished +thinking it out. "It's because I believe in her so tremendously, that +quick intelligence of hers. She mustn't be downed, mustn't be kept +depleted. It's a loss too horrible to face. She sees the world as it is. +She knows the dangers. She's got to be protected from them, so she can +go on seeing." + +"What does she see?" asked Nan curiously. "What kind of thing?" + +"Everything. Life. When it comes to what the collective brain can do, +you can't limit her. You never'll make her believe in miracles, but she +can find out how they're done." + +"Mercy!" said Nan. "You talk like a book." + +"Notes, for an essay: 'France.' I've been thinking 'em out. How she +ought to be given a hand, so she doesn't have to spend the next thirty +years or so outwitting the German devil. That's hard sledding for her +beautiful intelligence. She ought to be safe, so she can turn it to +other things: the science of living, hers, ours, everybody's." + +"Ah," said Nan, "but they'll tell you it won't be for everybody: only +France." + +"That's the point," said Raven. "It's a gamble. But they can't deny +she's got the beautiful intelligence. I can trust anything so perfect. I +trust it absolutely." + +"Why don't we do it ourselves? Build a fire under us, Rookie. Come on!" + +"We aren't homogeneous," said Raven. "We've no race spirit, no live +nerve through the whole of us. France has. That mind of hers, that +leaping intelligence! If she were as holy as she is keen, she'd make the +world the poets dreamed of." + +"Then go to it," said Nan. "Turn in your money. I will mine. Stump you!" + +"Not yet," said Raven. "You sit tight and see how I come out. I haven't +got enough to set the Seine afire, but such as it is, I'd like to turn +it over to her for what she needs most: agriculture, schools, research. +Administered so it could be withdrawn if she didn't make good and turned +in somewhere else. Oh, it's a gamble! I told you it was. But +administered, mind you. That's the point." + +"Through Dick," she commented, plainly with dissatisfaction. "Now, why +Dick?" + +"Because," said Raven, "Dick's got a head for organizing. He's his +father over again, plus the Raven streak. And the Raven streak doesn't +do him any harm. It isn't soft, like Old Crow--and me. It's his mother +in him, and she takes back--but O Lord! what's the sense of going into +that?" + +"Anyhow," said Nan, with decision, "you keep your affairs in your own +hands." + +"For the present, yes," said Raven. "And I do want to think it out in +detail. I can do it at Wake Hill. I shall get on my pins enough for +that." + +"Isn't it funny?" said she. "Aunt Anne with her Palace of Peace and you +with your invincible France. But, Rookie, you hear to me. Whatever you +do with your own money, you do it your own way. Don't be a slacker." + +Raven sat looking at her, a slow smile dawning. He rather liked Nan's +taking him in hand. + +"That's it, is it?" he asked, with a relish she was glad to see. "A +slacker! so be it. If I'm a slacker, I am. I'm a conscientious objector. +What I object to is the universe, the pattern it's made on. I object to +the way we're running it, and, being made as we are, I don't see how we +can be expected to do anything but what we're doing. It's a perfectly +logical proposition. And except for a few minor chores I've got to see +to, I simply won't play." + +Nan was thinking. She looked down at her hands, lying in her lap. Raven +looked at them also and wondered, as he often had, since they came home, +how such hands could have done the tasks she set them to. She looked up +and met his eyes gravely with something imperative in hers. It is a way +women have sometimes. They seem to be calling on the boy in man and +bidding him take heed. + +"I wouldn't," said she, "talk to Dick about going to Wake Hill." + +"What would you do? Cut stick, and let him wonder what in the deuce it's +all about?" + +"I wouldn't talk; I'd write." + +"Oh, write!--what's the difference?" + +"If you talk, he'll say something that'll shut you up and you'll be just +as far apart as you are to-day. If you write, you can tell him as much +as you want to and no more. And the first thing he'll do will be to +bring the letter to me." + +"I see," said Raven. "And you'll interpret." + +"I'll interpret. I can, Rookie. I know you, don't I? and I know Dick." + +"You ought to," said Raven rashly again because he was again curious, +"the man you're going to marry." + +"Yes," said Nan calmly, rising, "the man I'm going to marry. Only"--her +face, as she turned it to him, brimmed over with a childish sort of +fun--"don't tell him that, Rookie. It's perfectly true I haven't +promised him. And I don't mean to--yet." + +"Quite right," said Raven, rising. He felt a distinct relief. He, too, +wanted to see what Dick would make of himself. "You do your own +telling." + +"There he is," said Nan, "just as it is in a play. We've got to a climax +and he comes in at the door. But, Rookie----" She stopped, for Dick was +nearing in the hall, and Raven knew what she would have said. It was in +both their minds. They hadn't finished their talk. It had merely strayed +into another channel, or bolted and run away there. Aunt Anne's money +and her Palace of Peace still stared them in the face. Dick put his head +in at the door. He looked rather sheepish, as if his dignified going had +been invalidated by this impetuous coming back, as if he couldn't live +without Nan and she was bound to see through it. + +"Well?" he said gruffly. "Talked out?" + +They both laughed, with the sudden absurdity of it. How should they, +their eyes questioned each other, ever be talked out, what with Aunt +Anne and the universe and France? + +"Absolutely," said Nan. "Good night, Rookie. Going to write your letter? +Come on, Dick." + + + + +IV + + +Raven sat down at the table and began his letter. He was wrestling with +it at once, to give himself no time to argue over the point of its being +no ordinary letter such as he had been accustomed to write to Dick. He +began with the succinct statement of what he meant to do. He had made +all his arrangements for getting out of the business. They could be +concluded in short order. As to the business itself, he had no complaint +to make. The old man--he permitted himself this indulgence as he never +could have in Anne's lifetime, as touching her father--the old man had +been square all through. He was as good as they make 'em. But there was +nothing for him, Raven, in the concern except its cumulative capacity +for making money. He'd no traditional pride in it, as the old man had. +He'd worked for all he was worth, to squeeze every drop he could out of +it so that his mother--"your grandmother, you know, Dick"--might have +every last luxury she wanted. Well, she'd had 'em, though one of the +ironical things about it was that she didn't want so very many, and he +needn't have worked so hard or so long. However, that's neither here nor +there. What's done is done. The War's done--they say--and the thing that +would please Raven best would be----Here he brought up with a full stop. +He was running into dangerous revelations, going back to a previous +state of mind, one he had begun cherishing as soon as his mother died, +and even caressed, with a sort of denied passion, when Anne also died, +and he felt so shamefacedly free. All his life he had wanted to wander, +to explore, to bruise himself against the earth and pick himself up and +go on and get bruised again. He loved the earth, he wanted her, in her +magnificence and cruelty, wanted to write about her, and make the +portrait of her for stay-at-homes who weren't adventurous and were +content with reading about her in the blank moments after the office +grind. Yet he was a stay-at-home himself. Why? in God's name why? + +He asked himself the question, as he sat with lifted pen, almost the +words dropping off it, to tell Dick the things it would be simply +disconcerting to know. Raven saw, with a sad clearness, why he hadn't +written the books he wanted to about the earth. They would have been +rough books, full of rock and clay and the tumbling of rivers and +thunder grumbling in the clouds. If he had been really afraid of Anne +and her ordered ambitions for him, he could have printed them under an +assumed name. She need never have known at all. They wouldn't have been +the books he could have written if he had been foot-loose and gone +blundering along in strange trails over the earth, but they might have +held something of the sort his inner man wanted to fashion. And if the +secret of them had been kept, they needn't have interfered with his smug +little folk stories Anne and her women's clubs prized so much. Had he +been actually afraid of Anne? Was he one of the men who are shamefully +under the feminine finger, subject to mother, subject to wife, without +the nerve--scarcely the wish, indeed--to break away? He was not afraid +of his mother, or, if he had been, it was the fear of hurting her who +had been so hurt already. Ever since he could remember, he saw himself, +even as a little boy, trying to get her away from his father who had a +positive cast of mind, a perfect certainty of being right and a +confirmed belief that robust measures always were the thing. If you did +wrong, you were to be punished, promptly and effectually. If you were +afraid of the dark, and came downstairs in your nightgown upon the +family sitting by the lamp, you were whaled for it, to teach you there +was something worse than bed even in the dark. If you said your head +ached and you couldn't eat bacon and greens, which father elected to +consider a normal dish, you were made to eat a lot with no matter what +dire result, because there wasn't a physical ill which couldn't be +mended by treating it robustly. He was God. He knew. And he was +perfectly well and had never once for half a minute entered into those +disordered cells of bodily ill where the atom cries to its Creator in an +anguish of bewilderment and pain. And when his body met the fate +appointed for its destruction, as all bodies must, and he was brought +home broken after the runaway that made him a thing almost too terrible +to look upon, except by eyes so full of compassion that they love the +more, Raven, then a very little John, found himself wondering how it +seemed to father now. Even runaways, father had appeared to think, could +always be governed, if you kept your head. + +They never knew what he thought. He died quickly, under opiates, and +John believed his mother was so thankful for the merciful haste of it +that she could not, until long after, recall herself to mourn. And she +did honestly mourn. The little John was glad of that. So ill and tired +had she been for years and yet so bound upon the rack of her husband's +Spartan theories for her, that John thought he could not have borne it +if she had not adored her righteous tormentor, if she had had to look on +him as her master, not her lord by love. It seemed to him he was always +mourning over his mother, in those days, always lying awake and +wondering if she were awake, too, always trying to save her from some +task too heavy for her and too heavy for him also, so that, if she were +to be saved, it had to be by stratagem. But stratagem was difficult in +that house, because his older sister, who became Dick's mother, was of +her father's temperament, always perfectly well and also an inferior god +who knew at every point what to do, and she had not merely imbibed +father's certainty that the only thing mother needed was to take a +brace: she had it by nature. And when, father being gone to heaven--and +John, young John now, not little any more, made no doubt he had gone, it +pleased mother so to say it and be obligingly agreed with--Amelia, his +sister, took her departure, on the night of her marriage with a very +prosperous Mr. Powell, for the middle west, John Raven, then beginning +his apprenticeship to wool, danced a fantastic fling in the sitting-room +where the wedding gifts still lay displayed and whooped with emotion at +last let loose. His mother, in the gray silk and commendable lace Amelia +had selected and he had paid for, did smile unwillingly, but she spoke +to him in the reproving tone which was the limit of severity his boyhood +had known from her and which he had learned, in those earliest days, +meant nothing at all: + +"I'd be ashamed! Any one would think you were glad your sister had +gone!" + +John did not say he was glad. He knew too much to stir up loyal +reactions in mother's conscience. He simply wove a dance of intricate +mazes about her, as she sat in her chair, and his inner mind was one +pæan of thanksgiving to God, not the spurious gods who had been his +father and sister, but the mysterious Deity who had, for obscure +purposes, called them into being, because now John had at last full +swing and could let mother out of bondage. What difference did it make +that he wasn't trekking through darkest Africa or being hunted by the +jungle in India, so long as mother was out of bondage? He even took his +allegiance to Anne rather lightly, those first years, he was so +absent-minded about everything but hypnotising mother into thinking she +was going to be very happy and live a long time doing it. And that was +the part of his life when there seemed to be a great deal of it, and if +he didn't have a thing now there would be plenty of chances to snatch at +it later. He had simply been eaten up, the energy of him, the will, +perhaps, by compassion. And then his mother had died and he knew he +could have done no more for her than he had done, and while he was +turning round to look about him--and ah! in that lean year came Anne's +horrible accusation that he did not love her!--the War broke out, and he +felt himself shocked into action. The very atoms of his body seemed to +fall asunder and rearrange themselves and, as soon as he could decently +get away, without throwing the bewilderment of the business on Anne, he +had gone, and he had never seen her again. + +He had written to her faithfully, and with the compassion that was +either natally or by the habit of life a part of him, but he had not +obeyed her. For she begged him, almost, at intervals, commanded him, to +return to work with her for the peace of mankind. At first he tried to +explain himself and assuage her grief over what she called his desertion +of their common ideals. He answered the arguments in the letters that +had become a misery to him to receive as his had become an inexpressible +burden to write. Finally, with a wrench to himself, he ceased, and, with +infinite pains, compiled data that might interest without offending her. +The letters continued, but as soon as he found she was sending him +abstractions valueless because they had no roots in the living issues of +things, he had to stop. That, not her death, had been their lasting +farewell. + +What, in the name of all that was mysterious, he reflected, had made +Anne--and so early--assume the burden of an unasked allegiance to him? +His family and hers had been next-door neighbors at Wake Hill, but on no +equality of worldly footing. The Hamiltons, thriving on wool, had been +able to buy for themselves all the picturesque luxuries of civilized +life. Their women toiled not. Their delicate air was the product of +tuition in dainty ways. Their men had acquired the unconscious pose of +dominance, of knowing what was their due and expecting to get it without +argument. Sometimes up there at Wake Hill they did receive a +disconcerting knock or two from some "embattled farmer" whom they called +"my man," and who didn't like the sound of it. But the answering rebuff +never penetrated the fine mail of their acquired arrogance. It meant, +they smilingly said, "New England," and tolerantly passed it by. Raven's +people were of a different stripe, "brainy," he thought with an unspoken +pride of his own, yet deficient in a certain practical quality of taking +the world "but as the world," and consequently always poor. Their ways +were rougher ways. Their women had to work to trim the edges of their +plainer surroundings with the alleviating prettinesses the Hamiltons +cast aside with every changing style. And Anne, coming home from Europe +one summer, where she had not only seen wonder and beauty, already +familiar to her--for she was a young lady then--and where he knew she +had met men and women whose names were trumpet calls in his +ears--singled him out, in his shyness and obscurity, and offered him the +key to the fulfilment of his dreams. Education, travel, the life of +books--all were in her hand, the potential fruit of her father's doting +affection for her, and all were to be his. What could have inspired her +with so wholesale and fantastic a philanthropy? He could never +adequately guess, and he was no nearer doing it now than in the old +bewildering days when the Hesperidean apples were dropping over him and +he was, from some shy instinct, dodging to avoid them. And the reason he +had never guessed and never could guess was that he left out of all the +data at his hand the one first moving factor: that he was a beautiful +youth and Anne had imperiously loved him and had never ceased to love. + +As he sat there, the pen lifted, his mind going back over the things +that had led him away from adventure into wool, and were now leading him +as far from wool as might be, he was tempted. What if, in spite of Nan, +he should risk it and tell Dick, once for all, why he was going away, +make it clear so there should be no after-persuasions, no clutter of +half understanding? He was tired of thinking about his life as a life. +The temptation to such morose musing had come upon him in the last six +months, and once yielded to, he felt the egotistical disease of it +through his very blood and bones. If he were Catholic, he could confess +and get rid of it. He was not Catholic, only pagan, the natural man. The +Church had a wisdom of her own. All her rites and ceremonies found their +root in something salutary for the human mind. Confession was salutary. +You might not be absolved, but if you were pagan you could believe that +the very act of it absolved you. Nan said Dick never would understand. +So much the better. Let him carry off the burden of it. If he +understood, he'd see the extreme sacredness of a confidence entrusted to +him. If he didn't, he'd hide it as a thing you'd better say as little +about as possible. So he tucked his first letter into its envelope and +began to write again, with no date and no direct address, but from a +sense that it was going to be an enormously comforting thing to do. + + + + +V + + +"I think I'll tell you the real reason why I'm going to Wake Hill. I've +told you I'm going, but just as my nerves move the muscles that move my +legs to go, so my will moves my nerves and the me that is inside +somewhere and is a perfect stranger to you--and also to the me I am used +to myself--moves my will. You see, the me inside me knows there's +something wrong. Something mighty bad--or it may be merely +inevitable--has happened to me. I went through the War all right, on a +pretty even keel, because I thought I saw a bright light at the end. I +thought we all saw the light. And the light wasn't any electric +signboard out to say there never would be any more wars, but it was a +light you could see to read by. You could see the stars and see them +differently from the old way we'd been seeing them. We could see the +moon and the Milky Way--but I suppose that comes under stars--and the +upshot of it was that we thought we saw God. And after you'd seen God, +you knew saying there shouldn't be any more war was only beginning at +the wrong end of the puzzle. Of course war is a damnable business, +perhaps the most damnable we go into because it's so wholesale. But if +you begin at the right end of the puzzle and not the wrong, the thing we +learn is that the only reality in this universe for which it's worth +going through the obscene hells of which war is one, is God. To be aware +of Him, not to explain Him. You can't explain Him. You can't explain +what He's done to you or means to do. All you can do is to keep your eye +on Him and fall in. + +"I came home. I was rather cracked, when I got here, I was so pleased +with my little plaything. I'd seen God. I was only one of a good many +millions that saw Him. And it was exactly as if you went into an +enchanter's cave and expected to find some dream you'd dreamed made +real, and all you found was the Forty Thieves sitting there counting +over their spoils. No! no! it isn't an allegory. I don't mean America +and profiteers. I don't mean anybody particularly. But it began to come +over me more and more every day that we and everybody else on the round +world, if they had seen God, had forgotten all about it. Just as the +old-fashioned men at Wake Hill used to read their Bible Sunday and put +it away on the parlor table with the album and go out early Monday +morning to carry the apples to market all deaconed on top. By George! we +were the same old lot. And worse, for we'd had our look through the +peep-hole into eternities, and now we said, 'It makes my eyes ache. I'm +going to wear a shade.' No, son, I don't mean Leagues of Nations and +Internationalism or any of the quack remedies. I mean just God. We'd +been badly scared--Nan said so to-day--and we got down on our knees and +howled to the Highest and offered Him tribute. + +"Now you may say that even if the whole world had forgotten God, if I'd +seen Him why couldn't I still remember Him? Why couldn't I consider the +millions of years that go to the making of man and do my little bit and +wait on His will? Because my temptation came on me. I was tempted in the +wilderness of my own credulity and conceit. For I looked back over time +past and I said like Solomon--I don't know whether he ever said it, but +he's the most blasé Johnnie I remember--'All is vanity.' As it was in +the beginning, so it ever shall be. We are not made in the image of God. +We are made rather grotesquely out of dust, and to dust we shall return, +all our hopes, all our aspirations, all the pretty plans we form for +defeating death and time. And who made us and put us on this dark planet +where it is next to impossible to see a step before us? God. Who is +responsible for us? God. Can we find out His will? Never. Can we hope +for any alleviation of misery on our dark planet? Never: for if we seek +out many inventions to down disease and poverty, we shall unloose as +many by-products of discovery and bring new plagues upon us. And so I +had to turn away from God. Do you see? I didn't deny He exists. I didn't +accuse Him of bad faith to us. How can He show either good faith or bad +when He has made us no promises? He has merely set us on the dark planet +and forced us to whirl with it on the wheel of time. And so, do you see, +having turned away from God--and I had to, I had to in mere honesty--I +simply lost Him. And having lost Him, there is nothing left to lose. +Also, having once seen Him and then lost Him, I can't take up the puzzle +again. I can't play the game. If I hadn't what we New Englanders call +common sense, I suppose I should put an end to myself. What would be the +good? He would simply catch me, like a rabbit out of a cage, and chuck +me back again on the dark planet. Don't think I blame Him. He wouldn't +do it out of cruelty. He'd have to put me back. That's the way His laws +are made. So I'm going up to Wake Hill and live with Charlotte and +Jerry, and see if I can't get tired enough every day to sleep at night. +I couldn't keep on here. I couldn't. What we call civilization is too +sickening to me. I should simply go off my nut. And when you come to +that, it's an awful complication, besides the suffering of it. That I +shrink from, too. I'm talking a good deal, but actually it's the thing I +least want to do. I don't want a fuss." + +Here he paused, wondered if he had more to say, thinking Dick must be +unusually dull, even for a poet, if he couldn't understand such a plain +state of things, and then took an irrational satisfaction in carefully +folding these last pages and putting them in the envelope with what he +had written first. He addressed the envelope to Dick, sealed and weighed +it, got up and stretched himself and felt distinctly better. He had, in +a way, confessed, and it was having the effect on him he had so sagely +anticipated. He could sleep to-night. And he did sleep. It was one of +the nights he used to have after long tramps about Wake Hill, when his +tired legs thrilled deliciously before they sank into a swoon of +nothingness. + +In the morning, he leaped the chasm from four to six, a wakeful misery +of late, when he was accustomed to go over and over the last harassing +pages in his book of doubts. He did not wake until seven, and then it +was with a clear-eyed resumption of consciousness. And here he was, +exactly as he had found himself on other mornings when the bath of +oblivion had not been so deep. Here was his world, the world he was +trying to run away from, waiting for him in all its ordered hostilities. +Immediately it struck him full in the center that, instead of having +something less to brood upon by reason of his confession to Dick, he had +saddled himself with more. He had the letter itself to repent of. He had +given, not his unhappiness but his actual self away, and, no matter how +clearly Dick understood, he had conjured up another anguish in admitting +to his disordered inner world the lenses of another mind. This was only +a matter of a second's disconcerting thought. It was also immediately +clear to him that the letter must not go, and he spoke from his bedside +to the kitchen and gave orders that nothing should be mailed until he +came down. A contrite voice replied. The letters were mailed: that is, +the thick one on the library table. Mary had gone in last night to lock +the windows, and saw it, and knew he had forgotten to leave it in the +hall. He often did forget. It was stamped and sealed. And the furnace +man came then. Raven thought he might, in another minute, be groaning +into her sympathetic ear; so he shut her up with an assurance that it +was all right. But he felt the sweat start on his forehead at the +picture of Dick sitting down to breakfast--Dick always ordered a big +breakfast, having a hunter's appetite and a general impression that, the +more he nourished himself, the more manly it would make his nose--and +poring over the fable of his uncle's soul, or what seemed to be his +soul, with eyes strained to their limit of credulity. However, it was of +no use. Nothing was of any use when destiny had one of those ironic fits +of hers and sat down to make a caricature of you, just for the fun of +bursting her old sides over it. He dressed in a dogged haste, wondering +if he'd better telephone Dick and ask him not to open any letter he +might have from him that morning, and then dismissing it, because it had +assuredly been received and Dick was now absorbing it with his chops and +eggs. + +Raven went down to his own eggs in a grim and sulky frame of mind. He +would repudiate the letter, if need be, tell Dick it was only something +he had written as a literary experiment and thought he'd try it on the +dog. But the moment he heard the boy's key in the door and then his step +through the hall, he knew he could not, for some unexplained reason +inherent in his own frame of mind, "put it over." It was as if Dick +represented the universe Raven was arraigning, was counsel for it, so to +speak, and Raven had got, in sheer decency of honor, to stand to his +guns. But it was all worse than he thought. Dick's entrance was so +quick, his onslaught so unstudied, his glance so full of alarmed +commiseration, that Raven saw at once he had been shocked out of all +manly proprieties. Dick caught at a chair, on the way to the table, +brought it with him and, placing it at a near angle to Raven's, dropped +into it as if exhausted. + +"I'd no idea," he began, "why, I'd no more idea----" + +Raven's hand tightened on his fork. Then he laid the fork down, for, +after all, he had finished breakfast, and might as well make the most of +running his hands into his pockets and shutting them there. + +"Morning, Dick," he said. "Have in some toast and eggs?" + +Dick, in no mind even to weigh the significance of toast and eggs, was +staring at him. He was cheated by a poverty of words when he most needed +them, and could only repeat: + +"I hadn't the least idea. I tell you it never occurred to me. I don't +believe it did to Nan, either." + +"What?" asked Raven. "What is it that didn't occur to you?" + +"I did think of it when you first spoke of going to France, you know," +said Dick, in a justification of himself that seemed more for his own +ease than Raven's. "I didn't believe you could pull it off, a man of +your years. You took it so easy! You never turned a hair. But I might +have known you'd have to pay for it afterward." + +"What is it I've taken so admirably?" asked Raven. "What is it I've got +to pay for?" + +"Why," said Dick, "your slogging over there--a man of your age----" + +"Well," said Raven curtly, cracking his voice at him in a way Dick had +never had to take from him, "how is it I'm paying? What's the matter +with me?" + +"Why," said Dick, in a perfect innocence of any offense in it, "don't +you know? You've seen enough of it. I should think you'd be the first to +know." + +Raven simply looked at him. Dick had a feeling that his uncle was about +to roar out something, and braced himself for the unbelievable event. +However, it would not surprise him. That, he knew, was a part of it. But +Raven was putting his question again, smoothly and tolerantly, as if to +assure him there was time enough to make a well considered reply: + +"Just what, in your opinion, is the matter with me?" + +"Why," said Dick, that innocent gaze still upon him, "shell shock." + +Raven jumped. Every nerve in him seemed to give a little twitch of pure +surprise with every other. + +"O Lord!" said he. "Who could ever have expected that? It's worse than I +thought." + +"Why, it's no disgrace," Dick assured him eagerly. "Think how many +fellows have had it. They haven't got over it. They're having it now. +The only thing to do is to recognize it and put yourself under +treatment." + +"That'll do," said Raven, with a determined calm. "Your diagnosis has +gone far enough. And now I shall have to ask you to do two things for +me." + +"Two!" Dick echoed, and Raven, though at the end of his patience, was +touched to see the suffused look of the boy's eyes. "You needn't cut it +down to two. Just you tell me----" + +There, though he was poetically eloquent and diffuse in print, he +stopped and could literally say no more without an emotion he considered +unworthy of him. + +"Two things," said Raven. "One is to forget every blamed word of the +screed I was jackass enough to send you. The other is to give me your +word you won't mention it, even to me. Oh, there's another thing. Go +home and burn the thing up." + +Dick's eyes were all a wild apprehension. + +"Oh," said he, "I can't burn it. I haven't got it." + +"You haven't it? Who has?" + +"Nobody--not yet." + +"Oh, then you've destroyed it already." + +"No," said Dick miserably. "I've sent it off." + +"Who to? Nan?" + +"No. Mother." + +Raven could hardly believe him. He did not remember any illuminating +confidences from Dick on the subject of mother, but he made no doubt the +boy looked upon her as he did, as a force too eccentrically +irresponsible to be unloosed. + +"Well!" he said. The state of things struck him as too bad to be taken +otherwise than calmly. You couldn't spend on it the amount of emotion it +deserved, so you might as well get the credit with yourself and your +antagonist of an attack unexpectedly gentle. "Now, what did you think +you were doing when you sent it off to your mother?" + +"Uncle Jack," said Dick, rather awkwardly blundering about his mental +armory for some reasonable defense, "she's your sister." + +"Yes," said Raven, "Milly is my sister. What then?" + +"Then, why, then," said Dick, "when a thing like this happens to you, +she'd feel it, wouldn't she?" + +"You're perfectly sure you know what has happened to me? You trust your +own diagnosis?" + +"Of course I trust it," Dick burst forth. "Your letter--why, your letter +isn't normal. Shell shock's a perfectly legitimate thing. You know it +is. You're just the one to be hit. You did perfectly crazy things over +there, entirely beyond any man of your years. And I'm mighty thankful we +can put our finger on it. For if it isn't shell shock, it's something +worse." + +"You mean," said Raven, "I've gone off my nut." + +Dick did not answer, but there could be no doubt of his own mental +excitement, and he was apprehensive in a measure that moved Raven to an +amused compassion. Raven sat looking at him a long minute. Then he got +up and took his newspaper from the table beside him. + +"Come," he said. "We'll go into the library and see if we can get +anywhere." + +Dick followed him, and they sat down together by the fire, this after +Raven had moved a third chair into the space between them. He smiled at +himself as he did it. It was the chair Nan had sat in the night before. +He had a foolish feeling that he was invoking her remembered presence, +calling on her to help them out. + +"Now, Dick," he began, when they were seated, "you said something about +my letter's not being normal. What is normal, when you come to that?" + +Dick frowned into the fire. This, he felt, had some hidden leading, and +he wasn't going to be caught. + +"What's the use of asking fool questions?" he inquired, in his turn. +"You know." + +"Can't help it," said Raven. "I've got to be Socratic. Help me out, old +man. Let me have my little game. What is normal?" + +"Why," said Dick, floundering, "I suppose it's what the general run of +people think--and do. It's keeping to the rules. It's trotting on the +course. It isn't going off at some tangent of your own." + +Dick felt rather proud of this, its fluency and general appositeness. He +plucked up his spirits, thinking he might be going to manage Raven, +after all. + +"Now, see here," said Raven, suddenly leaning forward and looking at him +in the friendliest community of feeling, "it means a good deal when a +fellow of my years, as you say, gets a biff that sends him staggering." + +"Just what I said," Dick assured him. "It's mighty serious. It's awful." + +"Has it occurred to you," said Raven, "that I may be right?" + +"Right? How right?" + +Thereupon question and answer piled up fast. + +"I've indicted the universe, as it were. How can you prove the universe +hasn't laid herself open to it? How do you know the indictment of the +creature she made and then ground under her heel isn't the very thing +she's been waiting for all these millions of years?" + +"Oh, come, Jack! the universe hasn't been waiting for you. That's a part +of it, don't you see? You've got delusions, delusions of greatness, +delusions----" + +"Shut up. Don't use your spurious jargon on me. Just answer my +questions. How do you know it isn't the healthiest thing that ever +happened in this rotten tissue of pretense we call civilization for even +one man--just one--to get up and swear at the whole system and swear +again that, so far as his little midge's existence goes, he won't +subscribe to it? What business have you to call that disease? How do you +know it isn't health? How do you know I'm not one of the few normal +atoms in the whole blamed carcass?" + +Dick felt himself profoundly shocked. He was having to reverse his +conclusions. Uncle Jack had stood for a well ordered sanity, conversant +with wool and books and mysteriously devoted to Miss Anne Hamilton, +whose conventional perfections evidently held within their limit Uncle +Jack's highest ideals. Uncle Jack had shown a neat talent with his pen. +He had grown middle-aged at an imperceptible and blameless pace, and now +he was raging about like a sort of cave man with nothing less than the +universe to bound his wild leaps and curvetings. + +"But you know, Jack," he remonstrated feebly, "there isn't anything new +in saying the nation's going to the dogs. The Britishers say it, we say +it----" + +"I don't say it," Raven asserted. "We're not going to the dogs. We've +gone. We're there. We're the dogs ourselves, and nothing worse could +happen to a criminal--from Mars, for example--than to be sent to us. We +ought to be the convict colony of the universe." + +"Don't," said Dick, with an affectionate sweetness as exasperating as it +was moving. "It only excites you. Come on out and have a tramp. We could +motor out to----" + +"O Lord!" groaned Raven. "Why don't you beguile me up to the +Psychopathic?" + +Then he was, for the first time, aghast at what he had set going. Dick +was looking at him again with that suffused glance of an affection too +great to mind disclosing itself in all its pathetic abnegation. + +"I couldn't say it myself," he began brokenly. "But you've said it; you +see yourself. If you would----" + +There he stopped and Raven sat staring at him. He felt as if the words +had got inside his body and were somehow draining his heart. When he +spoke, his voice sounded hoarse in his own ears. + +"Dick, old man," he said, "I'm not--that." + +"No! no!" Dick hastened to assure him, and somehow his hand had found +Raven's and gripped it. "Only--O good God!" he ended, and got out of his +chair and turned his back. + +Raven, too, rose. + +"Dick," said he quietly, "you go home now. And don't you speak about +this to anybody, not to Nan even. You understand." + +Dick nodded, still with his back turned, and got out of the room, and +Raven thought he must have caught at his hat in the hall, and made one +stride for the door. The door banged and Raven was alone. + + + + +VI + + +The next day Nan telephoned Raven that she was taking train for New York +for perhaps a week's stay with the Seaburys. These were her nearest +relatives, cousins at a remove Raven never really untangled, and of late +they had been spending persuasive energy in trying to induce her to live +with them. Since she had come home from France and Aunt Anne had died, +they were always descending upon her for brief visits in the house where +she succeeded Aunt Anne, and liking her so tumultuously, in her grown-up +state, that they pelted her with arguments based on her presumable +loneliness there and the silliness of carrying on the establishment +really as a species of home for superannuated servants. Nan honestly +liked the cousins, in a casual way, though it was as inconceivable to +her that the Boston house might be given up as it would have been to +Aunt Anne. There was, she felt, again in Aunt Anne's way, a certain +continuity of things you didn't even think of breaking. Now she was +seeking the Seaburys for reasons of her own. They had to be suitably +told that Aunt Anne had left her money away from them as from her, and +naturally, though ridiculously, to "that Raven she was always making a +fool of herself about." They were ruthless of speech within family +conclave, though any one of them would have thought more than twice +about calling Aunt Anne any sort of fool, in her lifetime, even at a +distance safely beyond hearing. Raven was not, if Nan could forestall +the possibility, to be assaulted by mounting waves of family animosity. + +Raven was glad, for once, to get rid of her, to find she was removing +herself from the domestic turmoil he had created. There could not be the +triangular discussions inevitable if she and Dick fell upon him at once, +nor should he have to bear the warmth of her tumultous sympathy. Dick +had evidently told her nothing, and he even gathered that she was going +without notice to Dick. Then Raven began a systematic and rapid +onslaught on his immediate affairs, to put them in order. Mr. Whitney, +Anne's lawyer, who had always seemed to regard him in a disconcerting +way as belonging to Anne, or her belonging in some undefined fashion to +him, opened out expansively on the provisions of the will. He most +sincerely congratulated Raven. Of course it was to have been expected, +but----! Raven kept miserably to the proprieties of the moment. He +listened with all due reserve, silent on the subject of Anne's letter. +That was his affair, he thought, his and Nan's; unless, indeed, it was +nobody's affair but Anne Hamilton's, and he was blindly to constitute +himself the unreasoning agent of her trust. That must be thought out +later. If he undertook it now, piling it on the pack of unsubstantial +miseries he was carrying, he would be swamped utterly. He could only +drop it into a dark pocket of his mind where an ill-assorted medley of +dreads and fear lay waiting--for what? For a future less confusing than +this inscrutable present? At least, they could not be even glanced at +now. He wrote Charlotte and Jerry, his caretakers on the place at Wake +Hill, that he was coming for an indefinite stay. He instructed his +housekeeper in Boston that the house was to be kept open; possibly Mr. +Richard would be there a good deal. Then he sat down to write his +sister. That was the problem: what should he say to her who would +presently be receiving his unfortunate screed with some inflammatory +introduction from Dick and would--he knew her!--scarcely have finished +it before she took steps toward flooding him with epistolary advice and +comment. He could see her now at her desk, assembling data of conduct, +bodily well-being, and putting it all down in that masterful hand of +hers. That settled it. He mustn't write her. He must telegraph and +forestall Dick. And he did telegraph her, on the moment, a message of +noncommittal brevity: + +"Letter Dick sent you is all poppycock. Forget it." + +That might, he concluded, yet without hope, keep her from rushing her +pen to the rescue, even if it did not prevent her fuming. And as he sat +at the library table with a disorder of papers before him, Dick appeared +at the door: good boy, full of zeal and pity. He looked so overflowing +with honest affection, so eagerly ready to help that Raven exasperatedly +loved him for his kind officiousness. Yet he had nothing for him but a +gruff: + +"Now what do you think you're here for?" + +Dick was prepared for repulse, this or any other. He had armed himself +against all possible whims and obstinacies, and he wore the air of a +carefully adjusted patience. + +"Can't I help there?" he inquired, advancing to the table and drawing up +a chair. "Couldn't you let me run over those and just tell you what they +are?" + +"You go to thunder," said Raven, rapidly assorting, clapping into +bundles and casting aside. "Yes, you can, too. Take this basket and +empty it into the fireplace. Behind the log and smash it down so it +won't set the chimney afire. Remember how your grandmother used to keep +a scare going all the time for fear of chimneys? I guess I've inherited +it. I have to use the formula." + +Dick emptied the papers with a grave care foreign to him, as if even so +small a service, at such a moment, bore a weightier meaning, and brought +the basket back. He sat down and waited in a silence Raven felt more +portentously vocal than the loudest outcry. + +"Dick!" he said. He stopped work and looked at the youth, an unwilling +smile twisting his mouth. He was not sure of its being well to take it +humorously; yet it was funny. "Dick, if you've got anything to say, say +it. If you haven't, clear out. This is my busy day." + +Dick shook his head despairingly and yet obstinately. He wasn't going to +leave Uncle Jack to the powers of darkness. + +"Just tell me what you're winding things up for?" he ventured. "I ought +to know." + +"Then don't ask as if you were whispering into the ear of Buddha, or +trying not to wake baby," said Raven, tearing a package of letters with +a sudden savage haste. They were Anne's letters to him when he was in +France, and he had meant to keep them because she would have an ideal of +the sacredness they ought to bear, and exasperatingly the suggestion +seemed to include a power of imposing itself on him. And if Dick hadn't +come in to bait him with irrelevant questions, his perverse inner self +excused itself, he might not be defying the ideal and tearing the +letters up. As it was, he found them a salutary sacrifice. + +"If you mean my going to Wake Hill, yes, I'm going. I've written +Charlotte. Or rather I've addressed it to Jerry, she's so careful about +his prerogative as a male." + +"When?" asked Dick. + +"The minute I get some boots and things to go logging in. This house +will be open. You can come in and roost if you want to. If you marry +Nan"--this was an audacity that occurred to him at the moment. It +suddenly seemed to him a blessed comfort to think of Nan in his +house--"you can come here and live." + +Dick lost his sacrificial air and turned sulky. + +"I don't know about Nan," he said. "I never know about her, not since +we've come back. She was soft as--as silk over there." + +"The maternal," said Raven briefly, tearing one of Anne's letters, with +a crack, across the pages. "It was what you needed to keep you going. +Not personal, only because you were a sojer boy." + +The mortification of it all, the despite of not holding his own with her +now he was not serving a cause, was plainly evident in Dick's face. He +had had a bad night of it, after Nan's flouting and Uncle Jack's letter +on top of that. + +"She was beastly," he said, with no further elaboration. + +But Raven knew he was returning to his walk home with her and some +disconcerting circumstances of it. No doubt Nan had been ruthless. Her +mind had been on Aunt Anne and the Palace of Peace. Little boys in love +couldn't joggle her fighting arm and expect to escape irritated reproof. + +"Nan's got a good deal to think of just now," he said. "Besides, you may +not be man enough for her yet. Nan's very much of a woman. She'll expect +things." + +Dick sat glowering. + +"I'm as much of a man as I was in France," he said obstinately. "More. +I'm older." Then his sacrificial manner came back, and, remembering what +he was there for, he resumed, all humble sweetness, like the little Dick +who used to climb on Raven's knee and ask for a tell-story: "I'm going +down with you. I've made all my plans." + +Raven looked up at him in a new surprise. + +"The deuce you are," said he. "No, you're not, boy. If I catch you down +there I'll play the game as you've mapped it out for me. I'll grab +Jerry's axe or pitchfork and run amuck, blest if I don't. You'll wake up +and find yourself sending for the doctor." + +Glancing cheerfully up, he was instantly aware, from the boy's unhappy +face, that Dick believed him. Raven burst into a laugh, but he quickly +sobered. What a snare they were getting themselves into, and only by an +impish destiny of haphazard speech. + +"Don't look so shocked, Dickie," he said flippantly. "I'm no more dotty +than--Hamlet." + +There he stopped again to wonder whimsically at the ill fate of it all. +For Hamlet was mad; at least, Dick thought so. He couldn't have caught +at anything more injurious to his cause. + +"'They fool me to the top of my bent,'" he reflected ruefully. + +That was what Dick was ready to do. But sister Amelia wouldn't fool him, +if she got East with her emergency dressing bag and her perfectly +equipped energy. She would clap him into the Psychopathic before he had +time for even half as much blank verse as Hamlet had. They wouldn't +allow him a first act. + +"Don't look like that," he suggested again and kindly, because it was +evident that, however irritating Dick might be as a prospective +guardian, he was actually suffering an honest misery. + +"I don't," said Dick. "I mean, I don't mean to look different. But +somehow it's got me, this whole business has, and I can't get away from +it. I've thought of it every minute since you told me. It isn't so much +you I'm thinking about. It's him." + +Raven, as a writer of English, paused to make a mental note that, in +cases of extreme emotion, the nominative case, after the verb to be, is +practically no good. You simply have to scrap it. + +"Who?" he inquired, in the same line of natural language. + +"Old Crow." + +Dick uttered the name in a low and hesitating tone. He seemed to offer +it unwillingly. Raven stared at him in a perfect surprise, now uncolored +by any expectation he might have had of what was coming. + +"Old Crow?" he repeated. "What do you know about Old Crow?" + +"Well," said Dick, defensively, "I know as much as you do. That is, I +suppose I do. I know as much as all Wake Hill does, anyway." + +"Who told you?" + +"Mother. I didn't suppose it was any secret." + +"No," said Raven thoughtfully, "it's no secret. Only he was queer, he +was eccentric, and so I've always assumed he had a pretty bad time of +it. That's why I never've talked about him." + +"Mother did," said Dick, in a sudden expansion. It seemed to ease him up +a little, this leading Raven to the source of his own apprehension. +Indeed, he had felt, since Raven's letter, that they must approach the +matter of his tired wits with clearness, from the scientific standpoint. +The more mental facts and theories they recognized the better. "She told +me once you looked just like him, that old daguerreotype." + +"Had sister Amelia concluded from that," inquired Raven quietly, "that I +was bound to follow Old Crow, live in the woods and go missionarying +across the mountain?" + +"No," said Dick, so absorbed in his line of argument that he was +innocently unaware of any intended irony. "She just happened to speak of +it one day when we found the daguerreotype. Uncle Jack, just what do you +know about him?" + +Raven considered a moment. He was scanning his memory for old +impressions and also, in his mild surprise over the pertinency of +reviving them, wondering whether he had better pass them on. Or would +they knot another tangle in the snarl he and Dick seemed to be, almost +without their volition, making? + +"Old Crow," he began slowly, "was my great-uncle. His name was John +Raven. He was poor, like all the rest of us of that generation and the +next, and did the usual things to advance himself, the things in +successful men's biographies. He studied by the kitchen fire, not by +pine knots, I fancy--that probably was the formula of a time just +earlier. Anyhow he fitted himself for the college of the day, for some +reason never went, but did go into a lawyer's office instead, was said +to have trotted round after a gypsy sort of girl the other side of the +mountain, found she was no good, went up into the woods and built the +old hut I got into shape in the spring of 1914. Queer! I expected to go +up there to study and write. I'd got to the point, I s'pose, where I +thought if I had a different place to write in I could write better. +Sure sign of waning powers! Well, he lived there by himself, and folks +thought he was queer and began to call him Old Crow. I saw him several +times when I was a little chap, never alone. Father took me with him +when he went up to the hut to carry food. Mother never approved of my +going. She disapproved of it so much that father stopped taking me." + +"Well, you saw him," said Dick, in a way of holding him to his +narrative, so that Raven, wondering why it was of such importance, bent +a frowning look on him. + +"Yes, I saw him. And he was nice to me, uncommon nice. He put his hand +on my shoulder and looked down at me in a way--well, not the +patronizing, grown-up way, but as if, now I come to think of it, as if +he pitied me." + +"How did he look?" + +Dick was catching at things, Raven saw, the slightest clue to Old Crow's +withdrawn personality. He seemed, on his side, to be constructing a +portrait. Raven sought about in the closed chambers of his mind and +produced one significant bit of remembrance after another. They were +retrieved with difficulty out of the disorder of things regarded as of +no importance: but here they were. + +"He was tall, thin, rather hatchet-faced, something as I am. Oh, you +knew that, didn't you? No beard, and I think he was the neatest person I +ever saw. Father was clean shaven, you remember; but there were days +when he either got lazy or was too busy to shave. I remember how +exquisitely nice and peeled his face used to look on Sunday. But Old +Crow was shaved all the time, judging from the way he looked the few +times I saw him. I've heard father and mother speak of it, too. +Charlotte told me once she'd seen him and he was neat as a new pin." + +"How old was he when he went up there into the woods?" + +"To live alone? I don't know. Forty, maybe. Comparatively young, +anyway." + +"Was it the woman? Was there a cause for it, a cause people knew?" + +"There wasn't any cause I knew. He simply, so far as I ever heard, +passed the place over to father--that was his nephew, you know--and went +up the hill and built himself a log hut. It was well built. I only had +to calk it some more and put in another flooring when I came into it." + +As Raven went on, he became uncomfortably aware of the resemblance +between his own proposed withdrawal and Old Crow's; but he stuck to it +doggedly. It was all playing into Dick's hands and Amelia's, assuming he +could predicate her mind; but he was resolved they shouldn't have it all +their own way. He would give them every last straw of evidence, and it +should do them no good in the end. There was a bravado about it. If +Dick, in his affectionate virtue and Amelia in her energy of well-doing, +wanted to challenge him to the proof, he'd give them a pretty tussle for +it. + +"What I want to know is," said Dick, "what he thought he was going off +there for? Didn't anybody know?" + +"They may have," said Raven. "I didn't know." + +"And he lived his life out there, till he died?" + +"Yes. And died in a very gentlemanly fashion, of pneumonia, and was +found in a dignified position on his bed, hands folded, and everything +in a great state of order, as if he'd known he was going and arranged +things to give as little trouble as he could." + +"What did he do up there all by himself? Read? Write?" + +"He read a good deal, I believe. We found him reading when we went up." + +"What sort of books?" + +"Oh, hang it, Dick," said Raven, beginning to fidget under examination, +"you're district-attorneying it a trifle too much to interest me. I'm +getting bored, son. This isn't a third degree." + +But Dick was not to be curbed or reasoned with. + +"I think," he said, "if you don't mind, we'd better talk it out. You see +I do really need to know about him, and you're the only one that can +tell me. Mother's is chiefly hearsay." + +"Fire away," said Raven easily, accepting the situation. He leaned back +in his chair and began making patterns on the block of paper before him +with a silver dagger at his hand. "What is it you want to know?" + +"Everything. How the neighbors regarded him, what they said." + +"The neighbors didn't regard him at all, in your sense. Don't you know +the way country folks have of passing over the most eccentric things as +if they're all in the day's work? They gossip like thunder, and, if they +can whip up a scandal, they're made. But they never seem so awfully +shocked. Perhaps it's because they're used to the plain facts of life, +death, birth, madness, suicide. Maybe there's a sort of _gaucherie_ +about it. There are things you're shocked about that you wouldn't dare +discuss at Cambridge or the Club. You'd be afraid it wasn't good form. +Maybe you would though, now. Sometimes I forget the world's moved on a +peg." + +"But what did they say?" + +"Can't tell you, Dick. I belong to the family, you know, and maybe they +had some decency about talking over Old Crow when I was round. I don't +think there was anything they could say. He was a perfectly clean, +decent citizen. He kept on voting. He didn't meddle with them and they +didn't with him. The only eccentricity about him was that he lived alone +and that, the last ten years or so of his life, he tramped all round +that region, over the mountain, too, taking care of the sick, if there +were any. The last five years he went round preaching, and the very last +year of all he took old Billy Jones into his hut, an awful old rip, if +ever there was one, and tended him till his death--Billy's death, I +mean. And if you consider that as indicating queerness--except that +people don't do it--I don't. I should call any conventional disapproval +of it an indictment rather, an indictment of Christianity. If it's too +eccentric to fit into a so-called Christian civilization, that is." + +Dick wasn't going to call it anything at the moment. He sat staring at +the table, evidently reflecting, digesting and bowed down by his own +gravity in a way that always amused Raven even when he loved the boy +most. He fancied, when Dick looked like that, he was brooding over his +nose. + +"Take it easy, son," he advised him pleasantly. "You won't get anywhere +with Old Crow. Guess again." + +"No," said Dick, oblivious of the flippancy of this, "we sha'n't get +anywhere. We haven't enough data." + +"Now," said Raven, coming up from his lounging posture, "I've got to +hustle. You run along and we'll go out somewhere to-night: dine, if you +want to, and drop in at a show. But, for heaven's sake, don't go to +digging up graveyards and expecting me to reconstruct your ancestors +from as few bones as we've got of Old Crow's. You bore me sometimes, +horribly, Dick. And that's the truth." + +Dick did go away, though with an inarticulate remonstrance on his +tongue. But Raven was good-natured and yet decided, and even went to the +door with him, propelling him by a firm yet affectionate hand on his +shoulder. + +They did dine out that night in a manner mildly bohemian, really +determined upon by Raven to show Dick he wasn't incapable yet of the +accepted forms of diversion, afflictingly dull though they might prove. + + + + +VII + + +In less than a week Raven, hurried beyond any design of his own by +Dick's anxious attentions, had actually gone. Once in the train on the +way into the uplands where Wake Hill lies, he reflected, with a smile, +that Dick had really helped him inconceivably in this matter of haste. +He might have loitered along, dallying with the wisdom of going, and +possibly ended by not going at all. But Dick's insistence on formulating +the situation, his neatness and energy in getting all the emotions of +the case into their proper pigeon holes, had so harassed and then bored +him that he had worked like a beaver, he told himself, to get off and +escape them altogether. And not a word from Amelia, either to his +telegram or Dick's letter. Things were looking up. It might be Amelia +had been elected to some new and absorbing organization for putting the +social edifice still more irretrievably into the disorder it seemed bent +for, in which case she might forget the inner wobblings of such an +inconspicuous nomad as a brother in metaphysical pangs. He became +recklessly optimistic, as the train climbed higher into the hills, and +luxuriated in it, conscious all the time that it was altitude that was +intoxicating him, not any real hope of hoodwinking Amelia. You couldn't +do that so easily. + +The first glimpse of a far-away mountain brought the surprising tears to +his eyes. It was an inconsiderable ridge with an outline of no +distinction, but it had the old charm, the power of clutching at his +heart and dragging it up from the glories and sorrows of the sea. Raven +always insisted that he loved the sea best, with its terrors and +multitudinous activities; but the mountains did pull him up somewhere +into a region he did not inhabit all the time. He had an idea that this +was simply a plane of physical exhilaration; but it didn't matter. It +was an easement of a sort, if only the difference of change. When he +stepped out of the train at Wake Hill he was in a tranquil frame of +mind, and the more the minute he saw Jerry Slate there in the pung, +enveloped in the buffalo coat he had worn through the winter months ever +since he attained his present height. Jerry was a typical man of Wake +Hill. He was ten years, at least, older than Raven and had lived here, +man and boy, all his life, and his wife, Charlotte, was the presiding +benevolence of the Raven home. Seeing his passenger, he lifted his +whip-stock in salute and stepped out of the pung to meet him. Jerry was +yellow and freckled and blue-eyed, with a face, Raven always thought, +like a baked apple. It had still a rosy bloom, but the puckers +overspread it, precisely like an apple's after fervent heat. They shook +hands, Jerry having extracted a gnarled member from his mitten. + +"You take a look an' see 'f your trunk's come," he recommended, +restoring his hand to its beautifully knit sheath. "You're better +acquainted with the looks on't than I be. There 'tis now. Anyways it's +the only one there." + +It was Raven's own, and he and Jerry lifted it into the back of the +pung, and were presently jogging temperately homeward. Jerry never had +horses with any go in them. In the old days, when Raven used to come to +the farm with his mother, he would write Jerry to see that he had a +horse. + +"Get me a horse," he would write, "a horse, a horse, with four feet and +a mane and tail. Not a wooden freak out of Noah's ark, whittled out with +a jack-knife, such as I had last year. Get me a horse." + +And he would arrive to find some aged specimen, raw-boned and +indifferent, waiting for him in the stable. And Jerry would slap the +creature's haunches with a fictitious jollity and prophesy, the while he +kept an anxious eye on Raven, "I guess he'll suit ye all right." + +He never did suit. He had to be swapped off or, as it happened once or +twice, given away, and yet Raven was obtuse to the real reason until +Charlotte enlightened him. She took him aside, one day in the autumn, +when he and his mother were going back to town. + +"I guess if you want any horses next spring," she said, with one eye on +the door where Jerry might appear, "you better fetch 'em along with +you." + +"Why, yes," said Raven, "of course I can. Only I had an idea Jerry liked +to do the buying for the place." + +"Not horses," said Charlotte firmly. "Jerry's a peculiar sort of man. +They know it an' they kinder take advantage of him. I dunno why." + +Then Raven realized that Charlotte herself was responsible for his faith +in Jerry's bargaining prowess. She had hypnotized him into considering +Jerry a great fellow at a trade as at everything else manly and +invincible. She was watching him now with a doubtful and anxious eye. + +"No," she repeated, "I dunno why." + +"No," said Raven, "I don't know why either. But I'll look out for it." +At that instant he understood her way with Jerry and loved her for it. +She was tall and heavy-browed and dark, with warm, brown tints of eyes +and skin, and seven times the man Jerry was, but it was her passionate +intent to hold him supreme at home and market. + +Meantime they were jingling along, with a chill clashing of bells, and +Raven had heard all about the prospects of an open winter and the +difficulties of ice-cutting, and he gathered that Jerry and Charlotte +were extremely pleased to have him come. + +"Didn't know's we should ever set eyes on ye ag'in," said Jerry, with an +innocuous flick of his whiplash, hitting the dasher by intent. "That War +an' all." + +Raven thought he detected in his tone a general hostility to the War as +a disturber even of Wake Hill, and wondered if he should have to fight +it all over again with the imperfectly satisfied ideals of Jerry and +Charlotte. But Jerry laid that bogey to rest. + +"Not that I wouldn't ha' had ye go," he announced. "I'd ha' gone myself +if I hadn't been a leetle mite over age. I dunno but I could ha' been +some use as 'twas. I'm spry for my years. I never so much as thought +you'd git into it. Charlotte an' I were talkin' it over last night, an' +she says, 'He's forty-three, if he's a day.' How old be you?" + +"Forty-five," said Raven. "I wasn't in the trenches, you know. Ambulance +Corps." + +"Sho!" said Jerry. "Never come nigh the fightin' line, I s'pose." + +"Sometimes," said Raven, smiling a little to himself. "But the boys in +the trenches, you know, they're the ones that did the business. I +suppose the Hamilton house was closed all summer?" + +Jerry gave him a quick look and then took off a mitten to pass his hand +across his mouth. Raven knew what the look meant. It meant Anne +Hamilton: how had her death affected him? would he ask about her? and +the mild inquisitive neighborhood mind would go back to the old question +it had probably dropped and taken up intermittently for years: why, in +their curious intimacy, had he never married her? + +"Yes," said Jerry, "all summer. Little Nan was over there, too, where +you were, I understood." + +"Yes, she was over there. She's home now." + +"You knew her aunt died?" said Jerry speciously. It was foolish, he knew +it was foolish, and yet he could not, in his craving for some +amplification of the fact, help saying it. + +"Yes," said Raven, "I knew it." + +There the topic died. They were passing the last stretch of woods that +fringed the road before Raven's own house. Up on that slope at the +right, draped about by a dense woodland, occasional patches of pines +girdled by birch and maple, was the hut where Old Crow had lived. A +logging road came down from the ridge, and Raven saw with interest that +it had been broken out. + +"Chopping?" he asked, Jerry following his glance to the ascending road. + +Jerry grinned and clucked to the horse. He looked well satisfied with +himself. + +"No," he said. "But the minute you wrote you was comin', I yoked up the +oxen an' broke her out. Charlotte said you'd want to be goin' up there." + +Raven laughed. It was funny, too grimly funny. Even Charlotte and Jerry +were pushing him on up the rise to Old Crow's hut. Dick had begun it and +they were adding the impulse of their kindly forethought. + +"Yes," he said, "I shall. I'll go up at once." ("And have it over!" his +mind cynically added.) + +They were descending the last slope and the mild-mannered horse caught +the idea of stables and put on a gait. Raven could see the house, +delightful to him in its hospitable amplitude and starkly fitting the +wintry landscape. There in the columned front porch running away at each +side into wide verandas, stood a woman, tall, of proportions that +looked, at this first glance, heroic. She wore a shawl about her +shoulders, but her head was bare. + +"There she is," said Jerry, with an evident pride in so splendid a fact. +"I tell her she never can wait a minute to let anybody turn round." + +It was true. Charlotte could not wait. She began to wave--no short, +staccato, pump-handle wave, but a sweep indicative of breadth, like the +horizon line. Raven, while they were jingling up to the house, took one +more look at it, recognizing, with a surprise that was almost poignant, +how much it meant to him. He might not be glad to get back to it--in his +present state of disaffection he could not believe there was a spot on +earth he should be glad to see--but it touched the chord of old memories +and his eyes were hot with the assault of it. A square house with many +additions, so that it rambled comfortably away, threaded over at +advantageous points by leafless lines of woodbine and bitter-sweet and +murmured over by a great grove of pines at the west: his roots of life +were here, he recognized, with a renewed pang of surprise. He was not +used to thinking about himself. Now that the changed bias of his mind +had bred new habits, he was thinking a great deal. + +They stopped at the porch and Charlotte came down to them, stepping +lightly yet with deliberation. Raven knew she probably moved slowly +because she was so heavy, but it gave the effect of majesty walking. She +was unchanged, he thought, as he grasped her firm hand: her smooth brown +hair was as thick, her healthy face unlined. When he touched Charlotte +he always felt as if he touched the earth itself. Her hand was the hand +of earth, ready to lead you to wholesome and satisfying things. + +"Well," said she, "if I ain't pleased to see you! Jerry, you goin' to +take the trunk in this way?" + +Jerry gave her a quick look of inquiry. They had subtle modes of +communication. Charlotte could command him by the flicker of an eyelash +or a modulation of tone, so that Jerry seemed, in the resultant act, to +be following only his own careless or deliberate will. + +"Yep," said he, "I'll see to her." + +Raven laid hold of it with him and they carried it upstairs to the great +front room looking out to the eastern sky. And Raven was again moved, as +he went, by another surprising discovery: Charlotte had tears in her +eyes. He had at all times a moderate estimate of his own value in the +world, his own appeal to it. Perhaps that was one reason, aside from the +natural sex revulsion, why Anne's exaggerated fostering had roused in +him that wearied perversity. But it was warming to see Charlotte glad +enough to cry over him. When they had set down the trunk and the two had +gone downstairs, he looked about the room and found it good. The walls +were chiefly paneling, all but some expanses of a rich rose and blue +paper; the hangings were of a delicious blue, and a roaring fire was +making great headway. He could guess Charlotte had timed that birch log, +relative to their approach, for the curling bark had not yet blackened +and the fat chuckle of it was still insistent. He laughed a little at +himself. He might have repudiated the scheme of creation and his own +place in it, but he did love things: dear, homespun, familiar things, +potent to eke out man's well-being with their own benevolence and make +him temporarily content in an inhospitable world. + +When he went downstairs, the smells from the kitchen were something +overwhelming in their rich pervasiveness. He went directly in where +Charlotte bent at the oven door for a frowning inspection and a +resultant basting. + +"Yes," she said, glancing up, "turkey. Terry set him aside, sort of--he +was so well formed and had such nice, pretty ways. Jerry said we'd have +him first time you come. He's always be'n a terrible nice turkey." + +Raven had seen his place laid in the dining-room with bravery of damask +and old china. + +"I'm not going to eat alone," he said. "I couldn't face a whole turkey. +You and Jerry come on in and back me up. You set on two more plates." + +"Oh, no," said Charlotte, closing the oven door and rising. "I guess +I'll give him a minute longer. No. It's real nice of you, but we +couldn't. Jerry never would in the world." + +"Jerry be hanged!" said Raven. He wandered into the pantry and began +helping himself to the celery waiting by the cool window-pane. "Tell him +it's all decided. Jerry's got to do what we say." + +"If that ain't just like you," said Charlotte, with what seemed a pride +in his knowing ways. "Eatin' up the celery an' all, the minute 'fore +dinner, too. I wonder you don't pry into the cooky jar." + +"I will, now you mention it," said Raven, bending to it where it lurked, +with its secretive look, under the lower shelf. He lifted the cover with +an involuntary care. He had been there so often when he wanted a handful +of cookies and knew, if he clinked the cover, he might hear his father's +voice from the dining-room where he sat reading his paper: "What are you +doing out there?" The cookies were waiting for him, unchanged, as if +there were an everlasting pattern of cookies and you couldn't get away +from it: oak-leaf, discreetly specked with caraway. "Hurry up," said he, +coming out to Charlotte with his clutch of oak-leaves. "Put on your +plate and Jerry's or the turkey'll be done before you know it." + +Charlotte glanced round at him, absently took the cookies from his hand, +as if he were a child whose greed must be regulated, and laid them in a +plate on the table. + +"Don't you spoil your appetite," she said, still absently, for her mind +was with the turkey. "Well, I'll go an' ask Jerry. I don't believe he'll +feel to. Miss Anne----" + +Raven was sure he heard the last two words as she made her light way out +into the shed in a fictitious search for Jerry. He stood staring after +her and wondering. It was inconceivable that Anne, by sheer force of a +mind absolutely convinced of its own rightness, should have had such a +grip on everybody she came in contact with. It had been Anne's house +next door. She had spent her summers in it, and even Charlotte had +imbibed through its walls the pronouncements of a social code. Anne was +dead, but when Charlotte and Jerry were asked to sit down to turkey with +their employer and familiar friend, it was Anne's unforgotten ideal that +rose before her, the illuminated copy of the social code in its rigid +hand. As he stood, he saw Jerry pulling the pung under a shed at the +back of the barn. He knew Charlotte hadn't seen him, didn't intend to +take the time to see him, but would presently be back with Jerry's +ultimatum. That was her system. She implicitly followed Jerry's command, +a command she had already put into his mouth. It was so accepted a part +of the household routine that he had ceased to think of it as in the +least unusual. She was back again almost at once. + +"Jerry says he'd be happy to, to-day," she announced, "so long's as he +ain't changed back into his barn clo'es. We'll be kinder company. But +after this, he says, we'll begin as usual." + +So presently they sat down together to the crackly brown turkey and +Raven carved and fought off Charlotte, who rose from her place in a +majestic authority which seemed the highest decorum to take the fork and +pick out titbits for his plate, and they talked of countryside affairs, +but never, Raven was grateful to notice, of his absence or of France. +Once Jerry did begin a question relative to "them long range guns," but +Charlotte bore him down before Raven could lay hold of the question, +even if he had been eager for it. + +"Jerry's forbid me to ask you the leastest thing about how 'twas over +there," she said smoothly, without a look at Jerry, but a direct +intention that was like a swift secret communication between them, a +line not even to be tapped. "He says, 'We won't say one word about what +Mr. Raven's been through, not if he begins to talk about it himself. +He's been through enough,' says he. 'Now le's let him turn his mind to +suthin' else.'" + +"Yes," said Jerry boldly, "I guess that's pretty nigh what I said--what +I'd say now, anyways." + +Raven smiled a little inwardly, as he often did at "Mr. Raven." He and +Jerry and Charlotte had been neighbors, and he, being younger, was +always "young John" to them, and sometimes, in excess of friendliness or +exhortation, "Jack." He wondered if it had been the social idealism of +Anne that had made them attain the proper title, or if, when the crust +of renewed convention broke through, they would, under the stress of +common activities, flounder about as they did before he went away, in an +intermittent familiarity. + +"All the houses shut up," he said, "the summer houses?" + +"Yes," said Charlotte, eating her wing delicately, perhaps with a +thought of Anne. "City folks all gone. Went early this year, too. Wood's +so high now, if they ain't cut their own they don't seem to want to lay +in. Jerry says they'd ought to think further ahead." + +"Yes," said Jerry, with his mechanical acquiescence, "they'd ought to +think further ahead." + +"Who's bought the old Frye place?" asked Raven. "Or is it empty?" + +"No," said Charlotte, "it ain't empty. I dunno's you remember the +Tenneys that used to live over the mountain, what they call Mountain +Brook. Kind of a shif'less lot they were. Some of 'em drinked." + +"Why, yes," said Raven, "I remember 'em. The boys used to do a lot of +trapping. One of 'em--what was his name? Israel, yes, that's it. +Israel--he seemed to be of a different stripe. Used to work out. Seemed +to want to make something of himself." + +"That's him," said Charlotte. "Well, he's bought the Frye place." + +"Married?" + +"Yes, he married a girl over there, at Mountain Brook. He'd been away +years an' years, sence he was a growin' boy, an' he come back, an' seems +he had money laid up, an' he bought the Frye farm an' went straight off +over to Mountain Brook an' hunted her up an' married her. She used to +have folks, but they've all moved away. Seems if he'd had her in mind +all the time. Kind o' that way, he is, lays his fires a good while +beforehand." + +"Nice girl?" Raven inquired. + +Charlotte hesitated. Her brown cheek flushed. + +"Well," she said, "I never've heard anything ag'inst her, not anything I +should be willin' to repeat. You know what they be, there over the +mountain. There's the Donnyhills. Good folks, but shif'less! my soul! +Though she ain't that." + +"Called on her, haven't you?" + +"No," said Charlotte. She wore the flush of resentful matronhood. "I was +goin' to. I started, one afternoon. An' after I'd knocked, I heard him +jawin'. Well! You never heard a man talk so in all your life. I never +did, anyways! twittin' her with everything under the sun." + +"Nice for you," said Raven, "butting in on a row." + +"I didn't butt in," said Charlotte. "I turned round an' come straight +home. An' the next day they rode by, as budge as you please, she with +the baby in her lap. Baby had on a nice white coat. I didn't go ag'in. I +didn't feel to." + +Then Raven, seeing that Jerry had regretfully but inevitably laid down +his knife and fork, as one who can no more, relinquished the Tenneys, +and there was a period of that silence so blessed among intimates, and +Charlotte brought in the pudding. And after dinner, while she washed the +dishes, Raven sat in the kitchen and smoked a pipe with Jerry and +thought intermittently, in the inmost cell of his most secret mind, +about the blessed beauties of things. Here they were all about him, +inherited treasures of memory, some of them homely and of little value, +many of them far less convenient than the appliances of the present day. +He even thought he recognized ancient utensils, as Charlotte washed +them, the great iron spider where crullers were fried--always with a few +cut in hands with straight fat fingers, to suit a boyish fancy--and the +colander he had once been found utilizing as a helmet in a play of +chivalry. Such smells came out of this kitchen, like no other smells in +any house he knew. The outlines of things, the tints of time and use! +There was the red door into the buttery, where once, when he was a +little boy, he had caught for a few minutes only an enchanting glow from +the setting sun. Sunrise and rubies and roses: none of them had ever +equaled the western light on the old red paint. Over and over again he +had tried to recall the magic, to set the door at the precise angle to +catch the level rays, but in vain. It was a moment of beauty, fleeting +as the sunset itself, and only to be found in the one permanence that is +memory. He remembered it now with a thousand other impressions as +lasting and as lost, and childhood and youth came alive in him and hurt +and helped him. Yes, this was home. In a hostile universe there was one +spot where he and the past could safely rest. + + + + +VIII + + +Raven went to sleep thinking simply about the house, while the fire +flickered down on the hearth and shadows all about the room flickered +with it and then went out. He always loved shadows, their beauties and +grotesqueries, and he was unfeignedly glad he had no scientific +understanding of them, why they played this way or that and translated +the substance that made them so delicately and sometimes with such an +adorable foolishness. He liked it better that way, liked to make out of +them a game of surprises and pretend they were in good form and doing +particularly well, or again far below their highest. And following his +childishly enchanting game he began to feel rather abashed over what had +brought him here. He was glad to have come. It was the only place for +him, disordered as he was, with its wholesome calm, and he wondered +further if the state of mind that had become habitual to him was now a +state of mind at all. Was it not rather a temporary drop in mental +temperature now calming to normal? Hadn't he exaggerated the +complication of Anne's bequest? There was a way out of it; there must +be, a sane, practical way to satisfy what she wished and what she might +be supposed to wish now. He comforted himself with the pious sophistry +of an Anne raised on the wind of death above early inconclusions and so, +of course, agreeing with him who didn't have to pass the gates of +mystery to be so raised. He knew enough, evidently, so that he didn't +need to die to know more. His letter to Dick seemed of inconsiderable +importance, even the disaster of its reaching Amelia. If she held him up +to it, he could laugh it off. Anything could be laughed off. So, the +shadows mingling with the inconsequence of his thoughts, he drifted away +to sleep, catching himself back, now and then, to luxuriate in the +assurance that he was in the right place, finding comfortable +assuagements, and that inexplicably, because so suddenly, everything was +for the best in a mysterious but probably entirely unaccountable world. + +At four o'clock he woke. He had not for a moment last night expected +this. Four o'clock had been for months the hour of his tryst with the +powers of darkness. They hovered over him then with dull grey wings +extended, from sunrise to sunset, from east to west. He never had the +courage to peer up at them and see how far the wings really did reach. +They covered his mortal sky, and when he refused to stare up into their +leaden pinions, they stooped to him and buffeted and smothered him, +until he was such a mass of bruised suffering within that he could +almost believe his body also was quivering into the numbness of +acquiescent misery. And here were the wings again. They were even lower, +in spite of this clear air. They did not merely shut it out from his +nostrils, but the filthy pinions swept his face and roused in him the +uttermost revulsion of mortal man against the accident of his mortality. +The trouble of earth passed before him in its unceasing panorama, a +pageant of pain and death. Every atom of creation was against every +other atom, because everywhere was warfare, murder and rapine, for the +mere chance of living. He had won his inherited chance by sheer luck of +contest through millions of years while his forebears came up from the +slime and the cave. The little hunted creature, shrieking out there in +the wood in the clutch of a predatory enemy was not so lucky. It was the +enemy who was lucky to-night, but to-morrow night the enemy himself +might go down under longer claws and be torn by fangs stronger than his +own. And God had made it so. And God did not care. + +Raven lay there panting under the horror of it. The sweat started on his +skin. He was afraid. It was not his own well-being he feared for. Man's +life was short at the most. A few years might finish him up. It was +unlikely that he need live again. But he feared seeing still more of the +acts of this unmindful God, who could make, and set the wheel of being +to turning and then stand aside and let them grind out their +immeasurable grist of woe. And when he asked himself how he knew God was +standing aside, letting the days and years fulfil their sum, he believed +it was because he had suddenly become aware that time was a boundless +sea and that the human soul was sometimes in the trough of it and +sometimes on the crest. But never would the sea cast its derelicts upon +warm shores where they might build the house of life and live in peace +and innocence. Ever would they find themselves tossed from low to high +and fall from high to low again in the salt wash of the retreating wave. +For after all, it was the mysterious sea God had a mind to, never the +derelict atoms afloat on it. They would have to take sea weather to +time's extremest verge, as they always had taken it. They were +derelicts. + +As the light came, the leaden wings lifted and he went down to the early +breakfast Charlotte and Jerry intended to eat alone. Charlotte, with her +good morning, gave him a quick glance. He found she had not expected him +so early and knew she saw at once how harassed he was. He insisted on +sitting down to breakfast with them and, after Jerry had gone out, went +over the house in a mindless way, into all the rooms, to give himself +something to do. Also there seemed to be a propriety in it, a +fittingness in presenting himself to his own walls and accepting their +silent recognition. Then, hearing Charlotte upstairs, he went back into +the kitchen, as straight as if he had meant to go there all the time and +had merely idled on these delaying quests, and up to the nail by the +shed door where the key always hung, the key to Old Crow's hut. He took +it off the nail, dropped it in his pocket, got a leather jacket from the +hall and went out into the road. As he went, he heard Jerry moving about +in the barn and walked the faster, not to be halted or offered friendly +company. At the great maples he paused, two of them marking the entrance +to the wood road, and looked about him. The world was resolutely still. +The snow was not deep, but none of it had melted. It was of a uniform +whiteness and luster and the shadows in it were deeply blue. There were +tracks frozen into it all along the road, many of them old ones, others +just broken, the story of some animal's wandering. Then he turned into +the wood road and began to climb the rise, and as he went he was +conscious of an unaccountable excitement. Dick was responsible for that, +he told himself. Dick had waked his mind to old memories. This was, in +effect, and all owing to Dick, a tryst with Old Crow. + +He remembered every step of the way, what he might find if he could +sweep off the snow or wait until June and let the mounting sun sweep it +according to its own method. Here at the right would be the great patch +of clintonia. Further in at the left was tiarella, with its darling +leaf, and along under the yellow birches the lady's slipper he had +transplanted, year after year, and that finally took root and showed a +fine sturdiness he had never seen exceeded elsewhere. He went on musing +over the permanence of things and the mutability of mortal joy, +wondering if, in this world He had made without remedies for its native +ills, God could take pleasure in the bleak framework of it. And when he +had nearly reached the top of the slope, the three firs, where a turn to +the left would bring him to the log cabin door, suddenly he stopped as +if his inner self heard the command to halt. He looked about him, and +his heart began to beat hard. But he was not surprised. What could be +more moving than the winter stillness of the woods in a spot all +memories? Yet he was in no welcoming mood for high emotion, and looking +up and about, to shake off the wood magic, there at a little distance at +his right, between pine boles, he saw her, the woman. She was tall and +slender, yet grandly formed. A blue cloak was wrapped about her and her +head was bare. Her face had a gaunt beauty such as he had never seen. +The eyes, richly blue but darkened by the startled pupil, were +bewildering in their soft yet steady appealingness. Her hair was parted +and carried back in waves extraordinarily thick and probably knotted +behind. That, of course, he could not see. But the little soft rings of +it about her forehead he noted absently. And her look was so full of +dramatic tension, of patient, noble gravity, even grief, that one phrase +flashed into his mind, "The Mother of Sorrows!" and stayed there. So +moving was her face that, although he had at the first instant taken in +her entire outline, the significance of it had not struck him until now. +On her arm, in the immemorial mother's fashion, she carried a child. The +child was in white and a blue scarf was tied about his head. When Raven +saw the scarf, his tension relaxed. There was something about the scarf +that was real, was earthly: a ragged break in one free corner. In the +relief of seeing the break, and being thus brought back to tangible +things, he realized that he had, in a perfect seriousness, for one +amazing minute, believed the woman and the child to be not human but +divine. They were, as they struck upon his eyes, a vision, and he would +have been in no sense surprised to see the vision fade. It was the +Virgin Mary and her Son. Now, as he realized with the lightning rapidity +of a morbidly excited mind how terribly sensitive to his own needs he +must be to have clutched so irrationally at a world-old remedy, he took +off his hat and called to her: + +"You startled me." + +Without waiting for any response, he turned to the left, because the +probabilities were that he had startled her also, and that was why she +had stood there, petrified into the catalepsy of wood animals struck by +cautionary fear. But, as he turned, a man's voice sounded through the +woods, and waked an echo: + +"Hullo!" it called. "Hullo!" + +Raven involuntarily paused, and saw the woman running toward him. There +were stumps in her way, but she stepped over them lightly, and once, +when she had to cross a hollow where the snow lay deep, she sank in up +to her knees, and Raven involuntarily stepped forward to help her. But +she freed herself with incredible quickness and came on. It might have +been water she was wading in, so little did it check her. She halted +before him, only a pace away, as if she must be near in order to speak +cautiously, and Raven noted the exquisite texture of her pale skin and +the pathos of her eyes, the pupils distended now so that he wondered if +they could be blue. Meantime the voice kept on calling, "Hullo! hullo!" + +She spoke tremulously, in haste: + +"He'll be up here in a minute. You say you ain't seen me." + +"Is it some one you're afraid of?" Raven asked. + +She nodded, in a dumb anguish. + +"Then," said he, "we'll both stay here till he comes, and afterward I'll +go with you, wherever you're going." + +This, it seemed, moved her to a terror more acute. + +"No! no!" she said, and she appeared to have so little breath to say it +that, if he had not been watching her lips, he could not have caught it. +"Not you. That would make him madder'n ever. You go away. Hide you +somewheres, quick." + +"No," said Raven, "I sha'n't hide. I'll hide you. Come along." + +He took her by the arm and, though she was remonstrating breathlessly, +hurried her to the left. They passed the three firs at the turn and he +smiled a little, noting Jerry's good road and thinking there was some +use in this combined insistence on his following the steps of Old Crow. +There was the hut, in its rough kindliness, and there, the smoke told +him, was a fire. Jerry had been up that morning, because Charlotte must +have known he'd come there the first thing. Still smoothing the road to +Old Crow! He had been fumbling with one hand for the key, the while he +kept the other on her arm. She was so terrified a creature now that he +did not trust her not to break blindly away and run. He unlocked the +door, pushed her in, closed and locked it. Then he dropped the key in +his pocket and went back to the wood road. With a sudden thought, he +took his knife from his pocket and tossed it down the road into a little +heap of brush. Meanwhile the man was coming nearer and, as he came, he +called: "Hullo!" + +Raven, waiting for him, speculated on the tone. What did it mean? It was +a breathless tone, though not in any manner like the woman's. It was as +if he had run and stumbled and caught himself up, and all the time been +strangled from within by rage or some like madness. The woman's +breathlessness had simply meant life's going out of her with sheer +fright. Now the man was coming up the slope, bent at the shoulders, as +if he carried a heavy load or as if almost doubling himself helped him +to go the faster. He was a thin man with long arms and he carried an +axe. Raven called to him: + +"Hullo, there! Take a look as you come along and see if you can find my +knife." + +The man stopped short, straightened, and looked at him. Meantime Raven, +bending in his search, went toward him, scrutinizing the road from side +to side. He had a good idea of the fellow in the one glance he gave him: +a pale, thin face, black eyes with a strange spark in them, a burning +glance like the inventor's or the fanatic's, and black hair. It was an +ascetic face, and yet there was passion of an unnamed sort ready to +flash out and do strange things, overthrow the fabric of an ordered life +perhaps, or contradict the restraint of years. He stood motionless until +Raven, still searching, had got within three feet of him. Then he spoke: + +"Who be you?" + +He had a low voice, agreeable, even musical. Raven concluded he must +have been strangely moved to break into that mad "Hullo." It had been +more, he thought, that wild repetition with the echo throwing it back, +like the Gabriel hounds. But Raven took no notice of the question. He +spoke with a calculated peevishness. + +"I'm willing to bet my knife is within three feet, and see how the +confounded thing's hidden itself. It was right along here. Let me take +your axe and I'll blaze a tree." + +The man, without a word, passed him the axe and Raven notched a sapling. +Then, still holding the axe, he turned to the man with a smile. No one +had ever told him what a charming smile it was. Anne used to wonder, in +her dignified anguishes of love forbidden, if she could ever make him +understand how he looked when he smiled. + +"Well," said Raven, "who may you be?" + +"My name's Tenney," said the man, in the low, vibrant voice. + +"Oho!" said Raven, remembering Charlotte's confidences. Then, as Tenney +frowned slightly and glanced at him in a questioning suspicion, he +continued, "Then we're neighbors. My name's Raven." + +The man nodded. + +"They said you were comin'," he remarked. + +He held out his hand for the axe. Raven, loath to give it to him, yet +saw no excuse for withholding it. After all, she was safely locked in. +So he tossed the axe and Tenney caught it lightly, and was turning away. +But he stopped, considered a moment, looking down at the ground, and +then, evidently concluding the question had to be put, broke out, and, +Raven thought, shamefacedly: + +"You seen anything of her up here?" + +"Her?" Raven repeated, though he knew the country shyness over family +terms. + +"Yes. My woman." + +"Your wife?" insisted Raven. "I don't believe I know her. No, I'm sure I +don't. I've been away several years. On the road, you mean? No--not a +soul." + +A swift rage passed over Tenney's face. It licked it like a flash of +evil light and Raven thought he saw how dangerous he could be. + +"No," he said, "I don't mean on the road. I mean in the woods." + +"Up here?" persisted Raven. "No, certainly not. This is no place for a +woman. A woman would have to be off her head to come traipsing up here +in the snow. Is that what you were yelling about? I thought you were a +catamount, at least." + +He laughed. He had an idea, suddenly conceived, that the man, having a +keen sense of personal dignity, was subject to ridicule, and that a +laugh would be salutary for him. And he was right. Tenney straightened, +put his axe over his shoulder, and walked away down the hill. + + + + +IX + + +Raven stood looking after him a minute and then began an ostentatious +search for his knife, went to the little pile of brush and saw it--the +steel tip of the handle shining there--and pulled the brush aside to get +it. As he was rising with it in his hand, he saw Tenney turn and look +back at him. He held up the knife and called: + +"I've got it." + +Tenney, not answering even by a sign, went on over the rise and +disappeared below. Then Raven, after lingering a little to make sure he +did not reappear, turned up the slope and into the path at the left and +so came again to the hut. He unlocked the door and went in. She was +sitting by the fire and the child was on the floor, staring rather +vacuously at his little fingers, as if they interested him, but not +much. The woman was looking at the child, but only in a mechanical sort +of way, as if it were her job to look and she did it without intention +even when the child was safe. But she was also watching the door, +waiting for him; it was in an agony of expectation, and her eyes +questioned him the instant he stepped in. + +"Warm enough?" he inquired, as incidentally, he hoped, as if it were not +unusual to find her here. "Let me throw on a log." + +He did throw on two and the fire answered. The solemn child, who proved, +at closer view, to have an unusual beauty of pink cheeks, blue eyes, and +reddish hair, did not intermit his serious gaze at his fingers. When +Raven had put on the logs and dusted himself off, he found himself at a +loss. How should he begin? Was Tenney, with his catamount yells and his +axe, to be ignored altogether, or should he reassure her by telling her +the man had gone? But she herself began. + +"I suppose," she said, in the eloquent low voice that seemed to make the +smallest word significant, "you think it's funny." + +Raven knew what sense the word was meant to convey. + +"No," he said, "not in the least. It's pretty bad for you, though," he +added gravely, on second thought that he might. + +She made a little gesture with her hand. It was a beautifully formed +hand, but reddened with work. The gesture was as if she threw something +away. + +"He won't hurt me," she said. + +"No," Raven returned, "I should hope not." + +He drew up a chair to the hearth and was about to take it when she spoke +again. The blood ran into her cheeks, as she did it, and she put her +request with difficulty. It seemed to Raven that she was suddenly +engulfed in shame. + +"Should you just as soon," she asked, "take the key inside an' lock the +door?" + +She put it humbly, and Raven rose at once. + +"Of course," he said. "Good idea." + +He locked the door and came back to his chair and she began, never +omitting to share her attention with the child: + +"I know who you be. It's too bad this has come upon you. I'll have to +ask you not to let it go any further." + +Raven was about to assure her that nothing had come upon him, and then +he bethought himself that a great deal had. She had looked to him like +the Mother of Sorrows and, though the shock of that vision was over, she +seemed to him now scarcely less touching in her beautiful maternity and +her undefended state. So he only glanced at her and said gravely: + +"Nobody will know anything about it from me. After all"--he was bound to +reassure her if he could--"I've nothing to tell." + +Her face flashed into an intensity of revolt against any subterfuge, the +matter was so terrible. + +"Why, yes, you have," said she. "Isr'el Tenney chased his woman up into +the woods with an axe. An' you heard him yellin' after her. That's God's +truth." + +Raven felt rising in him the rage of the natural man, a passion of +protection for the woman who is invincibly beautiful yet physically +weak. + +"An'," she went on, "you might ha' seen him out there, axe an' all." + +"Oh," said Raven, as if it were of no great account, "I did see him." + +"O my soul!" she breathed. "You see him? I'm glad you come in. He might +ha' asked you if you'd seen me." + +"He did." + +This was a new terror and she was undone. + +"How'd you do it?" she asked breathlessly. "You must ha' put it better'n +I could or he'd be here now." + +"I didn't 'put it,'" said Raven, easily. "I lied, and he went off down +the hill." + +Extravagant as it seemed, he did get an impression, like a flash, that +she was disappointed in him because he had lied. But this was no time +for casuistry. There were steps to be taken. + +"You won't go back to him," he said, and said it definitively as if it +were a matter he had thought out, said it like a command. + +She stared at him. + +"Not go back to him?" she repeated. "Why, I've got to go back to him. +I've got to go home. Where do you expect I'm goin', if I don't go home?" + +"Haven't you any people?" Raven asked her. "Can't you go to them?" + +She laughed a little, softly, showing fine white teeth. The spell of her +beauty was moving to him. He might never, he thought, have noticed her +at all in other circumstances, if he had not seen her there in the woods +and felt her need knock at his heart with the imperative summons of the +outraged maternal. Was this the feeling rising in him that had made his +mother's servitude to his father so sickening in those years gone by? +Was the old string still throbbing? Did it need but a woman's hand to +play upon it? And yet must he not have noted her, wherever they had met? +Would not any man? + +"I've got four brothers," she said. "They'd laugh at me. They'd tell me +I'd married well an' got a better home than any of them could scrape +together if they begun at the beginnin' an' lived their lives over. +There's nothin' in Isr'el Tenney to be afraid of, they'd tell me. And +there ain't--for them." + +"No," said Raven quietly. He felt an intense desire to feel his way, +make no mistakes, run no risk of shutting off her confidence. "It's a +different thing for you." + +Now she turned her face more fully upon him, in a challenging surprise. + +"Why," she said, "I ain't afraid--except for him." + +By the smallest motion of her hand she indicated the child, who was now, +in sudden sleepiness, toppling back against the wall. + +"Put him up here," said Raven, indicating the couch. + +He opened the folded rug and held it until she had disposed the little +lax figure among the pillows. Then she took the rug from him and covered +the child, with quick, capable movements of her beautiful worn hands. +Raven, watching her, felt a clutch at his throat. Surely there was +nothing in the known world of plastic action so wonderful as these +movements of mothers' hands in their work of easing a child. With a last +quick touch on the rug, drawing it slightly away from the baby cheek, +she returned to her chair, and Raven again took his. He was afraid lest +she repent her open-mindedness toward him and talk no more. But she was +looking at him earnestly. It was evidently a part of her precautionary +foresight that he should know. Did she think he could help her? His +blood quickened at the thought. It seemed enough to have lived for, in +so brutal a world. She veered for a moment from her terror to the +necessity for justifying herself. + +"You needn't think," she said, almost aggressively, "I'd talk to +everybody like this." + +He was holding himself down to a moderation he knew she wanted, and +replied: + +"No, of course not. But you can talk to me." + +"Yes," she said, "I can." She dismissed that, having said it, as if she +saw no need of finding the underlying reasons they were both going by. +"You see," she said, "it's the baby. When he gits one o' them spells, +it's the baby he pitches on." + +Raven picked out from her confusion of pronouns the fact that Tenney, in +his spells, incredibly threatened the baby. + +"Don't you think," he said, "you make too much of it--I mean, as to the +baby. He wouldn't hurt his own child." + +Again the blood ran into her cheeks, and she looked a suffering so acute +that Raven got up and walked through the room to the window. It seemed +an indecency to scan the anguished page of her face. + +"That's it," she said, in a strangled voice. "When he has his spells he +don't believe the baby's his." + +"God!" muttered Raven. He turned and came back to her. "You don't mean +to live with him," he said. "You can't. You mustn't. The man's a brute." + +She was looking up at him proudly. + +"But," she said, "baby is his own child." + +"Good God! of course it is," broke out Raven, in a fever of impatience. +"Of course it's his child. You don't need to tell me that." + +Then, incredibly, she smiled and two dimples appeared at the corners of +her mouth and altered her face from a mask of tragic suffering to the +sweetest playfulness. + +"You mustn't say 'it,'" she reproved him. "You must say 'he.' Anybody'd +know you ain't a family man." + +Raven stood looking at her a moment, his own smile coming. Then he sat +down in his chair. He wanted to tell her how game she was, and there +seemed no way to manage it. But now he could ask her questions. Her +friendliness, her amazing confidence, had opened the door. + +"Exactly what do you mean?" he asked, yet cautiously, for even after her +own avowals he might frighten her off the bough. "Does he drink?" + +She looked at him reprovingly. + +"No, indeed," she said. "He's a very religious man." + +"The devil he is!" Raven found himself muttering, remembering the +catamount yells and the axe. "Then what," he continued, with as complete +an air as he could manage of taking it as all in the day's work, "what +do you mean by his spells?" + +She was silent a moment. Her mind seemed to be going back. + +"He gits--mad," she said slowly. "Crazy, kind of. It's when he looks at +baby and baby looks different to him." + +"Different? How different?" + +"Why," she said, in a burst of pride turning for an instant to the +little figure on the couch, "baby's got awful cunnin' little ways. An' +he's got a little way o' lookin' up sideways, kind o' droll, an' when he +does that an' Mr. Tenney sees it"--here Raven glanced at her quickly, +wondering what accounted for her being so scrupulous with her "Mr. +Tenney"--"he can't help noticin' it an' he can't help thinkin' how baby +ain't colored like either of us--we're both dark----" + +There she stopped, at last in irreparable confusion, and Raven was +relieved. How could he let her, he had been thinking, go on with the +sordid revelation? When he spoke, it was more to himself than to her, +but conclusively: + +"The man's a beast." + +"No, he ain't," said she indignantly. "Baby's light complected. You see +he is. An' I'm dark an' so's Mr. Tenney. An' I told him--I told him +about me before we were married, an' he thought he could stand it then. +But we went over to the county fair an' he see--_him_. He come up an' +spoke to him, that man did, spoke to us both, an' Mr. Tenney looked at +him as if he never meant to forgit him, an' he ain't forgot him, not a +minute since. He's light complected, blue eyes an' all. An' he stood +there, that man did, talkin' to us, kinder laughin' an' bein' funny, an' +all to scare me out o' my life for fear o' what he'd say. He didn't say +a word he hadn't ought to, an' when he'd had his joke he walked off. But +he had just that way o' lookin' up kinder droll, an' baby's got it. Mr. +Raven, for God's sake tell me why my baby's got to look like that man?" + +She was shaking him into a passion as unendurable as her own. He had +never felt such pity for any human being, not even the men blinded and +broken in the War. And he understood her now. Even through his belief in +her, that sudden belief born of her beauty and her extremity, he had +been amazed at her accepting him so absolutely. Now he saw. He was her +last hope and perhaps because he was different from the neighbors to +whom she could not speak, she was throwing herself into the arms of his +compassion. And she had to hurry lest she might not see him again. He +sat there, his hands clenched between his knees, his head bent. He must +not look at her. + +"Poor chap!" he said finally, his altered thoughts now on Tenney. "He's +jealous." + +She broke into a sob that seemed to rend her and then pulled herself up +and sat silent. But he could see, from her shadowy outline through his +oblique vision, that she was shaking horribly. + +"Can't you," he said, "make him understand, make him see how--how +tremendously you love him?" + +That was pretty mawkish, he thought, as he said it, but he meant it, he +meant volumes more. Flood the man with kindness, open the doors of her +beauty and let him see how really incorruptible she was, how loyal, how +wronged. For, with every minute of her company, he was the more +convinced of her inviolate self. Whatever the self had been through, now +it was motherhood incarnate. What was she saying to this last? + +"Be nice to him?" she asked, "that kind o' way?" And he saw, as she did, +that he had meant her to drown the man's jealous passion in passion of +her own. "He thinks," she said bitterly, "that's the kind o' woman I +am." + +Then he looked with her upon the barricaded road of her endeavor. + +"I can't even," she said, "have the house pretty when he comes home an' +be dressed up so's he'll have a pleasant evenin' but he thinks--that's +the kind o' woman I am." The last she said as if she had said it many +times before and it held the concentrated bitterness of her hateful +life. "An'," she added, turning upon him and speaking fiercely, as if he +had been the one to accuse her, "it's true. It is the kind o' woman I +am. An' I don't want to be. I want to set down with my sewin' an' watch +the baby playin' round. What is it about me? What makes 'em foller me +an' offer me things an' try, one way or another, to bring me down? What +is it?" + +She was panting with the passion of what seemed an accusation of him +with all mankind. He added one more to his list of indictments against +nature as God had made it. Here she was, a lure, innocent, he could have +sworn, backed up against the defenses of her ignorance, and the whole +machinery of nature was moving upon her, seeking, with its multitudinous +hands, to pull her in and utilize her for its own ends. + +"Never mind," he said harshly. "Don't try to understand things. You +can't. We can't any of us. Only I'll tell you how you looked to me, that +first minute. You looked like the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ." + +She shrank a little. He had touched, he saw, innocent prejudices. + +"Are you a Roman Catholic?" she asked. + +"No," he said, "not that nor anything. But you see how good you looked +to me. It doesn't hurt any of us to be Catholic, if we're good." + +"I didn't mean anything," she said humbly. "Only there ain't many round +here." + +"You say your husband is religious. Does he go to church?" + +"Yes," she answered soberly, and also with a kind of wonder at a man's +accomplishing so dull an observance. "We go twice every Sunday, an' +Sunday school an' evenin' meetin' besides." + +"Do you like it?" + +"No," she said, looking rueful, as if trusting he might forgive her. "I +git sleepy." + +At this Raven laughed and she glanced at him mildly, as if wandering +what he had found to please him. He had been thinking. + +"Now," he said, "we must plan what you're going to do. You won't let me +send you and the baby away to stay awhile?" + +She shook her head. + +"Then what are we going to do? Can't you let me go to him and tell him, +man to man, what an infernal fool he is?" + +A wild alarm flew into her face. + +"No! no!" she said. + +"What is going to happen? You can't go home." + +"Oh, yes, I can," said she. "I always do. It works off. Maybe it's +worked off now. He gits all wore out actin' the way he does, an' then +he's terrible scared for fear I've made way with myself, an' he's all +bowed down." + +"Oh!" said Raven. "And you've got him where you want him. And you settle +down and wait for another spell. How long do you generally stay away?" + +"Long's I can," she answered simply. "Till I'm afraid baby'll git cold. +I keep his little things where I can ketch 'em up an' run. But sometimes +he 'most gits a chill." + +The yearning of anxiety in her voice was intense enough, he thought, to +balance the grief of all the mothers bereft by Herod. + +"I don't see," he said, "how you get up here anyway. You must come by +the road? Why doesn't he follow you?" + +The slow red surged into her face. She was hesitating. There was +evidently worse to come. + +"He gits so mad," she said, with frequent pauses between the words, "he +don't stay in the house after he's had a spell. I guess he don't dare +to. He's afraid of what he'll do. He goes out an' smashes away at the +woodpile or suthin.' An' it's then I ketch up the baby an' run. I go out +the side door an' up the road a piece an' into the back road. Then I +come down the loggin' road the back way an' end up here. It's God's +mercy," she said passionately, "they've broke out that loggin' road or +there wouldn't be any path an' he'd see my tracks in the snow." + +"Then," said Raven, "if he has sense enough to go and work it off on the +woodpile, perhaps you aren't in any real danger, after all." + +She looked at him piteously. Her eyes narrowed with a frowning return to +a scene of terror past and persistently avoided in retrospect. + +"'Most always," she said, in a low tone, "it comes on him ag'in, an' +then, 'fore you know it, he's back in the house. Once he brought the axe +with him. Baby was in the cradle. The cradle head's split right square +acrost." + +"Good God!" said Raven. "And you won't let me send you away from here?" + +"Why, Mr. Raven," said she, and her voice was only less exquisite in its +tenderness than when she spoke of the baby, "ain't I married to him?" + +They sat looking at each other, and the suffused beauty of her face was +so moving to him that he got up and went to the window and stared out at +the tree branches in their winter calm. He made himself stand there +looking at them and thinking persistently of them, not of her. She would +not bear thinking of, this thing of beauty and need and, at the same +time, inexorability of endurance. Unless she would let him help her, he +was only driving the hot ploughshare of her misery through his own heart +for nothing. So he stood there, mechanically studying the trees and +remembering how they would wake from this frozen calm on a night when +the north wind got at them and made them thrash at one another in the +fury of their destiny. Her voice recalled him. + +"I don't mean," she said, "to make you feel bad. I hadn't ought to put +it on anybody else's shoulders, anyway." + +Then Raven realized that the tenderness in her voice was for him. He +turned and came back to his place by the fire. But he did not sit. He +stood looking at her as she looked anxiously up at him. + +"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "for the present, anyway. I'm +going now, and you're to stay here as long as you think best. When you +go, lock the door and put the key under the flat stone out by the step. +I often leave the key there. I'll make sure the stone isn't frozen down. +Now, you understand, don't you? You're to come up here whenever you +like. If there isn't a fire, you're to build one. Nobody will disturb +you. Jerry won't be cutting up here. I'll send him down into the lower +woods." + +"But," she said, in evident concern, "I can't do that. You come up here +to write your books. Mr. Tenney said so, when he was tellin' me who all +the neighbors were. He said you had the shack repaired so's to write +your books." + +Raven smiled. Books seemed far removed from this naked face of life. + +"I'm not writing books now," he said. "I'm just hanging round. I may go +over and see your husband, ask him to do some work for me." + +The quick look of alarm ran into her face. + +"Oh," she breathed, "you won't----" + +"No," he answered steadily, "I won't say a word about you. Of course I +sha'n't. And I won't to anybody." + +"An'," she broke in tumultuously, "if you should see me--oh, it's an +awful thing to say, after what you've done for me this day--but you +won't act as if you ever see me before?" + +That was the only wisdom, Raven saw, but a band seemed to tighten about +his heart. Deny her before men, she whom he had not yet untangled from +the rapt vision of their meeting? + +"No," he said, "I won't even look at you. Now I'm going. I'll loosen up +the stone." + +She rose to her imposing height and came to him where he stood, his hand +on the latch. Her eyes brimmed. In the one glance he had of her, he +thought such extremity of gratitude might, in another instant, break in +a flood of words. + +"Go back," he said, "where nobody can see you when I open the door. +Jerry may have taken a notion to come up." + +She turned obediently and he did not look at her again. He opened the +door and stepped out. The stone was there beside the larger one below +the sill. He bent and wrenched it up from the ground where the frost was +holding it, and with such unregarding force that the edges hurt his +hands. He smiled a little at the savage satisfaction of the act, +wondering if this was how Tenney felt when he smashed away at the wood. +Then he remembered that the key was inside, tapped on the door, opened +it and spoke to her: + +"You'd better lock the door. Keep it locked till you go." + +She was sitting before the fire, her head bent almost to her knee, her +face in her hands. He closed the door and waited until he heard her step +and the turning of the key. Then he strode out into the logging road and +down the slope. One certainty surged and trembled in him: that he had +never been so sorry for anybody in his life. + + + + +X + + +Raven, determinedly shedding his emotion, plunged fast down the hill and +into the house where Charlotte was busy in a steam of fragrances from +stove and cooking table and Jerry sat smoothing an axe helve. + +"See here," said Raven, pulling off his gloves and advancing to the +stove, where Jerry, looking mildly up, made room for him, "are you +thinning out up on the ridge?" + +Jerry nodded. + +"That's what you wrote," said he. + +"I've changed my mind," said Raven. "It looks mighty well up there as it +is, for the present, anyway. Didn't you say there was a lot of gray +birch that needed to go down in the river pasture?" + +Again Jerry nodded, and Charlotte, evidently not finding this definite +enough, put in: + +"Why, yes, Jerry, seems to me you said so. 'Twas in that letter you had +me write." + +"Well," said Raven, "I want you to get at the river woods. I want 'em +cleaned up. Couldn't you get somebody to help you? That man Tenney, how +about him?" + +Jerry, confronted by haste and emergency, two flying visitants he never +could encounter adequately, opened his mouth and looked at Charlotte. + +"Why, yes," said she. "He's a great hand to work. You said so yourself, +Jerry, only last week." + +"Then what if we should hire him?" said Raven. "What if I should go up +and ask him now?" + +Jerry was slowly coming to. + +"He's been by here to-day," said he, "axe in his hand. Went as if he's +sent for. Then he went back." + +"Well, that was an hour or more ago," said Charlotte. "You says to me, +'Where's he be'n?' says you. Yes, he's got home long 'fore this. You'll +find him some'r's round home." + +"All right," said Raven. "Don't go up on the ridge again, Jerry. I want +it left as it is." + +He hurried out through the shed and Charlotte and Jerry exchanged +glances, his entirely bemused and she sympathetically tender. + +"'Course he don't want you cuttin' on the ridge," she said. "He's goin' +up there to write his books. I should think you could see that." + +For Charlotte, when no third person was by to observe Jerry's sloth at +the uptake, had methods of her own to keep him mentally alive. If he did +lag a pace behind, it was his secret and hers, and sometimes, between +themselves, it was wholesome to recognize it. + +Raven walked at top speed. He could not, at his utmost, get to Tenney +soon enough. It was true, he was under vow not to assault or accuse him, +but it seemed to him the woman would not be even intermittently safe +unless the man were under his eye. As the picture of her flashed again +to his mind, sitting by his hearth, her head bowed in grief unspeakable, +he wondered what he should call her. Surely not, in his rage against +Tenney, by Tenney's name. She was "the woman," she was the pitiful type +of all suffering womanhood. + +There was the house, rather narrow in build, but painted white, with +green blinds. The narrowness gave it a look of unwelcoming meagerness, +this although it was of a good size. Raven wondered why some minds ran +to pointed roofs, inhospitable to the eye. This looked to him like +Tenney, his idea of him. The barn was spacious, and beautiful in silver +gray, and the woodpile, Raven decided ironically, a marvel of artistic +skill. He had never seen such a big woodpile, so accurately trimmed at +the corners, so perfect in the face of an extended length. It must, he +judged, represent a good many hours of jealous madness, if it was +entirely the product of those outbreaks when Tenney went out to smash +wood. And there, round one corner of the pile, was Tenney himself. Raven +realized that he had not expected to find him. Actually he had believed +the man was raging over snowy hillsides somewhere about, armed with his +axe and uttering those catamount cries. Tenney was not at work. He was +standing perfectly still, looking up the road. + +"Hullo!" called Raven, turning into the yard, and the man jerked back a +step and then stopped and awaited him. + +It was not a step actually. His feet did not leave the ground. He +merely, his whole body, seemed thrown out of position, to recover +instantly. Raven, watching him as he traversed the few steps between +them, decided that he was uncontrollably nervous, frightened, too, +perhaps, at what his apprehensive mind pictured: and that was good for +him. What was Tenney, according to his look? Raven, scrutinizing him as +he approached, determined to know something more than he had caught from +those preoccupied minutes in the woods. How, if he had his pen in hand, +would he describe Israel Tenney for one of the folk tales Anne had so +persistently urged him to? A thin, tall man with narrow shoulders and +yet somehow giving an impression of great wiry strength. He had a boldly +drawn line of profile, hair black and glossy and, as Raven saw with +distaste, rather long under his hat, vertical lines marking his cheeks, +lines deeper than seemed justified by his age, and, as he had noted +before, his eyes were also black with a spark in them. What was the +spark? It was, Raven concluded again, in this quick scrutiny, like that +in the eyes of inventors and visionaries. He wore clothes so threadbare +that it seemed as if he must have been cold. But they were patched with +a scrupulous nicety that made some revulsion in Raven rise up and +dramatically spur him to a new resentment. She had patched them. Her +faithful needle had spent its art on this murderer of her peace. He had +reached the woodpile now and Tenney came a step forward. + +"Great woodpile you've got here," said Raven. + +Tenney put out his hand and rested it on one of the sticks. He might +have been caressing a pet dog. + +"Stove wood length," he said briefly. Then he seemed to feel some +curiosity over being sought out after their meeting on the rise and +asked: "D'you find your knife?" + +"Why, yes," said Raven. "Didn't you see me hold it up to you?" + +Tenney nodded, frowning. He seemed to conclude he was giving himself +away, showing more interest in the stranger than the stranger had in any +way earned. But he asked another question. It leaped from him. He had to +ask it. + +"D'you see anybody up round there after I come down?" + +Raven shook his head, looking, he hoped, vague. + +"I came down myself," he said. "I had to talk with Jerry about his +thinning out." + +The eagerness faded from Tenney's face. + +"I didn't see Jerry up there this mornin'," he volunteered, in an +indifferent contribution toward the talk. + +"No," said Raven. "You won't see him up there at all after this--for a +spell, that is. I write, you know, books. I like to go up to the hut to +work. Not so likely to be interrupted there. I don't want chopping going +on." + +Tenney, with a quick lift of the head, looked at him questioningly. +Raven saw anger also in the look, at last anger ready to spring. Both +men had the same thought. Tenney wondered if the owner of the wood was +going to taunt him again with yelling like a catamount, and Raven did +actually put aside an impulse toward it. + +"D'you come over here to forbid my goin' up in your woods?" Tenney +inquired. + +"No," said Raven. "I came to ask you if you could help Jerry do some +thinning out in the river pasture. I'm rather in a hurry about that." + +"Why, yes," Tenney began. Then he added breathlessly, as if another part +of his mind (the suffering, uncontrolled part) broke in on his speech: +"Not yet, though. I can't do anything yet, not till I see how things +turn." + +Raven thought he understood. Tenney could settle to nothing until he +knew when his wife was coming back or whether she was coming at all. Now +that the vision of her had entered on their stage, he was conscious of +answering coldly: + +"All right. You can make up your mind and go over and see Jerry. He'll +arrange it with you." + +On these words, he was about turning away, when he found Tenney suddenly +oblivious of him. The man's thin face was quivering into a pathetic +disorder, flushed, quite beyond his control. He neither heard Raven nor +saw him, though he did speak brokenly: + +"There!" he said. "There she is now." + +Raven, turning, followed his gaze, directed up the road, not the way he +had come. There she was, walking toward them with swift, long steps, the +child held with the firmness that still seemed a careless buoyancy, as +he had seen her in the woods. She had come home, as she went, the back +way. Raven could have stood there through the long minute, motionless, +waiting for her to come to him, for it seemed as if it were to him she +came, not Tenney. But he recalled himself with a brusqueness so rough +and sudden that it was as if he gave himself a blow. That last glance +had shown him she had nothing more to fear from Tenney, for this time at +least. The man had been horribly frightened at her going. Now he was +under her heel. Raven did not give her another look. He turned homeward, +and called back to Tenney loudly enough for her to overhear him and be +under no apprehension as to what had passed: + +"Make up your mind, then come and talk it over with Jerry. It's +chopping, you understand, gray birches down in the river pasture." + +Tenney did not answer, and Raven, striding along the road, listened with +all possible intentness to hear whether husband and wife spoke together. +He thought not, but he did hear the closing of a door. + + + + +XI + + +Thyatira--this was her name, and she was called Tira--passed her husband +apparently without a glance. Nevertheless she had, in approaching, +become adequately aware of his disordered look, and the fact of it +calmed her to a perfect self-possession. She could always, even from one +of these fleeting glimpses, guess at the stage his madman's progress had +reached, and the present drop in temperature restored her everyday sense +of safety. With it came a sudden ebbing of energy and endurance. The +"spell" was over for the time, but her escape from the shadow of it left +her nerveless and almost indifferent to its returning; apathetic, too, +to her tormentor. Going in, she closed the door behind her, apparently +not noticing that he followed her, and when he opened it and came in, +she was sitting in his great chair by the fire, taking off the baby's +coat, and, with the capable, anxious mother motion, feeling the little +hands. Tenney came up to her and the child, turning at his step, looking +up at him solemnly. Tira's heart seemed to contract within her. This was +the very glance, "lookin' up kinder droll," that had brought on the +storm. But for Tenney it evidently meant something now that fitted his +mood of passionate anxiety to get back into the warm security of +domestic peace. + +"You lemme take him," he said, "whilst you git off your things. You'll +ketch your death o' cold, carryin' on so." + +The last he had to add. She was, his defensive inner mind told him, all +wrong in flying out of the house "like a crazed creatur'" when she might +have stayed and told him, just told him, whether she was the kind of +woman he, at these unheralded mad moments, thought she was. That was the +undercurrent always in his mind: if she wouldn't be so still and +hateful, if she would only tell him. She might have some pity on a man, +that defensive inner mind advised him, when she saw him all worked up. +But the minute he warned her the devil of doubt was again tempting him, +she began to freeze up and wouldn't speak to him at all. No wonder, with +that devil inside whispering to him and hounding him on--no wonder he +said things and--he trembled here and dared not follow out that +thought--and was afraid he might do things. But she shook her head, at +his offer of taking the child. + +"You might go an' cut a slice o' ham," she said wearily. "It's 'most +dinner time. We might's well have that as anything." + +But the baby reached out and closed his little fingers about Tenney's +thumb. Tenney stood there, his heart swelling within him at the contrast +between the child's forgivingness and her cruelty. Now she had the +child's outer things off, and she rose with them in one hand, carrying +the child on the other arm, and it was her movement that dragged the +little fingers away and broke that significant clasp on Tenney's thumb. +How hateful she could be, he thought, his heart swelling more and more. +He stood where she left him, and she went to the low couch and set the +baby down there, and put into his hand a formless doll she wanted him to +love. He never really noticed it, but she felt he would sometime love +the doll. Then she glanced, with the air of being recalled to a +wearisome routine, at the table in the middle of the floor; it meant ham +and eggs. It seemed also to occur to her that she had not taken off her +cloak, and she hung it on its nail behind the door. Soon, as Tenney, +still motionless there by the stove, seemed mutely accusing her, mutely +imploring her not to be cruel, she did turn and look at him. The thought +of Raven was uppermost in her mind. It had been there every minute since +she had gone into his house in the woods, but now it roused +compellingly, stronger than even her present apprehension. Most of all, +she was penetrated by a wonder almost greater than any emotion she had +ever felt, at having laid before him at once and without persuasion, the +story of her life. Why should she have told him? She would have said no +decent woman could betray her husband to another man. It was entirely +mysterious, and she gave it up. But there was, behind the wonder, a +dazzling sense that he was different. As he had told her that strange +thing she hardly dared think of now, because it seemed as if she must +have misunderstood him--the thing about her looking so good and +wonderful when he came upon her--so he, in his kindness and compassion, +his implication of assuming a mysterious responsibility for her, seemed +unbelievably good, not a citizen of this bleak neighborhood--or even the +world (her mind, though stumblingly, ran as far as that) and, more +astounding still, the real miracle was that he had been sent for this: +to save her. And at that moment of dazed reflection, it all meant the +passionate necessity of obeying him. He had bade her show her husband +how she loved him. Seeing the man was jealous, he had pitied him. +Perhaps she had not thought, since these last apprehensive days with +Tenney, whether she loved him or not. He had simply, at the times of +recurrent tragedy, been the terror within the house, and she had lived a +life of breathless consecration to the one task of saving the child. Did +she love him? Raven had assumed she did, and in her devotion to him she +must, in some form, obey. Almost it seemed to her there would be shame +in not loving her husband, if Raven expected it of her. None of these +things were formulated in her mind. They were only shadowy impulses, +like the forces of nature, persuading, impelling her. She had no words; +she had scarcely, as to the abstractions she dimly felt and never saw, +any reasoned thought. But she did have an unrecognized life of the +emotions, and this was surging in her now. + +She stood for a second looking at Tenney, the distended beauty of her +eyes like a question, a challenge. She seemed, though this neither of +them could know, to be beseeching him to tell her what treatment he +deserved of her, or what would make their case whole. They were simple +people, these two, but she had leaped, without knowing it herself, to a +new plane of life. She was still with Raven in the hut, trying to speak +his language, follow out his thought for her. She gave a little quick +rush across the room and, to Tenney's overwhelming surprise, her hands +were on his shoulders, her face so close to his that her sweet breath +fanned him. He had never seen her so. She had to be pursued, coaxed, +tired out with persuasion before she would even accept the warmth he too +often had for her. + +"Isr'el," she said, "Isr'el Tenney! if you ever ag'in, so long as you +live, think wrong o' that baby there, you'll be the wickedest man on +God's earth." + +His arms closed about her and she stood passive. Yet she wanted to free +herself. Did she love him? The question Raven had seemed to illuminate +kept beating on in her tired head. Did she love him? And as Tenney's +arms clung closer and his lips were on hers, she threw back her head and +cried violently: + +"No, I don't." + +"Don't what?" he asked, releasing her slightly, and she drew away from +him and, still obeying Raven, made one disordered effort at assurance. + +"If you think"--here she stopped. She could not go on. It had always +seemed to her a wrong to the baby to put the vile suspicion into words. +"If you think," she tried again, "what you said this mornin'--O Isr'el, +I've been as true to you as you are to your God." + +He was religious, she often told herself, chiefly in her puzzled musings +after a "spell" was over, and this was the strongest vow she could +imagine. But it disconcerted him. + +"There! there!" he said. "Don't say such things." + +Evidently the name of God was for Sundays. But he was uneasily +reassured. He was, at least, in a way of sense, delighted. He put his +face to hers and thickly bade her kiss him. He was not for the moment +horrible to her unconsenting will. Rather she found herself rejoicing. +When she could escape from him (and she felt no fear, her wild belief in +herself was so great) she thought she could dance and sing. For now she +knew she did not love him, and it made her feel so free. Always there +had been some uneasy bond, first with the man who cajoled her to her +heart-break and the miserable certainty that, whatever magic was in a +good name, it was hers no more, and then with Tenney, whom she had +followed humbly, gratefully, because he had been so kind and told her +nothing mattered if she would marry him. But now she felt a sudden +snapping of the bond and she knew that, in her mind, at least, in her +moments of solitude with the baby, she could dance upon the hills of +life. It was an entirely new sense of ecstasy, a thrilling of her blood. +She laughed out, a low, excited laugh, and put him from her and called +gaily: + +"You slice the ham, an' I'll git out some eggs." + +Tenney stared at her a minute, perplexed and wondering. Then his face +relaxed slightly. It might have been said he smiled. There was +apparently a good feeling in the house, such as he had never been able +to create. She had always been kind, conformable, but she had never +laughed like this, nor in his sight taken up the baby and tossed him +until he, too, laughed gurglingly. She cooked the dinner and Tenney, not +able to take himself out of her bewildering presence, hung about and +watched her and, when the baby began to fret for food, took him up and +walked with him until Tira was free. And while they ate dinner the baby +slept again on the lounge: for the cradle, grim witness Tenney could not +bring himself to look at now, had been moved into the bedroom. + +"D'you see that feller jest goin' when you come into the yard?" Tenney +asked her, when his first hunger was over and he leaned back in his +chair to look at her where she sat, only picking at her food, he thought +anxiously. She seemed queer to him to-day, with the rapt, exalted look +of one who had seen strange things and been tired by them, the tremulous +eloquence of her lips. She was, he owned to himself, yet not with any +satisfaction, because any smallest allurement in her lessened his chance +of keeping her faith inviolate, a likely looking woman. + +"I wish," he said irritably, out of his uneasiness over her, "you'd eat +suthin.' You're all beat out." + +She smiled at him. She felt kindly toward him as to a part of the world +that had at least begun to show its softer side to her. + +"No," she said, "I ain't beat out." + +"D'you see him?" he pursued, his thoughts recurring to Raven. + +"Yes," she responded, in a low tone, "I see him." + +"'Twas Raven. You knew he was comin' up to stay a spell. Don't ye +remember I see Jerry an' he told me? He wants me to go down in his river +pastur', choppin'. All of a whew to git at it. Jest like them city +folks. If a thing comes into their head, they'll shake the footstool but +they'll git it." + +"Yes," said Tira. "I think 's likely." + +She got up to bring the pie, warming in the oven, and when her back was +toward him she allowed herself a smile, happy, unrestrained, at Raven's +thought for her. She knew why Tenney was to be drawn off down to the +river pasture. This was a part of Raven's understanding and his +beneficence. + +"You goin'?" she asked, returning to her chair. + +"Yes," said Tenney. "Might 's well." + +When he had eaten he went out to his chores and she cleared the table +and walked about the house with a light step. She had been working +heavily of late, with a dull mind, but now there seemed to be a reason +for doing every task as perfectly as it could be done. There was not a +suspicion in her mind that Raven had a charm for her or that she could +possibly have a charm for him. He had simply opened a window for the +light to come in; he had shown her the door of escape. This was the +first simple kindness she had ever had. When she was little, the family +life had been a disorderly struggle for bare existence, and as she grew +into an ignorant girlhood she began to be angrily conscious that she +herself, she who did not recognize the power of her own beauty and with +it the strange force that lay beneath it, like a philter, for man's +undoing, was an object of pursuit by men made mad through passions she +hated. She had the simplest tastes, the most inconsiderable desires. She +would go off by herself then and spend a day wandering about the woods, +cooling her feet in brooks, sleeping under a tree. No man could make her +happiness completer, hanging about her steps, staring her down with +bold, impudent eyes. She even thought, in a formless way (for she had no +orderly inner life of wonder and conclusion) whether she should have +taken refuge with the light-haired man who was now driving Tenney to +madness, if he had not had that drollery of looking at you, like a boy +really, who cared only for a boy's fitful fun. But he was not kind. The +kindness had been only to lure her into trusting him, just as Tenney's +had turned into a rage of abusive jealousy. Raven's kindness was +different. It was not in any degree personal to her. She knew he would +have been as merciful to a squirrel caught in a trap. And the scars of +his own mental sufferings and restraints had done something to him, +something inexplicable that made him wonderful in her eyes. He seemed, +too, all-powerful. He was that miraculous combination of the human guide +and heavenly helper, with the wisdom to understand earthly trouble and +the power to administer what remedy there might be. + +Tenney did not come in until supper time. He had been over to Raven's, +he told her, and seen Jerry about the chopping. They were going in the +morning early. She made no reply. She was still at peace in the thought +of Raven's kindness, but the turmoil of the day had told on her, and she +was so tired that she could scarcely drag herself about; her eyes kept +closing as she moved. Tenney was still expectantly eager for an +awakening of her leniency. At eight o'clock he brought out the Bible and +stiffened himself into the rigidity that was the mail for his spiritual +combats. He was always referring to himself, at these times of religious +observance, as a servant of the Cross, and Tira used wearily to wonder +whether he felt obliged to arrange himself for combats that, so far as +she knew, never seemed to come off. There was a mysterious adversary he +was always describing with an apprehension that made her wonder if +Israel could really be afraid, and if that was why he announced so +belligerently that he was ready for him. Neither of them thought of the +combat as being simply the grim fight the will of men is doomed to on +the dark plain of man's mysterious sojourn. It seemed to them outside +somewhere, dramatic, imminent, and yet, if you prayed loudly enough and +read your chapter, not certain to happen at all. At least this seemed to +be what Tenney thought, and Tira, when she dwelt upon it, sleepily +followed him. To-night he was reading in Revelation, and when he had +finished that, he would begin, in due course, at Genesis, and go on with +an iron persistency of accomplishment as methodical as ploughing a +field. Tira, sitting at her side of the hearth, heard, through drowsy +ears, the incomprehensible vision of the tree of life with its twelve +manner of fruits, and when Israel shut the Bible with an air of virtuous +finality, she came awake and sat guiltily upright. + +"You've been asleep," he accused her frowningly. "Anybody'd think you +could keep yourself awake over the Word o' God." + +Tira leaned back in her chair and yawned with the simplicity of the +natural animal. Tenney caught his breath, the redness of her mouth and +the gleam of her teeth were so bewitching to him. He got up and carried +away the Bible. When he came back from the best room she was moving +about, setting away chairs and then brushing up the few chips on the +hearth. + +"I'm beat out," she acknowledged, with a wistful look at him, half +deprecating humility. "I guess I'll poke off to bed." + +"Yes," said Tenney, "le's go." + +At that minute there was a little waking call from the bedroom off the +sitting-room. Tenney gave her a startled glance. + +"Why," he said, "you got him in there?" + +They had been used to keeping the baby covered on the kitchen or the +sitting-room couch until their own bedtime and Tenney, preoccupied with +his last chore of reading the Scriptures, had not noticed that his wife +had carried him into the bedroom instead. + +"Yes," she said, with a significant quiet. "I thought 'twas full warmer +in the bed. I'm goin' to stay with him." + +"In there?" Tenney repeated. "All night?" + +She nodded at him. The afternoon brightness was again on her face, and +for an instant he felt afraid of her, she looked so strange. Then he +laughed a little. He thought he understood, and, advancing, put a hand +on her shoulder and spoke in an awkward tenderness. + +"Here," said he, "you ain't afraid o' me, be you? Why, I wouldn't no +more lay hands on him----" + +He had meant to add that she had reassured him by her disclaimer of the +morning. But he could not quite manage that. Words were not his +servants. They were his enemies, especially at such times as he was mad +with rage. Then they came too fast and got the better of him, and he +could hardly ever remember afterward what they were. Tira slipped from +under his hand and continued her ordered tasks about the room. But she +smiled at him in the friendliest way. + +"Oh, no," she said, "I ain't the leastest mite afraid." She laughed a +little, in a manner mystifying to him, for it suddenly seemed to her she +should never be afraid of anything again. + +Tenney stood there, his eyes following her as she moved about the room, +and again the thought of her cruelty possessed him. Last of all her +orderly deeds, she lighted a little lamp and set it on the table near +him. + +"Don't you forgit to blow it out," she warned him. "I'm terrible afraid +o' fire, these winter nights. I won't put out the big lamp yet. I can +see to undress by it, an' then baby won't wake up." + +He took his lamp and set it down again and went to the bedroom door, her +eyes following him. + +"I dunno," he said, in a strangled voice, "as there's any need o' that +in there, for folks to tumble over." + +He stepped inside, took up the cradle with the telltale gash in the +hood, carried it through the kitchen and set it outside the door, in the +shed. + +"I'll carry it up into the shed chamber to-morrer," he said, in the same +tortured voice. + +Then he took his lamp and turned to go. He was as much surprised at +himself as she could have guessed. For some reason--and he did not know +the reason--he could not bear to leave her there in the dark with the +silent witness standing by to cry out against him. Yet this he did not +think. He only knew he must get the cradle out of the room and do it +quickly. When he had reached the door to the enclosed staircase, her +voice halted him so abruptly that the light quivered in his hand. + +"Isr'el," it called, "you're real good. Don't you be cold. There's a +blanket on the foot." + +But though he hesitated another minute, the voice had nothing more for +him, and he went slowly up to bed. As he undressed, his thoughts down +there with her, he wondered how her voice could have sounded so gay. + +In the middle of the night, Tira woke suddenly, with the sense of +something near. There was the moon flooding the little room, and in the +doorway stood a figure. + +"That you, Isr'el?" she called clearly. + +"Yes," he said, and then hesitated, "you all right?" + +"Yes," she answered, in the same clear voice, with something commanding +in it now. "We're all right. You go back to bed, so's to git your sleep. +I'll call you if I'm up first." + +Tenney turned away, and she heard his hesitating step through the +kitchen and on the stairs. Then, as if this had been as commonplace an +interlude in her night as the baby's waking and drowsing off again, she +felt herself surging happily away to sleep. + + + + +XII + + +Raven, tired to lethargy by the morning's turmoil, stayed in the house +until after dinner. He sat by the library fire, a book on his knee, +chiefly to convince Charlotte, who would inevitably detect his drop in +responsive liveliness, that he was merely absorbed and not moping. Once +or twice she did appear at the door, plainly to look at him, but, +finding he kept his eyes on the page, she did not speak. The life had +gone out of him. He wondered at himself for being so fagged. Yet it had +been a good deal of a strain, that anguish of a creature he was not +allowed to help; it was exacting a heavy penalty. He found his mind +dwelling on it, look by look, word by word, and finding no relief except +in the thought of Tenney in the river pasture, chopping. If that came to +pass, the woman would be safe for hours she could count upon. + +That afternoon, Jerry reported that Tenney had been over and promised to +appear next morning with his axe. Then Raven went off for a walk along +the road skirting the base of the mountain. Possibly he chose it because +it led to the woman's old home, and the thought of her was uppermost in +his mind. The road itself was still and dark, subdued to a moving +silence, it might almost seem, by the evergreens, watchers on the high +cliff at the left, and the quiet of the river, now under ice, on the +other side below. He kept on to the stepping stones, at the verge of the +scattered settlement of Mountain Brook. They were rough granite at +regular distances apart, only the tops of them visible above the ice, +and they made the concluding stage of the walk across lots from Wake +Hill to Mountain Brook. In spring the water swirled about them madly, +and it was one of the adventures of boyhood for a squad to go over to +the stepping stones and leap from one to another without splashing into +the foam below. This was "playing Moosewood," the Indian who had been +found there drowned, whether by his own act because the local palefaces +had got his hill-top, over beyond, or from prolonged fire-water, no one +knew. But always he was a noble red man and one boy acted his despairing +part, and the others hunted him across the stones. In the game, he +always escaped and "shinnied" up the cliff opposite, by fissures the +boys of every generation knew, and struck a pose among the evergreens +above, whooping down defiance. + +Raven stopped there and gave a thought to the boy he had been, and then +to Anne, who had once taken the walk across lots with him, and who, when +he told her how they used to play Moosewood, insisted on crossing, +though he had tried to dissuade her, noting her foolish shoes, and aware +that she had no adroitness of eye and muscle. But she had a will of +steel in these matters, as well as those of the spirit, and would not be +prevailed on. Three of the daring leaps she made from one stone to +another and at the fourth she slipped and he caught and held her, the +delicate slenderness of her, in his arms. He had felt awkward merely and +sorry for her, she so overprized doing things superlatively well, and +when they reached the bank she was flushed and shaken, and again he was +sorry, it seemed so slight a thing to care about. But as he looked down +there now he was thinking really about her he called "the woman" in his +mind. She would not slip. She was as perfectly adapted in every tempered +muscle to the rough conditions of natural life as the pioneer women who +helped their men clear the wilderness and set hearthstones. It darkened +between the firs and they began to stir a little, as if a wind were +coming up, and he turned back home, again growing uneasy about her, shut +up there with her tormentor and walled about by the dark. + +He had his supper early, and he did not again invite Charlotte and Jerry +to eat with him. Now, he felt, he should need all the solitude he could +get to think out this thing he seemed to have taken upon himself, and +keep a grip on his anxiety. After supper he asked Charlotte for blankets +and a pillow. She did not look at him, but he was clearly aware that she +was worried and would not let him read it in her eyes. + +"It's all right, Charlotte," he assured her. "I just want some things up +there at the hut, for the couch, that's all." + +"You ain't goin' to sleep up there, be you?" she asked quietly. +Charlotte, he knew, had felt his mood. She saw he was on edge. + +"No," he said, "I shall be right back. Only I want to get them up there. +To-morrow I shall be carrying books and things." + +She got the blankets without a word, venturing only, as she gave them to +him: + +"Jerry'll be as mad as fire with me for not sendin' him up to lug 'em." + +Raven smiled at her and went off with his load. He carried also his +electric torch, and traversing the dark between the moving trees, +creaking now and complaining, at the door of the hut he flashed on the +light and lifted the stone. The key was there. That gave him a momentary +relief. She had understood and done her part toward his task of +defending her. He went in, tossed the things over a chair, and lighted +one of the candles on the mantel. The hearth was cold and he piled logs +and kindling. Then he put the pillow in its place on the couch and +spread the blankets. That was to show her she was to make herself +comfortable. The match-box he placed on the mantel, where it seemed +likely her hand would touch it, if she thought to feel there, and beside +it his torch. It might be a momentary defence against the impalpable +terrors of the night. But he was not sure she would feel any terrors, +save of the defined and tangible. That he considered absorbedly as he +went down the path after placing the key under the stone. It was not +that she was insensitive. He felt in her the alert readiness of a +perfectly acting nervous system. It showed itself in her self-control, +her readiness of courage, her persistent calm. She would not thrill with +apprehension over the tapping of those boughs against the walls: only at +a voice or a human tread. + +When he went in at his own door Charlotte appeared, with a quick step, +from the kitchen. She was relieved, he saw. Dear Charlotte! she did not +know how his anxieties were mounting, but she did feel the uneasiness he +had brought with him. He tried to throw her off the track of her silent +interrogations. + +"I'm dog tired," he told her. "I believe I'll go to bed." + +"That's right," said she. "Your fire's been blazed up quite a while." + +"Don't you know," he called back to her from the stairs, "how we always +sleep when we first come? I suppose it's the altitude." + +"Yes," said Charlotte. "So 'tis, anyhow accordin' to Jerry." + +Raven carried the look of her anxious, warm-colored face with him. It +was all motherly. Yet she had no children. Jerry lived under the daily +chrism of that soft well-wishing. And there was the woman up the road, +looking like a spiritual mother of men and strangely, mysteriously, also +like the ancient lure that makes men mad, and she had to fight like a +tigress for the mere life of her child. The contrast leaped into the +kaleidoscopic disorder he saw now as life like a brilliant, bizarre +fragment to make the whole scheme (if the scheme could be even estimated +by mortal minds) more disorderly still. But he was tired and he slept. +It would be good, he had thought for many weeks now, when he felt +himself drifting off, to sleep forever. To-night he did not want that +everlasting sleep. He wanted life, life to its full of power and +probity, to stand between the woman and her terror. Suddenly he woke, +and lay, his heart beating hard at the sound of the pines in the grove. +Charlotte had done her best to put the breadth of the house between him +and their lamenting, but their voices crept round the corner and into +his open windows, and invaded his mind. He lay there, the wind on his +face and that sighing melancholy of theirs calling him to an answering +sadness of his own. And now it was not his inexplicable panic of +disaffection toward the earth as God had made it, but a pageant of +darkness where formless terrors moved, all hostile to the woman. At this +moment, she seemed to him the point of blinding pain about which the +general misery of the world revolved. She was beauty in the flesh. She +led the mind to the desire of holy things. At least, that was where she +had led his mind. + +But the cruelty of creation was not content with setting her loose in +the world of created things with the gift of beauty and holiness in her +hand. It had veiled her also with the mysterious magic that was simple +enough and directly compelling enough to rouse the beast of jealousy, +the beast of mastery, in the hearts of men. She did not seem to him an +Aphrodite, bearing in her hand the cup of love. There was something +childlike about her, something as virginal as in Nan. He could believe +she would be endlessly pleased with simple things, that she could be +made to laugh delightedly over the trivialities of daily life. But the +hand of creation having made her, the brain of creation (that inexorable +force bent only on perpetuation) saw she was too good a thing to be +lost, too innocently persuasive to the passion of men. So it had thrown +over her the veil of mystery and pronounced against her the ancient +curse that she should be desired of many and yet too soft of her heart, +too weak in her defenses, even to foresee the pitfalls that awaited her +wandering feet and would sometime break her bones. + +This was the worst of all the sleepless hours he had had, and in the +morning he was up and out before Charlotte was ready for him. Jerry had +breakfasted, when Raven came on him in the barn. He expected Tenney to +go chopping, and he wanted the chores done, to get off early. Raven went +in then and told Charlotte he would not have his own breakfast until +Jerry had gone. He wanted to say a word to him as to the gray birches. +But actually he could not down his impatience to know whether Tenney was +coming at all. So he hung about and hindered Jerry with unnecessary talk +for a half hour or so, and while they were standing in the yard +together, looking down toward the river pasture, and Raven was +specifying, with more emphasis than he felt, that a fringe of trees +should be kept along the mowing, Tenney came. Jerry at once said he'd go +in and get his dinner pail and Raven waited for Tenney. This was not the +man of yesterday. He carried his axe and dinner pail. He walked alertly, +as if his mind were on his day's work, and the pale face had quite lost +its livid excitement. It was grave and even sad. Raven, seeing that, +wondered if the fellow could feel remorse, and was conscious of a lift +in the cloud of his own anxiety. Tenney, not waiting to be addressed, +walked straight up to him. He spoke, as soon as he was within hearing +distance of a tone of ordinary volume, and what he said surprised Raven +even more than the catamount calls of yesterday: + +"Be you saved?" + +Raven knew the salient country phrases, but, so alien was the question +to his conception of the man, that he answered perplexedly: + +"What do you mean by saved?" + +Tenney set down his dinner pail, as if it hampered him, and began +rhythmically, in the voice of the exhorter: + +"Saved by the blood of the Lamb." + +Raven stepped back a pace. + +"No," he said coldly, "not that I'm aware of." + +Tenney came forward a step and Raven again backed. There was something +peculiarly distasteful in being exhorted by a fellow of unbridled temper +and a bestial mind. + +"You are a sinner," said Tenney. "If you reject the great atonement, you +are lost. Don't you know you be?" + +"No," said Raven. He was on the point of turning away, when he +remembered it was an ill-judged impetuosity he could not afford. It was +more important, in this world of persecution and unstable defense, to +keep your antagonist busy, cutting gray birches. + +"Do you reject Him?" Tenney, too, had his day's work on his mind and he +spoke rapidly, with a patent show of getting his exhortation done in +time to fall into step with Jerry, appearing, at the moment, axe in +hand. He picked up his dinner pail. "Do you reject Him?" he repeated, in +his former singsong. "Do you reject Christ crucified?" + +And in spite of the prudence his inner self had counseled, Raven found +he was, perhaps only from force of habit augmented by his distaste for +the man, answering truthfully: + +"Yes," he said, "as you mean it, I do." + +Jerry, in the road, had halted and was looking back inquiringly. Tenney +started after him. Instead of being rebuffed by Raven's attitude, he +seemed to be exhilarated. Raven concluded, as he saw the light of a +perhaps fanatical zeal playing over his face, that the fellow took it +for a challenge, an incentive to bring one more into the fold. It was +something in the nature of a dare. + +When he went in, Charlotte was about her tasks at the kitchen stove. + +"You're not going to fodder the cattle, you know," he said to her, +passing through. "I'll see to that. Jerry showed me the mow he is using +from." + +"I always do," said Charlotte, "when he's away all day. I admire to git +out there an' smell the creatur's and hear 'em rattlin' round the +stanchils till they see the hay afore 'em." + +"Never mind," said Raven. "I'll do it to-day." Then a thought struck +him. "I wonder," he said, "who Tenney leaves to do his chores." + +"Why," said Charlotte, "I s'pose she does 'em, same's I do when I'm +alone. 'Tain't no great of a job, 'specially if the hay's pitched round +beforehand." + +Raven, sitting down to his breakfast, thought it a good deal of a task +for a woman made for soft, kind ways with children and the small +domestic animals by the hearth. And then he did have the humor to laugh +at himself a little. It showed how she had unconsciously beguiled him, +how she had impressed him with her curious implication of belonging to +things afar from this world of homespun usages. She was strong and +undeniably homespun herself, in every word and look. Let her fodder the +cattle. Perhaps they would add to the lonesome tranquillity of her day, +with their needs and their sweet-breathed satisfactions. + + + + +XIII + + +For a week it was hard, clear weather, with a crystal sky and no wind. +Tenney appeared in the early mornings and he and Jerry went off to their +chopping. Raven's relief grew. By the last of the week he found his +apprehension really lessening. Every hour of her safety gave him new +reassurance, and he could even face the nights, the long hours when +Tenney was at home. Tenney he took pains not to meet. He distinctly +objected to being pressed into a corner by the revivalist cant of a man +he could not wisely offend. Nor did he see her whom he called "the +woman." Sometimes in the early dusk after Tenney had got home, he was +strongly moved to walk past the house and see if their light looked +cheerful, or if he could hear the sound of voices within. Smile at +himself as he might, at the childishness of the fancy, he alternately +thought of her as being pursued out of the house by a madman with an axe +and exhorted to save herself by the blood of the Lamb. And, Tenney being +what he was, the last was almost as disquieting as the actual torment. +Every morning he went up to the hut to find no slightest sign of her +having been there. If he stayed long enough to build a fire, he went +back, after it had time to die, and laid another, so that she might +light it without delay. + +On the Saturday night of that week the wind veered into the east and the +clouds banked up. The air had a grayness that meant snow. He had been up +at the hut all the afternoon. He had pulled out an old chest, the +sea-chest of a long dead Raven who had been marked with sea longing, as +it sometimes happens to those bred in the hills, and had run away and +become mate and captain. Raven had always been vaguely proud of him, and +so, perhaps, had other Ravens, for Old Crow, when he moved up here, had +brought the sea-chest with him, and his own books also were stowed away +in it. Old Captain Raven's were entirely consistent with his +profession--charts, a wonderful flat volume full of the starry heavens +and more enchanting to Raven than any modern astronomy; but Old Crow's, +in their diverse character, seemed to have been gathered together as it +happened, possibly as he came on them, in no sense an index of +individual taste. There were poets (strange company they made for one +another!) Milton, Ossian, Byron, Thompson, Herrick, and the Essays of +Montaigne, the Confessions of Rousseau. Also, the Age of Reason, which, +on the testimony of uncut leaves, had not been read. And there was a +worn, dog-eared Bible. Raven had never wanted to appropriate the books +so far as to set them with his own on the shelves. They seemed to him, +through their isolation, to keep something of the identity of Old Crow. +He believed Old Crow would like this. It was precious little earthly +immortality the old chap had ever got beyond the local derision, and if +Raven could please him by so small a thing, he would. He had them all +out on chairs and sat on the floor beside the chest, looking them over +idly until it began to grow dark and, realizing how early it was, he +glanced up at the windows and saw the veil of a fine falling snow. He +got up, left his books in disorder, and lighted the lamp. The fire had +been dying down and he kicked the sticks apart. It must die wholly so +that a fresh one would run no chance of catching the coals. Yet it was +unlikely she would come to-night. Tenney would be tired with his week's +work. + +And just as he was making himself reasons, in a mechanical way, while he +put the room in order, there was a knock, quick, imperative, the door +was thrown open and there she was. She was about to shut the door, but +he ran before her. He did it and turned the key. Then he passed her and +hurried to the fire and with both hands heaped on cones and kindling +until it flared. While he did this she stood as still as a stone and +when, having his fire, he turned to her, he saw she had nothing on her +head and that the fine snow had drifted into the folds of her clothing +and was melting on her hair. She looked more wildly disordered than when +he had seen her before, for she had wrapped a blanket about her, and the +child was under it, covered so closely that Raven wondered how he could +breathe. He tried to take the blanket from her, but she held it +desperately. It seemed as if, in unreasoning apprehension, she dared not +let the child be seen. But he laid his hand on hers, saying, "Please!" +authoritatively, and she let him unclasp the tense fingers, remove the +blanket, and then take the child. Raven had had no experience with +babies, but this one he took, in the heat of his compassion, with no +doubt that he should know what to do with him. He felt the little feet +and hands and, finding them warm, drew forward an arm-chair for her, +and, when she sank into it, set the child in her lap. + +"Put your feet to the fire," he said. "Your shoes are all snow. Better +take them off." + +She shook her head. She stretched her feet almost into the blaze and the +steam rose from them. Raven went to the cupboard at the side of the +fireplace and took down a bottle of chartreuse. But she shook her head. + +"I dassent," she said. "He'll smell it." + +Raven came near breaking into an oath. Did the beast own her, that he +should be able, after this new outrage, to get her sweet breath? + +"I ain't cold," she assured him, "not now. No, I won't drink any"--for +he was about to pour it for her--"I never took much stock in them +things. I've seen too much of 'em." + +Then Raven remembered that Charlotte had told him all the boys +drank--her brothers--and he seemed to have turned another page in her +piteous life. He set back the bottle and, to give her time to recover +herself, resumed his task of straightening the room. At her voice, he +was at once beside her. + +"Should you just as soon," she asked quietly, as if the question were of +no moment, "I'd stay up here all night?" + +"Of course you're to stay all night." It seemed to him too beautiful a +thing to have happened, to know she was here in safety with the trees +and the snow. "I'll go down and get some milk and things for him"--he +was indicating the baby who, under the ecstasy of warmth, was beginning +to talk strange matters, standing on his mother's knee--"I'll tell +Charlotte I'm staying up here all night." + +But now he saw, in surprise (for he had failed to guess how his words +would strike her) that she was terrified, perhaps more by him than she +had been by Tenney. + +"No," she cried violently. "You can't do that. You mustn't. If you stay, +I've got to go." + +"I can't have you up here in the woods alone," he reasoned. + +She gave a little laugh. The quality of it was ironic. It made him +wonder what her laughter would be if she were allowed to savor the +quaintness of sheer fun. She spoke obliquely, yet accounting for the +laugh. + +"What do you s'pose'd happen to me?" + +"Nothing," he owned, comparing, as she meant him to, the safety of her +state up here, surrounded by the trees and the wind, and her prison with +the madman down below. "But I can't have it. Do you suppose I can go +down there and sleep in my bed?" He paused and began to coax. Charlotte +could have told her how beguiling he was when he coaxed. "I'll stay in +the other room and keep an eye out. I sha'n't sleep. I won't even +disturb you by tending the fire. You can do that. Come, is it a bargain. +It's the only safe thing to do, you know. Suppose he should come up here +in the night?" + +"That's it," she said quietly. "S'pose he should? Do you want I should +be found up here with a man, any man, even you?" + +He was silent, struck by her bitter logic. His heart, in the actual +physical state of it, ached for her. She would not let him save her, he +thought despairingly; indeed, perhaps she could not. For she alone knew +the noisome perils of her way. He relinquished his proposition, without +comment, and he could see at once what relief that gave her. + +"Very well," he said, "I'll go down. But I shall certainly come back and +bring you some milk. Something to heat it in, too. Old Crow used to have +dishes, but they're gone. Lock the door after me. I'll call when I +come." + +But she rose from her seat, put the baby on the couch and took the +blanket from the chair where he had spread it. There were still drops on +it, and she went to the other side of the room, at a safe distance from +the baby, and shook it. She had settled into a composure as determined +as his own. + +"It's no use talkin'," she said. "I've got to go back." + +"Go back?" He stared at her. + +"Yes. What we've just said shows me. Nothin's more likely than his +comin' up here. He might reason it out. He knows I wouldn't go to any o' +the neighbors, an' he'd know I wouldn't let baby ketch his death, a +night like this, the storm an' all. An' if he found me here locked in, +even if there wa'n't nobody here with me, I dunno what he'd do. Burn the +house down, I guess, over my head." + +The last she said absently. She was arranging the blanket about her with +an anxious care, evidently making it so secure that she need not use her +hands in holding. They would be given to the baby. + +"Burn my house down, will he? Let him try it," said Raven, under his +breath. + +She looked at him in a calm-eyed reproach that was all motherly. + +"We mustn't have no trouble," said she. "I dunno what I should do if I +brought that on you." + +"What does the man mean," Raven broke out, chiefly to attract her +attention and keep her there under shelter, "by going dotty half the +time and the other half butting in and asking people if they're saved?" + +"Did he ask you?" she inquired. She nodded, as if it were precisely what +might have been expected. "I s'pose he thinks he has to. He's a very +religious man." + +"Religious!" Raven muttered. "Does he have to do the other thing, too: +go off his nut?" + +She was looking at him gravely. Suddenly it came to him he must be more +sympathetic in his attitude. He must not let her feel rebuffed, thinking +he did not understand. + +"I dunno's I blame him," she said slowly, as if she found it a wearingly +difficult matter and meant to be entirely just. "You see he had +provocation." The red came flooding into her cheeks. "He come home from +work an' what should he see but the man, the one I told you----" + +She stopped, and Raven supplied, in what he hoped was an unmoved manner: + +"The one that looks up kinder droll?" + +For his life he could not have helped repeating the words as she had +given them to him. He had found them too poignant in their picturesque +drama to be paraphrased or forgotten. + +"Yes," she said eagerly. She was relieved to be helped. "He drove up in +his sleigh, about fifteen minutes 'fore Isr'el come home. He come up to +the house. I went to the door. 'What do you want?' I says. Then he begun +to say things, foolish things same's he always did----" + +She stumbled there, as if in shame, and Raven knew what kind of things +they were: things about her eyes, her lips, insulting things to an +honest wife, taunting things, perhaps, touching the past. More and more +she seemed to him like a mother of sorrows, a child unjustly scourged +into the dark mysteries of passion and pain. + +"Never mind," he said reassuringly. "Don't try to tell me. Don't think +of them." + +But she would tell him. It seemed as if she had to justify herself. + +"He told me he wanted to come in. 'You can't,' says I, 'not whilst I +live.' An' he laughed an' stood there an' dug his heel into the snow an' +waited, kinder watchin' the road till Isr'el hove in sight with his +dinner pail. An' then I see it all. He'd drove along that way an' see +Isr'el an' Jerry comin' acrost from their work an' he meant to stan' +there drivin' me out o' my senses till Isr'el see him. An' soon as he +was sure Isr'el did see him, he turned an' run for the sleigh an' got in +an' give the hoss a cut, an' he was off same's he meant to be." + +"And you were left alone with Tenney," said Raven quietly. "There! don't +tell me any more." + +She smiled upon him, giving him an ineffable sense that she had, in +telling him, somehow dropped her burden. Now she said, with as calm a +resolution as that of the martyr marching to the fire he is sure his +Lord has called him to: + +"I'll go down along." + +She went over to the couch, took up the child, and began to tuck about +him the folds of her enveloping blanket. Raven moved to her side. He had +an overwhelming sense of their being at one in the power of their +resolution. If she would yield to his deliberate judgment! if only their +resolutions could coincide! + +"No," he said, "you're not going down there. I won't have it." + +She looked at him and faintly smiled. + +"I've got to," she said. "If I stay away all night an' he don't know +where, there wouldn't be any way o' piecin' on." + +And suddenly he knew, if she was to persist in "piecing on," she was +right. + +"Wait," he said. "Let me think." + +There must be some way, he reflected, some means, by violence or +diplomacy, to help her fulfill the outer rites of her bargain until he +could persuade her to be taken beyond the reach of persecution. He +wanted to fight for her; but if that was not the way, if his fists would +only bruise her as well as Tenney, he was ready to lie. He had his idea. +It might be good, it might not, but it was an emergency idea. + +"I'll go down," he said. "I'll go over to your house and offer to pay +him for his week's work. You follow. Give me time enough to go into my +house on the way and get some money. Then you come while I'm talking to +him and I'll stay a bit, as long as I can. When you come, we can see how +he is. If he's violent to you--if he looks it, even--you've got to come +away." + +"Oh, no," she cried sharply, "I can't do that. You must see I can't." + +"I'll take you to my house," he said. "You know Charlotte. She'll be +nice to you. Why, if Charlotte found out a thing like this was going on +in the neighborhood, she'd go for him tooth and nail." + +"No," said she, in a dull decision. "I can't. It would all come on you." + +He understood. The madman would drag him into that range of jealous fury +and because he was a man. + +"I can look out for myself," he said roughly, "and you, too." + +Again she shook her head. + +"No," she said, "he might kill you. Anyways, he'd burn your barn." + +"He won't kill me," said Raven, "and I don't care a hang about my barn. +Let him burn. Good thing. I'll clap him into jail and you'll know where +he is. Now!" He looked at the clock on the mantel. "I'm going. In just +twenty minutes you start and come along as fast as you want to. I'll be +at your house." + +She had begun to speak, but he paid no attention. He turned up his +collar and stepped out into the storm. + +"Lock the door," he called back to her. "Keep it locked till you go." + +The road down the slope was scarcely clogged at all. The firs, waving +now and interlocking their branches in that vague joy or trouble of the +winter wind, were keeping off the powdery drift. When he got to his +house he saw Jerry on the way to the barn, but he did not hail him. +Possibly Jerry had paid Tenney for his week, and although Raven's own +diplomacy would stick at nothing, he preferred to act in good faith, +possibly so that he might act the better. He smiled a little at that and +wondered, in passing, if he were never to be allowed any arrogance of +perfect behavior, if he had always got to be so sorry for the floating +wisps of humanity that seemed to blow his way as to go darting about, +out of his own straight course, to pluck them back to safety. There were +serious disadvantages, he concluded, as he often had before, in owning a +feminine vein of temperament. He went in at the front door and up the +stairs, took a roll of money from his desk and ran down again. Charlotte +had not seen him. She was singing in the kitchen in a fragmentary way +she had when life went well with her, and the sound filled Raven with an +unreasoning anger. Why should any woman, even so dear and all deserving +as Charlotte, live and thrive in the warmth and light while that other +creature, of as simply human cravings, battled her way along from cliff +to cliff, with the sea of doom below, beating against the land that was +so arid to her and waiting only to engulf her? That, he thought, was +another count in his indictment against the way things were made. + +The Tenney house, when he approached it, was cold in the darkness of the +storm. The windows were inhospitably blank, and his heart fell with +disappointment. He went up to the side door looking out on the pile of +wood that was the monument to Tenney's rages, and knocked sharply. No +one came. He knocked again, and suddenly there was a clatter within, as +if some one had overturned a chair, and steps came stumbling to the +door. A voice came with them, Tenney's voice. + +"That you?" he called. + +He called it three times. Then he flung open the door and leaned out +and, from his backward recoil, Raven knew he had hoped unreasonably to +find his wife, knocking at her own door. Raven kicked his feet against +the step, with an implication of being snow-clogged and cold. + +"How are you?" he said. "Let me come in, won't you? It's going to be an +awful night." + +Tenney stepped back, let him enter, and closed the door behind him. They +stood together in the darkness of the entry. Raven concluded he was not +to be told which way to go. + +"Smells warm in here," he said, taking a step to the doorway at the +left. "This the kitchen?" + +Tenney recovered herself. + +"Walk in," he said. "I'll light up." + +Raven, standing in the spacious kitchen, all a uniform darkness, it was +so black outside, could hear the man breathe in great rasping gulps, as +if he were recovering from past emotion or were still in its grasp. He +had taken a lamp down from the high mantel and set it on the table. Now +he was lighting it, and his hand shook. The lamp burning and bringing +not only light but a multitude of shadows into the kitchen, he turned +upon Raven. + +"Well," he said, harshly. "Say it. Git it over." + +Raven heard in his voice new signs of a tremendous, almost an hysterical +excitement. It had got, he knew, to be quieted before she came. + +"If you'll allow me," he said, "I'll sit down. I'm devilish cold." + +"Don't swear," said Tenney, still in that sharp, exasperated voice, and +Raven guessed he was nervously afraid, at such a crisis, of antagonizing +the Most High. + +The vision of his own grandmother came up before him, she who would not +let him read a child's book in a thunder shower lest God should consider +the act too trivial in the face of elemental threatening and strike him +dead. He took one of the straight-backed chairs by the stove and leaned +forward with an absorbed pretense of warming his chilled hands. But he +was not reassuring Tenney. He was still more exasperating him. + +"Say it, can't you?" the man cried to him piercingly. "Tell it an' git +it over." Then, as Raven merely looked at him in a civil inquiry, +"You've got suthin' to break, ain't ye? Break it an' leave me be." + +Raven understood. The man's mind was on his wife, fled out into the +storm. His inflamed imagination was picturing disaster for her. He was +wild with apprehension. And it was well he should be wild. It was a pity +she was likely to come so soon. Raven would have been glad to see his +emotions run the whole scale from terror to remorse before she came, if +come she would, to allay them. + +"No," he said quietly, "I haven't anything to break. But it's going to +be an awful night. I guess there will be things to break about the folks +that are out in it." + +Tenney came up to him and peered down at him in blank terror. + +"Who's out in it?" he asked. "Who've you seen?" + +Raven laughed jarringly. It did seem to him grimly amusing to be +dallying thus with a man's fears. He was not used to playing games with +the human creature's destiny. He had always looked too seriously on all +such drama, perhaps because he had been so perplexed by drama of his +own. If his life was too puzzling a thing to be endured, was not all +life, perhaps, equally puzzling and therefore too delicate a matter to +be meddled with? But now the game was on, the game of sheer diplomacy. +The straight and obvious path wouldn't do if he was to save a woman who +handicapped him in advance by refusing to let herself be saved. + +"The night?" he repeated. "Who's out in it? Why, I'm out in it myself; +at least, I have been. But now I'm here by this stove, I don't know when +you'll get rid of me. Put in a stick, won't you, Tenney? These big rooms +have a way of cooling off before you know it." + +Tenney did put in a stick and more. He crammed the stove with light +stuff and opened draughts. Raven noted, in the keen way his mind had +taken up, of snatching at each least bit of safety for the woman, that +the tea kettle was boiling. She would be chilled. She would need hot +water. And suddenly he felt the blood in his face. There was a hand at +the latch of the side door. Tenney, too, heard it. He threw back into +the box the stick of wood he had selected and made three strides to the +entry. Again he called, in that voice of sharp anxiety: + +"That you?" + +She opened the door just before he could put out his hand to it, passed +him without a look, and came in. He shut the door and followed her. +Raven got up from his chair and stood, glancing at her with what he +hoped was a casual attention. Tenney came back and, when she had thrown +off the blanket, took it from her hand and dropped it on a chair. He was +all trembling eagerness. That act, the relieving her of the blanket, was +incredible to Raven. The man had wanted to kill her (or, at the least, +to kill his child), and he was humbly inducting her into the comforts of +her home. She had not looked toward Raven. With a decorum finer, he +thought, than his own, she would not play the game of diplomacy. She +knew him and she could not deny him, even to save her life. Suddenly +Tenney, brushing past to draw up a chair for her at the stove, became +aware of him. Raven believed that, up to the moment, he had, to the +man's absorbed gaze, been invisible. Now Tenney seemed to recognize the +decencies toward even an unbidden guest. + +"She's all beat out," he said, in uncouth apology. "It's my woman." + +Raven turned to her, waiting for her cue. Would she take a hand at the +game, as it imposed itself on him? Her silence and aloofness were his +answer. She was sitting forward in her chair, to get the baby's feet +nearer the warmth. But since she would not speak, Raven did. + +"I should think any one would be beat out, a night like this," he said, +as casually as he could manage, "carrying a baby, too, in such a storm. +You'd better be careful of the child, at least," he added curtly, +turning to Tenney, "if you want to keep him. Out in this cold and sleet! +You don't want their deaths on your hands, do you?" + +Tenney stared back at him in a wildness of apprehension. + +"Be you a doctor?" he managed to ask. + +Raven remembered the words: "Their tongue cleaved to the roof of their +mouth." That seemed to be what Tenney's tongue was doing now. + +"No," said he, "I'm not a doctor, but I've seen a good deal of sickness +in the War. Get them warm," he added authoritatively, "both of them. Put +the child into warm water." + +"Yes," said Tenney, in an anguished sort of haste. Then to his wife he +continued, in a humility Raven noted as her best guaranty of at least +temporary safety, "I'll bring you the foot tub, an' whilst you're doin' +it, I'll warm the bed." + +"Yes," she said quietly, but with a composure of mastery in her voice. +"So do." + +Raven got up and made his way to the door. Then he bethought himself +that he had not given any reason for coming and that Tenney might +remember it afterward and wonder. + +"I thought I'd run up," he said, "and pay you for your week's work." + +Tenney was darting about with a small tin tub, filling it from the +kettle and trying the temperature with his hand. + +"No," he answered absorbedly, "I can't bother with that to-night. Let it +be till another time." + +He had drawn a chair to his wife's side and set the tub on it, and now +she also tried the temperature while he watched her anxiously. And at +once the baby who, in his solemnity of silence, had seemed to Raven +hitherto little more than a stage property, broke into a lusty yelling, +and Tenney put out his hands to him, took him to his shoulder and began +to walk the floor, while the woman poured more water into the tub. +Neither of them had a look for Raven, and he went out into the +blustering night with a picture etched so deeply on his brain that he +knew it would always be there while he, in his flesh, survived: the old +picture of the sacred three, behind the defenses of their common +interests, the father, mother and the child. + + + + +XIV + + +All that night Raven, through his light sleep, had a consciousness of +holding on to himself, refusing to think, refusing angrily to fear. The +sleep seemed to him like a thin, slippery coating over gulfs unplumbed; +it was insecure, yet it failed to let him down into blessed depths of +oblivion below. But he would not think to no purpose (he had a dread of +the wild, disordered clacking of the wheels in unproductive thought), +and he would not invite again the strange humiliation, the relief tinged +by aversion, that came over him when he felt, on leaving them, the +inviolability of the three in their legal bond. She had looked to him so +like heaven's own, he had upborne her in his thought almost to the gate +of heaven itself; and yet she was walled in by a bond she would not +repudiate with the brute who persecuted her. In spite of her uncouth +speech, in spite of her ignorance of delicate usage, she seemed to him a +creature infinitely removed from the rougher aspects of this New England +life; yet there she was in one of the most sordid scenes of it, and she +was absorbed by it, she fitted it as a Madonna fits a cave. And what +business had he, he asked angrily, to weave about her the web of a +glorifying sympathy, exalting her only from that pernicious habit of his +of being sorry? Yet, as he thought it, he knew she was different from +the ordinary country woman afraid of her man, and that any fine mantle +he wove for her could not equal the radiance of her pure courage and +undaunted truth. + +Once he rose from his bed and began to dress hastily, with what he +recognized at the same moment as the wild purpose of slipping out of the +house and going up to Tenney's, to see if there was a light or to listen +for the catamount voice. But that, he realized immediately, was folly. +Suppose Tenney saw him. What reason could he plant in the man's inflamed +mind, except one more hostile to her peace? So he went back to bed, +chilled, and was savagely glad of his discomfort. It gave him something, +however trivial, to think about besides the peril of a woman who looked +like motherhood incarnate, and so should have been heir to all the +worship and chivalry of men. With the first light he was up and had +built his fire, and Charlotte, hearing him, got, sooner than was her +wont, out of her warm bed. Charlotte owned to liking to "lay a spell" in +winter, to make up for the early activities of summer mornings when you +must be "up 'fore light" to keep pace with the day. For after nine +o'clock "the day's 'most gone." She looked up at him as he came into the +kitchen where she was brashing her fire for a quick oven, and he found +her eyes clearly worried in their questioning. + +"No toast, Charlotte," he said. He wondered if even his voice was +trembling in his haste. "No biscuits. I'm going up to the hut." + +Charlotte nodded and seemed to settle into understanding. She had a +sympathetic, almost a reverent tolerance for the activities of pen and +ink. To her, Raven was a well-beloved and in no wise a remarkable being +until he stepped into the clouded room of literary activity. There she +would have indulged him in any whim or unaccountable tyranny. Charlotte +had never heard of temperament, but she believed in it. Once only did +she speak to him while he was drinking his coffee: + +"You got any ink up there?" + +He started and looked at her a moment, dazed. Nothing was further from +his mind than ink. Other liquids, tears, waters of lethe, lakes of fire +and brimstone would not have sounded foreign to his thought. But ink! +how incalculably far was the life of the written word from this raw +anguish of reality he was caught in to-day! He recovered himself +instantly. + +"I've got my pen," he told her, "my stylograph." + +And presently he had put on his coat, bidden her a hasty good-by and was +plunging up the slope. Somehow, though the crest of the wave had been +reached the night before and that usually, Tira had assured him, meant a +following calm, he was certain of seeing her to-day. It was not that he +wanted to see her, but an inner conviction, implacably fixed as the laws +of nature that are at no point subject to the desires of man, told him +she would come. The hut must be warm for her. The fire must be relaid. +And, he told himself grimly, the apex had been reached. The end of the +thing was before them. He must not yield to her again. He must command +her, persuade and conquer her. She must let him send her away. + +At the hut he almost expected to see her footprints in the light snow by +the door. But the exquisite softness lay untouched. The day was a heaven +of clearness, the shadows were deep blue and the trees beginning the +slow waving motion of their majestic secrecies. He took out the key from +under the stone, went in and made his fire with a hand too practiced to +lose in efficacy from its haste. Presently it was roaring upward and, +after a glance about to see that the room was not in any disorder too +great for him to remedy quickly, he walked back and forth, and whenever +it died down enough to let him, fed the fire. It began to seem to him as +if he were going to be there days feeding the fire to keep her warm, but +it was only a little before ten when he heard a step and his heart +choked him with its swelling of relief. At once he was also calmer. A +moment ago even, he would have wondered how he could meet her, how keep +the storm of entreaty out of his voice if he was to beg her to let him +save her. But now he knew he should be himself as she had briefly known +him and though he must command, he should in no sense offend. He stood +still by the fire, half turning toward the door, to wait. It was an +unformulated delicacy of his attitude toward her that she should not +find him going forward to meet her as if she were a guest. She should +enter as if the house were her own. But she did not enter. There was a +hand at the door. It knocked. Then he called: + +"Come in." + +The door opened, under what seemed to him, in his first surprise, a +halting hand and a woman stepped in. It was Nan. She came a hesitating +pace into the room and stood looking at him, after the one interested +glance about her, smiling a little, half quizzically, as if aware she +had brought a surprise and yet not in doubt of its being welcome. Raven +stared back at her for one bewildered minute and then, so instant and +great was the revulsion, burst into a shout of laughter. Nan stood there +and laughed with him. + +"What is it, Rookie?" she asked, coming forward to him. "I'm funny, I +suppose, but not so funny as all that. What's the joke?" + +She was a finished sort of creature to come into his wood solitude, and +yet an outdoor creature, too, with her gray fur cap and coat. She looked +younger, less worn than when he saw her last, perhaps because her cheeks +were red from the frosty air and her eyes bright at finding him. + +"Let me have your coat," he said. "Come to the fire." + +She took off her coat and he dropped it on the couch. He pulled a chair +nearer the hearth (it was his own chair, not Tira's), and motioned her +to it. She did not sit. She put out her thickly shod foot to the blaze +and then withdrew it, for she was all aglow from her plunge up the hill, +and turned to him, her brows knitted, her eyes considering. + +"What is it, Rookie?" she asked. "Something's up and you wish I hadn't +come. That it?" + +"I haven't had time to wish you hadn't come," he said. He had to be +straight with her. "I never was more surprised in my life. You were the +last person I expected to see." + +"But why d'you laugh, Rookie?" she persisted, and then, as he hesitated, +evidently considering exactly why he did and what form he could put it +in, she concluded: "I know. You were taken aback. I've done the same +thing myself, often. Well!" She seemed to dismiss it as unimportant and +began where she had evidently meant to begin. "Now I'll tell you what +I'm here for." + +"Sit down, Nan," he bade her. + +Now that his first derangement was over, he was glad to see her. Tira +might not come. If she did, he could do something. He could even, at a +pinch and with Tira's consent, put the knowledge of the tawdry business +into Nan's hands. But she would not sit down. Plainly she had received a +setback. She was refusing to accept his hospitality to any informal +extent. And he saw he had hurt her. He was always reading the inner +minds of people, and that was where his disastrous sympathy was forever +leading him: to that pernicious yielding, that living of other people's +lives and not his own. + +"It was only," he said, trying to pick up the lost thread of her +confidence, "that I didn't expect you. I couldn't have dreamed of your +coming. How did you come so early?" + +"Took the early train," said Nan curtly. + +"Not the beastly old thing that starts before light?" + +She nodded. + +"What for?" + +"To get ahead of them," she answered, still curtly. + +"Them? Who?" + +"Dick and his mother and Doctor Brooke." + +"Dick and Amelia? What's Amelia on here for?" + +He had half expected her and yet, in the new turmoil about him, he had +actually forgotten she might come. + +"Because Dick sent her your letter. They both assume you've broken down, +and she's called in an alienist to come up here and eye you over, and +Dick's pretty sick over the whole business; so he's coming along, too. +He was prepared for mother, I fancy, but not the alienist." + +"But what's it all for?" + +"Why, you know, Rookie. You've broken down." + +Raven stared at her. Then he laughed. + +"Well," he said, "let 'em come. Charlotte'll give 'em some dinner and +they can look at the mountain and go back on the six to-night." + +"That's precisely what they won't do," said Nan, her lips tightening. +"At least your sister. She's going to stay." + +"The deuce she is," said Raven. "What for?" + +Then Nan did break out of the stiffness that seemed to have held her +like an armor since the momentary setback of her coming. Her own laugh +ran over her face and creased it into delighted merriment. + +"Why, don't you see?" she asked him. "To brighten your life." + +Raven's eyes met hers with a rueful terror. He reached, at a leap, the +motive for her coming. + +"And you rushed off up here to tell me," he said. "Dear Nan! Good child! +But you don't mean they're actually coming to-day?" + +"Of course I do," she said impatiently. "Didn't I tell you so? They were +going to take the nine. They're well on the way. They'll get a pung or +something at the station and be driving up to the house presently, and +your sister'll give Charlotte the hamper of provisions she brought and +tell her there'll be four to dinner. There'll be five, though. She +didn't know that. She didn't hear about me. I s'pose you'll ask me to +stay." + +Raven put out his hand and stroked her sleeve. This was the first time +she had seemed to him a woman grown. When she came back from school, +those years ago, she had changed to girlhood. It was the girl always +even when she came home from France with a world of hideous memories +sealed away in her heart and brain. They had not, these memories, seemed +so much as to scar her, she had obliterated them so carefully by the +decorum of her desire to make the world no sadder by her knowledge. But +now, at some call, the call of his personal extremity perhaps, she +looked suddenly forceful and mature, as if her knowledge of life had +escaped her restraining hand and burst out to the aid of a knowledge of +him. + +"I don't exactly know," he said, "what to do with them. I don't mind the +alienist of course; but what do you suppose put it into her +head--Amelia's--to bring him along?" + +"Why," said Nan, "it's precisely the thing she would do. Don't you see? +She does everything by rule, by theory, the most modern, most advanced. +When Dick wrote her, she made up her mind like a shot. She had to put +you in a pigeon hole. Shell shock, _cafard_! So the next thing was to +set a specialist on the job. And there you are." + +Raven grinned. The whole thing was more and more fantastic to him. + +"I wonder how Dick likes the hornet's nest," he reflected, "now he's +stirred it up." + +"I can tell you," said Nan, a little white coming round her lips, as it +did when she was excited, "how he liked me. He told me the whole +business last night and I went for him. I told him he was a fool, a +plain downright fool, and he'd seen his last of me till he got us out of +the mess he'd got us into: you, me, and incidentally himself." + +"It is mighty nice of you to come into it," said Raven. + +"Well, how could I help it?" she asked impetuously, "when you're in? +Why, Rookie, wouldn't you----" + +There she stopped, and Raven answered the implication. + +"You bet I would. What concerns you concerns me. But I'd no business to +assume it's the other way about. That is, when it's Dick. You're bound, +you know," he said, in a tentative way he thought he ought to venture +and yet not quite sure of it, "to stand by Dick." + +Nan turned a little, to look at him fully. She seemed to be angry now, +and well it became her. + +"Why am I?" she demanded. "Why am I bound to stand by Dick? I'm bound to +nothing, with any man, Dick least of all, if he won't devote some of his +surplus energy to growing up. So I've told him. He's got to grow up." +But suddenly she seemed to recall herself to another question, put her +personal anger aside and veered to that. "Rookie," she said, "what about +Aunt Anne's will?" + +"Anne's will?" he repeated, staring at her. "Well, what about it?" + +"You've had notice of it, haven't you?" she asked. "Official notice, +that is?" + +"Oh, yes," he said, "before I left town. Whitney went over the whole +ground." But he said it as if it did not interest him to any degree. And +yet, as she amazedly thought, it had, the last time she saw him, +interested him to the exclusion of everything else. + +"I thought I'd remind you," she said, "that it's been in the papers. You +are Miss Anne Hamilton's residuary legatee. Dick knows it. So does your +sister. She'll ask you things. I thought if you'd made up your mind to +refuse it or, in short, anything about it, you'd want to be prepared for +her. Those questions of hers--you can't evade them. They go to the +bottom of your soul--and then some." + +"Oh," said Raven dazedly, recalling himself to a complexity he had all +but forgotten. "So they do. I dare say she will ask me. But I +don't--Nan, to tell the truth, I haven't thought of it at all." + +The inevitable comment sprung up in Nan's mind, as if his words had +touched a spring, releasing it: + +"What have you been thinking then?" + +And as if in exact comment upon that, came a sound at the door, a knock, +a hand on the latch and Tira stepped in. Nan turned sharply, and Raven +had only to lift his eyes to see the picture his mind had painted for +him. There she was, a little color in her cheeks from the air, her eyes +heavy, as if she had not slept. She carried the child in his little +white coat and cap, showing, Raven concluded, that she had not been +forced to leave the house in desperate haste. For an instant she +confronted Nan; the life in her face seemed to go out and leave her +haggard. Then, before Raven could take more than the one step forward to +meet her, she had turned and shut the door behind her. + +"Wait for me," he threw back over his shoulder at Nan and ran out. + + + + +XV + + +Tira was hurrying through the snowy track, ankle deep at every step. +Raven, bareheaded, ran after. In a minute he had overtaken her. + +"Stop!" he called, breathless, more from his emotion than from haste. +"Stop! I tell you." + +She did stop, and he came up with her. Now, at last, there were tears in +her eyes, and he thought angrily that he had been the one to overthrow +her control more absolutely than the danger she apprehended. He had, he +thought, in this unreasoning anger, promised her asylum in the hut and +she found it invaded. But curiously he did not think of Nan, who had +come uninvited and scared the poor fugitive away. Nan, child and woman, +was always negligible, too near him to be dealt with. But he had offered +this woman the safety of a roof and walls, and she had fled out of it. +At sight of his face, its contrite kindliness, her own set again into +its determined composure. She seemed to see that she could not count on +aid outside herself and returned again uncomplainingly to her old +equilibrium of endurance. + +"Come back," he said. "She's going down to the house with me. Besides, +if she did stay, you'd like her. You'd love her. That's only Nan." + +He said "Nan" of set purpose. It was the custom of this country folk, +when they talked among themselves, to call all alike by their Christian +names, even when they scrupulously used the surname in direct address. +He meant to reassure her. It was a way of bringing Nan into a friendly +nearness. + +"You've heard of her," he said, "Miss Hamilton's niece. She owns the +next house to mine, the Hamilton house. She'll be here this summer. +You'll be neighbors. Come back and speak to her." + +"No," said Tira, in a gentle obstinacy. "I guess I'll be gittin' along +toward----" + +Here she stopped. She did not know what the direction or the end of her +journey was to be. + +"You're not going off the place," said Raven bluffly. "That's flat. The +place is mine and you're safe on it. Do you want to go traipsing round +the woods in this snow"--he fell purposely into the country habit of +speech--"and get wet to your knees and have a cold?" + +"I sha'n't have a cold," she said, smiling dimly at him and looking, as +he realized, like a mother who was sorry her son could not have all he +grasped at, but still remained immovable. "I don't hardly remember +havin' one since I was little." + +The child had resumed the rôle of Buddhistic calm temporarily abandoned +last night when he screamed out his distaste for earthly complications, +and Raven, glancing at the solemn blue eyes, saw that the only hope of +moving her lay in him. + +"Do you want," he shot at random, "to have the baby get chilled--and +hungry?" There he broke off, though he saw that did move her. He had to +know from what extremity she fled. "Has this been going on all night?" +he asked. + +"No," she said, with the same air of gently reassuring him. "I slept +'most all night. So did he, Mr. Tenney, I guess. An' we started out all +right this mornin'. But after he'd read the chapter an' prayed, it all +come over him ag'in, an' I had to go." + +"After he'd read his chapter," said Raven. "And prayed! God!" + +The invocation sounded as if he also prayed. + +"This time," she continued, "he--he seemed to have a realizin' sense." + +She paused a perplexed moment. In the little she had said to Raven, he +had noted from the first that she was often blocked by a difficulty in +finding words she thought adequate. "He seemed to know what was comin'," +she said. "He give me warnin'." + +"Warning?" + +"Yes. He come in an' he says to me, 'You don't want to go traipsin' +round in this snow.'" + +Raven noted the word and smiled slightly. He and Tenney were at one in +their care for her. + +"'You go up chamber,' he says, 'an' have a fire in the air-tight an' +turn the key. I dunno,' he says, 'what's goin' to happen, this day. I +dunno.'" + +"Why didn't you?" asked Raven. + +"I didn't hardly dast to," she said, with her clear look at him. "I knew +if he knew I's up there he never could stan' it till he--broke in the +door." + +Raven could only look at her. + +"Besides," she said, "even if I be safer in the house, I don't feel so, +somehow. I've always lived a good deal out door." + +"So you came away," said Raven quietly. "You came here." The words +really were, "You came to me," but he would not say them. + +"I did lock the chamber door," she said, "jest as he said. But I locked +it on the outside an' took away the key. I thought he'd think I was +there an' it might keep him out a spell, an' when he did git in, it'd +give him a kind of a shock an' bring him to. It does," she added simply. +"It always gives him a shock, not findin' me. He's asked me over 'n' +over ag'in, when he come to, not to make way with myself, but I never'd +answer. He's got it before him, an' that's about all there is in my +favor, far as I can see." + +The gentle monotony of her voice was maddening to Raven; it brought him +such terrible things, like a wind carrying the seeds of some poisonous +plant that, if they were allowed to spring up, would overrun the world +of his hopes for her. + +"You wouldn't promise him," he said thickly, "but you'll promise me. +Promise me now. Whatever happens to you, you won't make way with +yourself." + +"Why, of course I sha'n't," she said, as if in some surprise that he +should ask it. "How could I? Not while there's baby." + +This threw him back to the sanity of their common cause. They were both +to fight, he for her and she for the mother's one absorbing task: the +child. He returned to his old grave way with her. + +"Now," he said, "you're going to do exactly what I tell you. If you +won't go back to the hut and see Nan, you're to stay here until I've got +Nan and taken her down to the house. And we sha'n't come up here at all, +unless I come to bring you something to eat." + +"I don't want," she hesitated, "to put her out." + +"Nan? You don't put her out. She only came because she didn't find me at +the house. If you don't do precisely what I tell you, that'll be putting +everybody out. I shall make an awful row. Do you hear me?" + +She smiled, a little flicker of a smile. She might not like to be +pursued by jealousy incarnate, but she was, he saw, rather amused at +being fraternally tyrannized over. + +"Now," he said, "I'm going. You're to stand here in your tracks, and +when I've sent Nan down the path I'll come and get you." + +He gave her no time to object, but went back to the hut, and in to +solitude and a deadening fire. He threw open the door of the other room, +though Nan would surely not be there, and swore at not finding her. +Womenfolk were giving him a good deal of trouble with their exits and +their entrances. He mended the fire, snatched up his cap and gloves and +went out again, up the path to Tira. She was standing motionless +precisely, he thought, in the tracks where he had left her, and the +Buddhistic child indifferently regarded him. + +"Come on," Raven called to her, stopping at a pace from them. "She's on +her way down along, and there's a good fire." + +She started obediently after him and Raven, though he saw in her +slowness the hesitating desire to express her distaste for putting any +one out, paid no attention but went on ahead and opened the door. + +"Keep up the fire," he bade her. "I'll be back along about one and bring +you something to eat. The little chap, too. We mustn't forget him." + +She had stepped inside and he was about closing the door; but she turned +and seemed to recover her attitude of protest. + +"No," she said, "don't you bring up anything. I shall be gone long 'fore +then." + +"Why, no, you won't," said Raven impatiently. "You're not going back +into that----" he paused, seeking a word that should not offend her. She +had clung to incredible loyalties. Perhaps she even clung to her home. + +"Oh," she said earnestly, "it'll be over by then, an' he'll want his +dinner." + +Tenney would want his dinner! He had no words for that. He turned away. +But she seemed to feel the finality of his going. Was he giving her up? +She put the child down on the couch and turned to follow. Raven was just +closing the door. + +"Don't!" she cried. There was piercing entreaty in her voice. "Don't!" + +It was really begging him not to give her up, and though he did not +clearly understand it so, he knew he was forcing on her something to +bear, in addition to all the rest. She must not think that of him. She +must feel safe, in whatever manner it was easiest for her to accept +safety. He smiled back at her in that way Anne Hamilton, when she had +caught him smiling at Nan, thought so maddeningly beautiful. Poor Anne! +She had starved for the sweetness of what seemed to her, in her hunger +of the heart, an almost benedictory tenderness. + +"Don't you worry," he said to Tira, in the phrasing he unconsciously +adopted to her. "Everything's going to be exactly as you want it. Only," +he added whimsically--a tone she had never heard in her life before--"if +I could have my say for a few hours, it would be to find you here when I +come back." + +He closed the door and hurried down the path, moved even beyond his pity +by the certainty that she was nearer him. She had accepted that strange +community of interest between them. She had to be saved and he was to +save her. Now it would be easier. He had no thought but to find Nan down +at the house, but two-thirds of the way along the path he saw her, +sitting on a slant of the great boulder and looking grave. She was not +the Nan who had come to the hut, a half hour ago, so gaily certain of +her welcome. The two women had shied at the sight of each other. He had +cleared up the situation for the one, and now he had to do it for Nan. +That was simple. He had never known her to fail in understanding. He +came up to her and she raised her eyes, earnest now, startled, to his. + +"Aren't you too cold there?" he asked. + +She shook her head and smiled a little. + +"No, not with my fur. I'm afraid the gray squirrels will see me. What +would they think of skinning so many of their little brothers?" + +"Nan," he said, "you saw her." + +She nodded, slid off the rock and stood there, not looking at him. Of +course she saw her, Nan's inner self was answering. Didn't they meet +face to face? But she knew this was but his beginning and she would not +challenge it. He plunged into the turmoil of Tira's affairs, foreign to +him so short a time ago and yet his. + +"She's the wife of the man who bought the old Frye place, next to yours. +He's jealous of her, has fits of insane rage against her and she has to +get out. One day I found her hiding up here in the woods. I told her, +whenever she had to make tracks to come here to the hut, and build a +fire and stay. I leave the key under the stone." + +"Yes," said Nan. "I see." + +"No, you don't," cried Raven, "or you wouldn't look like that. What is +it you don't see? What is it you don't like? Out with it, Nan." + +Nan said nothing, and suddenly he saw she was trembling. It was in her +lips, it must be all over her, because he could see it in her hands, the +tight shut ball of them under her long sleeves. + +"Now," he said, irritated beyond measure by the unkindness of +circumstance, "what is it I haven't made clear? Don't you like her? +Don't you believe in her? Or don't you take any stock in what I tell +you?" + +"Of course I believe you," said Nan quietly. He could see her relax. "As +for liking her--well, she's beautiful. I agree with you perfectly +there." + +But he had not said she was beautiful. That he did not remember. + +"She is, isn't she?" he agreed. "And so--Nan, she's the strangest +creature you ever saw in your life. I suppose I could count up the words +she's spoken to me. But the queer part of it is, I know they're all +true. I know she's true. I'd stake----" there he paused. + +"Yes," said Nan quietly. "I've no doubt she's true. And she's a very +lucky woman." + +"Lucky?" repeated Raven, staring. "She's the most unfortunate creature I +ever saw. Lucky! what do you mean by that?" + +"Well," said Nan, and now she spoke with an edge in her voice, "what's +she going to do about it? She's in danger of her life, you say." He +nodded absently, his mind going back to that word, lucky. "She's afraid +of her husband, afraid he'll kill her." + +"Not so much that as afraid he'll kill the child." + +"Well, then, isn't she going to leave him?" + +"No. She won't." + +"Have you asked her?" + +"Oh, yes," said Raven. "I asked her at once. I told her I'd send her +away from here, find her something to do: just what anybody'd say in a +case like that." + +"And she wouldn't let you?" + +"She wouldn't let me." + +"Why not?" asked Nan. "Does she--love the brute?" + +She might have flicked a lash across his face and his nerves winced +under it. There was, she saw, in his mind, something disparaging to the +woman in coupling her with a softness misplaced. + +"I don't know," he said, with a thoughtful precision. "Sometimes I think +she's all mother: doesn't care about anything but the child. I know +she's square, knew it at once, but that doesn't mean I know any more +about her. She's a locked door to me." + +His tone was low, but it told Nan how he wished the door would open and +let him in to persuade her to her own well-being. She looked at him a +moment, as he stood staring down at his feet where a ragged wisp of +yellowed brake came through the snow, looked as if he hurt her beyond +endurance, and yet she had to probe ill circumstance to its depths. Then +she spoke, but in her old voice of childlike gentleness toward him: + +"I see. I really believe, Rookie, I do see." + +He looked up at her in a palpable relief. + +"That's a good girl," he said. Again she was half child to him. "You'll +take a hand, too, won't you?" + +That was more than she had bargained for. She would believe in the +mysterious woman and leave him free to carry out any mission, however +sophistical or chivalrous, he would. But she had not expected to enter +the arena with him and defend the martyr thrown to the wild beast of +marital savagery. Raven felt her recoil. + +"I can't do anything for her," he pursued, with a discouragement she +read. "Anything real, that is. I can give her the shelter of the hut, +but he'll find that out some day and go crashing in. I can't be there +always. Fact is, I can't be there at all." + +"Yes," said Nan. "I see." There was in her voice a sweetness new to him. +"I'll do anything you say, Rookie, to make your mind easy. What do you +want me to do. Take her away from here?" + +He considered a moment. Yes, that was really what he did want. She had +put the words into his mouth. + +"But," said Nan practically, "what you've got to do now is to go down to +the house and be tried for your life. Your sister'll be there something +after two. And Dick. And the alienist." + +Raven shrugged his shoulders as if he shook them free of a burden. + +"I don't care anything about the alienist," he said. "Nor Dick. I do +care a lot about Amelia. She's an awful bore. But it can't be helped. +Come on down." + +"You know," said Nan tentatively, as they took the road, "we could ask +Charlotte for a luncheon and go off over the mountain. You've got +snowshoes, haven't you?" + +Raven shook his head. + +"You can't foil Amelia," he said, "by running away from her. She'd camp +for the winter. Or she'd get on our trail and follow us. No, we've got +to see it through." + + + + +XVI + + +At the house they found Charlotte, in a silent alertness, making ready +for the guests whom Nan, before going up to the hut, had announced to +her. She was systematically refusing to be flurried, but Raven knew that +Amelia, with her rigid conventions and perilous activity, was a +disquieting guest. Remembering that, he took the incident with an +ostentatious lightness, and Nan followed his lead. Presently Charlotte's +kind face relaxed, and when they saw she was continuing her preparations +with a less troubled brow, Raven took Nan upstairs to the great west +room made ready for his sister with a fire roaringly active. There he +installed her, and when she reminded him that the room had been wakened +from its winter drowse to this exhilaration for Amelia, he bade her +"hush up and stay put." Two facts were paramount: she was the first +comer and this was the best room. But, Nan said, she wasn't going to +stay over night. She should get the six o'clock back to Boston. Raven +might here have reflected that, if she had merely the fact of Amelia's +coming to break to him, she could have done it by telephone. Was there +something in the unexpectedness of finding him immersed in the problem +of Tira that had overthrown her preconceived plan? Had she, finding him +absorbed in a new association, lost immediate interest in the drama she +had mischievously meant to share? + +"I take it for granted," she said, "you'll let Jerry carry me to the +station." + +"No," said Raven, impishly determined, "you're going to stay. You'll +borrow nighties and things from Amelia." + +"Seethe the kid in its mother's milk?" inquired Nan, her own impishness +flashing up, irresistible. "Come up here to undermine her and then +borrow her things?" + +"Seethe the kid in its own tooth paste," said Raven. "Yes, you're simply +going to stay. It's foreordained. Actually you came up here to help me +out in more ways than one." + +"Did I?" she asked, and reflected. She had one of her moments of clever +guesswork over him. Rookie was a simple proposition. She could always, +she had once boasted to him, find him out. And reaching about for the +clue, suddenly she had it and proclaimed it in triumph. + +"I've got it. Your farmer's wife! you want me to do something, something +she won't let you do. It's what we said. You want me to take her back +with me." + +"Yes," he said. "Just that." + +They stood looking at each other gravely in the silence of the gaily +flowered room with the great blaze rushing up the chimney. It might have +seemed that they were measuring each other. Yet they were inadequately +matched, for though Raven knew Nan, it was not especially in her +relation to him, and she knew herself and him intimately, in their +common bond. The woman was the more intuitive, but the man was no less +honest. She thought a moment now, her gaze unseeingly following the +pattern of the rug at her feet. + +"Very well," she said. "I'll go over to the house and get some things, +and I'll stay." + +There were, they both knew, bureau drawers full of Aunt Anne's things, +doubtless in the perfect order that was a part of her exquisite mastery +of life. She disliked traveling with a cumbersome outfit, even from the +city to this ancestral foothold. Everything possible was left behind her +in each place. + +"I'll go with you," said Raven. She should not poke into the cold house +alone for the first time since she had inherited it, and encounter the +desolation of change. + +They went downstairs and out into the road, Charlotte looking from the +window after them and wondering if they were bound on some jaunt that +would leave her to encounter Mrs. Powell undefended. Nan's spirits +always came up in the out-of-doors. She was a normal creature, needing +to be quickened only by full air. She began to laugh. + +"Rookie," she said, "I could tell you something funny." + +"Fire away," said Raven. + +"It's about my staying. I didn't bring any real things, because I knew I +could come over here and get some, but my toothbrush is right here in my +coat pocket. Don't you see, Rookie? I was going to stay if you made me, +but not if you didn't, and you weren't to know I so much as thought of +it." + +"Humbug!" said Raven. "I might ha' knowed." + +They came to the house, a great yellow square, well back from the road, +and there being no path through the snow, Nan boasted of her boots and +laughed at him for ordering her to wait until he went back for a shovel. +So he strode ahead and broke a path and she followed, and he was not +really concerned for her because she looked so fit; it seemed unlikely +the natural conditions of nature would hurt her, however hostile. She +opened the door with the key produced from her coat pocket and stepped +into the great hall, darkened from the obscurity of the rooms on each +side where shades had been drawn, and a winter coldness reigned. Nan +gave herself no time to shiver over the chill of her homecoming, but ran +up the stairs as if she expected to find the sun at the end, and Raven +stood in the hall, waiting, and the presence of Anne seemed suddenly +beside him, and something he tried to think of as the winter cold +(though it was far more penetrating and ethereal) struck him with a +chill. Anne, the poignant memory of her, was certainly there with him as +he stood absently following with his eyes the bridge-crossed road of the +old landscape paper and thinking how different it used to look when the +summer sunlight struck it through the open door; and Anne was beating, +with her beautiful hands, at his unwilling heart, crying: + +"Let me in! let me in to crowd Nan and that common woman out!" + +Nan, coming down with a roll under her arm, glanced at him, perturbed. +He had, she judged, been seeing ghosts. They went out and locked the +door behind them (locking in, Nan silently hoped, the ghosts also), and +hurried back along the road. And when they had gone into his house +again, Raven told her to run upstairs and put her things in the west +chamber. + +"Scatter 'em all over the place," said he. "Amelia'll fight for that +room. She'll fight tooth and nail. I sha'n't let her have it, not even +if you give it up. Understand?" + +"But what is she going to have?" Nan asked, from the stairs. + +"She's going to sleep down here, back of the dining-room," said Raven +perversely, "in the room they made over for Old Crow when they were +going to get him to give up the hut and come down here to die. Amelia's +scared out of her boots in the country, unless she hears voices on every +side of her. I know Amelia. Cut along and come down again and help me +set the scene." + +They did set the scene, with an exhilaration that played back and forth +between them like a heady atmosphere. Charlotte was bidden to make the +bed in Old Crow's room and while Raven built the fire, Nan helped +Charlotte. And when the pung drove up from the station at the moment Nan +had foreseen, she and Raven were sitting before the dining-room fire, +apparently deep in talk. Whether Charlotte took her cue from them they +did not know, but she was too busy in the back of the house to appear at +once, and Mrs. Powell and Dick came in unheralded, turning first to the +dining-room. There sat the two, absorbed. The visitors began, on an +according note. + +"John!" cried Amelia, and "Nan!" Dick cried, in an identical voice. +Raven and Nan had the same effect of unison. They laughed, it was so +exactly what they had known it would be, and Raven came forward, put his +hands on his sister's shoulders, and gave her a little shake. + +"Now, Milly," he said, "what the dickens are you up here for?" + +Nan, having alienists on her mind, and finding none, was plumping her +question at Dick: + +"Where's Doctor Brooke?" + +Dick evaded it by the self-evident statement that he hadn't come, and +ended in a morass of frowning confusion. + +Mrs. Powell turned to her with a surprised interrogation, a doubtful +warmth. It tried subtly to convey an entire acceptance of her as an +individual, combined with disapproval of finding her in the spot she had +no excuse for seeking. And while they were exchanging civil commonplaces +veiling unspoken implications, Raven was looking at his sister and +thinking, in a whimsical terror, what a very large grain of sand she was +likely to prove in the machinery of his daily life, and how little she +had changed during his absence from America. Here she was, so +indomitable in every particular that you could almost believe she was +going to be as lasting as the processes that went to her equipment. She +had, you learned to know, tackled life as a servant to be governed, an +enemy to be downed. If it had antidotes, she would lose no moment in +equipping herself with them. If circumstance proved unfriendly, she +would ignore it and forge ahead. She was, Raven had always recognized, +the feminine replica of his father's special type. As to her looks, she +was a thin, whip-like woman, who gave an impression of wiry endurance +and serviceable resiliency. You would expect her to be hard to the +touch, mental or moral, and yet she could double, evade, rebound. Put +her in a hole, and she soon proved to you that its obscurity was the +last place where she proposed to stay. She looked the latest thing +evolved by the art of man. Her clothes were the prevailing fantastic +creation, and yet, on her, they were not illogical. They were the +plumage of an eccentric bird hatched to look that way. Her face, in its +sandy monotone of color, fitted the art of her wonderful and yet not too +noticeable hat, and her gloves and veil were the last word of style. +Amelia had begun making herself, Raven used to think, long before God +stopped making her. As a girl, she had gone after strange gods of +culture and æstheticism, forsaking them, when they toppled, for newer +gods still; but always she was undaunted, always persisting in her +determined pose of governing the situation and her own attitude toward +it. And Amelia, he knew, could hang on like grim death. + +"But Nan!" she was exclaiming, "who'd have expected to find you here?" + +"Well," said Nan, in the shock of realizing she hadn't quite remembered +what Amelia was like, and ranging herself to fight on Rookie's side, +"who'd have expected you, Mrs. Powell?" + +Dick stood frowning at them impartially and twisting his hat in his +hands like a sulky boy. + +"Have you opened your house?" Amelia persisted. "You're not staying----" + +"She's staying here," said Raven. "Nan's taken pity on me and come up +for a visit. Oh, Charlotte! here you are. Show Mrs. Powell to her room, +will you?" + +Charlotte appearing, white-aproned, in the doorway, looking like the +beneficent goddess of home, Mrs. Powell greeted her urbanely and asked +appropriate questions. Was she well, as well as she looked? And how was +her husband? Always well, she remembered. Yes, she would go to her room, +please. But she'd go up by herself. She knew the way. She should think +so, indeed! And her reminiscent laugh endowed them with the picture of +the little girl she had been, born and brought up in this very house. + +"Oh, but it isn't up," said Raven cheerfully. "It's the west bedroom." + +"Not----" she began, and he nodded, taking her coat from the chair. + +"Yes, Old Crow's room. What was going to be his if he hadn't given 'em +the slip. I put Nan into the west chamber. You'll be awfully comfortable +in that room, Milly. I'll take in your bag." + +Amelia, immediately circumspect when she did not see her way, did follow +him, but she was in as great a state of suppressed dudgeon as a +civilized lady, living by the latest rules, allows herself to be. Dick +and Nan, left alone in the dining-room, turned upon each other like two +young furies. + +"You came up here," said Dick, in a tone of ill-suppressed ire, "to tell +him we were coming. I call it a mean trick." + +"What about you?" inquired Nan. "You'd better not talk about tricks. Can +you think of a meaner one than giving him away to the entire middle +west?'" + +"The middle west!" echoed Dick bitterly. "I told my mother." + +"Yes, you told your mother. And she comes up here with her alienists." + +"You'll notice," said Dick icily, "the alienist didn't come." + +"I assume," said Nan, "he's expected on the next train. Or he's going to +pounce some time when Rookie isn't prepared." + +"You little beast!" said Dick. "You don't deserve it, but I'll inform +you he isn't coming at all. I choked him off. I told him mother's the +one that's dotty or she wouldn't have called him in, and Uncle Jack +wasn't a patient and never'd consent if he knew. And he was an awfully +decent fellow and said nothing would induce him to come." + +"You did, did you?" said Nan ungratefully. "Well, you'd better. You've +made enough mischief for one not very inventive young person, don't you +think? And wouldn't it seem to you you'd better use your influence with +your mother to-morrow morning and get out of here?" + +"Out of here?" repeated Dick. "Out of my uncle's house. You +act----" here he paused. + +"Yes," said Nan, "I do act precisely that way. I act as if I had more +right here than you. And I have. For I adore Rookie. And that gives me a +right to stay with him and fight for him, and die for him, if I want to. +And you don't care a sixpence, or you wouldn't have brought this on +him." + +Dick, the man, cooled sooner than she. He paled, and stood looking at +her. Then he spoke in a voice dulled by wonder: + +"I believe you do adore him." + +"Of course I do," cried Nan, all her anger of impatience thrilling in +her voice. "I love him more than anything in this world or the next and +I always did and I always shall." + +This Raven, coming back through the hall, heard. + +"Good Lord!" he said to himself. "Good Lord!" + +So these two, with all the forces of probability and beckoning fortune +pushing them together, could not approach even within hailing distance. +It was the hideous irony of a world bent on disorder. He walked in on +them with a consciously grave aspect of recalling them to their more +reasonable selves. + +"What are you two scrapping for?" he inquired, and Nan looked at him +humbly. She hated to have him bothered by inconsiderable persons like +herself and Dick. "Don't you know you've got the universe in your fists +for the last time you'll ever have it? You're young----" + +There he stopped awkwardly in the enumeration of their presumable +blessedness. It was Nan's face that stopped him. It had paled out into a +gravity surprising to him: a weariness he had often expected to see on +it after her work abroad, but had not yet found there. + +"Yes," she said, in a tone that matched her tired face, "we're young +enough, if that's all." + +The talk displeased her. Nan never liked people to be dull and smudgy +with disorderly moods. She kept a firm hand on her own emotions and +perhaps she could not remember a time when they had got away from her +under other eyes. Aunt Anne was partly responsible for that, and partly +the proud shyness of her type. + +"No, Rookie," she said, "we won't fight. Not here, anyway. Not in your +house." + +She held out a careless hand to Dick, who looked at it an instant and +then turned sulkily away. "Young cub!" Raven thought. He should have +kissed it, even gone on his knees to do it, and placated her with a +laughing extravagance. He recalled the words he had caught from her lips +when he was coming in and flushed to his forehead over the ringing +warmth of them. He bent to the fine hand about relaxing to withdrawal, +after Dick's flouting, drew it to his own lips and kissed it: not as he +would have had Dick do it but yet with all his heart. As he lifted his +head he smiled into her eyes, and their look smote him. It was as if he +had somehow hurt her. + +"O Rookie!" she said, under her breath. + +And at the instant, while they stood awkwardly in the rebound from +emotions not recognized, Amelia came out from her bedroom, perfected as +to hair and raiment, but obviously on edge and cheerfully determined on +not showing it. Evidently she liked Old Crow's room no more than she +might have guessed. + +"O Lord!" said Raven ruefully to his inner self, "we're going to have a +cheerful house-party, now ain't we?" + + + + +XVII + + +The afternoon went off moderately well. Nan forgot the late +unpleasantness between her and Dick and assumed they were on their usual +terms, a fashion of making up more exasperating to him than the quarrel +itself. He was too often, he suspected, out of the picture of her +immediate mind. But it was most unproductive to sulk. When she forgot +and he reproached her for it, she forgot that also; and now when she +suggested a walk he got his cap with a degree of cheerfulness and they +went out, leaving Raven and his sister together by the fire, for what +proved to be one of the rich afternoons of Raven's life. Amelia sat down +at the hearth and put her perfectly shod feet to the blaze. + +"Now, John," she said crisply, while he was fidgeting about, wondering +whether he dared offer her a book and take himself out of doors, "sit +down and tell me all about it." + +Raven went to the fire, but stood commanding it and her. He might, he +thought, as well meet the issue at once. + +"What?" he asked. "What do you want to know?" + +"You mustn't think I can't sympathize," she informed him, in the clear +tone he recognized as the appropriate one for an advanced woman who sees +a task before her--"damned meddlers," he was accustomed to call them in +his sessions of silent thought--"you mustn't think I'm not prepared. +I've heard lectures on it, and since Dick sent me your letter I've read +more or less." + +"My letter!" groaned Raven. "If ever a chap was punished for a minute's +drunkenness----" + +"Drunkenness?" interrupted Amelia incisively. + +"Oh, drunkenness of feeling--irresponsibility--don't you know? Didn't +you ever hear of a chap's killing himself in a minute of acute +discontent because he couldn't stand the blooming show an instant +longer? Well, I didn't kill myself. I did something worse. I wrote a +letter, and, by an evil chance, it was mailed, and Dick, like a fool, +sent it on to you." + +"Dick did absolutely right," said Dick's mother conclusively. "We won't +discuss that. We'll go into the thing itself." + +"What the deuce is the thing?" Raven inquired. "The letter, or my +bursting into tears, like a high-strung maiden lady, and calling Dick in +to be cried over?" + +"Don't evade it," she charged him, with unabated gravity. "We mustn't, +either of us. You know what I mean--_cafard_." + +"_Cafard!_" Then he remembered Dick also had caught up the word, like a +missile, and pelted him with it. He gulped. Ordinary speech wasn't going +to be adequate. She belonged to this infernal age that lived by phrases. +If he told her he was still of the opinion that the world was a +disordered place of torment you could only exist in by ignoring its real +complexion, she would merely consign him to a cell more scientifically +padded, and stand gazing at him through the bars, in solemn sympathy. +"So I've gone _cafard_," he said slowly, looking down at the fire and +wondering how to answer a fool according to her folly. Or was she +incredibly right? Had he some creeping sickness of the brain, the very +nature of which implied his own insensitiveness to it? "Or do you say +'got' _cafard_? And what's your personal impression of _cafard_, +anyway?" + +She had her answer ready. From the little bag in her lap she took out a +small sheaf of folded papers, memorandum slips, they seemed to be, and +whirled them over in capable fingers. + +"It ought to be here," she said absorbedly. "Yes, here it is. No, it +isn't either. It must be among my club notes. What Galsworthy says about +it, you know. He makes it so clear. Just what they mean by it, the +French, how you simply go to pieces. You know, John. Of course you +know." + +"Yes," said Raven drily, "I heard of it remotely among the boys." + +"No wonder it happened to you. Really, you know, John, you ought not to +have gone over there at all, not at your age. It was fine of you. I'm +not denying that. But there were lots of things you could have done at +home: dollar a year men and all that. However, we must take it as we +find it. You've got _cafard_, and we must make sure you have the best +thing done for you. Do you see?" + +"And what," inquired Raven, curiously, "is the best thing?" + +"My idea," she said, pelting on in her habitual manner of manipulation +without much regard to the material she was working on, "would be for +you to see an alienist." + +"I thought," he was beginning mildly, and paused, with a sense of +danger. He must, he saw, forego the fun of chaffing her from his +awareness that the professional gentleman was to have been sprung on him +to-day, and that he knew equally the infliction could only be deferred. +But how, she would have questioned, did he get his news? Not, he would +have to convince her, through Nan. He amended his attack. "Why didn't +you scare one up and bring him along?" + +She frowned. Amelia was always restive under raillery. + +"We needn't," she said, "go into that. I did hope to arrange it, but +Dick upset things frightfully. He has behaved badly, very badly indeed. +I hope now to persuade you to call in Doctor Brooke yourself. I should +suppose he'd recommend your going into a sanitarium. However, we can't +judge till we see what he says. Only, John"--and here she looked at him +with some appearance of anxiety, as not knowing how he would take +it--"you must give yourself into our hands." + +"Whose hands?" asked Raven. "Yours? Dick's?" + +"Oh, dear, no, not Dick's." Again she mentally champed her bit. +Evidently Dick had exhausted her forbearance on the way up. "He's +behaved like a----" Invention failed her. "I do wish," she ended +plaintively, "the modern young man and woman had a vestige of respect +left--only a vestige--for their elders. They're queerness itself. Now +Nan! there's Nan. What's she posting off up here for and settling +herself in your house"--in the west chamber, Raven's inner mind +ironically supplied--"and acting as if you couldn't pry her out?" + +"You can't," said Raven. "Nan's here and I'm going to keep her, all +winter, if she doesn't get bored." + +Amelia gave a little staccato shriek. + +"All winter? I can't stay here all winter." + +"Dear old Milly, no," said Raven, with the utmost gentleness. "I +wouldn't have you for the world. It's Nan that's going to stay." + +"Why," said Amelia, "it isn't decent. You're not an old man, John. +Sometimes you don't even look middle-aged." + +"You said I was," he reminded her. "You said I was so old I went and got +_cafard_." + +"Besides," said Amelia, clutching at her vanishing argument, "age has +nothing to do with it. The older you are the more ridiculous they get +over you, these romantic girls. And you'd cut in and take her away from +Dick, right under his nose." + +Raven suddenly tired of it. + +"Amelia," he said, "don't be a fool. And don't say that sort of odious +thing about Nan. I won't have it. Nan's a child." + +"Oh, no," said Amelia, shaking her waved head with an air of doom. +"Nan's no child. Don't make any mistake about that. She's no child." + +At this, Raven found he was so unreasonably tired of her that he had to +call himself to order and wonder if he really could be disgusted with +Amelia, old Milly who was such a sophisticated fool and yet meant so +well by everybody that you had to keep reproving yourself when you were +tempted to consign her--elsewhere. + +"Milly," he said, in the tone he always had toward her at her worst, a +tone of recalling her, bidding her remember she was a nice ordinary +woman, not an arbiter of social destinies, "Milly, sometimes you're an +awful idiot. Don't you know you are? Don't you see it won't do to keep +hitting me on the raw? I sha'n't stand it, you know. I shall have to +take Nan under my arm and get out and leave you the house to yourself. +It's all very well for you to call down alienists on me, and get me to +put myself under restraint, but Nan's rather sacred to me. You can't +meddle with Nan, and if you weren't so wrapped up in your own conceit, +you'd see you couldn't." + +Amelia seemed to be reflecting on something which resulted in shocking +her into a further uneasiness. + +"And the thing she said! I heard it with my own ears. She adored you! +That's what she said, adored you. To Dick, too, of all people, Dick +she's virtually engaged to." + +Raven remembered a scene in a play where a drunken man lifts a chair and +then, aware of his own possibilities, gently sets it down again. He +wanted to lift a chair. Only he wanted to complete the act and smash it. + +"Milly," he said gently, "I tell you Nan is a child. Doesn't that show +she's a child--the pretty extravagance of it! Why, I'm 'old Rookie' to +Nan. What else do you think I could possibly be?" + +"Heaven knows," said Amelia, tightening her lips. "I can't imagine what +her Aunt Anne would have said. John, wasn't it wonderful her leaving you +practically all her money? And just what might have been expected. She +was bound up in you." + +"O Lord!" said Raven. + +But Amelia, once started, knew no bounds. + +"And that's what I say, John. If you take hold of yourself now and get +into shape again, you've a great many years before you, and Anne's money +with yours--well, I don't see why you shouldn't look forward to a great +deal." + +Raven went over to the window and sat down there staring at the black +bare branches and the clear sky. It seemed to him unspeakably desolate +and even, in its indifference to his own mood, cruel. So was Amelia, he +thought. In spite of her platitudes about enjoying a great deal, she had +him dead and buried. He became absurdly conscious that he was afraid, +but of one thing only: to hear her voice again. Upon that, thinking how +it would actually sound, he turned about and ignominiously left the +room. And since there was no spot in the house where she might not +follow him he took his hat and jacket from the kitchen and went out +through the shed. Charlotte was washing dishes at the sink, but she did +not, according to her custom, look up to pass the time of day. A cloud +rested even on her brown hair and splendid shoulders. Amelia had brought +the cloud. She'd have to get out, even if he had to tell her so. + +With no intention, but an involuntary desire to be where Amelia would +not find him (and also, it was possible, where that other quietest of +women could be found) he went down the road to the maples, and then +plunged into the woods and up the hill. He had first gone along the road +to mislead Amelia, if she chanced to be looking out. He couldn't have +her following, and she was equal to it, pumps and all. Halfway up the +hill, making his way through undergrowth where the snow packed heavily, +he turned off at his left and so got into the wood road. And then, his +breath coming quick from haste and the vexation of the clogged way, he +did not slacken to cool off in the relief of easier going, but, +breathless as he was, began to run, and got more breathless still. Tira +was up there in the hut. He was sure of it. And for those first hurried +minutes he forgot her presence there meant only added misery, but dwelt +upon his own need of such a spirit as hers; the strength, the poise, the +ready coolness. + +At the door he felt rebuffed, it looked so inhospitable, so tight +against him. He tapped and waited. No one came. Then he tried it and +found it locked and the revulsion was bitter. He was about turning away +when it came to him that at least he might go in. The key would be under +the stone. He put his hand into the hollow and found it there, and only +when he was setting it in the lock realized that this meant a deeper +loneliness. It would be easier to think she was there, the key turned +against him, but still in his house, than to find the house itself void +of her presence. He shook himself, in anger at the incomprehensible way +the whole thing was moving him. Why should it move him? Then, finding it +cold, the deserted room, he made himself busy and laid the fire and set +the two chairs hospitably by the hearth. He did not light the fire. It +must be ready for her if she came. After it was in order (her house, it +seemed to him now, with a fatalism of belief he accepted and did not +dwell upon) he sat down by the cold hearth and tried to think. But never +of himself. He thought of her: beautiful, lustrous, caged bird with the +door of her prison open, and who yet would not go. His mind went back to +Milly, waiting there at home to apply scientific remedies to his +diseased spirit, and he laughed a little, Milly seemed of such small +consequence. But the thought of the misery of mind that had brought him +here gave him a new sense of the cruelty of the world. For it had been +the sad state of the whole world he had fled away from and here, as if +all misery had converged to a point, he had taken a straight path to the +direst tragedy of all: a mother trying against hope to save her child, +the most beautiful of women pursued by sex cruelty, the gentlest +threatened by brute force. How could he save her? He could not, for she +would not be saved. He sat there until the dark in the corners crept +toward him like fates, their mantles held up in shadowy hands, to +smother him, and then suddenly remembering Nan and hospitable duties +down below, he got up, chilled, went out, and locked the hut behind him. +The house he found was a blaze of windows. Charlotte had lighted lamps +and candles all over it. He was half amused by that, it gave such an air +of fictitious gayety. He did not know Nan had whispered her to make it +bright because he would see it, coming up the road. + +The three were in the library by the fire. Amelia had dressed for supper +in chiffon absurdly thin and curtailed, neck and hem, so that Dick had, +without being told, brought her fur coat and put it about her shoulders. +That was just like her, Raven thought, as he went in upon them, to go by +the clock and, because winter evenings necessitated evening dress, +ignore the creeping cold of a country house. Nan wore her gown of the +morning, and her stout shoes. Indeed she had to, Raven reminded himself, +when he was about to commend her for good taste. She had brought only +her little bag. Nan was now sweet reasonableness itself. No sleepiest +kitten, claws in drawn, could have been softer. Amelia was baiting her, +asking her, with a reproving implication that she ought not to have been +in a position to know, about the life over seas, and Nan was answering +by the card, compliantly, sincerely. + +She had determined, Raven could see, that there should be no more +ructions in his house. When he came in, they looked up at him, frankly +pleased, and Amelia as patently relieved. + +"I'm so glad you've come back," she said, getting up so that Dick could +set another chair, and Raven join them in the conventional family +circle. "I've been trying to send Dick out after you, but he wouldn't +go. John, you mustn't get into the habit of wandering off alone like +that. You really mustn't." + +Raven grimaced as he took the properly adjusted chair, and wondered +whether he'd got again to invite Milly to shut up. But Dick did it, in +an honest despair that seemed entirely adequate. + +"Ain't mother the limit?" he remarked, to no one but perhaps his own +wondering mind. + +Raven gave a little bark of laughter, and Amelia betrayed no sign of +having heard. But Raven caught the grateful tribute of Nan's tone. + +"My hanky," she said, "Dickie, dear." + +He saw it dropped, saw Dick dart for it, and Nan, accepting it, give his +fingers a little squeeze. Evidently Dick, who flushed red, was being +paid for having briefly illuminated mother. Supper was got through +successfully, Raven and Dick doing active service. Raven talked about +thinning out the lower woods and Dick played up beautifully, taking it +with the greatest attention and answering at length. Mother was to be +shunted imperceptibly from _cafard_. And when they had finished and +returned again to the library fire, Nan, after perhaps half an hour of +desultory talk, yawned rudely and asked if she might go to her bed. +Raven suspected her. He noted how she half closed the library door +behind her; so he took the chair she had lately left, commanding the +crack of it. In about the time he expected, he heard her in the hall. +She had come down the back stairs, he judged, and was now putting on her +hat and coat, with scarcely a rustle, the sly one! + +"Draught from this door?" he suggested, got up and closed it. + +At least Dick shouldn't know she was going. If anybody stole behind her +in the friendly "outdoors" it should be he, to guard her from her own +foolhardiness. These roads were paths of peace, but Nan was equal to +adventure more extended. She might have snatched snowshoes, in her +stealthy preparation, to go off wood wandering. She might brave the +darkness where, to country minds, lurked the recurring legend of the +"lucivee." There was no actual danger, but Pan might be wandering. + +"These old windows are draughty, too," said Raven. He paused at one of +them, fumbling with the catch. Really he was watching the path. There +she was, at the left, going toward her own house. He pulled down the +shade and lounged back to his seat by the fire. + +"You probably feel the cold," said Milly drowsily. The fur coat and +blazing logs were beginning to do their blessed work. "Your vitality is +low." + +"Yes," said Raven piously. He would have sworn to anything. "Just so." +He went on talking to Dick, and Dick caught the ball neatly, so that +presently they could glance at each other in a community of +understanding. "She's off!" said Raven's face, and Dick's returned, +"Right you are!" while he droned on about "popple," the local word for +poplar, and the right month for peeling and whether it really paid to +cut it if you had to hire. Raven loved Dick at times like these, when he +was neither sulky over Nan's aloofness nor didactic about democracy and +free verse. Amelia choked and came awake. + +"Did I," she ventured, fearing a too frank reply, "did I--make a noise?" + +"No, dear," said Raven mellifluously. + +If Milly had been cleverer she would have remembered that when he was +deceiving her he spoke, "as if butter wouldn't melt," as if his vocal +arrangements dropped oil and balm. + +"Dick and I are talking out this lumber question. Don't you bother. You +don't know anything about popple." + +Milly, reassured, dropped her cheek, with a little breath, and closed +her eyes. "Gone?" Dick telegraphed Raven, who nodded "Gone!" took a step +to the door, opened it, and was himself away. He snatched, haphazard, at +a hat and coat on the great chest in the hall. Dick had a way of +throwing things down and leaving them where they fell. Yes, they were +Dick's, and Raven hastily shoved himself into them, judging it was +better, if Dick decided to go roaming, to keep him looking for them. +Then he went out and down the path and along the road where Nan had +gone. He came to her house and stopped, interrogating it. There was no +light. Still she might be in the back part, hunting about for something +she perversely couldn't wait for over night. He went up the path and +tried the front door. It was fastened and he called to her. But there +was no Nan, and he went back to the road and walked up and down, +waiting. If she wanted a run alone in the dark, she must have it. After +he had been pacing for what seemed to him a long time, he heard voices +and the crunch of snow. One voice was hers, and he went on to meet it. +The other, a man's, short-syllabled, replied at intervals. Nan seemed to +be holding forth. They were coming on briskly, Nan and a tall figure at +the other side of the road. She had seen Raven and called, clearly, +though not with any implication of relief: + +"That you, Rookie?" + +He came up to them and saw, with a surprise out of all proportion to the +event, in this neighborhood where anybody might join anybody else in +familiar intercourse, that it was Tenney. They stopped, Tenney a step +behind her. It looked as if he understood he had fulfilled his civility +to her and could be dismissed. + +"I've been calling on Mrs. Tenney," said Nan, "and I asked Mr. Tenney to +walk home with me. Thank you, Mr. Tenney. Good night. Think it over, +won't you?" + +Tenney turned, without a word, and went back along the road, with his +habitual look, Raven had time to note, in the one glance he cast after +him, of being blown by a hurrying wind. Raven faced about with Nan and +asked at once, in the excess of his curiosity: + +"Now what are you up to, calling on the Tenneys?" + +Nan answered seriously. There was trouble in her voice. + +"Well, I got thinking about them so I knew I shouldn't go to sleep, and +I just went up by, without any real plan, you know. The woman had such +an effect on me. I couldn't keep away from her." + +Raven was struck with the inevitableness of this. Yes, she had that +effect. You couldn't keep away from her. + +"I'd no idea of going in," said Nan. "And I did want a run. Isn't the +air heady? But just as I got to the house, she opened the door. She was +coming out, I suppose. She had the baby. The baby was all wrapped up. +She wasn't, though. She had just an apron on her head. And when the door +opened, I could hear him yelling inside. I don't know whether he was +driving her out or whether she'd started to run for it." + +"Well?" prompted Raven harshly. Why should she be so slow about it? +"What then?" + +"I went up the path," said Nan, in a half absent way, as if what she was +telling seemed far less important than the perplexing issues it had bred +in her. "I said good evening to her. I went by her: I think I did. I +must have got into the kitchen first. And there he was. He's a striking +fellow, isn't he, Rookie? Like a prophet out on the loose, foaming at +the mouth and foretelling to beat the band. He'd got something in his +hands. It was little and white; it might have been the baby's cap. He +was tearing it to rags. You ought to have seen him at it." + +"You shouldn't have gone in," said Raven angrily. "The fellow's dotty. +Don't you know he is? Did he speak to you?" + +Nan gave a little laugh. Suddenly the incongruity of it came over her. + +"No," she said, "I spoke to him. Suddenly I seemed to see how Charlotte +would have spoken--that mother way, you know, men can't stand up +against. I said--I _think_ I said--'Mr. Tenney, what under the sun are +you carrying on like this for? I should think you were in liquor.'" + +Raven, wondering if he should cry at the relief of having her safe out +of the ogre's den, had to laugh with her. + +"It caught him," said Nan, beginning to enjoy it, "as grandsir used to +say, between wind and water. He looked down at the thing in his +hands--the rags, you know--and dropped them into the wood-box. You see +that was the real wiliness of the serpent, my telling him he was in +drink. He's full of spiritual pride, all eat up with it. Then I played +Charlotte some more. I told Mrs. Tenney to come in, and remarked that +she'd get her death o' cold; and she did come in and her eyes--what eyes +they are, Rookie!--they were big as bread and butter plates. I suspected +she regarded me as specially sent. And I lit on him and told him, in +good set terms, that if I knew of his driving his wife out of the house +in one of his sprees, I'd have him hauled up and testify myself. Then I +ordered him to get his hat and walk home with me." + +"And he did!" cried Raven, in amazement at her. "Oh, yes, of course he +did. Go on." + +"Yes, he came to heel with a promptness that would have surprised you. +And I didn't let up a minute. I discoursed all the way, on the whole +duty of man." + +"Did he answer?" + +"Yes. That is, he spoke twice, the only times I'd let him. Once he broke +in: 'I ain't a drinkin' man.' That rankled, you see." + +"What did you say?" + +"I said: 'Yes, you are, too. No decent man would act as you've been +acting, unless he was drunk. And probably,' I said, 'you've been brewing +it in the cellar, and selling it to the neighbors.'" + +"That was a bliffer." + +"It was. I had an idea he might drop dead in his tracks." + +"That all he said?" + +"Yes. Oh, no, there was one other thing. He asked me if I were saved." + +"What did you say?" + +"Told him not to be a fool." + +Raven lifted up his voice and laughed. + +They were opposite his own house, and Dick, who had just opened the +front door, heard him. + +"Oh," said Dick icily, when they came up to him. "So that's where you +were. Uncle Jack"--for now he saw he had just cause for anger--"I'll +thank you to let my hat alone." + +"Yes, Dick," said Raven meekly. "But I saw it and it's such a dandy +hat." + +"Don't be rude to your only uncle," said Nan. + +She was slipping off her coat and Raven judged, seeing her so calm, that +her evening pleased her. + +"Mother in there?" Raven inquired of Dick. + +He had hung up the pilfered coat and hat, with great nicety of care, in +the hall closet. + +"No," said Dick. "She's gone to bed." + +The implication was that she shouldn't have been allowed to get bored +enough to go to bed. + +"I'm going, too," said Nan. She gave her hand to Raven. "'Night, +Rookie." Then she apparently remembered Dick, and shook her head at him. +"Silly!" she commented. "Nobody'll love you if you behave like that." + +Dick did not answer. He turned about and went into the library, and +Raven following, after he had seen Nan at the top of the stairs, found +him reading a day-old paper with a studied absorption it was evident he +was far from feeling. + + + + +XVIII + + +Dick tossed the paper aside and turned upon Raven who, taking his chair +at the hearth, had bent to throw on a handful of light wood: the sticks +that wake and change a room so completely that they might almost lighten +the mood of the man their burning plays upon. + +"Look here," said Dick, "you put the devil into Nan. What do you do it +for?" + +Raven looked up at him in a complete surprise. + +"No, I don't. The devil? Nan's got less to do with the devil than +anybody you and I ever saw. She's kept herself unspotted. She's a +child." + +This last he said of sudden intent for, having noted its effect on +Milly, he wondered how it would strike Dick. + +"Oh, no, she isn't," said Dick, with bitterness. "Unspotted--yes, of +course she is. But Nan knows her way about. She can play fast and loose +with the rest of 'em." + +He stopped, conscious of talking too much, and ashamed of it. Raven +remembered that quick interchange of ownership and repudiation between +the two as they flashed back at each other in his library, those weeks +ago, but he could not tell the boy Nan had kissed him out of her +impetuous bounty only because the terrors of the time had lifted her +beyond habit and because Dick's need was so great. She had put the +draught of life to his lips, that was all. He remembered Monna Vanna +going to the sacrificial tent, and his heart melted at the thought of +woman's wholesale giving even when the act is bound to recoil upon +herself alone. + +"You'd better not remind her of anything she said to you over there," he +allowed himself to advise. "Things were pretty strenuous then, Dick, +don't you remember? We've come back to a"--his voice failed him as he +thought how base a time they had returned to--"a different sort of thing +altogether. I'm an old fellow, according to you, but there's one thing I +know. You won't get a girl by 'flying off the handle,' as Charlotte +would say. Honest, old boy, when you have these fits of yours, you don't +seem, according to the prophet of your generation, as impressive as +usual." + +"Who is the prophet of my generation?" put in Dick sourly, as if that +were the issue between them. + +"G. B. S., I've understood," said Raven mildly. "Don't I recall your +telling me he was the greatest ever, at least since Aristophanes?" + +"Oh, cut it," said Dick, whose gods were subject to change. + +"Cut it by all means. But there is a thing or two I'd like your vote on. +Your mother now: what's your impression of her plans about staying along +here? Think she's game to tough it out as long as I do?" + +"She'll stay as long as Nan does." Dick was frowning into the fire, and +Raven doubted whether one of his admonitory words had sunk in. "I had an +idea I could go back to town to-morrow morning and wire her I'd broken +my leg or something. But Nan's got to go with me." + +"Nan will do as she pleases," said Raven. He rose from his chair +disgusted with young love so unpicturesque and cub-like. "Turn off the +lights, will you, when you go?" And he went off to bed. + +But in the morning, when he came down, Dick met him at the foot of the +stairs. It was a changed Dick. His lip was trembling. Raven concerned, +yet unable to deny himself a flippant inward comment, thought the boy +looked as if he'd been saying his prayers. + +"She's gone, Jack," said Dick. + +In stress of intimacy, he often dropped the prefatory title. + +"Gone?" Raven's mind flew to Tira. "Where?" + +"Back to Boston. Walked to the station. Took the milk train. Charlotte +says she simply walked out and said she wasn't coming back." + +"Your mother or--you don't mean Nan?" + +"Nan, yes. Do you see mother walking five miles to a train?" But if Dick +was unsettled, this was not his surly mood of the night before. "If I +drove her away"--he began, and then ended with an appealingness to be +remembered of the Dick who had not been nettled by life, "Jack, I wish +she wouldn't." + +"I'll ask Charlotte," said Raven. "Your mother out yet? No? Well, don't +bring her into it." + +He went off to the kitchen where Charlotte was just setting little +silver pots on a damask-covered tray. She glanced up at him, not +absently, because Charlotte always seemed so charged with energy that +she could turn from one task and give full attention to another. + +"For Mrs. Powell," she explained, setting her hands to the tray, as if +she expected him to make whatever remark he would without delaying her. +"She's havin' her breakfast in bed." + +"Dick tells me----" he began, and she nodded. + +"Yes, she's gone. Nan, you was inquirin' about, wa'n't you? It's all +right. I shouldn't ask any questions, if I was you: not yet anyways. +I've got a kind of an idea Dick'll be takin' the noon back to Boston. +Maybe his mother, too. But there!" + +This last was as if it were too much to hope for, and she lifted the +tray and hurried away with it to Old Crow's room. Raven went +thoughtfully back to the hall where Dick stood waiting, gnawing at his +lip, and looking curiously like the Dick who had been a boy and come to +Uncle Jack to have his fortunes mended as they affected kite or ball. + +"Yes," said Raven, "she's gone. Don't take it that way, old man. Nan +knows what's best for her." + +"Walked to the station," said Dick bitterly. "Just plain cut stick and +ran. Probably carried a bag. All because I made it so sickening for her +she couldn't stay." + +Raven thought of the things Nan had carried in the work of the last +years--supplies, babies born on retreats. She had seen the fortunes of +war. But there was no need of bracing Dick by telling him he could +testify she hadn't any bag. If the boy could be melted into a passion of +ruth over Nan, instead of a passion of resentment, so much the better +for him. + +"Come and have breakfast," he said. "Charlotte's bringing it in." + +They went together, and when Dick had bolted his coffee and egg he said: + +"Of course I've got to take the 11.03." + +"Of course," said Raven. He knew if he were a young lover who had +offended Nan and driven her away, that was what he should do: follow and +humble himself before her. "Jerry'll drive you down." + +So it happened that when Amelia, carefully dressed, came out of her room +at noon, Dick had left without a word to her and her dignified +resentment was only diverted by hearing Nan, too, had gone. + +"John," said she, disposing herself by the fire, "I should like to know +how you account for that girl?" + +"For Nan?" said Raven absently. He was wishing Nan had found it easy to +tell him she was going. "I don't account for Nan. I don't have to." + +"So unexpected," said Amelia. "So absolutely impervious to everything +we've brought them up to reverence. It's all of a piece. Depend upon it, +no young girl could go over there and do the things she did and not feel +the effects of it: for life, absolutely for life. You yourself feel the +effects in one way, the young ones in another." + +Raven was very considerate of her, left stranded there with him. But +after the noon dinner, when they settled again by the fire, he began to +realize the magnitude of his task. He was simply saddled with Amelia. +She hadn't been able to get her alienist up here, but she had +constituted herself a psychic detective on her own account. At first he +didn't mind, she was so "simple honest" in her expedients. It was +amusing, to a moderate degree, to evade them. How did he sleep? Did he +dream? Did he know anything about the psychology of dreams? There was +Freud. + +"Yes," Raven interpolated. "Nasty fellow. Peeps and botanizes on his +mother's grave." + +Did the world still seem to him as hopeless as it did at the time of his +writing the letter? That gave him an idea. + +"Where is that letter?" he asked, cutting across the track of her +calculated approaches. "What became of it?" + +She did not evade him. She was too surprised. + +"I gave it," she owned, "to one of our doctors at home. For a medical +congress." + +"The devil you did!" Raven permitted himself. "Milly, sometimes I think +you advanced women--O Lord!" + +"What else could I do?" Milly inquired, with her deliberate +fair-mindedness, which was, he miserably knew, a part of her culture. +"Surely, you wouldn't suppress evidence. And it won't be traced to you. +You're simply Mr. X." + +Raven was silent. He was thinking what a fool he had been to unpack his +heart with words, and that if he told Milly so he should simply be +unpacking it some more. He looked at the clear winter day occupying +itself out there without him, and wondered why the deuce he couldn't put +on snowshoes and tramp off his discontent leaving her to fight her +boredom by the fire. She'd brought it on herself, hadn't she? Nobody +wanted her to come. Was there some hidden force in women, their apparent +vulnerability to the harsh world conditions that were bound to crush out +even them in the end? They seemed so weak you had, in mercy, to +reënforce them and then they proved so horribly strong, and used their +strength against you, depleted as you were by fighting for them. Anyway, +if he could get Milly's blood to moving and pump some of this hill air +into her she, too, might be a more wholesome citizen of even an +unfeeling earth. + +"Want to go to walk, Milly?" he suggested seductively, and she looked at +him pleasantly, grateful for the tone, at least. + +"No," she said, "we're so cozy here." + +Cozy! it might be cozy, if that meant being choked. But he thought he +could stand a little more of it, and then he would at least drop asleep +and snore. The indiscretions of the body were terrible to Amelia. And he +did fall into a hopeless lethargy, and only about five o'clock, when the +early dark had come, threw it off and got to his feet. + +"'Bye," he said. "I'll be back for supper." + +Before she could answer, he was gone. Now he was afraid she might say, +with an ill-timed acquiescence, that after all she would have a little +walk, and he knew he simply couldn't stand it. By the fire, making an +inexorable assault on his senses, the calm, steady beat of her futile +talk could be borne. You bore it by listening through a dream. But out +of doors, when the crisp air had waked you, you'd simply have to swear +or run. He did run, snatching his hat as he went, up the road toward +Tenney's. It was not a reasoned flight, but he did want to calm himself +by the light burning through their windows, perhaps a glimpse of Tira +moving about. The night was going to be clear and not too cold for +pleasant lingering. Over beyond the rising slope opposite Nan's house he +heard an owl hooting and, nearer, the barking of a fox. He turned that +way and stood facing the dark slope. He knew what those trees were in +spring, pink and light brown in the marshes at the foot of the rise, +running up into a mist of sunshine with islands of evergreen. Then, +turning to go on, he cast a glance at the house and stopped with a word +of surprise. There was a light. Somebody had broken in (an incredible +happening here) and was beguiled by loneliness and silence into an +absurd security. He turned into the path and went softly up to the front +door, lifted the latch and was stepping in when some one came. It was +Nan. She was in the hall, a pile of blankets in her arms. Seeing him, +she did not start, only laughed a little, all the mischief of her face +running into it and waking it like the sun on moving water. + +"Nan," said Raven, "Nan, my darling, why are you here?" + +Nan did the incredible thing. She laid her pile of blankets in a chair, +came back to him and deliberately put arms over his shoulders and about +his neck. Her face, beautifully sweet in its new flush, was close to +his. It might well be flushed, for he had called her darling, and Nan, +feeling lorn and bewildered in losing the Rookie she used to think she +knew, felt for the instant that she had got home again. She had lost +him, she felt, when she saw the shaken look he gave the strange +beautiful woman up in the hut. Now here he was again, quite the same, +only it was true that she had not seemed to be, for years, what he +called her now. + +"Rookie, my darling," said Nan, seeing no reason why she shouldn't give +him the precious thing back again, "I'm terrible glad you've come. +Charlotte tell you?" She put her cheek against his for a minute, took +her arms away and turned into the west sitting-room where a fire was +leaping and making soft, living shadows on the ceiling. In the middle of +the room she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Look at the shadows," +she said, in a low voice, as if they might hear and flee away. "It's +exactly as if they lived here all the time and waited for us to come +back to them. Look at the ones behind those candlesticks. They've always +been just like this, little old scholarly gentlemen in queer hats +walking along a London street. I used to think they were going to old +second-hand shops to buy old second-hand books. I wouldn't have those +candlesticks moved by half an inch for fear the shadows would get mad +and go with them. Sit down, Rookie, there where you used to read to me. +I'll light up, so we can see each other." + +He did sit down without waiting for her, on the little squat, +old-fashioned sofa, and Nan went about the room with her match and +dotted it with candles. Raven looked after her in her housewifely +progress; he was still concerned, still grave over her leaving his house +for this. She had on her walking suit, whatever frills she might have +discovered upstairs, and she looked ready for outdoor enterprise. What a +hardy child she was, slender and supple, but taut for action in the +homespun service of the day! She threw her match into the fire and came +to him, sat down beside him and, like the Nan of a hundred years ago, +her childhood and his youth, put her head down on his shoulder. + +"Nan," said he, abandoning what he sometimes considered the heavy father +attitude and jamming the silky head down into its hollow, "what did you +do it for? Didn't you like my house?" + +"Yes, Rookie darling," she said, in a tone of drowsy happiness. "I meant +to stay--truly I did--and cut in when Mrs. Powell tried to get you to +give yourself away so she could tell her alienists how crazy you are. +But if I had, Dick would have stayed, too. He never'd have gone, never +in the world. And he's so quarrelsome." + +"How do you know he's gone?" Raven asked. + +"Why, of course he has. He would, the minute he thought I had. Hasn't +he?" + +"Yes," said Raven, "he has. Nan, why the dickens do you treat him so? +You mean to take him in the end." + +"Do I?" asked Nan, still most contentedly. "Rookie, what a lot you know. +Wake me if you hear a step." + +"A step? Who's coming?" + +"Charlotte. I told her I was no more afraid than up in your west +chamber. Not so much: Dick and his mother can't pounce on me here. I +didn't say that though. Charlotte thinks I just came over for a freak; +but she's coming to stay with me." + +"You don't know what Charlotte thinks," said Raven succinctly. "She's +got a pretty accurate idea of all of us. You're not going to stay here. +That's flat. We'll blow out the candles in a minute or two and poke off +home." + +"This is home," said Nan and rubbed her cheek on his coat. "Darling +Rookie!" + +"You're running away from Milly," said Raven. "That's all right. I wish +I could myself. But what are you going to say when she finds the house +is open and you're here? I found it out and so can she. I was going by +and saw the light." + +"She won't go by and see the light," said Nan, from the same far +distance. "Consider those pumps. She won't go out. If she does, you must +just take her the other way. Head her off, Rookie, that's what you do, +head her off." + +"Do you know, Nan," said Raven, with a sudden resolution, "what Dick +feels about you: I mean, what makes him so sore and ugly? He told me." +(There was a slight disturbance on his shoulder. Nan seemed to be +shaking her head.) "He apparently can't get at you. There's something in +you that baffles him, puts him off. It makes him mad as thunder. You +won't let him in, Nan. You don't let him see you as you are." + +"Why, Rookie!" said Nan. She sat up straight and looked him in the face. +Her eyes were beautifully calm. If her clinging to him was against the +rules of this present life, nothing in her expression showed it. She was +really like a child used to being loved and innocently demanding it. +"Why, Rookie, Dick's not more than half grown up." + +"He writes," said Raven obstinately, aware of having really no argument. + +"What kinds of books? Conventional rot. Verse. Anybody could do it by +the yard. No, you needn't look like that. 'Course I couldn't! But +anybody that could write at all. You could, Rookie, only you wouldn't +have the face. You'd feel such a fool." + +"Of course it's conventional," said Raven, "his poetry is. But that's +natural enough. He belongs to the new school. You don't find him +conventional himself, do you? Too conventional?" + +"He's precisely like his mother," said Nan. She had the air of wanting +to account for him, once for all, and sweep him out of the way. "Only +she's conventional about waving her hair and uplift and belonging to +societies, and he's conventional about brotherhood and a new world and +being too broad-minded to be healthy. Don't you know there are crude +things in a man that have got to stay there, if he is a man? War, now! +if some beast goes out on a prowl (like Germany) the normal man doesn't +call it a herd madness and quote the New Testament. He gets his gun. So +did Dick get his gun, but now he thinks it's all over, he's too +broad-minded to live. Oh, you can laugh, Rookie, but there is such a +thing as being too superior to be decent, and that's Dick. The only time +I come anywhere near liking him is when he forgets to call the world a +fraternal sewing circle and comes out with a healthy damn. That's the +streak of you in him. Don't you know the nicest thing about him is the +streak of you?" + +Raven was not aware of knowing that, but he had to own, though silently, +that there was an exasperating three-quarters of Dick he himself could +not, of late years, get along with. Was it youth? he wondered. Yet Nan +was young. Who so sweetly sympathetic as Nan? + +"Let's not talk about him," said she. "Yes, a minute more, though. I've +sent off a letter to him. Charlotte was to give it to Jerry to mail on +the train. It told him I shouldn't tell where I was, and I certainly +shouldn't come back till he got his mother away from here. He'd simply +got to do it. I told him plainly." + +"And then you're going back? You promised him?" + +"I didn't promise him anything. Because, how could I? I don't know how +things are coming out. There's the woman." + +"What woman?" + +He asked this in a perfect good faith. + +"Mrs. Tenney." She withdrew from him slightly. If Tira made his heart +race, she wouldn't hear it. He should not be spied upon. "Don't you +know," said she clearly, "I've got to see this thing through?" + +"See it through?" he repeated. "You can't. She won't let you. She won't +let me." + +"Of course she won't let you. If the man's mad with jealousy, he won't +stand another man's supporting his wife." + +"I should very much doubt if she let you. She's got a loyalty--well, +it's the sort you read about when a brute breaks a woman and she says +she fell and hurt herself. It's been the surprise of my life that she +said a word to me." + +"That's easy," said Nan. "You're so awfully sorry for everybody. They +feel it in you. She thought you were an archangel." + +"An archangel!" groaned Raven. "Good Lord! Well, what do you propose +doing?" + +"Go over there to-morrow. Ask her to come here and help me get the house +in order." + +"Then what? Talk to her? You'll frighten her." + +But he knew Nan would frighten no one, not the least of the maimed and +spent. + +"No, but I thought maybe if things kept happening, I could take her back +with me to town, to work." + +"There's the child," suggested Raven. + +"Yes, that's a drawback," she owned seriously. "On the other hand, it's +an advantage. The child might be made the reason: to have somebody look +at him, you know. I suppose you saw he isn't quite right." + +"Not right? what do you mean? Deficient?" + +"I don't know," said Nan. "That or something. Deaf, maybe. But not +right. I hear something. It's Charlotte. Kiss me, Rookie. On my +forehead"--he did it--"on my forehead, on my right cheek, on my left +cheek, on my chin. No, that's all. That's good-night, Rookie--darling +Rookie! It is Charlotte. I'll let her in." + +She went to the door and opened it and Charlotte appeared, done up in an +old-fashioned shawl and--Raven noted in an amused incredulity--a +nondescript knitted thing, old-fashioned when he was a child. + +"A cloud," he said to himself. "That's what they called the thing." + +He felt absurdly thankful at seeing it again. It seemed to assure him +that although the surface of life might heave and sink with revolution +and the fate of dynasties, Charlotte and her equipment of bed-rock +integrity and clouds existed still. She paused in the doorway to take a +basket from Jerry, and closed the door on him, after a casual +good-night. Raven went into the hall. The basket was generous, in its +oval capacity, the contents covered with a napkin. + +"Want this carried upstairs?" he asked, but Charlotte shook her head. + +"No," she said. "It's for her breakfast. I shall be gone 'fore light." +She lifted her sincere gaze to Raven. "I thought I'd come over," she +added. "I shouldn't feel easy to have her here all alone. Jerry said he +wanted I should." + +Raven nodded at her and carried the basket off into the kitchen, and +when he came back both women were upstairs and he heard the interchange +of voices and their quick tread. + +"'Night, Rookie," Nan broke off her housewifely deeds to call, and he +called back: + +"Good night." + +Then he went out and home again, and fulfilled his destiny for the day +by another somnolent hour with Milly before the fire. + + + + +XIX + + +Nan and Charlotte, each in a front chamber, were soon cozily in warmed +sheets. But when Nan judged Charlotte must be asleep, she got up, put +more wood on the dying fire, slipped on her fur coat over a wrapper, did +up her knees in a blanket and sat down by the window she had not yet +opened, in anticipation of this hour of the silent night. Really she had +lived for it, ever since she entered the hut and found the strange +woman. The night at Raven's house had been as still as this, but there +were invisible disturbances in the air; they riddled her chamber through +and pierced her brain: what Amelia thought, what Dick thought. Here +there was only the calm island of Charlotte's beneficence, and even that +lay stiller than ever under the blanket of a tranquil sleep. She felt +alone in a world that wasn't troubling itself about her, because it +never troubled itself about anything. + +The moon was just up above the fringe of trees at the east and shadows +were black across the snow. She sat looking out with intentness as if +she were there at the window for the sole purpose of watching the silent +world, but really to get her mind in order for the next day and all the +coming days. She felt about the heart the strange dropping we know as +grief. No wonder the mortal creature, looking on at the commotions +within the frail refuge of his body, should have evolved the age-old +phrase that the heart bleeds. Nan's heart had been bleeding a long time. +There used to be drops on each shock of her meeting Raven after absence +and finding herself put away from the old childish state of delighted +possession. At first, she had believed this was one of the mysterious +cruelties of Aunt Anne's inexorable delicacy of behavior; but when she +grew older she had one day a great happy light of understanding, one of +those floods that sweep over youth after washing at the barriers of its +innocence. Rookie himself had put her away. It was one of the scrupulous +things he had done for her, because she had been too ignorant to do them +for herself. He had seen she was grown-up. It was true, Nan had to own, +that this was one of the lines, drawn across her life, that pleased Aunt +Anne most, because it removed her (or seemed to remove her) from Rookie. +Aunt Anne was jealous to her fingertips, the ends of those beautiful, +delicately prisoning hands. Nan had tried never to acknowledge that. It +always seemed such a barbarity to find in Aunt Anne the things that +would have shocked her in herself. + +To-night she looked it in the face. Aunt Anne was jealous. That was the +first count. All her own life, too, Nan had been vaguely irritated by +Raven's not marrying Aunt Anne. He was her property, wasn't he, in a +queer way, never questioned, never, on his part, rebelled against? Yet +it was a bondage. And if the real reason was that Aunt Anne wouldn't +have him, why didn't he play the man and batter down her scruples, even +that barrier of the years between them? But after that sudden look into +Raven's eyes, the night she told him about the will, she had never been +able to think of him as loving Aunt Anne at all. It was that horrible +compassion of his, she believed, that obedience of the male to the +weaker (and yet the stronger) principle of the demanding opposite. He +had always been in bondage through his affections, first to his mother, +then Aunt Anne, and then suddenly, terrifyingly, but most gloriously +because this was the only wildly spontaneous thing of all, to the +strange woman in the hut. He was innocent there, he was unthinking, he +didn't know what tale his eyes told of him. It wasn't earthly passion +they told. She had seen many things in her tumultuous life of the last +few years, this woman he called a child. The eyes told how his soul was +going down in a wreckage of worship of the charm that blooms in a few +women only, translated to him through the pity of this woman's wretched +state. Should she interpret him to himself? She could, without +offending. Rookie was sensitive to see, and she found her hand steady to +hold the torch. But there she saw herself slipping into Aunt Anne's +mandatory attitude, choking, dominating, sapping him, heart and brain. +It mustn't be done. It shouldn't. Rookie had had enough of spiritual +government. Above all, she wanted him to have his life: not the sterile +monotony of a man who renounced and served and deferred to managing +females. + +Had the woman any soul in her? If Rookie kidnaped her (and the child, it +would have to be, the doubtful child) would she pay in love for love, or +only an uncomprehending worship? One thing Nan had determined on, the +minute she opened her door to him this night and saw the quick concern +in his face and heard his tone in greeting: Rookie should feel there was +somebody in this disordered world who plainly adored him. If he could +believe that the better for her putting her cheek on his and loving him +to death, he should have it. Rookie should feel warm. As for her, she +was cold. She shivered there by the window and knew it was the inner +tremor of her nerves, for the fire still leaped and the room was +pulsing. "The amount of it is," said Nan to herself, "my heart's broken. +Oh, hang Aunt Anne!" Then she remembered Aunt Anne was dead. But she +would not have recalled the little missile hurled at the impalpable +ghost through the shade of removedness that enveloped her. Nan was +inexorable in standing for what she saw. + +In the morning she found the fires burning below stairs and her tray set +out, with cup and plate. Charlotte had gone. Nan felt the mounting of +spirit due a healthy body, with the new day, and made her toast and her +coffee with a great sense of the pleasure of it all. There was one +drawback. It was distinctly "no fair" to let Charlotte come over to +companion her at night when there was so much to do with the exigent +Amelia on board. But that must settle itself. If she could get Tira +(whom she also called "the woman" in her thoughts) to run away with her +to town, it could hardly be done too quickly. So immediately after her +breakfast she put on coat and hat and went "over to Tenney's," as the +country folk would put it. This was a day brightly blue, with mounting +warmth, the road a smoothness of packed snow. When she reached the +house, Tenney was just driving up to the side door in the sleigh, and +she rejoiced. It made her errand easier. He was going to town, and she +could see the woman alone. But immediately Tira, carrying the baby, a +little white lump in coat and hood, came out and stepped into the +sleigh. She, too, was going. Tenney waited while she settled herself and +tucked the robe about her. He was not solicitous, Nan saw, but the +typical country husband, soberly according her time to get herself and +the child "well fixed." Nan, waiting, her eyes on them, still halted +until they drove out, and nodded her good morning. Tenney drew up. His +sharp eyes signaled her. + +"I've got it in mind," he announced, "to have a prayer-meetin', come +Wednesday. I'm goin' to put up a notice in the post-office." + +He turned a reminding look on Tira who responded by what seemed to Nan +an unwilling confirmation: + +"You're invited to come." + +"You're all invited," said Tenney harshly, as if Tira had lagged in +urgency. "All on ye." + +"Thank you," said Nan, with a cheerful decisiveness. "I'll come." + +Tenney slapped the reins and they went on, to a jingling of bells thinly +melodious in the clear air, and Nan turned back to her house. How +beautiful she was, the strange woman, she thought, with a renewal of her +wonder over Tira, the calm majesty of her, the way she sat erect in the +old red sleigh as if she were queen of a triumphal progress, the sad +inscrutability of her wonderful eyes, the mouth with its evasive curves; +how would an artist indicate them delicately enough so that you kept +them in your memory as she saw herself doing, and were yet not able to +say whether it was the indented corner or the full bow? She found +herself remembering poetic lines about Grecian Helen, and then recalling +herself to New England and the unlikelihood of such bewitchingness. +There couldn't be a woman so compact of mystery and unconsidered +aloofness, and yet beauty, beauty to the bone. + +When the Tenneys drove by Raven's, each with face set forward, not +looking at the house, Raven was in the kitchen consulting Charlotte +about supplies. Jerry, also, was going to town, for, imperious even in +her unspoken needs, Amelia would have to be delicately fed. Charlotte, +hearing the bells, glanced absently at the window and Raven's eyes +followed. He felt his heart give a little added start, of relief, he +knew. At least Tenney wouldn't stop the horse and brain his wife on the +road. + +"There's the Tenneys," said Charlotte. "That's a queer kind of a woman, +that wife he's got." + +"Why is she?" Raven demanded. + +Whatever Charlotte felt, he must pluck it out of her. It was sure to be +true. + +She spoke thoughtfully, as if reviewing what was not altogether clear in +her own mind. + +"I dunno's I know. But she's so kind o' quiet. Pleasant enough, but you +al'ays feel as if she's a mile off." + +Yes, Raven owned to himself, Charlotte was right. That was the way he +felt, only it was not one mile but many miles off. + +"That baby, too," said Charlotte, her brows knitted, as if the whole +thing troubled her. "The baby ain't right." + +Just what Nan said. What witchery women had! + +"What's the matter with the baby?" he asked, and was nettled at the +roughness of his voice. + +Charlotte shook her head and seemed to shake off perplexed imaginings. + +"I dunno," she said again. "But suthin' is. An' that's the queer part +on't. You never'd know whether Mis' Tenney knows it or whether she +don't. But there!" Then her mind settled to its task. "No, you couldn't +git sweet-breads this time o' year, up here anyways. They don't kill." + +Raven, after the consultation was over and Charlotte had explained the +ease with which she could pack a hamper of hot dishes to carry over to +Nan, "come one o'clock," went to his social task in the library where +Amelia sat at the drowsy rite of warming her toes. He had a more or less +relaxed feeling with Amelia now; she had shot her bolt and sprung her +mine and could hardly have more in hiding. But she had, the completest +shock possible. She sat with her eyes fixed on the doorway, waiting, and +her question was ready: + +"John, what do you know about Uncle John? Great-uncle, of course I +mean." + +Raven advanced into the room and chose a seat by the window. Amelia, +still thinly clad above and ineffectually baking herself, made him +irrationally want to get away from fires. + +"Old Crow?" he asked. + +"Why, yes, if you want to call him that. I suppose that's what the +country people did call him." + +"Why," said Raven slowly, getting his recollections in order, prepared +to give her what was good for her and no more, "I suppose there's no +doubt he was an eccentric. He built the hut up there and moved into it +and finally went over the countryside doctoring, in an unscientific +way--and praying--and finally hauled in Billy Jones, a sort of old rake +they thought of sending to the poor farm, and took care of him till he +died. Billy was a tank. When we were little, there used to be stories we +got hold of about the way Billy's legs swelled. One of the boys 'down +along' told me he'd been up there and looked into the hut and Billy sat +there in a chair with his legs bandaged and the water dripping through +to the floor. We all wished our legs would drip. We thought it was +great. Mother wouldn't let me go up there after old Billy went into +residence. But we boys kept on hearing about him. I've no doubt we got +most of the salient points." + +He was giving her more than was good for her, after all. Amelia wouldn't +like this. She didn't like it. + +"Shocking!" she commented, shaking her head in repudiation. + +"I've thought since," said Raven, partly in musing recollection and +perhaps a little to show her what she got by fishing for old memories, +"Billy had cirrhosis of the liver. As I said, Billy was a tank." + +"We needn't go into the question of Jones," said Amelia, with dignity. +"He doesn't concern us. It was a perfectly unjustifiable thing for Uncle +John to do, this taking him into his own house and nursing him. +Perfectly. But it only shows how unbalanced Uncle John really was." + +"Call him Old Crow, Milly," Raven interrupted her, resolved she should +accept the picture as it was if she were bent on any picture at all. +"Everybody knew him by that: just Old Crow. At first, I suppose it was +the country way of trying to be funny over his name, as soon as he got +funny to them with his queerness. And then, after he'd gone round +nursing the sick and praying with the afflicted, they may have put real +affection into it. You can't tell. You see, Milly, Old Crow was a +practical Christian. From all I've heard, he was about the only one you +and I've ever met." + +"He was certainly not normal," said Amelia ingenuously, and while Raven +sat rolling that over in his delighted mind and getting the full logic +of it, she continued: "Do you know, John, he was a very commanding man, +very handsome really? You look like him." + +"Much obliged, Milly," said Raven. He was smiling broadly at her. His +eyes--the crinkles about them multiplied--withdrew in a way that always +made her uneasy, she was so unlikely, at such times, to guess what he +was thinking about. In another instant he was to inform her. It all came +over him, in a wave. He gasped under the force of it and then he roared +with laughter. "By George, Milly," he cried, "I've got you. As the +Scotch say (or are said to say) I hae it noo. Old Crow was dotty and my +nose is like Old Crow's. So I'm dotty, too." + +"I think," said Amelia, with dignity, "any specialist, if you could only +be persuaded to put your case into his hands, would inquire very closely +into family traits. And you and I, John, ought to help him by tabulating +everything we can." + +"Sure!" said Raven, relapsing into a vulgarism likely to set her teeth +on edge and possibly, in the spasm of it, close them momentarily on +reminiscence. "I'm willing to let you in for all I know about Old Crow. +To tell the truth, I'm rather proud of him myself." + +Charlotte was passing through the hall and Amelia called to her. + +"Charlotte, a minute, please. You know our uncle, Mr. John Raven." + +"Old Crow, Charlotte," Raven reminded her, seeing she needed prompting, +not yet guessing where the question was to lead. Curiously, he thought, +it was Milly's exasperating fate to put everybody on guard. But it was +inevitable. When you had a meddler in the family, you never knew where +you'd have to head her off. + +"What," continued Amelia, "has become of Uncle John's books?" + +"His books?" interrupted Raven, himself off the track now, "what the +deuce do you want with Old Crow's books?" + +"Where are they?" Amelia continued, now turning to him. "There's +something somewhere--a book--I know it perfectly well--and we've got to +have it. It came to me in the night." + +"What was it?" asked Raven. "Old Crow was rather a bookish chap, I +fancy, in a conventional way. I've got some of his stuff up in the hut: +rather academic, the kind daguerreotyped young men with high stocks used +to study by one candle. What do you suspect--a will, or a love-letter +slipped in behind a cover and forgotten? It can't be a will. Old Crow +didn't have anything to leave." + +Amelia's hands trembled a little. A brighter rose had encircled the +permanent red of her cheeks. She was, Raven saw with curiosity, much +excited. + +"There was certainly a book," she said, "a mottled blank book a third +full of writing. It was a sort of journal. I was in the room when mother +brought it from the hut and passed it to father to look at. He'd just +come down from your room. You were ill, you know: diphtheria. Mother +passed it to him without a word, the way people do when there are +children in the room. He looked at it and then at her, and they nodded. +I was little, you know, but I saw it was important, and I listened. And +father said: 'No, it won't do to have it lying around. I'll carry it up +attic and put it in the red chest.' That's what I mean, Charlotte," she +continued, turning to Charlotte, who stood with a frown of concentration +on her smooth forehead. "You know that old red chest, the one where +uncle's book was put." + +"Oh, yes," said Charlotte. "I know the old chest." + +"Well," said Amelia conclusively, having made her point, "then you go up +attic, will you, and open the chest, take out the blank book and bring +it down." + +"Nonsense!" said Raven. "Charlotte's got her hands full. I'll run up by +and by." + +Charlotte gave him a serious, perhaps a warning look, he remembered +afterward, and went out of the room. + +"You recall it, don't you," Amelia continued, "how you had diphtheria +after Uncle John's death, and father had it next week." + +"Yes," said Raven, tasting the unchanged bitterness of an old misery. + +That had been one of the points where his life turned. His father had +taken the infection from him and nearly died, and the child he was then +had never been able to escape a shuddering belief that he might have +been guilty of his father's death. That had made him turn the more +passionately to the task of lightening his mother's burden in the wild +anxiety he had caused her. Poor little boy, he thought, poor little +fool! Making his life a business of compensating somebody for something, +and never, until these later years, even seeing the visible path his own +feet should have taken. He forgot Amelia and showed himself so absent +that she got huffy and fell into silence and only when he left the room +did she remind him: + +"Don't forget the journal. You'd better run up and look for it now." + +He did go upstairs, really with an idea it might be best to run over the +journal before Amelia pounced on it and turned it, in some manner, to +his own undoing. At the head of the stairs stood Charlotte, waiting. One +hand was under her apron. She stepped silently into his room, tacitly +inviting him to follow, and brought out the hand and the mottled book. + +"Here," she said. "Here 'tis. You lay it away safe some'r's. Don't seem +to me I'd let anybody see it, if I's you, till you've been over it +yourself." + +Raven, with a nod of understanding, took the book, put it into his desk +drawer and turned the key, and Charlotte hurried away to her kitchen. +When he went downstairs again, he found Amelia at the open door. She was +all an excitement of anticipation. + +"Law, Milly," said he, in the country phrasing he loved to use to her +when she was most securely on her high horse of the cultured life, "you +look as nervous as a witch." + +"Where is it?" said Amelia, beating a tattoo of impatience, with one +hand, on the door. "You've been up attic, haven't you?" + +"Bless you, no," said Raven. "I can't go up attic now. I've got to do an +errand for Charlotte." This was true. Nan's dinner had to be carried +over. "You run up, there's a good girl. Give you something to do. No! +no!" She was turning toward the kitchen. "Don't you go bothering +Charlotte. I won't have it. Cut along." + +And Amelia did, in a dignified haste, to show him how journals were +found, and later, when the moment came, Raven went with his hot hamper +to Nan's. + +She met him at the door, no such overflowing Nan as last night, but +serenely practical and quite settled into the accustomed comforts of her +house. + +"I'm as hungry as a bear," said she. "Come through to the kitchen. I eat +in there. The only drawback to this, Rookie, is that it takes it out of +Charlotte. Still, it won't last long, and I'll give her a kiss and a +blue charmeuse. That would pay anybody for anything." + +They unpacked the basket together, and Nan, her plate and knife and fork +ready on a napkin, began to eat. Raven sat down at the other end of the +table. + +"I wish you'd stay," he said, watching her in her pretty haste. "I don't +mean here: over with me. Come on, Nan. Amelia's settled down for good. +She won't bother you--much. Anyhow, you can run off up to the hut." + +Then he remembered what other fugitive she might find at the hut, and +saw she, too, remembered. Her words came pat upon it. + +"The Tenneys are going to have a prayer-meeting Wednesday night." + +"A prayer-meeting!" He heard himself echoing it incredulously. + +"Yes, and you're to take me, Rookie. Don't scowl. I've got to see that +man when he worships his idols, and you've got to see him, too. His god +must be an idol: burnt offerings, that sort of thing. Perhaps that's +what he's doing it all for: offering her up, as a kind of sacrifice. His +wife, I mean. What's her name, Rookie?" + +"Thyatira," said Raven, and got up, his mind suddenly dense to the +comfortable picture of Nan and her dinner, and went home. + + + + +XX + + +The next few days went by, all alike cloudless and uneventful within the +house. Nan coaxed Charlotte into bringing her over meat and vegetables, +and, with a plea of liking it, cooked them herself. Raven swung back and +forth between the houses, but Nan found him silent and, she decided, +cross. Every day he went up to the hut to see whether the fire had been +lighted, and every day found the place in its chilly order. It seemed to +him as if the whole tragic background against which Tira had been moving +had been wiped away by some wide sweeping sponge of oblivion, as if he +had dreamed the story or at least its importance in his own life, as if +Nan had always been living alone in her house, and Amelia, tied up in +Charlotte's aprons, her lips compressed in implacable resolution, always +going through trunks in the attic, searching for a mottled book. He had +no compunction over Amelia. Let her search, he thought, when Charlotte +came to him with a worried brow and asked if he didn't think he could +put it somewheres in sight, so's 't she should know 'twas no use. Do her +good. If she didn't like it she could go back to her clubs and her +eugenics and her Freudians. And when the evening of the prayer-meeting +came he looked out at the brilliant weather, judged that the immediate +region might seize upon it as an excuse for sleigh-riding, and was +returning to his book for a brief minute more, when Amelia called from +the window: + +"Three sleighs! Where can they be going?" + +"Oh," said Raven, without raising his eyes from the page, "sleighing, +most likely." + +But the minute she left the window, he put down his book, got his hat +and coat from the hall, and went out through the kitchen where Charlotte +was sponging bread. + +"Going to the meeting?" he asked her. + +"No," said Charlotte, absorbedly dissolving her yeast cake. "I never +take much stock in----" There she paused, lest she might be uncharitably +expansive, and found refuge in Jerry. "He says Isr'el Tenney ain't so +much of a man, when all's said an' done, an' don't seem as if he could +stan' seein' him on his knees. But there!" + +Raven went on through the shed and up the road, to Nan's. She had seen +him from the window and came down the path. + +"Knew I'd come, did you?" he grumbled. + +"Yes," said Nan. "We'd really better go." + +Raven hated it all, out of his element as he was, going to spy on Tenney +and hear him pray. What other reason was there? He and Nan simply wanted +to search out the reactions in Tenney's spiritual insides in order to +defeat him the more neatly. + +The house was brightly lighted downstairs. Six or eight sleighs stood in +the shelter of the long open shed at right angles to the barn. The +horses had been taken in and blanketed. When Raven and Nan arrived, no +one else was outside, and he was about to knock when Nan, who remembered +the ways of neighborhood prayer-meetings, opened the door and stepped +in. Men and women were seated in a couple of rows about the walls of the +two front rooms, and Tenney stood in the square entry beside a table +supplied with a hymn-book, a Bible, and a lamp. He had the unfamiliar +aspect of a man reduced to discomfort of mind by the strictures of a +Sunday suit. His eyes were burning and his mouth compressed. What did +they mean, that passion of the distended pupil, that line of tightened +lip? Was it the excitement of leadership, the responsibility of being +"in charge" of the solemn convention of prayer-meeting? It was the face, +Nan thought, of one who knew the purposes of God from the first word of +creation to the last, and meant to enforce them by every mastery known +to man: persuasion, rage, and cruelty. She gave him a good evening and +he jerked his head slightly in response. The occasion was evidently too +far out of the common to admit of ordinary greetings. A man and woman +just inside the doorway of the front room moved along, and signed Raven +and Nan to take their vacated seats. As soon as they were settled Tenney +began to "lead in prayer," and Raven, his mind straying from the words +as negligible and only likely to increase his aversion to the man, sat +studying the furnishings of the room, a typical one, like all the +parlors of the region from the time of his boyhood to that of his father +and Old Crow. There was the center table with the album and three red +volumes of Keepsakes and Garlands, a green worsted mat, hopefully +designed to imitate moss, and on the depression in its center the astral +lamp. On the wall opposite were pictures of Tenney's father and mother, +painful enlargements from stiff photographs, and on the neighboring wall +a glazed framing of wax flowers and a hair wreath. The furniture was +black walnut upholstered with horsehair. Tenney was of the more +prosperous line of farmers. And yet he had not begun so. All this +represented the pathetic ideal of one who toiled and saved and bought +after the fashion of his type. + +Raven's eyes strayed to the faces about him: these were the younger set, +boys and girls from sixteen to twenty. The first two or three had, by +chance perhaps, dropped into this room and the rest gravitated shyly to +it. There was always a line of cleavage at prayer-meeting, as at teas +and "socials," between old and young. Raven was glad he had chosen the +room at random. He liked the atmosphere of half-awed, half-tittering +youth. They were always on the verge, always ready to find hilarity in +untoward circumstance, and yet trained to a respect for meeting, doing +their conventional best. What hard red cheeks there were, what great +brown hands of boys, awkwardly holding hats, and yet, taken into the +open, how unerringly they gripped the tasks that fell to them. All of +them, boys and girls alike, were staring at him and Nan: at Nan with a +frank admiration, the girls perhaps with envy. At the corner of the room +corresponding to his own, two chairs had been left vacant, and when his +eyes came to them he saw a blue scarf depending from the back of one; it +had been dropped when the occupant of the chair had left it. It was +Tira's chair, and Tira herself appeared from the door opposite, leading +from the kitchen, crossed the room, took the scarf and wrapped it about +her shoulders and sat down. She had been called out, perhaps in response +to a cry from the child who seemed to be the center of commotion in this +house, though so mysteriously inactive. Raven felt the blood mounting to +his face, she was so movingly beautiful in this scene of honest but +unlovely mediocrity. Even her walk across the room, unconscious of +herself, yet with the rhythmic step of high processionals--how strange a +part she was of this New England picture! He could not see her now, +without turning, and tried to summon his mind home from her, to fix it +on Tenney, who, having finished his prayer, was calling on one and +another, with an unction that seemed merely a rejoicing tyranny, for +testimony. It was a scene of tension. Church members were timid before +the ordeal of experience or pleading, and the unconverted were strained +to the verge of hysteria over a prospect of being haled into the open +and prayed for. Neither Raven nor Nan knew how unpopular Tenney had +become, because he could not enter the conventional limits of a +prayer-meeting without turning it into something too tense, too +exciting, the atmosphere of the revival. Yet, though his fellow +Christians blamed him for it, they sought it like a drug. He played on +their unwilling nerves and they ran to be played on. He was their opera, +their jazz. Breath came faster and eyes shone. The likelihood of a +hysterical giggle was imminent, and some couples, safely out of range of +Tenney's gaze, were "holding hands" and mentally shuddering at their own +temerity. + +Now he was telling his own religious experience, with a mounting fervor +ready to froth over into frenzy. Raven, turning slightly, regarded him +with a cold dislike. This was the voice that had echoed through the +woods that day when Tira stood, her baby in her arms, in what chill of +fear Raven believed he knew. Tenney went on lashing himself into the +ecstasy of his emotional debauch. His eyes glittered. He was happy, he +asserted, because he had found salvation. His conversion was akin to +that of Saul. To his immense spiritual egotism, Raven concluded, nothing +short of a story colossally dramatic would serve. He had been a sinner, +perhaps not as to works but faith. He had kept the commandments, all but +one. Had he loved the Lord his God with all his heart, all his soul, all +his might? No: for he had not accepted the sacrifice the Lord God had +prepared for him, of His only Son. That Son of God had been with him +everywhere, in his down-sittings and his uprisings, as He was with every +man and woman on earth. But, like other sinful men and women, he had not +seen Him. He had not felt Him. But He was there. And one day he was +hoeing in the field and a voice at his side asked: "Why persecutest thou +me?" He looked up and saw----Here he paused dramatically, though Raven +concluded it was simply because he found himself at a loss to go on. He +had appropriated the story, but he was superstitiously afraid to +embroider it. For he (Raven gave him that credit) honestly believed in +his self-evolved God. + +"And then," said Tenney, in a broken voice, tears trickling down his +cheeks, "the voice said to me: 'Go ye out and preach the gospel.'" + +The front door opened and a little answering breeze flickered in the +flame of the lamp. A girl near Nan, her nerves on edge, gave a cry. A +man stepped in and closed the door behind him. He was a figure of +fashion evolved from cheap models and flashy materials. Tall, quick in +his movements, as if he found life a perpetual dance and +self-consciously adapted himself to it, with mocking blue eyes, red hair +and a long nose bent slightly to one side, he was, in every line and +act, vulgar, and yet so arrogantly bent on pleasing that you +unconsciously had to acknowledge his intention and refrain from turning +your back on him. He looked at Tenney in a calculated good humor, +nodded, had his great coat off with a quick gesture, and slung it over +his arm. Then he stepped past Tenney, who stood petrified as if he saw +the risen dead, and into the room. This was Eugene Martin. He seemed not +to be in the least subdued to the accepted rules of prayer-meeting, but +nodded and smiled impartially, and, as if he had flashed that look about +for the one niche waiting for him, stepped lightly over to Tira's corner +and took the chair at her side. Raven, from the tragic change in +Tenney's face, knew who he was and bent forward to see what Tira's eyes +would tell. She was, it seemed, frozen into endurance. Martin, in +seating himself, had given her a cordial good evening. She did not +answer, nor did she look at him. Her pale lips did not move. Nor did +she, on the other hand, withdraw from him. The chairs had been pushed +close, and, as she sat upright, scarcely moving a muscle with her +breath, the blue scarf touched his shoulder. Raven withdrew his gaze, +not to make the moment in any sense conspicuous, and, feeling the +silence, turned to Tenney to see if his leadership could surmount this +base assault. The assault was premeditated. The gay insolence of the +man's manner told him that. Tenney stood there silent, flaccid, a hand +on the casing of the door. Every vestige of religious excitement had +left his face. His overthrow was complete, and Raven, judging how Martin +must rejoice, was for the moment almost as sorry for Tenney as for his +wife. The little disturbance had lasted only a moment, but now all eyes +were turning on Tenney, who had ceased to "lead." In another minute the +eyes would be curious, the silence would be felt. As Raven wondered what +would break the evil spell, Nan's voice came out clear, untinged by the +prevailing somberness, warm with the confidence of youth: + +"Can't we sing one of the nice old hymns? Coronation! That's got such a +swing to it." + +She began it, and the young voices broke in pell-mell after her like a +joyous crowd, seeing a vine-clad procession, and losing no time in +joining for fear of losing step. Raven knew perfectly well the great old +hymn was no matter for a passionately remorseful, sin-laden meeting of +this sort. Nan knew it, too. He was sure she had not ventured it for the +protection of Tira. No one had ever told Nan about the man with the +devil in him who "looked up kinder droll." But she could see the tide of +human emotion had better be turned to the glorification of God than to +the abasement of man. Raven, in the swell of it, put his lips to her ear +and whispered: + +"I'm going to ask you to change your seat." + +She gave no sign of having heard, but sang on, in a delightful volume, +to "Crown Him Lord of all." The moment the last note died, Raven came to +his feet. He addressed Tenney: + +"One minute. There's a draught here by the door." + +He went over to Martin, Nan following: + +"Do you mind sitting by the door?" he asked the man. "There's a good +deal of a draught." + +Martin, his surprised look at Nan changing to a ready gallantry, got up +at once. + +"Anything," said he, "to oblige a lady." + +Nan sat down and Raven and Martin took the seats by the door. There, +too, Martin had advantage of a sort. He could stare down Tenney at short +range, and this he did with a broad smile. Tenney, Raven concluded, was +down and out. His comb was cut. Whatever passions might stir in him +later--however, in reviewing the scene, he might rage over the disturber +of his peace--now his spiritual leadership had passed from him and the +prayer-meeting itself was quashed. An air of curiosity hung over it. Two +or three of the older men and women in the other room offered testimony +and one man, the old clock-mender from the other side of the mountain, +who swore with a free tongue about his secular affairs, but always wept +when he went through the observance he called approaching the throne, +knelt and prayed in a high voice through sobs. This lightened the +atmosphere. No one ever regarded this performance seriously. He was the +comic relief. On his Amen, Nan (blessed Nan! thought Raven) proposed: + +"Let's sing again." + +"No!" said Tenney. He had got back his self-assertiveness. Raven could +guess his jealous anger, the tide of fury coming, flooding the stagnant +marshes of his soul. "I want to hear one more testimony. Thyatira +Tenney, get up and tell what God has done for you." + +Tira gave a start so violent that the blue scarf fell from her shoulders +and one end of it lay over Nan's arm. She did get up. She rose slowly +and stood there looking straight before her, eyes wide and dark, her +hands clasped. Her stiff lips moved. She did piteously, Raven saw, try +to speak. But she could not manage it and after the long moment she sank +back into her seat. Nan placed the blue scarf about her shoulders, +carefully, as if the quiet concern of doing it might tell the woman +something--that she was companioned, understood--and, one hand on the +knot of Tira's clasped fingers, began to sing. She sang the Doxology, +and after that, through unbreakable custom, the meeting was over and you +had to go home. Men and women came to their feet, there were greetings +and good nights and about Nan gathered a group of those who remembered +her. But she kept her left hand on Tira's, and after the others had gone +she said something quickly to the woman who stood, looking dead tired, +uttering mechanical good nights. Martin, with a jovial good night to +Tenney, had hurried off at once. + +"See you later," he called back to him at the door, and Tenney looked +after him with the livid concentration of a man who sends his curse +forward to warn where it is not yet time for a blow. A laughing group +followed Martin. There were girls who, horrified at the implications +that hung about his name, were yet swayed by his dashing gallantry, and +young men who sulkily held the girls back, swearing under their breath. +Tira broke loose from Nan and went, fast as running water, through the +room, to the back of the house. Raven made no pretense of saying good +night to Tenney. He forgot it, forgot Tenney, save as an element of +danger to be dealt with later. On the doorstep he stopped with Nan, in +the seclusion of the moment while the others were bringing out horses +and putting them into the sleighs. + +"We can't leave her here with him," he said. + +"What was the matter?" Nan returned as quickly. "What happened? That +man?" + +"Yes. The one he's jealous of. We can't leave her here." + +"No use," said Nan. "She won't go. I asked her, told her I was living +over at the house alone, wanted company. No use. She wouldn't go." + +"She must go." + +"She won't, I tell you. Then I asked if she'd let me stay over here and +she said no. She said----" + +"What?" urged Raven when she stopped. + +"I almost can't tell, it's so pathetic. Just a word--three words: 'You +don't know.' Then she stopped. Just that: 'You don't know.'" + +Raven gave a little sound she could not bear, a breath, a curse--what +was it? Anyway, the breaking impatience of a helpless man. He did not +stir. He meant, she saw, to stay there, doggedly stay, on the step, to +await what happened. She put her hand through his arm. + +"Come," she said authoritatively, "let's walk up the road and drop in +again when they've all gone. It's no use staying now." + +That, he saw, was wise, and they went out into the road, waited a moment +for the sleighs just starting, and then walked away from home. Some of +the people were singing "camp-meeting hymns," and there was one daring +burst of "Good night, ladies," and a chorused laugh. Prayer-meeting at +Tenney's was not, Raven concluded, regarded much more seriously than +Charlotte had foreseen. The bells jingled off into the distance. The +horses were bent on home. As if the sound only had torn up the night +into shreds of commotion, so now the bits of silence drew together into +a web and the web covered them. Nan, in spite of the perplexed question +of Tira, could have settled under the web, there with Raven, as under +wings. But he was hot with impatience. They had gone half a mile +perhaps, when he stopped. + +"Come back," he said. "I've got to know." + +Nan turned with him and they went on in silence but very fast. Once or +twice she was about asking him not to take such long steps, but she set +her teeth and swung forward. In front of Tenney's they stopped. The +rooms were lighted. The house was still. Raven drew a deep breath. What +he had expected he did not know, whether calls for help or Tenney's +voice of the woods shouting, "Hullo!" This, at any rate, was a reprieve. + +"Come on," he said. "I'll take you home and then come back." + +Again Nan stepped out in time. No use, she thought, to beg him to let +her come, too. But she could come back. Women were useful, she knew, +with their implied terrors and fragility, in holding up certain sorts of +horror. Nan was willing to fight, if need were, with all the weapons of +her sex. In the road in front of her own house, was Charlotte, waiting +for them. Nan left Raven, put a hand on Charlotte's arm, and called her +"Ducky." + +"You won't come in?" she said to Raven. "Don't you think you'd better. +Half an hour or so?" + +"Not a minute," said Raven. "Good night." + +He left them and after a few striding steps was aware of Charlotte, +calling him. She came up and spoke his name. + +"I've just met that woman." + +"What woman?" he asked impatiently. + +"Tira Tenney. With the baby. This time o' night." + +"Where?" + +"Front o' the house, just as I come out." + +"Then she was coming there," he burst forth. "Too bad! too bad! Didn't +you know that? Didn't you ask her in?" + +"Yes," said Charlotte, "I asked her in an' she said no, she was goin' +down along. An' I stood an' watched her an' she turned off up the rise +into the woods." + +So it had begun, the terror, the flight. She was going to the hut and, +for some reason, not the back way. + +"There's somethin' 'tain't right," Charlotte was beginning, but he +seized her wrist and held it. To keep her attention, or to feel the +touch of something kindly and warm? + +"Yes," he said, "something's wrong. Don't tell, Charlotte. Not a +word--not to Nan or Jerry or--above all not to Tenney. I'll see to it." + +He left her and hurried loping along the road, almost at a run, and +Charlotte went in to Nan. + + + + +XXI + + +Raven passed his house and turned into the wood road. There he did not +slacken, but took the rise at a great gait. He was at the hut a moment +after Tira: she had had time for neither light nor fire. + +"It's Raven," he called. She did not come, and he added: "I'm alone. Let +me in." + +Waiting there at the door, he had time to note the stillness of the +woods, the creak of a branch now and then, and the half-drawn sigh from +the breeze you hardly felt. At the instant of his beginning to wonder +whether she might have fallen there from a hurt or whether she was even +terrified of him, he heard the sound of the key and the door opened. He +stepped in and her hand was at once on the key. She turned it and melted +noiselessly into the dark of the room, and he followed her. + +"No fire!" he reproached her, or perhaps himself, for it seemed, in the +poignancy of his tenderness, as if he should have had it burning night +and day. He set a match to the kindling and the flame answered it. She +had taken one of the chairs at the hearth and he saw, in the leaping +light, that she had put the child on the couch and covered him. She was +shuddering all over, shaking horribly, even her lips, and he went into +the bedroom, came back with a blanket and wrapped it about her. She held +it close, in that humble way she had of trying to spare him trouble, +indeed to make no confusion in the world she found so deranged already. +He remembered the chartreuse she had once refused and took it down from +the high cupboard, poured a little and set the glass in her shaking +hand, and, when the muscles did not answer, put it to her lips. + +"It won't hurt you," he said. "Down it." + +She drank, and the kindly fire of it warmed her. She looked up at him, +and what she said was more unexpected than anything he could have +imagined: + +"Do you believe it?" + +"Believe what?" + +He could only guess she meant something connected with Tenney's madness +of suspicion and the devil of a man. + +"What he said." She was looking at him with intensity, as if life and +death lay in his answer. "He said He was there to-night, there in the +room. Do you believe that?" + +"Who was there?" Raven prompted her, and the immediate reply staggered +him. + +"Jesus Christ." + +He temporized. + +"I've no doubt he believed it," he said, unwilling to speak Tenney's +name. It was doubly hateful to him at the moment of her being so +patently undone. He could only think she was trying to reconcile the +ugly contrast between her husband's expressed faith and his insane +action. "I'm sure he thought so." + +"That ain't what I mean," she hesitated, and he began to see how her +mind was striving in an anguish of interrogation. "What he +thinks--that's neither here nor there. What I want to know is whether +it's _so_. If there's Somebody"--she clasped her hands on her knees and +looked up at him, mutely imploring him who was so wise in books and life +to help her striving mind--"if there's Somebody that cares--that died +over it, He cared so much--if He's round here everywhere--if He sees it +all--an' feels terrible, same as we do ourselves--why, then it's +different." + +"What's different?" Raven asked, out of his fog. + +She was demanding something of him and he felt, in a sickness of +despair, that it was something he couldn't give her because he hadn't it +himself. Tenney could read her the alphabet of comfort, though he was +piling on her those horrors of persecution that made her hungry for it. + +"Why," she said, and the light and a bloom of something ineffable swept +over her face, changing its tragic mystery from the somberness of the +Fates to the imagined youthful glory of the angels, "if He's here all +the time, if He's in the room when things happen to us, an' wishes He +could stop it an' can't because"--again her mind labored and she saw she +had come up against the mysterious negatives of destiny--"anyways, He +would if He could--an' He knows how we feel inside when we feel the +worst, an' cares, cares same as----" here she was inarticulate. But she +turned for an instant toward the couch where the child lay, and her face +was the mother face. She meant, he knew, as she cared for her child. +"Why, then," she continued, "there wouldn't be anything to fret about, +ever. You never'd be afraid, not if you was killed, you wouldn't. You'd +know there was Somebody in the room." + +This was the most deeply considered speech of her whole life. The last +words, ingenuous as a child's unconscious betrayal, tore at him as, he +suddenly thought, it would be if he saw a child tortured and in fear: as +if he saw Nan. They told him how desperately lonesome and undefended she +had felt. + +"An' don't you see," she concluded, with the brightness of happy +discovery, "even if you was killed, what harm would it do you? He'd be +waitin'. You'd go with Him. Wherever it is He lives, you'd go." + +Raven turned abruptly, walked to a window and stood there looking into +the dark. The challenge of her face was impossible to bear. Suppose she +asked him again if he believed it? Did he believe in a God made man? By +no means. He believed in one God, benevolent, he had once assumed, but +in these latter years too well hidden behind His cloud for man to say. +Did the old story of a miraculous birth and an atonement move him even +to a desire to believe? It repelled him rather? What, to his honest +apprehension, was the God made man? An exemplar, a light upon the path +of duty, as others also had been. Had the world gone wrong, escaped from +its mysterious Maker, and did it need to be redeemed by any such +dramatic remedy? No, his God, the God who made, could not botch a job +and be disconcerted at the continuing bad results of His handiwork. The +only doubt about his God was whether He was in any degree benevolent. +When he reflected that He had made a world full to the brim of its cup +of bitterness, he sometimes, nowadays, thought not. All this swept +through his mind in a race of thoughts that had run on that course +before, and again he heard her and knew she was pulling him back to the +actual issue as it touched herself. + +"You tell me," she was calling him. Her voice insisted. He did not turn, +but he knew her face insisted even more commandingly. "You know. There's +nothin' you don't know. Is it true?" + +Nothing he didn't know! The irony of that was so innocently piercing +that he almost broke into a laugh. Nan was right then. Tira did regard +him, if not as an archangel, as something scarcely less authoritative. +He turned and went back to the fire, threw on an armful of sticks, and +stood looking into the blaze. + +"What makes you say that?" he asked her. "What makes you think I know?" + +"Why," said she, in a patent surprise, "'course you know. I've always +heard about you, writin' books an' all. An' that's the kind you be, too. +You're"--she paused to marshal her few words and ended in an awed +tone--"you're that way, too. When folks are in trouble, you're so sorry +it 'most kills you." + +This was a blow staggering enough to hit his actual heart and stop it +for a beat. What if he should say to her: "Yes, I do care. I care when +you are hurt. I don't know about the God made man, but isn't my caring +enough for you?" + +Then bitter certainties cut in and told him it wouldn't do. She had +learned her world lesson too terribly well. It would be only another +case of man's pursuing, promising--what had they promised in the past? +And after all, he thought recklessly, what did the private honor of his +testifying yes or no amount to anyway? What moral conceit! To save his +own impeccable soul by denying a woman the one consolation that would +save her reason. + +"Yes, Tira," he said quietly, and did not know he had used her name, +"it's all true." + +She gave a little sound, half sob, half ecstatic breath, and he saw she +had not been sure he would yield her the bright jewel she had begged of +him. + +"True!" she said, in the low tone of an almost somnolently brooding +calm. "All of it! Everywhere!" + +"Yes," said Raven steadily, "everywhere." + +"Over there where He was born, here!" That seemed to amaze her to a +glory of belief. "Why, if He's everywhere, He's here, too." + +"Yes," said Raven. He loved his task now. He was putting her sorrows to +sleep. "He's here, too." + +At that moment, incredibly, it seemed to him that a difference pervaded +the place, or at least that his eyes had been opened to a something +unsuspected, dwelling in all things. Did he, his unchanged mind asked +him, actually believe what he had not believed before? No, the inner +core of him signaled back to his mind. His belief had not changed. Yet +indubitably something had happened and happened blessedly, for it +brought her peace. Tira gave a little laugh, a child's laugh of +surprised content. He glanced at her. She was looking into the fire and +the haggardness of her face had softened. It was even, under the warmth +of the flames and her own inner delight, absorbed and dreamy. And Raven +knew he must wake her, and, he hoped, without flawing the dream, to +present action. + +"Now," he said, "I want you to come with me down to Nan's"--still he +dared not put her off a step from the intimacy of neighborly relations +by presenting Nan more formally--"and spend the night there. In the +morning, you'll go back to Boston with her. I shall enter a complaint +against your husband." + +It wasn't so hard to give Tenney the intimacy of that name, now she +looked so sweetly calm. She started from her dream, glanced up at him +and, to his renewed discomfort, broke into a little laugh. It was sheer +amusement, loving raillery too, of him who could give her the priceless +gift of a God made man and then ask her to forsake the arena where the +beasts were harmless now because she no longer feared them. + +"Why, bless your heart," she said, in a homespun fashion of address that +might have been Charlotte's, "I wouldn't no more run away! An' if you +should have him before the judge, I'd no more say a word ag'inst him! I +wouldn't git you into any trouble either," she explained, in an anxious +loyalty. "I'd say you was mistaken, that's all." + +Something seemed to break in him. + +"What do you mean?" he asked roughly. "What do you think you mean? I +suppose you're in love with him?" + +Tira looked at him patiently. She yielded to a little sigh. + +"Why," she said, "that's where I belong. I don't," she continued +hesitatingly, in her child's manner of explaining herself from her +inadequate vocabulary, "I guess I don't think about them things much, +not same as men-folks think. But there's one or two things I've got to +look out for." Here she gave that quick significant glance at the little +mound on the couch. "An' there ain't no way to do it less'n I stay right +there in my tracks." + +Raven, his hand gripping the mantel, rested his forehead on it and dark +thoughts came upon him. They quickened his breath and brought the blood +to his face and his aching eyes. It was all trouble, it seemed to him, +trouble from the first minute of his finding her in the woods. She might +draw some temporary comfort from his silent championship, in the +momentary safety of this refuge he had given her. But he could by no +means cut her knot of difficulty. She was as far from him as she had +been the moment before he saw her. She was speaking. + +"It ain't," she said, in a low voice, "it ain't that I don't keep in +mind what you've done for me, what you're doin' all the time. But I +guess you don't see what you've done this night's the most of all. Now +you've told me you know it's true"--here she was shy before the talk of +god-head--"why, I know it's so, too. An' I sha'n't ever be afraid any +more. I sha'n't ever feel alone." + +"But Tira," he felt himself saying to her weakly, "I feel alone." + +Did he actually say it, he wondered. No, for he lifted his face from his +shielding hand and turned miserable eyes upon her, and her eyes met him +clearly. Yet they were deeper, softer, moved by a sad compassion. There +was something patiently maternal in them, as if she had found herself +again before the old sad question of man's uncomprehended desires. She +spoke, strangely he thought then, and afterward he wondered if she +actually had said the thing at all. + +"There's nothin' in the world I wouldn't do for you, not if 'twas +anyways right. But----" and again she gave that fleeting glance of +allegiance to the child. + +He tried impatiently to pull himself together. She must see there was +something hideous in his inability to make her safe, something stupid, +also. + +"Tira," he said, "you don't understand. Sometimes I think you don't +realize what might happen to you. And it's silly to let it happen, +foolish, ignorant. If some one told you there was a man outside your +door and he wanted to kill you, you'd lock the door. Now there's a man +inside your house, inside your room, that wants to kill you. Yes, he +does," he insisted, answering the denial in her face, "when he's got one +of his brain storms. Is there anything to pride yourself on in staying +to be killed?" + +She answered first with a smile, the sweet reassurance of a confident +look. + +"He won't," she said, "he won't try to kill me, or kill him"--she made a +movement of the hand toward the couch--"no, not ever. You know why? I'm +goin' to remind him Who's in the room." + +"Why didn't you remind him this time?" Raven queried, pushed to the +cynical logic of it. "You could have turned his own words against him. +It wasn't an hour since he'd said it himself." + +"Because," she answered, in a perfect good faith, "then I didn't know +'twas so." + +"Didn't know 'twas so? Why didn't you?" + +Her eyes were large with wonder. + +"Because," she said, "then you hadn't told me." + +Raven stared at her a full minute, realizing to the full the exact +measure of his lie coming back to him. + +"Tira," said he, "I believe you're not quite bright." + +"No," said she simply, with no apparent feeling, "I guess I ain't. 'Most +everybody's told me so, first or last." + +It sobered him. + +"I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn't mean that. I'm off my head a +little. I'm so worried, you see. I want to know you're safe. You're not +safe. It isn't easy to accept that--to lie down under it." + +Usually he had spoken to her in the homespun phrasing he instinctively +used with his country neighbors, but the last words were subtly +different to her, they were more distant, and she accepted them with a +grave humility. + +"Yes, sir," she said, and Raven awoke to the irritating knowledge that +she was calling him "sir." He smiled at her and she realized that, as +mysteriously as she had been pushed away, now she was taken back. + +"So," he said, "you won't go down to Nan's and spend the night?" + +She shook her head, watching him. Little as she meant to do what he told +her, she wanted less to offend him. + +"Then," said Raven, "you'll stay here. I'll bring in some more blankets, +and you lie on the couch. You'll have to keep an eye on the fire. Don't +let it go down entirely. It can get pretty cold." + +He got up, lighted a candle and went into the bedroom for the blankets. +Tira followed him and silently took the pair he gave her, came back to +the couch and spread them carefully, not to waken the child. He followed +with more and, while she finished arranging her couch, piled wood on the +fire. For a moment he had an idea of announcing that he would stay and +keep the fire up while she slept. But even if she submitted to that, she +would be uneasy. And she was a hardy woman. It would not hurt her to +come awake, as he knew she could, with the house-guarding instinct of +the woman trained to serve. + +"There," he said, beating the wood-dust from his hands, "now lock me +out. Remember, you're not to go back there to-night. You owe that to me. +You've given me bother enough." + +But his eyes, when hers sought them timidly, were smiling at her. She +laughed a little, happily. It was all right, then. + +"You ain't mad," she said, half in shy assertion, following him to the +door. + +"No," he said gravely. "I'm not mad. I couldn't be, with you. I never +shall be. Good night." + +He opened the door, went out and waited an instant to hear the key click +behind him and ran plunging down the snowy road. Once on the way he +looked up at the mysterious stars visible in the line of sky above the +track he followed. Deeper and deeper it was, the mystery. He had given +her a God to adore and keep her protecting company. He who did not +believe had wrought her faith out of his unbelief. When he turned into +the road, he thought he saw someone under the porch of his house and +hurried, his mind alive to the chance of meeting Tenney, searching for +her. The figure did not move and as he went up to the house a voice +called to him. It was Amelia's. + +"O John, is that you? I can't see how you can leave the house alone to +go wandering off in the woods and never saying a word." + +There she was in her fur coat, not so much frightened, he thought, as +hurt. She was querulous with agitation. + +"All right, Milly," he said, and put an arm through hers, "here I am. +And the house isn't alone. Don't get so nervous. Next thing you know, +you'll have to see a specialist." + +"And Charlotte's gone," she lamented sharply, allowing him to march her +in and turning, in the warm hall, to confront him. "Here I've been all +alone." + +"Where's Jerry?" + +Raven had thrown off his hat and coat and frankly owned himself tired. + +"In the kitchen. But he won't tell where Charlotte is. He says she's +gone up along." + +"Well, so she has, to a neighbor's. Come into the library and get 'het' +through before you go to bed." + +"And," she lamented, letting him give her a kindly push toward the door, +"I've got to pack, myself, if Charlotte doesn't come." + +"Pack?" He stared at her. "You're not leaving?" + +"Yes, John." She said it portentously, as bidding him remember he might +be sorry when she was no more. "I'm going. Dick has telegraphed." + +"Anything the matter?" + +"That's it. I don't know. If I did, I could decide. He orders me, simply +orders me, to take the early train. What do you make of it?" + +Raven considered. Actually, he thought, Dick was carrying out his +benevolent plan of getting her back, by hook or crook. + +"I don't believe I'd worry, Milly," he said, gravely, "but I think you'd +better go." + +"Yes," she said, "that's it. I don't dare not to. Something may be the +matter. I've tried to telephone, but he doesn't answer. I must go." + + + + +XXII + + +Raven always remembered that as the night of his life, up to this +present moment, the mountain peak standing above the waters of his +discontent. The top of the mountain, that was what lifted itself in an +island inexpressibly green and fair above those sullen depths, and on +this, the island of deliverance, he was to stand. After he had reasoned +Amelia into her room and persuaded her to leave her packing till the +morning, he went up to his own chamber, mentally spent and yet keyed to +an exhausting pitch. He was excited yet tired, tied up into nervous +knots without the will to loose them. What sense in going to bed, when +he could not sleep? What need of reviewing the last chapter of his +knowledge of the woman who was so compelling in her helplessness and her +childlike faith? He would read: something silly, if he had it at hand. +The large matters of the mind and soul were not for this unwilling +vigil; and at this intruding thought of the soul he smiled, remembering +how glibly he had bartered the integrity of his own to add his fragment +to the rising temple of Tira's faith. He had strengthened her at the +expense of his own bitter certainties. It was done deliberately and it +was not to be regretted, but it did open a window upon his private +rectitude. Was his state of mind to be taken so very seriously, even by +himself? Not after that! Lounging before his book-shelves in search of a +soporific, suddenly he remembered the mottled book. It flashed into his +mind as if a hand had hurled it there. He would read Old Crow's journal. + +Settled in bed, the light beside him and the mottled book in his hand, +he paused a thoughtful minute before opening it. Poor old devil! Was +this the jangled record of an unsound mind, or was it the apologia for +an eccentricity probably not so uncommon, after all? Foolish, he +thought, to leave a record of any sort, unless you were a +heaven-accredited genius, entrusted with the leaves of life. Better to +recognize your own atomic insignificance, and sink willingly into the +predestined sea. He opened it and took a comprehensive glance over the +first page: an oblong of small neat handwriting. Many English hands were +like that. He was accustomed to call it a literary hand. Over the first +date he paused, to refer it back to his own years. How big was he when +Old Crow had begun the diary? Seven, that was all. He was a boy of seven +years, listening with an angry yet fascinated attention to the other +boys talking about Old Crow, who was, they said, luny, love-cracked. He +never could hear enough about the terrifying figure choosing to live up +there in the woods alone, and who yet seemed so gentle and so like other +folk when you met him and who gave you checker-berry lozenges. Still he +was furious when the boys hooted him and then ran, because, after all, +Old Crow was his own family. And with the first words, his mind started +to an alert attention. The words were to him. + +"I am going to write some things down for the boy," Old Crow began, in +the neat-handed script. "He is a good little boy. He looks like me at +his age. I had a kind of innocence. He has it, too. If he should grow up +anything like me, I want him to have this letter"--the last word was +crossed out and a more formal one substituted--"statement. If he thinks +about things anyways different from what the neighbors do, they will +begin to laugh at him, and try to make him believe he is not in his +right mind." + +Over and over, through the first pages of the book, there were +grammatical lapses when Old Crow, apparently from earnestness of +feeling, fell into colloquial speech. This was always when he got so +absorbed in his subject that he lacked the patience to go back and +rewrite according to rules he certainly knew but which had ceased to +govern his daily intercourse. + +"He must remember he may be in his right mind, for all that. If one man +thinks a thing, it might be true if forty thousand men think different. +The first man that thought the earth was round, when everybody else +thought it was flat, was one man. The boy will be told I was crazy. He +will be told I was love-cracked. I did want Selina James. She was a +sweet, pretty girl and high-headed, and the things some folks thought of +her were not so. But she was the kind that takes the world as it was +made and asks no questions, and when I couldn't take it so and tried to +explain to her how I felt about it, she didn't know any way but to +laugh. Perhaps she was afraid. And she did get sick of me and turned me +off. She married and went away. I was glad she went away, because it is +very hard to keep seeing anybody you thought liked you and find they +didn't, after all. It keeps reminding you. It was after that time I +built me the hut and came up here to live. + +"Now the boy will hear it was on account of Selina James that I came up +here, but it is not so, though it well might have been. It was about +that time I began to understand what a hard time 'most everybody is +having--except for a little while when they are young, and sometimes +then--and I couldn't stand it. And I thought how it might not be so if +everybody would turn to and help everybody else, and that might be the +kingdom of heaven, the same as we read about it. And then one day I went +out--I was always going round the fields and woods, kind of still, +because I liked to come on little animals living their own lives in +their own way--and I came to the open spot up above the hut where there +are the old apple trees left from the first house the Ravens lived in, +on the back road, before the other road went through. And on one of the +lower limbs of the apple tree was a robin and she was making that noise +a robin makes when she is scared 'most to pieces, and on another limb +there was a red squirrel, and he was chattering so I knew he was scared, +too. And down under the tree there was a snake pointed right at a little +toad, and I stamped my foot and hollered to scare him away; and that +same minute he struck and the toad fell over, whether poisoned to death +or scared to death I didn't know. And the snake slipped away, because he +was afraid of me, just as the toad was afraid of him. And the bird +smoothed down her feathers and flew away, and the squirrel run along +where he was going. They had got off that time, and I suppose the next +minute they forgot all about it. But I never forgot. It was just as if +something had painted a picture to show me what the world was. It was +full of fear. Everything was made to hunt down and kill everything else, +except the innocent things that eat grass and roots, and innocent as +they be--as they are--they are killed, too. And who made it so? God. So +what peace could I have--what peace could anybody ever have--in a world +where, from morning till night, it is war and murder and the fear of +death? And what good is there in trying to bring the kingdom of heaven +down to men? You can't bring it to the animals. What if you could die +for men? A good many have done that besides Jesus Christ. But who is +going to die for the animals? And the animals in captivity--I saw a bear +once, in a cage, walking up and down, up and down, and moaning. I saw a +polar bear once trying to cool himself on a cake of ice. I saw an eagle +with his wings clipped. An eagle ought to be up in the air. And all that +could be done away with, by law, if men would see to it. But even then +(and this is the strangest part of it, the part that won't bear thinking +about) it is not only that men are unmerciful to the animals, but the +animals, when they are hungry, are unmerciful to one another. I shall +come back to this. + +"Now about Jesus Christ. I hate to write this because, if the boy does +not see things as I do, maybe it will be bad for him to read it, and he +may think I am blaspheming holy things. I pray him to remember I write +in earnestness and love, love for him, for the earth and for the +animals. I want to tell him things look very black to me. When I think +how I felt over losing Selina James it seems to me as nothing compared +with the way I feel about the way the world is made. For it is all +uncertainty and 'most all pain. It seems to me it is not possible for +anything to be blacker than the earth is to me. I wake in the morning +with a cloud over me, and when I go to bed at night the cloud is there. +It settles down on me like--I don't know how to say what it is like--and +I call out, up here alone in the woods. I call to God. I remember how He +made the earth and I ask Him why He had to do it so. Over and over I ask +Him. He does not answer. He can't. I suppose that is what it is to be +God. You have to make a thing a certain way, and after it is done they +have to take it, the men and the animals, and do the best they can with +it. And one night when I was calling to God, there was a scream of an +animal--a little animal--just outside, and I knew an owl had got him. +And I covered my ears, for it seemed as if that was God's answer to me, +and I didn't want to hear any more. I even thought--and I tell the boy +this so that if he has thoughts that frighten him he will have the +comfort of knowing somebody has thought them before--I thought that +scream was God's answer. It was a good many months before I could pray +again, even to ask God why. + +"Now about religion. A great many people go to church and find comfort +in it, and they come home and eat meat for their dinners, meat +killed--they don't know how it is killed. Sometimes it is killed the +best you can and sometimes not. They don't seem to think about that. +They have done their duty and gone to church, and they go out to feed +the animals they are going to kill when they are fat enough, and +sometimes the animals will be killed the best they can and sometimes +not. And if they think about their sins, they quiet themselves by +thinking Christ has taken them on His own shoulders. And so, unless +somebody they love has died, or they are poor or disappointed, they say +it is a very pleasant world, and they ask for another slice of beef and +plan what they will do Monday, now Sunday is so far along. Now if the +boy is that kind of a boy, let him be like those people who do the best +they can without questioning. Let him do the best he can and not +question. But if he is different, if he has to think--sometimes I am +sure he will have to, for I cannot help seeing he looks out of his eyes +like me. His eyes are terrible to me, for they are always asking +questions, and that is what Grandmother Raven used to say to me. She +used to say: 'You are always asking questions with your eyes. Stop +staring and ask your questions right out.' But I couldn't. As long ago +as that, I knew my questions hadn't any answers. + +"Now if the boy begins to ask himself questions about Jesus Christ, +whether He is the son of God, and whether He could take on Himself the +sins of the world, I want to tell him that I am sure it is not so. I +want the boy to remember that nobody can take away his sins: nobody but +himself. He must accept his punishments. He must even go forward to meet +them, for through them alone can he learn how to keep away from sin. And +I want him to regard the life of Jesus Christ with love and reverence, +and make his own life as much like it as he can. But I want him to +remember, too, that God made him as he is, and made his father and +mother and all the rest back to the first man, and that there is no +guilt of sinfulness upon man as a race. There is only the burden of +ignorance. We live in the dark. We were born into it. As far as our +knowledge of right and wrong goes, so far are we guilty. But He has made +us as we are, and if there is guilt, it is not ours." + +As Raven read this, he found himself breathing heavily in the excitement +of knowing what it cost the man to write so nakedly for casual eyes. To +that elder generation, trained in the habit of thought that prevailed in +a country region, so many years ago, it was little short of blasphemy. +He turned a page, and had a cumulative surprise. For time had leaped. +The date was seven years later. Old Crow was now over sixty, and this +was the year before his death. Raven could hardly believe in the +likelihood of so wide a leap, but the first line showed him it was +actual. The subject matter was different and so was the style. The +sentences raced as if they were in a hurry to get themselves said before +the pen should drop from a palsied hand. + +"I gave up writing with that last line. I thought there was no more to +say. I didn't even want to read it over. If I hadn't said it well, still +I had said it and I didn't see any better way. I wanted to fortify the +boy against the loneliness of feeling there was nobody that understood. +I wanted to tell him I understood. That was all I could do for him at +that time. But a great deal more has happened. The last of it happened +over two years ago, but I was too busy to write it down. Besides, I +didn't know there would be such things to write. The boy knows me a +little now. He comes up oftener. His mother brings him. She is very +sweet and gentle, but she will not leave him alone with me because I am +queer and she is afraid I may teach him to be queer. She does not +understand. She wouldn't if I told her. She takes things as they are. +There are no questions in her mind. There will be in the boy's. They +have begun to come. I can see them more than ever by the look in his +eyes. Several years ago, about when I finished writing in this book, I +saw I should have to give up questioning myself and calling on God. +There were no answers. If there were, He didn't mean to let me have +them. I mustn't keep on. It was dangerous. I got no good out of it and I +should come to harm. And if I had got to live, I must be as near like +other folks as I could. So I must be as busy as I could. And it came to +me that over beyond the mountain there were folks poorer than I am, and +that knew less, a good deal less. I didn't know anything about God, but +I did know I must keep clean and eat the right food. So I begun to take +long tramps round the countryside, and wherever I went I'd try to find +out the sick and, if the family was poor, work for them a while and sit +up with the sick one, and, if he was discouraged, try to help him +through. + +"So it happened I was away from the hut a good deal of the time, and I +got an idea the Ravens liked that. It must have touched their pride to +have Old Crow living up here alone, queer as Dick's hat-band. Whichever +way I fixed it, I was a kind of a curse: for when I went off on my +wanderings I was a tramp and the news of it came back home, and I often +think the boy's mother was sorry and wished I wouldn't, though even that +was better than my being around, toleing off the boy. I liked my +wanderings, in summer best of all. But in winter the folks needed me +more, shut up so in tight houses, catching colds in bad air, and it got +so when they were sick they'd send for me and I was proper pleased to +go. And they came to have a kind of a trust in me, and I was nearer +being contented than I'd been in my whole life. Because the questions +didn't come hardly at all, now. I was too busy by day and too tired at +night. So it went on till one day I came to old Billy Jones's little +house, where he lived all alone in the dirt and filth. It was just at +the foot of the mountain and no neighbors under half a mile. I say he +lived there, but he wasn't there more than a third of the time. The boy +will remember how he used to go along the road, full as a tick, and the +school children making fun of him and then running before he could get +at them. I don't know as he would, though. There never was any harm in +him, only he did neglect himself so he was an awful sight. And the only +time he was in his little house was when he'd been hired out haying or +something, and got his money and spent it and come back with crackers +and cheese in his old carpet bag, to sober up. + +"This day I was speaking about (it was October and no wind) I was going +by his house and I saw a smoke coming out of the chimney, and I thought +old Billy had come home to sober up. But I hadn't hardly got to the +house before I heard him calling me, and I looked and there he was in +the front door leaning on a cane. + +"'You come in here,' says he, and I went in. + +"It was a terrible hog's nest, his front room was, but I paid no +attention, for that's the way he lived. He sat down in a chair and made +a motion with his hand for me to come near, and I did, and he took my +hand and put it on his knee. + +"'Feel that,' he says. And when I didn't know what he meant, nor care +hardly, for I thought he might be in drink, he called out, in a queer +voice--sharp it was, and pitiful--and says he: 'My legs are swelling. +Hard as a rock.' + +"Then I saw he was in a trouble of fear, and I asked him questions and +he told me how long it had been coming on and how he went to the doctor +down to the street, and the doctor told him he was a sick man, and how +he would grow worse instead of better and could never take care of +himself in the world, and the doctor would get him sent to the Poor +Farm. That was his trouble. He did not want to go to the Farm, and when +I told him it was the right way, he broke down and shook and cried and +said he was afraid to go. Then he told me why. The boy must not read +this until he is grown up, but when he is, he will hear there was a man +killed over across the mountain: Cyrus Graves, a poor, good-for-nothing +creature as it was said. (But God made him.) He was found by the side of +the road, and it was thought he had words with a peddler that went along +that day and never was found afterward. But some thought the authorities +never tried so hard as they might to find the peddler, because Cyrus was +such a poor good-for-nothing that he was well rid of, and if the peddler +was found and not convicted he might come back and burn their barns. And +when old Billy Jones was shaking there before me, I kept asking him what +he was afraid of, and he said: + +"'Will you promise not to tell?' + +"I said I would. And he said: + +"'It was me that killed Cyrus Graves. We were coming home together, and +we had both had a drop too much, and we had words about something, I +forget what. And which of us struck first I don't know, but I know I +struck him and he fell pitch-polling down the side of the road into the +gully and I went home and crawled into bed. And the next day they found +him, and I said I came home across lots, and there was a man that met me +and he said it was so and I was so far gone in liquor I never could have +raised my head again that night, once I'd laid down and begun to sleep +it off. But he never knew I did raise my head for I was not so well +started as common and I went out again about ten to fill up. And it was +then I met Cyrus Graves.' + +"I told him there was but one thing for him to do. He must send for the +sheriff and give himself up. But he cried out at that and said: + +"'Look at my poor legs. Do you think a man with such legs as mine has +got strength enough to be hung?' + +"I told him he would not be hung. He was a very sick man, and there was +no court of law in the world so unmerciful as not to take that into +account. But he would not do it. He had not meant to kill Cyrus Graves, +he said, and he would not die a murderer and known for one. And that was +why he would not go to the Poor Farm. As he got sicker, he might be +delirious or talk in his sleep. Rave, that was the word he used. He +might rave. After he stopped speaking, I sat thinking it over, and he +watched my face. He spoke first, and he spoke as if he could hardly wait +to hear the answer and yet was obliged to hear it. + +"'Ain't you goin' to say you'll come here an' take care of me?' he said. +'My time won't be long.' + +"Then I could see my going round taking care of the sick had made him +turn to me. That was the way with all of them round here. They turned to +me. It was the only comfort I had. I told him I could not take care of +him there. It was no fit place. I thought a spell longer, and he watched +me. His eyes were full of fear. The little animals look like that when +they are trapped. Then I told him I would have him brought over to the +hut if he would come, and he jumped at it. I scarcely ever saw a man so +wild with thankfulness. And the next day I hired a team and went over +after him, and I took care of him to the end." + +Here was a heavy dash. Raven could imagine Old Crow's drawing the line +with one impatient stroke because he had got so far in a story he could +ill stop to write, but that had to be written. Raven had forgotten Tira +up there in the lonesome woods, forgotten a day was very near when she +would have to make one more of her desperate decisions. He was thinking +of Old Crow. + + + + +XXIII + + +He went on reading: + +"There is no need of going into old Billy's sickness. It made a great +change in my life. As soon as it got about that I had taken him to live +with me, folks began to say I was queer, the same as they did before, +and the children would hoot and run. He was known to be so bad (they had +always called him bad; they never once thought God made him) they +thought I liked to keep company with him because I must be bad, too. And +I could not go about any more doing for people because I was doing for +him and there was no time. But people kept sending for me, and when they +saw old Billy Jones sitting there with his bandaged legs, they would +feel hard toward me. They said I would rather do for him than for them, +and he ought, by rights, to be on the town. That meant his going to the +Farm. Sometimes I thought they felt so about it there might be action +taken to get him there--to the Poor Farm. He never thought of this, I am +sure. He had a peaceful time, as much so as a man could have that has +killed his body and begins to be afraid he has killed his soul. That was +the hardest time I had with him: about his soul. He was afraid to die. I +told him God made him and would see to him in the end, and that He well +knew he did not mean to kill Cyrus Graves. He said that was true, but if +he had been tried here in a court of law the jury would have pronounced +him guilty and it was very likely God would. And there was hell. These +things I could not answer because I did not know, and if I had any +convictions they were as dark as his, though of another sort. But I did +try to put heart into him, and I hoped the end would come before he +suffered any more. + +"I want the boy to know that all this time his mother was a very great +comfort to me. Of course she could not let the boy come up to the hut, +because old Billy Jones was too dreadful a sight for a child to see. But +she cooked a great many delicate things and brought them up or sent +them, and, one day I shall never forget, when I had a blind headache and +had to lie down in the dark, she sat with Billy a long time, to keep him +from being lonesome, and afterward I found she had bandaged his legs. + +"As time went on and he grew worse and worse, there was but one thing he +wanted. It was to be forgiven. I tried again to persuade him to tell +publicly the straight story of the killing and so die with a clean mind. +This he would not do. He had asked me to get him a headstone, with his +name on it all complete, and he was much set against being remembered as +a murderer. All his life he had lived outside the law, so to speak, and +he wanted to die respectable. I told him it might happen to him that, +after his death, somebody would be accused of the death of Cyrus Graves +and in that case I should break my promise to him and tell. To this he +consented, though unwillingly, and I am now telling, not only for the +sake of the boy, but for the sake of all to whom the boy may have to +pass on the strange things that came to Billy Jones. His sickness went +on in a very painful way, and when it got to be near the end he was +still more distressed in mind. He could not die, he said, unless he was +forgiven. And yet he had to die. For a while he seemed almost to hate me +because I could not show him the way. + +"'If I was a Roman Catholic,' he said, 'and you was a priest, you could +forgive me yourself. You would forgive me, I'll warrant ye.' + +"I did not deny it, though I felt very hopeless of anything I might do. +In those last days I could have denied him nothing. He seemed to me like +all the trouble in the world beating out there in the hut. God had made +him, and made him so that he did not rightly see good from evil, and he +had ruined his body, and now he was taking the consequences. And the +night before he died, he cried out a terrible voice: + +"'You don't say a word about Jesus Christ.' + +"I stood by his bed in anguish of mind perhaps as great as his. Yet not +as great, for he had no strength of body to bear the anguish with. + +"'You never have said anything,' he went on. + +"I felt as if he was accusing me of not giving him water when he was +fevered, or bread if he was hungry. Then he said he remembered something +he used to hear when he was little and he had hardly ever heard of it +since. But he had heard other things. And I guessed he was remembering +he had lived with the people who used the name of Jesus Christ only to +swear by. He had heard, he told me, that Jesus Christ was the son of +God, and God sent Him here to save sinners, and, if sinners called on +Him to save them, they would be saved. And then he looked at me for a +minute with that same look, as if he hated me, and he said: + +"'You don't believe it. You wouldn't let me suffer like this, if you +did.' + +"And all my spirit broke up in me, and my legs were weak under me, and +the tears ran down on my face, and I said to him: + +"'I do believe it.' + +"'Will you swear it?' he asked me. He was very wild then. 'Will you +swear by Jesus Christ it is so?' + +"'Yes,' I said, 'I will swear.' + +"And I fell on my knees by the bed and said: 'Let us pray.' And I +prayed, in what words I don't know, but my hand was on his, and when I +said Amen, he said Amen, too, and when I looked at him all the trouble +was smoothed out of his face and he said, 'Jesus Christ!' as he never +could have said it in his life before. It was as if you were speaking to +your mother or your friend (yet not just a friend, but a heavenly +friend) and shortly he died. And I had told him a lie. But I was not +sorry. I was glad. What was my keeping my poor soul clean to old Billy +Jones's dying in peace? It was the last thing I could give him, and he +was welcome to it. + +"It was in the early morning he died, and I did what I knew about making +him right for his coffin, and then went down to get one of the neighbors +that knew more, and all that day I was busy. The next day he would be +taken away and lie in the Methodist church at the Ridge, and the third +day he would be buried. And nobody had ever taken any interest in him +except to call him a poor good-for-nothing creature--nobody except your +mother (she is a good woman) but it looked as if he would have a +well-attended funeral. I was glad of that, for I knew he would be +pleased. He was laid out in the bedroom of the hut and the window was +open and the cold air blowing on him, and I lay down on the couch in the +large room. I didn't take my clothes off, for at such times it is +respectful to have watchers about the dead. It may not be necessary, but +it is the custom, and I wanted old Billy to have everything that was +fitting and right. I did not mean to go to sleep, but lie there a spell +and then get up and put on more wood and go into his cold room and let +him feel as if he was being taken care of to the last. And I lay there +thinking how I had heard there was diphtheria over beyond the mountain +and I would take a day or two to rest me and then I'd go over there and +help. I laughed a little to myself, and I see now it wasn't a very +pleasant kind of laugh, for I thought the people would begin to like me +again because I was free to do for them. + +"And I did go to sleep, being, as I said, very tired, and how long I +slept I don't know. But suddenly I waked up, just as wide awake as I am +this minute, and I knew as well as I ever knew anything, that Billy +Jones was in the room. I didn't see him. I didn't hear him. I didn't +hear anything, outside or in. It was a very still night, and there +wasn't even the creaking of the branches against each other. But Billy +Jones was in the room. I wasn't afraid, but I felt queer. I had a kind +of prickly feeling all over me. The hair on my head moved somehow, +according to the feeling it gave me. Perhaps that was being afraid, only +I don't take it so. The reason I think differently is that I didn't want +it to stop. If Billy Jones was there, I didn't want him to go away. If +he had anything to say, I wanted to hear it. And I was as sure as ever I +was of anything in my life that there was something to say. If this was +the beginning of something that was going to happen, it was only the +beginning. There was more to come. And I wanted to know what. I lay +there as still almost as Billy's body in the next room. I was afraid of +missing something. If there was something for me to hear I'd got to keep +still to hear it. But I said that before. I have to keep saying it, it +took such hold of me. The fire hadn't wholly died down. I could tell by +that I hadn't been asleep long. But I didn't dare to get up and put on +another stick. I was afraid if I moved I might jar something and it +would break. And I couldn't have it break till the end--the end of my +knowing what it was. + +"And now the boy must remember that what follows, if I live to write it, +is faithful and true. That is what the Bible says about things like +that: they are faithful and true. And mine are just as true. It seemed +to me as if the ceiling of the room raised up and the walls opened out +and the room was as if it was not. Whether I looked through it or +whether it was gone, I do not know. But I looked into a great space. And +it was dark and at one side of it there was a great light. And the light +was not angry, as a sunset looks when it flames and flares. It was +steady, and I knew it was to light the world. And there came into my +head some words: 'And the darkness comprehended it not.' When I waked +up, I found the words in the Bible, but that night it seemed to me they +were said for the first time. The boy must remember Billy Jones was in +all this. He was the chief part of it. As to the words, it was as if +Billy Jones said them. I was in the darkness, and I was to be made to +comprehend. And when I looked lower through the darkness--and I cannot +tell how, but I seemed to be in it and yet at the same time I was above +it, so that I looked down and saw what was going on--I saw multitudes of +men and women, trying to get through it. Sometimes they walked slowly, +as if it was hard to walk, and sometimes they jostled each other and +sometimes stopped to push one another about, and sometimes when some +were down the others stamped on them. But they were all going somewhere, +and it was toward the light. And as I say, I was in the darkness though +I could see through it, and I wondered if I was going, too. + +"And then I understood. I couldn't tell the boy how I understood, not if +he was here to ask me; but it was as if a voice spoke and told me in two +or three words, and few as they were, I took them in and I knew. Perhaps +there was a voice. Perhaps it was the voice of Billy Jones. There is no +reason why not. The minute after he got out of his body, he might have +known everything: I don't mean everything, I mean the one thing that +would explain it all. And he had a kindness for me, and if he learned +anything that smoothed out his trouble and turned it into joy, he would +want me to know, too. And this is it, though now I have got to the place +for telling it, I don't know how. It is like a dream. You have to tell +it the minute you wake, or it is gone. I saw that creation had been a +long time going on. I saw that although we have minds to think with, we +haven't really, in comparison with the things to be thought out. I saw +that we are so near the dust that we can no more account for the ways of +Almighty God than the owl hooting out there in the woods can read the +words I am writing here. I saw that nothing is to be told us. We are to +find out everything for ourselves, just as we have found electricity and +the laws of physics. And poisons--we have found out those, some of them, +even if we had to die to do it. And God lets us die trying to find out. +He doesn't care anything about our dying. And if He doesn't care +anything about our dying, He doesn't care anything about the rabbit +broken by the owl, or the toad struck by the snake. + +"Now, why doesn't He care? For the first time, I knew there was a reason +that was not a cruel reason. I knew His reasons were all good. And I saw +that though He could not break the rules of His plan by telling us +things, He could give us a kind of a something inside us that should +make us work it out ourselves. We had hungers. We had one hunger for +eternal life. We had to believe in it, to help us bear this present +life. We believed it so hard that men rose up and said it was so, and we +said God had put the words into their mouths. And out of our sufferings, +pity was born, and now and then a man would be raised up so full of pity +that other men believed in him and followed everything he said and even +called him a god. And this was well, because if they had not thought he +was a god, they might not have followed him. And I seemed to be told +that a great many men were born who were sent from God, but I have not +read many books and how can I prove whether it is true? + +"But Jesus Christ came, and His story is the story of the will of God. +For men believed His father was God. That is to keep in our minds always +the fatherhood of God. And his mother was believed to be a virgin. I do +not know how to say this, but I was given to believe that that was no +more true than I had thought, but still that it was the truest of all. +It is one of the things we are to believe. We are to learn from it--how +can I say?--that there is a heavenly birth out of purity and light. It +is a symbol. That is the word: a symbol. And His death for mankind is +the everlasting symbol of man's duty: to die for one another. And He +went into the grave, and ascended into heaven, and so shall we all die +and live again. But every observance of every church is a +symbol--nothing more. And the man that was a god is a symbol and nothing +more. But nothing could be more. For to find a symbol that has lasted, +in one form or another, since the beginning of the world is to learn +that it is something the world itself is built on. It is the picture +book we are given before we can read print. And it means that something +is working out--and is not yet--and the eye of man hath not seen or the +ear of man heard. And about fear--that is the most wonderful of all and +the hardest to tell. It is our friend. At first everything fed upon +everything else; and so it does now, for how shall I say the animal has +fear and the growing plant has not? And our fear tells us what to turn +away from, and it fits us for the fight of the mortal life. But in the +end will our fear be only the fear of evil? Fear is our counselor. It is +our friend. + +"Now perhaps I have done wrong in trying to write this out. Perhaps I +have not helped the boy or anybody he tells. Perhaps I have offended +them. I know the sound of what I must have heard and the sight of what I +saw was clearer to me before I tried to tell about them. At first I kept +them back somewhere in my mind and didn't try to see them or hear them +too close. And when I did that, the great light was always there and I +was running toward it. But now I have tried to tell, I see it is no more +than words. They darken counsel. And I have put it back into my mind, +not so much to be thought about as to have at hand. And all my trouble +has gone. It has been a long trouble. I am over sixty now. But I am not +afraid of anything and I am not in doubt. When I see men suffering, I +know they are suffering for a reason. When I find the bird with a broken +wing or the rabbit bit by the trap I know God knows about them, and if I +cannot know, it proves it is not necessary I should. For there is the +great light. (But it is not likely the boy will see this account of it +at all, because I shall try to write it over--to write it better--and if +I make it clearer this will be destroyed.) + +"Another thing: about the worship of God. He does not want us to worship +Him as we understand it, to crawl before Him as if He were an idol we +had set up to get us victories over our enemies and to fill us with +food. He wants us--what shall I say?--to open our hearts and our minds +and our ears and eyes to what He wants us to know. He is not an idol. He +is God. And all the way to Him, the horrible way through burnt +offerings, the blood of lambs and goats--blood, blood, all the way--is +the way that climbs up to the real sacrifice, the last of all: the man's +own heart. + +"One thing more: the greatest thing that ever happened to me was old +Billy Jones. Was it because I was sorry for him? Was it because I could +do something for him? I don't know. But I tell the boy that the man or +the woman that makes him shed his blood in pity for them, that is the +man or woman that will open his eyes to what we call Eternal Life. What +is Eternal Life? Is it living forever? I do not know. But the +words--those two words--stand for the great light ahead of us, the light +I truly saw. And what the light is, still I do not know. But this I +know: God is. He lives. And He is sorry. The boy may tell me this is no +more than the words about His caring for the sparrow that falleth. But I +tell him it is more to me, for this I have found out for myself. And I +have found it out through great tribulation. But the tribulation is not +now. It has stopped. It stopped with the sound of old Billy Jones's +voice I heard--somehow I heard it--when his body lay in there dead. And +I am not afraid. I am not afraid of fear--even for the little +animals--and that is more than for myself. And that is my legacy to the +boy. He must not be afraid." + +There it ended, and Raven sat for a long time looking at the fine +painstaking script and seeing, for the moment, at least, the vision of +Old Crow. He felt a great welling of love toward him, a longing to get +hold of him somehow and tell him the journal had done its work. He +understood. And it meant to him, in its halting simplicity, more than +all the books he had ever read on the destiny of man. Meager as it was, +it seemed to him something altogether new, because it had come out of +the mind of an ignorant man, if a man can be called ignorant who has +used his mind to its full capacity of thought and unconsciously fitted +it, so far as he might, to the majestic simplicities of the Bible. Old +Crow had never read anything about legend or the origins of belief. +There were no such books then at Wake Hill. He read no language but his +own. Whatever he had evolved, out of the roots of longing, had been done +in the loneliness of the remote shepherd who charts the stars. And in +the man himself Raven had found a curious companionship. Their lives +seemed to have run a parallel course. Old Crow, like himself, was a +victim of world sickness. And his wound had been cleansed; he had been +healed. + +Raven did give a little smile to the thought that, at least, the man had +been saved one thing: he had no authoritative Amelia on his track to +betray him to organized benevolence. And for himself something, he could +not adequately tell what, was as clear to him as a road of light to +unapprehended certainties. It was a symbol. It was the little language +men had to talk in because they could not use the language of the stars: +their picture language. But it was the rude token of ineffable reality. +As the savage's drawing of a man stands for the man, so the symbols +wrought out by the hungry world stand for what is somewhere, yet not +visibly here. For the man exists or the savage could not have drawn him. +Not all the mystics, he thought, smiling over his foolish inner +conviction that could not be reached through the mind but only through +the heart, not all the divines, could have set up within him the altar +of faith he seemed suddenly to see before him: it had to be Old Crow. +And he slept, and in the morning it did not need the mottled book at his +bedside to remind him. Still it was Old Crow. + +He put it all away in his mind to think over later, just as Old Crow had +turned aside from his vision for the more convincing clearness of an +oblique angle upon it, and dressed hastily. He got out of the house +without meeting even Charlotte, and was about crossing the road on the +way to the hut when he saw Tenney coming, axe and dinner pail in hand. +Raven swerved on his path, and affected to be looking down the road. He +could not proceed the way he was going. Tenney's mind must not be drawn +toward that living focus by even the most fragmentary hint. Yet if Tira +was still there, she and the child must be fed. After his glance down +the road he turned back to the house, nodding at Tenney as he neared. +But Tenney motioned to him. + +"Here," he called stridently. "You wait." + +Raven halted and as Tenney was approaching, at a quick stride, noted how +queerly he was hung. It was like a skeleton walking, the dry joints +acting spasmodically. When the man came up with him, he saw how ravaged +his face was, and yet lighted by what a curious eagerness. Ready, he +hoped, at all points for any possible attack involving Tira, Raven still +waited, and the question Tenney shot at him could not have been more +surprising: + +"Did you find salvation?" + +Raven stood looking at him for an instant, and suddenly he remembered +Old Crow, who had accomplished the salvation of a sick heart and +bequeathed the treasure to him. + +"Yes," he said, more tolerantly than he had ever spoken to Tenney. "I +think I did." + +Was it his imagination that Tenney looked disappointed? + +"Last night?" the man insisted. "Did you find it last night? Through +me?" + +"No," said Raven. "I didn't find it through you." + +Tenney was ingenuously taken aback. + +"There is one way," he said, "into the sheepfold--only one." + +He turned about, muttering, and Raven, looking after him, thought he was +an ugly customer. For a woman to be shut up alone with him, her young, +too, to defend! It was like being jailed with an irrational beast. But +Tenney paid no further attention to him. He walked away, swinging his +dinner pail, down across the meadow to the lower woods, and Raven, after +the fringe of birches had closed upon him, hurried off to the hut. He +did not expect to find her. The pail in Tenney's hand was sufficient +evidence, even if the man's going to his work were not. Tenney would +never have abandoned his search or his waiting for her, and if he had, +he would not have delayed to pack a dinner pail. The hut was empty of +human life, but the bricks were warm. She could not have left until the +early morning. Mechanically he piled kindling near the hearth. But +curiously, though the hut was warm not only with the fire but the +suggestion of her breathing presence, it was not she who seemed to be +with him but Old Crow. + +He went back to the house and found Amelia in traveling dress, her face +tuned to the note of concentration when something was to be done. She +was ready. She had the appearance of the traveler needing only to slip +on an outer garment to go, not merely from New Hampshire down to Boston, +but to uncharted fastnesses. It meant, he found, this droll look of +being prepared for anything, not the inconsiderable journey before her +but a new enterprise for him. And he would have to be persuaded to it. +Well, she knew that. She met him in the hall. + +"John," she said, with the firmness of her tone in active benevolences, +"I have asked Jerry to take me to the train. I want you to go with me." + +"Me?" said Raven, unaffectedly surprised. "What for?" + +"For several things. If Dick is in any sort of trouble----" + +"He's not," said Raven. "Take my word for that." + +"And," she concluded, "I want you to see somebody." + +"Somebody?" Raven repeated. He put his hand on her shoulder, smiling +down at her. Milly was a good sort. It was too bad she had to be, like +so many women benevolence mad, so disordered in her meddling. "I suppose +you mean an alienist." + +She nodded, her lips compressed. She would stick at nothing. + +"Now Milly," said Raven, "do I seem to you in the least dotty?" + +Tears came into her eyes. + +"I wish you wouldn't use such words," she said tremulously. It meant +much for Milly to tremble. "It's like calling that dreadful influenza +the flu." + +Raven was reminded of the old man down the road who forbade secular talk +in the household during a thunder shower. It "madded" the Almighty. You +might be struck. + +"I won't," he said, the more merciful of her because she was on the +point of going. "And I won't go back with you." + +"Will you come later?" she persisted, still tremulous. + +"No," said Raven, "probably not. If I do, I'll let you know. And you +mustn't come up here without notifying me well in advance." + +"That shows----" she began impulsively. "John, that isn't a normal thing +to say: to expect your own sister to notify you." + +"All right," said Raven cheerfully. "Then I'm not normal. The funny part +of it is, I don't care whether I'm normal or not. I've got too many +other things to think of. Here's Charlotte with your brekky. Come on." + +In the two hours before she went, he was, she told Dick afterward, +absolutely scintillating. She never knew John could be so brilliant. He +talked about things she never knew he had the slightest interest in: +theosophy and feminism and Americanization. She couldn't help wondering +whether he was trying to convince her of his mental soundness. But he +certainly was amazing. Dick received this in silence. He understood. + +It was true. Raven did fill the time from a racing impetuosity, only +slackened when Jerry appeared with the pung. Then he hurried her into +her coat, kissed her warmly--and she had to comment inwardly that she +had never found John so affectionate--and, standing bareheaded to watch +her away, saluted her when she turned at the bend in the road. Then, +when the scene was empty of her, he plunged in, past Charlotte, standing +with hands rolled in her apron, snatched his cap, and hurried up the +road to Nan. + + + + +XXIV + + +Raven, relieved of his hindering Amelia, felt extraordinarily gay. He +went fast along the road, warm in the deepening sun, and saw Nan coming +toward him. He waved his cap and called to her: + +"She's gone." + +"Who?" Nan was coming on with her springing stride, and when she reached +him she looked keenly at him, adding: "What's happened to you, Rookie?" + +Nothing had happened to her, he could see. She was always like a piece +cut out of the morning and fitted into any part of the day she happened +to be found in: always of a gallant spirit, always wholesome as apples, +always ready. This was not altogether youth. It was, besides, something +notable and particular which was Nan. He laughed out, she caught his +mood so deftly. + +"Something has happened," he said. "First place, Milly's gone. Second, +I've found Old Crow." + +"You've found Old Crow? What do you mean by that?" + +"Can't tell you now. Wait till we sit down together." + +"And she's truly gone?" + +They stood there in the road as if Nan's house were not at hand; but the +air and the sun were pleasant to them. + +"Gone, bag and baggage. Dick wired and ordered her in some way she +didn't dare ignore. I suspect he did it to save me. He's a good boy." + +"He is a good boy," said Nan. There was a reminiscent look in her eyes. +"But he's a very little one. Were we ever so young, Rookie, you and I?" + +"You!" + +"Yes. I'm a sphinx compared with Dick. I didn't tell you last night, +there was so much else to say, but I had a letter from him, returned to +Boston from New York. He assumed, you know, if I wasn't in Boston I'd +gone to the Seaburys'. So he wrote there." + +"What's he want?" + +Nan hesitated a moment. Then she said: + +"It's a pretty serious letter, Rookie. I suppose it's a love-letter." + +"Don't you know?" + +"Yes, I suppose I know. But it's so childish. He's furious, then he's +almost on his knees begging, and then he goes back to being mad again. +Rookie, he's so young." + +"When it comes to that," said Raven, "you're young, too. I've told you +that before." + +"Young! Oh! but not that way. I couldn't beg for anything. I couldn't +cry if I didn't get it. I don't know what girls used to do, but we're +different, Rookie, we that have been over there." + +"Yes," said Raven, "but you mustn't let it do too much to you. You +mustn't let it take away your youth." + +Nan shook her head. + +"Youth isn't so very valuable," she said, "not that part of it. There's +lots of misery in it, Rookie. Don't you know there is?" + +"Yes," said Raven, "I know." Suddenly he remembered Anne and the bonds +she had laid on him. Had he not suffered them, in a dumb way, finding no +force within himself to strike them off? Had he been a coward, a dull +fellow tied to women's restraining wills? And he had by no means escaped +yet. Wasn't Anne inexorably by his side now, when he turned for an +instant from the problem of Tira, saying noiselessly, this invisible +force that was Anne: "What are you going to do about my last wish, my +last command? You are thinking about Nan, about that strange woman, +about yourself. Think about me." But he deliberately summoned his mind +from the accusing vision of her, and turned it to Nan. "Then," he said, +"there doesn't seem to be much hope for Dick, poor chap!" + +"Doesn't there?" she inquired, a certain indignant passion in her voice. +"Anyway, there's no hope for me. I'd like to marry Dick. I'd like to +feel perfectly crazy to marry him. He won't write his poetry always. +That's to the good, anyhow. If I don't marry him I shall be a miserable +old thing, more and more positive, more and more like all the women of +the family, the ones that didn't marry"--and they both knew Aunt Anne +was in her mind--"drying rose leaves and hunting up genealogical trash." + +"But, my own child," said Raven in a surge of pity for her, as if some +clearest lens had suddenly brought her nearer him, "you don't have to +marry Dick to get away from that. You'll simply marry somebody else." + +"No," said Nan, "you know I sha'n't." + +"Then," said Raven, "there is somebody else." + +She shook her head. + +"I'm an odd number, Rookie," she said, with a bitterness he found +foreign to her. "All those old stories of kindred souls may be true, but +they're not true for me." + +"You have probably," said Raven, a sharp light now on her, bringing out +the curves and angles of her positive mind, "you have done some perverse +thing to send him off, and you won't move a finger to bring him back." + +Nan laughed. She was no longer bitter. This was the child he knew. + +"Rookie," she said, "you are nearer an absolute fool than any human +being I ever saw. If I wanted a man back, it's likely I could get him. +Most of us can. But do you think I would?" + +"Then you're proud, sillykins." + +"I'm not proud," said Nan--and yet proudly. "If I loved anybody, I'd let +him walk over me. That's what Charlotte would say. Can't you hear her? +It isn't for my sake. It's for his. Do you think I'd bamboozle him and +half beckon and half persuade, the way women do, and trap him into the +great enchantment? It is an enchantment. You know it is. But I'd rather +he'd keep his grip on things--on himself--and walk away from me, if +that's where it took him. I'd rather he'd walk straight off to somebody +else, and break his heart, if it came that way." + +"Good Lord, Nan," said Raven, "where do you get such thoughts?" + +"Get them?" she repeated. "I got them from you first. You've been a +slave all your life. Don't you know you have? Don't you know you had +cobwebs spun round you, round and round, till she had you tight, hand +and foot, not hers but so you couldn't walk off to anybody else? And +even now, after her death----" + +"Stop," said Raven. "That's enough, Nan." + +Again Anne Hamilton was beside them on the wintry road, and they were +hurting her inexpressibly. + +"That's it," said Nan. "You're afraid she'll hear." + +"If I am," said Raven, "it's not----" There he stopped. + +"No," said Nan. She had relented. Her eyes were soft. "You're not afraid +of her. But you are afraid of hurting her. And even that's weak, +Rookie--in a man. Don't be so pitiful. Leave it to the women." + +Raven laughed a little now. Again she seemed a child, crying after the +swashbuckling hero modern man has put into the discard, where apparently +he has to stay, except now and then when he ventures out and struts a +little. But it avails him nothing. Somebody laughs, and back he has to +go. + +"I am pretty stupid," he said. "But never mind about an old stager like +me. Don't be afraid of showing him--the man, I mean--all your charm. +Don't be afraid of going to his head. You've got enough to justify every +possible hope you could hold out to him. You're the loveliest--Nan, +you're the loveliest thing I ever saw." + +"The loveliest?" said Nan, again recklessly. "Lovelier than Tira?" + +For an instant she struck him dumb. Was Tira so lovely? To him certainly +she had a beauty almost inexpressible. But was it really inherent in +her? Or was it something in the veil he found about her, that haze of +hopeless suffering? + +"Do you think she's beautiful?" + +His voice was keen; curiosity had thinned it to an edge. Nan answered it +with exactness. + +"I think she's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. She doesn't know it. +If she did, she'd probably wave her hair and put on strange chiffons, +what Charlotte calls dewdads. She'd have to be the cleverest woman on +earth to resist them. And because she's probably never been an inch out +of this country neighborhood, she'd rig herself up--Charlotte again!--in +the things the girls like round here. But she either doesn't know her +power or she doesn't care." + +"I'm inclined to think," said Raven slowly, "she never has looked at +herself in that way. It has brought her things she doesn't want, things +that made her suffer. And she's worked so hard trying to manage the +whole business--life and her sufferings--she hasn't had time to lay much +stress on her looks." + +"It's all so strange," said Nan, as if the barriers were down and she +wanted to indicate something hardly clear to herself. "You see, she +isn't merely beautiful. Most of us look like what we are. We're rather +nice looking, like me, or we're plain. But she 'takes back,' as +Charlotte would say. She reminds you of things, pictures, and music, and +dead queens--isn't there a verse about 'queens that died young and +fair'?--and--O heavens, Rookie! I can't say it--but all the old hungers +and happinesses, the whole business." + +"I wonder," said Raven impetuously, "if you think she's got any mind at +all. Or whether it's nothing but line and color?" + +Nan shook her head. + +"She's got something better than a mind. She has a faithful heart. And +if a man--a man I cared about--got bewitched by her, I'd tell him to +snatch her up and run off with her, and even if he found she was hollow +inside, he'd have had a minute worth living for, and he could take his +punishment and say 'twas none too much." + +"You'd tell him!" Raven suggested, smiling at her heat and yet moved by +it. "You weren't going to fetter your man by telling him anything." + +"No," said Nan, returned to her composure, which was of a careless sort, +"I shouldn't, really. I'd hope though. I'd allow myself to hope he'd +snatch her away from that queer devil's darning needle she's married to, +and buy her a divorce and marry her." + +"You would, indeed! Then you don't know love, my Nan, for you don't know +jealousy. And with a mystery woman like that, wouldn't the man be +forever wondering what's behind that smile of hers? Tenney wonders. It +isn't that flashy fellow at the prayer-meeting that makes him wonder. +It's the woman herself. Yet she's simplicity itself--she's truth--but +no, Nan, you don't know jealousy." + +"Don't I?" said Nan, unperturbed. "You're mighty clever, aren't you, +Rookie? But I tell you again I'd rather leave my man to live his life as +he wants it than live it with him. Now"--she threw off the moment as if +she had permanently done with it--"now, I went to see her this morning." + +"You did? What for?" + +"It was so horrible last night," said Nan. "Hideous! There was that +creature sitting there beside her, that perfumery man." + +"Perfumery?" + +"Yes. He smelled like the soap the boys used to buy, the ones that lived +'down the road a piece.' He frightened her, just his sitting down beside +her. And it put some kind of a devil into that awful Tenney. I thought +about her all night, and this morning I went over and asked her to go +back with me now, while Tenney's away chopping. I told her I'd help her +pack, and Jerry'd take us to the train." + +"What did she say?" + +"Nothing. Oh, yes, she did." Nan laughed, in the irritation of it. "She +said I was real good. Said Israel was going to kill soon." + +"Kill?" + +"Hogs. There were two. They'd weigh three hundred apiece. It was quite a +busy season, trying out and all, and no time for her to be away." + +It was irresistible. They both laughed. They had been dowering her with +the grace of Helen, and now she stood before them inexorably bent on +trying out. + +"I gather," said Nan, rather drily, "you're going over to see her +yourself." + +"Yes," said Raven. "But not till I've seen you. You ran away from Milly. +Now Milly's gone, and you're coming back." + +Her eyes roved from him to the steadfast green of the slope across the +road. She was moved. Her mouth twitched at the tight corners, her eyes +kindled. + +"It would be fun," said she. + +"Besides, think how silly to keep Charlotte provisioning you and tugging +over to spend nights, poor Charlotte!" + +"I really stayed," said Nan, temporizing, "for this Tira of yours--and +Tenney's." + +This form of statement sounded malicious to her own ears, but not to +his. Sometimes Nan wished he were not quite so "simple honest." It was, +she suspected, the woman's part--her own--to be unsuspecting and +obstinately good. + +"But if," she continued, "she won't have anything to do with you, I +might as well go back to town." + +"Not yet," said Raven. "I've got something to tell you." + +"What's it about?" + +"Old Crow." + +Nan thought a minute. + +"All right," she said. She looked at once unreasonably happy, like, he +extravagantly thought, a beautiful statue with the fountain of life +playing over it. "I'll come--for Old Crow." + +"Pick up your duds," said he, "and I'll go along and see if I can make +anything out of her. You be ready when I come back." + +Nan looked after him and thought how fast he walked and how Tira, as +well as Tira's troubles, drew him. If Tira knew the power of her own +beauty, how terribly decisive a moment this would be in the great dark +kitchen Nan had just left! And yet if Tira, having looked in her mirror +and the mirror of life, were cruelly sophisticated enough to play that +part, the man would be given odds to resist her. He was no ingenuous +youth. + + + + +XXV + + +Raven walked up to the side door of the house and knocked. She came at +once, her face blank of any expectation, though at seeing him she did +stand a little tenser and her lips parted with a quicker breath. + +"Good morning," said he. "Aren't you going to ask me in?" + +"Oh!" breathed Tira. It seemed she did actually consider keeping him +out. "I don't know," she blundered. "I'm alone, but I never feel +certain----" + +She never felt certain, he concluded, whether her peril might not be +upon her. But he had a sense of present security. He had seen Tenney +disappearing inside the fringe of woods. + +"Let me come in," he said quietly. "I want to talk to you. It's cold for +you out here." + +She moved aside and he followed her to the kitchen. The room was +steaming with warmth, the smell of apple sauce and a boiling ham. Her +moulding board, dusted with flour, was on the table, and her yellow +mixing bowl beside it. Raven did not think what household duties he +might be delaying, but the scene was sweet to him: a haven of homely +comfort where she ought to find herself secure. There was, in the one +casual glance he took, no sign of the child, and he was glad. That +strange, silent witness, since Nan and Charlotte had both, by a phrase, +banished the little creature into an alien room of its own, had begun to +embarrass him. He wanted to talk to Tira alone. + +"Baby's in the bedroom," said Tira, answering his thought. "When he's in +here, I wake him up steppin' round." + +Raven stood waiting for her to sit, and she drew forward a chair, +placing it to give her an oblique view from the window. Having seated +herself, she asked him, with a shy hospitality: + +"Won't you set?" + +He drew a chair nearer her and his eyes sought her in the light of what +Nan had said. Yes, she was beautiful. Her blue calico, faded to a +softness suited to old pictures, answered the blue of her eyes. The +wistful look of her face had deepened. It was all over a gentle +interrogation of sweet patience and unrest. + +"So Nan came over," he began. It seemed the only way to pierce her +reserve, at once, by a straight shaft. "You wouldn't do what she wanted +you to." + +She shook her head. + +"Why wouldn't you?" he urged, and then she did answer, not ungraciously, +but with a shy courtesy: + +"I didn't feel to." + +"It would be"--he hesitated for a word and found an ineffectual +one--"nice, if you could talk to her. She wouldn't tell." + +"I don't," said Tira, still with the same gentle obstinacy, "hold much +with talkin'." + +Raven, because he had her to himself and the time was short, determined +not to spare her for lack of a searching word. + +"Tira," he said, and she smiled a little, mysteriously to him but really +because she loved to hear him use her name, "things aren't getting any +better here. They're getting worse." + +"Oh, no," she hastened to say. "They're better." + +"Only last night you had to run away from him." + +"Things are ever so much better," said Tira, smiling at him, with a +radiance of conviction that lighted her face to a new sort of beauty. +"They're all right. I've found the Lord." + +What could he say? Old Crow had besought him, too, to abandon fear in +the certainty of a safe universe speaking through the symbols man could +understand. He tried to summon something that would reach and move her. + +"What if I were drowning," he said. "Suppose I knew I should"--he sought +for the accepted phrase--"go to heaven, if I drowned. Do you think I +should be right in not trying to save myself?" + +Tira knit her brows. It was only for an instant, though. + +"No," she said. "Certain you'd have to save yourself. You'd have to try +every way you knew. That's what I've done. I'm tryin' every way I know." + +"I'm telling you another way," said Raven sharply. "I'm telling you you +can't live with a crazy man----" + +"Oh, no," she interrupted earnestly. "He ain't that. He has spells, +that's all." + +"I'm not even asking you to go away with me. I'm asking you to go with +that good woman over there." Somehow he felt this was more appealing +than the name of Nan. "I trust her as I do myself, more than myself. +It's to save your life, Tira, your life and the baby's life." + +She was looking at him out of eyes warm with the whole force of her +worshiping love and gratitude. + +"No," she said softly. "I can't go. I ain't got a word to say ag'inst +her," she added eagerly. "She's terrible good. Anybody could see that. +But I can't talk to folks. I can't let 'em know. Not anybody," she added +softly, as if to herself, "but you." + +Raven forbade himself to be moved by this. + +"Then," he said, "you'll have to talk to other folks you may not like so +well. I shall complain of him. I shall be a witness to what I've seen +and what you've told me. I've threatened you with that before, but now +it's got to be done." + +"No," said Tira, trying, he could see, through every fiber of will in +her to influence him. But never by her beauty: she was game there. "You +wouldn't tell what I've said to you. You couldn't. 'Twas said to you an' +nobody else. It couldn't ha' been said to anybody else on this livin' +earth." + +Here was a spark of passion, as if she struck it out unknowingly. But he +must not be moved, and by every means he would move her. + +"What is there," he said, in the roughness of an emotion she saw +plainly, "what is there I wouldn't do to save your life? To save you +from being knocked about, touched"--he was about to add "violated," the +purity of her seemed so virginal, but he stopped and she went on: + +"It's just as I told you before. If they asked me questions, I should +say 'twa'n't so. I should say you thought 'twas so, but 'twa'n't. I +should say you wrote books an' you got up things, I guessed. It made you +wrong in your head." + +Old Crow! The innocent observers of his life and Old Crow's were in a +mysterious conspiracy to prove them both unsound. He laughed out +suddenly and she looked at him, surprised. + +"Do you know why I would?" she continued earnestly. "Because he never'd +overlook it in this world. If they hauled him up before a judge, an' you +testified, the minute they let him go he'd take it out o' you. You'd be +in more danger'n I be now. Besides, I ain't in any danger. I tried it +this mornin' an' I found out." He sat with knitted brows and dry lips +waiting for her to go on. "Last night," she said, "after you went down +from the shack, I couldn't sleep. I never closed my eyes. But I wa'n't +lonesome nor afraid. I was thinkin' o' what you said. He was there. +Jesus Christ was there. An' I knew 'twas so because you said so. +Besides, I felt it. An' 'long about three I got up an' covered the coals +an' took baby an' come down along home. For, I says, if He was there +with me in the shack, He'll go with me when I go, an' my place is to +home. An' there was a light in the kitchen, an' I looked in through the +winder an' Isr'el was there. He was kneelin' before a chair, an' his +head was on his hands an' through the winder I heard him groan. An' I +stepped in an' he got up off his knees an' stood lookin' at me kinder +wild, an' he says: 'Where you been?' An' I says: 'No matter where I +been. Wherever I been He's come home with me.' An' he says, 'He? Who is +it now?' An' I felt as if I could laugh, it was so pleasant to me, an' +seemed to smooth everything out. An' I says, 'Jesus Christ. He's come +home with me.' An' he looked at me kinder scairt, an' says: 'I should +think you was out o' your head.' An' I went round the room an' kinder +got it in order an' brashed up the fire an' he set an' looked at me. An' +I begun to sing. I sung Coronation--it stayed in my mind from the +meetin'--I dunno when I've sung before--an' he set an' watched me. An' I +got us an early breakfast an' we eat, but he kep' watchin' me. I'd ketch +him doin' it while he stirred his tea. 'Twas as if he was afraid. I +wouldn't have him feel that way. You don't s'pose he is afraid o' me, do +you?" + +This she poured out in a haste unlike her usual halting utterance. But +there was a steadiness in it, a calm. He shook his head. + +"No," he said. "I wish he were afraid of you." He wanted to leave her +the comfort of belief and at the same time waken her to the actual +perils of her life. "Tira," he said, looking into her eyes and trying to +impress her with the force of his will, "he isn't right, you know, not +right in his head, or he never would behave to you as he does. Any man +in his senses would know you were true to him. He doesn't, and that's +why he's so dangerous." + +A convulsive movement passed over her face, slight as a twitching of +muscles could well be. The sweat broke out on her chin. + +"No," she said, "any man wouldn't know. Because it's true. That man that +come into this house last night an' set down side o' me--an' glad enough +he was there happened to be that chair left, same as if I'd left it for +him--he's bad all through, an' every man in this township knows it, an' +they know how I know it, an' how I found it out." The drops on her +forehead had wet the curling rings of her hair and she put up her hand +and swept them impatiently away. Her eyes, large in their agonized +entreaty, were on Raven's, and he suffered for her as it was when he had +seen her at the moments of her flight into the woods. And now he seemed +to see, not her alone, but Nan, not a shred of human pathos that had +been tossed from hand to hot hand, but something childlike and +inviolate. And that was how he let himself speak. + +"But, dear child," he said, "Tenney knows how faithful you are. He knows +if you hadn't loved him you wouldn't have married him. And he knows if +you love anybody, you're true through everything." + +"That's it," she said loudly, in a tone that echoed strangely in the +great kitchen. "That's it." + +He knew what she meant. If she loved the man, she could convince him, +mad as he was. But she did not love him. She was merely clinging to him +with all the strength of her work-toughened hands. + +"But talk to him," he insisted. "Show him how well you mean toward him." + +"I can't," she said. "I never've talked to anybody, long as I lived. I +git"--she paused for a word and ended in a dash: "I git all froze up." + +She sat staring at him, as if her mind were tied into knots, as if she +could neither untie them, nor conceive of anybody's doing it. But he +could not know just what sort of turmoil was in her nor how it was so +strange to her that she felt no mental strength to meet it. In the +instinct to talk to him, that new impulse born out of the first human +companionship she had ever had, she felt strange troubles within her +mind, an anguish of desire, formless and untrained. She was like a child +who stretches out arms to something it dearly longs for and finds its +fingers will not close on it. She had never, before knowing him, felt +the least hunger to express anything that did not lie within the small +circle of her little vocabulary. But her mind was waking, stretching +itself toward another mind, and suffering from its own impotence. + +"O God!" she said, in a low tone, and then clapped her hand over her +mouth, because she had not meant to speak that name. + +There came a knock at the door. Instantly the look of life ebbed from +her face. It assumed at once its mask of stolid calm. She got up and +went to the door and Raven, waiting for her to come back, remembered +absently he had heard the clang of bells. Visualizing her face as she +had talked to him, trying to understand her at every point, the more as +she could not explain herself, he was suddenly and sharply recalled. He +heard her voice. + +"No," she cried, so distinctly that the sound came through the crack of +the door she had left ajar. "No, no, I tell you. You never've stepped +foot into this house by my will, an', so long as I'm in it, you never +shall." + +Raven rose and went to the door. He had not stopped to think what he +should find, but at least it was, from her tone, a menace of some sort. +There stood Eugene Martin, in his fur coat, his florid extravagance of +scarf and pin, on his face the ironic smile adapted to his preconceived +comedy with Tira. Martin, hearing the step behind her, started, +unprepared. He had passed Tenney, slowly making his way homeward, and +counted on a few minutes' speech with her and a quick exit, for his +butt, the fool of a husband, to see. But as Raven appeared, the fellow's +face broke up in a flouting amusement. Here was another, the satiric +lips were ready to swear. Deepest distrust of Tira shone forth in the +half smile; a low community of mean understanding was in his following +glance at Raven. He burst into a loud laugh, took off his hat and made +Tira an exaggerated bow. + +"Don't mention it," he said. "Didn't know you had company. Wouldn't +think o' comin' in." + +He turned away, his shoulders shaking with ostentatious mirth. It was +all in a minute, and Raven's following act, quite unreasoned, also +occupied a minute. He put Tira aside, stepped out after Martin and +walked behind him down the path. When Martin reached the sleigh, Raven +was at his side. Martin had ceased shaking his shoulders in that +fictitious mirth. Now in that last moment, it seemed, he took cognizance +of Raven, and turned, apprehension, in spite of him, leaping to his +face. Raven, still with no set purpose, grasped him by the collar with +one hand and with the other reached for the whip in the sleigh. It was +over quickly. Raven remembered afterward that the horse, startled by the +swish of the blows, jumped aside and that he called out to him. He did +not propose depriving Martin of the means of exit. The fellow did not +meet judgment lying down. He did a wild feat of struggling, but he was +soft in every muscle, a mean antagonist. The act over, Raven released +him, with an impetus that sent him staggering, set the whip in the +socket and turned back to the house. At that moment he saw Tenney coming +along the road, not with his usual hurried stride, but slowly, his head +lifted, his eyes upon the figures at his gate. Raven recoiled from the +possibility of a three-cornered wrangle when Tenney also should reach +the scene. It was an impossible predicament. Not for himself: he was +never troubled by any hampering sense of personal dignity, but for Tira, +who stood in silence watching them. She had advanced a few steps into +the snowy path and waited, immovable, the light breeze lifting her rings +of hair. To Raven, in the one glance he gave her, she was like a Fate, +choosing neither good nor ill, but watching the even course of time. If +Martin saw Tenney, he was not going to linger for any problematic issue. +He stepped into the sleigh and, without drawing the fur robe over his +knees, took up the reins. His face, turned upon Raven, was distorted +with rage. + +"That's assault," he called to him, "assault an' battery. I'll have the +law on you an' she's my witness." + +"Stop!" called Tira. She came down the path with long strides, her +garments blowing back. At three paces from the sleigh she halted and +called to him in a voice so clear and unrestrained that Raven thought +Tenney, coming on with his jerky action, might also have heard it. + +"You stir a step to git the law on him an' I'll tell what I know. What +did I find out about you? The money stole out o' the box after they had +the raffle for the War, the deed under old lady Blaisdell's feather bed, +because it wa'n't recorded an' it left you with the right an' title to +that forty feet o' land. Five counts!" She held up her left hand and +told off one finger after the other. "I've got 'em all down in my mind, +an' there they've been ever since I left you. What d' I leave you for? +Not because you treated me like a dog, whenever the fit was on ye, but +because you was meaner'n dirt." + +He sat there, the reins gathered in his hand, staring at her, his face +stiffened in a reflex of the cold passion of hers. Upon her last word, +he called to the horse with an oath as if it had been the beast that +offended him, turned the sleigh and drove off. Tenney, breathless, was +now on the scene. His thin lips curled and drew back, the snarl of the +angry feline. + +"Two on ye," he said to Raven. "Come to blows over her, have ye? An' +you're on top." + +Raven turned to Tira. + +"Go into the house," he said. + +Tenney laughed. It was not the laugh of the man who had just left them. +There was no light mockery in it, but a low intensity of misery, the +cynical recognition of a man whose house has been destroyed and who asks +his inner self how he could have expected anything different. But when +he spoke it was jeeringly, to Tira. + +"Go into the house," he mocked. "Didn't ye hear him? He tells ye to go +into the house, into my house, so's he can fight it out ag'in same's he +done with t'other one. You better go. He won't git no odds from me." + +He set his dinner pail down beside him, and his hand moved a few inches +along the helve of his axe. And Raven, like Tira, was sorry for him. + +"No," said Tira, "I sha'n't go into the house. An' this to-do ain't so +much about me as about you, Isr'el Tenney, because you're makin' a fool +o' yourself. You'll be town talk, an' you deserve to be. You've brought +it on yourself." + +Raven, his eyes on the man's face, saw it change slightly: something +tremulous had come into it, though it might have been only surprise. The +hand on the axe helve shook perceptibly. Now it looked to Raven as if it +might be his turn. + +"I came up here this morning," he said, "to see her." Curiously, at the +moment of saying "your wife," he balked at it. He would not, even by the +sanction of the word, seem to give her over to him. + +"Yes," said Tenney. The lividness of anger tautened his face. "You see +me off to my work. You knew you'd find her here." + +"Yes," said Raven. "I knew I should find her. I had to see her alone, +because I wanted to ask her to leave you, go away from here, and be +safe." + +Tenney stared at him. The brusque fact was too much for him. Why should +Raven have told it? + +"You are known," Raven continued steadily, "to abuse your wife." + +Tenney's lips again curled back. + +"I ain't laid a finger on her," he snarled. "Anybody but a liar 'd tell +you so." + +"She has told me so," continued Raven. "I came to warn her I should +complain of you and have you bound over to keep the peace. She said if I +did that she would refuse to testify against you. She said she would +rather"--here a slight bitterness came into his voice and, for an +instant, he had a foolish satisfaction in reminding Tira of her +unfriendliness in blocking him--"she would rather have me considered out +of my mind than let you get your just deserts." + +"Ah!" snarled Tenney. "I wa'n't born yesterday." + +This interchange had had on Tira all the effect Raven could have wished. +She started forward a step, with a murmured sound. But Tenney was +unmoved. + +"Now you know," said Raven, "you're not going to tell me I'm a liar. I +draw the line at that. You'll have to drop your axe--that's a cowardly +streak in you, Tenney, a mighty mean streak, that axe business--and I'll +give you your punishment without waiting for judge or jury." + +Tenney looked down at the axe frowningly, and the hand holding it sank +to his side. + +"Besides saying she wouldn't testify against you," Raven continued, "she +refused to leave you. She is a foolish woman, but she's like most of +them. They hang on to the beast that abuses 'em, God knows why. But the +rest of us won't let you off so easy. Don't think it, for a minute. The +next time she's seen wandering round the woods with her baby and you +after her, yelling like a catamount, you're going to be hauled up and, +even if she won't testify, there's enough against you to make it go hard +with you." + +Tenney ceased staring at the axe and looked up at Raven. Was it hatred +in the eyes? The gleam in them flickered, in a curious way, cross +currents of strange light. He tried to speak, gulped, and moistened his +dry lips. Then he managed it: + +"What business is it o' yourn?" + +"It's every man's business," said Raven. "When you began running over +the woods, yelling like a catamount"--he returned to this of set +purpose, because it evidently bit--"I thought it was queer, that's all. +Thought you were out of your head. But it got to be too much of a good +thing. And it's one thing to make yourself a laughing-stock. It's +another to be indicted for murder." + +"I don't," said Tenney, "stan' any man's interferin' with me. I give ye +fair warnin' not to meddle nor make." + +"Then," said Raven, "we've both got our warning. I've had yours and +you've had mine. You're a mighty mean man, Tenney. A mean cuss, that's +what you are." + +Tenney, in the surprise and mortification of this, barked out at him: + +"Don't ye call me a cuss. I'm a professin' Christian." + +"Stuff!" said Raven. "That's all talk. I wonder a man of your sense +shouldn't see how ridiculous it is. You're not a Christian. When you +stand up in meeting and testify, you're simply a hypocrite. No, I don't +call you a Christian. I call you a scamp, on the way to being locked +up." + +Tenney's mind leaped back a space. + +"You're tryin' to throw me off the track," he announced. "Ye can't do +it. When I come up the road you an' Eugene Martin was out there an' you +knocked him down. I see ye. You horsewhipped him. Now if it's anybody's +business to horsewhip Eugene Martin, it's mine. What business is it o' +yourn horsewhippin' a man that's hangin' round another man's wife +unless----" + +"Hold on there," said Raven. "I gave him his medicine because he was too +fresh." Here he allowed himself a salutary instant of swagger. Tenney +might as well think him a devil of a fellow, quick to act and hard to +hold. "It happens to be my way. I don't propose taking back talk from +anybody of his sort--or yours. He's a mean cuss, too, Tenney, ready to +think every man's as bad as he is--a foul-mouthed fool. And"--he +hesitated here and spoke with an emphasis that did strike upon Tenney's +hostile attention--"he is the kind of cheap fellow that would like +nothing better than to insult a woman. That was what he sat down by your +wife for, last night. That was why I made an excuse to get him away from +her. I wouldn't allow him within ten feet of a woman of my own family. +You ought to be mighty glad I looked out for yours." + +Tenney was in a coil of doubt. Suddenly he glanced round at Tira, +standing there in the path, her eyes upon one and the other as they +spoke. Raven would not willingly have looked at her. He felt her +presence in his inmost heart; he knew how cold she must be in the wintry +air with nothing about her shoulders and the breeze strong enough to +stir those rings of hair about her forehead. But she must suffer it +while he raked Tenney by the only language Tenney knew. + +"But here be you," cried Tenney, as if his mind, unsatisfied, went back +to one flaw after another in Raven's argument. "You see me go by to my +work, an' you come up here to talk over my folks behind my back an' tole +'em off to run away with you." + +"I have explained all that once," said Raven. "You'll have to take it or +leave it." + +At that instant Tira stepped forward. She gave a little cry. + +"You've hurt your foot!" + +Raven's glance followed hers to the ground and he saw a red stain +creeping from Tenney's boot into the snow. Tenney also glanced at it +indifferently. It was true that, although the cold was growing anguish +to a numbing wound, he was hardly aware of it as a pain that could be +remedied. This was only one misery the more. + +"Course I've hurt my foot," he said savagely. "What d'ye s'pose I come +home for, this time o' day?" + +"Why," said Tira, in an innocent good faith, "I s'posed you come back to +spy on me." + +That did take hold of him. He looked at her in an almost childish +reproach. Now he put the foot to the ground--he had been, though +unconsciously, easing it--but at the first step winced and his face +whitened. + +"God A'mighty!" Raven heard him mutter, and was glad. He seemed more of +a man invoking God in his pain than in waving deity like a portent +before unbelievers. + +Tira had gone to him. + +"You put your hand on my shoulder," she said, something so sweetly +thrilling in her voice that Raven wondered how Tenney could hear it and +not feel his heart dissolve into water. For himself, he was relieved at +the warming tone, but it mysteriously hurt him, it seemed so horrible +that all the tenderness of which it was witness had to be dammed in her +with no outlet save over the child who was "not right." Tenney paid no +attention to her, and Raven took him by the arm. The snow was reddening +thinly and Raven could see the cut in the boot. + +"Open the door," he said to Tira. "I'll help him in." + +Curiously, though Tenney had forgotten the hurt except as a part of his +mental pain, now that his mind was directed toward it he winced, and +made much of getting to the door. Yet it seemed to be in no sense to +challenge sympathy. He was simply sorry for himself, bewildered at his +misfortune, and so intently was his mind set on it now that he did not +seem annoyed by Raven's supporting him. Tira hurried on in advance, and +when they entered she was putting wood into the stove and opening +drafts, to start up the neglected fire. Raven led him to the chair by +the hearth, knelt, without paying any attention to his muttered +remonstrance, and, with much difficulty of frequent easements, got off +the boot and the soaked stocking. It was an ugly cut. Tenney, glancing +down at it, groaned and looked away, and Tira brought a pillow and +tucked it behind his head. Raven, glancing up at him, saw he was white +and sick and Tira said: + +"He never can stan' the sight o' blood." + +Evidently the irony of it did not strike her at all, but Raven wrinkled +his brows over it. He sent her here and there, for water to wash the +wound and for clean cloth. He rolled a bandage and put it on deftly +while Tenney stared. + +"Now," said he, coming to his feet, "you'd better telephone the doctor. +This is all I know." + +Tira went to the telephone in the next room and Raven cleared away the +confusion he had made and again Tenney watched him. At intervals he +looked down at his bandaged foot as if he pitied it. Tira, having given +her message, came back and reported that the doctor would be there +shortly. + +"Then," said Raven, "I'll be off. Telephone if you need anything. +Perhaps I'd better come over anyway. He'll have to be got to bed. I'll +call you up." + +He felt a sudden easement of the strain between himself and Tira. Tenney +himself, through his hurt, had cleared the way. Their intercourse, void +of secrecy, was suddenly commonplace; at the moment there was nothing in +it to light a flash of feeling. Tenney did not look at him. Then Raven, +in a sudden mounting of desire to show Tira how sorry he was for her, +said to her impetuously: + +"I hate to leave you alone." + +And again she surprised him as she had the night before in implicit +acceptance of her new faith, something as tangible as divine. She spoke +in a perfect simplicity. + +"I ain't alone," she said. + +Tenney had turned his head, to listen. + +"We ain't alone, Isr'el, be we?" she challenged breathlessly. + +"I dunno what you're talkin' about," said Tenney uneasily, and she +laughed. + +It was, Raven wonderingly thought, a light-hearted laugh, as if she had +no longer anything to bear. + +"Why," said she, "same as I told you. We ain't alone a minute o' the +time, if we don't feel to be. He's with us, the Lord Jesus Christ." + +The telephone bell rang and she went off to answer it. Tenney, as if +with a hopeful conviction that another man would understand, turned his +eyes upon Raven. + +"What's anybody want to talk like that for?" he questioned +irrepressibly. + +"It's the way you talk yourself," said Raven. "That's precisely what you +said last night." + +"It's no kind of a way----" Tenney began, and then pulled himself up. +Raven believed that he meant it was one thing to invoke the Founder of +his religion in a sacerdotal sense, but not for the comforting certainty +of a real Presence. "Seems if anybody's crazed. Seems if----" Here he +broke off again, and Raven took satisfaction in the concluding phrase: +"It's no way to talk when a man's lamed himself so's't he can't git +round the room 'thout bleedin' to death." + +By this Raven understood the man was, in an hysterical way, afraid of +Tira and her surprising invocation. He judged things were looking rather +better for her, and went off almost cheerfully, without waiting for her +return. + + + + +XXVI + + +When Raven came to Nan's, he went in without knocking and found the +house still. He called her name, and she answered from an upper +distance. Presently she appeared, traveling bag in hand, and came down +to him. + +"You really want me, Rookie?" she asked him, pausing at the closet door +where she had hung her hat and coat. "You want an unattached female, +unchaperoned, very much at large?" + +"I want her," said Raven, "more than anything else I'm likely to get in +this frowsy world. As to chaperons, Charlotte will do very well, without +legging it over here every night to keep you in countenance." + +Nan put on her hat and coat, and he picked up the bag. + +"Back door locked?" he asked. + +She laughed. + +"Yes," said she. "That shows I meant to come. Go ahead, Rookie. I'll +lock this door." Mid-way down the path, she glanced at him and then +ventured: "You look very much set up. What is it, Rookie? what +happened?" + +"The thing that's happened," said Raven, with a little reminiscent +laugh, "is that Tenney's afraid of his wife. And he's cut his foot and +can't get away from her. I call it the most ironical of time's revenges +I've ever had the pleasure of seeing." + +He went on and told her the story of Tenney's disabled foot. Nan, +listening, did not take it in. + +"But I don't see," she offered, "why it makes him afraid of her." + +"It doesn't. Though it makes it more difficult for him to get at her. +The thing that's bowled him over is that she's taken him at his word. +He's told her the Founder of his religion is everywhere present, and now +she's accepted it and assumes the Presence is there in the kitchen, it +scares him. He assumes she's dotty. Hence he's afraid of her. You see, +Nan, the Presence he's in the habit of invoking is something he +conceives of as belonging to strictly sacerdotal occasions. Really, it's +a form of words. But she believes it and that, as I told you, scares +him. It's like raising a ghost. He's raised it and somebody's seen it +and he's scared." + +"Can't the queerest things happen," Nan asked him, in a discursiveness +he found nevertheless relevant, "here in New England? There isn't a +human trait or a morbid outcrop but we've got it. See! Charlotte's at +the window. S'pose she'll want me?" + +"She'll love it," said Raven. He lifted up his voice and called and +Charlotte left the window to appear at the door. "I've got her, +Charlotte," said Raven. "She's going to make us a visit. Give us almond +pudding for dinner, can't you?" + +It was too late for that, Charlotte told him indulgently, but she +guessed there'd be suthin'. She lingered in the hall while Nan took off +her coat, and volunteered information about the fire being lighted in +the west chamber. + +"I 'most thought you'd come," she said, in a way softly confidential. +"You can settle right down now, you two, an' visit." + +She put a hand for an instant on Nan's shoulder and Nan felt the glow of +her beneficence. Did Charlotte know what it was to her to have even one +evening alone with Rookie? Charlotte knew most things. Probably she knew +that. + +Nan and Raven had their noon dinner and went for a walk, up the road. +That led them past Tenney's and when they reached the house Raven said: + +"You wait a jiff and I'll ask how he is." + +Tira came, in answer to his knock. She was gravely calm, not even +disturbed in her secret mind, Raven concluded, not keyed up by inner +apprehension, and keeping herself firm. Where, he wondered absently, at +the same instant, did she get those clothes, blue, always worn to the +exact point of soft loveliness, the very moral of her eyes? She glanced +down the path at Nan, and Nan waved to her. Tira gave a serious little +bow and turned her glance to Raven, who inquired: + +"How's his foot?" + +"It pains him a good deal," she said, with that softness he had noted in +her voice while they dressed the hurt. "He has to set with it in a +chair. It worries him to death not to git round." + +"Good Lord!" said Raven. "You must think I'm a nice chap. Who's doing +the barn work?" + +"Oh," said Tira, "that's all right. I can see to that. I always do when +he's gone for day's works." + +"You can't water the stock." + +"Oh, yes, I can." Now she smiled at him, beautifully, bewilderingly, for +his kindness in asking. "I done it before dinner. That's nothin'. +Besides, I like it: takes me out door." + +"Don't do any more," said Raven. "We'll be over, 'long about four +o'clock, Jerry or I." Then, for he had forgotten Tenney, in his +awareness of her, he remembered to ask: "The doctor came, did he?" + +She nodded gravely. + +"Say anything?" + +She shook her head, and then offered, it seemed unwillingly: + +"He thought he might be laid up quite a spell." + +To Raven, that seemed so desirable, that he wondered at the +commiseration in her voice; evidently she could be sorry for Tenney +without an admixture of relief at having him safely fettered for a +while. + +"Well," he said, "I'll be over. And if there's anything----" he stopped +and looked her in the eyes, gravely authoritative. It was the first time +their two inner selves had met in such unrestrained interchange. If +there was anything he could do for her, the glance said, she was to know +he would do it, to the very limit of allegiance. What did her own glance +say? Was there acceptance in it? Not so much that as a grave +understanding and gratitude. He was her refuge, her strength. She might +still go winging brokenly about the obscurity that made her life, but he +was the shelter where she might take cover if she would. Their gaze +broke (it was locked there an instant only) and however she felt in +turning from him, Raven had the sensation of dragging his eyes away. + +"I'll be over," he said, "in time to fodder and milk." + +He was leaving, but she called after him: + +"No, don't you come. You send Jerry." + +"I can do it as well as Jerry," he answered impatiently, and again she +called: + +"No, don't you come. I don't think best." + +Immediately Raven knew, if she put it in that tone (the mother tone it +was) he himself didn't "think best." He joined Nan and they walked on, +not speaking. Suddenly he stopped for an instant, without warning, and +she too stopped and looked at him. He took off his hat and was glad of +the cold air on his forehead. + +"Mystery of mysteries!" he said. There was bitterness in his tone, +exasperation, revolt. Evidently he saw himself in a situation he neither +invited nor understood. "Who'd think of finding a woman like that on a +New England doorstep talking about foddering the cows?" + +Nan considered the wisely circumspect thing to say and managed tamely: + +"She's a good woman." + +They went on. + +"Yes," said Raven, after a while, "she's a good woman. But does she want +to be? Or isn't there anything inside her to make her want to be +anything else?" + +"I have an idea," said Nan, going carefully, "most of the men she's +known have wanted her to be something else." + +"Now what do you mean by that?" said Raven irritably. "And what do you +know about it anyway? You're nothing but a little girl." + +"You keep saying that," said Nan, with composure, "because it gives you +less responsibility." + +He stared at her, forgetting Tira. + +"Responsibility?" he repeated. "What responsibility is there I don't +want to take--about you?" + +"You don't want me to be a woman," said Nan. "You want me to be a little +girl, always adoring you, just enough, not too much. You've been adored +enough by women, Rookie." + +They both knew she was talking in a hidden language. It was not women +she meant; it was Aunt Anne. + +"But," said she, persisting, "I'm quite grown up. I've been in the War, +just as deep as you have, as deep as Dick. I've taken it all at a +gulp--the whole business, I mean, life, things as they are. I couldn't +any more go back to the Victorian striped candy state of mind I was +taught to pattern by than you could yourself." + +"You let the Victorians alone," growled Raven. "Much you know about +'em." + +"They were darlings," said Nan. "They had more brains, any ten of 'em, +than a million of us put together. But it does happen to be true they +didn't see what human nature is, under the skin. We do. We've scratched +it and we know. It's a horrible sight, Rookie." + +"What is it?" said Raven. "What is under the skin?" + +Nan considered. + +"Well," she said finally, "there's something savage. Not strong, +splendid savage, you know, but pretending to be big Injun and not +fetching it. Wearing red blankets, and whooping, and tearing raw meat. O +Rookie, how do folks talk? I can't, even to you. But the world +isn't--well, it isn't as nice as I thought it: not so clean. You ought +to know. You don't like it either." + +"So," said Raven, meditatively, "you don't like it." + +"It's no matter whether I like it or not," said Nan, in a chilly way he +interpreted as pride. "I'm in it. And I'm going to play the game." + +They went on for a while without speaking, and then Raven looked round +at her, a whimsical look. + +"So you give notice," he said, "you're grown up." + +"I give notice," said Nan tersely. "I'm a very old lady really, older +than you are, Rookie." Then she judged the moment had come for setting +him right on a point that might be debatable. "If you think I was a +little girl when I sat there and loved you the other night, you might as +well know I wasn't. And I wasn't a woman either: not then. I was just a +person, a creatur', Charlotte would say, that wanted you to get under +your tough lonesome old hide there's somebody that loves you to death +and believes in you and knows everything you feel." + +"Am I lonesome, Nan?" he asked quickly, picking out the word that struck +him deepest. "I don't know." + +"I do," said Nan. "You haven't had any of the things men ought to have +to keep them from growing into those queer he-birds stuck all over with +ridiculous little habits like pin feathers that make you want to +laugh--and cry, too. Old bachelors. Lord!" + +"Look out," said Raven. "You'll get me interested in myself. I've gone +too far that way already. The end of that road is Milly and +psycho-analysis and my breaking everybody's head because they won't let +me alone." + +"Break 'em then," said Nan concisely. "And run away. Take this Tira with +you and run off to the Malay Peninsula or somewhere. That sounds further +away than most places. Or an island: there must be an island left +somewhere, for a homesick old dear like you." + +"Now, in God's name," said Raven, "what do you say that for?" + +"Tira?" Nan inquired recklessly. "What do I tell you to take her for? +Because I want to see you mad, Rookie, humanly mad. And she's got the +look that makes us mad, men and women, too." + +"What is it?" Raven asked thickly. "What is the look?" + +"Mystery. It's beauty first, and then mystery spread over that. She's +like--why, Rookie, she's like life itself--mystery." + +"No," said Raven, surprising her, "you're not a little girl any more: +that's true enough. I don't know you." + +"Likely not," said Nan, undisturbed. "You can't have your cake and eat +it. You can't have a little Nan begging for stories and a Nan that's on +her job of seeing you get something out of life, if she can manage it, +before it's too late." + +There she stopped, on the verge, she suddenly realized, of blundering. +He was not to guess she had too controlling an interest in that +comprehensive mystery which was his life. How horrible beyond measure if +she took over Aunt Anne's frantic task of beneficent guidance! Rookie +should be free. He began to laugh, and, without waiting for the reason, +she joined him. + +"Maybe I will," he said, "the Malay prescription, half of it. But I +should want you with me. You may not be little, but you're a great Nan +to play with. We won't drag Tira's name into it," he added gravely. +"Poor Tira's name! We'll take good care of it." + +"Oh, I'll go," said Nan recklessly. "But we'll take Tira. And we'll +build her a temple in a jungle and put her up on a pedestal and feed her +with tropical fruits and sit cross-legged before her so many hours a day +and meditate on her mystery." + +"What would she say?" Raven wondered, and then laughed out in a quick +conviction. "No, she wouldn't say anything. She'd accept it, as she does +foddering the cows." + +"Certainly," said Nan. "That's Tira." + +"You've forgotten the baby." + +"Yes," said Nan, soberly. "Poor little boy!" + +They were serious and could play no more, and presently turned into the +back road and so home. At supper they had a beautiful time, the lights +soft, the fire purring, and the shades up so that the cold austerities +of night could look in without getting them. Nan had done a foolish +thing, one of those for which women can give no reason, for usually they +do not know which one it is out of the braided strands of all the +reasons that make emotion. She had unearthed a short pink crêpe frock +she used to wear in her childish days, and let her heavy hair hang in +two braids tied with pink ribbons. Did she want to lull Rookie's +new-born suspicion of her as a too mature female thing, by stressing the +little girl note, or did she slip into the masquerading gown because it +was restful to go back the long road that lay between the present and +the days when there was no war? Actually she did not know. She did know +she had flown wildly "up attic," the minute Rookie announced the daring +plan of the visit, and flung open chest after chest, packed by Aunt +Anne's exact hands, with this and that period of her clothes. Why had +Aunt Anne kept them, she straightened herself to wonder, at one point, +throwing them out in a disorderly pile, ginghams, muslins, a favorite +China silk. Could it be Aunt Anne had loved her, not so much as she +loved Rookie, but in the same hidden, inflexible way, and wanted to +preserve the image of her as she grew to girlhood, in the clothes she +had worn? It was not likely, she concluded, and was relieved to dismiss +even the possibility. It would have made too much to live up to, a +present loyalty of obedience which, if Aunt Anne in the heavenly courts +had anything like her earthly disposition, would be the only thing to +satisfy her. Nan didn't mean to do anything definitely displeasing, +especially to Aunt Anne. She simply meant to enjoy to the full the +ecstasy of living, just as if it were going on for a lifetime, under the +same roof with Rookie and having him all to herself. Then she came on +the pink crêpe, with its black bows, and gave a tiny nod of satisfaction +there in the attic dusk, and was all in a glow, though it was so cold. + +When she came down to supper that night, Raven was reading his paper by +the fire. He glanced up as if she came in so every night, Nan thought. +She liked that. But she was a little awkward, conscious of her +masquerade and so really adding to the illusion of girlhood, ill used to +its own charm. Raven threw down his paper and got up. + +"Lord!" said he. "Come here, you witch. Let me look at you." + +Nan was actually shy now. + +"Why, my darling," said Raven, in a tone so moved she was almost sorry +she had brought it all about. It made too many responsibilities. Which +Nan was she going to be? ("But no kissing!" she reminded herself.) +"You've come back to me." + +"I haven't been away," said Nan, recovering herself and treating him to +a cool little nod, "not actually. Like it, Charlotte?" For Charlotte had +come in with a platter, and Nan turned about, peacocking before her +unsurprised gaze. "I found it up attic." + +"It's real pretty," said Charlotte. "Them scant things they're wearin' +now, they ain't to be thought of in the same day." + +Then, having given the room a last glance (almost a caressing touch +Charlotte had, a little anxious, too, because all comforts were so +important) she went out, and Nan was sitting opposite Raven at the +table, demure, self-contained, yet playing her wildest. It was a game +she knew she was to have entirely alone. The game was that she and +Rookie were living here in this house in some such potency of possessive +bliss that nothing could separate them. She was careless over the terms +of it. She was a child, she was a woman, she was everything Rookie +wanted her to be. Here they were together, and the universe, finding the +combination, Nan and Rookie, too strong to fight against, had given up +the losing battle, turned sulkily and left them alone. + +They were hungry and in high spirits, and they ate and talked a great +deal. Nan meant to remember what they talked about. Even the words were +so dear to her she would have liked to set them down in a book to keep +for her old age that was to be as desolate as Aunt Anne's. But it +shouldn't be as conventional. There should be waves on that sea. Then +Charlotte had come in to clear the table and afterward, by Raven's +invitation, sat ten minutes or so by the fire and talked of neighborhood +things, and they were left alone again, and he was suddenly grave. Was +the game over, Nan wondered, and then went on into a more unbridled +speculation whether he was finding himself reminded of the old scruples, +the old withholdings when Aunt Anne, unable to keep up with their +galloping horses of fun, restrained them delicately but with what a hand +of steel! And suddenly she realized he was not thinking of her. Was the +grim house over the rise of the road calling to his anxious heart? + +"Nan," he said, as if he had suddenly made up his mind, "I've got +something to show you." + +He left the room and she heard him running upstairs. Presently he was +back, carrying the mottled book. Instantly it had a vivid interest for +her, he held it so reverently and, it seemed, so tenderly. She was at +the fire and he told her to get up and take the other chair. It would +bring the light at her back. With the book still in his hand, he sat +down before the fire and began to tell her the story of Old Crow. Nan +had known it, in its outer eccentricities; but had Old Crow been +unhappy? That was new to her. She had heard of him as queer, the country +oddity who, being frenzied over God or love, had madly incarcerated +himself in the loneliness of his own eccentricity. + +"At odds with life as he found it," Raven concluded, "not actually able +to bear it. That's how it looked to the rest of us. Now, this is how it +looked to him." + +"Is it a journal?" Nan asked. + +She had forgotten her game. She was no child now, but a serious woman +with an intensely frowning glance. + +"Yes. This is his journal. Want to read it, or me read it to you?" + +"Oh, you," said Nan. + +"I'd better, I guess. His punctuation's queer, and so's his spelling +sometimes. But I wish I could write as good a fist." + +So he began. Nan sat perfectly still while the reading lasted. Once +getting up to tend the fire, she went back to a higher chair and sat +tense, her hands clasped about her knees. Old Crow seemed to have +entered the room, a singularly vital figure with extraordinary things to +say. Whether you believed the things or not, you had to listen, Old Crow +believed them so tremendously. He was like a shock, an assault from the +atmosphere itself. He affected Nan profoundly. Her perched attitude in +the chair was, in an unreasoned way, her own tribute of strained +attention. She was not combating him, but she had to tune herself up +high not to be overwhelmed. When Raven had finished, he turned and laid +the book on the table behind him, but lingeringly as if, Nan thought, he +had an affection for it. + +"Well," he asked, "what do you think?" + + + + +XXVII + + +"What do I think?" Nan repeated. "About Old Crow, or his religion? It is +that, isn't it, Rookie? It is a religion." + +"It's a religion, all right," said Raven. "And curiously, Nan, it's +given me a tremendous boost." + +"Because you think----" + +"Not because I think anything. I've an idea that with religions you'd +better not think. You'd better believe." + +"If you can," said she. + +"But don't you believe?" he asked her, out of an impetuosity like her +own. "I never thought to wonder what you believed. I remember though, +one time." + +"Yes," said Nan. A deeper red ran into her cheeks, and her brows came +down a little over her eyes. Raven could see she was visualizing +something. "You're going back to the time when I wouldn't be confirmed." + +"I remember. Mighty disagreeable, that was." + +"Yes. I was in disgrace. She looked at me as if she'd been frozen. And +you brought me a peach. Do you remember that peach?" + +He shook his head. But he did remember, though he said nothing, his mind +on the poor little girl chilled by Aunt Anne's frozen look. + +"It was the most beautiful peach," said Nan, looking into the fire, and +continuing to hug her knees. "It wasn't that I didn't have peaches. +There were plenty to be eaten like a lady with a silver knife, or even +stolen off the sideboard and gobbled in the garden with the juice +squshing over your white frock. But this one--you slipped it into my +hand and I knew it was because you were sorry for me. And I took it out +of the room and went into the garden with it. And what do you s'pose I +did then, Rookie?" + +"Ate it, I hope," said Raven. He felt his eyes hot with angry sorrow +over her. "That's the only thing I know of to do with a peach." + +"I went round behind the lilacs, where the lily bed is, and stood there +and cried like--like a water spout, I guess, and I kissed the peach. I +kissed it and kissed it. It was like a rough check. And then I buried it +among the lilies because the dirt there looked so soft." + +"Did it come up?" + +He wanted, though so late, to turn it into childish comedy. Nan laughed +out. + +"No," she said ruefully, "not the way you'd expect. It did come up. I +saw her troweling there the next morning. She'd called me to bring her +other gardening gloves. She'd found a hole in one she had on. You know +how exquisitely she kept her hands. And just as I came, she turned up +the peach, and looked at it as if it had done something disgraceful to +get there, and tossed it into her basket." + +"Now," said Raven, "you can't make me think anybody"--he couldn't allow +himself to say Aunt Anne--"went hunting out your poor little peach." + +"No," said Nan, bending on him a limpid gaze. "Of course not, +consciously. Only there was something----" But even she, with all her +recklessness, could not follow this out. To her own consciousness was +the certainty that deep in Aunt Anne, deep as the principle of life +itself, was an intuition which led her will to the evidence it needed +for its own victories. "And the queer thing about it was," she ended, "I +didn't refuse to be confirmed because I doubted things. I refused +because I believed. I believed in God; I believed so hard I was afraid." + +"What of?" + +"Afraid of standing in with what I didn't like. Afraid I couldn't carry +it through, and if I didn't, there'd be ginger for me somewhere. So +queer, Rookie, like all the things that keep happening to us. Little +ironies, you know, that sort of thing. For she thought I was behaving +shockingly toward God. And really, Rookie, it was because I was so +afraid of Him. I believed in Him so much I couldn't say I believed in a +way I didn't." + +"Like Old Crow," said Raven. "Only you didn't go far enough. You didn't +say it's only a symbol." + +"I tried not to think much about it, anyway," she owned. "I couldn't +believe what she did. But I couldn't go into it. I can't now. Don't you +know, Rookie, there are things you can't talk about? It's bad manners." + +"I wish the learned divines thought so," said Raven. "Dear Nan!" he +added, his mind returning to her. "I didn't know you so very well, after +all. I must have seen you were having a beast of a time, or I mightn't +have butted in with the peach, but I didn't know how deep it went." + +"Oh, it always goes deep with children," said Nan, carelessly, as if the +child he was pitying being snowed under by the years, it made no great +difference about her, anyway. "You get gashed to the bone and the scars +are like welts. But so far as I see, it has to be, coming into a world +you don't even know the rules of till they're banged into you." + +"You wouldn't be willing," said Raven, spurred on by a mounting +curiosity over her, the inner mind of her he seemed never to have +touched before, "you wouldn't be willing to tell me what it was in the +church you didn't like?" + +"Yes," said Nan decisively, "I should mind. Oh, I'd tell you, Rookie, if +I could anybody. But I can't. Maybe I could if I hadn't seen it working: +over there, you know--seen boys clinging to it so at the +end--confession--the crucifix. (The vestments, do you remember? over +that faded horizon blue!) I couldn't do it, Rookie, what they did, not +if I died this minute. Only," she added, struck by a thought, "I might +want it to remind me. I might touch the crucifix, you know, or look at +something or feel the holy water on my forehead. I might be too far gone +to think up to God but--yes, it might remind me." + +"Symbols," said Raven, profoundly moved by the vision of the bright +spirit in her mortal beauty flickering out. "Old Crow." + +"And when I said," she hesitated, anxious to give him everything he +asked of her, "the things I didn't like, I meant the things they tell +us, Rookie. You know: facts, details. And then you think of God and--no +use, Rookie, no use!" + +"Yes," said Raven, "that's where Old Crow was up against it. But picture +writing, because it's the only kind of writing we can read--picture +writing, Nan, because we're savages--he could take that and not wince." + +"Anyway," said Nan, "I'm happiest not thinking of it. I say my prayers: +God bless Rookie. God bless me. That's all." + +"I don't believe it." + +"Don't believe what? That I say 'God bless Rookie'? Course I do. Why +not?" + +"Well, I'm blessed!" said Raven, at a loss. Then, recovering himself, +"Nan, I never've known you in the least. How am I getting at you now?" + +"Because we're shut up here with the quiet and the snow," said Nan. + +She looked at the fire, not at him. He thought, with a startled delight +in her, he had never seen a more contented figure and, the beauty of it +was, entirely oblivious of him. It made no demands. + +"It's a fact," he reflected, "I've really never seen you since you grew +up. First you were a child, then you went over there. You had to take +life whole, as Old Crow took his religion." + +"Yes," said Nan, "I guess we're all queer, we young ones, that have been +in service. You see we've had to take things as they are. You can't veil +them from us. We've seen 'em. We know." She laughed out. "Rookie, it's +queer, but I'm a good deal more like the old-fashioned girl we read +about than the rest of the crowd I run with." + +"Why?" Raven ventured. + +If Nan was in a mood to unveil her dear mind, he wanted her voice to +rush on and on in that sweet staccato. And her answer was in itself +surprising: + +"Aunt Anne." + +Raven sat looking at her, a slow smile dawning. There she was, "prim as +a dish," Charlotte would say, her two braids down her back, her hands +clasped about her knees. He had never, the undercurrent in his mind +still reminded him, been so alone with her since the days when they had, +with an unspoken sense of lawlessness, slipped away together for a day's +fishing or a breathless orchid hunt in the woods. The adventures had +been less and less frequent as time ran on and it had begun to dawn on +Raven that they were entirely contrary to Aunt Anne's sense of New +England decencies. After each occasion Nan would be mysteriously absent +for a half day, at least, and when she reappeared she was a little shyer +of him, more silent toward Aunt Anne. Had she been put to bed, or shut +up with tasks, to pay the tax on her stolen pleasures? He never knew. He +did know, however, that when he proposed taking her off to wild delights +that made her eyes glow with anticipation she always refused, unless he +acceded to her plea to slip away: always to slip away, not to tell. +Could it be she had known by a child's hard road to knowledge--of +observation, silence, unaided conclusion--that Aunt Anne would never +allow them to run away to play? Curious, pathetic, abnormal even, to +have been jealous of a child! Then he pulled himself up with the shocked +sense, now become recurrent, that he had never allowed himself to attack +Anne's fair dignity with the weapon of unsuppressed guesswork about her +inner motives. He had assumed, he had felt obliged to assume, they were +as fine as her white hands. All the more reason for not assailing them +now when she was withdrawn into her strange distance. Yet one source of +wonder might be allowed him to explore unhindered: the presence of Nan +here at his hearth, inviting him to know her to the last corner of her +honest mind. She was even eager in this loving hospitality. He would +hardly have seen how to define the closeness of their relation. She had +turned her eyes from the fire to meet his. + +"Well?" she said. "What?" + +"I was thinking how queer it is," said Raven, "we never've been alone +together very much--'all told' as Charlotte would say--and here we sit +as if we were going to be here forever and talk out all the things." + +"What things?" asked Nan. + +She was not looking at him now, but back into the fire and she had a +defensive air, as if she expected to find herself on her guard. + +"Lots of 'em," said Raven. "The money." His voice sounded to her as if +he cursed it, and again he pulled himself up. "What are we going to do +with it?" + +"Aunt Anne's," she said, not as a question but a confirmation. + +"Yes. I can't refuse it. That means throwing it back on you. If I won't +decide, I'm simply making you do it for me. I don't see anything for it +but our talking the thing out and making up our minds together." + +"No," said Nan. "I sha'n't help you." + +"You won't?" + +"I suppose it amounts to that." + +"Now why the dickens not?" + +Nan kept up her stare at the fire. She seemed to be debating deeply, +even painfully. + +"Rookie," she said, at last, in a tumultuous rush, "I never meant to say +this. I don't know what'll come of saying it. But you've had a terrible +sort of life. It's almost worse than any life I know. You've been +smothered--by women." This last she said with difficulty, and Raven +reddened, in a reflecting shame. "You've done what they expected you to. +And it's all been because you're too kind. And too humble. You think it +doesn't matter very much what happens to you." + +"You've hit it there," said Raven, with a sudden distaste for himself. +"It doesn't." + +"And if I could clear your way of every sort of bugbear just by deciding +things for you, I wouldn't do it." + +"Don't try to change my destiny," said Raven, plucking up spirit to +laugh at her and lead her away from this unexpected clarity of analysis +that could only mean pain for both of them. "I'm old, dear. I'm not very +malleable, very plastic. We're not, at forty-odd." + +"And if," said Nan deliberately, "I loved you better, yes, even better +than I do (if I could!) I wouldn't tell you. It would be putting bonds +on you. It would be setting up the old slavery. The more I loved you, +the more I should be taking over the old tyranny: direct succession, +Rookie, don't you see?" + +Here she laughed, though with some slight bitterness, and he did see. +Aunt Anne had ruled his life, to the drying up of normal springs in it. +Nan didn't mean to accept the inheritance. He was profoundly touched, by +her giving so much grave thought to it, at least. + +"But, dearest child," he said, "what does it matter now? I'm rather a +meager person. You couldn't dress me up with attributes, out of your +dear mind. I shouldn't know how to wear 'em. I'm no end grateful to you +for wanting to. But if you gave me the earth for a football now I'm too +stiff to kick it. It's a curve, life is. Don't you know that? You're on +the up-grade, you and Dick. I may not have got very far, but I'm on the +down." + +"And yet," said Nan, turning and laying a finger on the book at her +side, "you can read a thing like that, a man's life turned inside out +for you to see, and understand what he meant by it, and then say the +game's up. You make me tired." + +If he made her tired, she made him unaffectedly surprised. + +"But, Nan," he said, "I didn't know you caught on so tremendously to the +old chap. I didn't know it meant so very much to you." + +"Of course it means things to me," she said. "Anyway because it does to +you. You came up here sick, sick at heart, sick in your mind, because +you've been through the War and you've seen what's underneath our +proprieties and our hypocrisies. You see we're still in the jungle. And +it's nearly killed you out, Rookie, the dear you inside you that's not +at home in the jungle. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what kind +of a Rookie you are. Things hurt you like blazes. And then here comes +Old Crow, just as if he rose out of his grave and pointed a finger at +you. And he says, 'Don't be afraid, even of the jungle.' And suddenly +you weren't afraid. And now you're afraid again, and talk about downward +curves, and all that. Why, Rookie, I'm older than you are, years and +years." + +Raven's mouth and eyes were wide open in amazement at her. + +"I'm damned!" said he conversationally. "The way you young things go on. +You put us in our places. Dick does, too. You've heard him. But, as I +remember, then you had a tendency to choke him off." + +"We won't discuss Dick," said she, again prim as a dish. "And I'm not +putting you in your place because I belong to my own generation. It's +only because you fill up the foreground. I have to look at you. I can't +see anything else. I never could. And as a matter of fact, I don't +belong to this generation. I haven't got their conceit and their +swagger. Sometimes I wish I had. I can't even talk their slang. I can't +smoke a cigarette." + +Then Raven remembered, as if she had invited a beam of light to throw up +what would appeal to him as her perfections, that she did seem to him an +alien among her youthful kind, and a shy alien at that, as if she hoped +they might not discover how different she was and put her through some +of those subtle tortures the young have in wait for a strange creature +in the herd. + +"No," he said, "you're not like the rest of them. I should have said it +was because you're more beautiful. But it's something beyond that. What +is it?" + +"Don't you know?" said Nan, turning to him, incredulous and even a +little accusatory, as if he should long ago have settled it for her +doubting mind whether it was a gain for her or irreparable loss. "No, I +see you don't. Well, it's Aunt Anne." + +"Aunt Anne?" + +"Yes. I never had the college life girls have now. When she sent me to +the seminary, it was the privatest one she could find. If she could have +exiled me to mid-Victorianism she would. I don't say I should have liked +college life. Maybe I shouldn't. Except the athletics. Anyhow, I can +hold my own there. I was enough of a tomboy to get into training and +keep fit. And Rookie--now don't tell--I never do--I see lots of girls, +perfectly nice girls, too, doing things Aunt Anne would have died before +she'd let me do. And what do you think? I don't envy them because +they're emancipated. I look at them, and I feel precisely what Aunt Anne +would feel, though I don't seem to get excited about it. The same word +comes into my mind, that word all the girls have run away from: +unladylike! Isn't that a joke, Rookie? Charlotte would say it's the +crowner." + +"You're a sweet thing, Nan," said Raven, musing. He did wonder whether +she was really in revolt against Aunt Anne's immovable finger. + +"Smoking!" said Nan, her eyebrows raised in humorous recollection. "I +used to be half dead over there, dog tired, keyed up to the last notch. +You know! I'd have given a year of life for a cigarette, when I saw what +the others got out of it. I was perfectly willing to smoke. I was eager +to. But I'd think of Aunt Anne, and I simply couldn't do it." + +Then it seemed to him that, since Aunt Anne's steel finger had resulted +in such a superfine product of youth, they'd better not blame her too +radically. It was her tyranny, but it was a tyranny lineally sprung from +a stately past. + +"I don't believe it was Aunt Anne alone," he said. "It was your +remembering a rather fine inheritance. Your crowd think they're very +much emancipated, but they've lost the sense of form, beauty, tradition. +You couldn't go all the way with them. You couldn't be rough-haired." + +"At any rate," said Nan, "I can't be young: in the sense they're young. +I'm a 'strayed reveler,' that's all. But I don't know why I'm painting a +Sargent portrait of me. Yes, I do. I want to squeeze everything I can +out of this darling minute together, so when we don't have any more +minutes I can go back to this. And you can remember, in case you ever +need me, just what sort of an old Nan I am." + +"And you suggest," said Raven, "my kidnaping a nice New England woman +and her baby and carting them off to the Malay Peninsula." + +Nan turned upon him delightedly. He could not know what he did for her +by juggling the Tira myth into raillery. + +"But think, Rookie," she said, "a woman so beautiful she's more than +that. She's mystery. Now, isn't she beautiful?" + +"Beautiful," Raven agreed, and the picture of her, madonna-like, in the +woods, suddenly smote the eyes of his mind and blinded them to all but +Tira. + +She saw him wince, and went on more falteringly, but still determined to +go all the way. + +"Into a new world, Rookie, all ferns and palms." + +"And snakes!" + +"Perfectly honest, perfectly free, and no jungle except the kind that +grows up in a night." + +"And you," said Raven, "with your New England traditions and your +inherited panic over a cigarette!" + +They looked at each other across the length of the hearth, and it all +seemed delightfully funny to them--their solitude, their oneness of +mind--and they began to laugh. And at the combined shout of their +merriment (almost competitive it was, in the eagerness of each to +justify the particular preciousness of the moment) the door opened and +Dick came in, halted, stared, in a surprise that elicited one last hoot +at the unexpectedness of things, and indulged himself in a satirical +comment of greeting, far from what he had intended. Poor Dick! he was +always making sage resolutions on the chance of finding Raven and Nan +together, but the actuality as inevitably overthrew him. + +"Oh," said he, "that's it, is it? So I thought." + +If he thought it, he was none the less unwise in saying so. He knew +that, knew the effect he had produced, and yet was powerless to modify +it. Nan was plainly taken aback, and she knew why. He was destroying her +happy moment, snatching it out of any possible sequence of hours here +with Rookie. Dick had come and he would stay. Raven read the boy's face +and was bored. He had seen that look too much of late. But he rose and +went forward with the appropriate air of welcome. + +"Well, old boy," said he, his hand on Dick's shoulder, "why didn't you +'phone up? There'd have been something ready for you. No matter. We'll +make a raid on the pantry." + +"I don't want anything," said Dick morosely. + +His eyes never left Nan. They traveled from her braids to her feet. Why, +his angry gaze demanded, was she sitting here in a beguiling +masquerade--silly, too! The masquerade was silly. But it made her into +something so unapproachable in the citadel of a childhood she had no +lien on any longer that his heart ached within him. Except for that one +kiss in France--a kiss so cruelly repudiated after (most cruelly because +she had made it seem as if it were only a part of her largess to the +War) he had found little pleasure in Nan. Yet there could be such +pleasure with her. The generous beauties of her mind and heart looked to +him a domain large enough for a life's exploring. But even the woman who +had given him the kiss in France had vanished, withdrawn into the little +girl Raven seemed to be forever wakening in her. He got out of his +driving coat and stepped into the hall to drop it. When he came back, +Nan had made room at the fire and Raven had drawn up another chair. + +"Now," said Raven, "I'll forage for some grub." + +At that, he left them, and Nan thought bitterly it was the cowardice of +man. Dick was in the sulks and she was to suffer them alone. + + + + +XXVIII + + +Dick, looking down upon Nan, had that congealed aspect she alone had the +present power of freezing him into. She knew all the possibilities of +that face. There was the angry look: that had reigned of late when she +flouted or denied him. There was the sulky frown, index of his jealousy +of Rookie, and there had been, what seemed a long time ago, before they +went through this disintegrating turmoil of war, the look of a boy's +devotion. Nan had prized him very much then, when he was not flaunting +angry rights over her. Now she sat perversely staring into the fire, +realizing that everything about her angered him: the childish vanity of +her dress, assumed, he would be sure, to charm the Rookie of old days +into renewed remembrance. But he had to be faced finally, since Rookie +was gone so long, stirring up Charlotte to the task of a cold bite, and +with a little shrug she lifted her eyes to face exactly the Dick she had +expected to see: dignified reproach in every line. Nice boy! she had the +honest impartiality to give him that grace only to wish he would let her +enjoy him as she easily could. What a team he and she and Rookie would +be if they could only eliminate this idea of marriage. How they could +make the room ring, here by the fire, with all the quips of their old +memories. Yet wouldn't Dick have been an interruption, even then? Wasn't +the lovely glow of this one evening the amazing reality of her sitting +by the fire with Rookie alone for the first time in many years, and, if +he fell into the enchantment of Malaysia and the mysteries of an +empty-headed Tira, the last? And now here she was dreaming off on Rookie +when she must, at this very instant, to seize any advantage at all, be +facing Dick. She began by laughing at him. + +"Dick," she said, "how funny you are. I don't know much about Byron, but +I kind of think you're trying to do the old melancholia act: Manfred or +what d'you call 'em? You just stand there like old style opera, +glowering; if you had a cloak you'd throw an end over your shoulder." + +"Nan!" said he, and she was the more out of heart because the voice +trembled with an honest supplication. + +"There!" she hastened to put in, "that's it. You're 'choked with +emotion.' Why do you want to sound as if you're speaking into a barrel? +In another minute you'll be talking 'bitterly.'" + +Dick was not particular about countering her gibes. That was +unproductive. He had too much of his own to say. + +"What do you suppose I'm here for?" he asked, as if, whatever it might +be, it was in itself accusatory. + +"Search me," said Nan, with the flippancy he hated. + +She knew, by instinct as by long acquaintance, that one charm for him +lay in her old-fashioned reticences and chiefly her ordered speech. +Almost he would have liked her to be the girl Aunt Anne had tried to +make her. That, she paused to note, in passing, was part of the general +injustice of things. He could write free verse you couldn't read aloud +without squirming (even in the company of the all-knowing young), but +she was to lace herself into Victorian stays. + +"I suppose," said she, "you came to see whether I mightn't be having the +time of my life sitting here with Rookie by the fire." + +"I did," he frankly owned. "Mother said you'd gone to New York. So she +went on." + +"Now what the dickens for? Haven't I a perfect right to go to New York +without notice?" + +"Why," said Dick, "you'd disappeared. You'd gone away from here, and you +were lost, virtually lost. You weren't anywhere." + +"If she thought I was in New York, why didn't that settle it? What did +she have to go trailing on after me for?" + +"Because," said Dick, "we didn't know. She wanted to telephone. I +wouldn't let her. I couldn't have the Seaburys started up. I couldn't +have you get into the papers." + +"Into the papers!" said Nan. "Heavens! I suppose if I'm not in at curfew +I'm to be arrested." + +"I let her go," repeated Dick. "But I knew as well as I wanted to you'd +doubled back here and you were with him." + +"Then, for God's sake," said Nan, in a conversational tone, knowing the +adjuration would be bitter to him, "if I wanted to be with him, as you +put it--I'm glad I ain't a poet--why didn't you let me?" + +"Because," said Dick promptly, "it's indecent." + +She had no difficulty in facing him now. It was a cheap means of +subjugating, but, being an advantage, she would not forego it. And, +indeed, she was too angry. + +"Dick," she said, "you're a sickening little whelp. More than that, +you're a hypocrite. You write yards and yards of your free verse to tell +us how bold and brave you are and how generally go-as-you-please we've +got to be if we're going to play big Injun, and then you tell me it's +indecent to sit here with Rookie, of all people in the world. My God! +Rookie!" + +Again she had invoked her Maker because Dick would shiver at the +impropriety. "No violence," she thought satirically, remembering he was +himself the instigator of violence in verse. But Dick was sorry. He had +not chosen his word. It had lain in his angry mind and leaped to be +used. It could not be taken back. + +"You can't deny," said he, "you are perfectly happy here with him. Or +you were a minute ago before I came." + +"No," said Nan, "I don't deny it. Is that indecent?" + +Now she had the whip hand, for he was not merely angry: he was plainly +suffering. The boyish look had subtly taken possession of his face. This +was the Dick she had loved always, next to Rookie. But his following +words, honest as they were, lost him his advantage of the softened look. +He was hanging to his point. + +"Yes," he said. "He's old. You're young. So am I. We belong together. We +can be awfully fond of him. We are. But it's got to be in the right way. +He could live with us. We'd simply devote ourselves to him. But Nan, the +world belongs to us. We're young." + +At that instant Raven came in and set down his tray. Nan glanced up at +him fearfully, but it was apparent he had not heard. She was no longer +angry. The occasion was too big. Dick seemed to her to be speaking out +of his ignorance and not from any wilful cruelty. She got up and went to +Raven, as he stood there, put her hand through his arm and smiled up at +him. + +"Rookie," she said, with a half laugh that was really a caress, +"darlingest Rookie! Charlotte never got that supper together in the +world. You did it yourself, not to disturb her. I never saw so much food +at one time, in all my life." + +It was a monstrous feast, bread, butter, cheese, ham: very neatly +assembled, but for a giant's appetite. + +"We'll all have some," sad Raven. "Draw up, old son. Nan'll butter for +us." + +For the first minutes it seemed to Dick he could not eat, the lump in +his throat had risen so. But Nan buttered and they did eat and felt +better. Raven avoided looking at them, wondering what they were +quarreling about now. It must, he thought, be the way of this new +generation starting out avowedly "on its own." + + + + +XXIX + + +The blessed diversion of eating ended, a blank moment stared them in the +face. What to say next? Were Nan and Dick, Raven wondered, to go on +fighting? Was it the inevitable course of up-to-date courtship? Perhaps +the new generation, from its outlook on elemental things, was taking to +marriage by capture, clubbing the damsel and striding off, her limpness +flung over a brawny arm. It seemed to him a singularly bare, unshaded +way to the rose-leaf bowers his poets had been used to sing; but +undoubtedly the roads were many, and this was one. Possibly the poets +wouldn't say the same now. Dick ought to know. But at least there must +be no warfare here in this warm patch of shelter snatched out of the +cold and dark. His hand was on Old Crow's journal, Dick's inheritance, +he thought, as well as his, and now a fortunate pretext to stave off an +awkward moment. + +"Run over this," he said. "Nan and I've been doing it. I don't believe +we're in any hurry for bed." + +Dick took it, with no show of interest. How should he have been +interested, forced to switch his mind from the pulsating dreams of youth +to worn mottled covers? + +"What is it?" he asked indifferently. + +Raven was rather curious now. What impression would Old Crow make, +slipping in like this, unheralded? + +"Never mind," he said. "Run over it and get on to it, if you can. I'd +like to know what you think." + +Dick, without much heart, began to read, and Raven lighted a pipe. +First, a tribute to Nan's abstinence, he passed her the cigarettes, and +when she shook her head, smiled back at her, as if he reminded her of +secrets they had together. Presently she got up, and Dick, closing the +book, threw it on the table. + +"Bed?" Raven asked, also getting up, and Nan said good night and was +gone. + +The two men sat down, each with the certainty that here they were to +stick until something determining had been said, Raven irritated by the +prospect and Dick angrily ready. + +"Well," said Raven, indicating the book, "what do you think?" + +"That?" said Dick absently. "Oh, I don't know. Somebody trying to write +without knowing how?" + +Raven gave it up. Either he had not read far, or he had not hungered or +battled enough to be moved by it. + +"Now, look here," said Dick, "I may not be interested in that, but +there's something I am interested in. And we've got to talk it out, on +the spot." + +"Well!" said Raven. He mended the fire which didn't need it, and then +sat down and filled his pipe. He wasn't smoking so very much but, he +thought, with a bored abandonment to the situation, gratefully taking +advantage of a pipe's proneness to go out. While he attended to it he +could escape the too evidently condemnatory gaze from those young eyes +that never wavered, chiefly because they could not be deflected by a +doubt of perfectly apprehending everything they saw. + +"Now," said Dick, plunging, "what do you want to do this kind of thing +for?" + +"What kind of thing?" asked Raven, lighting up. "Smoke?" + +Dick looked at him accusingly, sure of his own rightness and the clarity +of the issue. + +"You know," he said. "This business. Compromising Nan." + +Raven felt that slight quickening of the blood, the nervous thrill along +the spine a dog must feel when his hair rises in canine emergency. He +smoked silently while he was getting himself in hand, and, in the space +of it, he had time for a good deal of rapid thinking. The outrage and +folly of it struck him first and then the irony. Here was Dick, who +flaunted his right to leave nothing unsaid where realistic verse +demanded it, and he was consigning Nan to the decorum Aunt Anne herself +demanded. Was the young animal of the present day really unchanged from +the first man who protected his own by a fettering seclusion, simply +because it was his own? Was Dick's general revolt only the yeasty +turmoil sure to take one form or another, being simply the swiftness of +young blood? Was his general bravado only skin deep? Raven hardly knew +how to take him. He wouldn't be angry, outwardly at least. The things +Dick had said, the things he was prepared to say, he would be expected +to resent, but he must deny himself. It was bad for the boy, and more, a +subtle slur on Nan. They mustn't squabble over her, as if her sweet +inviolateness could be in any way touched by either of them. Presently +he took his pipe out, looked at it curiously as if it did not altogether +please him and remarked: + +"Dick, you're a fool." + +"Oh, yes," said Dick, with a bitterness that curled his lip a little, +"I'm a young fool, too, I suppose. Well, thank God for that. I am young, +and I know it, and just what I'm getting out of it and what I've a right +to get. You can't play that game with me, Uncle Jack. You simply can't +do it. The old game's played out." + +"And what," said Raven mildly, "is the old game? And what's the new one +going to be? You'll have to tell me. I don't know." + +"The old game," said Dick, "was precisely what it was in politics. The +old men made the rules and the young were expected to conform. The old +men made wars and the young fought 'em. The old men lied and skulked and +the young had to pull them out of the holes they got into. I suppose +you'd say the War was won at Chequers Court. Well, I shouldn't. I should +say it was won by the young men who had their brains blown out, and lost +their eyes and their legs." + +"No," said Raven quietly, "I shouldn't say the War was won at Chequers +Court. We needn't fight over that. The thing that gets me is why we need +to fight at all. There's been a general armistice and Eastern Europe +doesn't seem to have heard of it. They go on scrapping. You don't seem +to have heard of it either. You come home here and find me peaceably +retired to Charlotte and Jerry and my Sabine Farm, and you proceed to +declare war on me. What the devil possesses you?" + +"Yes," said Dick, the muscle twitching in his lip, "I do find you here. +And Nan with you." + +"Dick," said Raven sharply, "we'll leave Nan out of this." + +Dick, though the tone was one that had called him to attention years +ago, told himself he wasn't afraid of it now. Those old bugaboos +wouldn't work. + +"I am going," he said, "to marry Nan." + +"Good for you," responded Raven. "No man could do better." + +"Do you mean to tell me," countered Dick, "you're not bluffing? Or do +you actually want to let her marry me and you--you'd continue this under +my nose?" + +Raven stared at him a full minute, and Dick angrily met him. "Stare +away," Dick was thinking. "I'm in the right. I can look you down." + +"Dick," said Raven finally, "I called you a fool. It isn't such a bad +thing to be a fool. We're most of us fools, of one sort or another. But +don't let me think you're a dirty-minded little cad. Now I don't want to +bring Nan into this, but I rather think I've got to. What are you +driving at? Come, out with it!" + +To his wonderment, his pain amounting to a shock of perplexity and +grief, he saw Dick's face redden and the tears spring to his eyes. How +horribly the boy cared, perhaps up to the measure of Nan's deserts, and +yet with what a childish lack of values! For he had no faith either in +Nan or in old Jack. The ties of blood, of friendship, were not holding. +He was as jealous as Othello, and no sane certainties were standing him +in stead. Dick, feeling the painful tears, felt also the shame of them. +He wanted to answer on the instant, now Raven had given him his chance; +but so unused was he to the menace of betraying emotion that he was not +even sure of not blubbering like a boy. He swallowed and came out with +it: + +"You've got some sort of hold on her nobody else has. You've hynotized +her. She eats out of your hand." + +Raven, in despair, sat looking at him. He ought, he felt, to be able to +laugh it all away, but he was too bewildered and too sorry. + +"Dick," said he finally, "I shall have to say it again. You're an awful +fool. Nan and I were always the best of friends. I rather think I have +known her in a way none of the rest of you have. But--hypnotized her! +Look at me, Dick. Remember me plodding along while you grew up; think +what sort of a chap I am. You won't find anything spectacular about me. +Never has been, never will be. And Nan, of all people! little Nan!" + +Dick forgot the imminence of a breaking voice and humid eyes. Raven, he +felt, wasn't playing the game. He was skulking out of it. + +"Do you deny," he said, in a voice so loud and hoarse that it startled +him as it did Raven, "that you're in love with her?" + +"Good God!" said Raven. He rose, laid his pipe on the mantel and stood, +trembling, even in his clenched hands. "What is there to answer," he got +out at length, "to a question like that? You've just reminded me I'm +past my youth. Why don't you remember it yourself when it'll do you some +good? I'm an old chap, and you----" + +"You're as fit as ever you were in your life," said Dick, as if he +grudged it to him. "And more fascinating, I suppose, to a girl like her. +There's something pathetic about it. It's half pity, too! Nothing so +dangerous in the world." + +Raven swung round, walked to the window and, hands in his pockets, stood +looking out. In love with Nan! well, he did love Nan better than any +created thing. All the old tests, the old obediences, would be nothing +to him if he could consecrate them to Nan, her happiness, her safety in +this dark world. How about his life? Yes, he would give that, a small +thing, if Nan needed the red current of it to quicken her own. But "in +love" as Dick understood it! If you were to judge Dick's comprehension +of it from his verse, love was a sex madness, a mortal lure for the +earth's continuance, by the earth begot. And who had unconsciously held +out that lure to him but the woman of mystery up there on the road in +that desolate house with her brutal husband and her deficient child? He +had seen the innocent lure, he had longed to put out his hand to the +hand unconsciously beckoning. Through the chill wintry night the message +came to him now. And only Nan could understand that the message might +come and that it was a part of the earth and to be forgotten, like a hot +wind or a thrilling song out of the dark--Nan, his darling, a part of +him, his understanding mind, as well as the fiber of his heart. Suddenly +he turned on Dick who was watching him, ready, it seemed, to pounce on +his first change of look. + +"Dick," he said, "I adore Nan." + +"Yes," said Dick, "I know you do. I told you----" + +"But," broke in Raven, "you don't know anything about it." + +"Oh," said Dick, "then I don't adore her, too." + +Raven reflected. No, his inner mind told him, there was no community of +understanding between them. How should Dick traverse with him the long +road of rebuff and downfall he had traveled? How should youth ever be +expected to name the cup it has not tasted? For Dick, he thought again, +what is known as love was a simple, however overwhelming, matter of the +mounting blood, the growing year. For him it would be the ashes of +forgotten fire, the strange alembic mixed of bitter with the sweet. In +that moment he faced an acknowledged regret that he had not lived the +normal life of marriage at the start, the quieting of foolish fevers, +the witness of children. We are not, he reflected, quite solvent unless +we pay tribute before we go. He mused off into the vista of life as it +accomplishes itself not in great triumphal sweeps, but fitful music +hushed at intervals by the crash of brutal mischance, and only, at the +end, a solution of broken chords. Meantime Dick watched him, and Raven +at last, feeling the boy's eyes on him, came awake with a start. + +"Yes, Dick," he answered gently, "of course you love her. And it ought +to do you good. It's a big thing to love Nan." + +"Very well then," said Dick, his voice trembling a little in answer to +that gentler tone, "you let her alone, can't you? Nan's a different girl +when she's with you. It's no use denying it. You do hypnotize her." + +"Dick," said Raven, "that's a beastly thing to say. If you mean it to be +as offensive as it sounds, you ought to be booted for it." + +"Oh," said Dick, with a simple certainty in what he knew, "I don't blame +you as I should any other fellow that wasn't going through what you are. +That would be a simple matter to deal with: a chap that knew what he was +doing. You don't, old man. You may not know it, but you don't." + +"For the land's sake!" said Raven, echoing Charlotte, "And what, again +for the land's sake, am I going through?" + +"You know," said Dick uneasily because he did hope to avoid putting it +into words. "_Cafard._" + +Raven had one of his moments of silence, getting hold of himself, taking +the matter in, with its forgotten enormity. + +"So," he said, "you've adopted your mother's word for it. I hadn't +realized that." + +"Oh, Mum's no such fool," said Dick. "She may be an aggravation and a +curse--I'll own that--but she's up to date. Why, Jack, anybody that ever +knew you'd know you're not yourself." + +"No," thought Raven, "few of us are ourselves. We've been through the +War, my son. So have you; but you didn't have such a brittle old world +inside you to try to put together again after it was smashed. Your inner +world was in the making. Whatever you might feel in its collision with +the runaway planet of the mad human mind, it could right itself; its +atoms might cohere." + +"You needn't think," proceeded Dick generously if a trifle too +magnificently, "I can't see. There's a lot of things I see that don't +bear talking about. I've pitched into you about Nan, but you needn't +suppose I don't know it's all a matter of hidden complexes." + +Again recurring to Charlotte in this moment of need, Raven reflected +that he didn't know whether he was afoot or a-horseback. + +"You don't mind, I hope," he said, with humility before this perfectly +equipped intelligence, "explaining a little." + +"Why," said Dick, "there's all your previous life. It's a case of +inhibition. There was Miss Anne." + +"Stop," said Raven, his curiosity over the boy's mind dying in a crash. +"Stop right there, Dick; you're making a fool of yourself. Now we'll go +to bed." + +He got up and waited, and Dick, sulkily, rose too. + +"You needn't think," he began, and Raven broke in: + +"You needn't think I shall stand another word of your half-baked +psycho-deviltries. You can believe what you like. It'll harm nobody but +yourself. But you don't talk it here, or out you go. Now!" + +The last word meant he was waiting to put out the light and Dick, +without another look at him, strode out of the room, snatched his +suit-case and went up the stairs. Raven heard the decisive click of his +door and, his own heart beating in a quick response to what he knew must +happen, turned on the light again and stood there silent, waiting. It +did happen. A soft rustle, like a breeze blowing down the stairs, and +Nan came in. She had taken off her child's dress, as if to show him she +had left their game behind her. The long braids were pinned up, and she +wore her dark walking dress. She was paler, much older, and he was +renewedly angry with Dick for banishing the Nan that was but an hour +ago. Perhaps that Nan would never come back. + +"Darling Rookie," she said, so softly that the sound of it could not +have got half way up the stairs, "what's it all about?" + +"About you, Nan," he answered, and denied himself the darling Nan he had +for her. "And being in love. And Dick's wanting you." + +"It's more than that," said Nan wistfully. "He's been at you somehow. +He's dug ditches across your dear forehead and down your cheeks. What +d'he say, Rookie? What d'you say to him?" + +Raven shook his head. He had no idea of inviting her into the +psycho-analytic ward of Dick's mind. + +"Nan," he said, "the boy's unhappy. He's in love with you. No doubt +about it." + +Nan, on her part, had nothing to say to this. + +"What made you change your dress?" asked Raven. "You give me a funny +feeling, as if you'd put the little Nan to bed and come down here to say +you're going, in a minute, and never coming back." + +"I am going," said Nan, "only not in a minute. Charlotte says Jerry +shall take me to the early train." + +"Now, by George!" said Raven, so loudly she put her finger to her lip, +"if that's what Dick's done, he shall go himself, and know the reason, +too. Spoil my visit with you, break it all up? Why, I never had a visit +from you before." + +"It's broken," said Nan. "You couldn't put it together again." The red +had come into her cheeks and her eyes showed a surface glitter he did +not know. "I'm going to leave you to Tenney--and Tira--and your +destiny--and Old Crow." + +"Is this a part of your scheme?" asked Raven roughly. He was curiously +dashed, almost shamed by her repudiating him. "You're as bad as Dick. +He's been bringing all his psychopathic patter to bear on me, and you're +deserting me. Oh, come! Let's be safe and sane, like the Fourth." + +"So we will be," said Nan. She was retreating toward the door. There +were simple natural things she wanted at that moment. She wanted to go +to him, put her arms about him, mother or child arms, as he might wish, +and bid him a good-by that would wrap him about like a cloak while they +were absent one from the other. He should have her lips as he had her +heart. Nan was an adventurer on the high seas of life. She cared very +little whether her boat rode the wave or sank, so it could unload the +gold and gems it carried on the sand of the world she loved. Rookie was +the home of her heart. The gold was all for him. But if he did not want +it--and meantime she was at the door. "Don't get up," she said, "to see +me off. If you do, he will, too, and there'll be more fireworks. No, no, +Rookie. Don't look like that. I'm not hateful about him, really, only he +has spoiled my fun." + +"Why you should go," said Raven, advancing; "why you should leave this +house just because he's come!" + +"No fun!" said Nan. "Do you see us, the three of us, sitting down to +meals together? No, Rookie. Can't be done. Good night." + +Here she did turn definitely and went up the stairs, and Raven presently +followed. In his room he stood for a moment thinking, not of Dick, who +was troublesome, in an irritating way incident to biting young cubs just +aware of their teeth, but of the challenge that was Nan. Here she was, +all beauty, all wisdom, in the natal gifts of her, telling him, with +every breath, she loved him and only him. And yet, his knowledge of life +was quick to answer, it was the accretion of long hungers, the sum of +all desires since she was little and consigned to Aunt Anne's delicate +frigidities for nurture and, as the event proved, for penury. She had no +conception of a love as irresistible as hers was now abounding. In a +year or two, youth would meet her on the road of youth, and they would +kiss and old Rookie would become the dim duty of remembered custom. And +as he thought these things, his overwhelming revolt against earth and +its cruelty came over him, and he stood there gripping his hands into +their palms, again at open war with life. It was a question without an +answer, a hunger unfed, a promise broken. Eternal life was the soporific +distilled by man, in his pathetic cunning, to dull the anguish of +anticipated death. Standing there in the silence, he felt the waves of +loneliness going over him, and thought of Nan in her chamber across the +hall, angelic in her compassion, her arms ready for him as a mother is +ready for her child. The moonlight made arabesques on the walls, and he +walked to the window with an instinctive craving for the open. He stood +gripping the casing with both hands and looking up over the hillside +where also the light lay revealingly. Up there was the hut where Tira +might be now if Tenney had not wounded himself, fleeing in her turn from +earthly cruelty. Up there Old Crow had lived in his own revolt against +earth cruelty. And, with the thought, Old Crow seemed to be, not on the +hillside, but beside him, reading to him the testimony of the mottled +book, but more insistently, in a clearer voice. If it could be so, if +God had intention, not only toward his own colossal inventiveness, but +as touching the well-being of man--yes, and of the other creatures, too, +the pathetically oppressing and oppressed--if He had given man the +problem with no solution indicated, to work it out as he had worked out +pottery and fabrics, and light and talking over space--always in +conformity to law--it was stupendous. No matter how many million men +went to the building of the safeguarding reefs, no matter through what +blood and tears the garden of the earth was watered if the flower of +faith could grow at last. + +"That is my legacy to the boy," he seemed to hear Old Crow repeating. +"He must not be afraid." + +And as he was sinking off to sleep he had an idea he was praying, +perhaps to God; or was it to Old Crow? At any rate, he was saying: + +"For God's sake look out for Nan. You don't need to make it so devilish +hard for Nan." + +He was downstairs early. At the foot of the stairs stood Charlotte, +waiting. She looked--what? compassionate? + +"She's gone," said Charlotte. "Jerry was up 'fore light." + +"Gone?" echoed Raven. "At this time of day? What for? She'll have an +hour to wait." + +"She would have it so," said Charlotte. "She was terrible anxious to git +off." + +So, Raven thought, she didn't want to see either of them. She was tired +of them, of him with his stiff withdrawals and Dick's young puppyhood. +He ran upstairs, snatched some old riding breeches out of a closet, put +them on and, without a word to Charlotte, went to the barn. But her eye +was on him and she called out of the shed door: + +"You took your saddle with you. Don't you know you did? There's nothin' +but your father's hangin' there, old as the hills." + +Raven did not answer, or even turn his head. He went into the harness +room, found the old saddle hanging in its place, led out Nellie, +surprised at being expected to leave her oats, saddled her and rode +away. He was angry, with Nan, with all the childish trouble of the +business, and--as two neighbors agreed, seeing him gallop past--rode +like the devil, yet not coming upon Nan and Jerry until they were at the +station platform. Nan saw him first. She was gloriously glad, waving her +hand and laughing out. Jerry stood with mouth open, silent but +incurious, and Raven dismounted and threw him the reins. + +"Hitch her behind," he said. "I'll go back with you. Got something extra +to blanket her?" + +He came up to Nan, and they took hands and went into the waiting room +together. It was steaming hot from the monster stove and they retreated +again to the platform. + +"Come out and walk," said Raven, "up to Pine Grove. You've got an hour, +you little simpleton. What did you run away for?" + +The station is in a cluster of houses, awake early every morning when +the milk goes away. But the road across the track leads up a little rise +into Pine Grove, where church and sociables have picnics, the merrier +for the neighborliness of the few trains. Raven and Nan climbed the rise +almost at a run, and when they reached the shadowing pines, looked in at +the pure spaces, remembering, for the first time, the snow would bar +them out. They must keep to the road. + +"Forty-eight minutes," said Raven. "We'll walk twenty and then cut back. +Come on." + +They walked a little, raced a little, talked--not much--and laughed a +great deal. Raven was in the highest spirits, sure he was sending her +off happy, since she would go. Never afterward could they remember what +they talked about: only it seemed a fortunate moment stolen from the +penury of years. Again he took out his watch. + +"Time's up!" he said, and they went back. + +The station was alive with its small activities. Jerry was walking +Nellie up and down. The train came in and when Nan left him Raven +remembered they had not said good-by. There was a kind of permanence in +it; the moment had cemented something into bonds. When she had gone he +and Jerry got into the pung and drove away leading Nellie, and then +Raven remembered he had not breakfasted. They talked horse all the way +home, and when Dick, appearing on the porch, called to them: + +"What you got Nellie for?" + +Raven answered cheerfully: + +"I took a notion." + +Then he and Dick went in to breakfast, and Nan's name was not mentioned. +Charlotte, Raven concluded, had told the boy she was gone. He seemed to +detect in Dick some watchful kindness toward himself, the responsible +care attendants manifest toward the incapable. Dick was, he concluded, +bent on therapeutic measures. + + + + +XXX + + +Tira, from the forenoon of Tenney's accident, entered on uneventful +days. He lowered over his helplessness; he was angry with it. But the +anger was not against her, and she could bear it. For the first time she +saw his activities fettered, and the mother in her answered. She +ventured no outspoken sympathy, but he was dependent on her and in that, +much as it chafed him, she found solace. He was chained to his chair, +his wounded foot on a rest, and he had no diversions. Tira sometimes +wondered what he was thinking when he sat looking out at the road, +smooth with the grinding of sleds and slipping of sleighs. Once she +brought the Bible and laid it before him on a stand. If its exposition +was so precious to him at evening meeting, there would be comfort in it +now. But he glanced at her in what looked like a quick suspicion--did it +mean he thought she meant to taunt him with the unreality of his +faith?--and, after it had lain there a forenoon untouched, he said to +her uneasily: + +"You put that away." + +She took it back to its place on the parlor stand under Grandsir +Tenney's hatchet-faced photograph, wondering in her heart why it was not +what she had heard them read of God: "A very present help in time of +trouble." If you knew it was so, Tira reasoned, you never had to fret +yourself any more. And if that place was waiting for you--the good place +they talked about--even a long lifetime was not too much to face before +you got to it. After she had laid the book down and turned away from it +to cross the ordered stillness of the room, she stopped, with a sudden +hungry impulse, and opened it at random. "Let not your heart be +troubled," she read, and closed it again, quickly lest the next words +qualify so rich a message. It might say further on that you were not to +be troubled if you fulfilled the law and gospel, and that, she knew, was +only fair. But in her dearth she wanted no sacerdotal bargaining. She +needed the heavens to rain down plenty while she held out her hands to +take. When she entered the kitchen again Tenney, glancing round at her, +saw the change in her look. She was flushed, her mouth was tremulous, +and her eyes humid. He wondered, out of his ready suspicion, whether she +had seen anyone going by. + +"What's the matter?" he asked sharply. + +"Nothin's the matter," she answered. But her hands were trembling. She +was like Mary when she had seen her Lord. + +"Who's gone by?" he persisted. "I didn't hear no bells." + +"No," said Tira. "I don't believe anybody's gone by, except the +choppers. It's a proper nice day for them." + +The child woke and cried from the bedroom and she brought him out in the +pink sweetness of his sleep, got the little tub and began to give him +his bath by the fire. As she bent over him and dried his smooth soft +flesh, the passion of motherhood rose in her and she forgot he was "not +right," and sang a low, formless song. When he was bathed she stood him +naked on her knee, and it was then she found Tenney including them both +in the livid look she knew. And she saw what he saw. The child's hair +was more like shining copper every day, his small nose had the tiniest +curve. By whatever trick of nature, which is implacable, he was not like +her, he was not like Tenney. He was a message from her bitter, ignorant +past. Her strong shoulders began to shake and her hands that steadied +the child shook, too, so that he gave a little whimper at finding +himself insecure. + +"Isr'el," she broke out, "before God!" + +"Well," said he, in the snarl she had heard from him at those times when +his devil quite got the better of him, "what? What you got to tell?" + +"It ain't so," she said, her voice broken by her chattering lips. +"Before God, it ain't so." + +"So ye know what I mean," he jeered, and even at the moment she had +compassion for him, reading his unhappy mind and knowing he hurt himself +unspeakably. "Ye know, or ye wouldn't say 'tain't so." + +Words of his own sprang up in her memory like witnesses against him, +half phrases embodying his suspicion of her, wild accusations when, like +a drunken man, he had let himself go. But this he did not remember. She +knew that. Shut up in his cell of impeccable righteousness, he believed +he had dealt justly with her and no more. She would not taunt him with +his words. She had a compassion for him that reached into his future of +possible remorse. Tira saw, and had seen for a long time, a catastrophe, +a "wind-up" before them both. Sometimes it looked like a wall that +brought them up short, sometimes a height they were both destined to +fall from and a gulf ready to receive them, and she meant, if she could, +to save him from the recognition of the wall as something he had built +or the gulf as something he had dug. As she sat looking at him now, +wide-eyed, imploring, and the child trod her knee impatiently, a man +went past the window to the barn. It was Jerry, gone to fodder the +cattle, and Jerry brought Raven to her mind who, if he was obeying her +by absence, was none the less protecting her. The trouble of her face +vanished and she drew a quick breath Tenney was quick to note. + +"Who's that?" he asked her sharply, turning in his chair to command the +other window. + +"Jerry," she said. Her heart stilled, and she began to dress the child, +with her mother's deftness. "He comes a little early to fodder, 'fore he +does his own." + +"I dunno," said Tenney, irritably because he had to wear out his spleen, +"why you can't fodder the cows when anybody's laid up. There's women +that do it all the time if their folks are called away." + +"Why, I could," said Tira, with a clear glance at him, "only he won't +let me." + +"What's he got to do with it," said Tenney, in surprise. "Won't let ye? +Jerry Slate won't let ye? Jerry ain't one to meddle nor make. I guess if +you told him 'twas your place to do it an' you'd ruther stan' up to it, +he'd have no more to say." + +The blood came again to her face. She had almost, she felt, spoken +Raven's name, and a swift intuition told her she must bury even the +thought of it. + +"There ain't," she said, "two nicer folks in this township than +Charlotte an' Jerry, nor two that's readier to turn a hand." + +Tenney was silent, and Jerry did the chores and went home. Sometimes he +came to the house to ask how Tenney was getting on, but to-day he had to +get back to his own work. + +This was perhaps a week after Tenney's accident, when he was getting +impatient over inaction, and next day the doctor came and pronounced the +wound healing well. If Tenney had a crutch, he might try it carefully, +and Tenney remembered Grandsir had used a crutch when he broke his hip +at eighty-two, and healed miraculously though tradition pronounced him +done for. It had come to the house among a load of outlawed relics, too +identified with the meager family life to be thrown away, and Tira found +it "up attic" and brought it down to him. She waited, in a sympathetic +interest, to see him try it, and when he did and swung across the +kitchen with an angry capability, she caught her breath, in a new fear +of him. The crutch looked less a prop to his insufficiency than like a +weapon. He could reach her with it. He could reach the child. And then +she began to see how his helplessness had built up in her a false +security. He was on the way to strength again, and the security was +gone. + +The first use he made of the crutch was to swing to the door and tell +Jerry he need not come again. Tira was glad to hear him add: + +"Much obleeged. I'll do the same for you." + +Afterward she went to the barn with him and fed and watered while he +supplemented her and winced when he hurt himself, making strange sounds +under his breath that might have been oaths from a less religious man. +And Tira was the more patient because the doctor had told her the foot +would always trouble him. + +It was two days after he had begun to use his crutches, that Tira, after +doing the noon chores in the barn and house, sat by the front window in +her afternoon dress, a tidy housewife. The baby was having his nap and +Tenney, at the other window, his crutch against the chair beside him, +was opening the weekly paper that morning come. Tira looked up from her +mending to glance about her sitting-room, and, for an instant, she felt +to the full the pride of a clean hearth, a shining floor, the sun lying +in pale wintry kindliness across the yellow paint and braided rugs. If +she had led a gypsy life, it was not because her starved heart yearned +the less tumultuously for order and the seemliness of walls. For the +moment, she felt safe. The child was not in evidence, innocently calling +the eye to his mysterious golden beauty. Tenney had been less irascible +all the forenoon because he had acquired a fortunate control over his +foot, and (she thought it shyly, yet believingly) the Lord Jesus Christ +was with them. Disregarded or not, in these moments of wild disordered +living, He was there. + +She heard sleigh-bells, and looked out. Tenney glanced up over his +glasses, an unwonted look, curiously like benevolence. She liked that +look. It always gave her a thrill of faith that sometime, by a miracle, +it might linger for more than the one instant of a changed visual focus. +She caught it now, with that responsive hope of its continuance, and +knew, for the first time, what it recalled to her: the old minister +beyond Mountain Brook looked over his glasses in precisely that way, +kindly, gentle, and forgiving. But mingled with the remembrance, came +the nearing of the bells and the shock to her heart in the man they +heralded: Eugene Martin, driving fast, and staring at the house. The +horse was moving with a fine jaunty action when Martin pulled him up, +held him a quieting minute, and got out. He paused an instant, his hand +on the robe, as if uncertain how long he should stay, seemed to decide +against covering the horse and ran up the path. He must have seen Tira +and Tenney, each at a window, but his eyes were on the woman only. Half +way along the path, he took off his hat and waved it at her in +exaggerated salute, as if bidding her rejoice that he had come. In the +same instant he seemed, for the first time, to see Tenney. His eyes +rested on him with a surprise excellently feigned. He replaced his hat, +turned about like a man blankly disconcerted and went back down the +path, with the decisive tread of one who cannot take himself off too +soon. He stepped into the sleigh and, drawing the robe about him, drove +off, the horse answering buoyantly. Tira sat, the stillest thing out of +a wood where stalking danger lurks, her eyes on her sewing. Tenney was +staring at her; she knew it, and could not raise her lids. Often she +failed to meet his glance because she so shrank, not from his conviction +of her guilt, but the fear of seeing what she must remember in blank +night watches, to shudder over. For things were different at night, +things you could bear quite well by day. Now he spoke, with a restrained +certainty she trembled at. He had drawn his conclusions; nothing she +could possibly say would alter them. + +"Comin' in, wa'n't he?" the assured voice asked her. "See me, didn't he, +an' give it up?" + +Tira forced herself to look at him, and the anguished depths of her eyes +were moving to him only because they seemed to mourn over his having +found her out. + +"No, Isr'el," she said quietly. "He wa'n't comin' in. He drew up because +he see you, an' he knew 'twould be wormwood to both of us to have him do +just what he done." + +Tenney laughed, a little bitter note. Tira could not remember ever +having heard him laugh with an unstinted mirth. At first, when he came +courting her, he was too worn with the years of work that had brought +him to her, and after that too wild with the misery of revolt. She was +sorry for that, with an increasing sorrow. Tira could bear no +unhappiness but her own. + +"Wormwood!" he repeated, as if the word struck him curiously. "D'he +think 'twas goin' to be wormwood for a woman to find a man comin' all +fixed up like courtin' time, to steal a minute's talk? You make me +laugh." + +He did laugh, and the laugh, though it might have frightened her, made +her the more sorry. She had the sense of keeping her hand on him, of +holding him back from some rushing course that would be his own +destruction. + +"Yes," she answered steadily. "'Twould be nothin' but wormwood for me, +an' well he knows it. He don't--love me, Isr'el." + +She hesitated before the word, and with it the thought of Raven came to +her, as she saw him, unvaryingly kind and standing for quiet, steadfast +things. "He hates me." + +"Hates ye," he repeated curiously. "What's he hate ye for?" + +"Because," said Tira, bound to keep quietly on in this new way of reason +with him, "I left him. An' I left him 'fore he got tired o' me. He +never'd overlook that." + +"You left him, did ye?" he repeated. "Then that proves you was with him, +or ye couldn't ha' left him." + +"Why, Isr'el," said she, her clear gaze on his turbid answering one, "I +told you. I told you long 'fore you married me. First time you ever +mentioned it, I told you, so's to have things fair an' square. I told +you, Isr'el." + +He said nothing, but she knew the answer at the back of his mind, and it +seemed to her wise now to provoke it, to dare the accusation and meet +it, not as she always had, by silence, but a passionate testimony. + +"You said," she continued, "it shouldn't make no difference, what I'd +done 'fore you married me. You said we couldn't help the past, but we +could what's comin' to us. An' I thought you was an angel, Isr'el, with +your religion an' all. Not many men would ha' said that. I didn't know +one. An' we were married an' you--changed." + +"Yes," he said. His hands were shaking as they did at the beginning of +his rages, but Tira, embarked on a course she had long been coming to, +was the more calm. "Yes, I changed, didn't I? An' when d' I change? When +that"--he paused and seemed to choke down the word he would have given +the child--"when that creatur' in there turned into the livin' pictur' +of the man that drew up here this day. Can you deny he's the image of +him?" + +"No," said Tira, looking at him squarely. "He is the image of him." + +"What do folks think about it?" he asked her. "What do you s'pose the +neighbors think? What'll it be when it grows worse an' worse? What'll +the school children say when he's old enough to go to school? They'll +see it, too, the little devils. The livin' image, they'll say, o' 'Gene +Martin." + +Tira laid her work on the table in front of her. The moment of +restraining him had failed her, but another moment had come. This she +had seen approaching for many months and had pushed away from her. + +"Isr'el," she said, "I guess you won't have that to worry over. There's +no danger of his goin' to school. He--ain't right." + +He stared at her a long moment, puzzling instances accumulating in his +mind, evidences that the child was not like other children he had seen. +Then he began to laugh, a laugh full of wildness and despair. + +"O my Lord!" he cried. "My Lord God! if I wanted any evidence I hadn't +got, You've give it to me now. You've laid Your hand on her. You've laid +Your hand on both of 'em. He can't ride by here an' see a red-headed +bastard playin' round the yard an' laugh to himself when he says, +'That's mine.' You've laid Your hand on 'em." + +Tira rose from her chair and went to him. She slipped to the floor, put +her head on his unwelcoming shoulder and her arms about his neck. + +"Isr'el," said she, "you hear to me. If you can't for the sake o' me, +you hear to me for the sake o' him,--sleepin' there, the pitifullest +little creatur' God ever made. How's he goin' to meet things, as he is? +'Twould be hard enough with a father 'n' mother that set by him as they +did their lives, but you half-crazed about him--what'll he do, Isr'el? +What'll the poor little creatur' do?" + +Tenney sat rigid under her touch, and she went on, pouring out the +mother sorrow that was the more overwhelming because it had been locked +in her so long. + +"Isr'el, I could tell you every minute o' my life sence you married me. +If 'twas wrote down, you could read it, an' 'twould be Bible truth. An' +if God has laid His hand on that poor baby--Isr'el, you take that back. +It's like cursin' your own flesh an' blood." + +"I do curse him," he muttered. "I curse him for that--not bein' my flesh +an' blood." With the renewed accusation, his anger against her seemed to +mount like a wave and sweep him with it, and he shook himself free of +her. "Jezebel!" he cried. "Let go o' me." + +Tira rose and went back to her chair. But she did not sit down. She +stood there, looking out of the window and wondering. What to do next? +With a man beside himself, what did a woman do? He was talking now, +drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair and looking at her. + +"Sometimes," he said, "when it all comes over me, I think I'll shet you +up. I'll leave him asleep in there an' lock you in, up chamber, an' you +can hear him cry but you can't git to him. An' mebbe you can work it out +that way. He'll be the scapegoat goin' into the wilderness, cryin' in +there alone, an' you'll be workin' out your punishment, hearin' him +cry." + +Tira stood listening and thinking. This was a new danger. If he shut her +away from the child (and he might do it easily, when his foot would +serve him again) nobody would hear. They were too far away. He was +frightening her. She would frighten him. She walked up to him and stood +looking down on him. + +"Isr'el," said she quietly, "don't you git it into your head you could +shet me up." + +"Yes," said he, and his tone was as ominous as her own, "I guess I could +shet you up all right." + +"Yes," said Tira, "mebbe you could. But if you do, I'll break out. An' +when I've broke out"--she towered over him--"I'll break your neck." + +Tenney, looking up and seeing in her eyes the mother rage that sweeps +creation from man to brute, was afraid, and Tira knew it. She looked him +down. Then her gaze broke, not as if she could not have held his +forever, but haughtily, in scorn of what was weaker than herself. + +"I've been a true wife to you, Isr'el," she said. "You remember it now, +'fore it's too late. For as God's my witness, if you turn your hand +ag'inst a little child--whether it's your own or whether it ain't--an' +that baby in there is yourn an' no man but you has got part nor lot in +him--if you turn ag'inst him, I turn ag'inst you. An' when I've done +that, you'll find me as crazy as you be, an' I can't say no worse." + +She went into the bedroom and he heard her crooning there, defiantly he +thought, even through the low sweetness of her voice. But her passion +had shaken him briefly. For the moment, the inner self in him could not +help believing her. He went back to his newspaper, trying, though the +print was dim before him, to recover his hold on the commonplace of the +day. He, too, would be unmoved; she should see he was not afraid of her +tantrums. But he had not read half a column before an evil chance drew +his eyes to a paragraph in the gossip from the various towns about. This +was under the caption of his own town: + +"A certain gentleman appeared last week with a black eye, gained, it is +said, in a scrap with a non-resident interested in keeping the peace in +country towns. It is said both combatants bore themselves gallantly, but +that suit for assault and battery is to be brought by the party +attacked." + +Tenney sat staring at the words, and his mind told him what a fool he +was. That meant the encounter at his gate. He had ignored that. He had +been deflected from it simply because he had cut his foot and let +himself be drawn off the track of plain testimony by his own pain and +helplessness. Was Raven in it, too? Was there a shameless assault of all +the men about on Tira's honesty? While he was the dupe of Martin, was +Martin Raven's dupe? Did such a woman bring perpetual ruin in her path? +This he did not ask himself in such words or indeed through any +connected interrogation. It was passion within him, disordered, dim, but +horrible to bear. He got up presently, took her scissors, cut out the +paragraph and laid it on her basket where her eyes must fall upon it. +When he had gone back to his chair, she appeared from the bedroom and +went up to him. He did not look at her, but her voice was sweeter, +gentler than the song had been, with no defiance in it, and, in spite of +him, it moved his sick heart, not to belief in her, or even a momentary +rest on her good intent toward him, but to a misery he could hardly +face. Every nerve in him cried out in revolt against his lot, his aching +love for her, his passion forever unsatisfied because she was not +entirely his, the anguish of the atom tossed about in the welter of +elemental life. + +"Isr'el," said she, "there's one thing we forgot when we spoke so to +each other as we did a minute ago." + +She waited, and he looked up at her, and the hunger of his eyes was as +moving to her as if, like the child they had fought over, he was himself +a child and "not right." + +"We forgot," she said, in a soft shyness at having to remind him who was +a professing Christian of what he knew far better than she, "Who was +with us all the time: the Lord Jesus Christ." + +She turned away from him, in a continued timidity at seeming to preach +to him, and seated herself again by the other window. The newspaper +clipping arrested her eye. She took it up, read it over slowly, read it +again and Tenney watched her. Then she crumpled it in her hand and +tossed it on the table. She glanced across at Tenney and spoke gravely, +threading her needle with fingers that did not tremble. + +"That's jest like him," she said. "Anybody 't knew him 'd know 'twas +what he'd do. He's hand in glove with Edson that carries on that paper. +They go to horse-trots together. He's willin' to call attention to +himself, black eye an' all, if he can call attention to somebody else, +same time. That's wormwood, too, Isr'el. We're the ones it's meant for, +you an' me." + + + + +XXXI + + +In a day or two Raven had convinced himself that Dick, firm-lipped, +self-controlled, as if he had set himself a task, did not mean to leave +him. Raven, half amused, half touched, accommodated his behavior to +their closer relation and waited for Dick to disclose himself. He would +have been light-heartedly glad of the boy's company if he had found no +strangeness in it, no purpose he could not, from point to point, divine. +Dick sent for more clothes, and a case came by post. He wrote in his +chamber, for an hour or two every morning, and after that, Raven became +conscious that the boy was keeping a watchful eye on him. If Raven went +up to the hut, Dick was sure to appear there, in ten minutes at the +most. Once, after a heavy snow, Raven had the wood road broken out, and +Dick looked on in a darkling conjecture. And when Raven, now even to +Jerry's wonder, proceeded to break from the hut to the back road, Dick +found it not only impossible to restrain himself but wise to speak. They +were standing by the hearth in the hut, after Raven had swept it and +laid a careful fire. He had worked with all possible haste, for he never +was there now without wondering whether she might come. He had been +resting in the certainty of Tenney's crippled state, but the wounded +foot, he knew, was bettering every day, and with it Tira's security +lessened. Jerry's dismissal from the chores had troubled him so much +that he had gone up, immediately after, to reason with Tenney. But +Tenney was entering the barn door at the moment of his turning into the +yard, and Tira, following, stopped an instant and made Raven a little +gesture that seemed to him one of hasty dismissal, and he went back home +again. + +"Jack," said Dick, this morning in the hut--it was as if he had to +speak--"what are you getting this place ready for, and breaking out the +back road? You don't need to come up here, in weather like this. If you +do, you've got your snowshoes. What the deuce are you breaking out for?" + +Raven stood a moment looking down at Tira's fire. It seemed a sacred +pile, consecrated to holy use. What would Dick say if he told him the +paths had been broken for a woman's flying feet, the fire was laid to +warm her when she came here hunted by man's cruelty? Dick was said to +have written some very strong verse, but how if he found himself up +against life itself? + +"It's a jolly old place," Raven said, rousing himself out of his musing. +"As for breaking out, that's what oxen are for." + +Dick was looking at him in a manifest concern. It was true affection. +The boy might find it difficult to hail him across the interval of years +between them, but he did love old Jack, though with the precise measure +of patronage due the old. + +"You know," said Dick, "it worries me like the deuce to see you coming +up here like----" + +He paused as if the matter were too complex to be gone into lightly. + +"Like what?" Raven asked him. + +"Well, we've been over that. You know who built this. You know what he +did in it. He brought an old rip up here to live with him, and--oh, +confound it, Jack! don't pretend you don't even remember old Crow." + +"Yes," said Raven gravely, "I remember Old Crow." + +"Well, anyhow," said Dick, "he was a family disgrace, and the less said +about him the better." + +"I showed you, the night you came," said Raven, "the story of Old Crow's +life. You didn't quite catch on. Want another try at it?" + +Dick had to search his memory. The only thing he had kept in mind about +that night was his anger against Nan. There was a book, he recalled +vaguely: some sort of stuff in a crabbed hand. + +"Old Crow?" he said. "Old Crow never wrote anything." + +"You think," said Raven, "he brought his bum up here and they sat and +guzzled. Well, you're wrong, my son. Come, let's go down, and though I +don't know whether it'll mean anything to you, you shall have another +hack at Old Crow." + +He was not easy until he had turned the key on the safety of the hut and +started down the hill. When they had rounded the curve made by the three +jutting firs, he stopped. + +"Go on," he said. "I'll overtake you." + +He ran back and slipped the key under the stone. It was a part of her +security to keep the secret from Dick also. + +No more was said of Old Crow that day, but, in the early evening, when +they were before the fire, Raven brought down the book, always in the +drawer of the little table by his bed. It was, in an undefined way, +kindliness and company, always reminding him that, whatever his +undesirable status now, he had been "the boy," and this was his own +personal message from Old Crow. + +"There you are," he said. He laid it on the table. "Don't read it unless +you'd really rather. It's meant a good deal to me. Maybe it won't to +you. I don't know much about the processes of your mind. You may feel at +home in this particular world. I never do. Old Crow didn't either. But +you'll see." + +Dick began to read and, since Nan was not by to be loved and hated, with +an intent mind. Once or twice he turned back, Raven saw, to ponder some +passage again. It was slow reading. He had not the passionate haste of +one who has thirsted for some such community of assurance, and flies +over the ground, plucking a leaf here and there, meaning to return. When +he had finished he closed the book, laid it on the table, and pushed it +aside as if he had definitely done with it. + +"Jackie," said he, "I'm mighty glad you showed me this." + +"Good!" said Raven. "Got inside it, have you?" + +"Why, yes," said Dick, with assurance. "That's easy enough. It isn't +new, you know. And it isn't so much my getting inside that as getting +inside Old Crow." + +"Oh!" said Raven mildly, "so you got inside Old Crow. Now what did you +find there?" + +"I don't know," said Dick, "whether you'd better be told. From a +psychopathic point of view, that is. But I rather guess you ought." + +"Dick," said Raven, "in the name of all the gods you worship, what +shouldn't I be told? And exactly how do you see us two living along +here, mild as milk? What's our relation? Sometimes, when I find you +plodding after me, I feel as if you were my trainer. Sometimes I have a +suspicion I really am off my nut and you're my keeper. Out with it, boy? +How do you see it? Come!" + +Dick, from a patent embarrassment, was staring down at the hearth, and +now he looked quickly up in a frankness truly engaging. + +"Jack," he said, "you needn't think you're going to be left here alone, +to work things out by yourself. There's no danger of mother. I told her +to keep off. She only irritates you. But she hasn't gone back home. +She's right there in Boston, waiting to come." + +Raven got up and walked back and forth through the room. Then he +returned to his chair. + +"Dick," he said conversationally, "if you were as young in years as you +are in your mind, I'd mellow you." + +Dick generously ignored this. He had the impeccable good nature of the +sane set in authority over the sick. + +"What I think, is," he said, with a soothing intonation Raven +despairingly recognized as the note of strength pitting itself against +weakness, "we can work it out together, you and I. We can do it better +than anybody else. I suppose if I went back you'd send for Nan. But that +won't do, Jack. You'll see it for yourself, when you're all right again. +Now what I mean about Old Crow is, that his complexes are like yours--or +rather yours are like his. Don't you see what an influence he's had on +you? More than Miss Anne even." + +"Hold up," said Raven. "I'm being mighty patient with you, but certain +things, you know, you don't say." + +"You used to go up there and see him," said Dick, willingly +relinquishing Miss Anne. There were times when, as he remembered from +boyhood, old Jack was dangerous. "Some of the things about him shocked +you. Some appealed to you. Pity, too: you must have pitied him +tremendously. You probably knew about his craze over this girl he +mentions here. You may have heard things about her, just as he did. +Jack, I can see--the whole thing has come to me in the last ten +minutes--Old Crow has been the big influence in your life. Everything +else has come from that. And then the war knocked you out and you got +_cafard_ and the whole blasted business blew up and came to the surface +and--there you are." + +"Yes," said Raven, "here we are." + +He leaned back in his chair and laughed until he could have cried. Never +had he found anything funnier than the boy's honest face and his honest +voice pouring forth undigested scraps from haphazard gleanings. + +"Dick," he said, "you're a dear fellow. But you're an awful ass. The +trouble is with you, old man, you've no imagination. It was left out. +You're too much like your mother and it'll be the death of you as it is +of her if you don't stop being intelligent. That sort of popular science +stuff, you know. Be a little sloppy, boy. Come off your high horse." + +Dick was still unassailably good-natured. Raven was his job, and he +could hold himself down with a steady hand. + +"Now," said Raven, "for heaven's sake scrap your complexes, even if you +scrap Old Crow with 'em, and let's see if we can't be moderately +peaceable. That is, if we've got to be marooned here together." + +And by dint of giving his mind to it, he was himself peaceable and even +amusing, but as the dark came on he found he had much ado to keep up the +game; he was too sensitively awake to Tira. With no new reason for it, +he was plainly worried, and, leaving Dick reading by the fire, went up +to his own room. He sat down by a front window, facing the dark wall of +the hill, but when, after another hour, he heard Dick come up and shut +himself in, he slipped down the stairs, took his cap and went off to the +hut. The sky was dark, but clear, and the stars burned in galaxies of +wonder. But the beauty of the night only excited and oppressed him until +he could assure himself she was not out in it on one of her dreadful +flights. If he found her in the hut, he could go home to bed. He reached +the door, stopped, and put his hand under the stone. The key was there, +and he laughed out in his thankfulness. The laugh was at his fears, and +he wondered whether he would rather think of her there in her prison or +here, still under sentence, due at her prison again. Then he heard a +step: a man's crashing on regardless of underbrush. Was it Tenney? +Should he hear that voice as he had before in its wild "Hullo"? + +"Where are you?" came the voice. "Where are you, old man?" + +Dick had followed him and was, in his affectionate solicitude, warning +him against surprise. Raven ran down to meet him, and by the turn of the +fir trees they faced each other. + +"Dick," said Raven, "what are you up here for?" + +"Can't help it, old man," said Dick. The eagerness of his voice made it +very moving. "Really, you know, I can't have you trotting round, this +time of night, all by your lonesome. If you want to hang round here, you +let me come, too. We'll light the fire and smoke a pipe and finish the +night, if you say so. Come, old man. Come on." + +"No," said Raven quietly, "we won't light fires and smoke pipes. We'll +go down now, to bed. Dick, you're a fool. I've had to tell you so more +than once. But you're a dear fool, and sometime I may be able to +remember that and nothing else. Just now I can't seem to want to do +anything but pitch you, neck and crop, into the snow." + +They went down together, Dick still doggedly conscious of doing the only +thing possible, and when they were near the foot of the hill, Raven +yelled at him, the old Moosewood whoop, and sprang. It was the signal +between them when one or the other had a mind to "wrastle," and they +stood there in the road and assailed each other scientifically and with +vigor, to the great benefit of each. It was a beneficent outburst, and +Charlotte, roused by the cry, ran to a chamber window and stood there in +her nightgown, watching. + +"How they do carry on!" she commented to Jerry, when they had separated +and come in, chaffing volubly. "For all the world like two toms." + +Things were easier between them, now they had mauled each other, and +they ran upstairs together, "best friends" as they used to be when Dick +learned the game. He was wonderfully encouraged. This was the Uncle Jack +he used to tag about the place. He went to bed with a hopeful +presentiment that, if things kept on like this, he might take Raven back +to town presently, reasonable enough to place himself voluntarily in the +right hands. + +To Tira, the week dragged on with a malicious implication of never +meaning to end until it ended her. Strange things could be done in a +week, it reminded her, conclusive, sinister things. The old fears were +on in full force, and though it had not looked as if they could be much +augmented, now they piled up mountain high. And she presently found out +they were not the old fears at all. There was a fresh menace, +ingeniously new. She had studied the weather of Tenney's mind and knew +the signs of it. She could even anticipate them. But this new menace she +could never have foreseen. It was simply his crutch. An evil magic +seemed to have fallen upon it, and it was no longer a crutch but a +weapon. Tenney would not abandon it. His foot was improving fast, and +the doctor had suggested his dropping the crutch for a cane; but he kept +on with it, kept on obstinately without a spoken pretext. To Tira, there +was something sinister in that. She saw him not relying on it to any +extent, but sedulously keeping it by him. Sometimes he gesticulated with +it. He had, with great difficulty, brought in the cradle again, as if to +emphasize his callousness to the gash in it, and once he tapped it with +the crutch, while the baby lay there asleep, and set it rocking. Tira, +cooking at the table, felt her heart stand still. An actual weapon she +could flee from, but was this a weapon? The uncertainty was in itself +terrifying. + +It was the day he set the cradle rocking that she awoke in the night, +her fear full upon her. He was at her side, sleeping heavily. The baby +was on her other arm. Yet it seemed to her that the menace from Tenney +had pierced her to reach the child and, on its passage, stabbed through +her racing heart. Then her temptation came upon her, so simple a thing +she seemed stupid never to have thought of it before. She rose to a +sitting posture, put her feet out of bed, took the child, and carried +him with her into the sitting-room. She laid him on the couch and +covered him, and then stole back into the bedroom. The crutch was there, +in its habitual place at night, leaning against the foot of the bed. She +could put her hand on it in the dark. Tenney, too, she had begun to +reflect, could put his hand on it. What deeds might he not do with it in +those hours when the sanities of life also sleep? She took it gently and +went out again through the sitting-room and kitchen into the shed. Her +purpose had been to hide it behind the wood. But if he came on it there, +it would not be a crutch he found. It would be a weapon. She put her +hand on an upright beam, as she stood painfully thinking it out, and +touched the handle of a saw, hanging there on a nail; immediately she +knew. She went back into the kitchen, lighted the lantern and carried it +into the shed. There stood the crutch leaning against the beam below the +saw, a weapon beyond doubt. She set down her lantern, laid the crutch on +the block Tenney used to split kindlings, set her foot upon it and +methodically sawed it into stove wood lengths. When it was done she +gathered up the pieces, carried them into the sitting-room, to the stove +where Tenney always, in winter weather, left a log to smoulder, dropped +them in and opened the draught. Then she went back to the shed, swept up +her scattering of sawdust, hung the saw in its place, gave a glance +about her to see that everything was in its usual order, and returned +into the kitchen. She put out the lantern, hung it on its nail, went +into the sitting-room and partially shut the draft on the noisy blaze. +She did not dare quite shut it, lest a bit of the weapon should be left +to cry out from the ashes and tell. When she was back in bed again, the +child on her arm, Tenney, disturbed by her coming, woke and turned. He +lifted his head from the pillow, to listen, and she wondered if he could +hear the beating of her heart. + +"You there?" he asked. "What's that stove started out roarin' for? The +chimbly ain't afire?" + +"No," said Tira. "Mebbe somethin's ketched." She got out of bed, ran +into the sitting-room, noiselessly shut the crack of draught, and came +back. "Them knots are kinder gummy," she said calmly, and was heartened +by the evenness of her voice. "I guess 'twon't roar long." + +They listened together until the sound diminished, and Tira knew when he +relaxed and dropped off again. It did not seem to her that she dropped +off at all, she was so relieved to think of her enemy smouldering and +done for. + +This was the night Raven had had his premonition of her and gone up to +the hut to find her, and the next night he was aware of her again, as if +she had put a hand out through the darkness and given him an imploring +touch. He and Dick had had an almost jovial day. Their wrestling bout +had proved sound medicine. It had, Raven thought, cleared the air of the +fool things they had been thinking about each other. This evening they +had talked, straight talk, as between men, chiefly of Dick's future and +his fitness for literature. There was no hint of Nan, though each +believed she was the pivot on which Dick's fortunes turned. About ten +they went up to bed, and again Raven found himself too uneasy to sleep, +and again he sat down by the window in the dark. Incredibly, yet as he +found he knew it would happen, he saw a figure running up the path. It +came almost to the front door, halted a moment, as if in doubt, stooped +and threw up a clutch of snow against a window. The snow was full of icy +pellets; they rattled against the pane. But it was not his window, which +was dark; the hand had cast its signaling pellets to the room where a +light was burning and where the outline of a man's figure had just been +visible. And the man was Dick. But Raven knew. He opened his door and +shut it as softly, stole down the stairs, opened the outer door, and +drew her in. Then, in the instant of snapping on the light, he saw Tira +recoil; for there, at the foot of the stairs, was Dick. She would have +slipped out again, but Raven's hand was on her. He still held hers, as +he had taken it, and now he turned her to the library door. It was all +done quickly, and meantime he said to Dick, "Go back to bed," and Dick +perhaps not responding exactly, commented under his breath, "Good God!" +Raven followed Tira into the library, turned the key in the lock, +switched on the light in his reading lamp, and drew a chair to the +smouldering fire. + +"Sit down," he said. "You must get warm." + +He threw on cones and roused a leaping blaze. Then he made himself look +at her. He forgot Dick and Dick's shocked bewilderment. He was calm as +men are calm in an accomplished certainty. She had come. She did not +seem cold or in any sense excited, though she put her hands to the blaze +and bent toward it absently, as if in courtesy because he had given it +to her. As she sat, drawing long breaths that meant the ebbing of +emotion, he let his eyes feed on her face. She was paler than he had +seen her. There were shadows under her eyes, and the lashes on her cheek +looked incredibly long: a curved inky splash. Her hood had fallen back, +but she kept the blue cloak about her to her chin, as if it made a +seclusion, a protection even against him. But it was only an instant +before she withdrew her hands from the blaze and turned to him, with a +little smile. She began to speak at once, as if she had scant time, +either for indulging her own weakness or troubling him. + +"You'll think it's queer," she said. "I've come here routin' you out o' +bed when you've give me that nice place up there to run away to." + +Raven found himself ready to break out into asseverations that it was +the only natural thing for her to do. Where should she go, if not to +him? + +"No," he said, the more gravely because he was counseling himself while +he answered her. "You did right. But," he added, "where's----?" + +She understood. Where was the baby who always made the reason for her +flight? + +"He's up there," she answered, with a motion of her hand toward the +road. + +"In the hut?" he exclaimed. "You left him there?" + +It seemed impossible. + +"Yes," she said quietly, "all soul alone. I run out with him, same as I +always have. I run up there. I found the road all broke out. I wa'n't +surprised. I knew you'd do it. That is, I'd ha' known it if I'd thought +anything about it. An' I found the key an' started the fire. An' then I +knew I'd got to see you this night, an' I put him on the lounge an' set +chairs so's he wouldn't fall out, an' packed him round with pillers, an' +locked him in an' left him." + +She paused and Raven nodded at her as if he wanted to find it as simple +as it seemed to her. + +"You see, I couldn't bring him down here," she said. "He might cry. An' +there's Charlotte. An' Jerry. An' the young man. I'm sorry the young man +see me. That's too bad." + +"It's all right," said Raven briefly, though he was aware it was, from +Dick's present point of view, all wrong. "I'll attend to that." + +"He's safe enough," said Tira, her eyes darkening as she recurred to the +baby. "If he cries, 'twon't do no hurt up there. Well!" She seemed to +remind herself that there was much to say. "I must be gittin' along with +my story." She looked at him in a most moving wistfulness, and added: "I +got scared." + + + + +XXXII + + +Raven gave his answering nod. That seemed to be about all he could +respond with, in his danger of saying the rash thing. + +"Yes," he said, "scared. Same way?" + +"No," she said. "Worse. I guess I never've been so scared. An' I've got +myself to thank. You see, last night----" + +"Yes," said Raven. "I got wind of it last night." + +This, though it puzzled her, she could not stay to follow out, with the +baby up in the hut defended only by pillows and Tenney perhaps turning +to ask: "You there?" + +"You see," she said, "it's his crutch." + +"You mean," supplied Raven, brute anger rising up in him against brute +man, "he's struck you with it?" + +"No, no," she hastened to assure him. "He ain't even threatened me. Only +somehow it was like his havin' somethin' always by him, somethin' he +could strike with, an'--I dunno what come over me--I burnt it up." + +At once Raven faced the picture of it, the mad impulse, the resulting +danger. But he would not add his apprehensiveness to hers. + +"I dunno," she said, "as you'll hardly see what I mean: but it begun to +look kinder queer to me, that crutch did. All I could think of was how +much better 'twould be for everybody concerned if 'twas burnt up." + +"Yes," said Raven. "I see. We all feel so sometimes, when we're tired +out." The moderation of these words but ill expressed his tumultuous +mind. That was it, his passionate understanding told him. The natural +world throws its distorted shadows, and our eyes have to be at their +strongest not to recoil in panic, while we turn back to strike. "And," +he said, because she seemed to be mired here in the bog of her own +wonderment, "in the morning of course he found it out." + +The strangest look came into her face: she was horrified, and more than +that, indubitably more, she was perplexed. + +"Yes," she said, "he found it out. 'Course he found it out first thing, +'fore he dressed him even. I got up early an' made the fires. I've been +makin' 'em sence he's laid up. So I don't know no more'n the dead how he +looked when it first come over him the crutch wa'n't there. But he come +out int' the kitchen--I'd been t' the barn then an' give the cows some +fodder--an' he carried a cane, his gran'ther's it was, same's the +crutch. It's got a crook handle, an' I've kep' it in the chimney corner +to pull down boxes an' things from the upper cupboard. An' he went out +to the barn an' come in an' eat his breakfast, an' eat his dinner an' +his supper, when they come round, an' we done the barn work together, +an' he ain't mentioned the crutch from first to last." + +"Well," said Raven, in a futile reassurance, "perhaps he thinks he's +left it somewhere, and if he doesn't particularly need it--Jerry told me +only this morning the doctor said he might as well be getting used to a +cane." + +"No," said Tira conclusively, "he don't think he's left it anywheres. +He's keepin' still, that's all." + +Immediately Raven saw the menacing significance of Tenney's keeping +still. His mind ran with a quick foot over the imprisonment of the two +there together. Was there a moment, he wondered, when the suffering +brute was not threatening to her, when her heart could rest itself for +the next hurried flight? He ventured his question. + +"Has he been"--he hesitated for a word and found what sounded to him a +mawkish one--"good to you at all, these last weeks?" + +Tira reflected a moment and then, for the first time since she came in +from the cold, the blood rushed to her haggard cheeks. She remembered a +moment, the day before the burning of the crutch, when he had found her +doing her hair before the bedroom glass and had caught her to him +wildly. She had put him away from her, though gently, because his +violence, whether it took the form of starved passion or raging hate, +always seemed to her the unbecoming riot of a forward child, and he had +left her in a shamefaced anger, a grumbling attempt to recover his lost +dignity. Tira hid even from herself the miserable secrets of marital +savagery. No sacrifice was too great to hide from Tenney her knowledge +of his abasement. Most of all must she hide it from another man, and +that man Raven. Her answer was not ready, but she had it for him, and he +understood, in his unfailing knowledge of her, that it was the first +crooked one she had ever given him, and for the first time he felt anger +toward her. She was defending her enemy, and against him. + +"He does the best he can," she said. "He takes things terrible hard. I +dunno's I ever see anybody that took 'em so hard." + +Then, as he did not speak, she looked at him and meeting the cold +unresponsiveness in his face her composure broke and she stretched out +her hands to him in a wildness of entreaty. + +"Oh, don't you look like that," she cried. "If you turn from me 'twill +be my death." + +He was not cold now. He bent to her and took her hands in his. + +"Tira," he said, "come away with me. You can't bear this any longer. +Take the child and come. You'd be safe. You'd be happy, if you weren't +afraid. Don't go back there for another minute. Stay here over night, +and to-morrow I'll take you away." + +He was looking at her, his eyes holding hers as his hands held her +hands. And, whatever he had meant, the strangest, swiftest retribution +of his life came to him through the change in her face. How could flesh +and muscle bring about such an alteration in human line and texture, the +Mother of Sorrows transformed to a Medusa head? Her lips parted, +trembling over words they could not bring themselves to say. Her eyes +widened into darkness. Her brows drew together in a pitiful questioning. +And her voice, when she did speak, was a vibrating protest against what +her eyes knew and her mind. + +"You don't mean," she said, "_that_?" + +Raven dropped her hands as if they had struck him. The question was a +rushing commentary on his life and hers. Was he, she meant, only another +actor in this drama of man's hunger and savagery? Was he a trader in the +desire of beauty, that tragic dower nature had thrown over her like a +veil, so that whoever saw it with a covetous eye, longed to possess and +rend it? Probably Tira never did what would be called thinking. But her +heart had a vital life of its own, her instinct was the genius of +intuition. He had been kind to her, compassionate. She had built up a +temple out of her trust in him, and now he had smoked the altar with the +incense that was rank in her nostrils. He had brought, not flowers and +fruits, but the sacrifice of blood. And he, on his part, what did he +think? Only that he must save her. + +"No, Tira," he said, "I don't mean that. I mean--what you want me to +mean. You can't understand what it is to a man to know you're afraid, to +know you're in danger and he can't help you. I didn't ask you as I +ought. I asked you to come away with me. I ask you again. Come away with +me and I'll take you to the best place I know. I'll take you to Nan." + +He had not guessed he was going to say this. Only, as he spoke, he knew +in his inner mind the best place was Nan. Suddenly she seemed to be in +the room with them. What was it but her cool fragrant presence? And she +understood. Tira might not. She might feel these turbid waves of his +response to he knew not what: the beauty and mystery of the world, the +urge of tyrant life, all bound up in the presence of this one woman. She +was woman, hunted and oppressed. He was man, created, according to the +mandate of his will, to save or to undo her. But the world and the +demands of it, clean or unclean, could not be taken at a gulp. He must +get hold of himself and put his hand on Tira's will. For she could only +be saved against her own desire. Whatever he had seemed to ask her, or +whatever his naked mind and rebellious lips had really asked, he could +not beg her to forgive him. He must not own to a fault in their +relation, lest he seem, as he had at that moment, an enemy the more. + +"That's exactly what you must do," he said. "You must let me take you to +Nan." + +A soft revulsion seemed to melt her to an acquiescence infinitely +grateful to her. + +"That," she said, "was what I had in mind. If she'd take him--the +baby--an' put him somewhere. She said there were places. She said so +herself. I dunno's you knew it, but she talked to me about him. She said +there was ways folks know now about doin' things for 'em when they ain't +right, an' makin' the most you can of 'em. She told me if I said the +word, she'd come here an' carry him back with her." + +"But," said Raven, "what about you? I'm ready to stand by the child, +just as Nan is. But I'm doing it for your sake. What about you?" + +"Oh," said Tira, with a movement of her eloquent hands, as if she tossed +away something that hindered her, "tain't no matter about me. I've got +to stay here. Mr. Raven"--her voice appealed to him sweetly. He +remembered she had not so used his name before--"I told you that. I +can't leave him." + +The last word she accented slightly, and Raven could not tell whether +the stress on it was the tenderness of affection, or something as +moving, yet austere. And now he had to know. + +"You want to stay with him"----he began, and Tira interrupted him +softly, looking at him meantime, as if she besought him to understand: + +"I promised to." + +Raven sat there and looked into the fire, thinking desperately. At that +moment, he wanted nothing in the world so much as to snatch her away +from Tenney and set her feet in a safe place. But did he want it solely +for her or partly for himself? What did it matter? Casuistry was far +outside the tumult of desire. He would kick over anything, law or +gospel, to keep her from going back there this night. Yet he spoke +quietly: + +"We'll go up and get the baby, and I'll call Charlotte, and you'll stay +here to-night. To-morrow we'll go." + +"No," said Tira, gently but immovably, "I couldn't have Charlotte an' +Jerry brought into it. Not anyways in the world." + +"Why not?" asked Raven. + +"I couldn't," she said. "They're neighbors. They're terrible nice folks, +but folks have to talk--they can't help it--an', 'fore you knew it, it'd +be all over the neighborhood. An' he's a professin' Christian. 'Twould +be terrible for him." + +Sometimes he only knew from the tone of her voice, in this general +vagueness of expecting him to understand her, whether she meant Tenney +or the child. + +"What I thought was," she went on timidly, "if she'd come an' git +him"--and here "him" evidently meant the child--"'twould be reasonable +she was takin' him back where he could be brought up right. She'd just +as soon do it," she assured him earnestly, as if he had no part in Nan. +"Some folks are like that. They're so good." + +He was insatiate in his desire to understand her. + +"And you mean," he said, with a directness he was willing to tincture +with a cruelty sharp enough to serve, "to send the child off somewhere +where he will be safe, and then live here with this brute, have more +children by him----" + +"No! no!" she cried sharply. "Not that! don't you say that to me. I +can't bear it. Not from you! My God help me! not from you." + +He understood her. She loved him. He was set apart by her overwhelming +belief in him, but she was in all ways, the ways of the flesh as well as +the spirit, consecrated to him. Her body might become the prey of man's +natural cruelty, and yet, while she wept her tears of blood in this +unreasoning slavery, she held one worship. There he would be alone. The +insight of the awakened mind told him another thing: that, in spite of +her despairing loyalty, he could conquer her scruples. He could, by the +sheer weight of a loving will, force her to follow him. A warm entreaty, +one word of his own need, and she would answer. And while he thought, +the jungle feeling came upon him, hot, hateful to his conscious mind, +the feeling of the complexity of it all, strange beasts of emotion out +for prey, the reason drugged with nature's sophistries. The jungle! That +was what Nan had called it, this welter of human misery. Who else had +been talking to him about it? Why, Old Crow! He had not called it the +jungle, but he had been lost in its tortuous ways. This prescience to +Old Crow brought a queer feeling, as if a cool air blew on him. The +jungle feeling passed. Almost he had the vision of an eternal city, +built up by the broken but never wholly failing strength of man, and Old +Crow there beckoning him into it and telling him he'd kept a place for +him. And the cool breeze which was Old Crow told him that although Tira +must be rescued, if it could be brought about, it must not be through +any of the jungle ways. She must not be drugged by jungle odors and +carried off unwillingly, even to the Holy City itself, by that road. He +and Tira--yes, he and Tira and Nan--would march along together with +their eyes open. He hastened to speak, to commit himself to what he must +deliberately wish: + +"Then we'll telephone Nan." + +She looked at him, all gratitude. Her friend had gone away into strange +dark corners of life where only her instinct followed him, and here he +was back again. + +"No," she said, "don't you telephone. Somebody'd listen in. You write. I +guess mebbe nothin'll happen right off, even if I did burn the crutch. I +guess I got kinder beside myself to-night. I ain't likely to be so +ag'in." + +"I'll walk up to the hut with you," said Raven, rising as she did, "and +see you safe inside." + +"No," said she, "I couldn't let you no ways. It's bad enough as 'tis." + +By this she meant the paragraph in the paper which had laid an insulting +finger on him; but he had not seen it and did not understand. Only it +was plain to him that she would not let him go. She drew her hood up, +and made it secure under her chin. Then she looked at him and smiled a +little. She had to smile, her woman's instinct told her, to reassure +him. She opened the door, and though he followed her quickly, had +slipped through the outer door as softly and was gone. He stood there on +the sill watching her hurrying to the road. When she had turned to the +right, she began to run, and he went down the path after her to look up +the road, lest she had seen something pursuing her. But the night was +still. There was no sound of footsteps on the snow, and the far-off +barking of a fox made the silence more complete. She was only hurrying, +because her mother heart had wakened suddenly to the loneliness of the +child up there among the pillows, torturing herself with wonders that +she could leave him. He went out into the road and continued on her +track, until he saw her turn into the woods. Then, waiting until she +should be far enough in advance not to catch the sound of his pursuit, +he suddenly heard footsteps on the road and turned. A man was coming +rapidly. It was Dick. + + + + +XXXIII + + +In his relief--for, in spite of the man's lameness, he had made sure it +was Tenney--Raven laughed out. At once he sobered, for why was Dick here +but to spy on him? + +"Well," he inquired brusquely, "what is it?" + +They turned together, and Dick did not speak. When they had gone in and +Raven closed the hall door and glanced at him, he was suddenly aware +that the boy had not spoken because he could not trust himself. His +brows were knit, his face dark with reproachful anger. + +"Think the old man shouldn't have gone out in the cold without his hat +and muffler?" asked Raven satirically. + +"Yes," said Dick, in a quick outburst. "I think just that. It's a risk +you've no business to take. In your condition, too. Oh, yes, I know you +do look fit enough, but you can't depend on that. Besides--Jack, who's +that woman? What's she going up into the woods for? She's not going to +the hut? Is that why----?" + +Raven stood looking at him, studying not so much his face as the +situation. He turned to the library door. + +"Come in, Dick," he said. "We'll talk it out. We can't either of us +sleep." + +Dick followed him in and they took their accustomed chairs. Raven +reached for his pipe, but he did not fill it: only sat holding it, +passing his thumb back and forth over the bowl. He was determining to be +temperate, to be fair. Dick could not forget he was old, but he must +force himself not to gibe at Dick for being young. + +"Do you feel able," he said, "to hear a queer story and keep mum over +it? Or do you feel that a chap like me, who ought to be in the +Psychopathic, hasn't any right to a square deal? When you see me going +off my nut, as you expect, shall you feel obliged to give in your +evidence, same as families do to the doctor and the clergyman if a man's +all in?" + +Dick was straight. + +"I'll do my best," he said. "But a woman--like that--and you meeting her +as you did! It's not like you, Jack. You never'd have done such a thing +in all your born days if you weren't so rattled." + +There were arguments at the back of his mind he could not, in decency, +use. He remembered Raven's look when he drew her in, and the tragic one +that mirrored it: passionate entreaty on the woman's face, on the man's +passionate welcome. As usual, it was the real witnesses of life standing +dumb in the background that alone had the power to convict. But they +could not be brought into court. Custom forbade it, the code between man +and man. Yet there they were, all the same. + +"Well!" said Raven. He had responded with only a little whimsical lift +of the eyebrows to this last. "If you won't trust me, I must you. That's +all there is about it. The woman is our neighbor. Israel Tenney's wife, +and she's in danger of her life from her husband, and she won't leave +him." + +Dick stared as at the last thing he had expected. He shook his head. + +"Too thin," he said. "I've seen Tenney and I've heard him spoken of. +He's a psalm-singing Methody, or something of that sort. Why, I met him +one day, Jerry and I, and he stared at me as if he wanted to know me +again. And Jerry said afterward he was probably going to ask me if I'd +found the Lord; but he changed his mind or something. No, Jack, don't +you be taken in. That woman's pulling your leg." + +"Dick," said Raven, "I've been told you have a very vivid sense of drama +in your narrative verse. You couldn't, by any possibility, apply it to +real life?" + +"Oh, I know," said Dick, "New England's chock full of tragedy. But I +tell you I've seen Tenney. He's only a kind of a Praise-God Barebones. +Put him back a few hundred years, and you'd see him sailing for +Plymouth, for freedom to worship God. (Obstinate, too, like the rest of +'em. He wouldn't worship anybody else's God, only the one he'd set up +for himself.) If his wife didn't mind him, he might pray with her or +growl over the dinner table, but he wouldn't bash her head in. +Understand, Jack, I've seen Tenney." + +"Yes," said Raven drily, "I've seen Tenney, too. And seen him in action. +Now, Dickie, you put away your man-of-the-world attitude toward battle, +murder, and sudden death, and you let me tell you a few things about +Tenney." + +He began with the day when he had found Tira in the woods. He touched on +the facts briefly, omitting to confess what the woman looked to his +dazzled eyes. It was a drawing austerely black and white. Could he tell +anyone--anyone but Nan--how she had seemed to him there, the old, old +picture of motherhood, divine yet human? It was too much to risk. If he +did lay his mind bare about that moment which was his alone, and Dick +met it with his unimaginative astuteness, he could not trust himself to +be patient with the boy. He said little more than that he had given her +the freedom of the hut, and that he meant always to have it ready for +her. Then he came to this last night of all, when she had run away from +Tenney, not because he had been violent, but because he had "kept +still." That did take hold on Dick's imagination, the imagination he +seemed able to divorce from the realities of life and kept for the +printed page. + +"By thunder!" he said. "Burned the crutch, did she? That's a story in +itself, a real story: Mary Wilkins, Robert Frost. That's great!" + +"Sounds pretty big to me," said Raven quietly. "But it's not for print. +See you don't feel tempted to use it. Now, here we are with Tira up +against it. She's got to make a quick decision. And she's made it." + +"Do you call her by her first name?" asked Dick, leaping the main issue +to frown over the one possibly significant of Raven's state of mind. + +"Yes," said Raven steadily, "I rather think I call her by her first +name. I don't know whether I ever have 'to her head,' as Charlotte would +say, but I don't seem to feel like calling her by Tenney's name. Well, +Tira's decided. She's going to give her baby to Nan." + +Dick's eyes enlarged to such an extent, his mouth opened so vacuously, +that Raven laughed out. Evidently Dick wasn't regarding the matter from +Tira's standpoint, or even Raven's now, but his own. + +"Nan!" he echoed, when he could get his lips into action. "Where does +Nan come in?" + +"Oh," said Raven, with a most matter-of-fact coolness, "Nan came in long +ago. I told her about it, and it seems she went to see Tira off her own +bat, and offered to take the baby." + +"She sha'n't do it," proclaimed Dick. "I simply won't have it, that's +all." + +"I fancy," said Raven, "Nan'll tell you you've got nothing whatever to +do with it. And really, Dick, you never'll get Nan by bullying her. +Don't you know you won't?" + +Dick, having a perfectly good chance, turned the tables on him neatly. + +"That'll do," said he, remembering how Raven had shut him up when he +dragged in Anne Hamilton. "We won't discuss Nan." + +Now it was Raven's turn to gape, but on the heels of it, seeing the +neatness of the thrust, he smiled. + +"Right, boy," he said. "Good for you. We won't discuss Nan, and we won't +discuss Tira. But you'll hold your tongue about this business, and if +you find me opening the door of my house at midnight, you'll remember +it's my business, and keep your mouth shut. Now I'm going up the hill to +see she's safe, and if you follow me, in your general policy of keeping +on my trail, I don't quite know what will happen. But something will--to +one of us." + +He got up, went into the hall and found his cap and leather jacket. Dick +meantime stood in the library door regarding him from so troubled a mind +that Raven halted and put a hand on his shoulder. + +"Cut it out, boy," he said, "all this guardian angel business. You let +me alone and I'll let you alone. We're both decent chaps, but when you +begin with your psychotherapy and that other word I don't know how to +pronounce----" + +Dick, having, at this period of his life only an inactive sense of +humor, mechanically supplied it: "Psychiatry." + +"What a beast of a word! Yes, that's it. Well, they're red rags to me, +all these gadgets out of the half-baked mess they've stirred up by +spying on our insides. I can't be half decent to you. But I want to be. +I want us to be decent to each other. It's damnable if we can't. Go to +bed, and I'll run up and see if poor Tira's safe." + +He did not wait for an answer, but went out at the front door, and Dick +heard him whistling down the path. The whistle seemed like an +intentional confirmation of his being in a cheerfully normal frame of +mind, not likely to be led too far afield by premonitions of New England +tragedy. Perhaps that was why he did whistle, for when he reached the +road he stopped and completed the first half of the ascent in silence. +Then, as the whistle might mean something reassuring to Tira, he began +again with a bright loudness, bold as the oriole's song. He reached the +hut, whistling up to the very door, and then his breath failed him on a +note, the place looked so forbiddingly black in the shadow, the woods +were so still. It did not seem possible that a woman's warm heart was +beating inside there, Tira's heart, home of loves unquenchable. He put +his hand down under the stone. The key was there, and rising, he felt +his mind heavy with reproaches of her. She had gone back to Tenney. The +night's work was undone. What was the use of drawing her a step along +the path of safety if she turned back the instant he trusted her alone? +He went down the hill again in a dull distaste for himself. It seemed to +him another man might have managed it better, swept her off her feet and +bound her in an allegiance where she would obey. When he reached his own +house, he was too discontented even to glance at Dick's window and +wonder whether the boy was watching for him. The place was silent, and +he put out the lights and went to bed. + +Next morning he had got hold of himself and, with that obstinate +patience which is living, went to the library after breakfast and called +up Nan. It was wonderful to hear her fresh voice. It broke in upon his +discouragements and made them fly, like birds feeding on evil food. +Would she listen carefully, he asked. Would she translate him, because +he couldn't speak in any detail. And when he had got thus far, he +remembered another medium, and began the story of last night in French. +Nan listened with hardly a commenting word, and when he had finished her +bald answer was ridiculously reassuring. + +"Sure!" said Nan. "I'll be there to-night. Send Jerry for me. Eight +o'clock." + +"God bless you!" said Raven. "You needn't bring any luggage. It'll +probably be wiser to go right back." + +Nan said "Sure!" again, no doubt, Raven thought, as indicating her view +of her errand as a homespun one there was no doubt of her carrying out +with the utmost simplicity. Then he went to tell Jerry he was to meet +the evening train, and on the way he told Dick: + +"Nan's coming to-night." + +"Nan!" said Dick. "Not----" + +"Yes," said Raven. "I telephoned her. Buck up, old man. Here's another +chance for you, don't you see? We're in a nasty hole, Tira and +incidentally Nan and I. Play the game, old son, and help us out." + +"What," inquired Dick, "do you expect me to do?" + +"Chiefly," said Raven, "keep out. It's my game and Nan's and Tira's. But +you play yours. Don't sulk. Show her what a noble Red Man you can be." + +Dick turned away, guiltily, Raven thought, as if he had plans of his +own. What the deuce did he mean to do? But their day passed amicably +enough, though they were not long together. Raven went up to the hut and +stayed most of the afternoon. It was not so much that he expected Tira +to come as that he felt the nearness of her there in the room she had +disarranged with barricading chairs and pillows and then put in order +again before she left. He could see her stepping softly about, with her +deft, ordered movements, making it comely for him to find. She had left +pictures of herself on the air, sad pictures, most of them, telling the +tale of her terror and foreboding, but others of them quite different. +There were moments he remembered when, in pauses of her talk with him, +she glanced at the child, and still others when she sat immobile, her +hands clasped on her knee, her gaze on the fire. Henceforth the hut +would be full of her presence, hers and Old Crow's. And, unlike as they +were, they seemed to harmonize. Both were pitiful and yet austere in +their sincerity; and for both life had been a coil of tangled meanings. +He stayed there until nearly dark, and his musings waxed arid and dull +with the growing chill of the room. For he would not light the fire. It +had to be left in readiness. + +When he went down he found Dick uneasily tramping the veranda. + +"Charlotte wants us to have a cup of tea," said Dick. "She said supper's +put off till they come." + +"They?" inquired Raven. "Who's they?" + +"It's no use, Jack," Dick broke forth. "I might as well tell you. I +s'pose if I didn't you'd kick up some kind of a row later. I telephoned +Mum." + +"You don't mean," said Raven, in a voice of what used to be called +"ominous calm," before we shook off the old catch-words and got +indirections of our own, "you don't mean you've sent for her!" + +"It's no use," said Dick again, though with a changed implication, "you +might as well take things as they are. Nan can't come up here slumming +without an older woman. It isn't the thing. It simply isn't done." + +Raven, through the window, saw Charlotte hovering in the library with +the tea tray. He watched her absently, as if his mind were entirely with +her. Yet really it was on the queerness of things as they are in the +uniform jacket of propriety and the same things when circumstance +thrusts the human creature out of his enveloping customs and sends him +into battle. He thought of Dick's philosophy of the printed word. He +thought of Nan's desperate life of daily emergency in France. Yet they +were all, he whimsically concluded, being squared to Aunt Anne's +rigidity of line. But why hers? Why not Old Crow's? Old Crow would have +had him rescue Tira, even through difficult ways. He opened the door. + +"Come on in," he said. "Charlotte's buttered the toast." + +Dick followed him, and they sat down to their abundant tea, Charlotte +pausing a moment to regard them with her all-enveloping lavishment of +kindliness. Were they satisfied? Could she bring something more? + +"The trouble with you, Dick," said Raven, after his third slice of +toast, buttered, he approvingly noted, to the last degree of drippiness, +"is poverty of invention. You repeat your climax. Now, this sending for +Milly: it's precisely what you did before. That's a mistake the actors +make: repeated farewells." + +Dick made no answer. He, too, ate toast prodigiously. + +"Now," said Raven, when they had finished, "do I understand you mean to +put your mother wise about what I told you last night? Yes or no?" + +"I shall do----" said Dick, and at his pause Raven interrupted him. + +"No, you won't," said he. "You won't do what you think best. Take it +from me, you won't. What I told you wasn't my secret. It's poor Tira's. +If you give her away to your mother--good God! think of it, Milly, with +her expensive modern theories and her psychiatry--got it right, that +time!--muddling up things for a woman like her! Where was I? Well, +simply, if you play a dirty trick like that on me, I'll pack you off, +you and your mother both. I don't like to remind you but, after all, old +man, the place is mine." + +The blood came into Dick's face. He felt misjudged in his affection and +abused. + +"You can't see," he said. "I don't believe it's because you can't. You +won't. It isn't Nan alone. It's you. You're not fit. You're no more fit +than you were when Mum was here before. And you can pack me off, but, by +thunder! I won't go." + +"Very well," said Raven, with a happy inspiration. "You needn't. I'll go +myself. And I'll take Nan with me." A picture of Nan and her own vision +of happy isles came up before him, and he concluded: "Yes, by George! +I'll take Nan. And we'll sail for the Malay Peninsula, or an +undiscovered island, and wear Mother Hubbards and live on breadfruit, +and you and your precious conventions can go to pot." + +So, having soothed himself by his own intemperance, he got up, found his +pipe and a foolish novel he made a point of reading once a year--it +would hardly do to tell what it was, lest the reader of this true story +fail to sympathize with his literary views and so with all his +views--and sat down to await his guests in a serviceable state of good +humor. He had brought Dick to what Charlotte would call "a realizing +sense." He could afford a bit of tolerance. Dick got up and flung out of +the room, finding Raven, he told himself, in one of his extravagant +moods. Nine times out of ten the moods meant nothing. On the other hand, +in this present erratic state of a changed Raven, they might mean +anything. For himself, he was impatient, with the headlong rush of young +love. Nan was coming. She was on the way. Would she be the same, distant +with her cool kindliness, her old lovely self to Raven only, or might +she be changed into the Nan who kissed him that one moment of his need? +He snatched his hat and tore out of the house, and Raven, glancing up +from his novel, saw him striding down the path and thought approvingly +he was a wise young dog to walk off some of his headiness before Nan +came. As for him, he would doze a little over his foolish book, as +became a man along in years. That was what Charlotte would say, "along +in years." Was it so? What a devil of an expression, like all the rest +of them that were so much worse than the thing itself: "elderly," +"middle-aged," what a grotesque vocabulary! And he surprised himself by +throwing his foolish book, with an accurate aim, at a space in the +shelves, where it lodged and hung miserably, and getting up and tearing +down the walk at a pace emulating Dick's, but in the opposite direction: +the result of these athletic measures being that when Amelia and Nan +drove up with Jerry, the station master's pung following with two small +trunks that seemed to wink at Raven, with an implication of their +competitive resolve to stay, two correctly clad gentlemen were waiting +on the veranda in a state of high decorum. As to the decorum, it didn't +last, so far as Raven was concerned. Messages of a mutual understanding +passed between his eyes and Nan's. He burst into sudden laughter, but +Nan, more sagely alive to the dangers of the occasion, kept her gravity. + +"Well," said Amelia, as Raven, still laughing, solicitously lifted her +out, "you seem to be in a very happy frame of mind. I'm glad you _can_ +laugh." + + + + +XXXIV + + +Thereafter they all behaved as if they had separated yesterday and +nothing was more natural than to find themselves together again. Amelia, +with bitterness in her heart, accepted the room she again longed to +repudiate, and Nan, with a lifted eyebrow at Raven, as if wondering +whether she'd really better be as daring as he indicated, followed +Charlotte up the stairs. At supper they talked decorously of the state +of the nation, which Raven frankly conceived of as going to the dogs, +and Amelia upheld, from an optimism which assumed Raven to be amenable +to only the most hopeful of atmospheres. After supper, when they +hesitated before the library door, Nan said quite openly, as one who has +decided that only the straight course will do: + +"Rookie, could I see you a minute? In the dining-room?" She took in +Amelia with her frank smile. "Please, Mrs. Powell! It's business." + +"Certainly," Amelia said, rather stiffly. "Come, Dick. We'll keep up the +fire." + +They had evidently, she and Dick, resolved, though independently of each +other, to behave their best, and Dick, in excess of social virtue, shut +the library door, so that no wisp of talk would float that way and +settle on them. Nan confronted Raven with gayest eyes. + +"Did you ever!" she said, recurring to the Charlottian form of comment. +"At the last minute, if you please, when I was taking the train. There +she was behind me. We talked all the way, 'stiddy stream' (Charlotte!) +and not a thing you could put your finger on. Did he send for her?" + +"I rather think so," said Raven, giving Dick every possible advantage. +Then, rallied by her smiling eyes, "Well, yes, of course he did. Don't +look at me like that. I have to turn myself inside out, you she-tyrant!" + +"Does Dick know?" she hastened to ask. "About Tira?" + +"Yes." + +"Know what I'm here for?" + +"Yes." + +"Given his word not to blab? Hope to die?" That was their childish form +of vow, hers and Dick's. + +"I hope so," said Raven doubtfully. "I represented it to him as being +necessary." + +"I'll represent it, too," said Nan. "Now, Rookie, I'm going over there, +first thing to-morrow morning. I'm going to see Tenney." + +"The deuce you are! I'm afraid that won't do." + +"Nothing else will," said Nan. "Tenney's got to give his consent. We +can't do any kidnaping business. That's no good." + +She said it with the peremptory implication of extinguishing middle-aged +scruples, and Raven also felt it to be "no good." + +"Very well," said he. "You know best. I'll go with you." + +"Oh, no, you won't. There are too many men-folks in it now. I'm going +alone. Now, come back and talk to the family. Oh, I hope and pray +Dick'll be good! Doesn't he look dear to-night, all red, as if he'd been +logging? Has he? Have you? You look just the same. Oh, I do love Dick! I +wish he'd let me, the way I want to." + +Meantime Charlotte had come in, and Nan went to her and put her hands on +her shoulders and rubbed cheeks, as she used to do with Raven. + +"Come on," she said to him. "Time!" + +So they went into the library and conversed, with every conventional +flourish, until Amelia set the pace of retirement by a ladylike yawn. +But she had a word to say before parting, reserved perhaps to the last +because she found herself doubtful of Raven's response. If she had to be +snubbed she could simply keep on her way out of the room. + +"John," said she, at the door, with the effect of a sudden thought, "how +about Anne's estate? Are they getting it settled?" + +Raven hesitated a perceptible instant. He somehow had an idea the estate +was an affair of his, not to say Nan's. + +"I suppose so," he answered, frowning. "Whitney's likely to do the right +thing." + +Amelia was never especially astute in the manner of danger signals. + +"I suppose," she said, "you've made up your mind what to invest in. Or +are the things in pretty good shape? Can you leave them as they are?" + +Dick was standing by the hearth, wishing hard for a word with Nan. She +had smiled at him once or twice, so peaceably! The next step might be to +a truce and then everlasting bliss. Now, suddenly aware of his mother, +he ungratefully kicked the fire that was making him such pretty dreams, +went to her, took her by the arm and proceeded with her across the hall. + +"You talk too much," said Dick, when he had her inside her room. "Don't +you know better than to drag in Miss Anne? He's touchy as the devil." + +"Then he must get over it," said Amelia, in her best manner of the +intelligent mentor. "Of course, she was a great loss to him." + +"Don't you believe it," said Dick conclusively. "She had her paw on him. +What the deuce is it in him that makes all the women want to dry-nurse +him and build him up and make him over?" + +Then he wondered what Nan was saying to Raven at the moment, remembered +also Raven's injunction to play a square game with her and, though his +feet were twitching to carry him back to the library, sat doggedly down +at his mother's hearth and encouraged her to talk interminably. Amelia +was delighted. She didn't know Dick had so earnest an interest in the +Federation of Clubs and her popular course in economics. She was +probably never more sustainedly intelligent than in that half hour, +until Dick heard Nan going up to bed, sighed heavily, and lost interest +in the woman citizen. + +Nan and Raven, standing by the fire, in their unexpected minute of +solitude, looked at each other and smiled in recognizing that they were +alone and that when that happened things grew simple and straight. To +Raven there was also the sense of another presence. Anne had somehow +been invoked. Amelia, with her unfailing dexterity in putting her foot +in, had done it: but still there Anne was, with the unspoken question on +her silent lips. What was he going to do? He knew her wish. Presently he +would have her money. He caught the interrogation in Nan's eyes. What +was he going to do? + +"I don't know, Nan," he said. "I don't know." + +"Never mind," said Nan. "You'll know when the time comes." + +And he was aware that she was still in her mood of forcing him on to +make his own decisions. But, easily as he read her mind, there were many +things he did not see there. It was a turmoil of questions, and of these +the question of Aunt Anne was least. Did he love Tira? This headed the +list. Did he want to tear down his carefully built edifice of culture +and the habit of conventional life, and run away with Tira to elemental +simplicities and sweet deliriums? And if he did love Tira, if he did +want to tear down his house of life and live in the open, she would help +him. But all she said was: + +"Good night, Rookie. I'm sleepy, too." + +To leap a dull interval of breakfast banalities is to find Nan, on a +crisp day, blue above and white below, at the Tenneys' door. Tira, +frankly apprehensive, came to let her in. Tira had had a bad night. The +burning of the crutch fanned a fire of torment in her uneasy mind. She +had hardly slept, and though she heard Tenney's regular breathing at her +side, she began to have a suspicion it was not a natural breathing. She +was persuaded he meant now to keep track of her, by night as well as +day. It began to seem to her a colossal misfortune that the crutch was +not there leaning against the foot of the bed, and now its absence was +not so much her fault as a part of its own malice. Nan, noting the worn +pallor of her face and the dread in her eyes, gathered that Tenney was +at home. She put out her hand, and Tira, after an instant's hesitation, +gave hers. Nan wondered if she were in a terror wild enough to paralyze +her power of action. Still, she had given her hand, and when Nan stepped +up on the sill, with a cheerful implication of intending, against any +argument, to come in, she stood aside and followed her. But at the +instant of her stepping aside, Nan was aware that she threw both hands +up slightly. It was the merest movement, an unstudied gesture of +despair. Tenney was sitting by the kitchen stove, and Nan went to him +with outstretched hand. + +"I thought I should find you if I came early enough," she said. "How's +your foot?" + +She had a direct address country folk liked. She was never "stand-off," +"stuck-up." It was as easy talking with her as with John Raven. + +"Some better, I guess," said Tenney. He eyed her curiously. Had Raven +sent her, for some hidden reason, to spy out the land? + +"You get round, don't you?" pursued Nan. + +She took the chair Tira brought her and regarded him across the shining +stove. Tira withdrew to a distance, and stood immovable by the scullery +door, as if, Nan thought, she meant to keep open her line of retreat. + +"No," said Tenney grimly, "I don't git about much. Three times a day I +git from the house to the barn. I expect to do better, as time goes on. +I've got my eye on a cord wood stick, an' I'm plannin' how I can whittle +me out a crutch." + +Nan, glancing at Tira, caught the tremor that went over her and +understood this was, in a veiled way, a threat. She came, at a leap, to +the purpose of her call. + +"Mr. Tenney," she said, "I'm an awfully interfering person. I've come to +ask you and your wife to let me do something." + +Tenney was staring at her with lacklustre eyes. In these latter days, +the old mad spark in them had gone. + +"Your baby," said Nan, feeling her heart beat hard, "isn't right. I know +places where such poor little children are made--right--if they can be. +They're studied and looked after. I want you to let me take him away +with me and see if something can be done. His mother could go, too, if +she likes. You could go. Only, I'll be responsible. I'll arrange it +all." + +Tenney still stared at her, and she found the dull gaze disconcerting. + +"So," he said at length, not even glancing at Tira, "so she's put that +into your head." + +"So far as that goes," said Nan boldly, "I've put it into hers. I saw he +wasn't right. I told her I'd do everything in my power, in anybody's +power, to have him"--she hesitated here for a homely word he might take +in--"seen to. And now (you're his father) I've come to you." + +Tenney sat a long time, motionless, his eyes on the window at the end of +the room where a woodbine spray was tapping, and again Nan became +conscious of the increased tremor in Tira's frame. For now it seemed to +have run over her and strangely to keep time to the woodbine spray +outside. One would have said the woodbine, looking in, had, in a mad, +irritating way, made itself the reflex of these human emotions within +the room. Tenney spoke, drily yet without emphasis: + +"Then he put ye up to this?" + +"Who?" asked Nan. + +For some obscure reason he would not mention Raven's name. But he spoke +with a mildness of courtesy surprising to her and evidently the more +alarming to Tira, for she shook the more and the vine appallingly knew +and kept her company. + +"I'm obleeged to ye," said Tenney. "But I don't want nothin' done for me +nor mine. He's mine, ye see. He's in there asleep"--he pointed to the +open bedroom door--"an' asleep or awake, he's mine, same's any man's +property is his. An' if he ain't right, he ain't, an' I know why, an' +it's the will o' the Lord, an' the Lord's will is goin' to be fulfilled +now an' forever after, amen!" + +The tang of scripture phrasing led him further to the channel his mind +was always fumbling for. + +"Do you," he asked Nan, not with any great show of fervor, but as if +this were his appointed task, "do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ +yet? Be ye saved?" + +"Mr. Tenney," said Nan, "I don't care a scrap whether I'm saved or not, +if I can make this world swing a little easier on its hinges." That +seemed to her a figure not markedly vivid, and she continued. "It needs +a sight of oiling. Don't you see it does? O, Mr. Tenney, think of the +poor little boy that's got to live along"--the one phrase still seemed +to her the best--"not right, and grow to be a man, and you may die and +leave him, and his mother may die. What's he going to do then?" + +"No," said Tenney quietly, with the slightest glance at Tira in her +tremor there by the door, "I ain't goin' to die, not this v'y'ge. If +anybody's goin' to, it ain't me." + +"O Isr'el!" said Tira. Her voice rose scarcely above a whisper and she +bent toward him in a beseeching way as if she might, in another instant, +run to him. "You let him go. You an' me'll stay here together, long as +we live. There sha'n't nothin' come betwixt us, Isr'el." In this Nan +heard a hidden anguish of avowal. "But you let him go." + +Tenney did not regard her. He spoke, pointedly to Nan: + +"I'm obleeged to ye." He rose from his chair. He was dismissing her. His +action approached a dignity not to be ignored, and Nan also rose. + +"I sha'n't give it up," she said. "I shall come again." + +She tried to smile at him with composure, including Tira in the +friendliness of it, but Tira, oblivious of her, was staring at Tenney, +and Nan found herself outside, trouble in her mind. Tira had not gone to +the door with her. She had staid still staring, in that fixed +interrogation, at Tenney. He looked at her now, met her eyes, and gave a +little grimace. He had done well, the movement said. He had seen through +it all. He was pleased with himself. Now he spoke to her, so affably +that she frowned with perplexity at finding him kind. + +"'Tain't so terrible hard," said Tenney, "to see through folks, once ye +set your mind on it. He started her out on that, he an' you together, +mebbe. ''F I git rid o' the young one,' you says, 'I shall have more +freedom to range round, outdoor.' Mebbe you said it to him. Mebbe he +said it to you. Mebbe 'twas t'other one--Martin--that said it an' you +took it up. No, 'tain't so hard to see through folks, once ye git a +start." + +He turned and took, with a difficulty half assumed, the few steps to the +wood-box, selected a couple of sticks and, with a quiet deftness that +seemed to indicate a mind bent only on the act itself, put them in the +stove. Tira watched him, fascinated by him, the strength in abeyance, +the wayward will. When he set on the stove cover, it seemed to break the +spell of her rigidity and she turned, hurried into the scullery and came +back. She had, he saw, a knife. That was not alarming. It was a small +kitchen knife, but he recognized it as the one she made a great fuss +about, asking him to sharpen it often and keeping it for special use. +But she gripped it strangely. Besides, there was the strangeness of her +face. + +"Here! here!" he said. "What you doin' o' that knife?" + +Tira was not thinking of him. She had gone, with her quick, lithe step, +to the window where the vine was tapping, and thrown it up. + +"Here!" he called again, his uneasiness shifting; whatever a woman was +doing, with a face like that, she must be stopped. "What you openin' +winders for, a day like this, coldin' off the room?" + +Tira reached out and seized the woodbine spray, cut it savagely and then +shut the window. She came back with the spray in her hand, took off the +stove cover and thrust it in, twining and writhing as if it had life and +rebelled against the flame. + +"There!" she said. "I ain't goin' to have no vines knockin' at winders +an' scarin' anybody to death." + +Then she went into the scullery and put the knife in its place, blade up +in a little frame over the sink, and came back into the bedroom where +the child was whimpering. She stayed there a long time, and Tenney stood +where she left him, listening for her crooning song. When it began, as +it did presently, he gave a nod of relief and started moving about the +room. Once he went into the scullery, and Tira heard him pumping. But +when she had got the child dressed, and had gone out there herself, to +prepare the vegetables for dinner, she put her hand mechanically, +without looking, on the rack above the sink. The hand knew what it +should find, but it did not find it. The knife was gone. Tira stood a +long time looking, not at the empty place, but down at her feet. It was +not alarming to miss the knife. It was reassuring. It was not to be +believed, yet she must believe it. Tenney was taking precautions. He was +afraid. + +Nan, halfway home, met Raven. He had been walking up and down, to meet +her. Defeat, he saw, with a glance at her face. + +"Yes," said Nan, coming up with him. "No go, Rookie. He was civil. But +he was dreadful. I don't know whether I should have known it, but it's +the way she looked at him. Rookie, she was scared blue." + +Raven said nothing. He felt a poor stick indeed, to have brought Nan +into it and given her over to defeat. + +"Can't we walk a spell?" said she. "Couldn't we take the back road to +the hut? I do so want to talk to you." + +They turned back and passed the Tenneys' at a smart pace. Raven gave the +house a swift glance. He was always expecting to hear Tira cry out, she +who never did and who, he knew, would endure torture like an Indian. +They turned into the back road where the track was soft with the latest +snow, and came into the woods again opposite the hut. When they reached +it and Raven put down his hand for the key, Nan asked: + +"Does she come here often?" + +"Not lately," he said, fitting the key in the lock. "She had rather a +quiet time of it while he was lame." + +They went in and Nan kept on her coat while he lighted the fire and +piled on brush. + +"Rookie," she said, when he had it leaping, "it's an awful state of +things. The man's insane." + +"No," said Raven, "I don't feel altogether sure of that. We're too ready +to call a man insane, now there's the fashion of keeping tabs. Look at +me. I do something outside the ordinary--I kick over the traces--and +Milly says I'm to go to the Psychopathic. Dick more than half thinks so, +too. Perhaps I ought. Perhaps most of us ought. We deflect just enough +from what the majority are thinking and doing to warrant them in +shutting us up. No, I don't believe you could call him insane." + +They talked it out from all quarters of argument. Nan proposed emergency +activities and Raven supplied the counter reason, always, he owned, +going back to Tira's obstinacy. Nan was game to kidnap the child, even +from Tira's arms. Couldn't be done, Raven told her. Not longer ago than +yesterday, Tira would have consented, but now, he reminded her, Tenney's +crazy mind was on him. Yes, it was a crazy mind, he owned, but Tenney +was not on that account to be pronounced insane. He couldn't be shut up, +at least without Tira's concurrence. And she never would concur. She +had, if you could put it so, an insane determination equal in measure to +Tenney's insane distrust, to keep the letter of her word. Then, Nan +argued, Tira and the child together must go back with her. To Tenney, +used only to the remote reaches of his home, the labyrinth of city life +was impenetrable. He couldn't possibly find them. He wouldn't be +reasonable enough, intelligent enough, to take even the first step. And +Raven could stay here and fight out the battle. Tenney wouldn't do +anything dramatically silly. Tira was "'way off" in fearing that. He +would only fix Raven with those unpleasant eyes and ask if he were +saved. Very well, Raven agreed. It was worth trying. They must catch the +first chance of seeing Tira alone. + +Then, though his mind was on Tira, it reverted to Anne. Again she seemed +to be inexorably beside him, reminding him, with that delicate touch of +her invisible finger, that he was not thinking of her, not even putting +his attention uninterruptedly on what she had bidden him do: her last +request, he seemed to hear her remonstrating, half sighing it to +herself, as if it were only one more of the denials life had made her. +Even if he did not agree with her, in his way of taking things (throwing +away his strength, persuading young men to throw away theirs, that the +limited barbarism called love of country might be served) could he not +act for her, in fulfilling her rarer virtue of universal love? + +"I tell you what, Nan," he said, with a leap from Tira to the woman more +potent now in her unseen might than she had ever been when her subtle +ways of mastery had been in action before him, "it's an impossible +situation." + +How did she know he was talking, not of Tira but of Anne? Yet she did +know. There had been a moment's pause and perhaps her mind leaped with +his. + +It was, she agreed, impossible. Yet, after all, so many things weren't, +that looked so at the start. Think of surgery: the way they'd both seen +men made over. Well! He didn't remind her that they had also seen a +mountain of men, if fate had piled their bodies as high as it was piling +the fame of their endeavor, who couldn't be made over. + +"If we refuse her," he said--and though Nan was determined he should +make his decision alone, she loved him for the coupling of their +intent--"we seem to repudiate her. And that's perfectly devilish, with +her where she is." + +It was devilish, Nan agreed. Her part here seemed to be acquiescence in +his attitude of mind, going step by step with him as he broke his path. + +"And," said Raven, lapsing into a confidence he had not meant to +make--for would Anne in her jealous possessiveness, allow him to share +one intimate thought about her, especially with Nan?--"the strange part +of it is, I do seem to feel she's somewhere. I seem to feel she's here. +Reminding me, you know, just as a person can by looking at you, though +he doesn't say a word. Have you felt that? Do you now?" + +"No," said Nan, with her uncalculated decisiveness that made you sure +she was not merely speaking the truth as she saw it, but that she did +see it clearly. "I have felt it, though, about other people. About two +or three of the boys over there, you know. They were the ones I knew +rather well. And Old Crow! up here, Rookie, alone with you, I have that +sense of Old Crow's being alive, very much alive. Is it the thoughts +he's left behind him, written on the air, or is it really Old Crow?" + +"The air's been changed a good many times since he was here," said Raven +lightly. It was not good for little girls to be wrestling forever with +things formless and dark. + +"Oh," said she, "but there's something left. Our minds make pictures. +They don't get rubbed out. Why, I can see old Billy Jones sitting here +and Old Crow bandaging his legs, and your mother and little Jack coming +up to bring things in a basket. You can say that's because Old Crow told +it so vividly I can't get it out of my mind. But that isn't all. Things +don't get rubbed out." + + + + +XXXV + + +The next day Raven saw Tenney driving by, probably to the street where +all the neighbors went for supplies. Up to this time Jerry had offered, +whenever he was going, to do Tira's "arrants," and Tenney had even +allowed him to bring home grain. Raven at once summoned Nan. It was +their chance. Tira must be taken by storm. Let her leave the house as it +was and run away. Nan hurried on her things, and they went up the road. + +"There she is," said Nan, "at the window." + +Raven, too, saw her white face for the moment before it disappeared. She +was coming, he thought, making haste to let them in. He knocked and +waited. No one came. He knocked again, sharply, with his stick, and +then, in the after silence, held his breath to listen. It seemed to him +he had never heard a house so still. That was the way his mind absurdly +put it: actively, ominously still. + +"She was at the window," said Nan, in a tone that sounded to him as +apprehensive as the beating of his own heart. "I saw her." + +He knocked again and, after another interval, the window opened above +their heads and Tira leaned over the sill. + +"You go away," she said quietly, yet with a thrilling apprehension. "I +can't let you in." + +They stepped back from the door and looked up at her. She seemed even +thinner than when Nan had seen her last, and to Raven all the sorrows of +woman were darkling in the anguish of her eyes. He spoke quietly, making +his voice reassuring to her. + +"Why can't you? Have you been told not to?" + +"No," said Tira, quick, he thought, to shield her persecutor, "nobody's +said a word. But they've gone off, an' you can't be certain when they'll +be back." + +"Hasn't he gone to the street?" Raven asked her, and now her voice, in +its imploring hurry, could not urge him earnestly enough. + +"He said he was goin'. You can't tell. He may turn round an' come back. +An' I wouldn't have you here--either o' you--for anything in this +world." + +But though she said "either of you," her eyes were on Raven, beseeching +him to go. He did not answer that. In a few words he set forth their +plan. She was to take the child and come. It was to be now. But she +would hardly listen. + +"No," she called, in any pause between his words. "No! no! no!" + +"Don't you want to save the child?" Raven asked her sternly. "Have you +forgotten what may happen to him?" + +She had her answer ready. + +"It's his," she said. "He spoke the truth, though it wa'n't as he mean +it. But the baby's his, an' baby as he is, an' _as_ he is, he's got to +fight it out along o' me. You go now, an' don't you come a-nigh me +ag'in. An' if you stay here knockin' at my door, I'll scream so's I +sha'n't hear you." + +She withdrew her head from the window, but instantly looked out again. + +"God Almighty bless you!" she said. "But you go! you go!" + +"Tira!" called Raven sharply, "don't you know you're in danger? Don't +you know if anything happens to you it'll----" He paused, and Nan +wondered if he meant to say, "It will break my heart!" and scarcely felt +the pain of it, she was so tense with misery for them both. + +Tira leaned out again and seemed to bend even protectingly toward them. +She smiled at them, and the softening of her face was exquisite. + +"I ain't in danger," she said. "I've said things to him. He's afraid." + +"Threatened him?" Raven asked. + +"I've kep' tellin' him," said Tira, in that same tone of tender +reasonableness such as mothers use when they persuade children to the +necessities of things, "he must remember we ain't alone. An' somehow it +seems to scare him. He don't see Him as I do: the Lord Jesus Christ." + +She shut the window quietly, and Raven and Nan went away. They walked +soberly home without a word, but when Nan was taking off her hat she +heard bells and went to the library window. Raven was standing by the +table, trying to find some occupation to steady his anxious mind. + +"Look!" said Nan. + +It was Tenney, and he was "whipping up." + +"She knew, didn't she?" commented Nan, and he answered: + +"Yes, she knew." + +Here his trouble of mind broke forth. He had to be enlightened. A woman +must guess what a woman thought. + +"I can't understand her," he said. "I believe I have understood her, up +to now. But to say the child's got to bear it with her! Why, a woman's +feeling about her child! It's as old as the world. A woman will +sacrifice herself, but she won't sacrifice her child." + +He looked at her with such trouble in his face that Nan had to turn +away. He understood her too well. Could he read in her eyes what her +mind had resolved not to tell him? Yet she would tell him. He shouldn't +grope about in the dark among these mysteries. She wanted, as much as +Old Crow wanted it, to be a light to his feet. + +"She would," she told him quietly, "sacrifice herself in a minute. Only +she can't do it the way we've offered her, because now you've come into +it." + +"I've been in it from the first," frowned Raven. "Ever since the day I +found her up there in the woods." + +"Yes, but then that poor crazy idiot was jealous only of him, the +creature that sat down by her at prayer-meeting; and now he's jealous of +you. And she's saving you, Rookie. At any risk. Even her own child." + +Nan thought she could add what had been in her mind, keeping time to +every step of the way home: "For now she loves you better than the +child." But it proved impossible to say that, and she went out of the +room, not looking at him, and only waiting to put away her hat and coat +in the hall. She went upstairs with the same unhurried step and shut the +door of her room behind her. She stood there near the door, as if she +were guarding it against even the thoughts of any human creature. They +must not get at her, those compassionate thoughts, not Charlotte's, +certainly not Raven's. For at that moment Nan found herself a little +absurd, as many a woman has who knows herself to be starving for a man's +love. She began to tremble, and remembered Tira shaking there by the +door that morning that seemed now years away. The tremor got hold of her +savagely and shook her. It might have been shaking her in its teeth. + +"Nervous chill!" said Nan to herself, insisting on saying it aloud to +see if her teeth would actually chatter and finding they did. She had +seen plenty of such nervous whirlwinds among her boys and helped to +quiet them. "I'm an interesting specimen," chattered Nan. "Talk about +_cafard_!" + +All that forenoon, Dick fretted about the house, waiting for her, hoping +she would go to walk, let him read to her--Dick had a persistent habit +of reading verse to you when he found you weren't likely to get into the +modern movement by yourself--but no Nan. At dinner, there she was, +rather talkative, in a way that took Amelia into the circle of intimacy, +and seemed to link up everybody with everybody else in a nice manner. +Nan had the deftest social sense, when she troubled herself to use it. +Aunt Anne would have been proud of her. + + + + +XXXVI + + +Then everything, so far as Raven and Nan were concerned, quieted to an +unbroken commonplace, and the four--for Amelia and Dick held to their +purpose of "standing by"--again settled down to country life, full of +the amenities and personal abnegations of a house party likely to be +continued. Charlotte was delighted, in her brooding way, and ascribed +the emotion to Jerry who, she said, "liked somethin' goin' on." Nan and +Dick had vaulted back to their past: the old terms of a boy and girl +intimacy in robust pursuits admitting much laughter and homespun talk. +They went snowshoeing over the hills, Raven, though Nan begged him to +come, electing to stay at home with Amelia, who would stand at the door +to see them off, half persuaded she was up to going herself and, indeed, +almost feeling she had gone, after considering it so exhaustively, and +then retreating to the library where she was cramming for next year's +economics. Raven was very good to her. He would sit down by the blazing +hearth, listening with an outward interest to her acquired formulae of +life, and then, after perfunctory assent or lax denial, retire to his +own seclusion over a book. But he seldom read nowadays. He merely, in +this semblance of studious absorption, found refuge from Amelia. He was +mortally anxious for Tira, still face to face with brute +irresponsibility, and when the mental picture of it flamed too lividly +and could not be endured, he threw down his book and hurried up to the +hut, to find her. She never came. The fire, faithfully laid for her, was +unlighted. The room breathed the loneliness of a place that has known a +beloved presence and knows it no more. Nearly every day he and Nan had a +word about her, and often he saw Nan going "up along" and knew she was, +in the uneasiness of no news, bent on walking past the house, if only +for a glance at the windows and the sight of Tira's face. Three times +within a few weeks Tenney had driven past, and each time Nan, refusing +Dick's company, hurried up the road. But she came back puzzled and +dispirited, and called to Raven, who, in a fever of impatience, had gone +out to meet her: + +"No. The door is locked." + +She would put a hand on his arm and they would walk together while she +told him her unvarying tale. When she had knocked persistently, Tira +would appear at the chamber window, and shake her head, and her lips +seemed to be saying, "No! no! no!" And each time Tenney returned +shortly, and they were sure his going was a blind. He never went to the +street, and even Charlotte remarked the strangeness of his short +absences. + +"What under the sun makes Isr'el Tenney start out an' turn round an' +come back ag'in?" she inquired of Jerry. "He ain't gone twenty minutes +'fore he's home." + +Jerry didn't know. He "'sposed Isr'el forgot suthin'." + +How was Tira? Raven asked after Nan had seen her at the window, and she +did not spare him. Pale, she said, paler than ever, a shadow of herself. +But Nan had faith that her courage would hold. It was like the winter +and the spring. Tenney stood for the forces of darkness, but the spring +had to come in the end. Also she owned that her great reason for +believing in Tira's endurance was that Tira was not alone. She had, like +Old Crow, her sustaining symbol. She had, whatever the terrifying +circumstance of her daily life, divine companionship. She had her Lord, +Jesus Christ. + +"I believe," said Raven abruptly, one day when they were tramping the +snowy road and she was answering the panic of his apprehensive mind, +"you swear by Old Crow's book." + +"I do," said Nan simply, "seem to be hanging on to Old Crow. I've read +it over and over. And it does somehow get me. Picture writing! And human +beings drawing the lines and half the time not getting them straight! +But if there's something to draw, I don't care how bad the drawing is. +If there's actually something there! There is, Rookie. Tira's got hold +of it because she's pure in heart. It's something real, and it'll see +her through." + +Raven was not content with its seeing her through until he could be told +what the appointed end was likely to be. If Tira was to fight this +desperate battle all her mortal life, he wasn't to be placated by the +rewarding certainty of a heavenly refuge at the end. + +"I can never," he said, "get over the monstrous queerness of it all. +Here's a woman that's got to be saved, and she's so infernally obstinate +we can't save her. When I think of it at night, I swear I'm a fool not +to complain of the fellow in spite of her, and then in the morning I +know it can't be done. She'd block me, and I should only have got her in +for something worse than she's in for now." + +"Yes," said Nan, "she'd block you. Wait, Rookie. Something will happen. +Something always does." + +Yes, Raven thought, something always does, and sometimes, in country +tragedies, so brutal a thing that the remorseful mind shudders at itself +for not preventing it. But Nan, equably as she might counsel him, was +herself apprehensive. She expected something. She had a sense of waiting +for it. Dick must be prepared. He must be found on their side. Whatever +the outcome, Raven must not suffer the distrust and censure of his own +house. + +Dick had been reading to her by the fire while Raven was taking Amelia +for a sober walk. Nan wished Dick wouldn't read his verse to her. It +made her sorry for him. What was he doing, a fellow who had seen such +things, met life and death at their crimson flood, pottering about in +these bizarre commonplaces of a literary jog-trot? They sounded right +enough, if you stood for that kind of thing, but they betrayed him, his +defective imagination, his straining mind. He didn't see the earth as it +was. He was so enamored of metaphorical indirection that he tried to see +everything in the terms of something else. But to-day she had her own +thoughts. She sat staring into the fire, her cheeks burned by the +leaping heat, and Dick, looking up at her, stopped on an uncompleted +line. + +"You haven't," he said, "heard a word." + +"Not much of it," said Nan. She looked at him disarmingly. When her eyes +were like that, Dick's heart was as water. "I was thinking about Tira." + +He had to place this. Who was Tira? + +"Oh," said he, "the Tenney woman. Jack needn't have dragged you into +that. It's a dirty country story." + +"Not dirty," said Nan. "You'd love it if you'd thought of it yourself. +You'd write a play about it." + +Dick frowned. + +"Well, I didn't think of it," said he, "and if I had, I shouldn't be +eating and sleeping it as you and Jack are. Whatever's happening up +there, it isn't our hunt. It's hers, the woman's. Or the authorities'. +The man ought to be shut up." + +Nan began telling him how it all was, how they wanted definitely to do +the right thing and how Tira herself blocked them. Dick listened, +commended the drama of it, and yet found it drama only. + +"But it's a beastly shame," he commented, "to have this come on Jack +just now when he isn't fit." + +Nan had her sudden hot angers. + +"Do you mean to tell me," she countered, "you believe that now, now +you've lived with him and seen he's exactly what he used to be, only +more darling--you believe he's broken, dotty? Heavens! I don't know what +you'd call it." + +Dick did not answer. He scarcely heard. One word only hit him like a +shot and drew blood. + +"Stop that!" he ordered. + +They faced each other with eyes either angry or full of a tumultuous +passion an onlooker would have been puzzled to name. + +"Stop what?" + +"Calling him darling. I won't have it." + +Nan found this truly funny, and broke into a laugh. + +"Do you know," she said, "how every talk of ours ends? Rookie! It always +comes round to him. I call him darling and you won't have it. But you'll +have to." + +"No," said Dick, "I won't have it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. +You little devil! I believe you do it to work me up. That's all right if +it stopped there. But it won't. Some day he'll hear you and then----!" + +She was flaming again. + +"Hear me? Hear me call him darling? Why, he's heard it so often it's no +more to him than your calling him Jack. But if he asked me what I meant +by it! do you know what would happen then?" + +"What would?" + +"Then," said Nan enigmatically, "I should tell him, that's all." + +She would say no more, though he hurled questions at her, and hardly +remembered afterward what they were. He was of an impression that he +begged her to love him, to marry him, though Dick, prodigal as he was of +great words in his verse, scarcely believed he used them in the direct +address of love-making. But certainly he did beg her, and Nan was gentle +with him, though always, like Tira, as she remembered afterward, +repeating, "No! no!" At the end, his passion softened into something +appealing, as if they were together considering the sad case he found +himself in and he depended on her to help him through. + +"Nan," he said, in the boyish way she loved, "don't you see it's got to +be in the end? We've always been together. We're always going to be. +Don't you see, old Nan?" + +Nan smiled at him, brilliantly, cruelly, he thought. But she was sorry +for him, and it was only a show of cruelty. It came out of her kindness, +really. Dick mustn't suffer so for want of her. Bully him, abuse him, +anything to anger him and keep him from sheer weak, unavailing regret. +Nan had a great idea of what men should be: "tough as a knot," she +thought, seasoned all through. If they whimpered, she was aghast. + +"No," she said again, with the brilliant smile, "no! no! I can't. I +won't. Not unless"--and this, too, was calculated cruelty--"unless +Rookie tells me to." + +They sat staring at each other as if each wondered what the outcome was +to be. Nan was excitedly ready for it. Or had the last word been +actually said? But Dick altogether surprised her. He got up and stood +looking down at her in a dignity she found new to him. + +"When you come to me," he said, "you'll come because I ask you. It won't +be because any other man tells you to." + +He walked past her, out of the room. Did he, Nan wondered, in her +ingenuous surprise, look a very little like Rookie? When he was twenty +years older, was he going to look as Rookie did now? His expression, +that is. For, after all, there was Dick's nose. + +And in these days what of Tira? She, too, was on an edge of nervous +apprehension. Tenney was about the house a great deal. He still made +much of his lameness, though never in words. Every step he took seemed +an implication that a cane was far from sufficient. He needed his +crutch. And as the period of his silence lengthened, Tira was driven by +her fear to another greater fear: that she might mention it herself. +What if she should tell him how the crutch, leaning there at the foot of +the bed, had seemed to her a weapon, not a crutch? What if she appealed +to his pity and even played a part with him, dwelling on her woman's +weakness of nature, her tremors, deprived of the protection that should +be hers? Artifice was foreign to her. Yet what was there, short of +implicating Raven, she would not do for the child? But a glance at +Tenney's face, the tightness of reserve, the fanatical eyes, closed her +lips, and they moved about together dumbly at their common tasks. As she +grew paler and the outline of her cheek the purer over the bones +beneath, he watched her the more intently, but still furtively. One +forenoon when the sky was gray and a soft snow fell in great flakes that +melted as they came, he went haltingly up to the shed chamber and came +down with his gun. He was not a huntsman, and when they moved into the +house it had been left there with a disorder of things not likely to be +needed. He drew a chair to the table and then addressed her almost +urbanely. He wanted, she guessed, to call her attention in some explicit +way. + +"You git me some kind of a rag," he bade her. "I'm goin' to clean up +this old musket. You might's well hand me that oiler, too, off'n the +sink shelf. I can't git about any too well." + +She brought him the cloth and the oiler and went away to the sink again, +determined not to be drawn into any uneasiness of questioning. But it +fascinated her, the sight of him bending to his task, and her will +weakened. In spite of herself, she went over to the table and stood +looking down at him. Presently he glanced up at her and smiled a little +in a way she did not like. It seemed to imply some recognition of a +common knowledge between them. He had, the look said, more than the +apparent reason for what he was doing. The oiling of the gun was not +all. Something at the back of his mind was more significant than this +act of his hands, and this something, the look said, she also knew. All +through the moment of her gazing down at him Tira was telling herself +she must not speak. Yet she spoke: + +"You goin' gunnin'?" + +"I dunno but I be," he returned, his eyes again on his work. "I've had +it in mind quite a spell, an' I dunno's there's any reason for puttin' +on't off." + +"What you goin' after, Isr'el?" she asked, against her will, and he was +silent for what seemed so long, that she pursued: "You goin' rabbitin'?" + +"No," said Tenney. "I dunno's I be. What's the use o' shootin' down +four-footed creatur's? T'other ones'll do well enough for me." + +Again he glanced up at her and her look of frozen horror evidently +warned him against terrifying her unduly. She must be shaken enough to +obey him, not to fight. + +"You look kinder peaked," he said, with what she found a false air of +interest. "You don't git out enough. Mebbe you'd ought to git out +nights. I've been noticin' how peaked you look, an' I thought mebbe I'd +git the old musket loaded up an' go out an' shoot ye a pa'tridge. Tempt +your appetite, mebbe, a mite o' the breast." + +"I dunno," said Tira, speaking with difficulty through her rigid misery, +"as you'd ought to, so near nestin' time. I dunno's as it's the season +to kill." + +"All seasons are the same to me," said Tenney. "When it's time to kill, +then kill, I say. Kill!" + +He spoke the word as if he loved it, and Tira walked away from him into +the bedroom, and stretched herself on the bed, her hand on the sleeping +child. When it was time to get dinner she came out again and found him +reading his paper by the stove. He had set the gun away in a corner. But +directly after dinner he shaved at the little glass by the kitchen +window and told her, again with the air of abundant explanation she +found foreign to him, that he was going to the street, to get the colt +shod. The colt did need to be shod. She knew that. Perhaps this time he +was actually going. + +"You want to take along the eggs?" she said, and he assented. + +He asked her, too, for a list of groceries she needed. He would have to +wait his turn at the blacksmith's. He might be a long time. She need not +expect him before dark. She might as well go out, he told her, and +again: + +"You're lookin' peaked. You need the air." + +She heard him drive briskly out of the yard, but she would not, for some +reason she did not herself know, go to the window to look after him. It +was all a plan, she told herself. She was not to be taken in by it. She +would force herself to sit down to her sewing. She would not leave the +house while he was gone. If he wanted to tempt her out, to trap her, let +him have his will. It was better, she thought, with a moment's satirical +comment, for him to be driving off on a fictitious mission than roaming +the neighborhood with a gun in his hand. She glanced involuntarily at +the corner where the gun had stood not many minutes before he left the +house. It was gone. Then she knew. She threw down her work, went to the +telephone, and called Raven. He was there, and she felt her heart answer +wildly when, at her first word, he broke in: + +"Is it you?" Not her name, only the intimacy of the significant word. +"The hut?" he added. + +"Up there," said Tira, breathless. "Both of you. I've got to see you +both. Come quick." + +She got her cloak and threw it down again, remembering it was what she +was used to wearing and that Tenney would most certainly recognize her +outline in it, even though a long way off. Grandmother Tenney's black +blanket shawl was in the parlor chest of drawers, that and her hood, +disfiguring ancientry of dress. She ran into the parlor, snatched them +out, tied on the black knitted hood and, not unfolding the shawl, +wrapped it about her shoulders. The baby was in his cradle, and she gave +him one glance. If he waked, he would cry. Let him cry. But she did lock +the door behind her, and put the key on the sill, a place Tenney would +know. Half way down the path, she went back, took the key again and +dropped it into her apron pocket. Tenney might come, but he should not +go into the house and find the child alone. Lest he should come the way +he went, she took the back road, and there, when she was about to turn +into the wood road, she heard sleigh-bells behind her, the horse going, +as her ear told her, "step and step." But she was actually on the wood +road when the driver whipped up and the bells came clashingly. She did +not turn to look. It was not Tenney. She would have known his bells. The +horse drew up, the driver called to him a peremptory and jovial word, +and she knew the voice. It was Eugene Martin's, and instinct told her to +stop and face him. He stepped out of the sleigh and threw the robe, with +a quick motion, over the horse. Then he came on to her, smiling, +effusively cordial, and Tira waited. A pace away he took off his hat and +made her an exaggerated bow. He was carefully dressed, but then he was +always that, according to his lights. Only Tira, who knew him so well, +all his vain schemes of personal fitness, judged this to be a day of +especial preparation. For what? He took the step between them and put +out both hands. + +"If this ain't luck!" he beamed. "How are you, girl? I made up my mind +I'd see you, but I hadn't an idea you'd be on the road." + +Tira rolled her hands in her apron, as if they were cold. His extended +hands she did not seem to see. + +"I ain't waitin' for you," she said quietly, her eyes on his. "You +better go right straight along about your business an' leave me to +mine." + +"I ain't done right, Tira," said Martin, with the specious warmth she +knew. "I did try to git you in bad with Tenney, but don't you know what +that sprung from? I'm jealous as the devil. Don't you know I be?" + +"You've no call to be jealous nor anything else," said Tira steadily. +"You an' me are as fur apart"--she hesitated for a word, and her eyes +rested for a moment on one of the tall evergreens moving slightly in the +breeze. "We couldn't any more come together than I could climb up to the +pick o' that pine tree." + +He still regarded her solicitously. He was determined not to abandon his +part. + +"Ain't somebody come betwixt us?" he demanded, with that vibration of +the voice once so moving to her. "You can't deny it. Can you now?" + +"Nobody's come betwixt us," said Tira. "If you was the only man on this +earth to-day, I'd run from you as I would a snake. I hate you. No, I +don't. I look on you as if you was the dirt under my feet." + +But as she said it she glanced down, wistfully troubled, as if she +begged forgiveness of the good earth. The quick anger she knew in him +flared like a licking flame. He threw his arms about her and held her to +him as tightly, it seemed to her, as if he were hostile to the very +breath within her body. And she was still, not only because he gripped +her so but because she had called upon that terrible endurance women +recognize within themselves. He kissed her, angry, insulting kisses she +could bear more patiently than the kisses of unwelcome love. But as his +lips defiled her face, he was suddenly aware that it was wet. Great +tears were rolling down her cheeks. He laughed. + +"Cryin'?" he jeered. "Poor little cry-baby! wipe her eyes." + +While he held her with one arm, the other hand plunged into her apron +pocket and brought out her handkerchief. It also touched the key. His +instincts, she knew, had a scope of devilish cunning, and at once he +knew what key it was. He laughed. Looking off through the trees, he had +seen what gave him another clue. + +"Smoke!" he called, as if he shouted it to an unseen listener who might +not have been clever enough to guess. "Smoke from that shack Raven lazes +round in same as Old Crow did afore him. That's where you were goin'. +The wood road all broke out for you. I might ha' known it when I see +that. Go along, my lady. He'll be there waitin' for you. Go along. But +jest for the fun o' the thing, you leave the key with me." + +She answered with a desperate wrench; but though one of her hands +reached the pocket where the key lay, she could only twitch the fingers, +and while he laughed softly he pulled the tie of her apron and, +releasing her with a little push, snatched the apron from her, rolled it +and thrust it into his pocket. She sprang at him, but he gave her +another push that sent her staggering and ran laughing to the sleigh. + +"So long!" he called back at her. + +She recovered herself and started after him. But the horse plunged +forward and Martin was shouting at her jovially, in what words she did +not hear. She only knew, through the bewilderment of her despair, that +the tone was merciless. + +She stood there a moment, looking after him, and realizing that he had +forced her into a corner from which there was no possible way out. But +then another fear beat in her numbed brain. She had not accomplished the +task for which she came here. Martin and his trick must wait. That other +need was more important. There was the hut and its welcoming smoke and +there Raven must be looking for her. She started running along the snowy +path, reached the door, found it unlocked and went in. + + + + +XXXVII + + +Raven, as soon as he had Tira's message, went to find Nan. She was not +in her room, but Charlotte, when he finally brought up at the kitchen, +told him Nan and Dick had gone to walk. Down the road, she said. They +had called to him, but he was in the barn. + +"Then," said Raven, getting into his jacket, "see her the minute she +comes back and send her up to the hut." + +Yes, Charlotte meant to be in the kitchen all the afternoon. She would +see Nan. Raven left the house and hurried up the hill. He found the hut +in order, the fire laid as he had left it. That was, foolishly, always a +surprise. Her presence hung so inevitably about the place that he was +taken aback to find no visible sign of it. Now when she appeared it was +breathlessly, not, as he thought, from haste, but from her encounter +with Martin. And she came stripped of her reserves, the decorum of +respectful observance she always kept toward him. At first glance he was +shocked by the change in her appearance and could not account for it, +not knowing he missed the familiar folds of the blue cloak about her, +not seeing that her black shawl and the knitted hood accentuated the +tragic paleness of her face. She came straight to him and he took her +hands and, finding them so cold, held them in one of his and chafed +them. This she did not notice. She neither knew that they were cold nor +that he was holding them. + +"You must go away," she said, surprising him because he thought she had +come to say she herself was ready to go. "Where is she?" Tira asked, +with a quick glance about the room, as if the least deviation in her +plan fretted her desperately. "I depended on seein' her." + +"Nan?" asked Raven. "I couldn't find her. What is it, Tira?" + +"She'd ha' helped me out," said Tira despairingly. "She'd ha' seen +you've got to go away from here an' go quick. Couldn't you pack up an' +git off by the nine o'clock?" + +"Don't be foolish," said Raven. He released her hands and drew a chair +nearer the fire. "Sit down. I haven't the least idea of going anywhere. +Do you suppose I should go and leave you in danger?" + +But she did not even seem to see the chair he had indicated or the fire. +She stood wringing her hands, in a regardless way, under her shawl, and +looking at him imploringly. + +"I ain't in any danger," she said, "not compared to what you be. He's +stopped dwellin' on that man an' his mind is on you." + +The shame of this did not move her now. Her fear had burned every +reticence to ashes and her heart looked out nakedly. + +"He's got out the old gun," she went on. "I dunno's he's fired a gun +sence we've been here unless it might be at a hawk sailin' over. He says +he's goin' to shoot me a pa'tridge--for me! a pa'tridge for me to +eat!--an' he looked at me when he said it, an' the look was enough. You +go. You go to-night an' put the railroad betwixt you an' me." + +"Don't be foolish, Tira," said Raven again. "I've been in more dangerous +places than this, and run bigger risks than Tenney's old musket. That's +all talk, what he says to you, all bluff. I begin to think he isn't +equal to anything but scaring a woman to death. But"--now he saw his +argument--"I will go. Nan and I will go to-night, but only if you go +with us. Now is your chance, Tira. Run back to the house and get the +boy. Bring him here, if you like, to stay till train time and then +come." + +He stretched out his hand to her and waited, his eyes on hers. Would she +put her hand into his in obedience, in fealty? She began to cry, +silently yet rendingly. He saw the great breaths rising in her, and was +sick at heart to see her hand--the hand she should have laid in +his--clutching her throat to still its agony. + +"I dunno," she said brokenly. "Yes, I s'pose I do know. I've got to do +it. It's been pushin' me an' pushin' me, an' now I've got to give up +beat. You won't save yourself, an' somehow or another you've got to be +saved." + +Raven felt the incredible joy of his triumph. He had yielded to her +obstinacy, he had actually given up hope, and now, scourged by her +devotion to him, she was walking straight into the security he had urged +upon her. Yet he dared not betray his triumph, lest outspoken emotion of +any sort should awaken her to a fear of--what? Of him? Of man's nature +she had learned to abhor? + +"That's right, Tira," he said quietly. "Now you've given up +responsibility. You've put yourself and the boy in my hands, mine and +Nan's. You've promised, remember. There's no going back." + +Still he held out his hand, and though she ignored it, her dumbly +agonized look was aware of it. It was waiting for her, the +authoritative, kind hand, and she took hers from her throat and laid it +in his grasp. Tira seemed to herself to be giving up something she had +been fighting to keep. What was she giving up? Nothing it was right to +keep, she would have said. For at that minute, as it had been in all the +minutes that led to it, she believed in him as she did in her Lord, +Jesus Christ. Yet she was aware, with that emotional certainty which is +more piercing than the keenness of the most brilliant mind, that she had +surrendered, the inner heart of her, and whatever he asked her to do +would now be humbly done. + +In the instant of their standing there, hand clasped in hand, the +current of life between them rushed to mingle--humble adoration in her, +a triumphant certainty in him. But scarcely had the impetuous forces met +before they were dissolved and lost. The sharp crack of a gun broke the +stillness outside, and Tira tore her hand from his and screamed +piercingly. She threw herself upon Raven, holding him with both hands. + +"Hear that!" she whispered. "It's right outside here. He's shot to make +you come out an' see what 'tis. In the name o' God, don't you open the +door." + +Raven shook himself free from her, and then, because she was sobbing +wildly, took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the chair by the +hearth. + +"Stop that," he said sternly. "Stay there till I come back." + +He took the key from the lock, opened the door and stepped out. There +lay Dick on his face, his head close by the door-stone, and Tenney, gun +in hand, stood stupidly staring at him. + +"I shot at a pa'tridge," Tenney babbled, "I shot----" + +But Raven was kneeling by Dick in the reddening snow. + + + + +XXXVIII + + +Eugene Martin had driven at a quick pace through the back road and down +again to the point where it met the highway. He had stuffed Tira's apron +into his pocket, and through his passion he was aware of it as something +he could use, how he did not yet know. But the key: that was a weapon in +itself. She could not get into her house without it. Tenney could not +get in. So far as Tira was concerned, it was lost, and Tenney would have +to be told. And as he turned into the other road, there was Tenney +himself driving toward home, and Martin knew what he was to do. + +"Hi!" he called, but Tenney did not stop. He drew out slightly to the +side of the road, the implication that Martin might pass. Martin drove +up alongside and, the way growing narrower, seemed bent on crowding him. +The horses were abreast and presently the road narrowed to a point +where, if they continued, one would be in the ditch. + +"I've got something o' yourn," called Martin. He was good humor itself. +The chances of the road had played patly into his hand. "Anyways, I +s'pose 'tis. I come across your woman on the back road. She turned into +the loggin' road, to Raven's shack. She dropped her apron an' I picked +it up. There's a key in the pocket. Looks like a key to somebody's outer +door. Yourn, ain't it? Here 'tis, rolled up in the apron. Ketch!" + +He had taken out the apron, rolled it tighter and then, as Tenney made +no movement, tossed it into the sleigh. He shook the reins and passed, +narrowly escaping an over-turn, but, at the same moment, he was aware +that Tenney had stooped slightly and lifted something. It was a familiar +motion. What had he lifted? It could not be a gun, he told himself. Yet +he knew it could be nothing else. Was this the next move in the mad +game? For the first time he began to wonder whether Tenney's religion +would really keep him cool and questioned whether, having neatly +balanced his own account, he might close it now before he found himself +in danger. Driving fast, he was aware that Tenney, behind him, was also +coming on. But he would not look until he had passed Tenney's house, and +then he did give one backward glance. Tenney had turned into the yard, +and Martin relaxed, satisfied with the day's job. Perhaps it was really +finished, and he and Tira were square. + +Tenney, having driven into the yard, blanketed the horse and thrust the +apron under the seat of the sleigh. He stood for a moment, thinking. +Should he unlock the door, go into the house, and lock it against the +woman who had run away to Raven's shack? He could not think clearly, but +it did seem to him best to open the door and look about. How had she +left things behind her? Was her absence deliberately planned? Inside, he +proceeded mechanically with the acts he would ordinarily have done after +an absence. The familiar surroundings seemed to suggest them to him. He +fitted the key into the lock again, took off his great-coat and hung it +up, chiefly because the nail reminded him, and then, the house suddenly +attacking him with all the force of lonely silence, he turned and went +out again and shut the door behind him. There was the horse. Why had he +covered him? He would naturally have unharnessed. But then he saw the +gun in the sleigh, and that, like the silent house, seemed to push him +on to something he had lost the power to will, and he took the gun and +walked fast out of the yard. Now at once he felt clear in the head. He +was going to find Raven. That was the next step. Wherever Raven was, he +must find him. But when he turned out of the yard to go up the back +road, he was aware of a strange dislike to coming upon him at the hut. +Tira was there, he knew, but if Raven also was, then there would be +something to do. It was something in the back of his mind, very dark and +formless as yet, but it was, he told himself again, something that had +to be done. Perhaps after all, even though it was to be done sometime, +it need not be to-day. Even though Tira was up there, the job was a +terrifying one to tackle when he felt so weak in his disabled foot, so +cold after Martin's jeering voice when he tossed over the key. He turned +again and went down the road to Raven's. His foot ached badly, but he +did not mind it so much now, the confusion and pain of his mind had +grown so great. It seemed, like this doubt that surrounded Tira, a curse +that was to be always with him. At Raven's, he went to the kitchen door +and knocked, and Charlotte came. + +"He to home?" he asked, not looking at her, but standing there a +drooping, miserable figure. + +"Jerry?" she asked. "Yes. He's in the barn, gone to feed an' water." + +"No," said Tenney. "John Raven. Is he to home?" + +"Why, no," said Charlotte. "Not round the house. He said he's goin' up +to the hut." + +At that he stared at her desperately, as if begging her to take back her +words; they might have been a command to him, a verdict against him. She +stepped out a pace. + +"Why, Mr. Tenney," she said, "what you round with a gun for, this time +o' night? You can't see nothin'. It'll be dusk in a minute." + +"Pa'tridges," he called back to her, adding darkly, "I guess I can see +well enough, come to that." + +Charlotte stood there watching him out of the yard and noted that he +turned toward home. When Nan and Dick came up the road the other way, +she had gone in, and they had been in the house five minutes or more +before she knew of it. Then Dick wandered into the kitchen, on one of +the vague quests always bringing the family there in search of her, and +she called to him from the pantry: + +"D'you see anything of Isr'el Tenney on the road?" + +No, Dick had seen nobody. He stood leaning against the casing, watching +her floury hands at their deft work. + +"He come here, not ten minutes ago," said Charlotte, "after your Uncle +John. He had a gun. I never see Isr'el Tenney with a gun. 'Pa'tridge +shootin,' he said. Pa'tridges, when you can't see your hand afore you in +the woods! I told him Uncle John'd gone up to the hut. When Uncle John +went off, he said he wanted Nan should come up there, quick as ever she +could. You tell her, won't you? I forgot." + +Then Dick knew. Tira was up there. And Tenney was out with a gun: New +England tragedy. It was impossible, the sanctimonious Tenney. Yet there +was New England tragedy, a streak of it, darkly visible, through all New +England life. It would be ridiculous: old Tenney with his +prayer-meetings and his wild appeals. And yet, he reflected, all tragedy +was ridiculous to the sane, and saw before his mind's eye a satiric poem +wherein he should arraign the great sad stories of the world and prove +their ironic futility. But all this was the hurried commentary of the +mind really bent on something actual, and from that actuality he spoke: + +"Don't tell Nan, Charlotte. I'll see what he wants." + +He went off and Charlotte thought he was right, the afternoon waning as +it was. She would tell Nan later, a good deal later, when Raven and Dick +had had time to come down again. And this was how Dick climbed the slope +and was approaching the door of the hut when Tenney stole behind him +through the dusk and fired. + +Raven, in the instant of seeing Dick there on the ground, locked the +door of the hut, dropped the key in his pocket, knelt by him and, with a +hand on his pulse, snapped out his orders to Tenney, standing there +staring vacuously: + +"Go down to the house. Get Jerry and the sled. Come back with him. Get a +move on. Run!" + +Tenney continued looking emptily at him, still babbling about +pa'tridges, and Raven got up and wrenched the gun from his hand, calling +loudly, though they were close together: + +"Don't you hear me? Get Jerry and the sled. Run, man, run." + +Tenney started away in a dazed indecisiveness and Raven remembered his +hurt and that he probably could not run. At the same instant Tenney's +mind cleared. He was plunging down the slope and, whatever anguish it +caused him, insensible to it. + +Raven unlocked the door, stepped in and found Tira facing him. + +"Go home," he said. "Get the boy and go down to my house. You're to stay +there now." + +At the instant of saying this, he set the gun inside the door, snatched +some blankets from the bedroom and came out again. Tira stepped aside to +let him pass. It looked as if he would have walked over her. He covered +Dick warmly, picked up the boy's glasses from the snow and dropped them +into his pocket. With that involuntary act, the emotional assault of the +whole thing nearly had him. He remembered Dick's eyes as he had +sometimes seen them without their glasses, wistful and vaguely soft. +Always his eyes, denuded of the lenses behind which they lived, had a +child's look of helpless innocence, and here he was floored by life's +regardless cruelty. Though, if he was not only floored but actually done +for, he was not yet the one to suffer. He was away in that sanctuary of +the assaulted body known as unconsciousness, and Raven did not dwell for +more than an instant on "the pity of it" all. + +Tira had come out of the hut and, at sight of Dick under his mound of +covering, she gave a little cry and stooped to him with outstretched +hand, perhaps with an idea of somehow easing him. But Raven caught her +wrist before she touched him. + +"Don't," said he. "I've sent down for the sled." + +"Is he----?" she whispered, stepping back as he released her. + +"I don't know," said he. "You can't do anything. Don't stay here." + +But she stood still, staring down at the mound of blankets and Raven +again on his knees beside it, his fingers on Dick's wrist. + +"Didn't you hear me?" said he curtly. "You're to get the child and come +to my house for the night." + +"Will he"--and now he saw her mind was with Tenney--"will he be +arrested?" + +"I hope," Raven allowed himself the bitterness of saying, "I hope he'll +get imprisonment for life." + +And there was such sternness in the kind voice that Tira turned and +went, half running, up the path to the back road and home. + +That night at eleven, when the house had quieted, and Raven was alone in +the library, he permitted himself a glimpse at the denied emotional +aspect of the day. Jerry had got quickly to the top of the hill and Dick +had been moved down without disaster, Tenney, white-faced and +bewildered, lending his strength as he was told. Raven called upon him +for this and that, and kept him by them on the way down to the house, so +that Tira might have time to snatch the child and hurry away. At the +moment of nearing the house he remembered her, and that if Tenney went +directly back by the high road, he might meet her. + +"Here!" This to Tenney, who was sagging on behind the sled, and who at +once hurried along to his side. "Go back to the hut and see if I've left +the key in the door. If it's there, you can lock up and bring it down to +me. If it isn't, don't come back." + +Then, he assumed, Tenney would go home by the back road, the shortest +route. For he would not find the key, which was still in Raven's pocket. +Tenney looked at him, seemed to have something to say, and finally +managed it. As Raven remembered, it was something about pa'tridges and +his gun. Whether he was shaken by fright, one could not have told, but +he was, as Charlotte remarked upon it afterward, "all to pieces." Raven +ignored the mumble, whatever it was, and Tenney, finally understanding +that he might as well be as far off the earth as Dick, for all the +attention anybody was going to pay him, turned, limping, and then Raven, +with that mechanical sensitiveness to physical need always awake in him +now, caught up a stick lying in the dooryard and tossed it to him. + +"Here!" said he. "That'll do for a cane." + +Tenney could not catch; he was too stupid from bewilderment of mind. But +he picked it up, and went limping off across the road and up the hill. +Then the women had to be told, and when Jerry brought the horses to a +standstill at the door, Raven ran in, pushing Charlotte aside--dear +Charlotte! she was too used to life and death to need palliatives of +indirection in breaking even such news as this--and believed now, as he +thought it over, that he met Milly and Nan, who had seen their approach, +running to meet him, and that he said something about accident and, as +if it were an echo of Tenney, a fool shooting partridges. Milly, shocked +out of her neat composure, gave a cry, but Nan turned on her, bade her +be quiet, and called Charlotte to the bedroom to get it ready. It was +Milly's room, but the most accessible place. Raven telephoned for the +doctor at the street and called a long-distance for a Boston surgeon of +repute, asking him to bring two nurses; and he and Nan rapidly dressed +the wound, with Dick still mercifully off in the refuge called +unconsciousness. Raven remembered that Milly, as she got in his way, +kept telling him she ought to have taken a course in first aid, and that +Dick was her son and if a mother didn't know, who did? But he fancied he +did not answer at all, and that he and Nan worked together, with quick +interrogative looks at each other here and there, a lifted eyebrow, a +confirming nod. And now the local doctor had arrived, had professed +himself glad his distinguished colleague had been summoned and approved +Raven's work. He was gone in answer to another urgent call, and the +surgeon had not come, could not come for hours. But Dick was conscious, +though either too weak or too wisely cautious to lift an eyelid, and Nan +was with him. That Raven had ordered, and told Milly she was to come to +the library after Jerry moved her things upstairs and she was settled +for the night. + +Milly was badly shaken. She looked, her strained eyes and mouth +compressed, as if not only was she robbed of the desire of sleep, but +had sworn never, in her distrust of what life could do to her, to sleep +again. But she had not appeared, and as Raven sat there waiting for her, +Charlotte came down the stairs and glanced in, a comprehensive look at +the light, the fire, and at him, as if to assure him, whatever the need +in the sick room, she kept him also in mind. Raven signed to her and she +nodded. He had a question to ask. It had alternated in his mind with +queer little heart-beats of alarm about Dick: hemorrhage, shock, +hemorrhage--recurrent beats of prophetic disaster. + +"Have you seen Tira?" he asked. "I told her to come here and stay till +we could get her off somewhere." + +Then he remembered that, so wide-reaching did Charlotte always seem to +him in her knowledge of the life about her, he had not explained why +Tira must be got out of the way, and that also was before him. But in +her amazing habit of knowing, she knew. + +"No," she said, "she ain't b'en near. She won't leave Tenney. She's one +o' them that sticks by." + +Immediately he was curious to hear what she had imagined, how she knew. +Was the neighborhood awake to even the most obscure local drama? While +Tira thought she was, at the expense of her own safety, covering +Tenney's wildness of jealousy, were they all walking in the sun? + +"Who told you?" he asked her. + +"Why, nobody," said Charlotte. "It didn't take no tellin'. Jerry heard +him hollerin' after her that day you was up in the woods, an' when you +kep' the loggin' road broke, I knew you was givin' her some kind of a +hole to creep into." + +So they had known, she and Jerry. But they had not told. They would +never tell. + +"One thing," said Charlotte, smoothing her apron and looking at him in +an anxious interrogation, "what be we goin' to say? That was the first +thing doctor asked: 'Who done it?' (You know I let him in.) ''Twas a +poor crazed creatur,' says I, 'after pa'tridges.' I was goin' to say +Dick had a gun an' tripped up over a root; but that never'd do in the +world, shot in the back so." + +"The partridges'll do for the present," said Raven grimly. "He's +certainly crazy enough. He said he was shooting partridges. We'll take +it at that." + +Charlotte went on, and he sat thinking. So Tira had chosen not to come. +So fixed was his mind on the stern exigency of the situation, as it now +stood, that her disobedience in itself irritated him. The right of +decision, as he reasoned, had passed out of her hands into his. He was, +in a sense, holding the converging lines of all this sudden confusion; +he was her commanding officer. At that moment, when he was recognizing +his anger against her and far from palliating, cherishing it as one of +the tools in his hand, to keep him safely away from enfeebling doubt, +Milly came noiselessly down the stairs. She would, he realized, in her +unflinching determination to do the efficient thing, be as silent as a +shadow. She appeared in the doorway, and her face, her bearing, were no +longer Milly's. This was a paper semblance of a woman, drawn on her +lines, but made to express grief and terror. Quiet as she was, the shock +had thrown her out of her studied calm. She was elemental woman, +despising the rigidities of training, scourged into revolt. Even her +dress, though fitted to the technical needs of the hour, was unstudied. +Her hair, ordinarily waved, even in the country, by the intelligence of +her capable fingers, was twisted in a knot on the back of her head. +Raven, so effective had been the success of her ameliorating devices, +thought Milly's hair conspicuously pretty. But now there was a little +button of it only, as if she had prepared for exacting service where one +displaced lock might undo her. A blue silk negligée was wrapped about +her, with a furled effect of tightening to the blast, and her face was +set in a mask of grief that was not grief alone, but terror. She came in +and sat down in one of the chairs by the hearth, not relaxing in the +act, but as if she could no longer stand. + +"John!" she said, in a broken interrogation. "John!" + +He got up and elaborately tended the fire, laying the sticks together +with an extreme care, and thinking, as he did it, by one of those idle +divagations of the mind, like a grace note on the full chord of action, +that a failing fire had helped a man out of more than one hole in this +disturbing life. It gave your strung nerves and rasped endurance a +minute's salutary pause. He put down the tongs and returned to his +chair. + +"Buck up, Milly," said he. "Everything's being done. Now it'll be up to +Dick." + +But he realized, as if it were another trial setting upon him at the +moment when he had borne enough, that his eyes were suddenly hot. This +was not for Milly, not for himself. Again, for some obscure reason, he +saw Dick's eyes, softened, childlike, as he had recalled them without +their glasses. Through these past weeks of strain, he had been irritated +with the boy, he had jeered at him for the extravagances of his gusty +youth. Why, the boy was only a boy, after all! But Milly, leaning +forward to the fire, her trembling hands over the blaze, was talking +with amazing intensity, but still quietly, not to disturb the stillness +of the expectant house. For the house, suddenly changed, seemed itself +to be waiting, as houses do in time of trouble. Was it for Dick to die +or to take on life again? Houses are seldom kind at such times, even in +their outward tranquillity. They are sinister. + +And when Milly began to speak, Raven found he had to deal with a woman +surprisingly different from the one who had striven to heal him through +her borrowed aphorisms. + +"To think," she began, "to think he should escape, after being over +there--over there, John, in blood and dirt and death--and come home to +be shot in the back by a tramp with a gun! Where is the man? You +detained him, didn't you? Don't tell me you let him go." + +"I know where to find him," Raven temporized. "He'd no idea of going." + +She insisted. + +"You think it was an accident? He couldn't have had a grudge. Dick +hadn't an enemy." + +"You can make your mind easy about that," said Raven, taking refuge in a +detached sincerity. "It wasn't meant for Dick. He was as far from the +fellow's thoughts as the moon." + +He remembered the fringe of somber woods and the curve of the new moon. + +"It isn't so much the misfortunes of life," Milly kept on. She was +beating her knee now with one closed hand and her voice kept time. "It's +the chances, the horrible way things come and knock you down because +you're in their path. If he doesn't"--here she stopped and Raven knew +she added, in her own mind, "if he doesn't live--I shall never believe +in anything again. Never, John, never!" + +Raven was silent, not only because it seemed well for her to free her +mind, but because he had a sudden curiosity to hear more. This was Milly +outside her armor at last. When she had caught him out of his armor, she +had proposed sending him to the Psychopathic, and here she was herself, +raving against heaven and earth as unrestrainedly as a savage woman +might beat her head against a cliff. + +"Chance!" she repeated. "That's what it is, chance! He got in the way +and he was struck. I lived through the War. I gave my son. What more +could I do? But now, to have him come home to our old house and be shot +in the back! How can you sit there and not move a muscle or say a word? +What are you thinking about?" + +"Well," said Raven quietly, "if you'll believe me, I'm thinking about +you. I'm mighty sorry for you, Milly. And I'm keeping one ear cocked for +Nan." + +"There's no change," she interrupted him. "Charlotte would tell us. I +left Nan on purpose. I want him, every time he opens his eyes, to see +her there. She's the one he wants. Mothers don't count." Here again the +elemental woman flashed out and Raven welcomed the reality of it. "She +couldn't help being kind, with him as he is." + +No, he inwardly concurred, Nan, who had kissed the boy to hearten him in +his need, would be ready with her medicinal love again. She'd pour +herself out: trust her for that. + +"Besides," he said, "besides you and Dick and Nan, I was thinking of Old +Crow." + +"Old Crow?" This threw her out for an instant and she went back to her +conception of Raven as a victim of complexes of which Old Crow was +chief. "It's no time for dwelling on things that are past and gone. You +think far too much about Old Crow. It weakens you." + +"Old Crow," said Raven quietly, "is the chap you and I need here +to-night. I'd like mighty well to sit down and talk it over with him. So +would you, if you knew him better. Old Crow went through what you and I +are going through now. He found the world a deuced puzzling place and he +didn't see the conventional God as any sort of a solution. And then--I +don't suppose you're going to bed right off. You won't feel like sleep?" + +"Bed!" she flung out. "Sleep!" + +"Then look here, Milly," said Raven, "you do what I tell you." He opened +a drawer in his desk and took out the mottled book. "Here's Old Crow's +journal. You sit here by the fire and read it while I take Nan's place +and send her off to bed. And if it doesn't give you an idea Old Crow's +got his mind on us to-night, wherever he is, I'm mistaken." + +He brought her the book. She took it, with no interest, leaving it +unopened on her knee. + +"Wherever he is," she repeated, not precisely curious, but as if she +might be on the verge of it when she again had time. "I didn't know you +believed in immortality." + +"I didn't, either," said Raven. "But," he added, "I believe in Old +Crow." + +She was holding the book mechanically and he left her sitting with it +still unopened and went in to Dick. He found him restless, not in any +movement of his body but in the glance of his dilated eyes. Nan looked +up, grave, steady, gone back, as Raven saw, to her trained habit of +action, emotionless, concentrated on the moment. + +"You'd better go up to bed," said Raven. "I'll stay now. He can have you +to-morrow." + +"He can have me all the time," said Nan clearly, and Dick's eyes turned +upon her with an indifferent sort of query. How much did she mean by +that? It sounded as if she meant everything, and yet Raven, his heart +constricting, knew it might not be more than impetuous sacrifice, the +antidote given in haste. But now Dick spoke and Raven bent to him, for +either he was too weak to speak clearly or he was saving himself. + +"Don't arrest him. No end of talk." + +"No," said Raven. "It wasn't you he was out for." + +The restless eyes turned on Nan. + +"Go to bed," said Dick. + +Her hand had been on his and she took it gently away, and got up. + +"I'm not sleepy," she said. "I'll camp in the library a while." + +When she had gone Raven, sitting there by Dick, who did not speak again, +listened for the murmur of voices from the library. Would they keep +companionable vigil, the two women, heartening each other by a word, or +would they sit aloof, each wrapped in her own grief? There was not a +sound. They were falling in with that determination of the house to +maintain its sinister stillness, its air of knowing more than it would +tell. + + + + +XXXIX + + +Tenney, not finding the key of the hut, and increasingly alive to the +anguish flaring in his foot, went home by the back way. Tira was waiting +at the door. She saw him coming, and, for that first moment, he could +ignore the pain in a savage recognition of her plight. She had, he +thought, having missed the key, not even tried the door. But this brief +summary of her guilty folly angered him for the moment only. He was +suddenly tired, and his foot did ache outrageously. He gave way to the +pain of it, and limped heavily. As he neared the house, however, his +face did relax into a mirthless smile. There were tracks under the +kitchen window. She had hoped to get in that way and had found the +window fastened. And all the time there was the door, ready for a +confident hand. But the ill chance of it amused him for not much more +than the instant of its occurrence. His mind recoiled upon his own +miserable state. He had gone out in search of justice, and he had come +home in terror of what he had himself unjustly done. If he had been +imaginative enough to predict the righteous satisfaction he expected +from his vengeance on Raven, he might have foreseen himself coming back +to bring Tira the evil news, and smiling, out of his general rectitude, +at her grief and terror. Perhaps he would have been wrong in those +unformulated assumptions. Perhaps he would not have been calm enough for +satisfaction in the completed deed, since the mind does, after a red +act, become at once fugitive before the furies of inherited beliefs and +fears. Perhaps it would have shrunk cowering back from the old, old +penalty against the letting of blood, as it did now when he was faced +with the tragic irony of the deed as it was. He had shed blood and, by +one of the savage mischances of life, the blood of a man innocent of +offense against him. After the first glance at Tira, he did not look at +her again, but passed her, threw open the door, and went in. His +thoughts, becoming every instant more confused, as the appalling moments +in the woods beat themselves out noisily, seemed to favor closing the +door behind him. It was she who had brought him to this pass. It was she +who had locked his door upon herself and, in her wantonness, as good as +thrown away the key. Let her stay outside. But he was not equal to even +that sharpness of decision and Tira, after she found the door swinging +free, went in. + +Tenney had seated himself in his arm-chair by the window. He had not +taken off his hat, and he sat there, hands clasped upon the stick Raven +had tossed him, his head bent over them. He looked like a man far gone +in age and misery, and Tira, returning from the bedroom, the child in +her arms, felt a mounting of compassion and was no longer afraid. She +laid the child in its cradle and, with a cheerful clatter, put wood in +the stove. The child cried fretfully and, still stepping about the room, +she began to sing, as if to distract it, though she knew she was making +the sounds of life about Tenney to draw him forth from the dark cavern +where his spirit had taken refuge. But he did not look up, and presently +she spoke to him: + +"Ain't you goin' to unharness? I'm 'most afraid Charlie'll be cold." + +The form of her speech was a deliberate challenge, a fashion of rousing +him to an old contention. For it was one of her loving habits with +animals to name them, and Tenney, finding that "all foolishness," would +never accept the pretty intimacies. To him, the two horses were the bay +and the colt, and now Tira, with an anxious intent of stirring him even +to contradiction, longed to hear him repeat, "Charlie?" adding, "D'you +mean the bay?" But he neither spoke nor moved, and she suddenly realized +that if she screamed at him he would not hear. She went on stepping +about the room, and presently, when the dusk had fallen so that she +could see the horse in the yard only as an indeterminate bulk, she +slipped out, unharnessed him, and led him into his stall. She began to +fodder the cattle, pausing now and then to listen for Tenney's step. But +he did not come. She returned to the house for her pails, lighted a +lantern, and went back to milk. Still he did not come, and when she +carried in her milk, there he sat in the dark kitchen, his head bent +upon his hands. Tira shut up the barn, came back to the kitchen, and put +out her lantern; then she was suddenly spent, and sat down a moment by +the stove, her hands in her lap. And so they sat together, the man and +woman, and the child was as still as they. He had whimpered himself off +to sleep. + +Tira, recognizing herself, with a dull indifference, as too tired to +move, was not at first conscious of thinking either about what she had +gone through or what was before her. But as her muscles relaxed, her +mind, as it was always doing now for its rest and comfort, left this +present scene where, for the first active moments, Tenney had filled her +thoughts, and settled upon Raven. He had told her to come to him. He had +ordered it, as if she belonged to him, and there was heavenly sweetness +in that. Tira loved this new aspect of him. She rested in it, as a power +alive to her, protecting her, awake to her well-being. Yet, after that +first glance at Tenney, sitting there with head bent over the stick, she +had not a moment's belief in her right to go. It was sweet to be +commanded, to her own safety, but here before her were the dark +necessities she must share. And suddenly, as she sat there, and the +sense of Raven's protectingness enfolded her and she grew more rested, a +feeling of calmness fell upon her, of something friendly nearer her than +Raven even (though it had seemed to her lately as if nothing could be +more near), and she almost spoke aloud, voicing her surprised delight: +"Why, the Lord Jesus Christ!" But she did not speak the words aloud. She +refrained in time, for fear of disturbing Tenney in some way not wise +for him; but her lips formed them and they comforted her. Then, suddenly +tranquillized and feeling strong, she rose and fed the child and made +some bustling ado, talking about milk and bread, hoping to rouse Tenney +to the thought of food. But he sat there darkly, and by and by she put +the kettle on and, in the most ordinary manner, made tea and spread +their table. + +"Come," she said to him. "Supper's ready. We might's well draw up." + +He did glance at her then, as if she had surprised him, and she smiled, +to give him confidence. At that time Tira felt all her strength, her +wholesome rude endurance, to the full, and stood tall and steady there +in the room with the two who were her charge and who now, it seemed to +her, needed her equally. Tenney rose with difficulty and stood a moment +to get control of his foot. He walked to the table and was about to sit +down. But suddenly his eyes seemed to be drawn by his hand resting on +the back of the chair. He raised it, turned it palm up and scrutinized +it, and then he looked at the other hand with the same questioning gaze, +and, after a moment, when Tira, reading his mind, felt her heart beating +wildly, he went to the sink and pumped water into the basin. He began to +wash his hands. There was nothing on them, no stain such as his fearful +mind projected, but he washed them furiously and without looking. + +"You stop a minute," said Tira quietly. "I'll give you a mite o' hot +water, if you'll wait." + +She filled a dipper from the tea kettle, and, tipping the water from his +basin into the sink, mixed hot and cold, trying it solicitously, and +left him to use it. + +"There!" she said, standing by the table waiting for him, "you come as +quick's you can. Your tea'll be cold." + +So they drank their tea together, and Tira forced herself to eat, and, +from the store of woman's experience within her, knew she ought to urge +him also to hearten himself with meat and bread. But she did not dare. +She could feel the misery of his sick mind. She had always felt it. But +there were reactions, of obstinacy, of rage almost, in the obscurity of +its workings, and these she could not challenge. But she poured him +strong tea, and when he would take no more, got up and cleared the +table. And he kept his place, staring down at his hand. He was studying +it with a look curiously detached, precisely as he had regarded it at +the moment when he seemed to become aware of its invisible stain. Tira, +as she went back and forth about the room, found herself also, by force +of his attitude, glancing at the hand. Almost she expected to find it +red. When her work was done, she sat down by the stove and undressed the +baby, who was fretful still and crying in a way she was thankful to +hear. It made a small commotion in the room. If it irritated Tenney into +waking from his daze, so much the better. + +Ten o'clock came, and Tenney had not stirred. When eleven struck she +roused from her doze and saw his head had sunken forward; he was at the +nodding point of sleep. She had been keeping up the fire, and presently +she rose to put in wood, knocking down a stick she had left on the end +of the stove to be reached for noiselessly. He started awake and rose, +pushing back his chair. + +"Is that them?" he asked her, with a disordered wildness of mien. "Have +they come?" + +By this she knew he expected arrest for what he had done. + +"No," she said, in her quietest voice. "Nobody's comin' here to-night. I +dropped a stick o' wood, that's all. Don't you think you better poke off +to bed?" + +He did not answer her, but went to the window, put his hands to his face +and peered out. Then he turned, stood a moment looking about the room as +if for some suggestion of refuge, went to the couch, and lay down. Tira +stood for a moment considering. Almost at once, he was asleep. She threw +a shawl over him and went into the bedroom and stretched herself as she +was on the bed. + + + + +XL + + +Raven, to his sorry amusement, discovered something. It was Milly, and +she had changed. Indubitably Milly regarded him with a mixture of wonder +and of awe. He had taken command of the situation in the house and +developed it rationally. The house itself had become a converging point +for all medical science could do for a man hit in a vital spot and +having little chance of recovery. But what Raven knew to be the common +sense of the measures he brought to pass, Milly, in her wildness of +anxiety, looked upon as the miracles of genius. She even conciliated +him, as the poor human conciliates his god. She brought him the burnt +offering of her expressed belief, her humility of admiration. And +whenever one of the family was allowed to supplement the nurses, by day +or night, she effaced herself in favor of Raven or Nan. Raven was the +magician who knew where healing lay. Nan was warmth and coolness, air +and light. Dick's eyes followed Nan and she answered them, comforting, +sustaining him, Raven and Milly fully believed, in his hold on earth. +But as to Milly, Raven had to keep on wondering over her as she wondered +at him. So implicit had been his belief in her acquired equipment for +applying accepted remedies to the mischances of life, that he was amazed +at seeing her devastated, overthrown. She was even less calm than the +women he remembered here in this country neighborhood. When sickness +entered their homes, they were, for the most part, models of efficient +calm. They had reserves of energy. He wondered if Milly had crumbled so +because she had not only to act but to decide how to seem to act. She +had to keep up the wearisome routine of fitting her feelings to her +behavior, her behavior to her feelings. There were not only things to be +done; there were also the social standards of what ought, in crises, to +be felt. She had to satisfy her gods. And she simply wasn't strong +enough. Her hold was broken. She knew it, clutched at him and hung on +him, a dead weight, while he buoyed her up. Were they all, he wondered, +victims of the War? Milly, as she said that night when she came to him +in her stark sincerity while Dick lay unconscious, had given him up +once. She had given him to the War, and done the act with the high +decorum suited to it. And the country had returned him to her. But now, +grotesque, bizarre beyond words, she had to surrender him to a fool +"shooting pa'tridges." For facing a travesty like that, she had no +decorum left. + +Dick, too, was the victim of abnormal conditions. He had been summoned +to the great act of sacrifice to save the world, and the call had +challenged him to after judgments he was not ripe enough to meet. It had +beguiled him into a natural sophistry. For had not the world, in its +need, called mightily on the sheer strength and endurance of youth to +slay the dragon of brute strength in her enemies? Youth had done it. +Therefore there was no dragon, whether of the mind or soul, it could not +also slay. His fellows told him so, and because they were his fellows +and spoke the tongue he understood, he believed it with a simple honesty +that was Dick. + +As to Nan, she seemed to Raven the one sane thing in a bewildered world; +and for himself: "I'm blest if I believe I'm so dotty, after all," he +mused. "What do you think about it?" And this last he addressed, not to +himself, but to the ever-present intelligence of Old Crow. He kept +testing things by what Old Crow would think. He spoke of him often, as +of a mind active in the universe, but only to Nan. And one night, late +enough in the spring for the sound of running water and a bitterness of +buds in the air, he said it to her when she came down the path to him +where he stood listening to the stillness broken by the ticking of the +season's clock--steady, familiar sounds, that told him winter had broken +and the heart of things was beating on to leaf and bloom. He had, if he +was not actually waiting for her, hoped she would come out, and now he +saw her coming, saw her step back into the hall for a scarf and appear +again, holding it about her shoulders. At last, firm as she was in +spirit, she had changed. She was thinner, with more than the graceful +meagerness of youth, and her eyes looked pathetically large from her +pale face. She had seen Dick go slipping down the slope, and now that +beneficent reactions were drawing him slowly back again, she was feeling +the waste of her own bodily fortitude. + +"Where shall we go?" she asked him. "Been to the hut lately?" + +No, Raven told her, he hadn't been there for days. They crossed the road +and began the ascent into the woods. + +"So you don't know whether she's been there?" Nan asked. She stopped to +breathe in the wood fragrances, coming now like a surprise. She had +almost forgotten "outdoors." + +"Yes," said Raven. "I know. Sometimes I fancy she won't need to go there +again. Tenney's a wreck. He sits there in the kitchen and doesn't speak. +He isn't thinking about her. He's thinking of himself." + +"How do you know? You haven't been over?" + +"Yes, I went over the morning after the shooting. I intended to tell +Tira to get her things on and come down to the house. But when I saw +him--saw them--I couldn't." + +"You were sorry for him?" Nan prompted. + +They had reached the hut, and Raven took out the key from under the +stone. Close by, there was a velvet fern frond ready to unfurl. He +unlocked the door and they went in. Her last question he did not answer +until he had thrown up windows and brought out chairs to the veranda at +the west. When they were seated, he went on probing for his past +impression and speaking thoughtfully. + +"No, I don't know that I was particularly sorry for him. But somehow the +two of them there together, with that poor little devil between +them--well, it seemed to me I couldn't separate them. That's marriage, I +suppose. Anyhow it looked to me like it: something you couldn't undo +because they wouldn't have it undone." + +Nan turned on him her old impetuous look. + +"You simpleton!" she had it on her tongue to say. "She doesn't want it +undone because anybody that lifts a finger will get you--not her--deeper +into the mire." But she did say: "I don't believe you can even guess +what she wants, chiefly because she doesn't want anything for herself. +But if you didn't ask her to leave him, what did you do?" + +"I told him to hold himself ready for arrest." + +"You're a funny child," commented Nan. "You warn the criminal and give +him a chance to skip." + +"Yes," said Raven unsmilingly. "I hoped he would. I thought I was giving +her one more chance. If he did skip, so much the better for her." + +"How did she look?" asked Nan, and then added, tormenting herself, +"Beautiful?" + +"Yes, beautiful. Not like an angel, as we've seen her. Like a saint: +haggard, with hungry eyes. I suppose the saints hunger, don't you? And +thirst." He was looking off through the tree boles and Nan, also +looking, found the distance dim and felt the sorrow of youth and spring. +"Everything," said Raven, "seems to be in waves. It has its climax and +goes down. Tenney's reached the climax of his jealousy. Now he's got +himself to think about, and the other thing will go down. Rather a big +price for Dick to pay, to make Tira safe, but he has paid and I fancy +she's safe." He turned to her suddenly. "Milly's very nice to you," he +asserted, half interrogatively. + +He saw the corner of her mouth deepen a little as she smiled. Milly had +not, they knew, been always nice. + +"Yes," she agreed, "very nice. She gives me all the credit she doesn't +give you about doctors and nurses and radiographs and Dick's hanging on +by his eyelids. She says I've saved him." + +"So you have," said Raven. "You've kept his heart up. And now you're +tired, my dear, and I want you to go away." + +"To go away?" said Nan. "Where?" + +"Anywhere, away from us. We drain you like the deuce." + +"No," said Nan, turning from him and speaking half absently, "I can't go +away." + +"Why can't you?" + +"He'd miss me." + +"He'd know why you went." + +Her old habit of audacious truth-telling constrained her. + +"I should have to write to him," she said. "And I couldn't. I couldn't +keep it up. I can baby him all kinds of ways when he's looking at me +with those big eyes. But I couldn't write him as he'd want me to. I +couldn't, Rookie. It would be a promise." + +"Milly thinks you have promised." This he ventured, though against his +judgment. + +"No," said Nan. "No, I haven't promised. Do you want me to?" + +"I don't know," Raven answered, without a pause, as if he had been +thinking about it interminably. "If it had some red blood in it, if you +were--well, if you loved him, Nan, I should be mighty glad. I'd like to +see you living, up to the top notch, having something you knew was the +only thing on earth you wanted. But these half and half things, these +falterings and doing things because somebody wants us to! God above us! +I've faltered too much myself. I'd rather have made all the mistakes a +man can compass, done it without second thought, than have ridden up to +the wall and refused to take it." + +"Do you think of her all the time?" she ventured, in her turn, and +perversely wondered if he would think she meant Tira and not Aunt Anne. + +But he knew. "No," he said, "I give you my word she's farther away from +me than she ever was in her life. For a while she was here, at my elbow, +asking me what I was going to do about her Palace of Peace. But +suddenly--I don't know whether it's because my mind has been on +Dick--suddenly I realized she was gone. It's the first time." Here he +stopped, and Nan knew he meant it was the first time since his boyhood +that he had felt definitely free from that delicate tyranny. And being +jealous for him and his dominance over his life, she wondered if another +woman had crowded out the memory of Aunt Anne. Had Tira done it? + +"And you haven't decided about the money." + +"I've decided," he surprised her by saying at once, "to talk it out with +Anne." + +She could only look at him. + +"One night," he continued, "when Dick was at his worst, I was there +alone with him, an hour or so, and I was pretty well keyed up. I seemed +to see things in a stark, clear way. Nothing mattered: not even Dick, +though I knew I never loved the boy so much as I did at that minute. I +seemed to see how we're all mixed up together. And the things we do to +help the game along, the futility of them. And suddenly I thought I +wouldn't stand for any futility I could help, and I believe I asked Old +Crow if I wasn't right. 'Would you?' I said. I knew I spoke out loud, +for Dick stirred. I felt a letter in my pocket--it was about the estate, +those bonds, you remember--and I knew I'd got to make up my mind about +Anne's Palace of Peace." + +Nan's heart was beating hard. Was he going to follow Aunt Anne's +command, the poor, pitiful letter that seemed so generous to mankind and +was yet so futile in its emotional tyranny? + +"And I made up my mind," he said, with the same simplicity of hanging to +the fact and finding no necessity for explaining it, "to get hold of +Anne, put it to her, let her see I meant to be square about it, but it +had got to be as I saw it and not as she did. Really because I'm here +and she isn't." + +Her eyes filled with tears, and as she made no effort to restrain them, +they ran over and spilled in her lap. She had thought hard for him, but +never so simply, so sternly as this. + +"How do you mean, Rookie," she asked humbly, in some doubt as to her +understanding. "How can you get hold of Aunt Anne?" + +"I don't know," said he. "But I've got to. I may not be able to get at +her, but she must be able to get at me. She's got to. She's got to +listen and understand I'm doing my best for her and what she wants. Old +Crow understands me. And when Anne does--why, then I shall feel free." + +And while he implied it was freedom from the tyranny of the bequest, she +knew it implied, too, a continued freedom from Aunt Anne. Would he ever +have set his face so fixedly toward that if he had not found Tira? And +what was Tira's silent call to him? Was it of the blood only, because +she was one of those women nature has manacled with the heaviness of the +earth's demands? Strangely, she knew, nature acts, sometimes sending a +woman child into the world with the seeds of life shut in her baby hand, +a wafer for men to taste, a perfume to draw them across mountain and +plain. The woman may be dutiful and sound, and then she suffers +bewildered anguish from its potency; or she may league herself with the +powers of darkness, and then she is a harlot of Babylon or old Rome. And +Tira was good. Whether or not Raven heard the call of her +womanhood--here Nan drew back as from mysteries not hers to touch--he +did feel to the full the extremity of her peril, the pathos of her +helplessness, the spell of her beauty. She was as strong as the earth +because it was the maternal that spoke in her, and all the forces of +nature must guard the maternal, that its purpose may be fulfilled. Tira +could not speak the English language with purity, but this was +immaterial. She was Tira, and as Tira she had innocently laid on Raven +the old, dark magic. Nan was under no illusion as to his present +abandonment of Tira's cause. That he seemed to have accepted the ebbing +of her peril, that he should speak of it with something approaching +indifference, did not mean that he had relaxed his vigilance over her. +He was not thinking of her with any disordered warmth of sympathy. But +he was thinking. Suddenly she spoke, not knowing what she was going to +say, but out of the unconscious part of her: + +"Rookie, you don't want anything really, do you, except to stand by and +give us all a boost when we're down?" + +Raven considered a moment. + +"I don't know," he said, "precisely what I do want. If you told me Old +Crow didn't want anything but giving folks a boost, I'm with you there. +He actually didn't. You can tell from his book." + +"I can't seem to bear it," said Nan. She was looking at the darkening +woods and her wet eyes blurred them more than the falling dusk. "It +isn't healthy. It isn't right. I want you to want things like fury, and +I don't know whether I should care so very much if you banged yourself +up pretty well not getting them. And if you actually got them! O Rookie! +I'd be so glad." + +"You're a dear child," said Raven, "a darling child." + +"That's it," said Nan. "If you didn't think I was a child, perhaps you'd +want me. O Rookie! I wish you wanted me!" + +Into Raven's mind flashed the picture of Anne on her knees beside him +saying, in that sharp gasp of her sorrow, "You don't love me." This was +no such thing, yet, in some phase, was life going to repeat itself over +and over in the endless earth journeys he might have to make, futilities +of mismated minds, the outcry of defrauded souls? But at least this +wasn't his cowardly silence on the heel of Anne's gasping cry. He could +be honest here, for this was Nan. + +"My darling," he said, "you're nearer to me than anything in this +world--or out of it. Don't you make any mistake about that. And if I +don't want things 'like fury,' as you say, it's a matter of the +calendar, that's all. Dick wants them like fury. So do you. I'm an old +chap, dear. You can't set back the clock." + +But he had pushed her away, as his aloofness had pushed Anne. He had +thrown Anne back upon her humiliated self. He had tossed Nan forward +into Dick's generation and hers. But here was the difference. She wasn't +going to cry out, "You don't love me." Instead, she turned to him, +shivering a little and drawing her scarf about her shoulders. + +"We'd better go down," she said. "It's getting cold. Dick'll be +wondering." + +They got up and Raven set the chairs inside the hut and took his glance +about to see if all was in order: for he did not abandon the unwilling +hope that Tira might sometime come. As they went down the hill the talk +turned to the hylas and the spring, but when they reached the house Nan +did not go in to Dick. She went to her own room and lay down on her bed +and thought passionately of leaving Rookie free. How was it possible? +Could he be free while she was bound? Sometimes of late she had been so +tired that she could conceive of no refuge but wild and reckless outcry. +And what could he think she meant when she said: "I wished you wanted +me"? + + + + +XLI + + +Spring came on fast and Nan, partly to assure Milly she wasn't to be +under foot forever, talked of opening her house and beginning to live +there, for the first time without Aunt Anne. But she predicted it, even +to Milly, with no great interest, and Raven, though he had urged her to +run away from the cloudy weather Milly and Dick made for her, protested +against her living alone. Dick was now strong enough to walk from his +room to the porch, and Raven, watching him, saw in him a greater change +than the languor of low vitality. He had the bright-eyed pallor of the +man knocked down into the abyss and now crawling up a few paces (only a +few, tremulous, hesitating) to get his foothold on the ground again. He +was largely silent, not, it sometimes seemed, from weakness, but the +torpor of a tired mind. He was responsive to their care for him, ready +with the fitting word and look and yet, underneath the good manners of +it all, patently acquiescent. + +Then Nan found herself rested, suddenly, in the way of youth. One +morning she got up quite herself again, and wrote her housekeeper to +assemble servants and bring them up, and told Raven he couldn't block +her any longer. She had done it for herself, and she quoted the +over-worked commonplace of the psychological moment. He, also believing +in the moment, refrained from argument and went over to open doors and +windows. He was curiously glad of a word with her house, not so much to +keep up old acquaintance as to ask its unresponsiveness whether it was +going to mean Nan alone for him hence-forth or whether, at a time like +this when he stood interrogating it, Anne Hamilton also stood there, in +her turn interrogating him. Was she there to-day? Everything spoke +mutely of her, the wall-paper she had prized for its ancient quaintness, +the furniture in the lines of grace she loved. At that desk she had sat, +slender figure of the gentlewoman of a time older than her own. Was her +presence so etched in impalpable tracery on the air that he ought to +feel it? Was she aching with defeated hopes because she might almost be +expecting him, not only to remember but even to hear and see? No death +could be more complete than the death of her presence here. He could +not, even by the most remorseful determination, conjure up the living +thought of her. Somehow it had seemed that here at least he might +explain himself to her, feel that he had made himself clear. He did +actually speak to her: + +"I can't do it, Anne. Don't you see I can't?" + +This was what he had meant when he told Nan he must get hold of her. +What place could be so fortunate as this, full of the broken threads of +her personality? They only needed knitting up by his passionate +challenge, to be Anne. He called upon her, he caught the fluttering +fringes of her presence in his trembling hands. But he could not knit +them up. They broke, they floated away. It seemed, from the dead +unresponsiveness of her house, as if there had never been any Anne. So +he gave it up, and, in extreme dullness of mind, went about opening +windows, and as the breeze idled in and stirred the waiting air and the +sunlight rushed to it, he seemed to be sweeping the last earthly +vestiges of her from the place that had known her best. And at once it +appeared to him that he had done an inexorable, perhaps even a cruel +thing, and he hurried out, leaving the air and sun to be more merciful +than he. + +When he went into his own yard he saw Dick sitting under the western +pines, where Raven had set a couple of chairs and had a hammock swung. +Dick had ignored the hammock. He scarcely sat at ease, and Raven had an +idea he was meeting discomfort halfway, with the idea of making himself +fit. He did say a word of thanks for the chairs. + +"Only," he added, "don't let it look too sociable. That'll be as bad as +the porch." He laughed a little, and concluded: "I don't mean you, Jack. +You know that, don't you?" + +Raven guessed he was allowing himself the indulgence of avoiding his +mother. For now Milly, as he recovered, had struggled hard for her lost +poise and regained it, in a slightly altered form, it is true; but still +she had it pretty well in hand, she was unweariedly attentive to him and +inexorably self-sacrificing in leaving Nan the right of way. Her life +had again become a severely ritualistic social enterprise, but now she +was just far enough lacking in spontaneity to fail in playing her game +as prettily as she used. It was tiring to watch, chiefly because you +could see how it tired her to play. + +Raven went down the little foot-path to Dick, and he thought anew how +illness had ravaged him. He had the tired eyes, the hollow cheek of +ineffective youth. + +"Hoping you'd come," said Dick. "Now, where's Tenney?" + +"Tenney," said Raven, "is at home, so far as I know. I saw him last +night." + +"Go up there?" + +"Yes." + +"What for?" + +Raven smiled a little, as if he found himself foolish or at best +incomprehensible. + +"Well," he said, "I gave him every chance to skip. I hoped he would. +That would be the simplest way out. But when I found he wasn't going to, +I began to go there every night to let him see I was keeping an eye on +him. I don't go in. I just call him out and we stare over each other's +heads and I inform him you're better or not so well (the probation +dodge, you know) and he never hears me, apparently, and then I go away. +I've got used to doing it. Maybe he's got used to having it done. Maybe +it's a relief to him. I don't know." + +"Does he still look like a lunatic at large?" + +"More or less. His eyes are less like infuriated shoe buttons, but on +the whole he seems to have quieted a lot." + +"You don't suppose," said Dick, "you've put the fear of God into him?" + +"Not much. If anybody has, it was you when he saw you topple over and +knew he'd got the wrong man." + +"He was laying for you, then," said Dick. + +"Why, yes," said Raven. "Tira was there, telling me he'd set up a gun, +and she'd got to the point of letting Nan take her away, when he fired. +What the dickens were you up there for, anyhow?" he ended, not quite +able to deny himself reassurance. + +"I'd heard he was out with a gun," said Dick briefly. "Charlotte told +me. And I gathered from your leaving word for Nan that the Tenney woman +was there--at the hut, you know." + +"Don't say 'the Tenney woman,'" Raven suggested. "I can't say I feel +much like calling her by his name myself, but 'the Tenney woman' isn't +quite----" + +"No," said Dick temperately. "All right, old man, I won't." + +"Awfully sorry you got it instead of me," said Raven, apparently without +feeling. He had wanted to say this for a long time. "Wish it had been +the other way round." + +"I don't, then," said Dick, gruffly in his turn. "It's been an +eye-opener, the whole business." + +"What has?" + +"This." He evidently meant his own hurt and the general viewpoint +induced by it. "I'm not going to stay round here, you know," he +continued, presenting this as a proposition he had got to state abruptly +or not at all. + +"Why not?" + +"I don't believe I could say," Dick temporized, in a way that suggested +he didn't mean to try. "There's Mum, you know. She's going to be at me +again to go in for my degree. Oh, yes, she will, soon as she thinks I +won't come unglued. Well, I don't want it. I simply don't. And I don't +want what she calls a profession: any old thing, you know, so long as +it's a profession. I couldn't go in for that either, Jack. If I do +anything, it's got to be on my own, absolutely on my own. Fact is, I'd +like to go back to France." + +"Reconstruction?" Raven suggested, after a minute. + +"Maybe. Not that I'm specially valuable. Only it would be something to +get my teeth into." + +Was this, too, Raven wondered, an aftermath of the War? Had it shaken +the atoms of his young purpose too far astray for them ever to cohere +again? Dick had had one purpose. Even that didn't seem to be surviving, +in any operative form. + +"Writing?" he suggested. "Oxford--and poetry?" + +Dick shook his head. + +"Well," said Raven, "if it's France then, maybe I'll go with you." + +Dick smiled slightly. Did his lip tremble? + +"No," he said, at once, as if he'd been waiting for it, "you stay here +and look after Nan." + +This gave Raven the slightest opening. + +"That's the devil of it," he said, "your leaving Nan." + +"Yes," said Dick quietly, his eyes on an orchard tree where an unseen +robin sang, "I'm leaving her." + +"She's been devoted to you," Raven ventured. + +"Quite so. I've been lying there and seeing----" + +He paused and Raven prompted: + +"Seeing what?" + +Dick finished, with a deeper quiet: + +"Seeing her look at you." + +Raven, too, stared at the tree where the robin kept up the bright beauty +of his lay. He was conscious, not of any need to combat this finality of +Dick's, but of a sense, more poignant than he could support without +calling on his practiced endurance, of the pity of it, the "tears of +things." Here was youth, its first bitter draught in hand, not recoiling +from it, but taking it with the calmness of the older man who has fewer +years to taste it in. He could not ask the boy to consider, to make no +hasty judgment. Whatever lay behind the words, it was something of a +grave consequence. And Dick himself led the way out of the slough where +they were both caught. + +"Curious things come to you," he said, "when you're laid by the heels +and can't do anything but think: I mean, as soon as you get the nerve to +think." + +"Such as?" + +"Well, poetry, for one thing. When I began to think--and I didn't want +it to be about Nan any more than I could help--I used to have a +temperature, you know--puzzled them, doctor, nurse, all of you. Nan, +that was! I knew it, though the rest of you hadn't the sense. Well, I +made my mind run away from it. I said I'd think about poetry, my long +poem. I'd lie there and say it over to myself, and see if the rest of it +wouldn't come." He laughed a little, though not bitterly. He was frankly +amused. "What do you think? I couldn't even remember the confounded +thing. But I could other things: the verse I despised. Wasn't that the +limit? Omar Khayyám! I lay there and remembered it by the yard." + +"That's easy," said Raven. "Nothing like the first impressions. They +stick." + +"Evidently," said Dick. "They did stick. And my stuff didn't." + +"Is this," Raven ventured, not seeing whether the boy was quivering +under his calm, "a case against the moderns?" + +Dick answered promptly, though Raven could only wonder, after all, just +what he meant: + +"It's a case against me." He went on, his eyes still on the melodious +orchard converts. It must have been a vagabond robin swaggering there, +really deriding nests, he found so much leisure to sing about them. "I +wanted to say I didn't get you that time when you told me you'd pretty +much done with the world. I though Mum was right: _cafard_, you +remember. But I've swung round into the same rut. It's a rotten system. +I'm done with it." + +Raven looked at him in a sudden sharp misery of apprehension. First, Old +Crow, then he, then Dick, one generation following another. + +"Don't you go that path, old man," he said. "You'll only lose your way +and have to come back." + +"Come back?" + +"Yes. Old Crow did. Remember the book. He challenged the whole business, +and then he swung round to adoring it all, the world and Whoever made +it. He didn't understand it a whit better, but he believed, he accepted, +he adored." + +"What would you say?" Dick asked curiously, after a moment. "Just what +happened to him?" + +"Why, I suppose," said Raven, "in the common phrase, he found God." + +They were silent for a time and both of them tried desperately to think +of the vagabond robin. Raven, his mind released by this fascination of +dwelling on Dick apart from any responsibility of talking to him, found +it running here, there, back and forth, over these weeks of their stay +together. It halted, it ran on, it stopped again to consider, but always +it was of Dick and incidentally of himself who didn't matter so much, +but who had to be in it all. Were they at one in this epidemic of world +sickness? As the great explosive forces of destruction and decay seemed +to have released actual germs to attack the physical well-being of +races, had the terrible crashes of spiritual destinies unsettled the +very air of life, poisoned it, drugged it with madness and despair? Was +there a universal disease of the mind, following this wholesale +slaughter, which the human animal hadn't been able really to bear though +it had come to a lull in it, so that now it was, in sheer shrieking +panic, clutching at its various antidotes to keep on living? One +antidote was forgetfulness. They were forgetting the War, some thousands +of decent folk who clearly had meant to remember. A horrible antidote +that, but perhaps they had to take it to save themselves. Too big a +price to pay for living (and such thread-paper lives!) but still there +did seem to be a prejudice in favor of the mere drawing of breath. Maybe +you couldn't blame them, spinning in the sunshine like insects of a day. +Some of the others had to save themselves by the wildness of a new +intoxication. They danced, their spirits danced: a carmagnole it was, a +dance of death, the death of the spirit as he saw it. But maybe, with +this preposterous love of life in them they, too, had to do it. Maybe +you couldn't blame them. He and Dick--they had been like two children, +scared out of their wits, crying out, hitting at each other in the dark. +Youth and age, that was what they had fought about. It had been an +unseemly scrap, a "you're another." Dick had been brought up against +life as it looks when you see it naked, the world--and what a world! No +wonder he swore it was a world such as neither he nor his fellows, like +him aghast, would have made. He would simply have to live some quarter +century to find out what sort of a world he and his fellows did actually +make. + +And Raven: Lord! Lord! what was the use of having traveled his own +quarter century along the everlasting road if it didn't make him at +least silent in sheer pity of it: youth singing along to the Dark Tower, +jingling spurs and caracoling nag, something it didn't quite know the +feeling of shut in its nervous hand? What was it shut there? The key, +that was it: the key to the Dark Tower. Youth made no doubt it was the +key, easy to hold, quick to turn, and the gate would fly open and, if +youth judged best, even the walls would fall. And yet, and yet, hasn't +all youth held the key for that borrowed interval and do the walls ever +really fall? But if age doesn't know enough to include youth in its +understanding, as youth (except the poets) couldn't possibly include +age, why then! + +"I am," thought Raven, returning to the Charlottian vernacular, "very +small potatoes and few in a hill." + +And what was the Dick, the permanent Dick who would remain after a few +more years had stripped him of the merely imitative coloring he caught +from his fellows? Dick talked about "herd madness," and here was he, at +one with his own herd. He piped in verse because a few could sing, +he--but what was the use hammering along on the old dissonance: youth, +age, age, youth. And yet they needn't be dissonant. They weren't always. +There was Nan! But as to Dick, he was simply Dick, a good substratum of +his father, Anthony Powell, in him, a man who had had long views on +trade and commerce and could manage men. And a streak of Raven, not too +much but enough to imagine the great things the Powell streak would show +him how to put his hand to. + +Dick had been staring at him, finding him a long way off, and now he +spoke, shyly if still curiously: + +"Would you say you'd found God?" + +Raven came back; he considered. + +"No," he said, at last, "I couldn't say anything of the sort: it sounds +like such awful swank. But I rather stand in with Old Crow. The fact is, +Dick"--it was almost impossible to get this clarified in his own mind to +the point of passing it on--"Old Crow's made me feel somehow--warm. As +if there's a continuity, you know. As if they keep a hand on us, the +generations that have passed. If that's so, we needn't be so infernally +lonesome, now need we?" + +"Well," said Dick, "we are pretty much alone." + +"But we needn't be," said Raven, painfully sticking to his text, +"because there are the generations. The being loyal to what the +generations tried to build up, what they demand of us. And behind the +whole caboodle of 'em, there's something else, something bigger, +something warmer still. Really, you know, if only as a matter of +convenience, we might call it--God." + +A silence came here and he rather forgot Dick in fantastically thinking +how you might have to climb to the shoulders of a man (Old Crow's, for +instance) to make your leap to God. You couldn't do it from the ground. +Dick had taken off his glasses to wipe them and Raven, recalling himself +and glancing up, found his eyes suffused and soft. + +"Jackie," said Dick, "you're a great old sport." + + + + +XLII + + +The spring had two voices for Tira, the voice of a fainting hope and the +voice of fear. The days grew so capriciously lovely that her heart tried +a few notes in answer, and she would stand at her door and look off over +the mountain, fancying herself back there on the other side with the +spirit of girlhood in her, drawing her, in spite of dreary +circumstances, to run, to throw herself on the ground by cool violet +banks to dream and wake, all flushed and trembling, and know she must +not tell that dream. But when the dusk came down and the hylas peeped +and the moist air touched her cheek, she would lose courage and her +heart beat miserably in tune with the melancholy of spring. Still, on +the whole, she was coming alive, and no one knew better than she that +life, to be life, must be also a matter of pain. Tenney was leaving her +to a great extent free. He was off now, doing his fencing, and he would +even, returning at noon or night, forget to fall into the exaggerated +limp he kept in reserve to remind her of his grievance. She had not seen +Raven for a long time now, except as he and Nan went by, always looking +at the house, once or twice halting a moment in the road, as if debating +whether they should call. And Tira, when she saw them, from her hiding +behind the curtain, would step to the door and fasten it against them. +She would not answer, she told herself, if they knocked. But they never +did knock. They went on and left her to her chosen loneliness. For an +instant she would be unreasonably hurt, and then smile at herself, +knowing it was she who had denied them. + +It was an April morning when the spring so got into her blood that she +began to wish for things. They were simple things she wished for: +chiefly to feel herself active in the air and sun. She wanted to go +away, to tire herself out with motion, and she made up her mind that, if +Tenney went to the long pasture fencing, she would shut the house and +run off with the baby into the woods. The baby was heavy now, but +to-day, in her fullness of strength, his weight was nothing to her. They +might even go over to Mountain Brook by the path "'cross lots" where the +high stepping stones led to the track round the mountain. She loved the +look of the stepping stones in spring when the river swirled about them +and they dared you to cross and then jeered at you because the water +foamed and threatened. She sang a little, finishing her morning tasks, +and Tenney, coming from the barn with his axe, to start on his day's +fencing, heard her sing. Tira, when she saw him, was in such haste to be +off herself that she called to him from the window: + +"Here! don't you forget your luncheon. I've got it 'most put up." + +He glanced back over his shoulder, and spoke curtly: + +"I don't want it. I'm goin' over on the knoll." + +Her heart fell. The day was done. She would have to stay and get his +dinner. Even an hour's vagabondage would be impossible, for the knoll +was across the road overlooking the house and he would see her go. All +these weeks she had held herself to a strict routine, so that every +minute could be accounted for. This day only she had meant to break her +habit and run. It was over then. She was bitterly disappointed, as if +this, she thought, smiling a little to herself, was the only day there +was. She might as well wash blankets. She went to the bedroom to slip +off her dress and put on a thick short-sleeved apron: for Tira was not +of those delicate-handed housewives who can wash without splashing. She +dripped, in the process, as if, Tenney used to tell her in the first +days of their marriage, she got in all over. In her bedroom, with the +sweet air on her bare arms and the robins calling and the general tumult +and busy ecstasy outside, she stopped to wonder. Could she take the baby +and slip out by the side door, and come back in time to fry Tenney's ham +for dinner? No, it wouldn't do. He would be in for a drink, or the cow +shut up in the barn with her calf would "loo" and he would wonder if +anything was happening to them. A dozen things might come up to call him +back. She would wash blankets. Then she saw the baby, through the +doorway, sitting where she had put him, on the kitchen rug, and a quick +anger for him possessed her. + +"In that hot kitchen," she said aloud, "when there's all outdoors!" + +She dragged one of the blankets from the bed, ran out as she was, +bare-armed, bare-necked, and spread it on the grass in front of the +house. + +"It's goin' to be washed anyways," she placated the housewifely instinct +within her, and she ran in for the baby and set him on the blanket. One +heart-breaking thing about this baby who was "not right" was that there +were no answers in him. She had tried all the wiles of motherhood to +show him how she loved him, and coax him to respond, not so much in +actual sentience to her as a baby's rejoinder to the world he could see +and touch. He had no answers. But this morning when the sun fell warmly +on him and the breeze stirred his coppery hair, he did, it seemed, hear +for an instant the voice of earth. He put out his fat hands and gurgled +into a laugh. Tira went mad. She was immediately possessed by an +overwhelming desire to hear him laugh again. She called to him, in +little cooing shouts, she stretched out her arms to him, and then, when +he would not be persuaded even to turn his head to her, she began to +dance. Perhaps after the first step she really forgot about him. Perhaps +the mother ecstasy ran into the ecstasy of spring. Perhaps, since she +could not answer the lure of the woods by running to them that morning, +the woods ran to her, the green magic of them, and threw their spell on +her. She hardly saw what was about her, even the child. The cherry tree +in bloom was a great whiteness at her right, the sun was a splendor, the +breeze stirred her hair, and the child's head was a coppery ball she +fixed her eyes upon. And while she waved her arms and danced, Martin, +who had seen her from the road, and left his horse there, was coming +toward her across the grass. Why could she not have seen him stop? Why +was he nothing more than a tree trunk in the woods, standing there while +she flung up her white arms and danced? The earth spirits may know. Pan +might know. They had got Tira that day, released from her winter's +chill. She did not, and still less Martin, his own blood rising with +every pulse. + +"Hooray!" he yelled. "That's the talk." + +He made a stride and Tira darted back. But it was not she he ran toward. +It was the child. He bent to the baby, caught him up and tossed him +knowingly and the baby, again incredibly, laughed. Tira, taken aback at +the sight of Martin, like a sudden cloud on her day, was arrested, in +her first rush toward him, by the pretty laugh. Her baby in Martin's +hands: that was calamity unspeakable. But the child had laughed. She +would hardly have known what price she would refuse even to the most +desperate of evil spirits that could conjure up that laugh. She stood +there breathless waiting on the moment, afraid of the event yet not +daring to interrupt it, and Martin tossed the baby and the baby laughed +again, as if it were "right." For Martin himself, except as the +instrument of the miracle, she had hardly a thought. It might have been +a hand out of heaven that had caught up the child, a hand from hell. But +the child laughed. Martin, for the interval, was neither malevolent nor +calculating. This was not one of his impish pleasantries. It might have +been in the beginning, but he was enormously flattered at having touched +the spring of that gurgling delight. For this was, he knew, a solemn +baby. He had glanced at it, when he came Tira's way, but only carelessly +and with no idea it was not like all babies. He supposed they began to +take notice sometime, when they got good and ready. Queer little devils! +But he was as vain and eager in his enjoyment of the response to his own +charm as he was prodigal in using it. The spring day had got into his +blood, too, and when he saw Tira dancing, the baby a part of the bright +picture, he had taken the little devil up, with no purpose but somehow +because it seemed natural, and when the child laughed he knew he had +made a hit and kept on, singing now, not a cradle song but a man's song, +something he had not himself thought of since he heard his old +grandmother drone it between smokes, while she sat by the fire and +dreamed of times past. It was something about Malbrook--"gone to the +army"--"hope he never'll come back." And there was Tira now, within the +circle of his fascination, bending a little toward him, her eyes darker +than he had seen them for many a day, her white arms wide, as if she +invited him. He wondered how a woman with her black hair could have a +skin so white; but he never guessed the lovely arms were stretched +toward the child and not to him, and that they would have snatched the +baby but for that amazing laugh. He stopped, breathless more from his +thoughts than his gay exertion, and gave a shout. + +"Here!" he cried, to Tira, in a joviality of finding her at one with him +and the day (this first prime day of spring, a day that ought to make a +person shake a leg), "you take him. Fine little chap! Set him on the +ground ag'in an' you an' me'll have a tell." + +Tira took the step toward him and lifted her arms for the child. She was +glad the wild game had ended. Martin put the baby into her arms, but +instantly she felt his hands on her elbows, holding her. + +"Guess that's the way to git you, ain't it?" he inquired, in jovial good +humor. "You can't scratch with the youngster between us. You can't cut +an' run. By thunder, Tira! you're as handsome as you were that day I see +you first an' followed you home? Remember? You're like"--his quick mind +saw it at a leap--"you're like this cherry tree, all a-bloom." + +He bent his head to her arm, almost as white as the cherry bloom and +kissed it. A shadow dropped upon them. It was only a little sailing +cloud but it startled Tira more than the kiss; the look of the day had +changed so suddenly and as if it were changing for them alone. For there +outside was the bright affluence of spring just as it had been but over +them the warning cloud. She glanced about, in the one instant of +darkening, and on the knoll across the road saw what the kind little +cloud might have been sent to tell her. Tenney stood there, a stark +figure, watching them. Her numbness to the presence of Martin who stood +holding her broke in a throb of fear. The instant before, his lips on +her arm had been no more than the touch of a leaf that might have blown +there. She did not even remember it. She lifted her face to his and, +seeing the fear in it, he involuntarily released her and she stepped +away from him. + +"You go," she said. "Go quick. He's over there on the knoll. My God! +don't look. Don't you know no better'n to look? He's fencin'. He's got +his axe." + +But Martin had looked. He gave a little disconcerted laugh and turned +away. + +"So long!" he called back over his shoulder. "Glad the little chap took +to me. Have him out here an' whenever I'm goin' by----" + +She did not hear. She had run, as if from nearing danger, into the house +and closed the door behind her. It was warmer even in the few minutes +since she had come out, but she had lost her delight in the open. She +was afraid, and as Martin stepped into his wagon, he wondered why. Tira +was a good, strong, husky girl, a streak of the gypsy in her. Sometimes +in the old days he'd been half afraid of her himself when things didn't +suit, mostly after he got carrying on with some other girl. The way her +eyes opened on a chap! Why didn't she open 'em that way on Tenney? Queer +proposition, a woman was, anyways. + +Tira carried the baby into the front room and sat down by the window, +still holding him. She pushed her chair back until the curtain hid her +and, through the narrow strip between curtain and casing, kept her eyes +on Tenney. For several minutes after Martin had driven away, he stood +there, still as a tree. Then the tree came alive. Tenney moved back to +the left, where the fence ran between field and pasture, and she lost +him. But she could not hear his axe. In her anxiety she strained the +child against her until he struggled and gave a fitful cry. She did not +heed the cry. This, her instinct told her, was the only safe place for +him on earth: his mother's arms. + +All through the morning she sat there, looking now and then from the +window, and still holding the child. When the clock struck eleven, the +sound awoke her. If she was to get dinner, she must be about it. Was she +to get dinner? Or was she to assume that this day marked the settlement +of the long account? The house itself, still in its morning disorder, +told her the moment had come. The house itself, it seemed to whisper, +could not possibly go on listening to the things it had listened to +through the winter or holding itself against the horror of the more +horrible silence. Who would think of eating on the verge of this last +inevitable settlement? And what would the settlement be? What was +there--she thought over the enemies she had feared. The crutch: that was +gone. She had made sure of that. The gun: but if it were here she +doubted whether Tenney would dare even look at it again, remembering +that night when he washed at the invisible stain on his hands. A quarter +of an hour had gone in these imaginings, and then she did get up, went +into the kitchen, built her fire, and set the table. But as she moved +about the room, she carried the baby with her, working awkwardly against +his weight and putting him down for a minute only at a time and +snatching him up again at an unexpected sound. Once a robin called just +outside the window, a bold bright note; it might have been the vagabond +robin from Raven's orchard who sang about nests but seemed never to +break off singing long enough to find a straw for one. She caught up the +child from the couch and stood breathless, listening. It seemed as if +the robin knew, and somehow, like Martin, felt like laughing at her. + +Tenney was there, at a few minutes after twelve, but dinner was not on +time. He came in, washed his hands at the sink and glanced about him. +The table was set, and Tira, at the stove, the child on her hip, was +trying the potatoes. She did not look at him. If he looked strange, it +seemed to her she might not be able to go on. + +"I ain't dished up," she said. "I'm kinder late." + +Tenney spoke immediately and his voice sounded merely quiet, not, she +reasoned anxiously, as if he tried to make it so, but just--quiet. + +"You ain't washed the breakfast dishes neither. Ain't you feelin' well?" + +"Yes," said Tira, "well as common. I left 'em, that's all." + +"Oh," said Tenney. "Wanted to git at suthin' else." + +She turned and looked at him. Yes, he was different, not paler, nor, as +she had seen him, aflame in a livid way, but different. + +"Isr'el," she said, "I never knew 'Gene Martin was goin' to stop here. I +knew no more'n the dead." + +"Was that him?" asked Tenney indifferently. "I see somebody stopped. I +thought mebbe 'twas the butcher. Then I remembered he comes of a +Wednesday." + +That settled it in her mind. The weekly call of the butcher was as fixed +as church on Sunday. Tenney was playing for something, and she +understood. The moment had come. The house and she both knew it. She was +not sorry, and perhaps, though she had been good to it and kept it in +faithful order, the house was not sorry either. Perhaps it would rather +rest and fall into disorder the way Tenney would let it, if he were here +alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with +the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence +that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law. +He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did +not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind. +Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning--three together in May +sunshine--had confirmed his ugly doubts, he was relieved to wash his +hands of them both. The phrase came into her mind, and that in itself +startled her more than any fear of him. Wash his hands! How pitiful he +had been that night he washed his hands! + +They sat down to dinner together, and though Tira could not eat, she +made pretense of being too busy, getting up from the table for this and +that, and brewing herself a cup of tea. Tenney had coffee left over from +breakfast, and when her tea was done she drank it hastily, standing at +the sink where she could spill a part of it unnoticed. And when dinner +was over he went peaceably away to the knoll again, and she hastily set +the house in order while the baby slept. + +When Tenney came home he was quite the same, silent but unmoved, and +after milking he took off his boots by the stove and seemed to doze, +while Tira strained the milk and washed her dishes. She was still sure +that she and the child were to go. When would it be? Would the warning +come quickly? She wanted to leave the waiting house in order, the house +that seemed to know so much more about it all than she did. The fire had +gone down in the stove, but though the night was warm, Tenney still sat +by the hearth, huddled now in his chair, as if he wanted the comforting +of that special spot: the idea of the hearthstone, the beneficence of +man's cooking place. Tira's mind was on the night, the warmth of it, the +moist cool breath bringing the hylas' peeping. It made her melancholy as +spring nights always had, even when she was most happy. She thought of +the willows feathering out on the road to her old home, and how the +sight of them against the sky, that and the distant frogs, made her +throat thick with the clamor of a rising fear. The river road was the +one she would take when she was turned out, even if the willows did look +at her as she went by and lay that moist, cool hand of foreboding on her +heart. She had a plan, sprung together like the pieces of a puzzle since +she had known he was to send her away. There was a sawmill over the +other side of the mountain and the men's boarding house. She could get +work there. It would be strange if a woman so strong and capable could +not get work. + +Tenney stirred in his chair, roused himself from his huddled posture and +got up. Was he going to tell her now? + +"I guess mebbe I'll poke off to bed," he said, in his commonplace manner +of that noon. "I've got to be up bright an' early." + +"Ain't you finished on the knoll?" she ventured. + +"Yes, or next to it. But I've got quite a number o' jobs to do round +home." + +He went up the stairs without a light, carrying his shoes in his hand, +and Tira shivered once, thinking how horrible it was to go so softly in +stockinged feet. She was not afraid of him. Only she did wish his feet +would sound. She did not sleep that night. She brought in the cradle, +put the baby in it, and drew it to the window and there she sat beside +it, the night through, her hand on the broken hood. She had chosen a +high, straight chair, so that she might be too uncomfortable to sleep, +but she had no temptation to drop off. All her nerves were taut, her +senses broad awake. She was ready, she knew, for anything. The night was +peaceful, thrilled by little sounds of stirring life, and the house, +whatever it guessed, had forgotten all about her. Toward three o'clock +she suddenly lost her sense of vitality. She was cold, and so sleepy now +that the thought of bed was an ache of longing. She got up, found +herself stiff and heavy-footed, lifted the child from his cradle and +went into the bedroom with him. There she put him inside the sheets, and +lay down beside him on the outside of the bed. She slept at once, but +almost at once she was recalled. Tenney was standing in the bedroom +door, looking at her. + +"Wake up," he was saying, not unkindly. "Wake up." + +She came drowsily awake, but before she was fully herself her feet were +on the floor and she was rubbing her heavy eyes. The sun was streaming +in. + +"I've blazed the fire an' het me up some coffee," he said, still in that +impersonal way which was so disturbing only because it was not his way. +"I've harnessed up. I'm goin' to the street. You remember where that +Brahma stole her nest? I've got to have two eggs for even dozens." + +"Up in the high mow," said Tira. "Right under the beam." + +She heard him go out through the shed, and she followed, to the kitchen, +slowly, with the squalid feeling that comes of sleeping in one's day +clothes, and there she found the fire low and his cup and plate on the +bare table. She could see him through the window. There was the horse, +hitched to the staple in the corner of the barn, there was the basket of +eggs on the ground waiting for its even dozens. + +"D'you find any?" she called. + +He did not answer, and she ran out to the barn and called up to the mow: + +"You there? You find any?" + +But the barn, in its soft darkness, with a beam of dusty light here and +there, knew nothing about him. He had not climbed to the mow, for the +ladder was on the other side of the barn floor. She lifted it, brought +it over, set it against the hay and climbed. She was broad awake now, +and her taut muscles obeyed and liked it. She stepped on the hay, found +the dark hole old Brahma chose for her secret hoarding place, and put in +her hand, once, twice. Three eggs! Brahma must have thought she was +pretty smart to lay three without having them stolen away from her. Tira +put the eggs carefully in her apron pocket and hurried down the ladder, +and out to the basket waiting on the ground. How many eggs did he want +to make even dozens? Did he tell her? She could not remember. Probably +he had forgotten himself, by now. She sat down on the step and took the +eggs out in her lap, and then began to count and put them back again. +The sun lay on them and they looked pretty to her in their brown +fairness. She liked them, she thought, as she counted, liked all the +farm things, the touch of them, the smell. Even old Charlie, standing +there, smelled of the barn, and that was good, too. Five dozen, that was +it, and one over. She put the extra egg in her pocket, got up and +carried the basket to the wagon, placing it in front where it could sit +safely between Tenney's feet. And at that minute Tenney himself came +round the corner from the front of the house, and the day was so kind +and the sun so warm on her face that it seemed a long time ago she had +thought he meant to send her away, and she called to him: + +"You might git a quarter o' tea, the kind they call English breakfast. +An' a half a dozen lemons. It's terrible hard to think up any kind of a +pie these days, 'twixt hay an' grass." + +"Tea," said Tenney, as if he were putting it down in his mind. "An' +lemons. You might go out, in a half an hour or so, an' look at that +calf." + +He stepped into the wagon, took up the reins and drove away. Tira +watched him out of the yard, and at last she had no suspicion of his +coming back, as he had done so often, to surprise her. He was +somehow--different. He was really gone. She went in, got her breakfast +and ate it, this with more appetite than she had had for many weeks, and +smiled at herself, thinking she was not sleepy yet, but when sleep came +on her it would come like a cloud and smother her. She moved fast about +the kitchen to get her work done before it came, and in perhaps an hour +she remembered Tenney's telling her to have an eye to the calf. She +smiled a little, grateful for even the tiniest impulse to smile, and +told herself she wouldn't go out to look after any calf until she had +looked at somebody else who ought to be awake. She went into the +bedroom, and stopped a choked instant at the strangeness of the bed. The +little coppery head was what she should have seen, but there was only +the straight expanse of quilt, and a pillow, disarranged, lying +crookedly near the top. She snatched up the pillow. There was the little +coppery head. The baby was lying on his back, and over his face, +carefully folded into a square, was her apron, the one Eugene Martin had +torn away from her. The baby was dead. + + + + +XLIII + + +Tenney did not come home until two o'clock. When he drove into the yard +he found Tira there, standing on the step. This was a day of clear +sunlight, like that of yesterday, and the breeze moved her light rings +of hair. Tenney glanced at her once, but, saying nothing, got out and +began to unharness. Tira stood waiting. He led the horse into the barn, +and when he came out and walked toward the house she was still waiting, +a woman without breath even, one might have thought. When he was perhaps +three feet from her she spoke, but in a quiet voice: + +"Stop! You stan' right there an' I'll tell you. The doctor's been. I +'phoned him. I told him I overlaid the baby." + +"Overlaid?" muttered Tenney, in a puzzled way. + +Now a little feeling did manifest itself in her voice, as if he must be +a fool not to have known these tragedies that come to mothers. + +"Overlaid," she repeated, with the slightest tinge of scorn. "That's +what women do sometimes, big heavy women! Roll over on the little +creatur's an' lay on 'em so 't they can't breathe. I s'pose they can't +help it, though. They're tired. I told him I done that. He was sorry for +me. I asked him if the crowner'd come, an' I'd have to swear to't, an' +he said no. I was glad o' that, though mebbe it's no worse to swear to +anything than 'tis to say it. He was terrible good to me. I told him +baby'd got to lay over to Mountain Brook, side o' mother, an' he said he +was goin' there an' he'd git one of 'em to dig the little grave. I told +him you're all run down, your foot behavin' so, an' you wouldn't be able +to do nothin', an' I was 'most afraid o' your givin' out, when I told +you. So he's goin' to send the man with the little coffin." + +There was no faintest tremor of bitterness or gibing in this. It was the +simplest statement of facts. Tenney had stood perfectly still, but now +he lifted one hand and looked at it casually, as he had that other time. +He made an uncertain step, as if to pass her and enter the house, but +Tira stretched out her arms. They barred the way. + +"No," she said, "you ain't comin' in." + +"Ain't comin' in?" repeated Tenney. + +He looked up at her, but his glance fell at once to the trembling hand. + +"No," said Tira, "you ain't comin' into this house ag'in till he's +carried out of it. I've made you up a bed in the lower barn an' I've set +you out suthin' to eat there. Day after to-morrer mornin' the doctor's +comin' over after me an' baby--or send somebody, if he can't come--an' +he's goin' to see to the minister an' all. He was terrible sorry for me. +An' that night, day after to-morrer night, you can come back into the +house; but you can't come before." + +She went in and shut the door behind her, and Tenney heard the key turn +sharply in the lock. He stood there several minutes, moistening his dry +lips and looking down at his hands, and then he, too, turned about and +went down to the lower barn, where he found a bed made up and a cold +lunch on a little table. But while he ate he wondered, in an absent +muse, about the bed. It was the old four-poster he had packed away in +the shed chamber. How had she carried the heavy hardwood pieces down, +fitted them together and corded them? He was curious enough to lift the +tick to find out what she had used for cord. Her new clothes-line; and +there was the bed wrench in the corner by the chopping block. It looked +as if, having done with it, she had thrown it there in a wild haste to +get on with these things that must be done before he came. Even then, +with his mind on his hands--not hands, it seemed to him, he could quite +bear to touch food with--he wondered if some man had helped her. Had +Martin been here again, or was it Raven? But, after all, nothing seemed +to matter: only the queer state of his hands. That was the trouble now. + +All through the next day he hung about the place, doing the barn work, +milking, taking the milk to the house, but stopping there, for Tira met +him at the door, took the pails from him, and carried them in without a +word. He wondered vaguely whether, having denied him entrance to his own +house, she meant to refuse him food also, but presently she appeared +with a tray: meat and vegetables carefully arranged and the coffee he +depended on. Then she pointed out a wooden box, a little chest that had +lived up in the shed chamber, lifted the lid and bade him note the +folded garments within: he must change to-morrow, and these were his +clean clothes. Occasionally he glanced at her, but he could not see that +she looked very different. She was always pale. Early in the morning of +the third day she appeared with hot water and a basket filled with what +seemed to him at first a queer assortment of odds and ends. + +"Here," she said, "here's your shavin' things. I'll set the little +lookin' glass up ag'inst the beam. Here's your razor. I'll fill the mug. +Now, you shave you. If anybody should happen to see you, they'd say +'twa'n't fittin' for a man to have his baird all over his face, day of +his baby's funeral." + +The glass, with its picture of a red and blue house and a cedar tree, +she set against a beam, but it escaped her fingers and fell forward and +cracked straight across the little house. She picked it up, balanced it +against the beam and held it, with a frowning care, until it was secure. + +"Sign of a death!" she said, as if to herself, but indifferently. +"There! you shave you now, an' then I'll bring you out your breakfast +an' carry in the things." + +Tenney shaved before the little mirror with its crack across the house, +and, as if she had been watching him, she appeared at the minute of his +finishing. Now she was carrying a breakfast tray, poising it absorbedly, +with the intentness of a mind on one thing only. It was a good +breakfast, eggs and coffee and bacon, and the thick corn-cake he liked; +also, there was his tin lunch box. She pulled out the little table, set +the tray on it and brought his chair. + +"There!" said she. "Now soon as ever you've finished eatin' you take +your luncheon an' your axe an' go over to the long pastur' an' don't you +show your head back here till it's time to fetch the cows. You can bring +'em along with you, an' I'll have the pails out on the step so 't you +can start right off milkin'. An' when you've got through, you fetch the +milk into the house, same as usual." + +As she was leaving the barn she turned and the breeze lifted those +little rings of her hair and Tenney, looking full at her now, groaned. +It was not, he felt, any of the other things that had happened to them: +only there was always breeze enough, even on the stillest day, to stir +her hair. Now it seemed to be the only thing in the world with life in +it. + +"I shall tell 'em," she said clearly, as if she wanted him to understand +and remember--and she did not look at him, but across the road and up +the slope where the hut stood waiting for her--"the doctor an' all the +rest I've got to see, you was so sick over it, you couldn't come." + +Then she stepped out of the picture she had made against the smiling +day, the dark interior of the barn framing her, and walked, with her +free-swinging step, to the house. And Tenney ate his breakfast, took his +luncheon box and axe, and started for the woods. But he had not got out +of the yard when she called to him. He stopped and she came running; she +was no longer pale, and her eyes were rimmed with red. She came up with +him. + +"Isr'el," she said, "you think o' this. You think of it all day long. +'I'm goin' through it alone,' you says to yourself mebbe, after you've +got off there into the woods. 'But I ain't alone. He'll be with me, the +Lord Jesus Christ.' An' you remember there's that to think on. An' +there's forgiveness. Isr'el, you lay down your axe. You let me take holt +o' your hand." + +He could only stare at her, and she took the axe from his hand and laid +it at their feet. She took his hand and put it to her cheek. Then she +took his other hand and laid that also on her cheek, and murmured a +little formlessly, but in a way he sharply remembered as a means of +stilling the baby. She lifted her head then, smiling a little, and still +holding the hands. But before releasing them she stroked them softly and +said, "There! there! Poor souls," she added, "poor souls!" Did she mean +the unhappy hands, or all souls of men caught in the network of +mysterious life? She picked up his axe and gave it to him as a mother +might dismiss a child who was going to a distasteful task. "There!" she +said again. "Now, you remember." She turned from him, and Tenney went, +head down, to his work. + +That afternoon, about three o'clock, Nan was in her garden, busy with +the peony bed. She was dressed in cotton crêpe the color of the soil, +and her cheeks were red, like wild roses, and her ungloved hands also +the color of mould. She was delightfully happy getting into the earth +and the earth into her, and she looked it. Charlotte, coming on her +across the grass, thought her face was like a bloom the rest of her had +somehow made, as the earth was going to make red peonies. That is, I +think Charlotte thought something of this sort, though she would not +have put it in that way. Only she did have a great sense of Nan's entire +harmony with the garden bed and the garden bed with her. Charlotte had +other things on her mind, and she spoke without preamble: + +"D'you know what's happened over to Tenney's?" + +Nan got up from her knees, and her face was no longer the April-May face +she had bent above the peonies. + +"No," she said. "What is it?" + +"I see doctor go by this mornin' in his car," said Charlotte, "carryin' +Tira. In a couple of hours they come back. An' then he went by ag'in, +goin' down home. I was on the lookout an' stopped him. I was kind of +uneasy. An' he says: 'Yes, Mis' Tenney's baby's dead. She overlaid it,' +he says. 'They feel terribly about it,' he says. 'Tenney run away from +the services.'" + +Nan stood staring. She was thinking not only about the baby and the +Tenneys' feeling terribly--this Charlotte saw--but something farther +behind, thinking back, and thinking keenly. + +"I didn't say nothin' to nobody," Charlotte continued, "but the more I +thought on't the more stirred up I got. The baby gone, an' she there all +alone! So I run over. I knocked an' knocked, an' not a sound. Then, as I +was turnin' away, I got a glimpse inside the kitchen winder, an' if +you'll believe me there she set, hat an' all on, an' her hands full o' +daffies. You know them big double daffies always come up in their grass. +Well!" + +Nan threw down her trowel. + +"I'll go over," she said. "We'll both go." + +"What I come for," Charlotte hesitated, as they crossed the grass, "was +whether I better say anything to anybody." + +Nan knew she meant Raven. + +"No," she said, "Oh, I don't know! We can't tell till we see." + +Nan remembered she had not washed the earth off her hands, and yet, +though they were passing her door, she could not stop. When they came in +sight of the house, there was Tira in the doorway. She had taken off her +hat now, and there was no daffies in her hands. She looked so +commonplace, if her height and nobility could ever be less august, that +Nan felt a sudden drop in her own anxiety. Tira called to them. + +"Couldn't you come in a minute? I'd be pleased to have you." + +They went up the path, and when they stood at the foot of the steps, +confronting her, Nan saw how she had changed. And yet not tragically: +she was merely, one would have said, entirely calm, the stillest thing +in that pageant of the moving day. + +"I'd be pleased," she said, "if you'd walk in." + +She looked at Nan, and Charlotte at once turned away, saying, as she +went: + +"If there's anything--well, I'll be over." + +Nan and Tira went in, Nan holding Tira's hand in her earthy one. + +"Let's sit here," said Nan, crossing the room to the sofa between the +side windows. She was not sure of anything about this talk except that +she must keep her hand on Tira. She noticed that the double daffies, a +great bunch of them, were lying on the table. Tira was smiling faintly. +She drew a deep breath. It sounded as if she had been holding herself up +to something and had suddenly let go. + +"Seems good to set," she said. "I ain't hardly set down to-day +except----" She had it in mind to say except when she was in the car, +carrying the baby over to Mountain Brook, but it seemed too hard a thing +to say. + +"If you'd just lie down," said Nan, "I'd sit here." + +"No," said Tira, "I can't do that. I'm goin' over to Mountain Brook." + +"Not again? Not to-day?" + +"Yes, right off. I'm goin' to carry them daffies. He didn't have no +flowers, the baby didn't. I never thought on't--then. But he never had +none. He played with a daffy, 'most the last thing. I've got to git 'em +over there." + +"Not to-day, Tira," urged Nan. "You wouldn't get back till after dark." + +"I shouldn't come back to-night," said Tira. "The Donnyhills were real +good to me. They come to the grave. They'd admire to have me pass the +night." + +"Then," said Nan, "you wait till I go home and wash my hands, and I'll +ask Mr. Raven for his car and you and I'll go over. Just we two." + +"No," said Tira. "'Twouldn't do me no good to ride. When I've got +anything on my mind I can't do better'n walk it off. You let me be!" + +The last was a sharp, sudden cry, like the recoil from an unlooked-for +hurt. + +"I see," said Nan. "Yes, you must walk. I should want to, myself. But in +the morning, Tira--mayn't I come over after you?" + +Tira considered, her eyes on Nan's hand and her own clasped, lying on +Nan's knee. + +"Yes," she said, "you better. You come to the Donnyhills'. Yes, you +come." + +Then she considered again, and began one of her slow, difficult +meanderings, where the quickness of her heart and brain ran ahead of her +tongue's art to interpret them. + +"Seems if you knew," she said, "'most everything that's gone on." + +"Yes," said Nan, at a venture, and yet truthfully. "I think I've known." + +"An' now it's come to an end," said Tira. "Or if it ain't, it's on the +way to it. An' seems if you ought to know the whole. You're tough enough +to stan' up to 't." + +"Yes," said Nan simply, "I'm very tough. Nothing's going to hurt me." + +"I bring," said Tira, still with difficulty, "bad luck. Some folks do. +Folks set by me a spell. Then they stop. They think I'm goin' to be +suthin' they'd do 'most anything for, an' then they seem to feel as if I +wa'n't. An' there's no"--she sought for a word here and came out +blunderingly--"no peace nor rest. Nor for me, neither. I ain't had peace +nor rest. Except"--here she paused again and ended gravely, and not this +time inadequately--"in him." + +Nan understood. She was grave in her answer. + +"Mr. Raven," she said. "I know." + +The color flowed into Tira's face and she looked at Nan, with her +jewel-like eyes. + +"I'm goin' to tell you," she said, "the whole story. He's like--my God. +Anything I could do for him--'twould be nothin'. Anything he asked of +me----" + +Here the light faded out from her face and the flesh of it had that +curious look of curdling, as if with muscular horror. + +"But," she said, "here 'tis. S'pose it come on him, that--that"--she +threw back her head in despair over her poverty of words--"s'pose it +made him like----Oh, I tell you there's suthin' queer about me, there's +suthin' wrong. It ain't that I look different from other folks. I ain't +ever meant to act different. I swear to my God I've acted like a decent +woman--an' a decent girl--an' when I was little I never even had a +thought! You tell me. You'd know." + +Nan felt the hand on hers tighten. She put her other hand over it, and +thought. What could she tell her? These matters were too deep in the +causes of things for man to have caught a glimpse of them, except now +and then darkly through some poet's mind. There was one word that, to a +poet's mind only, might have illumined the darkness if only for an +instant: beauty, that was the word. Mankind could not look on beauty +such as this and not desire, for a moment at least, to possess it +utterly. But these things belonged to the dark places where brute nature +wrought her spells. And there were other beauties, other enchantments, +and of these, what could Tira, her mind moulded by the brutal influences +of her life, see, except as dreams of her own, not as having wholesome +correspondences in the mind of man? Could she guess what the appeal of +her loveliness would meet in Raven? Fastidious standards, pride of +honor, pride of race. The jungle, in itself, was as hateful to him as it +could be to her, who had been dragged through its fetid undergrowth with +a violence that had cut indelible marks into her. But for him, Raven--as +Nan believed she knew him and as Tira, her striving mind obscured by the +veil of her remembered past, could never know--hadn't the jungle +something for him beyond choking savors and fierce destructive poisons? +Didn't he know that even that miasma nourished wholesome virtues, +strength, abstinence, infinite compassion, if you crossed the horrible +expanse to the clear air beyond? Tira, fair as her mind was in its +untouched integrity, hated the jungle, but it was a part of the wrong +life had done her that she could not, highly as she worshiped Raven, +keep herself from seeing his kinship to the natural earth as Martin's +kinship with it, Tenney's--all the beasts who had desired her. How to +tell her that? How to tell her that although it was most loving of her +to save Raven from the curse she believed to be upon all men, he would +save himself? + +"They think," Tira continued, in a voice rough enough to hurt the ear, +"there's suthin' about me--different. An' they feel as if, if they owned +me body an' soul they'd be--I dunno what they'd be." + +"They think they'd be gods," Nan's mind supplied. "You are beauty, Tira. +You are the cup. They think if they could drink of you they would never +thirst again." + +"An' now," said Tira, "s'pose a man like--like him--s'pose it looked to +him some minute he never'd so much as expected--s'pose it looked to him +as if he'd be made if he owned me body an' soul. Well! That's easy, you +say. If I love him, what's my body an' what's my soul? Offer 'em to him, +quick. An' wouldn't I, if that was all? Wouldn't I?" + +She called it sharply, in an angry challenge. + +"Yes," said Nan quietly, "I know you would." + +"Well," said Tira, "what then? It wouldn't be any more"--her eyes, +glancing here and there in troubled search for help in her impossible +task of speech--"like them daffies over there. 'Twould be--mud." + +This, though it did not satisfy her, carried an ineffable loathing, the +loathing that had its seed in the pathway of her difficult life. + +"Now," she said, "you set by him, don't you?" + +"Yes," said Nan. + +"If 'twas your body an' soul, they'd be nothin' to you if he needed +'em." + +"Nothing." + +"An' you're goin' to stan' by him, an' if you marry away from him----" + +"Never mind that," said Nan. "What do you want me to do?" + +"I want you," said Tira, "to see what I mean. An' I want you to tell it +or not to tell it, as it seems best. An' if ever the time comes, when +it'll do him good to know I run away from him because he was my life an' +my soul an' my God, you tell him. An' if it ain't best for him to know, +you let it rest betwixt you an' me." + +"But, Tira," said Nan, "you're coming back?" + +Tira considered. + +"You see," she answered finally, "I've got my walkin' papers, as you +might say. The baby's gone. 'Twas the baby that made trouble betwixt his +father an' me. An' now there won't be no reason for my hidin' in the +shack up there or even passin' the time o' day with you, either of you. +An' that's a kind of a runnin' away, ain't it? Shouldn't you call it +runnin' away?" + +She smiled dimly, and Nan said: + +"Yes. But I shall come over to the Donnyhills' to-morrow." + +"Yes," said Tira, "so do. Now I'd better go." + +They got up and Nan put her hands on Tira's shoulders--and one hand was +numb from that iron clasp--and stood looking at her. Nan was not a +kissing woman, but she considered whether she should kiss her, to show +she loved her. She thought not. Tira's body had so revolted against +life, the life of the earth that had grown up into a jungle, that it +would be kinder to leave it inviolate even by a touch. + +"Don't you want to change your mind?" Nan asked. "Mayn't I get the car? +It's seven long miles, Tira." + +"Not the way I'm goin'," said Tira. There was a little smile at the +corners of her mouth. It was a kind smile, a mother smile. She meant to +leave Nan reassured. "I go 'cross lots, by old Moosewood's steppin' +stones." + +Nan withdrew her hands and thought absently how thin Tira's shoulders +were under her dress. She was like a ship, built for endurance and +speed, but with all her loveliness in the beauty of bare line. Tira put +on her hat and took up her daffodils and followed, out at the front door +and down the path. Nan looked back. + +"You've left the door open," said she. "Don't you want to lock up?" + +"No," said Tira, "he'll see to it." + +At the gate they parted, with a little smile from Tira, the kind that so +strangely changed her into something more childlike than her youth. + +"You come," she said, "in the mornin'. I shall be there, an' glad enough +to have you." + +She turned away and broke at once into her easy stride. Nan stood a +minute watching her. Then something came up in her, a surge of human +love, the pity of it all--Tira, Raven, the world, and perhaps a little +of it Nan--and she ran after her. The tears were splashing down her face +and blurring the bright day. + +"Tira!" she called, and, as she came up with her, "darling Tira!" + +"Why," said Tira, "you're cryin'! Don't you cry, darlin'. I never so +much as thought I'd make you cry." + +They put their arms about each other and their cheeks were together, wet +with Nan's tears, and then--Nan thought afterward it was Tira who did +it--they kissed, and loosed each other and were parted. Nan went home +shaken, trembling, the tears unquenchably coming, and now she did not +turn to look. + + + + +XLIV + + +Nan was very tired. She went to bed soon after dark and slept deeply. +But she woke with the first dawn, roused into a full activity of mind +that in itself startled her. There was the robin outside her window--was +it still that one robin who had nothing to do but show you how bravely +he could sing?--and she had an irritated feeling he had tried to call +her. Her room was on the east and the dawn was still gray. She lay +looking at it a minute perhaps after her eyes came open: frightened, +that was it, frightened. Things seemed to have been battering at her +brain in the night, and all the windows of her mind had been closed, the +shutters fast, and they could not get in. But now the light was coming +and they kept on battering. And whatever they wanted, she was +frightened, too frightened to give herself the panic of thinking it +over, finding out what she was frightened about; but she got up and +hurried through her dressing, left a line on her pillow for the maid and +went downstairs, out into a dewy morning. She had taken her coat, her +motor cap and gloves. Once in the road she started to run, and then +remembered she must not pass Tenney's running, as if the world were +afire, as things were in her mind. But she did walk rapidly, and +glancing up when she was opposite the house, saw the front door open as +Tira had left it, and a figure in one of the back rooms outlined against +the window of the front one where she and Tira had sat. That would be +Tenney. He must be accounting to himself for the lonesome house, though +indeed Tira would have left some word for him. When she went up the path +to Raven's door she was praying to the little imps of luck that Amelia +might not be the first to hear her. She tapped softly, once, twice, and +then Raven's screen came up and he looked down at her. They spoke a word +each. + +"Hurry," said Nan. + +"Wait," he answered, and put down the screen. + +When he came out, Nan met him on the top step where she had been +sitting, trying harder still not to be frightened. But he, too, was +frightened, she saw, and that this, to him also, meant Tira. + +"Get your coat," she said. "She's gone. Over to Mountain Brook." + +Raven's face did not alter from its set attention. + +"Yes," said Nan, "the car. I'll tell you the rest of it on the way." + +He got his coat and cap, and they went down to the garage together. +Shortly, they were slipping out of the yard, and she, with one oblique +glance, saw Amelia at a window in her nightie, and forgot to be +frightened for the instant while she thought Amelia would be accounting +for this as one of her tricks and compressing her lips and honorably +saying nothing to Dick about it. Raven turned down the road and Nan +wondered if she had even spoken the name of Mountain Brook. + +"Let her out," said she. + +Raven did let her out. He settled himself to his driving, and still he +had not questioned her. Nan turned her face to him and spoke incisively +against the wind of their going: + +"The baby died. Tira lay on it in her sleep. That was Monday. It was +buried yesterday. At Mountain Brook. Tira went back to Mountain Brook +yesterday afternoon, to carry the baby some flowers"--the moment she +said this she saw how silly it was and wondered why she had not seen it, +why she had been such a fool as not to be frightened sooner. "She said +she would spend the night with those Donnyhills." But had Tira thrown in +the Donnyhills to keep Nan from being frightened? + +Raven gave no sign of having heard. They were speeding. The east behind +them was a line of light, and the mists were clearing away. When they +turned into the narrow river road, the gray seemed to be there waiting +for them, for this was the gorge with the steep cliff on one side and +the river on the other, always dark, even at midday, with moss patches +on the cliffs and small streams escaping from their fissures and +tumbling: always the sound of falling water. + +"The Donnyhills?" Raven asked. "Don't I remember them? Sort of gypsy +tribe, shif'less." + +"Yes, that's it. She must have known them when she lived over there, +before she married." + +"That's where we go, is it?" + +"No," said Nan, and now she wondered if she could keep her voice from +getting away from her. "Stop where the cross cut comes out! Old +Moosewood's stepping stones. She was going to cross by them, where old +Moosewood----" There she stopped, to get a hand on herself, knowing she +was going to tell him, who knew it before she was born, the story of +Moosewood, the Indian, found there dead. + +If the stab of her disclosures drew blood from Raven she could not have +told. The road was narrower still, and rougher. Nan had forgotten where +the stepping stones came out. He was slackening now. She knew the curve +and the point where the cliff broke on the left, for the little path +that continued the cross cut on the other side of the road. He got out +without a glance at her, stepped to the water side of the roadway, and +she followed him. And it was exactly what her fear had wakened her to +say. There was no sign of Tira, but, grotesquely, her hat was lying on +one of the stepping stones, as if she had reckoned upon its telling +them. Raven ran down the path and into the shallow water near the bank, +and again Nan followed him, and, at the edge of the water, stopped and +waited. When the water was above his waist, he stooped, put down his +arms and brought up something that, against the unwilling river, took +all his strength. And this was Tira. He came in shore, carrying her, and +walking with difficulty, and Nan ran up the bank before him. He laid +Tira's body on the ground, and stood for an instant getting his breath, +not looking at her, not looking at Nan. + +"It's over," he said then quietly. "It's been over for hours." That was +the instant of reaction, and he shook himself free of it. "Where do they +live?" he asked Nan brusquely. "Yes, I know. We'll take her there. I'll +hold her. You drive." + +He lifted Tira again, put her into the car as if a touch might hurt her, +and sat there holding her, waiting for Nan. And Nan got in and drove on +to the Donnyhills'. + +All that forenoon was a madness of haste and strangeness. It is as well +to look at it through the eyes of Nan, for Raven, though he seemed like +himself and was a model of crisp action, had no thoughts at all. To Nan +it was a long interval from the moment of stopping before the little +gray Donnyhill house (and rousing more squalid Donnyhills than you would +have imagined in an underground burrow of wintering animals), through +indignities they had to show Tira's body, the hopeless effort of rousing +it again to its abjured relations with an unfriendly world. And while +they worked on the tenant-less body, the Donnyhill boy, a giant with a +gentle face, said he could drive, and was sent with Raven's car to the +farmer who had a telephone, and the doctor came and Nan heard herself +explaining to him that she woke up worried over Tira, because Tira had +spoken of the stepping stones. The doctor shook his head over it all. +The woman had been almost beside herself after the child's death. +Perfectly quiet about it, too. But that was the kind. Nan didn't think +she had any intention--any design?--and Nan hastened to say Tira had +told why she was going, told it quite simply. She had forgotten to give +the child any flowers. Of course, that did show how wrought up she was. +And there were the stepping stones. They were always tricky. Here the +doctor brought up old Moosewood, and said there were queer things. When +you came to think of it, New England's a queer place. Suicide? No! +Inquest? No! He guessed he knew. Then he went away and promised to send +the other man who would be the last to meddle with the body of Tira. + +The Donnyhill house was still, for all the children, with consolatory +chunks of bread in hand, had been sent off into the spacious playing +places about them. Mrs. Donnyhill, who looked like a weather-worn gypsy, +went about muttering to herself passionately sorrowful lamentations: +"God help us! poor creatur'! poor soul!" and she and Nan bathed Tira's +body--somehow they were glad to wash off the river water--and put on it +a set of clothes Nan suspected of being Mrs. Donnyhill's only decent +wear. For the folded garments were all by themselves in the bedroom +bureau, and it was true that the women in this region had forethought +for a set to be buried in. When this was over and before the coming of +the other man who was to have rights over Tira's body, Mrs. Donnyhill +remembered Raven and Nan might not have breakfasted, and gave them bread +and strong tea--brewed over night, it seemed to have been. They ate and +drank, and she moved about tucking children's tyers and sweaters into +holes of concealment and making her house fitting for Tira's majesty, +all the time muttering her pleas to God. + +About noon, when Tira was lying in the front room, in her solitude, no +more to be touched until she was put into her coffin, Raven came in from +his steady walk up and down before the house and went to Nan, where she +sat by the window in the other front room. The strength had gone out of +her. She sat up straight and strong, but her lips were ashen. As they +confronted each other, each saw chiefly great weariness. Raven's face, +Nan thought, was like a mask. It was grave, it was intent, but it did +not really show that he felt anything beyond the general seriousness of +the moment. + +"Get your things," he said to her. "We'll go back. Tenney's got to be +told, and I suppose Charlotte or somebody will have to do something to +his house." + +They both knew the strange commotion attendant here on funerals. +Sometimes houses were upturned from top to bottom and cleaned, even to +the paint. Nan put out a hand and touched his arm. + +"Don't do that, Rookie," she said, "don't take her back there. She +mustn't go into that house again. She wouldn't want it." + +Raven considered a moment. His face did not lose its mask-like calm. + +"No," he said then, "she mustn't. She must come to my house--or yours." + +"No," said Nan again, still keeping her hand on his arm, and aching so +with pity that she was humbly grateful to him for letting her touch his +sleeve, "she mustn't do that either. It would be queer, Rookie. It would +'make talk.' She wouldn't like that. Don't you see?" + +He did see. He gave a concurring motion of the head and was turning away +from her, but Nan rose and, still with her hand on his arm, detained +him. + +"We'll leave her here," she said. "That woman--she's darling. We can +make up to her afterward. But you mustn't appear in it again, except to +tell Tenney, if you'd rather. Though I could do that. Now, let's go." + +He was ready. But when he had reached the little entry between this room +and the one where Tira's body lay, she ran to him. + +"Rookie," she said, "Mrs. Donnyhill's out there with the children. Don't +you want to go in and see Tira?" + +Raven stood for a minute, considering. Then he crossed the entry and +Nan, finding he could not, for some reason, put his hand on the latch, +opened the door for him, and he went in. But only a step. He stood +there, his eyes on the poor bed where Tira lay, and then, as if he were +leaving a presence, he stepped back into the entry, and Nan understood +that he was not even carrying with him the memory of her great majesty +of beauty. She thought she understood. Even Tira's face was to be left +covered. She was to be inviolate from the eyes of men. In a few minutes +he had brought round the car, Nan had arranged things with Mrs. +Donnyhill, and they drove out into the day--blazing now, like +midsummer--and so home. And all the way they did not speak, until, +passing Tenney's, the door open and the house with a strange look of +being asleep in the sun, Nan said: + +"Leave me here. I'll see him and then go on." + +Raven did not answer. He drove past, to her own gate, and Nan, +understanding she was not to move further in any direction, got out. +Raven, perhaps feeling his silence had been unmerciful to her, spoke +quietly: + +"Run and get a bath and a sleep. I'll see him. I'll come for you if +you're needed." + +He turned the car and drove back, and Nan went in to her waiting house. +Raven stopped before Tenney's and, since the front door was open, halted +there and knocked. No answer. Then he went round to the side door and +knocked again, and called out several times, and the sound of his voice +brought back to him, like a sickness, the memory of Tenney's catamount +yell when he had heard it that day in the woods. No answer. The house +was asleep and a calf blared from the barn. He went back to the car, +drove home, and found Jerry waiting in the yard and Charlotte at the +door. Dick was in his chair down under the trees, his mother beside him, +reading. It was so unusual to see Amelia there that Raven wondered +idly--not that it mattered--he could meet a regiment of Amelias with +this callousness upon him--if Dick had beguiled her away so that she +might not pounce on him when he returned. He got out of the car stiffly. +He was, he felt at that instant, an old man. But if physical ineptitude +meant age, Jerry and Charlotte were also old, for Jerry was bewildered +beyond the possibility of speech and Charlotte shaken out of her calm. + +"You come into the kitchen," she said, and Raven followed her, and sank +into a chair, set his elbows on the table, and leaned his head in his +hands. He was very tired, but Mrs. Donnyhill's boiled tea was inexorably +keeping him up. Charlotte, standing above him, put her hand on his +shoulder. + +"Johnnie," she said, "Isr'el Tenney's been here. He wants you to give +him back his gun." + +"Oh," said Raven, taking his head out of his hands and sitting up. "His +gun?" + +"He says," Charlotte continued, her voice shaking, "Tira's run away. I +told him the last I see o' Tira was yesterday afternoon standin' in her +own door, an' he asked if she had her things on an' I didn't know what +to say. An' he said somebody down the road said you went by 'fore light, +drivin' like blazes. An' you had a woman in the car. An' Tira'd run +away." + +Raven was looking up at her, a little smile on his lips, but in his eyes +such strange things that Charlotte caught his head to her and held it +against her breast. + +"Yes," he said, "yes, Charlotte, Tira has run away. She went yesterday, +over to Mountain Brook. She tried to cross the stepping stones. She's +over at the Donnyhills' now. She's going to stay there till she's +buried. I'll go and tell him. Where do you think he is?" + +Charlotte still held his head against her warm heart. + +"You don't s'pose," she whispered, "you don't believe she done _that_?" + +"What?" he answered, and then her meaning came to him as his first hint +of what Tira might have done. He drew himself away from the kind hand +and sat up straight. "No," he said sharply. "It was an accident. She +never meant"--it had come upon him that this was what she had meant and +what she had done. But it must not be told of her, even to Nan. "Where's +Tenney?" he said. "Where do you think he is?" + +Charlotte hesitated. + +"He's up there," she said, after a moment while Raven waited, "up to the +hut. He said he's goin' to git his gun out o' there if he had to break +an' enter. He said he see it through the winder not two days ago. An' +Jerry hollered after him if he laid hand to your property he'd have the +law on him. Jerry was follerin' on after him, but you went by in the car +an' I called on him to stop. O Johnnie, don't you go up there, or you +let Jerry an' me go with you. If ever a man was crazed, that man's +Isr'el Tenney, an' if you go up there an' stir him up!" + +"Nonsense!" said Raven, in his old kind tone toward her, and Charlotte +gave a little sob of relief at hearing it again. "I've got to see him +and tell him what I've told you. You and Jerry stay where you are. +Tenney's not dangerous. Except to her," he added bitterly to himself, as +he left the house. "And a child in its cradle. My God! he was dangerous +to her!" And Charlotte, watching from the window, saw him go striding +across the road and up the hill. + +Raven, halfway up, began to hear an unexpected sound: blows, loud and +regular, wood on wood. When he had passed the turning by the three firs +he knew, really before his eyes confirmed it. Tenney was there at the +hut, and he had a short but moderately large tree trunk--almost heavier +than he could manage--and was using it as a battering ram. He was +breaking down the door. Raven, striding on, shouted, but he was close at +hand before Tenney was aware of him and turned, breathless, letting the +log fall. He had actually not heard, and Raven's presence seemed to take +him aback. Yet he was in no sense balked of his purpose. He faced about, +breathless from his lifting and ramming, and Raven saw how intense was +the passion in him: witnessed by the whiteness of his face, the burning +of his eyes. + +"I come up here," said Tenney, "after my gun. You can git it for me an' +save your door." + +Raven paid no attention to this. + +"You'd better come along down," he said. "We'll stop at my house and +talk things over." + +This he offered in that futile effort the herald of bad news inevitably +makes, to approach it slowly. + +"Then," said Tenney, "you hand me out my gun. I don't leave here till I +have my gun." + +"Tenney," said Raven, "I've got bad news for you." + +"Yes," said Tenney blankly. "She's run away. You carried her off this +mornin'. You don't need to tell me that." + +"I didn't carry her off," said Raven, speaking slowly and clearly, for +he had a feeling that Tenney was somehow deaf to him. "Tira went over to +Mountain Brook yesterday. Nan knew she was going, and this morning she +was worried, because she got thinking of Tira's crossing the stepping +stones. She asked me to take her over there. We found her. She was +drowned." + +Tenney's eyes had shifted from Raven's face. The light had gone out of +them, and they clung blankly to the tree spaces and the distance. + +"Have it your own way," said Tenney, in as blank a tone. "Settle it +amongst ye." + +"We shall go over to-morrow," said Raven. "Will you go with us?" + +"No," said Tenney. + +"Drownded herself," he said, at length. "Well, that's where it led to. +It's all led to that." + +"She slipped," said Raven roughly. "Don't you understand? Anybody could, +off those wet stones." + +"You open that door," said Tenney, "an' gimme my gun." + +But Raven went on talking to him, telling him quietly and reasonably +what they had judged it best to do, he and Nan. If Tira had wanted the +baby buried over there by her mother, wouldn't she want to be buried +there herself? + +"Very well, then. We'll arrange things. The day after"--he could not +bring himself to put the bare ceremonial that would see her out of the +world into the words familiar to the country ear--"that will be the day. +We shall go over. We'll take you with us." + +"No," said Tenney, "you needn't trouble yourselves. I sha'n't go over +there. Nor I sha'n't keep nobody else from goin'." + +By this Raven judged he meant that he would not interfere with their +seeing Tira out of the world in their own way. The man had repudiated +her. It was a relief. It seemed to leave her, in her great freedom, the +more free. + +"Come down now," said Raven, "to my house. We'll have something to eat." + +That was all he could think of, to keep the stricken creature within +sound of human voices. + +"I ain't hungry," said Tenney. "An' if I was"--here he stopped an +instant and a spasm shot across his face--"she left me cooked up." + +"All right," said Raven. "Then you go home now, and later in the day +I'll come over and see if you've thought of anything else." + +He believed the man should not, in his despairing frame of mind, be left +alone. Tenney turned, without a look at him, and went off down the +slope. Raven watched him round the curve. Then he took out the key from +under the stone, remembering it need never be put there again, went in +and locked the door. Suddenly he felt deadly sick. He went to the couch, +lay down and closed his eyes on the blackness before them. If he had a +wish, in this infinitude of desolation, it was that he might never open +them again on the dark defiles of this world. It was dusk when he did +open them, and for a minute he had difficulty in remembering why he was +there and the blow that had struck him down to such a quivering +apprehension of what was coming next. Then, before he quite found out, +he learned what had waked him. There was a voice outside--Tenney's +voice, only not Tenney's as he had known it--whimpering, begging in a +wild humility: + +"You there? You let me in. You there? For God's sake let me in." + +Raven was at once clearly awake. His mind was, after its interlude of +darkness, ready. He got up, and opened the door. + +"Come in," he said. "Yes, leave the door open. I've been asleep. It's +close in here." + +Tenney came in, not so much limping as stumbling. He seemed to be +shorter in stature. His head was bent, his body had sagged together as +if not a muscle of it had strength to do its part. Raven pulled forward +a chair, and he sank into it. + +"What do you s'pose," he began--and the voice was so nearly a whimper +that Raven was not surprised to see tears on his cheeks--"what do you +s'pose I wanted my gun for? To use on you? Or him? No. On me. But I +don't know now as I've got the strength to use it. I'm done." + +This was his remorse for the past as he had made it, and Raven had no +triumph in it, only a sickness of distaste for the man's suffering and a +frank hatred of having to meet it with him. + +"You know," said Tenney, looking up at him, sharply now, as if to +ascertain how much he knew, "she didn't do it. The baby wa'n't overlaid. +God! did anybody believe she could do a thing like that? She slep' like +a cat for fear suthin' would happen to him." + +"What," asked Raven, in horror of what he felt was coming, and yet +obliged to hear, "what did happen to him?" + +Tenney stretched out his hands. He was looking at them, not at Raven. + +"I can't git it out o' my head," he continued, in a broken whisper, +"there's suthin' on 'em. You don't see nothin', do you? They look to +me----" + +There he stopped, and Raven was glad he did not venture the word. What +had Raven to say to him? There seemed not to be anything in the language +of man, to say. But Tenney came alive. He was shaking with a great +eagerness. + +"I tell you," he said, "a man don't know what to do. There was +that--that--what I done it to--he wa'n't mine." + +He looked at Raven in a hunger of supplication. He was almost dying to +be denied. + +"Yes," said Raven steadily. "He was yours." + +"How do you know?" shrieked Tenney, as if he had caught him. "She talk +things over?" + +Raven considered. What could he say to him? + +"Tenney," he said at last, "you haven't understood. You haven't seen her +as she was, the best woman, the most beautiful----" + +Here he stopped, and Tenney threw in angrily, as if it were a part of +his quarrel with her: + +"She was likely enough. But what made her," he continued violently, +"what made her let a man feel as if her mind was somewheres else? Where +was her mind?" + +That was it, Raven told himself. Beauty! it promised ineffable things, +even to these eyes of jealous greed, and it could not fulfil the promise +because everything it whispered of lay in the upper heavens, not on +earth. But Tenney would not have heard the answer even if Raven could +have made it. He was broken. He bent his head into his hands and sobbed +aloud. + +"Good? 'Course she was good. Don't I know it? An' she's gone. An' +me--what be I goin' to do?" + +Somehow Raven understood that he was not thinking of his desolate house +and lonesome mind, but of himself in relation to the law he had broken +and the woman's heart, broken, too. Grotesquely almost, came to his mind +Tira's grave reminder: "He's a very religious man." And Tenney seemed to +have come, by some path of his own, round to the same thing. + +"If there was a God----" + +"Oh, yes," Raven threw in, moved by some power outside himself, "there +is a God." + +"If there was," said Tenney, "he couldn't forgive me no more'n He could +Cain. There's _that_ on my hands. When there's that----" + +He stopped before the vision of the man God had scourged into exile for +the shedding of blood. To Raven there was suddenly a presence beside +them: not a Holy Presence, such as they might well have invoked, but Old +Crow. And he remembered how Old Crow had eased the mind of Billy Jones. + +"Tenney," he said, "don't you remember what Tira believed in? She +believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. She believed He could forgive sins." + +"Do you believe it?" Tenney hurled at him. "Can He forgive--that?" + +Again he stretched out his hands. + +"Yes," said Raven. "He can forgive that." + +"An' I be," Tenney continued, in his scriptural phrasing, "whiter than +snow?" + +Raven found himself halting. There were, behind this vision of the +symbol by which God made Himself manifest to man, reserves of strict +integrities. + +"Tenney," he said, "you've killed a child. Your child. You're a +criminal. The only thing you can do to get back among men is to give +yourself up. To the law. And take your medicine." + +"O my God!" cried Tenney. "Tell it? Tell that? Bring it up afore judge +an' jury how I thought----" + +"Don't tell me what you thought," said Raven sharply. "You've said it +once. You were crazy, and you killed your child." + +"An' what if----" he began, and Raven finished for him: + +"What if they hang you? We can't go into that. There's your first step. +Give yourself up." + +The next instant he was sorry for the brutality of this. But Tenney did +not find it brutal. Strangely it seemed to him a way out, the only way. +He was brooding. Suddenly he looked up. + +"You told me," he said, apparently in wonder, "you didn't believe." + +What to say? "I believe in God Who is letting me--tenderly, oh, with +such pity for my human foolishness--seize whatever crutch I can to help +you over this dark mortal way?" Could he say that? No, it was true, but +somehow it couldn't be said. + +"Yes," he answered gravely, "I believe." + +"Then," said Tenney eagerly, "you pray with me." + +Raven, thinking on this afterward, knew he did pray, in what words he +never could recall, and that the substance of it was Forgiveness: +Forgive our sins. And that when he had finished Tenney completed his +faltering close with "For Christ's sake. Amen!" And that because Tenney +looked at him for confirmation, he, Raven, repeated it after him, humbly +and with sincerity. And when, shaken both of them beyond the possibility +of speech, they rose from their knees, they heard a voice outside, Nan's +voice: + +"Rookie, let me in." + +Raven opened the door, and found her there, and Dick was with her. + +"You shouldn't have come up here," he said to Dick. "You're not supposed +to climb hills." + +"He had to," said Nan. "I came up and listened and I heard voices. So I +went back again and asked Charlotte for sandwiches. And Dick would come. +But I carried the basket." She had gone past him into the room and was +unpacking food. "No, Mr. Tenney, you stay. They're for you, too. We're +all tired out, you know. Let's keep together all we can. We're so +lonesome. Tira! but she's the only one that isn't lonesome. _She's_ gone +to heaven. Look! hot coffee, too. Now you eat, both of you. There's +nothing like grub." + +In the midst of this, Dick had gone round the table and put out his hand +to Tenney and said: + +"H' are you, Tenney?" and Tenney, dazed, had given his. + +Raven found he was hungry and began to eat, and Nan somehow saw to it +that Tenney also ate. And Raven, at least, felt in the breath of the +spring night, something ebbing there in the hut. What was it: waves of +wild human turmoil finding a channel where they could flow equably? Nan +and Dick went out on the veranda while the two finished, and Raven noted +the murmur of their voices and wondered a little, idly, whether they +were better friends--lovers or only better friends. Presently Nan was +back again. She brushed up their crumbs and packed the dishes into the +basket. + +"Now, Mr. Tenney," she said, "this is what we've done. When I found you +were both up here, I had Jerry go over and get your cows. He milked and +I strained the milk. I locked up the house, too. Here's your key. What +makes you go back to-night? It'll be easier by daylight. Rookie, +couldn't he sleep up here?" + +"Yes," said Raven, "of course he can. We'll be down to breakfast, tell +Charlotte." + +Tenney offered no preference or opinion. He sat there, his key--the key +Tira had lost, he did remember vaguely--on the table before him. Nan, +with the air of there being no more to do, wafted Dick away with her. +And Raven and Tenney spent the night together in the hut. Raven did not +sleep. He had an impression that Tenney did not, either. It seemed to +him a watch with the dead. + + + + +XLV + + +In that darkest minute when it seems as if dawn will never come or, if +it does, to bring with it a deeper chill, Raven, for the first time in +weeks, found his old enemies upon him: the fear of life, the terrible +distaste for continuance in a world where there is no escape, even in +going on. Was this grief for Tira? Her needs had pulled him out from his +own sickness of mind, and now that she would never need anything again, +must he return to the dark dwelling of his mental discontent and crouch +there whimpering as Tenney had whimpered when he came to him here a few +hours ago? And slowly, achingly, his mind renewedly accepted the iron +necessity which is living. There was no giving up. There was no escape. +He had to live because the other choice--was it the fool's choice or the +coward's?--was not only unthinkable, but it did no good. There was no +escape. And side by side with the sickness of distaste for life as he +found it, was another distaste, as strong: for this malady of nostalgia +itself. He could not abide it another instant. It was squalid, it was +unclean, and he found his mind crying out: "Help me! for God's sake help +me!" But it was not to God he cried. It was to Old Crow. And Old Crow +heard. Indubitably he heard. For there was an answer. "Yes! yes!" the +answer kept beating in his mind. He would help. + +And what of Tira? Was she resolved into the earth that made her? Or +would she also help? He wondered why she had died. Was it because she +had been unable to face the idea of the little boy who was not right +taking his maimed innocence into some other state alone? No. Tira had +her starkly simple faith. She had her Lord Jesus Christ. She would, as +simply as she believed, have trusted the child to Him. Did she so fear +to face her life with Tenney--the hurtling, blind, elemental creature +with blood on his hands--that she took herself away? No. Tira was no +such person. There was a wild, high courage in her that, the more +terrible the challenge, responded the more valiantly. Why did she take +herself away? And what was she in these walls that had been dedicated to +her safety? Was she existent, like Old Crow? Was she here with Raven +when his mind clamored for peace? Did she, too, answer "Yes, yes!" She +had, he concluded, gone. It seemed as if she had withdrawn herself, by +her own will, for some inexorable reason. He remembered threnodies that +saw the beloved dead absorbed into the course of nature: the dawn, the +sunset, the season's round, the flowers that spring ever renewed to deck +the laureate hearse. And as his mind sought her in the night breeze that +came in to fan him and Tenney alike, in the sky where the stars, through +arboreal spaces, never looked so piercingly bright, he did seem to be +aware of an actual intelligence. But it was assuredly not Tira and it +was not Old Crow. It was Anne. + +Whether his mind had been so occupied by these other more immediate +things that she could not get the connection between her will and his, +whether she now found him, bereft of Tira, free to do her unchanged +bidding, he could not see. But Anne was there. At least, the knowledge +of her was in his mind, insisting on being heard, and insisting as it +never had in this present life. For whereas then her attack had been +subtly organized, Anne herself, the directing general, behind almost +invisible potencies of suggestion and finesse, now here she was in the +open, plainly commanding him, as if this might be the only fight she +should be able to manage, and it must be to the finish. And what she +wanted was plain obedience touching the disposal of her trust. It was +not his love she was asking for now. That, he concluded, though without +bitterness, might not look desirable to her any more. Or perhaps she had +learned how futile it was to ask it. Or, indeed, was all love futile +beyond the grave? No, for he loved Tira withdrawn into her impenetrable +seclusion--but that he must not think of. The fight was on, the +conclusive fight with Anne. And he seemed to be battling for the +integrity of his own soul, the freedom of his will. He sat up on his +couch, and heard himself say aloud: + +"No. I won't do it. You can't make me." + +Was this the way to speak to Anne, to whom all the reticences and +delicacies of life were native air? But she was not Anne now so much as +the enemy of sane conduct here in this world and of his struggling will. + +"D'you speak?" called Tenney from the next room. + +"All right," said Raven, and realized he must not speak again. + +Thereafter the fight with Anne went on within the arena of his mind. He +poured himself forth to her. For the first time in his life, he admitted +her to his inner beliefs and sympathies. He would not, he told her, +devote her money to the debasing of the world. Wherever she was, she had +not learned a page more than she had known when she wrote that letter to +him about the things that help the world and the things that hinder. He +didn't believe, he told her, she really wanted to learn. She wanted only +to be obeyed, to put her money where she had ordered it to go merely +because she had ordered it. + +"You can't have it, Anne," he repeated, whenever his mind halted in +argument, and she kept pressing him back, back into his old hopeless +subserviency. "I'll tell you where it's going. It's going to France. +There won't be any palace, Anne. It's going into the land. It's going to +help little French boys and French girls to grow up with time enough and +strength enough to put their beautiful intelligence into saving the +earth. It's going to be that sort of a bulwark between them and the +enemies of the earth. And that's the only road to peace. Don't you see +it is, Anne? Don't you see it? You won't get peace by talking about it. +You wasted your money when you did it, all through war-time. You harmed +and hindered. Don't you know you did? If you don't, what's the use of +dying? Don't they know any more there than we do here? Anyway, I know +more than you did when you made your will, and that's what I'm going to +do. Train up beautiful intelligences, Anne, the ones that are likeliest +to work it all out practically: how to live, that's what they're going +to work out, how to live, how to help the world to live. Don't you see, +Anne? For God's sake, don't you see?" + +She didn't see, or, if she did, she was too angry to give him the +comfort of knowing she did. But suddenly, in the midst of her anger, +there was a break, a stillness, though it had been still before. Perhaps +it was most like a stillness of mind, and he felt himself as suddenly +awake to a certainty that Anne had done with him. Once before she had +seemed to leave him, but this time it was for good. She had gone, +wherever the road was open to her. He had armed his will and sent it out +to fight her will. She was routed, and she would never challenge him +again. Perhaps, in her scorn, she had repudiated him. Perhaps the world, +if it were called on to pronounce judgment, would repudiate him for +betraying a dead woman's trust. Well, let it. The impeccability of his +own soul wasn't so very valuable, after all, weighed against what he saw +as the indisputable values of mortal life. He lay back on his bed, +exhausted by the fight, foolishly exhausted because, he told himself, +there hadn't been any real Anne. Only her mind, as he had known it, and +his own mind had been grappling, like two sides of an argument. But +while he tried to dull himself with this denial of the possibilities +beyond our sense, he knew underneath that there had been Anne. And she +had gone. She would not come again. + +Then he must have slept, for there was a gulf of forgetfulness, and when +his eyes came open, it was on Tenney standing there in the doorway. +Raven felt squalid after the night in his clothes, and Tenney looked to +him in much the same case. Also Tenney was shrunken, even since he had +come to the hut the day before, and then he had seemed not +three-quarters of his height. He asked now, not as if he cared, but as +if he wondered idly: + +"D' I leave my ammunition up here?" + +He had the gun in his hand. + +"Let the gun alone," said Raven. He got up and took it away from him, +and Tenney dumbly suffered it. "We'll go down now and have some +breakfast, and Jerry'll do your chores." + +"I can do my own chores," said Tenney. "I can go into the barn, I +guess." + +By this Raven understood that he did not mean to go into the house. +Perhaps he was afraid of it. Men are afraid of houses that have grown +sinister because of knowing too much. + +That day was a curious medley of watchfulness over Tenney: for Raven +felt the necessity of following him about to see he did himself no harm. +He called him in to breakfast, but Tenney did not even seem to hear, and +stood brooding in the yard, looking curiously down at his lame foot and +lifting it as if to judge how far it would serve him. Then Charlotte, +who had been watching from the window, went out and told him she had a +bite for him in the shed, and he went in with her at once and drank +coffee and ate the bread she buttered. He didn't, so he told her, want +to touch things any more. So she broke the bread and he carried the +pieces to his mouth with an air of hating them and fearing. When he went +over to his house, Raven went with him, and, finding Jerry had milked +and driven the cows to pasture, they stood outside, miserably loitering, +because Tenney had evidently made that resolve not to go in. + +"I suppose," said Raven, after a little, to recall him, "the milk is in +there." + +"Yes," said Tenney. "I s'pose 'tis." + +"It isn't strained, you know. What do you mean to do about it?" + +"Do?" said Tenney. "Let it set." + +Again they loitered, back and forth, sometimes on one side of the +woodpile, sometimes the other, each with a pretense of finding the +woodpile itself a point of interest. Suddenly Tenney ceased his foolish +walk up and down. + +"Look here," said he, "should you jest as lieves go in?" + +"Yes," said Raven. "Only you'd better come with me. Get it over. You've +got to go into your own house." + +"What I want," said Tenney, "is a blue apron, blue with white specks. I +don't believe it's there, but if 'tis I want it." + +To Raven, this was not strange. It was Tira's apron he wanted, something +that belonged to her, to touch, perhaps to carry about with him as a +reminder of the warmth and kindliness that lay in everything she owned. +Blue! that was her Madonna color. No wonder Tenney remembered it, if it +was blue. + +"It ain't hangin' up," said Tenney, with a particularity that seemed to +cause him an intense pain of concentration. "She never'd hang it up with +t'others. It's folded. Mebbe in her work-basket, mebbe--my God in +heaven! she wouldn't ha' kep' it. She's burnt it up. You take off the +cover o' the kitchen stove. You look there an' see if you can't find the +leastest scrid. Blue, you remember, all folded up." + +Raven went into the kitchen where the pails of milk were on the table, +waiting. He took off the stove cover and looked in, still an idle +compliance, to quiet the man's mind. It was like an outcome to a dream. +For there it was, a soft disorder easily indicating burned cloth, and +one shred of blue, a piece perhaps an inch and a half square, hemmed on +three sides: the end of an apron string. He took this carefully out, and +stood there looking at it a tense moment, as if it could summon Tira +back to tell him what it meant; look out his pocketbook, laid it in, and +put the pocketbook away. Then he went back to Tenney. + +"You were right," he said. "She burned it up." + +Tenney stared at him for what seemed a long time. + +"Oh," he said, as if it had been Raven who suggested it, "so she burnt +it up. Wa'n't there any left--not a scrid?" + +"Yes," said Raven, "there was. What do you want of it?" + +"Nothin'," said Tenney. "No, I don't want it. If 'twas the whole on't I +shouldn't want it, come to think. A man couldn't hang himself by an +apron. Even that one you couldn't. I guess"--he turned upon Raven so +sick a gaze that Raven advanced to him and put a hand on his arm--"I +guess," said Tenney, "I'm done. I've got to git some sleep. Should you +jest as soon I'd go up to that shack o' yourn an' lay down a spell?" + +Again they went up to the hut, and Tenney, throwing himself on the +couch, was at once asleep. All that day Raven watched by him, and that +night also they were there together: a strange day and night, Raven +remembered afterward, with Charlotte coming and Nan and finally Dick, +all with food or wistful companionship, and Nan's assuring him, in her +way of finding nothing out of the common, that everything had been done +for Tira, and she would go over to the service. Charlotte would go with +her. It would be better--her eyes questioned him, and he nodded, not +answering. It would be better he should not go. On the third day she +appeared again, in the middle of the afternoon, and said she had just +come from Mountain Brook and everything was----That she did not finish, +Tenney's somber eyes waited upon her with such a dumb expectancy. What +was going to be done, she wondered. Tenney couldn't stay in the hut, +keeping Raven there with him, as Billy Jones had kept Old Crow. Yet she +wasn't sure Raven wouldn't stay. But while she thought it, Tenney was +answering her, though he didn't seem to be speaking to either of them. +He might have been appealing to something invisible in the room. + +"I'll shave me," he said, "an' then I'll see." Something passed over him +like a great moving wind. "Why, God A'mighty!" he cried. "I can't stop +to shave me. It's now or never, don't you know 'tis?" + +He snatched his hat from the chair where he had thrown it, and went out +of the hut, limping down the hill. And Raven was with him. He was with +him as he hurried along the road so fast that it seemed as if the next +step meant breaking into a run. He was with him when, halfway to the +street, Eugene Martin passed them, in his buggy, stopped further on and +called to them: "Ride?" He was not laughing now, he was not jibing. He +seemed to be constrained to ask them to ride, they were hurrying so. +Raven threw a curse at him, but Tenney broke into a limping run and +jumped into the tail of the wagon and sat there, his legs dangling. And +he called so piercingly to Martin to drive along, to "Hurry, for God's +sake, hurry!" that Martin did whip up, and the wagon whirled away, and +Raven hurried on alone. + +That night, at eight o'clock, Nan went over to ask if Raven had come +home, and finding he had not, loitered back to her own gate and waited. +She could not go in. If she kept her mind on him, he might come. And +presently he came. She walked to meet him and put her hand through his +arm. He was walking firmly, but he looked "all in." + +"Come," she said. "Supper's waiting." + +"No," said Raven, "not yet. I got a fellow to bring me back from the +street. Dick said you'd been over." + +"Yes," said Nan. "I was horribly worried. Where's Tenney?" + +"Gone." + +"Where?" + +"To jail. He had Martin take him to a man he knew about at the street. +Sworn in special constable in the War. Had him telephone the sheriff. +Then I got there. Had to inquire round, to find out where he'd gone. +When I went in, Tenney was sitting there telling the sheriff he'd killed +his child. Sheriff asked what for. Said he had to do it. Then I came in +and he began to ask me questions about the Lord Jesus Christ." + +"But, Rookie," said Nan, "he didn't. He couldn't. Tira told me she----" + +"Yes," said Raven heavily. "You may be called to testify." + +"But when he asked that," said Nan, "about----" she hesitated. + +"About the Lord Jesus Christ? It was whether his sins were whiter than +snow." + +"What did you tell him?" + +"Oh," said Raven, "I told him yes. If he was sorry, they were. Of course +I told him yes. What could I tell him? But I don't believe I'd have told +Martin yes, if he'd asked me about his sins. He's scared blue. He was +there at the gate when I went in. Shook like a palsy, kept saying he +didn't know--didn't think--nobody need ask him----" + +"What did you say, Rookie?" + +"Nothing. I went in to Tenney. Now I'll go back." + +"You won't come in and have a bite? Nice supper, Rookie. Saved for you." + +"No. Not to-night." He turned away from her as if she were as actually +the outside shell of herself as he was of himself. They were mechanical +agents in a too terrible world. But he called back to her: "Nan, I've +told her." + +She was at his side, hoping for more, perhaps a touch of his hand. + +"Anne. I got word to her somehow. She understood." + +"Was she----" Nan paused. + +"Yes," said Raven. "But it's over--done." + +He turned away from her and went fast along the road home. He had, she +saw, escaped Aunt Anne. He had got himself back. Did his quick steps +along the road say he meant to escape her, too? That was easy. Darling +Rookie! he should if he wanted to. + + + + +XLVI + + +The story ends, as it began, with a letter. It was written by Raven, in +Boston, to Dick, in France, about a year after Tenney gave himself up. +The first half of it had to do with accounts, money paid over by Raven +to Dick, requisitions sent in by Dick to Raven, concise statements of +what Raven judged it best to do in certain contingencies Dick had asked +instructions upon. Then it continued on a new page, an intimate letter +from Raven to the nephew who was administering the Anne Hamilton Fund. +The previous pages would be submitted to the two Frenchmen, who, with +Dick, formed the acting board. These last pages were for Dick alone. + +"No, Tenney wasn't even indicted. There was the whirlwind of talk you +can imagine. Reminiscent, too! 'Don't you remember?' from house to +house, and whenever two men met in the road or hung over the fence to +spit and yarn. It was amazing, the number of folks who had set him down +as 'queer,' 'odd,' all the country verdicts on the chap that's got to be +accounted for. Even his religion was brought up against him. The chief +argument there was that he always behaved as if the things he believed +were actually so. He believed in hell and told you you were bound for +it. But I can't go into that. They couldn't, the ones that tried to. +They got all balled up, just as their intellectual betters do when they +tackle theology. All this, of course, began before you went away, and it +continued in mounting volume. If you want New England psychology, you +have it there, to the last word. That curious mixture of condemnation +and acceptance! They believed him capable of doing things unspeakable, +and yet there wasn't a public voice to demand an inquiry as to whether +he really had done them. They cheerfully accepted the worst and believed +the best. And it's true he had behaved more or less queer for a long +time, wouldn't speak to people when he met them, didn't seem to know +them, and then suddenly breaking out, in the blacksmith's shop or buying +his grain at the store, and asking if they were saved. The women were +the queerest. They said he set his life by the child. Why, he couldn't +even bear to go to the funeral of his wife or the child either, and +hadn't they seen him and Tira drivin' by, time and again, the baby in +Tira's lap, in his little white coat and hood? I don't know how many +times I heard the evidence of that little white hood. Even Charlotte +caught it and plumped it at me. + +"You remember yourself how disgusted the authorities were when he +trotted about like a homeless dog and insisted on being arrested for a +crime they knew he didn't commit. Poor old Tenney! they said, any man +might be crazed, losing his wife and child in one week. They were very +gentle with him. They told him if he hung round talking much longer he'd +be late for his planting. Of course the doctor did set the pace. He'd +told, everywhere he went, how Tira had sent for him at once, and how she +had said she had, in that hideous country phrase, 'overlaid' the child. +One interesting psychological part of it has persisted to this day: the +effect Tira had on the doctor, his entire belief in her simple statement +which she was never asked to swear to. (You remember there was no +inquest.) He never, he said, was so sorry for a woman in his life. He +seems to have been so determined to prove her a tragic figure that he +wouldn't for a moment have the disaster lightened by denying her that +last misfortune of having done it herself. Lots of these things I +haven't told you, they're so grim and, to me now, so wearing. They've +got on all our nerves like the devil, and I fancy even the Wake Hill +natives are pretty well fed up with 'em. At first they couldn't get +enough. When Tenney couldn't get the law to believe in him so far as to +indict him, the embattled farmers took it on themselves to cross-examine +him, not because they thought for a minute he was guilty, but because +they itched to hear him say so: drama, don't you see? And he never +wavered in asserting he did it: only when they asked him how, he just +stared, and once told a particularly smart Alec, he guessed it was a +man's own business how he killed his own child. And he stayed up in the +hut, just as he was doing when you went away, and night after night I +had to stay with him. Stuck to me like a burr and wore me threadbare +asking if he was forgiven, and if that didn't mean he was whiter than +snow. I tell you, Dick, it was all so involved that I believe, although +he used the set phrases about the Lord Jesus Christ, he really believed +it was I that had forgiven him. He used to ask me to tell God to do it +for my sake; and I remembered Old Crow and how he played up to Billy +Jones, and, if you'll believe it, I _did_ ask God (though not for my +sake!), and horrible as it is, grotesque as it is (no, by George, it +isn't grotesque to speak to a man in the only language he can +understand! he wanted God and he couldn't any more reach Him! he had to +climb up on another man's shoulders), well, I told him it was all right. +He was forgiven. Then he scared me blue by saying he was going round +preaching the gospel--his farm is sold, you know, stock gone, everything +wiped out--and I told him he'd proved too dangerous to be let loose on +the world again. But he had me there. He asked if he was forgiven, why +wasn't he whiter than snow? And he hung to me like my shadow, and asked +if he couldn't keep on living in the hut, till he felt strong enough to +preach. I told him he could, and blest if I didn't see him and me there +together, world without end, like Old Crow and Billy Jones, for nothing +was ever going to persuade him to let go of me again. You'd better +laugh, Dick. Nan and I had to. We almost cried. It is funny. I bet Old +Crow laughed. But Tenney saved me. He took it into his own hands. And +what do you think did it? We went down to the house one morning for +breakfast, and Charlotte came out to meet us, tying on a clean apron. It +was blue with white spots (I forgot you don't see any significance in +that, but Tenney did) and he stopped short and said: 'God A'mighty! I +was in hopes I never should set eyes on a woman's apron again.' + +"I went up to have a bath (my staying at the hut was a kind of emergency +business, you see) and he disappeared, and Charlotte and Jerry didn't +get on to it that he was really gone, and later on he was seen wading +into the water over at Mountain Brook, there by the stepping stones. The +Donnyhills saw him, and at first they thought he knew what he was about, +but kept on watching him. He stooped and dipped himself, and they had an +idea it was some kind of a self-conducted baptism. I believe it was. Nan +often has to remind me that 'he's a very religious man.' But they +watched, and presently he went under, and they knew then he was making +way with himself, and the Donnyhill boy, that calm young giant, fished +him out, Tenney fighting him furiously. And it began to look to me as if +he ought to be under a mild supervision (it wasn't for nothing you and +your mother let fly at me with your psychiatry! I escaped myself, but I +learned the formula). And now Tenney, agreeing to it like a lamb, is at +that little sanitarium Miss Anne Hamilton started 'up state,' and very +well contented. Nan goes to see him, and so do I. He is as mild--you +can't think! Reads his Bible every minute of the day when he isn't doing +the work they give him or converting the staff. + +"You'll say he's insane. I don't know whether he is or not. I don't know +whether they'll say so, the psychopathic experts they've let loose on +him. I simply think he found the difficulties of his way too much for +him and he revolted. He tried to right the balance of some of the most +mysteriously devilish inequalities a poorly equipped chap ever found +himself up against (strange forces that struck at him in the dark) and +being ignorant and at the same time moved by more volts of energy than +even the experts will be able to compute, he took the only path he saw, +slam-bang into the thick of the fight. As to his spouting his Bible like +a geyser--well, if he believes in it as the actual word of God, a word +addressed to him, why shouldn't he spout it? And if it tells him that, +after certain formulae of repentance, his sins shall be whiter than +snow, why shouldn't he believe that and say so with the simplicity he +does? All the same, I don't think he's exactly the person to wander at +large, and I've no idea what will happen when his good conduct and +general mildness come it over the psychiatrists. I grin over it +sometimes, all by myself, for I remember Old Crow and Billy Jones and I +wonder if the logic of inherited events is going to herd Tenney and me +together into the hut to live out our destiny together. But I don't +think so, chiefly because I want to keep my finger in this pie of the +French Fund and because it would distress Nan. Distress you, too, I +guess! And me! + +"Now, as to Nan. You gave it to me straight from the shoulder, and I've +got to give you one back. I agree with you. There's no hope for you. +She's enormously fond of you, but it's not _that kind_. And Nan's +old-fashioned enough to insist on that or nothing. I was so meddlesome +as to bring it up with her before you went away. She put me in my place, +told me practically it was nobody's business but hers--and yours--and +that she'd already talked it out with you and that you're a 'dear' and +you 'saw.' So, old man, as you say, that's that. _Finis._ But when, +after I've butted in, you butt in and accuse me of not 'seeing,' so far +as I myself am concerned, of holding her off, of being unfair to her, +all the rest of it (very intemperate letter, you must own) I've got to +give you your quietus as Nan gave me mine. First place, you say, with a +cheek that makes my backbone crawl, that Nan 'loves' me. (Do you really +want to be as Victorian as that, you slang-slinging young modern? But I +know! You think I mightn't catch on to your shibboleths and you borrow +what you judge to be mine, give me the choice of weapons, as it were.) +And you're a trump, Dick! Don't think I don't know that, and if I poke +fun at you it's to keep from slopping all over you with the Victorian +lavishness you'd expect. What did we ever fight for about your youth and +my age? Or wasn't it about that, after all? Was it really about--Nan? + +"Well, when it comes to 'love', I do love Nan. There you have it, good +old-fashioned direct address. She is as immediate to me as my own skin +and veins. She always has been. She began to grow into me when she was +little, and she kept on growing. There are fibers and rootlets of Nan +all through me, and the funny part of it is I love to feel them there. I +can't remember being dominated by anybody without resenting it, wanting +to get away--escape! escape!--but I never for an instant have felt that +about Nan. She's the better part of me. Good Lord! she's the only part +of me I take any particular pleasure in or that I can conceive of as +existing after I join Old Crow. (Not that I'm allowed to take much +pleasure in her now. She sees me when I call, answers when I consult her +about the Fund--and she's been tremendously sympathetic and valuable +there--but she seems to feel and, I've no doubt, for very good reasons, +that we're better apart. She has, I believe, a theory about it; but we +needn't go into that. And I don't quarrel with it.) + +"The queer part of it is that I feel Nan herself couldn't break the bond +between us, couldn't if she tried. It's as deep as nature, as actual as +Old Crow. I can give you a curious proof of it. I might be almost +swamped by somebody--yes, I mean Tira. I might as well say so as hear +you saying it over this letter--somebody that is beauty and mystery and +a thousand potencies that take hold on nature itself. But that doesn't +push Nan away by an inch. If I'm swamped, Nan's swamped with me. If I +mourn the beauty and the piteousness withdrawn, Nan mourns, too. It's +Nan and I against the world. But it isn't Nan and I with the world. The +world is against us. Do you see? For I'm a year older than when I saw +you last. And though many of the things you felt about the years weren't +true, a lot of 'em were, and they're a little truer now. And one of them +is that I've got to give Nan a fighting chance to mate with youth +and--oh, exactly what you've got. I wish you had her--no, I'm damned if +I do. I may not be young enough for jealousy, but I am unregenerate +enough. I probably mean I wish I wished it. For in spite of my revolt +against the earth, I'd like to give Nan the cup, not of earth sorceries +but earth loveliness, and let her swig it to the bottom. And then, if +Old Crow's right and this is only a symbol and we've got to live by +symbols till we get the real thing, why, then I'm sentimental +enough--Victorian! yes, say it, and be hanged!--to want to believe Nan +and I shall some time--some time----Anyhow, I'm not going to ask her to +spend her middle years--just think! 'figure to yourself!'--when Nan's +forty, what will your revered uncle be? + +"Now I've told you. This is the whole story, the outline of it. And why +do I tell you instead of merely inviting you to shut up as Nan did me? +Because if you retain in your dear meddlesome head any idea that Nan, as +you say, 'loves' me, you're to remember also that Nan is not in any +sense an Ariadne on a French clock, her arm over her head, deserted and +forlorn. You are to remember I adore her and, if I thought we could both +in a dozen years or so perish by shipwreck or Tenney's axe (poor +Tenney!) I should get down on my knees to her and beg her (can't you +hear our Nan laugh?) to let me marry her. (Probably she wouldn't, old +man--marry me, I mean. We're seldom as clever as we think, even you. So +there's that.) But, in spite of my erratic leanings toward Old Crow-ism +and sundry alarming dissatisfactions with the universe, I still retain +the common sense to see Nan, at forty, worrying over my advancing +arteriosclerosis and the general damned breaking up of my corporeal +frame. Not on your life. Now--shut up! + +"Yes, your mother continues to be dissatisfied over your being there. +She thinks it's all too desultory, but is consoled at your being +mentioned in the same breath with 'two such distinguished Frenchmen.' I +tell her you can't stop for a degree, and maybe if you follow out your +destiny you'll get one anyway, and that, if you still want to write +books, this will give you something to write about. But she doesn't mind +so much since she's gone into politics, hammer and tongs." + +Now this letter reached Richard Powell in the dingy office in Paris, +where he happened to be in consultation with his two advisers who were, +with an untiring genius of patience and foresight, interpreting to him +daily the soul of France. He went over the first part of the letter with +them, article by article, point by point, very proud, under his +composure, of their uniform agreement with the admirable Monsieur Raven. +And after their business session was concluded and the two Frenchmen had +gone, Dick addressed himself to the last part of the letter, given in +these pages. He bent himself to it with the concentration that turns a +young face, even though but for the moment, into a prophetic hint of its +far-off middle age. If he had kept enough of his shy self-consciousness +to glance at himself in the glass, he would have been able to smile at +the old fear of what the years might do to him. No heaviness there, such +as he remembered in his father's face: only trouble, pain, and their +mysteriously refining tracery. But the heaviness was in his heart. He +had to understand the letter absolutely, not only what it said but all +it implied. If it actually meant what he believed it to mean at first +reading, it drew a heavy line across his own life. Nan had drawn the +line before, but this broadened it, reënforced it with a band of black +absolutely impossible to cross. And it did mean it, and, having seen +that, without a possibility of doubt, he enclosed the letter in an +envelope, addressed it to Nan, and leaned back in his chair, never, he +believed, to think it over again, never so long as he and Nan lived. +There was no residuum of sentiment in his mind as there was in Raven's +that, after Nan had finished with this life, according to her own ideas, +there might be hope of another Nan bloomed out of this one somewhere +else and another Dick, risen out of his ashes, to try his luck again. +No, the line across the page was the line across their lives, and, said +Dick: "That's that." But he caught his breath, as he said it, and was +glad there was no one by to hear. Anybody who heard would have said it +was a sob. He was, he concluded, rather fagged with the day. These +confounded Frenchmen, with their wits you couldn't keep up with, they +took it out of you. + +This was why Raven, in Wake Hill, on the morning the letter came to Nan +in Boston, got a telegram from her, saying: "Come back." He had gone +there to stay over a night, after a few hours' visit with Tenney, who +was eagerly glad to see him, and again begging to be confirmed in his +condition of spiritual whiteness. Raven had just got to his house when +the message was telephoned up from the station, and its urgency made him +horribly anxious. He had been especially aware of Nan all day. Little +threads of feeling between them had been thrilling to messages he +couldn't quite get, as if they were whispers purposely mysterious, to +scare a man. He was on edge with them. They quickened the apprehension +the message brought upon him overwhelmingly. She never would have +summoned him like that if she hadn't needed him, not a word by +telephone, but his actual presence. He had Jerry take him back again to +the station, and in the late afternoon he walked in on Nan waiting for +him in one of the rooms Anne Hamilton had kept faithful to the +traditions of bygone Hamiltons, but that now knew her no more. It was +Nan the room knew, Nan in her dull blue dress against the background of +pink roses she made for herself and the room, Nan white with the pallor +of extreme emotion, bright anxiety in her eyes and a tremor about her +mouth. She went to him at once, not as the schoolgirl had run, the last +time she offered her child lips to him, but as if the moment were a +strange moment, a dazzling peak of a moment to be approached--how should +she know the way to her heart's desire? + +"What is it, dear?" asked Raven, not putting her off, as he had the +schoolgirl, but only unspeakably thankful for the bare fact of having +found her safe. "What's happened?" + +"I had to tell you straight off," said Nan, "or I couldn't do it at all. +He sent me your letter--Dick. The one about me." + +Raven was conscious of thinking clearly of two things at once. He was, +in the first place, aware of the live atoms which were the letter, +arranging themselves in his mind, telling him what they had told Nan. He +was also absently aware that Nan's face was so near his eyes it was +nothing but a blur of white, and that when he bent to it, the white ran, +in a rush, into a blur of pink. + +"So Dick sent it to you," he said. "Well, God bless him for it. Kiss me, +my Nan." + + * * * * * + +By Alice Brown + + The Prisoner + My Love and I + One Act Plays + The Black Drop + Vanishing Points + Robin Hood's Barn + Children of Earth + Homespun and Gold + The Flying Teuton + The Road To Castaly + Louise Imogen Guiney + Bromley Neighborhood + The Secret of the Clan + The Wind Between the Worlds +P/ + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Crow, by Alice Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CROW *** + +***** This file should be named 31372-8.txt or 31372-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/3/7/31372/ + +Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Old Crow + +Author: Alice Brown + +Release Date: February 24, 2010 [EBook #31372] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CROW *** + + + + +Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + + + +<h1>OLD CROW</h1> + +<h2>BY ALICE BROWN</h2> + + +<h3>New York<br /> +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +1922</h3> + +<h3><i>All rights reserved</i></h3> + +<h3>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.</h3> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1922,<br /> +<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.</h3> + +<h3>Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1922.</h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#I">I</a><br /> +<a href="#II">II</a><br /> +<a href="#III">III</a><br /> +<a href="#IV">IV</a><br /> +<a href="#V">V</a><br /> +<a href="#VI">VI</a><br /> +<a href="#VII">VII</a><br /> +<a href="#VIII">VIII</a><br /> +<a href="#IX">IX</a><br /> +<a href="#X">X</a><br /> +<a href="#XI">XI</a><br /> +<a href="#XII">XII</a><br /> +<a href="#XIII">XIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XIV">XIV</a><br /> +<a href="#XV">XV</a><br /> +<a href="#XVI">XVI</a><br /> +<a href="#XVII">XVII</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIII">XVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XIX">XIX</a><br /> +<a href="#XX">XX</a><br /> +<a href="#XXI">XXI</a><br /> +<a href="#XXII">XXII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIII">XXIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIV">XXIV</a><br /> +<a href="#XXV">XXV</a><br /> +<a href="#XXVI">XXVI</a><br /> +<a href="#XXVII">XXVII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIX">XXIX</a><br /> +<a href="#XXX">XXX</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXI">XXXI</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXII">XXXII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXV">XXXV</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXVI">XXXVI</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXVII">XXXVII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXVIII">XXXVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XXXIX">XXXIX</a><br /> +<a href="#XL">XL</a><br /> +<a href="#XLI">XLI</a><br /> +<a href="#XLII">XLII</a><br /> +<a href="#XLIII">XLIII</a><br /> +<a href="#XLIV">XLIV</a><br /> +<a href="#XLV">XLV</a><br /> +<a href="#XLVI">XLVI</a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>OLD CROW</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> + + +<p>John Raven sat in the library of his shabby, yet dignified Boston house, +waiting for Richard Powell, his nephew, whom he had summoned for an +intimate talk. He was sitting by the fire making a pretense of reading +the evening paper, but really he was prefiguring the coming interview, +dreading it a good deal, and chiefly for the reason that there was an +argument to be presented, and for this he was insufficiently prepared, +and must be, however long it might be delayed. When he telephoned Dick +to come he was at last armed with a bold conviction of being able to +proffer a certain case to him (his own case, in fact); but, as these +last moments went on, he weakened sensibly in any hope he might have had +that Dick would be able to meet him from any illuminating viewpoint of +his own. This was mid-winter, two years after the end of the War, where +Dick and his uncle had worked in the Ambulance Corps to the limit of +their capacities—Dick, no soldier, because of what seemed to him a +diabolic eccentricity of imperfect sight, and Raven, blocked by what he +felt to be the negligible disability of age. John Raven had, with the +beginning of the War—which, as early as 1914 he had decided to be his +war—made up his mind that although he was over forty and of a business +training with inconsiderable excursions into literature, he wanted +nothing so much as to get into the thick of it and the rough of it, so +far as a man might who was past his physical best, and now he was back +again, more fit than when he went, but at this present moment breathless +at the realization that he had been up against life as it actually is, +and that he found it a brute business and hated it. And this was not so +much the horror of life in the field where, however the human heart +cried out against the argument of desecrated flesh, the spirit could +call mightily upon God, challenging Him to grant the chrism of +fulfilment in return for this wild sacrifice of blood, as the horror of +life when peace was exercising her rights in unbelievable ways. This he +was going to explain to Dick, if he could manage it, while he set forth +also his need of retreating from the active scene and leaving some of +his formerly accepted duties on Dick's shoulders. As he sat there, +gaunt, long, lean man, with a thin brown face and the eagle's look, a +fineness of aquiline curve that made him significant in a dominant type, +he fitted his room as the room fitted him. The house was old; nothing +had been changed in it since the year when, in his first-won prosperity, +he persuaded his mother up from the country and let her furnish it with +her shyly modest taste, a sense of values that bade her keep within the +boundary of the atmosphere she brought with her in good old pieces +tenderly used. The room was dim, even by day, from these shadows of the +brooding past, and the dull blue draperies at the windows, while they +touched it to a more inspiriting tone, still spoke softly of the repose +a man wanted when he escaped from the outer world to the assuagement of +silence and his books.</p> + +<p>To-night, when Raven had just about come to the conclusion that he could +not possibly enter upon certain things with Dick because, although Dick +elected to be a poet, there was no recognized form of words that would +make him understand, and he'd better telephone him to put the interview +off, he heard his voice in the hall, and, answering it, even breaking +over it, like bright bubbles of a vocal stream, the voice of the girl +they both loved, in ways becoming to their differences. Raven drew a +comfortable breath. The intimate conference with Dick would have to be +deferred, though he would quite as willingly have had Nan listen to it, +except for the chance of her carrying it away with her, in that +sympathetic tenderness of hers, to burden her young heart. Nan would +have made quick work of understanding. She translated you as you went, +and even ran ahead of you, in her haste, just as she sometimes cut in on +your speech, not rudely rebuking you for being too slow, but in her +eagerness to assure you she caught at the first toss. And then they came +in, she full of anticipatory delight at seeing Raven, and Dick so full +of her that he seemed not to know whether his uncle were there or not, +except as an habitual figure in the furnishing of the room.</p> + +<p>We must pause a dull minute, while they were projecting themselves into +the scene, to find out how they looked and whether they also fitted the +room and Raven. Nan, known to her larger world as Annette Hamilton, was +a tall, slim, yet muscular girl, graced with as many physical +contradictions as you are likely to imagine. While she stood for an +instant before, puppy-like, precipitating herself upon Raven, her eyes +crinkled up like Mary Seraskier's, and she showed a line of milk-white +teeth. Altogether nature—for she had only the most inconsiderable help +from art—had done her exceedingly well. She had the hurling +impetuosities of the puppy when she found herself anywhere near persons +familiarly dear to her; but, unlike the puppy, she was a thing of grace. +Her hands and slim arms had a girl's loveliest contours, and yet, hidden +somewhere under that satin flesh with its rose and silver lustre, were +muscles serviceably strong. Her eyes were grey like Athena's, her hair +fine and thick and pale, and her face altogether too irregular to talk +about reasonably.</p> + +<p>How is it possible to delineate Dick, even with all profuse generosity +of comment, without suggesting that he was not of the type to please +himself, or tagging him with a priggishness afar from him? He certainly +was not the sort of hero his dramatic poems described with a choppy +vigor of detail, and whom there is no doubt he would have chosen to +resemble. But nature had given him a slimness and an actual grace he +found, in his private self-scrutiny, almost girlish, nor could he wholly +outwit and supplement her by the athletic training he never intermitted. +Dick's face, too, he found much against him, being of a round solidity +with a nose too thick and a mouth a thought too small. How could such +despite have happened to him, he asked himself in moments of depression +when, confronting the mirror, he recognized the wrongs inheritance had +done him. But he knew. It was father's people, that was it. They were +all round and owlish, and they thickened up in middle life. If he could +have shared Uncle Jack's lean aquilinity, people would have looked at +him twice, as they did at Uncle Jack, which in itself would be a bore, +except that Nan also might look. Aware of these things and hiding them +in his soul, he held himself tight, shut his mouth close, and challenged +you with a spectacled eye, pinning you down as if to say: "I am born in +every particular as I didn't want to be, but take notice that I'll have +no light recognition of the hateful trick they did me. I am in training +for a husky fellow. I haven't let up on myself one instant since I found +out how horrible it was to be a good deal more of a fellow than I shall +ever look. I never shall let up. And don't you let me catch you letting +up either, in the way you treat me."</p> + +<p>Nan, to go back to the minute of their entrance, made a swift assault +upon Raven. In the old days when he was a youngish man and she a little +girl, a growing thing, elongating like Alice, she used to hurl herself +into his arms and insist on staying there. Her aunt, Miss Anne Hamilton, +who had brought her up from babyhood, was always detaching her from +Raven; but Nan clung as persistently. Raven would look at Miss Anne, +over the girl's rumpled silk poll, with whimsically imploring eyes. Why +couldn't Nan be allowed to break upon him like a salty, fragrant wave of +the sea, he seemed to ask Miss Anne, bringing all sorts of floating +richness, the outcrop of her fancies and affections? Aunt Anne would +return the glance with her sweet, immovable deprecation and go on +detaching, while Nan, with an equal obstinacy—though hers was +protesting, vocable, sometimes shrill to the point of anguish—stuck to +her self-assumed rights. It was Raven himself who involuntarily stepped +over to Aunt Anne's side and finished the detaching process. When Nan +came back after her first term at the seminary Aunt Anne preferred to +college, and was running to him with her challenge of welcome, he was +taken aback by the nymph-like grace and beauty of her, the poise of the +small head with its braided crown—the girls at the seminary told her +she might have been a Victorian by the way she wore her hair—and he +instinctively caught her arms, about to enwreath his neck, held her +still and looked at her. She could not know what vision, overwhelming in +its suddenness, she brought before him, of childhood gone and maidenhood +come and the sacredness of this new state. Aunt Anne knew and frowned a +little to herself, from her silent, savage jealousy, realizing, though +she would never, in her proud integrity, allow herself to think it, that +this hushed veneration of Raven's was worse than the old tumultuous +intercourse. What Raven really might have said was:</p> + +<p>"Darling, you're a woman and you're a beauty. You don't know it, but you +don't want to hug a jaded old reveler like me."</p> + +<p>He was not, by any means, a reveler. His life had been little more than +a series of walks to business. But those were the words that came to +him, catching her adorable freshness of body and mind, and determining +to keep it untouched by dusty old pantaloons such as he saw himself. Nan +stood for a minute paling out under his eyes, and then drew away from +him and left the room, her braid-crowned head high. She had to meet him +at dinner, and he knew she had cried and Aunt Anne knew it and was hard +on her over the little things she could reprove her for, in a silky, +affectionate way, and Raven's heart swelled until he thought they both +must know its congestion, and tried to put round it another bond of +quiet, kind affection. Since that time, Nan had never kissed him; but +now, this two months since the death of Aunt Anne, she had adopted a +greeting of her own. She put her hands on his arm and bent her forehead +for a minute to his shoulder. The first time she did it, he wanted to +kiss the bright hair, but forbade himself, and the second time he said, +he was so curious over it:</p> + +<p>"A rite?"</p> + +<p>She was ready with her answer. He suspected she must have thought it out +ingeniously beforehand.</p> + +<p>"It's because I'm sorry for you."</p> + +<p>"Sorry?" he repeated.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "about Aunt Anne."</p> + +<p>Then he realized she was sorry because Aunt Anne was dead, and he was +more and more conscious of the unbecoming lightness and freedom where he +found himself at the death of Aunt Anne. He had not dared acknowledge it +to himself. He couldn't, for shame. But whereas, in the past years, when +he ventured to formulate his own life a little and see what it had done +to him and how he could go on meeting it, he had had a sense of +harassment and of being driven too hard, after Aunt Anne's death he +began to recognize the stillness of the space she had left behind. Now +to-day, before Nan had accomplished the little rite of the bowed head on +his shoulder, something queer about it seemed to strike Dick, and he +said to her:</p> + +<p>"He's your uncle, too, you know."</p> + +<p>Raven took this with composure, as signifying the length as well as the +depth of his adoptive relation toward her, but Nan met it with +resentment. She left him and turned upon Dick.</p> + +<p>"Now what," she said, "do you mean by that?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Nan," said the poor youth, keeping a stiff upper lip, because he +recognized the signs of an approaching squabble, "I've told him. I'll +tell him again. Jack, we're engaged."</p> + +<p>"We're nothing of the sort," said Nan, either in pure surprise or an +excellent simulation of it.</p> + +<p>Dick met this doggedly.</p> + +<p>"We are, too," he said. "You promised me."</p> + +<p>"Maybe I did," Nan yielded. "But it was that awful night when you were +going out. We won't talk about that. I'd have promised you anything +then. I'd have promised anybody, just as I'd have given 'em coffee or a +smoke. But when we got back and you expected to begin from there, didn't +I tell you to shut up? I've told you to ever since. And I believe," she +added, with an acumen that struck him in the center, "you're only +dragging it out now to catch me—before him."</p> + +<p>"I did shut up," said Dick, holding himself straight and using his mouth +tautly, "because your aunt was sick and then because she was worse. But +you needn't think I've shut up for good. Besides, it's only Jack I told. +He's nobody."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven mildly, "I'm nobody. Only I wish you wouldn't come here +to fight. Why can't you get it over on the steps, and then act like +Christians after you come in?"</p> + +<p>Nan laughed. She was instantly and most obligingly sweet, as if wholly +bent on pleasing him. But Richard glowered. It was quite like her, he +thought, to sprinkle herself over with that May morning look of hers +when she knew she had the horrible advantage not only of being adorable +in herself, but a female to boot, within all the sanctities that still +do hedge the sex, however it behaves.</p> + +<p>"You see," said Nan maternally, "in France we were living at high +pressure. Now everything's different. We mustn't be silly. Run away, +Dick, just as I told you, and leave me to talk to Rookie."</p> + +<p>This was her name for Raven, saved over from childish days.</p> + +<p>"All right then," said Dick. "But I sha'n't wait for you. I shall go to +Cambridge."</p> + +<p>It was such an anticlimax of a threat, delivered in so determined a +voice, that he expected them to laugh, in a silly way they had of seeing +the merest foolishness always from the same angle. But, as he turned to +go, it was with the chill certainty that they had forgotten all about +him. Nan had settled herself by the fire and his uncle was bringing her +a footstool, an elderly attention, Dick floutingly thought, very well +suited to Aunt Anne, but pure silliness for a girl who flung herself +about all over the place. At any rate, he wasn't wanted, and he did go +to Cambridge and hunted up some of the fellows likely to talk sense; but +no sooner had he settled within their circle of geniality than he found +himself glooming over Nan and tempted to go back and break in on that +mysterious conclave.</p> + +<p>It was mysterious. Nan herself had made it so. Her face, on Dick's +going, had fallen into a grave repose, and she turned at once to Raven, +saying:</p> + +<p>"You see, Dick ran in on the way over here, and when he told me you'd +sent for him, I said I'd come along, because I'd got to see you instead. +Was that cheeky? I really have got to. Couldn't the other thing wait?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly well," said Raven, with a ready cheerfulness he was aware she +could not understand. How should she? He had not been in the habit of +troubling Dick, or indeed any one, with his vaporings. He had lived, of +late years, as a sedate, middle-aged gentleman should, with no +implication of finding the world any less roseate than his hopes had +promised. As to Dick, the very sight of him had shown him beyond a doubt +how little disposed he was to take the lad into that area of tumultuous +discontent which was now his mind. "Fire away," he bade her. "You in +trouble, dear? You want patriarchal advice?"</p> + +<p>Nan might not have heard. She was looking, with a frowning gravity, into +the fire. How should she begin? He saw the question beating about in her +mind and hoped he could give her a lead. But she found the way for +herself. She turned to him with a sudden lovely smile.</p> + +<p>"Aunt Anne," she said, "has done something beautiful."</p> + +<p>He felt his heart shrinking within him as he combated the ungracious +feeling which, it seemed, would not down: that he was never to be done +with Aunt Anne's deeds, so often demanding, as they did, a reciprocal +action from him. What he wanted, he realized grimly, was to have his +cake and eat it, if he might use so homespun a simile for a woman who +had persistently lived for him and in him and then had made clear spaces +about him by going away in the dignity of death. He wanted to breathe in +the space she had left, and he also wanted to be spared the indecency of +recognizing his relief. But Nan, studying the fire persistently, to +allow his eyes all possible liberty of searching her face while she +generously avoided his, was going on in what was evidently a +preconceived task of breaking something to him.</p> + +<p>"Yes, she's done something beautiful, and done it for you."</p> + +<p>Raven's heart had shrunk so now that he wondered it could weigh so +heavily. How could a woman, his rebellious intelligence asked him, +manage to pursue a man with her benefits even from the grave? All his +grown-up life he had fought them, but still they hung about him him like +shackles. When he tore them off from one member—always wounding himself +only, and scrupulously sure of never, except by the inevitability of his +refusals, hurting her—they fastened on him somewhere else. When he was +under twenty—for he was fourteen years younger than she—had come the +question of her endowing him for the period of his apprenticeship to +literature, that he might write with a free mind. He had, tempting as +that was and safe as it seemed to his arrogant youth, found the decency +and prudence to refuse. He wondered now how he had been spared, saved +really by the prophetic gods from taking that guarantee, though he was +then so sure of his ability to justify the risk and pay it all back. +Perhaps his mother had helped him. She was a woman of rare sanity, and +though he could not remember her uttering a dissuading word, he was +sure, in the light of his own middle-aged vision, that she must have +been throwing the weight of her clear-mindedness into the scale.</p> + +<p>Then there was the question of a college course and of European travel: +those were among the colossal gifts Anne Hamilton had sought to lavish +on him. But again he had saved himself, accepting one thing only, a +benefit that must have hurt her heart like a stone, she was so bent on +his beautiful, bright aptitude at writing taking its place as soon as +possible, and with no dimming from a prosaic drudgery, in the world as +she knew it: the Boston world, the New England world, the court of +judgment that sits across the Atlantic. This benefit he asked for and +received, from her father: a clerk's place in the mills—Hamilton was a +wool magnate—and a chance to earn steady money for himself and his +mother, who was every year, in spite of her stout heart, slipping into +the weakness of the chronic invalid. Raven wrote his books at the fag +end of days given to his dull industry, and he succeeded in calling +attention to himself as a classical scholar, and then, as he impatiently +hit out with what he called pot-boilers in dialect, he got a popular +hearing and more money as well. All the time he was advancing in the +mills, and, as he advanced, he never failed to see before him the +flutter of Anne's discreet draperies or hear the click of her determined +heel. She never appeared in the business at all, but he was perfectly +sure there wasn't a preferment offered him by her father for which he +wasn't indebted to her manipulation of Hamilton in long, skillful hours +beforehand. Hamilton had no slightest idea he was being influenced, but, +as the years went on, he grew in appreciation of young Raven's business +abilities to such a degree that John, reading his mind like a familiar +tongue, wondered whether after all it was true, and he hadn't a genius +for the affairs of wool. Was he doing the thing that seemed so dull to +him with such mechanical and yet consummate cleverness that he was worth +all this unripe advancement, or was it indeed Anne's white hand that was +turning the wheel of power, her wand that was keeping the augmented +vision of him ever before her father's credulous eyes? But he could not +retard the wheels of his progress without making a fool of himself, and +by the time his sister had prosperously married and his mother had died, +he was a partner in the business, and then Hamilton also died and Raven +was asking Dick, hoping all the time he would refuse, if he wanted to +come in. Dick did refuse, with an instant hearty decision for which his +uncle inwardly blessed him. Raven had got so restive by this time over +the position he had himself won through Anne's generalship that he felt +the curse was going down through the family, and that Dick, if he should +come in, would wake up at forty-odd and find himself under the too heavy +shade of the Hamilton benevolence.</p> + +<p>"Not on your life," said Dick, when he was halfheartedly offered the +chance of battening on wool, "not while Mum's got the dough. There's +only one of me, and she's bound to keep me going."</p> + +<p>"You couldn't marry on it," said Raven.</p> + +<p>For that also Dick was cheerfully prepared.</p> + +<p>"By the time Nan's ready," he said, having at that point asked her +intermittently for several years, "I shall be getting barrelfuls out of +my plays."</p> + +<p>"'If,'" quoted Raven, "'Medina Sidonia had waited for the skin of the +bear that was not yet killed, he might have catched a great cold.'"</p> + +<p>"That's all right," said Dick. "You needn't worry, not till it begins to +worry me. The only thing that gets me is not pinning Nan down."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "she's a difficult person to pin."</p> + +<p>And saying it, he had a vision of a bright butterfly with "dye-dusty +wings" in stiff, glass-covered brittleness. He wondered if marrying +might pin Nan down like that.</p> + +<p>Another thought troubled him a little: whether Dick had built even +obscurely in his own mind on the money Nan would have from Aunt Anne, +and the more modest sum she had now from her dead father and mother. He +concluded not. He hadn't got to worry about that. Dick had lived in the +atmosphere of money and he took its permanence for granted.</p> + +<p>But we are keeping Nan looking at the fire and trying to get her news +out adequately, waiting a long time for these explanatory excursions +into past history. Raven also was waiting, a good deal excited and +conscious of his apprehensive heart. And when she spoke, in a studied +quietude, he found the words were the very last he expected to hear:</p> + +<p>"I wanted to be the one to tell you. We've found her will."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> + + +<p>They sat there silent for several minutes. Raven was keeping desperate +clutch on the inner self lashed by his hurrying heart, and telling it +there was no danger of his saying any of the things it was hounding him +on to say. He wanted to break out with an untempered violence:</p> + +<p>"Of course you've found it. And of course she's left a lot of it to me."</p> + +<p>He did not really believe that: only it so linked up with the chain of +her unceasing benevolences toward him that it seemed the only thing to +complete them adequately. And Nan, as if his premonition had prompted +her, too, was saying, after the minute she had left him to get his pace +even with hers, as if to assure him that, although she knew so much more +than he, she wouldn't hurry ahead:</p> + +<p>"Rookie, dear, she's left it all to you."</p> + +<p>Raven felt himself tighten up, every nerve and sinew of him, to do +something before it should be too late. He bent forward to her and said, +a sharp query:</p> + +<p>"Who found it?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Nan, smiling as if she couldn't ask anything better, "I +found it, in a perfectly innocent looking envelope with some old deeds +and mortgages."</p> + +<p>"You haven't got it here, have you?" he pelted on. "You didn't bring it +with you?"</p> + +<p>His eyes interrogated her with his voice, and she shook her head, +wondering at him.</p> + +<p>"Nothing to you?" he asked sharply. "I'm the sole legatee?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I have the house, of course," said Nan, "the one here and the place +at Wake Hill. She had those only for her lifetime, you know. Yes, you're +the sole legatee."</p> + +<p>"You haven't told anybody, have you?" he asked, in a despairing haste, +as if he were seeking about for ways to suppress the document.</p> + +<p>She broke into an amused giggle, the note he sometimes fancied she kept +for him alone.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," she said, "of course I have. I telephoned Mr. Whitney, and +he was in a great state over it. He came round, and I gave it to him."</p> + +<p>"A lawyer!" said Raven, in disgust. "A damned accurate, +precedent-preaching lawyer! Well, the fat's in the fire now. What did +you have to be so confounded previous for?"</p> + +<p>Nan was smiling at him as if she found herself wiser than he.</p> + +<p>"You didn't think you could tear it up, did you, Rookie?" she inquired. +"You can't, you know, except in stories."</p> + +<p>"I don't know what I thought," he said. "Only I wish it hadn't been +done, that's all. It's a"—he ended blankly—"a mistake."</p> + +<p>She was looking at him now in a warm, sweet way, to tell him she +understood and thanked him.</p> + +<p>"You're afraid I sha'n't have enough," she said. "I shall. I'd ever so +much rather you had it, Rookie."</p> + +<p>"It isn't a question," said Raven curtly, in his disaffection, "of how +much you're worth. It's simply yours, that's all, and you've got to have +it. Well, I can refuse it, I suppose. Only that's so boorish. It drags +everybody out into the open. What made her! Oh, what made her!"</p> + +<p>"I think it's nice," said Nan comfortably. "It seems to make everything +so right. As to other people—why, it's telling them, don't you know, +you really were the one she cared most about, though she couldn't care +quite in the way you wanted her to."</p> + +<p>He sat staring at her. What did she mean? What had she made up, in her +adequate mind, about his relation to Aunt Anne? She couldn't know how he +had fought off the yearly increasing benefits Anne had showered him +with, unless indeed Anne had told her. And it wasn't like her. Anne was +dignity itself. She kept her own counsel. She took her stately course +without the least recognition that there were peculiarities in the pace +she kept or the road she chose. She had the unconscious arrogance of her +class, a class perhaps, except as surviving in individuals, almost +extinct. She never accounted for herself, because it could not have +forced its way into her mind, from birth to death, that there was +anything in her conduct save the inevitable best, as ordered as the +stars. So, Raven knew, she had probably never talked over his nebulous +relation with her to Nan; but he was suddenly alive with curiosity to +know. He couldn't coax Nan into betraying that confidence, but he was +nevertheless set on getting at it somehow. He wondered if it might be +decent to do it by direct attack.</p> + +<p>"Nan," said he, "just what was my relation to your Aunt Anne? What do +you assume it to have been?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him as if in reproach, a hurt pride flushing her cheek and +giving a sort of wounded appeal to her glance.</p> + +<p>"Why," she stumbled, "I know. Of course I know. Everybody did that heard +how long you'd been devoted to her."</p> + +<p>This gave him so sharp a pang that it might almost have seemed she had +been told off to avenge some of Aunt Anne's wrongs of omission suffered +at his hands. He had never been devoted to her, even with his decent +show of deference in return for the benefits he had to reject. And now +Nan was accusing him of having kept up the relation he had been all his +life repudiating, and since Aunt Anne was gone (in the pathetic immunity +that shuts the lips of the living as it does those of the dead), he +could not repudiate it any more. Nan was looking at him now in her +clear-eyed gravity, but still with that unconscious implication of there +being something in it all to hurt her personally. The words came as if +in spite of her, so impetuously that she might easily not have seen how +significant they were:</p> + +<p>"There's nothing to be ashamed of in not getting the woman you want, +especially with that reason. She adored you, Rookie. I know she did. And +it was pretty heroic in her to keep her mind fixed on all those years +between you. I wouldn't, I can tell you. Do you s'pose I'd let a matter +of fourteen years keep me from the only man? No, sir. Not me."</p> + +<p>They sat gazing at each other, she as self-willed as her words and he +abjectly afraid of her finding out. Why? He could not have told. But it +did seem as if he must protect Anne, in the shadows where she lived now, +from the flashing directness of this terrible young glance. It was all +he could do for her. It was bad enough to have Nan build up a beautiful +dream house of eternal love and renunciation. It was infinitely worse to +be the cause of her demolishing it. And as his eyes, in sheer terror of +leaving her to reflect any more astutely and productively on this, held +hers, and hers answered back, suddenly he saw a new knowledge dawn in +their clear depths. She had somehow read him, underneath his evasions. +She knew. And before she could turn that involuntary discovery of hers +over in her mind and blur it with some of the discretions he was trying +to maintain, she burst out, in the extremity of her wonder:</p> + +<p>"Good heavens! I don't believe it was so at all. You weren't in love +with her. She was with you, and that was the only way she——" Here she +saw the morass her crude candor was leading them both into, and stopped, +but not soon enough for him to miss the look of eager relief sprung into +her eyes. He turned from her and spoke roughly:</p> + +<p>"We don't know what we're talking about. Going into things now—why, +it's the merest folly. Haven't we enough to worry over in the matter of +the will? That's the thing we've got to meet next."</p> + +<p>She had now, he saw, the consciously sweet and warming smile she had for +him when she wanted to coax him into doing something or ignoring +something she had done.</p> + +<p>"I'm in hopes," she said, "you may feel differently after you've read +her letter."</p> + +<p>"Her letter?" he repeated, as if that were a superadded shock. "What +letter?"</p> + +<p>"It was in the envelope," said Nan soothingly, "with the will."</p> + +<p>"Who's it to?"</p> + +<p>He was a writer of English, but his extremity was such that only the +briefest slovenliness would serve.</p> + +<p>"To you," she said, unclasping her little bag and bringing it out, the +familiar superscription uppermost and the very size and texture of the +envelope so reminiscent of Anne's unchanging habits that he felt again +the pressure of her fine indomitable hand on his.</p> + +<p>"Have you," he asked bleakly, "shown that to Whitney?"</p> + +<p>"Why, no," said she, in a clear-eyed surprise. "Of course not. It's +addressed to you."</p> + +<p>She held it out to him and, after a perceptible pause, he took it from +her and sat holding it, looking over it into the fire, as if he saw his +fate there, or as if he should determine it for himself by tossing the +letter in, to be devoured. Then he became aware that Nan was gathering +herself up to go. It was rather a mental intimation than anything +tangible. She was tight furled, like all the women of that moment of +fashion, and had no flying draperies to collect. But he felt her +flitting and knew at the same instant that he could not lose her, since, +determined as he was to bar her out of the inner recesses of his +unfurnished mental prison, where he and the memory of Aunt Anne dwelt so +miserably together, it was still a comfort to keep her human presence +within call.</p> + +<p>"Don't go," he implored her, and she, surprised, settled back, saying:</p> + +<p>"No, of course not, if you don't want me to. I thought you'd like to +read it straight off. Wouldn't it be easier to read it alone?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know whether I can ever read it," said Raven, and then, seeing +what a great booby he must sound, he ended savagely: "I'll read it now."</p> + +<p>Nan took a paper-knife from the table and offered it to him. Evidently +she felt an unformulated tenderness there, a guess that if he tore it +open it would seem as if he were somehow tearing at Aunt Anne's vanished +and helpless delicacies. Then, as he did not accept the knife, or, +indeed, seem to see it, she took the letter from his hand, ran the blade +noiselessly under the flap, withdrew the folded sheets, and gave them to +him. Raven, with a little shake of the head, as if he were reminding +himself not to be a fool, opened the letter, fixed his attention on it +and, without looking up, hurried through the closely written pages. Nan +sat as still as an image of silence, and when he had done and she heard +him folding the sheets and putting them back into the envelope, she did +not look up.</p> + +<p>"Well," said he, his voice so harsh and dry that now she did glance at +him in a quick inquiry, "it's as bad as it can be. No, it couldn't very +well be worse."</p> + +<p>Harrying thoughts raced through her mind. Had Aunt Anne reproached him +for any friendliness unreturned, any old hurt time had never healed? No, +Aunt Anne was too effectually armored by an exquisite propriety. She +would have been too proud to make any egotistical demand for herself +during life. Assuredly she could not have done it after death. Raven may +have guessed what she was thinking.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, in the same tone of dry distaste. All at once it seemed +he could be definitely allowed to treat himself to a little wholesome +rebuttal of Anne and her ways. "It's nothing you could possibly imagine. +She leaves the money to me to be used for a certain purpose. She doesn't +leave it to any association of the people that think as she does, +because she doesn't absolutely trust them never to divert it into some +channel she wouldn't approve. She leaves it to me to administer because +I know precisely what she means and I'd feel bound to do it in her way +and no other."</p> + +<p>"But what is the purpose?" Nan asked him. She was thoroughly surprised +and very curious. "So it's for a cause. Aren't you glad, Rookie? A +minute ago you didn't want it. What is the cause?"</p> + +<p>"The cause," said Raven, with infinite distaste, as if it galled him +even to say it, "is the cause of Peace."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord!" said Nan breathlessly. "O my stars!" She thought of it a +moment, and he thought also, and then she gathered herself hopefully. +"But, Rookie dear, you believe in peace. You don't have to carry it out +in her way. You can carry it out in yours—and mine—and Dick's—we that +have seen things over there. Why, bless you, Rookie, it's a great idea. +It's a chance: Liberty enlightening the world! a big educational fund, +and you to administer it. Cheer up, Rookie dear. It's a chance."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, it's not a chance," said Raven bitterly. "She's seen to that. +She's tied me up, hand and foot. It's got to be done in her way, the way +she'd been doing it herself since 1914."</p> + +<p>"The acutely sentimental?" asked Nan ruthlessly. Then the misery of his +face—a look, too, of mortification as if somebody had put him to public +shame—hurt her so that she spoke with an impetuous bitterness of her +own: "It was a cruel thing to do. Well, it was like her."</p> + +<p>Raven put in heavily:</p> + +<p>"She never meant to be cruel."</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan, "but the whole thing—all the things she had to do +with—came out of her being absolutely stupid and absolutely sure she +was right."</p> + +<p>Raven thought apathetically for a moment. His mind went plodding back +over the years of his acquaintance with Anne, as he had never meant it +should again. There had been moments, of late, when he wondered if he +need ever go back to that guiding hand of hers on his unresponsive life. +Of herself, he would have protested, he must have the decency to think. +Just now, recurring to that also, he wondered, with a grim amusement, +whether he had perhaps meant to set apart a day for it, say Thursdays +from ten to twelve, to think gratefully of Anne. But here he was again +at war with her, and the curious part of it seemed to be that he +couldn't undertake the warfare with the old, steady, hopeless +persistence he had got used to in their past; the mere thought of it had +roused him to a certain alarming wildness of revolt.</p> + +<p>"Well," he found himself saying to Nan, because there might be a +propriety in curbing her impetuous conclusions, "she had a way of being +right—conventionally, you might say."</p> + +<p>"Was she right about the War?" Nan threw back at him.</p> + +<p>"No," he felt obliged to own.</p> + +<p>"Is she right about this, trying to fetter you, hand and foot, against +what she knew you believed, and banking on your doing it because she's +crowded you and rushed you so many times and you've never failed her?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Raven miserably, "I've failed her often enough."</p> + +<p>"But answer me that: was she right when she left you her money to do +this fool thing and give the world another kick down hill where the +sentimentalists are sending it? Now I ask you, Rookie, was she right?"</p> + +<p>"No," he owned again.</p> + +<p>"Then," said Nan triumphantly, "you mean she's right about teas and +dinners and women's clubs and old portraits and genealogy and believing +our family tree was the tree of life. That's what you mean, isn't it, +Rookie?"</p> + +<p>Raven looked at her, an unhappy smile dawning. He was moderately sure, +in his unspoken certainties, that this was what he did mean. She had +been the perfect product of a certain form of civilization, her +proprieties, her cruelties even—though, so civilized were they, they +seemed to rank only as spiritual necessities.</p> + +<p>"I'd rather see a monkey climbing our family tree," said Nan, with a +rash irrelevance she hoped might shock him into the reaction of a +wholesome disapproval, "than all those stiffs she used to hold up for me +to imitate."</p> + +<p>"Don't!" said Raven involuntarily. "It would hurt her like the mischief +to hear you say a thing like that."</p> + +<p>"Why, Rookie," said Nan, with a tenderness for him alone, he saw, not +for Aunt Anne, "you act as if she might be—in the room." She kept a +merciful restraint on herself there. She had almost said: "You act as if +you were afraid she might be in the room."</p> + +<p>He sat staring at her from under frowning brows. Was it possible, his +startled consciousness asked itself, that the spell of Anne's tenacity +of will had not lifted in the least and he did think she might be in the +room? Not to intimidate him: he had never feared her. He had been under +the yoke, not only of his decent gratitude, but his knowledge of the +frightful hurts he could deal her. He wondered what Nan would say if he +could tell her that, if he could paint for her the most awful hour in +his remembrance, more terrible even than that of seeing his mother +suffer under mortal disease, when Anne had actually given way before +him, the only time in her ordered life, and accused him of the cruelty +of not loving her. This had not been the thin passion of the family +portraits smiling down on them from her walls, but the terrible +nerve-destroying anguish of a woman scorned. That was one of the things +in his life he never allowed himself to think about; but it would, in +moments of physical weariness, come beating at the door. He would hear +it leave the threshold while he sat, hands clenched and lips shut tight, +and go prowling round the house, peering in at him through the windows, +bidding him waken and remember. And when he did find himself forced to +remember before he could get out of doors and walk or ride, it was +always with an incredulous amazement that he had, in that moment of her +downfall, found the courage to withstand her. When the implacable ghost +of remembrance flashed on his mind the picture of her, face wet with +streaming tears, hands outstretched to him—beautiful hands, the product +of five generations of idleness and care—why did he not meet her +passion with some decency of response, swear he did love her, and spend +the rest of his life in making good? Would a lifetime of dogged +endurance be too much for a man to give, to save all this inherited +delicacy of type from the ruin of knowing it had betrayed itself and was +delicate no more?—the keenest pang it could feel in a world made, to +that circumscribed, over-cultured intelligence, for the nurture of such +flowers of life. He felt, as he stood there looking despairingly upon +her, as if he had seen all the manufactured expensiveness of the world, +lustrous silks, bloom of velvet, filigreed jewels, in rags and ruin. Yet +there was more, and this it was that had brought enduring remorse to his +mind. It was pride. That was in ruins. If she had assaulted him with the +reproaches of an unfed passion, there would have been some savage +response of rebuttal in him, to save them both from this meager sort of +shame. But what could heal in a man's mind the vision of a woman's +murdered pride, as deep as the pride of queens, in the days when the +world itself bowed its neck for queens to set their feet on? Nan was +looking at him curiously. He became aware of it, and returned to himself +with a start. He must, he judged, have been acting queerly. It had never +happened before that he had been under other eyes when the vision rose +to plague him.</p> + +<p>"You've been such a long time without speaking," said Nan gently. "What +is it, Rookie dear?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head. His forehead was damp with the sweat of his renewed +remorses.</p> + +<p>"There's such a lot of things, Nan," he answered, "that can't be said."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she agreed, "that's true. Want me to go home?"</p> + +<p>He didn't want her to go home. He caught at her dear presence. Almost he +wished he might tell her how horrible it was, not only to repudiate +Anne's last request of him, but to feel he was repudiating it on the +heels of that other refusal years ago.</p> + +<p>"No, dear," he said, "not yet. I'll go with you when you must."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe," Nan ventured, "it's as bad as you think. She did do +some foolish things," she meditated, "these last years."</p> + +<p>"She did some hideous things," said Raven, "because they weren't normal. +They weren't decent. And so they weren't right."</p> + +<p>"Maybe I don't know so much as you do about them," said Nan. "You see +she was so furious with me for going to France——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't say she was furious," urged Raven, still out of that sense of +her being in the room. "It would hurt her so confoundedly."</p> + +<p>"Well, she was, you see," said Nan. "I thought you knew about it. But I +remember, you'd gone. And when I told her I was going over, she was +furious. Oh, she was, Rookie! You can't say anything else. I know Aunt +Anne."</p> + +<p>"But just cut out some of the adjectives," said Raven, still with that +sense of Anne's being in the room and the unsportsmanlike business of +putting her in her place when she could not, even from her place, defend +herself. "She never was furious. She simply didn't believe in war and +she wouldn't join any relief work and didn't want you to."</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't join any relief work," said Nan, relentlessly rehearsing. +"She said the most frightful things and said them publicly. She ought to +have been arrested, only they didn't take the trouble. She wasn't a +Quaker. There was nothing inbred to excuse her. We're decent folks, +Rookie, we Hamiltons. But she stood for non-resistance. She said Belgium +shouldn't have resisted, and England shouldn't have gone in, and France +shouldn't have lifted a finger or thrown a bomb, and when you told +her—that is, I told her—she was crazy, she said something awful."</p> + +<p>Raven was startled out of his determination to show no curiosity.</p> + +<p>"What did she say?" he asked. "What was it that was awful?"</p> + +<p>Nan seemed to have paled a little under the rose-leaf texture of her +cheek.</p> + +<p>"Why, you know," she said, "what they all come back to. Whatever they +believe, they come back to that. I don't see how they can. I couldn't, +it scares me so. They tell you what He said—Christ."</p> + +<p>Raven sat looking at her, wondering absently, in the unregarded depths +of his mind, how they could go on with a talk that was ploughing deeper +and deeper and yet could get nowhere in the end. For certainly they were +both mercifully bent on saving Anne, and Anne, under this shadow of her +latest past, herself would not let them.</p> + +<p>"She absolutely forbade my going to France," said Nan, this with no +special feeling, but as if she had dwelt on it until there was no +emotion left to put into it. "She said it was notoriety I wanted. I told +her I'd scrub floors over there, if they wanted me to. It proved I did, +too, you know. I did it remarkably well. And then she said she forbade +me, and I reminded her I was of age and had my own money. And I went."</p> + +<p>Raven nodded. He thought they had said enough, but Nan's calm +impartiality did rest him. It was something he could not himself attain.</p> + +<p>"And now," said Nan, "she wants you to keep on doing the fool things +she'd have done then, if they'd let her. She probably wants to get up a +big scheme of propaganda and put it into the schools. And every blessed +boy and girl in this country is to be taught not to serve the truth and +do his job but—safety first."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, drearily "I suppose that's about it."</p> + +<p>"But actually," said Nan, suddenly aware that he had not told her, "what +does she say? Does she specify? What does she say?"</p> + +<p>"She says," Raven answered, in a toneless voice, glancing at the letter +but making no movement toward sharing it with her more definitely, "that +her money is to build a Palace of Peace—she doesn't say where—for +lectures, demonstrations of the sort I know she approves, all the +activities possible in the lines she has been following—for the +doctrine of non-resistance and the consequent abolishment of war."</p> + +<p>Again he ended drearily.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Nan, "what are you going to do about it? going to spend +your life and the lives of a lot of more or less intelligent pacifists +teaching children to compute the number of movies they could go to for +the money spent on one battleship——"</p> + +<p>"But, good God, Nan!" Raven broke in, "you and I don't want to preach +war."</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan, "but we can't let Aunt Anne preach peace: not her brand, +as we've seen it. O Rookie! what's the use of taking the world as it +isn't? Why don't we see if we can't make something of the old thing as +it is and has been? and blest if I don't believe as it always will be?"</p> + +<p>Raven looked at her in a maze of interrogation. Was this the fragility +of girlhood speaking, or was it womanhood, old as time itself, with the +knowledge of good and evil? She answered the look.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "I'm not a kid. Don't think it. I suppose it's because +I've seen—life."</p> + +<p>The pause before the last word, the drop on the word itself was not from +bitterness, he knew. But it was sad.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said irrepressibly, "you've seen life, and what do you think +of it?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated. Then she put out her hand and touched the petal of a +rose, one of a great dome of splendor in a bowl.</p> + +<p>"I like—roses," she said whimsically.</p> + +<p>She looked at him with that most moving look of a lovely face: the +knitted brows of rueful questioning, the smiling lips. Raven, staring +back at her, felt a sudden impulse to speak, to tell. It was the form of +her reply that invited him.</p> + +<p>"I don't believe, Nan," he said, "I even care about roses. I don't care +about the whole infernal scheme. That's what I sent for Dick for—to +tell him. Practically, you know I should have to tell Dick. And I +haven't done it and now I'm telling you."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> + + +<p>Nan sat looking at him with an air of patient alertness, ready, he saw, +to meet what he had to say and do the best she could with it. He had an +irritated apprehension that, as her work through the last few years had +lain chiefly in meeting emergencies, so now he was an emergency. And as +Dick, poet though the inner circle of journalism had listed him, might +not understand in the least what he was driving at, so there was danger +of Nan's understanding too quickly and too much, with the resultant +embarrassment of thinking something could be done. And nothing could be +done beyond the palliatives he meant to allow himself. He would try her. +He might see how far she would insist on going with him along his dreary +way. What if she had Anne's over-developed and thwarted maternity of +helpfulness? What if she insisted on going all the way and never leaving +him to the blessed seclusion of his own soul?</p> + +<p>"You see, Nan," he adventured, "I'm sick of the whole show."</p> + +<p>She nodded.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "I know. Coming back. Finding we aren't any better than +we were before we got frightened and said our prayers and promised God +if He'd stop the War we'd be different forever and ever, amen. That's +it, Rookie, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said Raven, staring at her, she seemed so accurate, +according to his own mental gauging, and so unmoved in her flippancy, +"that's pretty nearly it."</p> + +<p>She nodded at him again, whether to hearten him or to assure him of +their perfect unison he could not tell.</p> + +<p>"It was an awful jolt, wasn't it?" she inquired frankly. "You know, I +should think it might make some of them laugh, the ones they say observe +us from—where is it from? Mars? up in the heavens somewhere. It's like +reading a bitter sort of book. It is funny. Rookie, don't you think it's +funny?"</p> + +<p>Raven remembered a character in Mr. Owen Wister's "Virginian," the hen +crazed by her thwarted destiny.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, quoting "The Virginian," "not so damned funny either. +But how the dickens did you know what I was going to say?"</p> + +<p>"Because it's what we've all come back to," said she, "and what +everybody that stayed at home feels, or ought to if they've got anything +inside their nuts. Just think, Rookie! we were like the great multitude +in the Bible, somewhere, praising God. We broke our idols and—I don't +know what we didn't do. And now we're not scared any more, we've set 'em +up again: same old idols. Rookie, I bet you the only reason we ever +sacrificed to God at all was because we thought He was the biggest joss +and things were so desperate and all, we'd better make a sure thing of +it. And now we think we aren't in any particular danger, seems as if the +little gods would do, same as they did before; and they're not so +expensive."</p> + +<p>"Goodness, Nan!" said Raven, "how naughty you are. You didn't use to run +on so."</p> + +<p>"I haven't talked very much to you," said Nan drily, "not since I grew +up."</p> + +<p>He knew it was true, and knew also that the reason was, if she had +allowed her lips to utter it, "Aunt Anne wouldn't let me."</p> + +<p>"But," she said, "I don't understand altogether. I know you're mad and +discouraged and all the rest of it. But I don't see what Dick has got to +do with it."</p> + +<p>"It's simply this," said Raven. "I'm going away."</p> + +<p>She looked at him in what seemed to be serious alarm.</p> + +<p>"Relief work?" she asked. "Reconstruction?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven. "I don't believe I should be any good to them. There +isn't a blamed thing I can do, so far as I see, except for what money +I've got. I'm no good, Nan. I shouldn't sell for my hide and horns. And +I hate the whole blamed show. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the system, +from the beasts that devour one another to the rest of us. And I'm +simply going to desert. I'm going to run away."</p> + +<p>"Where?" asked Nan. "You can't run away from the earth."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven, "I can't jump off. So I'm going to do the next +convenient thing. I'm going up to Wake Hill and shovel snow with Jerry, +and maybe get into the woods and do some thinning out and, if I remember +anything about the millennium we've just shaved the edge of, just say to +myself there ain't a-going to be no millenium, so I can shut up."</p> + +<p>"You've taken advice, haven't you?" she concluded. "That's what they've +prescribed. I suppose it's all right."</p> + +<p>"Good God, no!" said Raven. "Do you think I've been to a doctor and +turned myself inside out? I'm going because Wake Hill is as far out of +the world as I can manage. If the whole earth hadn't gone crazy, I'd cut +stick for Tartary or some confounded place that isn't on the map. But +they're all on the map. There isn't an inch of ground that isn't under +some sort of moral searchlight. No, I'll be hanged if it's moral. It's +only the mites in the cheese getting busy and stirring up fermentation."</p> + +<p>Nan laughed out and then looked up at him in her rueful apology.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't help it," she said. "I thought of Dick, your telling him. +Dick's just got his book ready for the printer: Democracy, you know, in +three-legged verse. And they'll say it's full of insight and prophecy. +That's what they said about the other one: insight, prophecy! But Dick +won't have the least idea what you're driving at."</p> + +<p>"You see," said Raven, "he's thinking of doing some stiff work and +getting a degree: a sort of sop to his mother. She's as wild as a hawk, +you know, to get him to distinguish himself, doesn't much care how. I'd +meant to ask him to camp here with me this winter. I believe I did +actually ask him, now I think of it."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you did," said Nan. "It'll make a lot of difference to him, your +being away."</p> + +<p>"I don't think so," said Raven. "Anyhow, he'll have to get used to it, +especially as I'm not merely going away. I'm getting out, out of the +business and all."</p> + +<p>He was really surprising her now. She had grown up in the atmosphere of +belief in that particular business. When a Hamilton said his earthly +creed, he would have begun, if he had been honest, "I believe in wool."</p> + +<p>"You're not retiring?" she hesitated.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Made your pile, Rookie?"</p> + +<p>At once they thought of Anne and the new complication she had saddled +him with.</p> + +<p>"That isn't the question," he evaded. "The amount of it is, I couldn't +go to the office every morning and come home and go the next day, +without—well, Nan, frankly, going off my nut. I hate it. I hate the +whole business of what we call civilized life. I even think of giving +Dick power of attorney and passing all my stuff over into his hands."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Nan quickly, "you mustn't do that."</p> + +<p>He frowned at her, perplexedly.</p> + +<p>"Don't you trust him?" he asked. "Don't you trust Dick?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I trust Dick," said she impatiently, "his intentions, that +is."</p> + +<p>"You ought to," said Raven. "You're bound to, the man you're going to +marry."</p> + +<p>She kept her eyes on him, but she said nothing. And suddenly Raven +realized that he wanted to know about this business of marrying Dick. He +wanted to know tremendously. Yet, though this was the little Nan who +sometimes used to seem more his child than anybody's, he could not ask +her. She looked difficult, if not wayward.</p> + +<p>"Well," he compromised, "that's about where it is. I'm going into the +country, to get away from the clack of men. My income, all but the +little of it I set aside for food and taxes, will go to France. It may +go through Dick or it may——Oh, well, well," he added, seeing the +quick rebuttal again on her face, "that hasn't got to be decided in a +hurry. But ultimately it goes to France."</p> + +<p>"Why France?" asked Nan. "I see, though. They're all deserting her."</p> + +<p>"It isn't altogether that," said Raven, as if he hadn't finished +thinking it out. "It's because I believe in her so tremendously, that +quick intelligence of hers. She mustn't be downed, mustn't be kept +depleted. It's a loss too horrible to face. She sees the world as it is. +She knows the dangers. She's got to be protected from them, so she can +go on seeing."</p> + +<p>"What does she see?" asked Nan curiously. "What kind of thing?"</p> + +<p>"Everything. Life. When it comes to what the collective brain can do, +you can't limit her. You never'll make her believe in miracles, but she +can find out how they're done."</p> + +<p>"Mercy!" said Nan. "You talk like a book."</p> + +<p>"Notes, for an essay: 'France.' I've been thinking 'em out. How she +ought to be given a hand, so she doesn't have to spend the next thirty +years or so outwitting the German devil. That's hard sledding for her +beautiful intelligence. She ought to be safe, so she can turn it to +other things: the science of living, hers, ours, everybody's."</p> + +<p>"Ah," said Nan, "but they'll tell you it won't be for everybody: only +France."</p> + +<p>"That's the point," said Raven. "It's a gamble. But they can't deny +she's got the beautiful intelligence. I can trust anything so perfect. I +trust it absolutely."</p> + +<p>"Why don't we do it ourselves? Build a fire under us, Rookie. Come on!"</p> + +<p>"We aren't homogeneous," said Raven. "We've no race spirit, no live +nerve through the whole of us. France has. That mind of hers, that +leaping intelligence! If she were as holy as she is keen, she'd make the +world the poets dreamed of."</p> + +<p>"Then go to it," said Nan. "Turn in your money. I will mine. Stump you!"</p> + +<p>"Not yet," said Raven. "You sit tight and see how I come out. I haven't +got enough to set the Seine afire, but such as it is, I'd like to turn +it over to her for what she needs most: agriculture, schools, research. +Administered so it could be withdrawn if she didn't make good and turned +in somewhere else. Oh, it's a gamble! I told you it was. But +administered, mind you. That's the point."</p> + +<p>"Through Dick," she commented, plainly with dissatisfaction. "Now, why +Dick?"</p> + +<p>"Because," said Raven, "Dick's got a head for organizing. He's his +father over again, plus the Raven streak. And the Raven streak doesn't +do him any harm. It isn't soft, like Old Crow—and me. It's his mother +in him, and she takes back—but O Lord! what's the sense of going into +that?"</p> + +<p>"Anyhow," said Nan, with decision, "you keep your affairs in your own +hands."</p> + +<p>"For the present, yes," said Raven. "And I do want to think it out in +detail. I can do it at Wake Hill. I shall get on my pins enough for +that."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it funny?" said she. "Aunt Anne with her Palace of Peace and you +with your invincible France. But, Rookie, you hear to me. Whatever you +do with your own money, you do it your own way. Don't be a slacker."</p> + +<p>Raven sat looking at her, a slow smile dawning. He rather liked Nan's +taking him in hand.</p> + +<p>"That's it, is it?" he asked, with a relish she was glad to see. "A +slacker! so be it. If I'm a slacker, I am. I'm a conscientious objector. +What I object to is the universe, the pattern it's made on. I object to +the way we're running it, and, being made as we are, I don't see how we +can be expected to do anything but what we're doing. It's a perfectly +logical proposition. And except for a few minor chores I've got to see +to, I simply won't play."</p> + +<p>Nan was thinking. She looked down at her hands, lying in her lap. Raven +looked at them also and wondered, as he often had, since they came home, +how such hands could have done the tasks she set them to. She looked up +and met his eyes gravely with something imperative in hers. It is a way +women have sometimes. They seem to be calling on the boy in man and +bidding him take heed.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't," said she, "talk to Dick about going to Wake Hill."</p> + +<p>"What would you do? Cut stick, and let him wonder what in the deuce it's +all about?"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't talk; I'd write."</p> + +<p>"Oh, write!—what's the difference?"</p> + +<p>"If you talk, he'll say something that'll shut you up and you'll be just +as far apart as you are to-day. If you write, you can tell him as much +as you want to and no more. And the first thing he'll do will be to +bring the letter to me."</p> + +<p>"I see," said Raven. "And you'll interpret."</p> + +<p>"I'll interpret. I can, Rookie. I know you, don't I? and I know Dick."</p> + +<p>"You ought to," said Raven rashly again because he was again curious, +"the man you're going to marry."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan calmly, rising, "the man I'm going to marry. Only"—her +face, as she turned it to him, brimmed over with a childish sort of +fun—"don't tell him that, Rookie. It's perfectly true I haven't +promised him. And I don't mean to—yet."</p> + +<p>"Quite right," said Raven, rising. He felt a distinct relief. He, too, +wanted to see what Dick would make of himself. "You do your own +telling."</p> + +<p>"There he is," said Nan, "just as it is in a play. We've got to a climax +and he comes in at the door. But, Rookie——" She stopped, for Dick was +nearing in the hall, and Raven knew what she would have said. It was in +both their minds. They hadn't finished their talk. It had merely strayed +into another channel, or bolted and run away there. Aunt Anne's money +and her Palace of Peace still stared them in the face. Dick put his head +in at the door. He looked rather sheepish, as if his dignified going had +been invalidated by this impetuous coming back, as if he couldn't live +without Nan and she was bound to see through it.</p> + +<p>"Well?" he said gruffly. "Talked out?"</p> + +<p>They both laughed, with the sudden absurdity of it. How should they, +their eyes questioned each other, ever be talked out, what with Aunt +Anne and the universe and France?</p> + +<p>"Absolutely," said Nan. "Good night, Rookie. Going to write your letter? +Come on, Dick."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> + + +<p>Raven sat down at the table and began his letter. He was wrestling with +it at once, to give himself no time to argue over the point of its being +no ordinary letter such as he had been accustomed to write to Dick. He +began with the succinct statement of what he meant to do. He had made +all his arrangements for getting out of the business. They could be +concluded in short order. As to the business itself, he had no complaint +to make. The old man—he permitted himself this indulgence as he never +could have in Anne's lifetime, as touching her father—the old man had +been square all through. He was as good as they make 'em. But there was +nothing for him, Raven, in the concern except its cumulative capacity +for making money. He'd no traditional pride in it, as the old man had. +He'd worked for all he was worth, to squeeze every drop he could out of +it so that his mother—"your grandmother, you know, Dick"—might have +every last luxury she wanted. Well, she'd had 'em, though one of the +ironical things about it was that she didn't want so very many, and he +needn't have worked so hard or so long. However, that's neither here nor +there. What's done is done. The War's done—they say—and the thing that +would please Raven best would be——Here he brought up with a full stop. +He was running into dangerous revelations, going back to a previous +state of mind, one he had begun cherishing as soon as his mother died, +and even caressed, with a sort of denied passion, when Anne also died, +and he felt so shamefacedly free. All his life he had wanted to wander, +to explore, to bruise himself against the earth and pick himself up and +go on and get bruised again. He loved the earth, he wanted her, in her +magnificence and cruelty, wanted to write about her, and make the +portrait of her for stay-at-homes who weren't adventurous and were +content with reading about her in the blank moments after the office +grind. Yet he was a stay-at-home himself. Why? in God's name why?</p> + +<p>He asked himself the question, as he sat with lifted pen, almost the +words dropping off it, to tell Dick the things it would be simply +disconcerting to know. Raven saw, with a sad clearness, why he hadn't +written the books he wanted to about the earth. They would have been +rough books, full of rock and clay and the tumbling of rivers and +thunder grumbling in the clouds. If he had been really afraid of Anne +and her ordered ambitions for him, he could have printed them under an +assumed name. She need never have known at all. They wouldn't have been +the books he could have written if he had been foot-loose and gone +blundering along in strange trails over the earth, but they might have +held something of the sort his inner man wanted to fashion. And if the +secret of them had been kept, they needn't have interfered with his smug +little folk stories Anne and her women's clubs prized so much. Had he +been actually afraid of Anne? Was he one of the men who are shamefully +under the feminine finger, subject to mother, subject to wife, without +the nerve—scarcely the wish, indeed—to break away? He was not afraid +of his mother, or, if he had been, it was the fear of hurting her who +had been so hurt already. Ever since he could remember, he saw himself, +even as a little boy, trying to get her away from his father who had a +positive cast of mind, a perfect certainty of being right and a +confirmed belief that robust measures always were the thing. If you did +wrong, you were to be punished, promptly and effectually. If you were +afraid of the dark, and came downstairs in your nightgown upon the +family sitting by the lamp, you were whaled for it, to teach you there +was something worse than bed even in the dark. If you said your head +ached and you couldn't eat bacon and greens, which father elected to +consider a normal dish, you were made to eat a lot with no matter what +dire result, because there wasn't a physical ill which couldn't be +mended by treating it robustly. He was God. He knew. And he was +perfectly well and had never once for half a minute entered into those +disordered cells of bodily ill where the atom cries to its Creator in an +anguish of bewilderment and pain. And when his body met the fate +appointed for its destruction, as all bodies must, and he was brought +home broken after the runaway that made him a thing almost too terrible +to look upon, except by eyes so full of compassion that they love the +more, Raven, then a very little John, found himself wondering how it +seemed to father now. Even runaways, father had appeared to think, could +always be governed, if you kept your head.</p> + +<p>They never knew what he thought. He died quickly, under opiates, and +John believed his mother was so thankful for the merciful haste of it +that she could not, until long after, recall herself to mourn. And she +did honestly mourn. The little John was glad of that. So ill and tired +had she been for years and yet so bound upon the rack of her husband's +Spartan theories for her, that John thought he could not have borne it +if she had not adored her righteous tormentor, if she had had to look on +him as her master, not her lord by love. It seemed to him he was always +mourning over his mother, in those days, always lying awake and +wondering if she were awake, too, always trying to save her from some +task too heavy for her and too heavy for him also, so that, if she were +to be saved, it had to be by stratagem. But stratagem was difficult in +that house, because his older sister, who became Dick's mother, was of +her father's temperament, always perfectly well and also an inferior god +who knew at every point what to do, and she had not merely imbibed +father's certainty that the only thing mother needed was to take a +brace: she had it by nature. And when, father being gone to heaven—and +John, young John now, not little any more, made no doubt he had gone, it +pleased mother so to say it and be obligingly agreed with—Amelia, his +sister, took her departure, on the night of her marriage with a very +prosperous Mr. Powell, for the middle west, John Raven, then beginning +his apprenticeship to wool, danced a fantastic fling in the sitting-room +where the wedding gifts still lay displayed and whooped with emotion at +last let loose. His mother, in the gray silk and commendable lace Amelia +had selected and he had paid for, did smile unwillingly, but she spoke +to him in the reproving tone which was the limit of severity his boyhood +had known from her and which he had learned, in those earliest days, +meant nothing at all:</p> + +<p>"I'd be ashamed! Any one would think you were glad your sister had +gone!"</p> + +<p>John did not say he was glad. He knew too much to stir up loyal +reactions in mother's conscience. He simply wove a dance of intricate +mazes about her, as she sat in her chair, and his inner mind was one +pæan of thanksgiving to God, not the spurious gods who had been his +father and sister, but the mysterious Deity who had, for obscure +purposes, called them into being, because now John had at last full +swing and could let mother out of bondage. What difference did it make +that he wasn't trekking through darkest Africa or being hunted by the +jungle in India, so long as mother was out of bondage? He even took his +allegiance to Anne rather lightly, those first years, he was so +absent-minded about everything but hypnotising mother into thinking she +was going to be very happy and live a long time doing it. And that was +the part of his life when there seemed to be a great deal of it, and if +he didn't have a thing now there would be plenty of chances to snatch at +it later. He had simply been eaten up, the energy of him, the will, +perhaps, by compassion. And then his mother had died and he knew he +could have done no more for her than he had done, and while he was +turning round to look about him—and ah! in that lean year came Anne's +horrible accusation that he did not love her!—the War broke out, and he +felt himself shocked into action. The very atoms of his body seemed to +fall asunder and rearrange themselves and, as soon as he could decently +get away, without throwing the bewilderment of the business on Anne, he +had gone, and he had never seen her again.</p> + +<p>He had written to her faithfully, and with the compassion that was +either natally or by the habit of life a part of him, but he had not +obeyed her. For she begged him, almost, at intervals, commanded him, to +return to work with her for the peace of mankind. At first he tried to +explain himself and assuage her grief over what she called his desertion +of their common ideals. He answered the arguments in the letters that +had become a misery to him to receive as his had become an inexpressible +burden to write. Finally, with a wrench to himself, he ceased, and, with +infinite pains, compiled data that might interest without offending her. +The letters continued, but as soon as he found she was sending him +abstractions valueless because they had no roots in the living issues of +things, he had to stop. That, not her death, had been their lasting +farewell.</p> + +<p>What, in the name of all that was mysterious, he reflected, had made +Anne—and so early—assume the burden of an unasked allegiance to him? +His family and hers had been next-door neighbors at Wake Hill, but on no +equality of worldly footing. The Hamiltons, thriving on wool, had been +able to buy for themselves all the picturesque luxuries of civilized +life. Their women toiled not. Their delicate air was the product of +tuition in dainty ways. Their men had acquired the unconscious pose of +dominance, of knowing what was their due and expecting to get it without +argument. Sometimes up there at Wake Hill they did receive a +disconcerting knock or two from some "embattled farmer" whom they called +"my man," and who didn't like the sound of it. But the answering rebuff +never penetrated the fine mail of their acquired arrogance. It meant, +they smilingly said, "New England," and tolerantly passed it by. Raven's +people were of a different stripe, "brainy," he thought with an unspoken +pride of his own, yet deficient in a certain practical quality of taking +the world "but as the world," and consequently always poor. Their ways +were rougher ways. Their women had to work to trim the edges of their +plainer surroundings with the alleviating prettinesses the Hamiltons +cast aside with every changing style. And Anne, coming home from Europe +one summer, where she had not only seen wonder and beauty, already +familiar to her—for she was a young lady then—and where he knew she +had met men and women whose names were trumpet calls in his +ears—singled him out, in his shyness and obscurity, and offered him the +key to the fulfilment of his dreams. Education, travel, the life of +books—all were in her hand, the potential fruit of her father's doting +affection for her, and all were to be his. What could have inspired her +with so wholesale and fantastic a philanthropy? He could never +adequately guess, and he was no nearer doing it now than in the old +bewildering days when the Hesperidean apples were dropping over him and +he was, from some shy instinct, dodging to avoid them. And the reason he +had never guessed and never could guess was that he left out of all the +data at his hand the one first moving factor: that he was a beautiful +youth and Anne had imperiously loved him and had never ceased to love.</p> + +<p>As he sat there, the pen lifted, his mind going back over the things +that had led him away from adventure into wool, and were now leading him +as far from wool as might be, he was tempted. What if, in spite of Nan, +he should risk it and tell Dick, once for all, why he was going away, +make it clear so there should be no after-persuasions, no clutter of +half understanding? He was tired of thinking about his life as a life. +The temptation to such morose musing had come upon him in the last six +months, and once yielded to, he felt the egotistical disease of it +through his very blood and bones. If he were Catholic, he could confess +and get rid of it. He was not Catholic, only pagan, the natural man. The +Church had a wisdom of her own. All her rites and ceremonies found their +root in something salutary for the human mind. Confession was salutary. +You might not be absolved, but if you were pagan you could believe that +the very act of it absolved you. Nan said Dick never would understand. +So much the better. Let him carry off the burden of it. If he +understood, he'd see the extreme sacredness of a confidence entrusted to +him. If he didn't, he'd hide it as a thing you'd better say as little +about as possible. So he tucked his first letter into its envelope and +began to write again, with no date and no direct address, but from a +sense that it was going to be an enormously comforting thing to do.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> + + +<p>"I think I'll tell you the real reason why I'm going to Wake Hill. I've +told you I'm going, but just as my nerves move the muscles that move my +legs to go, so my will moves my nerves and the me that is inside +somewhere and is a perfect stranger to you—and also to the me I am used +to myself—moves my will. You see, the me inside me knows there's +something wrong. Something mighty bad—or it may be merely +inevitable—has happened to me. I went through the War all right, on a +pretty even keel, because I thought I saw a bright light at the end. I +thought we all saw the light. And the light wasn't any electric +signboard out to say there never would be any more wars, but it was a +light you could see to read by. You could see the stars and see them +differently from the old way we'd been seeing them. We could see the +moon and the Milky Way—but I suppose that comes under stars—and the +upshot of it was that we thought we saw God. And after you'd seen God, +you knew saying there shouldn't be any more war was only beginning at +the wrong end of the puzzle. Of course war is a damnable business, +perhaps the most damnable we go into because it's so wholesale. But if +you begin at the right end of the puzzle and not the wrong, the thing we +learn is that the only reality in this universe for which it's worth +going through the obscene hells of which war is one, is God. To be aware +of Him, not to explain Him. You can't explain Him. You can't explain +what He's done to you or means to do. All you can do is to keep your eye +on Him and fall in.</p> + +<p>"I came home. I was rather cracked, when I got here, I was so pleased +with my little plaything. I'd seen God. I was only one of a good many +millions that saw Him. And it was exactly as if you went into an +enchanter's cave and expected to find some dream you'd dreamed made +real, and all you found was the Forty Thieves sitting there counting +over their spoils. No! no! it isn't an allegory. I don't mean America +and profiteers. I don't mean anybody particularly. But it began to come +over me more and more every day that we and everybody else on the round +world, if they had seen God, had forgotten all about it. Just as the +old-fashioned men at Wake Hill used to read their Bible Sunday and put +it away on the parlor table with the album and go out early Monday +morning to carry the apples to market all deaconed on top. By George! we +were the same old lot. And worse, for we'd had our look through the +peep-hole into eternities, and now we said, 'It makes my eyes ache. I'm +going to wear a shade.' No, son, I don't mean Leagues of Nations and +Internationalism or any of the quack remedies. I mean just God. We'd +been badly scared—Nan said so to-day—and we got down on our knees and +howled to the Highest and offered Him tribute.</p> + +<p>"Now you may say that even if the whole world had forgotten God, if I'd +seen Him why couldn't I still remember Him? Why couldn't I consider the +millions of years that go to the making of man and do my little bit and +wait on His will? Because my temptation came on me. I was tempted in the +wilderness of my own credulity and conceit. For I looked back over time +past and I said like Solomon—I don't know whether he ever said it, but +he's the most blasé Johnnie I remember—'All is vanity.' As it was in +the beginning, so it ever shall be. We are not made in the image of God. +We are made rather grotesquely out of dust, and to dust we shall return, +all our hopes, all our aspirations, all the pretty plans we form for +defeating death and time. And who made us and put us on this dark planet +where it is next to impossible to see a step before us? God. Who is +responsible for us? God. Can we find out His will? Never. Can we hope +for any alleviation of misery on our dark planet? Never: for if we seek +out many inventions to down disease and poverty, we shall unloose as +many by-products of discovery and bring new plagues upon us. And so I +had to turn away from God. Do you see? I didn't deny He exists. I didn't +accuse Him of bad faith to us. How can He show either good faith or bad +when He has made us no promises? He has merely set us on the dark planet +and forced us to whirl with it on the wheel of time. And so, do you see, +having turned away from God—and I had to, I had to in mere honesty—I +simply lost Him. And having lost Him, there is nothing left to lose. +Also, having once seen Him and then lost Him, I can't take up the puzzle +again. I can't play the game. If I hadn't what we New Englanders call +common sense, I suppose I should put an end to myself. What would be the +good? He would simply catch me, like a rabbit out of a cage, and chuck +me back again on the dark planet. Don't think I blame Him. He wouldn't +do it out of cruelty. He'd have to put me back. That's the way His laws +are made. So I'm going up to Wake Hill and live with Charlotte and +Jerry, and see if I can't get tired enough every day to sleep at night. +I couldn't keep on here. I couldn't. What we call civilization is too +sickening to me. I should simply go off my nut. And when you come to +that, it's an awful complication, besides the suffering of it. That I +shrink from, too. I'm talking a good deal, but actually it's the thing I +least want to do. I don't want a fuss."</p> + +<p>Here he paused, wondered if he had more to say, thinking Dick must be +unusually dull, even for a poet, if he couldn't understand such a plain +state of things, and then took an irrational satisfaction in carefully +folding these last pages and putting them in the envelope with what he +had written first. He addressed the envelope to Dick, sealed and weighed +it, got up and stretched himself and felt distinctly better. He had, in +a way, confessed, and it was having the effect on him he had so sagely +anticipated. He could sleep to-night. And he did sleep. It was one of +the nights he used to have after long tramps about Wake Hill, when his +tired legs thrilled deliciously before they sank into a swoon of +nothingness.</p> + +<p>In the morning, he leaped the chasm from four to six, a wakeful misery +of late, when he was accustomed to go over and over the last harassing +pages in his book of doubts. He did not wake until seven, and then it +was with a clear-eyed resumption of consciousness. And here he was, +exactly as he had found himself on other mornings when the bath of +oblivion had not been so deep. Here was his world, the world he was +trying to run away from, waiting for him in all its ordered hostilities. +Immediately it struck him full in the center that, instead of having +something less to brood upon by reason of his confession to Dick, he had +saddled himself with more. He had the letter itself to repent of. He had +given, not his unhappiness but his actual self away, and, no matter how +clearly Dick understood, he had conjured up another anguish in admitting +to his disordered inner world the lenses of another mind. This was only +a matter of a second's disconcerting thought. It was also immediately +clear to him that the letter must not go, and he spoke from his bedside +to the kitchen and gave orders that nothing should be mailed until he +came down. A contrite voice replied. The letters were mailed: that is, +the thick one on the library table. Mary had gone in last night to lock +the windows, and saw it, and knew he had forgotten to leave it in the +hall. He often did forget. It was stamped and sealed. And the furnace +man came then. Raven thought he might, in another minute, be groaning +into her sympathetic ear; so he shut her up with an assurance that it +was all right. But he felt the sweat start on his forehead at the +picture of Dick sitting down to breakfast—Dick always ordered a big +breakfast, having a hunter's appetite and a general impression that, the +more he nourished himself, the more manly it would make his nose—and +poring over the fable of his uncle's soul, or what seemed to be his +soul, with eyes strained to their limit of credulity. However, it was of +no use. Nothing was of any use when destiny had one of those ironic fits +of hers and sat down to make a caricature of you, just for the fun of +bursting her old sides over it. He dressed in a dogged haste, wondering +if he'd better telephone Dick and ask him not to open any letter he +might have from him that morning, and then dismissing it, because it had +assuredly been received and Dick was now absorbing it with his chops and +eggs.</p> + +<p>Raven went down to his own eggs in a grim and sulky frame of mind. He +would repudiate the letter, if need be, tell Dick it was only something +he had written as a literary experiment and thought he'd try it on the +dog. But the moment he heard the boy's key in the door and then his step +through the hall, he knew he could not, for some unexplained reason +inherent in his own frame of mind, "put it over." It was as if Dick +represented the universe Raven was arraigning, was counsel for it, so to +speak, and Raven had got, in sheer decency of honor, to stand to his +guns. But it was all worse than he thought. Dick's entrance was so +quick, his onslaught so unstudied, his glance so full of alarmed +commiseration, that Raven saw at once he had been shocked out of all +manly proprieties. Dick caught at a chair, on the way to the table, +brought it with him and, placing it at a near angle to Raven's, dropped +into it as if exhausted.</p> + +<p>"I'd no idea," he began, "why, I'd no more idea——"</p> + +<p>Raven's hand tightened on his fork. Then he laid the fork down, for, +after all, he had finished breakfast, and might as well make the most of +running his hands into his pockets and shutting them there.</p> + +<p>"Morning, Dick," he said. "Have in some toast and eggs?"</p> + +<p>Dick, in no mind even to weigh the significance of toast and eggs, was +staring at him. He was cheated by a poverty of words when he most needed +them, and could only repeat:</p> + +<p>"I hadn't the least idea. I tell you it never occurred to me. I don't +believe it did to Nan, either."</p> + +<p>"What?" asked Raven. "What is it that didn't occur to you?"</p> + +<p>"I did think of it when you first spoke of going to France, you know," +said Dick, in a justification of himself that seemed more for his own +ease than Raven's. "I didn't believe you could pull it off, a man of +your years. You took it so easy! You never turned a hair. But I might +have known you'd have to pay for it afterward."</p> + +<p>"What is it I've taken so admirably?" asked Raven. "What is it I've got +to pay for?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Dick, "your slogging over there—a man of your age——"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Raven curtly, cracking his voice at him in a way Dick had +never had to take from him, "how is it I'm paying? What's the matter +with me?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Dick, in a perfect innocence of any offense in it, "don't +you know? You've seen enough of it. I should think you'd be the first to +know."</p> + +<p>Raven simply looked at him. Dick had a feeling that his uncle was about +to roar out something, and braced himself for the unbelievable event. +However, it would not surprise him. That, he knew, was a part of it. But +Raven was putting his question again, smoothly and tolerantly, as if to +assure him there was time enough to make a well considered reply:</p> + +<p>"Just what, in your opinion, is the matter with me?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Dick, that innocent gaze still upon him, "shell shock."</p> + +<p>Raven jumped. Every nerve in him seemed to give a little twitch of pure +surprise with every other.</p> + +<p>"O Lord!" said he. "Who could ever have expected that? It's worse than I +thought."</p> + +<p>"Why, it's no disgrace," Dick assured him eagerly. "Think how many +fellows have had it. They haven't got over it. They're having it now. +The only thing to do is to recognize it and put yourself under +treatment."</p> + +<p>"That'll do," said Raven, with a determined calm. "Your diagnosis has +gone far enough. And now I shall have to ask you to do two things for +me."</p> + +<p>"Two!" Dick echoed, and Raven, though at the end of his patience, was +touched to see the suffused look of the boy's eyes. "You needn't cut it +down to two. Just you tell me——"</p> + +<p>There, though he was poetically eloquent and diffuse in print, he +stopped and could literally say no more without an emotion he considered +unworthy of him.</p> + +<p>"Two things," said Raven. "One is to forget every blamed word of the +screed I was jackass enough to send you. The other is to give me your +word you won't mention it, even to me. Oh, there's another thing. Go +home and burn the thing up."</p> + +<p>Dick's eyes were all a wild apprehension.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said he, "I can't burn it. I haven't got it."</p> + +<p>"You haven't it? Who has?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody—not yet."</p> + +<p>"Oh, then you've destroyed it already."</p> + +<p>"No," said Dick miserably. "I've sent it off."</p> + +<p>"Who to? Nan?"</p> + +<p>"No. Mother."</p> + +<p>Raven could hardly believe him. He did not remember any illuminating +confidences from Dick on the subject of mother, but he made no doubt the +boy looked upon her as he did, as a force too eccentrically +irresponsible to be unloosed.</p> + +<p>"Well!" he said. The state of things struck him as too bad to be taken +otherwise than calmly. You couldn't spend on it the amount of emotion it +deserved, so you might as well get the credit with yourself and your +antagonist of an attack unexpectedly gentle. "Now, what did you think +you were doing when you sent it off to your mother?"</p> + +<p>"Uncle Jack," said Dick, rather awkwardly blundering about his mental +armory for some reasonable defense, "she's your sister."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "Milly is my sister. What then?"</p> + +<p>"Then, why, then," said Dick, "when a thing like this happens to you, +she'd feel it, wouldn't she?"</p> + +<p>"You're perfectly sure you know what has happened to me? You trust your +own diagnosis?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I trust it," Dick burst forth. "Your letter—why, your letter +isn't normal. Shell shock's a perfectly legitimate thing. You know it +is. You're just the one to be hit. You did perfectly crazy things over +there, entirely beyond any man of your years. And I'm mighty thankful we +can put our finger on it. For if it isn't shell shock, it's something +worse."</p> + +<p>"You mean," said Raven, "I've gone off my nut."</p> + +<p>Dick did not answer, but there could be no doubt of his own mental +excitement, and he was apprehensive in a measure that moved Raven to an +amused compassion. Raven sat looking at him a long minute. Then he got +up and took his newspaper from the table beside him.</p> + +<p>"Come," he said. "We'll go into the library and see if we can get +anywhere."</p> + +<p>Dick followed him, and they sat down together by the fire, this after +Raven had moved a third chair into the space between them. He smiled at +himself as he did it. It was the chair Nan had sat in the night before. +He had a foolish feeling that he was invoking her remembered presence, +calling on her to help them out.</p> + +<p>"Now, Dick," he began, when they were seated, "you said something about +my letter's not being normal. What is normal, when you come to that?"</p> + +<p>Dick frowned into the fire. This, he felt, had some hidden leading, and +he wasn't going to be caught.</p> + +<p>"What's the use of asking fool questions?" he inquired, in his turn. +"You know."</p> + +<p>"Can't help it," said Raven. "I've got to be Socratic. Help me out, old +man. Let me have my little game. What is normal?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Dick, floundering, "I suppose it's what the general run of +people think—and do. It's keeping to the rules. It's trotting on the +course. It isn't going off at some tangent of your own."</p> + +<p>Dick felt rather proud of this, its fluency and general appositeness. He +plucked up his spirits, thinking he might be going to manage Raven, +after all.</p> + +<p>"Now, see here," said Raven, suddenly leaning forward and looking at him +in the friendliest community of feeling, "it means a good deal when a +fellow of my years, as you say, gets a biff that sends him staggering."</p> + +<p>"Just what I said," Dick assured him. "It's mighty serious. It's awful."</p> + +<p>"Has it occurred to you," said Raven, "that I may be right?"</p> + +<p>"Right? How right?"</p> + +<p>Thereupon question and answer piled up fast.</p> + +<p>"I've indicted the universe, as it were. How can you prove the universe +hasn't laid herself open to it? How do you know the indictment of the +creature she made and then ground under her heel isn't the very thing +she's been waiting for all these millions of years?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, come, Jack! the universe hasn't been waiting for you. That's a part +of it, don't you see? You've got delusions, delusions of greatness, +delusions——"</p> + +<p>"Shut up. Don't use your spurious jargon on me. Just answer my +questions. How do you know it isn't the healthiest thing that ever +happened in this rotten tissue of pretense we call civilization for even +one man—just one—to get up and swear at the whole system and swear +again that, so far as his little midge's existence goes, he won't +subscribe to it? What business have you to call that disease? How do you +know it isn't health? How do you know I'm not one of the few normal +atoms in the whole blamed carcass?"</p> + +<p>Dick felt himself profoundly shocked. He was having to reverse his +conclusions. Uncle Jack had stood for a well ordered sanity, conversant +with wool and books and mysteriously devoted to Miss Anne Hamilton, +whose conventional perfections evidently held within their limit Uncle +Jack's highest ideals. Uncle Jack had shown a neat talent with his pen. +He had grown middle-aged at an imperceptible and blameless pace, and now +he was raging about like a sort of cave man with nothing less than the +universe to bound his wild leaps and curvetings.</p> + +<p>"But you know, Jack," he remonstrated feebly, "there isn't anything new +in saying the nation's going to the dogs. The Britishers say it, we say +it——"</p> + +<p>"I don't say it," Raven asserted. "We're not going to the dogs. We've +gone. We're there. We're the dogs ourselves, and nothing worse could +happen to a criminal—from Mars, for example—than to be sent to us. We +ought to be the convict colony of the universe."</p> + +<p>"Don't," said Dick, with an affectionate sweetness as exasperating as it +was moving. "It only excites you. Come on out and have a tramp. We could +motor out to——"</p> + +<p>"O Lord!" groaned Raven. "Why don't you beguile me up to the +Psychopathic?"</p> + +<p>Then he was, for the first time, aghast at what he had set going. Dick +was looking at him again with that suffused glance of an affection too +great to mind disclosing itself in all its pathetic abnegation.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't say it myself," he began brokenly. "But you've said it; you +see yourself. If you would——"</p> + +<p>There he stopped and Raven sat staring at him. He felt as if the words +had got inside his body and were somehow draining his heart. When he +spoke, his voice sounded hoarse in his own ears.</p> + +<p>"Dick, old man," he said, "I'm not—that."</p> + +<p>"No! no!" Dick hastened to assure him, and somehow his hand had found +Raven's and gripped it. "Only—O good God!" he ended, and got out of his +chair and turned his back.</p> + +<p>Raven, too, rose.</p> + +<p>"Dick," said he quietly, "you go home now. And don't you speak about +this to anybody, not to Nan even. You understand."</p> + +<p>Dick nodded, still with his back turned, and got out of the room, and +Raven thought he must have caught at his hat in the hall, and made one +stride for the door. The door banged and Raven was alone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> + + +<p>The next day Nan telephoned Raven that she was taking train for New York +for perhaps a week's stay with the Seaburys. These were her nearest +relatives, cousins at a remove Raven never really untangled, and of late +they had been spending persuasive energy in trying to induce her to live +with them. Since she had come home from France and Aunt Anne had died, +they were always descending upon her for brief visits in the house where +she succeeded Aunt Anne, and liking her so tumultuously, in her grown-up +state, that they pelted her with arguments based on her presumable +loneliness there and the silliness of carrying on the establishment +really as a species of home for superannuated servants. Nan honestly +liked the cousins, in a casual way, though it was as inconceivable to +her that the Boston house might be given up as it would have been to +Aunt Anne. There was, she felt, again in Aunt Anne's way, a certain +continuity of things you didn't even think of breaking. Now she was +seeking the Seaburys for reasons of her own. They had to be suitably +told that Aunt Anne had left her money away from them as from her, and +naturally, though ridiculously, to "that Raven she was always making a +fool of herself about." They were ruthless of speech within family +conclave, though any one of them would have thought more than twice +about calling Aunt Anne any sort of fool, in her lifetime, even at a +distance safely beyond hearing. Raven was not, if Nan could forestall +the possibility, to be assaulted by mounting waves of family animosity.</p> + +<p>Raven was glad, for once, to get rid of her, to find she was removing +herself from the domestic turmoil he had created. There could not be the +triangular discussions inevitable if she and Dick fell upon him at once, +nor should he have to bear the warmth of her tumultous sympathy. Dick +had evidently told her nothing, and he even gathered that she was going +without notice to Dick. Then Raven began a systematic and rapid +onslaught on his immediate affairs, to put them in order. Mr. Whitney, +Anne's lawyer, who had always seemed to regard him in a disconcerting +way as belonging to Anne, or her belonging in some undefined fashion to +him, opened out expansively on the provisions of the will. He most +sincerely congratulated Raven. Of course it was to have been expected, +but——! Raven kept miserably to the proprieties of the moment. He +listened with all due reserve, silent on the subject of Anne's letter. +That was his affair, he thought, his and Nan's; unless, indeed, it was +nobody's affair but Anne Hamilton's, and he was blindly to constitute +himself the unreasoning agent of her trust. That must be thought out +later. If he undertook it now, piling it on the pack of unsubstantial +miseries he was carrying, he would be swamped utterly. He could only +drop it into a dark pocket of his mind where an ill-assorted medley of +dreads and fear lay waiting—for what? For a future less confusing than +this inscrutable present? At least, they could not be even glanced at +now. He wrote Charlotte and Jerry, his caretakers on the place at Wake +Hill, that he was coming for an indefinite stay. He instructed his +housekeeper in Boston that the house was to be kept open; possibly Mr. +Richard would be there a good deal. Then he sat down to write his +sister. That was the problem: what should he say to her who would +presently be receiving his unfortunate screed with some inflammatory +introduction from Dick and would—he knew her!—scarcely have finished +it before she took steps toward flooding him with epistolary advice and +comment. He could see her now at her desk, assembling data of conduct, +bodily well-being, and putting it all down in that masterful hand of +hers. That settled it. He mustn't write her. He must telegraph and +forestall Dick. And he did telegraph her, on the moment, a message of +noncommittal brevity:</p> + +<p>"Letter Dick sent you is all poppycock. Forget it."</p> + +<p>That might, he concluded, yet without hope, keep her from rushing her +pen to the rescue, even if it did not prevent her fuming. And as he sat +at the library table with a disorder of papers before him, Dick appeared +at the door: good boy, full of zeal and pity. He looked so overflowing +with honest affection, so eagerly ready to help that Raven exasperatedly +loved him for his kind officiousness. Yet he had nothing for him but a +gruff:</p> + +<p>"Now what do you think you're here for?"</p> + +<p>Dick was prepared for repulse, this or any other. He had armed himself +against all possible whims and obstinacies, and he wore the air of a +carefully adjusted patience.</p> + +<p>"Can't I help there?" he inquired, advancing to the table and drawing up +a chair. "Couldn't you let me run over those and just tell you what they +are?"</p> + +<p>"You go to thunder," said Raven, rapidly assorting, clapping into +bundles and casting aside. "Yes, you can, too. Take this basket and +empty it into the fireplace. Behind the log and smash it down so it +won't set the chimney afire. Remember how your grandmother used to keep +a scare going all the time for fear of chimneys? I guess I've inherited +it. I have to use the formula."</p> + +<p>Dick emptied the papers with a grave care foreign to him, as if even so +small a service, at such a moment, bore a weightier meaning, and brought +the basket back. He sat down and waited in a silence Raven felt more +portentously vocal than the loudest outcry.</p> + +<p>"Dick!" he said. He stopped work and looked at the youth, an unwilling +smile twisting his mouth. He was not sure of its being well to take it +humorously; yet it was funny. "Dick, if you've got anything to say, say +it. If you haven't, clear out. This is my busy day."</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head despairingly and yet obstinately. He wasn't going to +leave Uncle Jack to the powers of darkness.</p> + +<p>"Just tell me what you're winding things up for?" he ventured. "I ought +to know."</p> + +<p>"Then don't ask as if you were whispering into the ear of Buddha, or +trying not to wake baby," said Raven, tearing a package of letters with +a sudden savage haste. They were Anne's letters to him when he was in +France, and he had meant to keep them because she would have an ideal of +the sacredness they ought to bear, and exasperatingly the suggestion +seemed to include a power of imposing itself on him. And if Dick hadn't +come in to bait him with irrelevant questions, his perverse inner self +excused itself, he might not be defying the ideal and tearing the +letters up. As it was, he found them a salutary sacrifice.</p> + +<p>"If you mean my going to Wake Hill, yes, I'm going. I've written +Charlotte. Or rather I've addressed it to Jerry, she's so careful about +his prerogative as a male."</p> + +<p>"When?" asked Dick.</p> + +<p>"The minute I get some boots and things to go logging in. This house +will be open. You can come in and roost if you want to. If you marry +Nan"—this was an audacity that occurred to him at the moment. It +suddenly seemed to him a blessed comfort to think of Nan in his +house—"you can come here and live."</p> + +<p>Dick lost his sacrificial air and turned sulky.</p> + +<p>"I don't know about Nan," he said. "I never know about her, not since +we've come back. She was soft as—as silk over there."</p> + +<p>"The maternal," said Raven briefly, tearing one of Anne's letters, with +a crack, across the pages. "It was what you needed to keep you going. +Not personal, only because you were a sojer boy."</p> + +<p>The mortification of it all, the despite of not holding his own with her +now he was not serving a cause, was plainly evident in Dick's face. He +had had a bad night of it, after Nan's flouting and Uncle Jack's letter +on top of that.</p> + +<p>"She was beastly," he said, with no further elaboration.</p> + +<p>But Raven knew he was returning to his walk home with her and some +disconcerting circumstances of it. No doubt Nan had been ruthless. Her +mind had been on Aunt Anne and the Palace of Peace. Little boys in love +couldn't joggle her fighting arm and expect to escape irritated reproof.</p> + +<p>"Nan's got a good deal to think of just now," he said. "Besides, you may +not be man enough for her yet. Nan's very much of a woman. She'll expect +things."</p> + +<p>Dick sat glowering.</p> + +<p>"I'm as much of a man as I was in France," he said obstinately. "More. +I'm older." Then his sacrificial manner came back, and, remembering what +he was there for, he resumed, all humble sweetness, like the little Dick +who used to climb on Raven's knee and ask for a tell-story: "I'm going +down with you. I've made all my plans."</p> + +<p>Raven looked up at him in a new surprise.</p> + +<p>"The deuce you are," said he. "No, you're not, boy. If I catch you down +there I'll play the game as you've mapped it out for me. I'll grab +Jerry's axe or pitchfork and run amuck, blest if I don't. You'll wake up +and find yourself sending for the doctor."</p> + +<p>Glancing cheerfully up, he was instantly aware, from the boy's unhappy +face, that Dick believed him. Raven burst into a laugh, but he quickly +sobered. What a snare they were getting themselves into, and only by an +impish destiny of haphazard speech.</p> + +<p>"Don't look so shocked, Dickie," he said flippantly. "I'm no more dotty +than—Hamlet."</p> + +<p>There he stopped again to wonder whimsically at the ill fate of it all. +For Hamlet was mad; at least, Dick thought so. He couldn't have caught +at anything more injurious to his cause.</p> + +<p>"'They fool me to the top of my bent,'" he reflected ruefully.</p> + +<p>That was what Dick was ready to do. But sister Amelia wouldn't fool him, +if she got East with her emergency dressing bag and her perfectly +equipped energy. She would clap him into the Psychopathic before he had +time for even half as much blank verse as Hamlet had. They wouldn't +allow him a first act.</p> + +<p>"Don't look like that," he suggested again and kindly, because it was +evident that, however irritating Dick might be as a prospective +guardian, he was actually suffering an honest misery.</p> + +<p>"I don't," said Dick. "I mean, I don't mean to look different. But +somehow it's got me, this whole business has, and I can't get away from +it. I've thought of it every minute since you told me. It isn't so much +you I'm thinking about. It's him."</p> + +<p>Raven, as a writer of English, paused to make a mental note that, in +cases of extreme emotion, the nominative case, after the verb to be, is +practically no good. You simply have to scrap it.</p> + +<p>"Who?" he inquired, in the same line of natural language.</p> + +<p>"Old Crow."</p> + +<p>Dick uttered the name in a low and hesitating tone. He seemed to offer +it unwillingly. Raven stared at him in a perfect surprise, now uncolored +by any expectation he might have had of what was coming.</p> + +<p>"Old Crow?" he repeated. "What do you know about Old Crow?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Dick, defensively, "I know as much as you do. That is, I +suppose I do. I know as much as all Wake Hill does, anyway."</p> + +<p>"Who told you?"</p> + +<p>"Mother. I didn't suppose it was any secret."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven thoughtfully, "it's no secret. Only he was queer, he +was eccentric, and so I've always assumed he had a pretty bad time of +it. That's why I never've talked about him."</p> + +<p>"Mother did," said Dick, in a sudden expansion. It seemed to ease him up +a little, this leading Raven to the source of his own apprehension. +Indeed, he had felt, since Raven's letter, that they must approach the +matter of his tired wits with clearness, from the scientific standpoint. +The more mental facts and theories they recognized the better. "She told +me once you looked just like him, that old daguerreotype."</p> + +<p>"Had sister Amelia concluded from that," inquired Raven quietly, "that I +was bound to follow Old Crow, live in the woods and go missionarying +across the mountain?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Dick, so absorbed in his line of argument that he was +innocently unaware of any intended irony. "She just happened to speak of +it one day when we found the daguerreotype. Uncle Jack, just what do you +know about him?"</p> + +<p>Raven considered a moment. He was scanning his memory for old +impressions and also, in his mild surprise over the pertinency of +reviving them, wondering whether he had better pass them on. Or would +they knot another tangle in the snarl he and Dick seemed to be, almost +without their volition, making?</p> + +<p>"Old Crow," he began slowly, "was my great-uncle. His name was John +Raven. He was poor, like all the rest of us of that generation and the +next, and did the usual things to advance himself, the things in +successful men's biographies. He studied by the kitchen fire, not by +pine knots, I fancy—that probably was the formula of a time just +earlier. Anyhow he fitted himself for the college of the day, for some +reason never went, but did go into a lawyer's office instead, was said +to have trotted round after a gypsy sort of girl the other side of the +mountain, found she was no good, went up into the woods and built the +old hut I got into shape in the spring of 1914. Queer! I expected to go +up there to study and write. I'd got to the point, I s'pose, where I +thought if I had a different place to write in I could write better. +Sure sign of waning powers! Well, he lived there by himself, and folks +thought he was queer and began to call him Old Crow. I saw him several +times when I was a little chap, never alone. Father took me with him +when he went up to the hut to carry food. Mother never approved of my +going. She disapproved of it so much that father stopped taking me."</p> + +<p>"Well, you saw him," said Dick, in a way of holding him to his +narrative, so that Raven, wondering why it was of such importance, bent +a frowning look on him.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I saw him. And he was nice to me, uncommon nice. He put his hand +on my shoulder and looked down at me in a way—well, not the +patronizing, grown-up way, but as if, now I come to think of it, as if +he pitied me."</p> + +<p>"How did he look?"</p> + +<p>Dick was catching at things, Raven saw, the slightest clue to Old Crow's +withdrawn personality. He seemed, on his side, to be constructing a +portrait. Raven sought about in the closed chambers of his mind and +produced one significant bit of remembrance after another. They were +retrieved with difficulty out of the disorder of things regarded as of +no importance: but here they were.</p> + +<p>"He was tall, thin, rather hatchet-faced, something as I am. Oh, you +knew that, didn't you? No beard, and I think he was the neatest person I +ever saw. Father was clean shaven, you remember; but there were days +when he either got lazy or was too busy to shave. I remember how +exquisitely nice and peeled his face used to look on Sunday. But Old +Crow was shaved all the time, judging from the way he looked the few +times I saw him. I've heard father and mother speak of it, too. +Charlotte told me once she'd seen him and he was neat as a new pin."</p> + +<p>"How old was he when he went up there into the woods?"</p> + +<p>"To live alone? I don't know. Forty, maybe. Comparatively young, +anyway."</p> + +<p>"Was it the woman? Was there a cause for it, a cause people knew?"</p> + +<p>"There wasn't any cause I knew. He simply, so far as I ever heard, +passed the place over to father—that was his nephew, you know—and went +up the hill and built himself a log hut. It was well built. I only had +to calk it some more and put in another flooring when I came into it."</p> + +<p>As Raven went on, he became uncomfortably aware of the resemblance +between his own proposed withdrawal and Old Crow's; but he stuck to it +doggedly. It was all playing into Dick's hands and Amelia's, assuming he +could predicate her mind; but he was resolved they shouldn't have it all +their own way. He would give them every last straw of evidence, and it +should do them no good in the end. There was a bravado about it. If +Dick, in his affectionate virtue and Amelia in her energy of well-doing, +wanted to challenge him to the proof, he'd give them a pretty tussle for +it.</p> + +<p>"What I want to know is," said Dick, "what he thought he was going off +there for? Didn't anybody know?"</p> + +<p>"They may have," said Raven. "I didn't know."</p> + +<p>"And he lived his life out there, till he died?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. And died in a very gentlemanly fashion, of pneumonia, and was +found in a dignified position on his bed, hands folded, and everything +in a great state of order, as if he'd known he was going and arranged +things to give as little trouble as he could."</p> + +<p>"What did he do up there all by himself? Read? Write?"</p> + +<p>"He read a good deal, I believe. We found him reading when we went up."</p> + +<p>"What sort of books?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, hang it, Dick," said Raven, beginning to fidget under examination, +"you're district-attorneying it a trifle too much to interest me. I'm +getting bored, son. This isn't a third degree."</p> + +<p>But Dick was not to be curbed or reasoned with.</p> + +<p>"I think," he said, "if you don't mind, we'd better talk it out. You see +I do really need to know about him, and you're the only one that can +tell me. Mother's is chiefly hearsay."</p> + +<p>"Fire away," said Raven easily, accepting the situation. He leaned back +in his chair and began making patterns on the block of paper before him +with a silver dagger at his hand. "What is it you want to know?"</p> + +<p>"Everything. How the neighbors regarded him, what they said."</p> + +<p>"The neighbors didn't regard him at all, in your sense. Don't you know +the way country folks have of passing over the most eccentric things as +if they're all in the day's work? They gossip like thunder, and, if they +can whip up a scandal, they're made. But they never seem so awfully +shocked. Perhaps it's because they're used to the plain facts of life, +death, birth, madness, suicide. Maybe there's a sort of <i>gaucherie</i> +about it. There are things you're shocked about that you wouldn't dare +discuss at Cambridge or the Club. You'd be afraid it wasn't good form. +Maybe you would though, now. Sometimes I forget the world's moved on a +peg."</p> + +<p>"But what did they say?"</p> + +<p>"Can't tell you, Dick. I belong to the family, you know, and maybe they +had some decency about talking over Old Crow when I was round. I don't +think there was anything they could say. He was a perfectly clean, +decent citizen. He kept on voting. He didn't meddle with them and they +didn't with him. The only eccentricity about him was that he lived alone +and that, the last ten years or so of his life, he tramped all round +that region, over the mountain, too, taking care of the sick, if there +were any. The last five years he went round preaching, and the very last +year of all he took old Billy Jones into his hut, an awful old rip, if +ever there was one, and tended him till his death—Billy's death, I +mean. And if you consider that as indicating queerness—except that +people don't do it—I don't. I should call any conventional disapproval +of it an indictment rather, an indictment of Christianity. If it's too +eccentric to fit into a so-called Christian civilization, that is."</p> + +<p>Dick wasn't going to call it anything at the moment. He sat staring at +the table, evidently reflecting, digesting and bowed down by his own +gravity in a way that always amused Raven even when he loved the boy +most. He fancied, when Dick looked like that, he was brooding over his +nose.</p> + +<p>"Take it easy, son," he advised him pleasantly. "You won't get anywhere +with Old Crow. Guess again."</p> + +<p>"No," said Dick, oblivious of the flippancy of this, "we sha'n't get +anywhere. We haven't enough data."</p> + +<p>"Now," said Raven, coming up from his lounging posture, "I've got to +hustle. You run along and we'll go out somewhere to-night: dine, if you +want to, and drop in at a show. But, for heaven's sake, don't go to +digging up graveyards and expecting me to reconstruct your ancestors +from as few bones as we've got of Old Crow's. You bore me sometimes, +horribly, Dick. And that's the truth."</p> + +<p>Dick did go away, though with an inarticulate remonstrance on his +tongue. But Raven was good-natured and yet decided, and even went to the +door with him, propelling him by a firm yet affectionate hand on his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>They did dine out that night in a manner mildly bohemian, really +determined upon by Raven to show Dick he wasn't incapable yet of the +accepted forms of diversion, afflictingly dull though they might prove.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> + + +<p>In less than a week Raven, hurried beyond any design of his own by +Dick's anxious attentions, had actually gone. Once in the train on the +way into the uplands where Wake Hill lies, he reflected, with a smile, +that Dick had really helped him inconceivably in this matter of haste. +He might have loitered along, dallying with the wisdom of going, and +possibly ended by not going at all. But Dick's insistence on formulating +the situation, his neatness and energy in getting all the emotions of +the case into their proper pigeon holes, had so harassed and then bored +him that he had worked like a beaver, he told himself, to get off and +escape them altogether. And not a word from Amelia, either to his +telegram or Dick's letter. Things were looking up. It might be Amelia +had been elected to some new and absorbing organization for putting the +social edifice still more irretrievably into the disorder it seemed bent +for, in which case she might forget the inner wobblings of such an +inconspicuous nomad as a brother in metaphysical pangs. He became +recklessly optimistic, as the train climbed higher into the hills, and +luxuriated in it, conscious all the time that it was altitude that was +intoxicating him, not any real hope of hoodwinking Amelia. You couldn't +do that so easily.</p> + +<p>The first glimpse of a far-away mountain brought the surprising tears to +his eyes. It was an inconsiderable ridge with an outline of no +distinction, but it had the old charm, the power of clutching at his +heart and dragging it up from the glories and sorrows of the sea. Raven +always insisted that he loved the sea best, with its terrors and +multitudinous activities; but the mountains did pull him up somewhere +into a region he did not inhabit all the time. He had an idea that this +was simply a plane of physical exhilaration; but it didn't matter. It +was an easement of a sort, if only the difference of change. When he +stepped out of the train at Wake Hill he was in a tranquil frame of +mind, and the more the minute he saw Jerry Slate there in the pung, +enveloped in the buffalo coat he had worn through the winter months ever +since he attained his present height. Jerry was a typical man of Wake +Hill. He was ten years, at least, older than Raven and had lived here, +man and boy, all his life, and his wife, Charlotte, was the presiding +benevolence of the Raven home. Seeing his passenger, he lifted his +whip-stock in salute and stepped out of the pung to meet him. Jerry was +yellow and freckled and blue-eyed, with a face, Raven always thought, +like a baked apple. It had still a rosy bloom, but the puckers +overspread it, precisely like an apple's after fervent heat. They shook +hands, Jerry having extracted a gnarled member from his mitten.</p> + +<p>"You take a look an' see 'f your trunk's come," he recommended, +restoring his hand to its beautifully knit sheath. "You're better +acquainted with the looks on't than I be. There 'tis now. Anyways it's +the only one there."</p> + +<p>It was Raven's own, and he and Jerry lifted it into the back of the +pung, and were presently jogging temperately homeward. Jerry never had +horses with any go in them. In the old days, when Raven used to come to +the farm with his mother, he would write Jerry to see that he had a +horse.</p> + +<p>"Get me a horse," he would write, "a horse, a horse, with four feet and +a mane and tail. Not a wooden freak out of Noah's ark, whittled out with +a jack-knife, such as I had last year. Get me a horse."</p> + +<p>And he would arrive to find some aged specimen, raw-boned and +indifferent, waiting for him in the stable. And Jerry would slap the +creature's haunches with a fictitious jollity and prophesy, the while he +kept an anxious eye on Raven, "I guess he'll suit ye all right."</p> + +<p>He never did suit. He had to be swapped off or, as it happened once or +twice, given away, and yet Raven was obtuse to the real reason until +Charlotte enlightened him. She took him aside, one day in the autumn, +when he and his mother were going back to town.</p> + +<p>"I guess if you want any horses next spring," she said, with one eye on +the door where Jerry might appear, "you better fetch 'em along with +you."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said Raven, "of course I can. Only I had an idea Jerry liked +to do the buying for the place."</p> + +<p>"Not horses," said Charlotte firmly. "Jerry's a peculiar sort of man. +They know it an' they kinder take advantage of him. I dunno why."</p> + +<p>Then Raven realized that Charlotte herself was responsible for his faith +in Jerry's bargaining prowess. She had hypnotized him into considering +Jerry a great fellow at a trade as at everything else manly and +invincible. She was watching him now with a doubtful and anxious eye.</p> + +<p>"No," she repeated, "I dunno why."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven, "I don't know why either. But I'll look out for it." +At that instant he understood her way with Jerry and loved her for it. +She was tall and heavy-browed and dark, with warm, brown tints of eyes +and skin, and seven times the man Jerry was, but it was her passionate +intent to hold him supreme at home and market.</p> + +<p>Meantime they were jingling along, with a chill clashing of bells, and +Raven had heard all about the prospects of an open winter and the +difficulties of ice-cutting, and he gathered that Jerry and Charlotte +were extremely pleased to have him come.</p> + +<p>"Didn't know's we should ever set eyes on ye ag'in," said Jerry, with an +innocuous flick of his whiplash, hitting the dasher by intent. "That War +an' all."</p> + +<p>Raven thought he detected in his tone a general hostility to the War as +a disturber even of Wake Hill, and wondered if he should have to fight +it all over again with the imperfectly satisfied ideals of Jerry and +Charlotte. But Jerry laid that bogey to rest.</p> + +<p>"Not that I wouldn't ha' had ye go," he announced. "I'd ha' gone myself +if I hadn't been a leetle mite over age. I dunno but I could ha' been +some use as 'twas. I'm spry for my years. I never so much as thought +you'd git into it. Charlotte an' I were talkin' it over last night, an' +she says, 'He's forty-three, if he's a day.' How old be you?"</p> + +<p>"Forty-five," said Raven. "I wasn't in the trenches, you know. Ambulance +Corps."</p> + +<p>"Sho!" said Jerry. "Never come nigh the fightin' line, I s'pose."</p> + +<p>"Sometimes," said Raven, smiling a little to himself. "But the boys in +the trenches, you know, they're the ones that did the business. I +suppose the Hamilton house was closed all summer?"</p> + +<p>Jerry gave him a quick look and then took off a mitten to pass his hand +across his mouth. Raven knew what the look meant. It meant Anne +Hamilton: how had her death affected him? would he ask about her? and +the mild inquisitive neighborhood mind would go back to the old question +it had probably dropped and taken up intermittently for years: why, in +their curious intimacy, had he never married her?</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jerry, "all summer. Little Nan was over there, too, where +you were, I understood."</p> + +<p>"Yes, she was over there. She's home now."</p> + +<p>"You knew her aunt died?" said Jerry speciously. It was foolish, he knew +it was foolish, and yet he could not, in his craving for some +amplification of the fact, help saying it.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "I knew it."</p> + +<p>There the topic died. They were passing the last stretch of woods that +fringed the road before Raven's own house. Up on that slope at the +right, draped about by a dense woodland, occasional patches of pines +girdled by birch and maple, was the hut where Old Crow had lived. A +logging road came down from the ridge, and Raven saw with interest that +it had been broken out.</p> + +<p>"Chopping?" he asked, Jerry following his glance to the ascending road.</p> + +<p>Jerry grinned and clucked to the horse. He looked well satisfied with +himself.</p> + +<p>"No," he said. "But the minute you wrote you was comin', I yoked up the +oxen an' broke her out. Charlotte said you'd want to be goin' up there."</p> + +<p>Raven laughed. It was funny, too grimly funny. Even Charlotte and Jerry +were pushing him on up the rise to Old Crow's hut. Dick had begun it and +they were adding the impulse of their kindly forethought.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "I shall. I'll go up at once." ("And have it over!" his +mind cynically added.)</p> + +<p>They were descending the last slope and the mild-mannered horse caught +the idea of stables and put on a gait. Raven could see the house, +delightful to him in its hospitable amplitude and starkly fitting the +wintry landscape. There in the columned front porch running away at each +side into wide verandas, stood a woman, tall, of proportions that +looked, at this first glance, heroic. She wore a shawl about her +shoulders, but her head was bare.</p> + +<p>"There she is," said Jerry, with an evident pride in so splendid a fact. +"I tell her she never can wait a minute to let anybody turn round."</p> + +<p>It was true. Charlotte could not wait. She began to wave—no short, +staccato, pump-handle wave, but a sweep indicative of breadth, like the +horizon line. Raven, while they were jingling up to the house, took one +more look at it, recognizing, with a surprise that was almost poignant, +how much it meant to him. He might not be glad to get back to it—in his +present state of disaffection he could not believe there was a spot on +earth he should be glad to see—but it touched the chord of old memories +and his eyes were hot with the assault of it. A square house with many +additions, so that it rambled comfortably away, threaded over at +advantageous points by leafless lines of woodbine and bitter-sweet and +murmured over by a great grove of pines at the west: his roots of life +were here, he recognized, with a renewed pang of surprise. He was not +used to thinking about himself. Now that the changed bias of his mind +had bred new habits, he was thinking a great deal.</p> + +<p>They stopped at the porch and Charlotte came down to them, stepping +lightly yet with deliberation. Raven knew she probably moved slowly +because she was so heavy, but it gave the effect of majesty walking. She +was unchanged, he thought, as he grasped her firm hand: her smooth brown +hair was as thick, her healthy face unlined. When he touched Charlotte +he always felt as if he touched the earth itself. Her hand was the hand +of earth, ready to lead you to wholesome and satisfying things.</p> + +<p>"Well," said she, "if I ain't pleased to see you! Jerry, you goin' to +take the trunk in this way?"</p> + +<p>Jerry gave her a quick look of inquiry. They had subtle modes of +communication. Charlotte could command him by the flicker of an eyelash +or a modulation of tone, so that Jerry seemed, in the resultant act, to +be following only his own careless or deliberate will.</p> + +<p>"Yep," said he, "I'll see to her."</p> + +<p>Raven laid hold of it with him and they carried it upstairs to the great +front room looking out to the eastern sky. And Raven was again moved, as +he went, by another surprising discovery: Charlotte had tears in her +eyes. He had at all times a moderate estimate of his own value in the +world, his own appeal to it. Perhaps that was one reason, aside from the +natural sex revulsion, why Anne's exaggerated fostering had roused in +him that wearied perversity. But it was warming to see Charlotte glad +enough to cry over him. When they had set down the trunk and the two had +gone downstairs, he looked about the room and found it good. The walls +were chiefly paneling, all but some expanses of a rich rose and blue +paper; the hangings were of a delicious blue, and a roaring fire was +making great headway. He could guess Charlotte had timed that birch log, +relative to their approach, for the curling bark had not yet blackened +and the fat chuckle of it was still insistent. He laughed a little at +himself. He might have repudiated the scheme of creation and his own +place in it, but he did love things: dear, homespun, familiar things, +potent to eke out man's well-being with their own benevolence and make +him temporarily content in an inhospitable world.</p> + +<p>When he went downstairs, the smells from the kitchen were something +overwhelming in their rich pervasiveness. He went directly in where +Charlotte bent at the oven door for a frowning inspection and a +resultant basting.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, glancing up, "turkey. Terry set him aside, sort of—he +was so well formed and had such nice, pretty ways. Jerry said we'd have +him first time you come. He's always be'n a terrible nice turkey."</p> + +<p>Raven had seen his place laid in the dining-room with bravery of damask +and old china.</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to eat alone," he said. "I couldn't face a whole turkey. +You and Jerry come on in and back me up. You set on two more plates."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Charlotte, closing the oven door and rising. "I guess +I'll give him a minute longer. No. It's real nice of you, but we +couldn't. Jerry never would in the world."</p> + +<p>"Jerry be hanged!" said Raven. He wandered into the pantry and began +helping himself to the celery waiting by the cool window-pane. "Tell him +it's all decided. Jerry's got to do what we say."</p> + +<p>"If that ain't just like you," said Charlotte, with what seemed a pride +in his knowing ways. "Eatin' up the celery an' all, the minute 'fore +dinner, too. I wonder you don't pry into the cooky jar."</p> + +<p>"I will, now you mention it," said Raven, bending to it where it lurked, +with its secretive look, under the lower shelf. He lifted the cover with +an involuntary care. He had been there so often when he wanted a handful +of cookies and knew, if he clinked the cover, he might hear his father's +voice from the dining-room where he sat reading his paper: "What are you +doing out there?" The cookies were waiting for him, unchanged, as if +there were an everlasting pattern of cookies and you couldn't get away +from it: oak-leaf, discreetly specked with caraway. "Hurry up," said he, +coming out to Charlotte with his clutch of oak-leaves. "Put on your +plate and Jerry's or the turkey'll be done before you know it."</p> + +<p>Charlotte glanced round at him, absently took the cookies from his hand, +as if he were a child whose greed must be regulated, and laid them in a +plate on the table.</p> + +<p>"Don't you spoil your appetite," she said, still absently, for her mind +was with the turkey. "Well, I'll go an' ask Jerry. I don't believe he'll +feel to. Miss Anne——"</p> + +<p>Raven was sure he heard the last two words as she made her light way out +into the shed in a fictitious search for Jerry. He stood staring after +her and wondering. It was inconceivable that Anne, by sheer force of a +mind absolutely convinced of its own rightness, should have had such a +grip on everybody she came in contact with. It had been Anne's house +next door. She had spent her summers in it, and even Charlotte had +imbibed through its walls the pronouncements of a social code. Anne was +dead, but when Charlotte and Jerry were asked to sit down to turkey with +their employer and familiar friend, it was Anne's unforgotten ideal that +rose before her, the illuminated copy of the social code in its rigid +hand. As he stood, he saw Jerry pulling the pung under a shed at the +back of the barn. He knew Charlotte hadn't seen him, didn't intend to +take the time to see him, but would presently be back with Jerry's +ultimatum. That was her system. She implicitly followed Jerry's command, +a command she had already put into his mouth. It was so accepted a part +of the household routine that he had ceased to think of it as in the +least unusual. She was back again almost at once.</p> + +<p>"Jerry says he'd be happy to, to-day," she announced, "so long's as he +ain't changed back into his barn clo'es. We'll be kinder company. But +after this, he says, we'll begin as usual."</p> + +<p>So presently they sat down together to the crackly brown turkey and +Raven carved and fought off Charlotte, who rose from her place in a +majestic authority which seemed the highest decorum to take the fork and +pick out titbits for his plate, and they talked of countryside affairs, +but never, Raven was grateful to notice, of his absence or of France. +Once Jerry did begin a question relative to "them long range guns," but +Charlotte bore him down before Raven could lay hold of the question, +even if he had been eager for it.</p> + +<p>"Jerry's forbid me to ask you the leastest thing about how 'twas over +there," she said smoothly, without a look at Jerry, but a direct +intention that was like a swift secret communication between them, a +line not even to be tapped. "He says, 'We won't say one word about what +Mr. Raven's been through, not if he begins to talk about it himself. +He's been through enough,' says he. 'Now le's let him turn his mind to +suthin' else.'"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jerry boldly, "I guess that's pretty nigh what I said—what +I'd say now, anyways."</p> + +<p>Raven smiled a little inwardly, as he often did at "Mr. Raven." He and +Jerry and Charlotte had been neighbors, and he, being younger, was +always "young John" to them, and sometimes, in excess of friendliness or +exhortation, "Jack." He wondered if it had been the social idealism of +Anne that had made them attain the proper title, or if, when the crust +of renewed convention broke through, they would, under the stress of +common activities, flounder about as they did before he went away, in an +intermittent familiarity.</p> + +<p>"All the houses shut up," he said, "the summer houses?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Charlotte, eating her wing delicately, perhaps with a +thought of Anne. "City folks all gone. Went early this year, too. Wood's +so high now, if they ain't cut their own they don't seem to want to lay +in. Jerry says they'd ought to think further ahead."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jerry, with his mechanical acquiescence, "they'd ought to +think further ahead."</p> + +<p>"Who's bought the old Frye place?" asked Raven. "Or is it empty?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Charlotte, "it ain't empty. I dunno's you remember the +Tenneys that used to live over the mountain, what they call Mountain +Brook. Kind of a shif'less lot they were. Some of 'em drinked."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said Raven, "I remember 'em. The boys used to do a lot of +trapping. One of 'em—what was his name? Israel, yes, that's it. +Israel—he seemed to be of a different stripe. Used to work out. Seemed +to want to make something of himself."</p> + +<p>"That's him," said Charlotte. "Well, he's bought the Frye place."</p> + +<p>"Married?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he married a girl over there, at Mountain Brook. He'd been away +years an' years, sence he was a growin' boy, an' he come back, an' seems +he had money laid up, an' he bought the Frye farm an' went straight off +over to Mountain Brook an' hunted her up an' married her. She used to +have folks, but they've all moved away. Seems if he'd had her in mind +all the time. Kind o' that way, he is, lays his fires a good while +beforehand."</p> + +<p>"Nice girl?" Raven inquired.</p> + +<p>Charlotte hesitated. Her brown cheek flushed.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "I never've heard anything ag'inst her, not anything I +should be willin' to repeat. You know what they be, there over the +mountain. There's the Donnyhills. Good folks, but shif'less! my soul! +Though she ain't that."</p> + +<p>"Called on her, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Charlotte. She wore the flush of resentful matronhood. "I was +goin' to. I started, one afternoon. An' after I'd knocked, I heard him +jawin'. Well! You never heard a man talk so in all your life. I never +did, anyways! twittin' her with everything under the sun."</p> + +<p>"Nice for you," said Raven, "butting in on a row."</p> + +<p>"I didn't butt in," said Charlotte. "I turned round an' come straight +home. An' the next day they rode by, as budge as you please, she with +the baby in her lap. Baby had on a nice white coat. I didn't go ag'in. I +didn't feel to."</p> + +<p>Then Raven, seeing that Jerry had regretfully but inevitably laid down +his knife and fork, as one who can no more, relinquished the Tenneys, +and there was a period of that silence so blessed among intimates, and +Charlotte brought in the pudding. And after dinner, while she washed the +dishes, Raven sat in the kitchen and smoked a pipe with Jerry and +thought intermittently, in the inmost cell of his most secret mind, +about the blessed beauties of things. Here they were all about him, +inherited treasures of memory, some of them homely and of little value, +many of them far less convenient than the appliances of the present day. +He even thought he recognized ancient utensils, as Charlotte washed +them, the great iron spider where crullers were fried—always with a few +cut in hands with straight fat fingers, to suit a boyish fancy—and the +colander he had once been found utilizing as a helmet in a play of +chivalry. Such smells came out of this kitchen, like no other smells in +any house he knew. The outlines of things, the tints of time and use! +There was the red door into the buttery, where once, when he was a +little boy, he had caught for a few minutes only an enchanting glow from +the setting sun. Sunrise and rubies and roses: none of them had ever +equaled the western light on the old red paint. Over and over again he +had tried to recall the magic, to set the door at the precise angle to +catch the level rays, but in vain. It was a moment of beauty, fleeting +as the sunset itself, and only to be found in the one permanence that is +memory. He remembered it now with a thousand other impressions as +lasting and as lost, and childhood and youth came alive in him and hurt +and helped him. Yes, this was home. In a hostile universe there was one +spot where he and the past could safely rest.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> + + +<p>Raven went to sleep thinking simply about the house, while the fire +flickered down on the hearth and shadows all about the room flickered +with it and then went out. He always loved shadows, their beauties and +grotesqueries, and he was unfeignedly glad he had no scientific +understanding of them, why they played this way or that and translated +the substance that made them so delicately and sometimes with such an +adorable foolishness. He liked it better that way, liked to make out of +them a game of surprises and pretend they were in good form and doing +particularly well, or again far below their highest. And following his +childishly enchanting game he began to feel rather abashed over what had +brought him here. He was glad to have come. It was the only place for +him, disordered as he was, with its wholesome calm, and he wondered +further if the state of mind that had become habitual to him was now a +state of mind at all. Was it not rather a temporary drop in mental +temperature now calming to normal? Hadn't he exaggerated the +complication of Anne's bequest? There was a way out of it; there must +be, a sane, practical way to satisfy what she wished and what she might +be supposed to wish now. He comforted himself with the pious sophistry +of an Anne raised on the wind of death above early inconclusions and so, +of course, agreeing with him who didn't have to pass the gates of +mystery to be so raised. He knew enough, evidently, so that he didn't +need to die to know more. His letter to Dick seemed of inconsiderable +importance, even the disaster of its reaching Amelia. If she held him up +to it, he could laugh it off. Anything could be laughed off. So, the +shadows mingling with the inconsequence of his thoughts, he drifted away +to sleep, catching himself back, now and then, to luxuriate in the +assurance that he was in the right place, finding comfortable +assuagements, and that inexplicably, because so suddenly, everything was +for the best in a mysterious but probably entirely unaccountable world.</p> + +<p>At four o'clock he woke. He had not for a moment last night expected +this. Four o'clock had been for months the hour of his tryst with the +powers of darkness. They hovered over him then with dull grey wings +extended, from sunrise to sunset, from east to west. He never had the +courage to peer up at them and see how far the wings really did reach. +They covered his mortal sky, and when he refused to stare up into their +leaden pinions, they stooped to him and buffeted and smothered him, +until he was such a mass of bruised suffering within that he could +almost believe his body also was quivering into the numbness of +acquiescent misery. And here were the wings again. They were even lower, +in spite of this clear air. They did not merely shut it out from his +nostrils, but the filthy pinions swept his face and roused in him the +uttermost revulsion of mortal man against the accident of his mortality. +The trouble of earth passed before him in its unceasing panorama, a +pageant of pain and death. Every atom of creation was against every +other atom, because everywhere was warfare, murder and rapine, for the +mere chance of living. He had won his inherited chance by sheer luck of +contest through millions of years while his forebears came up from the +slime and the cave. The little hunted creature, shrieking out there in +the wood in the clutch of a predatory enemy was not so lucky. It was the +enemy who was lucky to-night, but to-morrow night the enemy himself +might go down under longer claws and be torn by fangs stronger than his +own. And God had made it so. And God did not care.</p> + +<p>Raven lay there panting under the horror of it. The sweat started on his +skin. He was afraid. It was not his own well-being he feared for. Man's +life was short at the most. A few years might finish him up. It was +unlikely that he need live again. But he feared seeing still more of the +acts of this unmindful God, who could make, and set the wheel of being +to turning and then stand aside and let them grind out their +immeasurable grist of woe. And when he asked himself how he knew God was +standing aside, letting the days and years fulfil their sum, he believed +it was because he had suddenly become aware that time was a boundless +sea and that the human soul was sometimes in the trough of it and +sometimes on the crest. But never would the sea cast its derelicts upon +warm shores where they might build the house of life and live in peace +and innocence. Ever would they find themselves tossed from low to high +and fall from high to low again in the salt wash of the retreating wave. +For after all, it was the mysterious sea God had a mind to, never the +derelict atoms afloat on it. They would have to take sea weather to +time's extremest verge, as they always had taken it. They were +derelicts.</p> + +<p>As the light came, the leaden wings lifted and he went down to the early +breakfast Charlotte and Jerry intended to eat alone. Charlotte, with her +good morning, gave him a quick glance. He found she had not expected him +so early and knew she saw at once how harassed he was. He insisted on +sitting down to breakfast with them and, after Jerry had gone out, went +over the house in a mindless way, into all the rooms, to give himself +something to do. Also there seemed to be a propriety in it, a +fittingness in presenting himself to his own walls and accepting their +silent recognition. Then, hearing Charlotte upstairs, he went back into +the kitchen, as straight as if he had meant to go there all the time and +had merely idled on these delaying quests, and up to the nail by the +shed door where the key always hung, the key to Old Crow's hut. He took +it off the nail, dropped it in his pocket, got a leather jacket from the +hall and went out into the road. As he went, he heard Jerry moving about +in the barn and walked the faster, not to be halted or offered friendly +company. At the great maples he paused, two of them marking the entrance +to the wood road, and looked about him. The world was resolutely still. +The snow was not deep, but none of it had melted. It was of a uniform +whiteness and luster and the shadows in it were deeply blue. There were +tracks frozen into it all along the road, many of them old ones, others +just broken, the story of some animal's wandering. Then he turned into +the wood road and began to climb the rise, and as he went he was +conscious of an unaccountable excitement. Dick was responsible for that, +he told himself. Dick had waked his mind to old memories. This was, in +effect, and all owing to Dick, a tryst with Old Crow.</p> + +<p>He remembered every step of the way, what he might find if he could +sweep off the snow or wait until June and let the mounting sun sweep it +according to its own method. Here at the right would be the great patch +of clintonia. Further in at the left was tiarella, with its darling +leaf, and along under the yellow birches the lady's slipper he had +transplanted, year after year, and that finally took root and showed a +fine sturdiness he had never seen exceeded elsewhere. He went on musing +over the permanence of things and the mutability of mortal joy, +wondering if, in this world He had made without remedies for its native +ills, God could take pleasure in the bleak framework of it. And when he +had nearly reached the top of the slope, the three firs, where a turn to +the left would bring him to the log cabin door, suddenly he stopped as +if his inner self heard the command to halt. He looked about him, and +his heart began to beat hard. But he was not surprised. What could be +more moving than the winter stillness of the woods in a spot all +memories? Yet he was in no welcoming mood for high emotion, and looking +up and about, to shake off the wood magic, there at a little distance at +his right, between pine boles, he saw her, the woman. She was tall and +slender, yet grandly formed. A blue cloak was wrapped about her and her +head was bare. Her face had a gaunt beauty such as he had never seen. +The eyes, richly blue but darkened by the startled pupil, were +bewildering in their soft yet steady appealingness. Her hair was parted +and carried back in waves extraordinarily thick and probably knotted +behind. That, of course, he could not see. But the little soft rings of +it about her forehead he noted absently. And her look was so full of +dramatic tension, of patient, noble gravity, even grief, that one phrase +flashed into his mind, "The Mother of Sorrows!" and stayed there. So +moving was her face that, although he had at the first instant taken in +her entire outline, the significance of it had not struck him until now. +On her arm, in the immemorial mother's fashion, she carried a child. The +child was in white and a blue scarf was tied about his head. When Raven +saw the scarf, his tension relaxed. There was something about the scarf +that was real, was earthly: a ragged break in one free corner. In the +relief of seeing the break, and being thus brought back to tangible +things, he realized that he had, in a perfect seriousness, for one +amazing minute, believed the woman and the child to be not human but +divine. They were, as they struck upon his eyes, a vision, and he would +have been in no sense surprised to see the vision fade. It was the +Virgin Mary and her Son. Now, as he realized with the lightning rapidity +of a morbidly excited mind how terribly sensitive to his own needs he +must be to have clutched so irrationally at a world-old remedy, he took +off his hat and called to her:</p> + +<p>"You startled me."</p> + +<p>Without waiting for any response, he turned to the left, because the +probabilities were that he had startled her also, and that was why she +had stood there, petrified into the catalepsy of wood animals struck by +cautionary fear. But, as he turned, a man's voice sounded through the +woods, and waked an echo:</p> + +<p>"Hullo!" it called. "Hullo!"</p> + +<p>Raven involuntarily paused, and saw the woman running toward him. There +were stumps in her way, but she stepped over them lightly, and once, +when she had to cross a hollow where the snow lay deep, she sank in up +to her knees, and Raven involuntarily stepped forward to help her. But +she freed herself with incredible quickness and came on. It might have +been water she was wading in, so little did it check her. She halted +before him, only a pace away, as if she must be near in order to speak +cautiously, and Raven noted the exquisite texture of her pale skin and +the pathos of her eyes, the pupils distended now so that he wondered if +they could be blue. Meantime the voice kept on calling, "Hullo! hullo!"</p> + +<p>She spoke tremulously, in haste:</p> + +<p>"He'll be up here in a minute. You say you ain't seen me."</p> + +<p>"Is it some one you're afraid of?" Raven asked.</p> + +<p>She nodded, in a dumb anguish.</p> + +<p>"Then," said he, "we'll both stay here till he comes, and afterward I'll +go with you, wherever you're going."</p> + +<p>This, it seemed, moved her to a terror more acute.</p> + +<p>"No! no!" she said, and she appeared to have so little breath to say it +that, if he had not been watching her lips, he could not have caught it. +"Not you. That would make him madder'n ever. You go away. Hide you +somewheres, quick."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven, "I sha'n't hide. I'll hide you. Come along."</p> + +<p>He took her by the arm and, though she was remonstrating breathlessly, +hurried her to the left. They passed the three firs at the turn and he +smiled a little, noting Jerry's good road and thinking there was some +use in this combined insistence on his following the steps of Old Crow. +There was the hut, in its rough kindliness, and there, the smoke told +him, was a fire. Jerry had been up that morning, because Charlotte must +have known he'd come there the first thing. Still smoothing the road to +Old Crow! He had been fumbling with one hand for the key, the while he +kept the other on her arm. She was so terrified a creature now that he +did not trust her not to break blindly away and run. He unlocked the +door, pushed her in, closed and locked it. Then he dropped the key in +his pocket and went back to the wood road. With a sudden thought, he +took his knife from his pocket and tossed it down the road into a little +heap of brush. Meanwhile the man was coming nearer and, as he came, he +called: "Hullo!"</p> + +<p>Raven, waiting for him, speculated on the tone. What did it mean? It was +a breathless tone, though not in any manner like the woman's. It was as +if he had run and stumbled and caught himself up, and all the time been +strangled from within by rage or some like madness. The woman's +breathlessness had simply meant life's going out of her with sheer +fright. Now the man was coming up the slope, bent at the shoulders, as +if he carried a heavy load or as if almost doubling himself helped him +to go the faster. He was a thin man with long arms and he carried an +axe. Raven called to him:</p> + +<p>"Hullo, there! Take a look as you come along and see if you can find my +knife."</p> + +<p>The man stopped short, straightened, and looked at him. Meantime Raven, +bending in his search, went toward him, scrutinizing the road from side +to side. He had a good idea of the fellow in the one glance he gave him: +a pale, thin face, black eyes with a strange spark in them, a burning +glance like the inventor's or the fanatic's, and black hair. It was an +ascetic face, and yet there was passion of an unnamed sort ready to +flash out and do strange things, overthrow the fabric of an ordered life +perhaps, or contradict the restraint of years. He stood motionless until +Raven, still searching, had got within three feet of him. Then he spoke:</p> + +<p>"Who be you?"</p> + +<p>He had a low voice, agreeable, even musical. Raven concluded he must +have been strangely moved to break into that mad "Hullo." It had been +more, he thought, that wild repetition with the echo throwing it back, +like the Gabriel hounds. But Raven took no notice of the question. He +spoke with a calculated peevishness.</p> + +<p>"I'm willing to bet my knife is within three feet, and see how the +confounded thing's hidden itself. It was right along here. Let me take +your axe and I'll blaze a tree."</p> + +<p>The man, without a word, passed him the axe and Raven notched a sapling. +Then, still holding the axe, he turned to the man with a smile. No one +had ever told him what a charming smile it was. Anne used to wonder, in +her dignified anguishes of love forbidden, if she could ever make him +understand how he looked when he smiled.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Raven, "who may you be?"</p> + +<p>"My name's Tenney," said the man, in the low, vibrant voice.</p> + +<p>"Oho!" said Raven, remembering Charlotte's confidences. Then, as Tenney +frowned slightly and glanced at him in a questioning suspicion, he +continued, "Then we're neighbors. My name's Raven."</p> + +<p>The man nodded.</p> + +<p>"They said you were comin'," he remarked.</p> + +<p>He held out his hand for the axe. Raven, loath to give it to him, yet +saw no excuse for withholding it. After all, she was safely locked in. +So he tossed the axe and Tenney caught it lightly, and was turning away. +But he stopped, considered a moment, looking down at the ground, and +then, evidently concluding the question had to be put, broke out, and, +Raven thought, shamefacedly:</p> + +<p>"You seen anything of her up here?"</p> + +<p>"Her?" Raven repeated, though he knew the country shyness over family +terms.</p> + +<p>"Yes. My woman."</p> + +<p>"Your wife?" insisted Raven. "I don't believe I know her. No, I'm sure I +don't. I've been away several years. On the road, you mean? No—not a +soul."</p> + +<p>A swift rage passed over Tenney's face. It licked it like a flash of +evil light and Raven thought he saw how dangerous he could be.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "I don't mean on the road. I mean in the woods."</p> + +<p>"Up here?" persisted Raven. "No, certainly not. This is no place for a +woman. A woman would have to be off her head to come traipsing up here +in the snow. Is that what you were yelling about? I thought you were a +catamount, at least."</p> + +<p>He laughed. He had an idea, suddenly conceived, that the man, having a +keen sense of personal dignity, was subject to ridicule, and that a +laugh would be salutary for him. And he was right. Tenney straightened, +put his axe over his shoulder, and walked away down the hill.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2> + + +<p>Raven stood looking after him a minute and then began an ostentatious +search for his knife, went to the little pile of brush and saw it—the +steel tip of the handle shining there—and pulled the brush aside to get +it. As he was rising with it in his hand, he saw Tenney turn and look +back at him. He held up the knife and called:</p> + +<p>"I've got it."</p> + +<p>Tenney, not answering even by a sign, went on over the rise and +disappeared below. Then Raven, after lingering a little to make sure he +did not reappear, turned up the slope and into the path at the left and +so came again to the hut. He unlocked the door and went in. She was +sitting by the fire and the child was on the floor, staring rather +vacuously at his little fingers, as if they interested him, but not +much. The woman was looking at the child, but only in a mechanical sort +of way, as if it were her job to look and she did it without intention +even when the child was safe. But she was also watching the door, +waiting for him; it was in an agony of expectation, and her eyes +questioned him the instant he stepped in.</p> + +<p>"Warm enough?" he inquired, as incidentally, he hoped, as if it were not +unusual to find her here. "Let me throw on a log."</p> + +<p>He did throw on two and the fire answered. The solemn child, who proved, +at closer view, to have an unusual beauty of pink cheeks, blue eyes, and +reddish hair, did not intermit his serious gaze at his fingers. When +Raven had put on the logs and dusted himself off, he found himself at a +loss. How should he begin? Was Tenney, with his catamount yells and his +axe, to be ignored altogether, or should he reassure her by telling her +the man had gone? But she herself began.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she said, in the eloquent low voice that seemed to make the +smallest word significant, "you think it's funny."</p> + +<p>Raven knew what sense the word was meant to convey.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "not in the least. It's pretty bad for you, though," he +added gravely, on second thought that he might.</p> + +<p>She made a little gesture with her hand. It was a beautifully formed +hand, but reddened with work. The gesture was as if she threw something +away.</p> + +<p>"He won't hurt me," she said.</p> + +<p>"No," Raven returned, "I should hope not."</p> + +<p>He drew up a chair to the hearth and was about to take it when she spoke +again. The blood ran into her cheeks, as she did it, and she put her +request with difficulty. It seemed to Raven that she was suddenly +engulfed in shame.</p> + +<p>"Should you just as soon," she asked, "take the key inside an' lock the +door?"</p> + +<p>She put it humbly, and Raven rose at once.</p> + +<p>"Of course," he said. "Good idea."</p> + +<p>He locked the door and came back to his chair and she began, never +omitting to share her attention with the child:</p> + +<p>"I know who you be. It's too bad this has come upon you. I'll have to +ask you not to let it go any further."</p> + +<p>Raven was about to assure her that nothing had come upon him, and then +he bethought himself that a great deal had. She had looked to him like +the Mother of Sorrows and, though the shock of that vision was over, she +seemed to him now scarcely less touching in her beautiful maternity and +her undefended state. So he only glanced at her and said gravely:</p> + +<p>"Nobody will know anything about it from me. After all"—he was bound to +reassure her if he could—"I've nothing to tell."</p> + +<p>Her face flashed into an intensity of revolt against any subterfuge, the +matter was so terrible.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, you have," said she. "Isr'el Tenney chased his woman up into +the woods with an axe. An' you heard him yellin' after her. That's God's +truth."</p> + +<p>Raven felt rising in him the rage of the natural man, a passion of +protection for the woman who is invincibly beautiful yet physically +weak.</p> + +<p>"An'," she went on, "you might ha' seen him out there, axe an' all."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Raven, as if it were of no great account, "I did see him."</p> + +<p>"O my soul!" she breathed. "You see him? I'm glad you come in. He might +ha' asked you if you'd seen me."</p> + +<p>"He did."</p> + +<p>This was a new terror and she was undone.</p> + +<p>"How'd you do it?" she asked breathlessly. "You must ha' put it better'n +I could or he'd be here now."</p> + +<p>"I didn't 'put it,'" said Raven, easily. "I lied, and he went off down +the hill."</p> + +<p>Extravagant as it seemed, he did get an impression, like a flash, that +she was disappointed in him because he had lied. But this was no time +for casuistry. There were steps to be taken.</p> + +<p>"You won't go back to him," he said, and said it definitively as if it +were a matter he had thought out, said it like a command.</p> + +<p>She stared at him.</p> + +<p>"Not go back to him?" she repeated. "Why, I've got to go back to him. +I've got to go home. Where do you expect I'm goin', if I don't go home?"</p> + +<p>"Haven't you any people?" Raven asked her. "Can't you go to them?"</p> + +<p>She laughed a little, softly, showing fine white teeth. The spell of her +beauty was moving to him. He might never, he thought, have noticed her +at all in other circumstances, if he had not seen her there in the woods +and felt her need knock at his heart with the imperative summons of the +outraged maternal. Was this the feeling rising in him that had made his +mother's servitude to his father so sickening in those years gone by? +Was the old string still throbbing? Did it need but a woman's hand to +play upon it? And yet must he not have noted her, wherever they had met? +Would not any man?</p> + +<p>"I've got four brothers," she said. "They'd laugh at me. They'd tell me +I'd married well an' got a better home than any of them could scrape +together if they begun at the beginnin' an' lived their lives over. +There's nothin' in Isr'el Tenney to be afraid of, they'd tell me. And +there ain't—for them."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven quietly. He felt an intense desire to feel his way, +make no mistakes, run no risk of shutting off her confidence. "It's a +different thing for you."</p> + +<p>Now she turned her face more fully upon him, in a challenging surprise.</p> + +<p>"Why," she said, "I ain't afraid—except for him."</p> + +<p>By the smallest motion of her hand she indicated the child, who was now, +in sudden sleepiness, toppling back against the wall.</p> + +<p>"Put him up here," said Raven, indicating the couch.</p> + +<p>He opened the folded rug and held it until she had disposed the little +lax figure among the pillows. Then she took the rug from him and covered +the child, with quick, capable movements of her beautiful worn hands. +Raven, watching her, felt a clutch at his throat. Surely there was +nothing in the known world of plastic action so wonderful as these +movements of mothers' hands in their work of easing a child. With a last +quick touch on the rug, drawing it slightly away from the baby cheek, +she returned to her chair, and Raven again took his. He was afraid lest +she repent her open-mindedness toward him and talk no more. But she was +looking at him earnestly. It was evidently a part of her precautionary +foresight that he should know. Did she think he could help her? His +blood quickened at the thought. It seemed enough to have lived for, in +so brutal a world. She veered for a moment from her terror to the +necessity for justifying herself.</p> + +<p>"You needn't think," she said, almost aggressively, "I'd talk to +everybody like this."</p> + +<p>He was holding himself down to a moderation he knew she wanted, and +replied:</p> + +<p>"No, of course not. But you can talk to me."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "I can." She dismissed that, having said it, as if she +saw no need of finding the underlying reasons they were both going by. +"You see," she said, "it's the baby. When he gits one o' them spells, +it's the baby he pitches on."</p> + +<p>Raven picked out from her confusion of pronouns the fact that Tenney, in +his spells, incredibly threatened the baby.</p> + +<p>"Don't you think," he said, "you make too much of it—I mean, as to the +baby. He wouldn't hurt his own child."</p> + +<p>Again the blood ran into her cheeks, and she looked a suffering so acute +that Raven got up and walked through the room to the window. It seemed +an indecency to scan the anguished page of her face.</p> + +<p>"That's it," she said, in a strangled voice. "When he has his spells he +don't believe the baby's his."</p> + +<p>"God!" muttered Raven. He turned and came back to her. "You don't mean +to live with him," he said. "You can't. You mustn't. The man's a brute."</p> + +<p>She was looking up at him proudly.</p> + +<p>"But," she said, "baby is his own child."</p> + +<p>"Good God! of course it is," broke out Raven, in a fever of impatience. +"Of course it's his child. You don't need to tell me that."</p> + +<p>Then, incredibly, she smiled and two dimples appeared at the corners of +her mouth and altered her face from a mask of tragic suffering to the +sweetest playfulness.</p> + +<p>"You mustn't say 'it,'" she reproved him. "You must say 'he.' Anybody'd +know you ain't a family man."</p> + +<p>Raven stood looking at her a moment, his own smile coming. Then he sat +down in his chair. He wanted to tell her how game she was, and there +seemed no way to manage it. But now he could ask her questions. Her +friendliness, her amazing confidence, had opened the door.</p> + +<p>"Exactly what do you mean?" he asked, yet cautiously, for even after her +own avowals he might frighten her off the bough. "Does he drink?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him reprovingly.</p> + +<p>"No, indeed," she said. "He's a very religious man."</p> + +<p>"The devil he is!" Raven found himself muttering, remembering the +catamount yells and the axe. "Then what," he continued, with as complete +an air as he could manage of taking it as all in the day's work, "what +do you mean by his spells?"</p> + +<p>She was silent a moment. Her mind seemed to be going back.</p> + +<p>"He gits—mad," she said slowly. "Crazy, kind of. It's when he looks at +baby and baby looks different to him."</p> + +<p>"Different? How different?"</p> + +<p>"Why," she said, in a burst of pride turning for an instant to the +little figure on the couch, "baby's got awful cunnin' little ways. An' +he's got a little way o' lookin' up sideways, kind o' droll, an' when he +does that an' Mr. Tenney sees it"—here Raven glanced at her quickly, +wondering what accounted for her being so scrupulous with her "Mr. +Tenney"—"he can't help noticin' it an' he can't help thinkin' how baby +ain't colored like either of us—we're both dark——"</p> + +<p>There she stopped, at last in irreparable confusion, and Raven was +relieved. How could he let her, he had been thinking, go on with the +sordid revelation? When he spoke, it was more to himself than to her, +but conclusively:</p> + +<p>"The man's a beast."</p> + +<p>"No, he ain't," said she indignantly. "Baby's light complected. You see +he is. An' I'm dark an' so's Mr. Tenney. An' I told him—I told him +about me before we were married, an' he thought he could stand it then. +But we went over to the county fair an' he see—<i>him</i>. He come up an' +spoke to him, that man did, spoke to us both, an' Mr. Tenney looked at +him as if he never meant to forgit him, an' he ain't forgot him, not a +minute since. He's light complected, blue eyes an' all. An' he stood +there, that man did, talkin' to us, kinder laughin' an' bein' funny, an' +all to scare me out o' my life for fear o' what he'd say. He didn't say +a word he hadn't ought to, an' when he'd had his joke he walked off. But +he had just that way o' lookin' up kinder droll, an' baby's got it. Mr. +Raven, for God's sake tell me why my baby's got to look like that man?"</p> + +<p>She was shaking him into a passion as unendurable as her own. He had +never felt such pity for any human being, not even the men blinded and +broken in the War. And he understood her now. Even through his belief in +her, that sudden belief born of her beauty and her extremity, he had +been amazed at her accepting him so absolutely. Now he saw. He was her +last hope and perhaps because he was different from the neighbors to +whom she could not speak, she was throwing herself into the arms of his +compassion. And she had to hurry lest she might not see him again. He +sat there, his hands clenched between his knees, his head bent. He must +not look at her.</p> + +<p>"Poor chap!" he said finally, his altered thoughts now on Tenney. "He's +jealous."</p> + +<p>She broke into a sob that seemed to rend her and then pulled herself up +and sat silent. But he could see, from her shadowy outline through his +oblique vision, that she was shaking horribly.</p> + +<p>"Can't you," he said, "make him understand, make him see how—how +tremendously you love him?"</p> + +<p>That was pretty mawkish, he thought, as he said it, but he meant it, he +meant volumes more. Flood the man with kindness, open the doors of her +beauty and let him see how really incorruptible she was, how loyal, how +wronged. For, with every minute of her company, he was the more +convinced of her inviolate self. Whatever the self had been through, now +it was motherhood incarnate. What was she saying to this last?</p> + +<p>"Be nice to him?" she asked, "that kind o' way?" And he saw, as she did, +that he had meant her to drown the man's jealous passion in passion of +her own. "He thinks," she said bitterly, "that's the kind o' woman I +am."</p> + +<p>Then he looked with her upon the barricaded road of her endeavor.</p> + +<p>"I can't even," she said, "have the house pretty when he comes home an' +be dressed up so's he'll have a pleasant evenin' but he thinks—that's +the kind o' woman I am." The last she said as if she had said it many +times before and it held the concentrated bitterness of her hateful +life. "An'," she added, turning upon him and speaking fiercely, as if he +had been the one to accuse her, "it's true. It is the kind o' woman I +am. An' I don't want to be. I want to set down with my sewin' an' watch +the baby playin' round. What is it about me? What makes 'em foller me +an' offer me things an' try, one way or another, to bring me down? What +is it?"</p> + +<p>She was panting with the passion of what seemed an accusation of him +with all mankind. He added one more to his list of indictments against +nature as God had made it. Here she was, a lure, innocent, he could have +sworn, backed up against the defenses of her ignorance, and the whole +machinery of nature was moving upon her, seeking, with its multitudinous +hands, to pull her in and utilize her for its own ends.</p> + +<p>"Never mind," he said harshly. "Don't try to understand things. You +can't. We can't any of us. Only I'll tell you how you looked to me, that +first minute. You looked like the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ."</p> + +<p>She shrank a little. He had touched, he saw, innocent prejudices.</p> + +<p>"Are you a Roman Catholic?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "not that nor anything. But you see how good you looked +to me. It doesn't hurt any of us to be Catholic, if we're good."</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean anything," she said humbly. "Only there ain't many round +here."</p> + +<p>"You say your husband is religious. Does he go to church?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she answered soberly, and also with a kind of wonder at a man's +accomplishing so dull an observance. "We go twice every Sunday, an' +Sunday school an' evenin' meetin' besides."</p> + +<p>"Do you like it?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said, looking rueful, as if trusting he might forgive her. "I +git sleepy."</p> + +<p>At this Raven laughed and she glanced at him mildly, as if wandering +what he had found to please him. He had been thinking.</p> + +<p>"Now," he said, "we must plan what you're going to do. You won't let me +send you and the baby away to stay awhile?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Then what are we going to do? Can't you let me go to him and tell him, +man to man, what an infernal fool he is?"</p> + +<p>A wild alarm flew into her face.</p> + +<p>"No! no!" she said.</p> + +<p>"What is going to happen? You can't go home."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I can," said she. "I always do. It works off. Maybe it's +worked off now. He gits all wore out actin' the way he does, an' then +he's terrible scared for fear I've made way with myself, an' he's all +bowed down."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Raven. "And you've got him where you want him. And you settle +down and wait for another spell. How long do you generally stay away?"</p> + +<p>"Long's I can," she answered simply. "Till I'm afraid baby'll git cold. +I keep his little things where I can ketch 'em up an' run. But sometimes +he 'most gits a chill."</p> + +<p>The yearning of anxiety in her voice was intense enough, he thought, to +balance the grief of all the mothers bereft by Herod.</p> + +<p>"I don't see," he said, "how you get up here anyway. You must come by +the road? Why doesn't he follow you?"</p> + +<p>The slow red surged into her face. She was hesitating. There was +evidently worse to come.</p> + +<p>"He gits so mad," she said, with frequent pauses between the words, "he +don't stay in the house after he's had a spell. I guess he don't dare +to. He's afraid of what he'll do. He goes out an' smashes away at the +woodpile or suthin.' An' it's then I ketch up the baby an' run. I go out +the side door an' up the road a piece an' into the back road. Then I +come down the loggin' road the back way an' end up here. It's God's +mercy," she said passionately, "they've broke out that loggin' road or +there wouldn't be any path an' he'd see my tracks in the snow."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Raven, "if he has sense enough to go and work it off on the +woodpile, perhaps you aren't in any real danger, after all."</p> + +<p>She looked at him piteously. Her eyes narrowed with a frowning return to +a scene of terror past and persistently avoided in retrospect.</p> + +<p>"'Most always," she said, in a low tone, "it comes on him ag'in, an' +then, 'fore you know it, he's back in the house. Once he brought the axe +with him. Baby was in the cradle. The cradle head's split right square +acrost."</p> + +<p>"Good God!" said Raven. "And you won't let me send you away from here?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Mr. Raven," said she, and her voice was only less exquisite in its +tenderness than when she spoke of the baby, "ain't I married to him?"</p> + +<p>They sat looking at each other, and the suffused beauty of her face was +so moving to him that he got up and went to the window and stared out at +the tree branches in their winter calm. He made himself stand there +looking at them and thinking persistently of them, not of her. She would +not bear thinking of, this thing of beauty and need and, at the same +time, inexorability of endurance. Unless she would let him help her, he +was only driving the hot ploughshare of her misery through his own heart +for nothing. So he stood there, mechanically studying the trees and +remembering how they would wake from this frozen calm on a night when +the north wind got at them and made them thrash at one another in the +fury of their destiny. Her voice recalled him.</p> + +<p>"I don't mean," she said, "to make you feel bad. I hadn't ought to put +it on anybody else's shoulders, anyway."</p> + +<p>Then Raven realized that the tenderness in her voice was for him. He +turned and came back to his place by the fire. But he did not sit. He +stood looking at her as she looked anxiously up at him.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "for the present, anyway. I'm +going now, and you're to stay here as long as you think best. When you +go, lock the door and put the key under the flat stone out by the step. +I often leave the key there. I'll make sure the stone isn't frozen down. +Now, you understand, don't you? You're to come up here whenever you +like. If there isn't a fire, you're to build one. Nobody will disturb +you. Jerry won't be cutting up here. I'll send him down into the lower +woods."</p> + +<p>"But," she said, in evident concern, "I can't do that. You come up here +to write your books. Mr. Tenney said so, when he was tellin' me who all +the neighbors were. He said you had the shack repaired so's to write +your books."</p> + +<p>Raven smiled. Books seemed far removed from this naked face of life.</p> + +<p>"I'm not writing books now," he said. "I'm just hanging round. I may go +over and see your husband, ask him to do some work for me."</p> + +<p>The quick look of alarm ran into her face.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she breathed, "you won't——"</p> + +<p>"No," he answered steadily, "I won't say a word about you. Of course I +sha'n't. And I won't to anybody."</p> + +<p>"An'," she broke in tumultuously, "if you should see me—oh, it's an +awful thing to say, after what you've done for me this day—but you +won't act as if you ever see me before?"</p> + +<p>That was the only wisdom, Raven saw, but a band seemed to tighten about +his heart. Deny her before men, she whom he had not yet untangled from +the rapt vision of their meeting?</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "I won't even look at you. Now I'm going. I'll loosen up +the stone."</p> + +<p>She rose to her imposing height and came to him where he stood, his hand +on the latch. Her eyes brimmed. In the one glance he had of her, he +thought such extremity of gratitude might, in another instant, break in +a flood of words.</p> + +<p>"Go back," he said, "where nobody can see you when I open the door. +Jerry may have taken a notion to come up."</p> + +<p>She turned obediently and he did not look at her again. He opened the +door and stepped out. The stone was there beside the larger one below +the sill. He bent and wrenched it up from the ground where the frost was +holding it, and with such unregarding force that the edges hurt his +hands. He smiled a little at the savage satisfaction of the act, +wondering if this was how Tenney felt when he smashed away at the wood. +Then he remembered that the key was inside, tapped on the door, opened +it and spoke to her:</p> + +<p>"You'd better lock the door. Keep it locked till you go."</p> + +<p>She was sitting before the fire, her head bent almost to her knee, her +face in her hands. He closed the door and waited until he heard her step +and the turning of the key. Then he strode out into the logging road and +down the slope. One certainty surged and trembled in him: that he had +never been so sorry for anybody in his life.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2> + + +<p>Raven, determinedly shedding his emotion, plunged fast down the hill and +into the house where Charlotte was busy in a steam of fragrances from +stove and cooking table and Jerry sat smoothing an axe helve.</p> + +<p>"See here," said Raven, pulling off his gloves and advancing to the +stove, where Jerry, looking mildly up, made room for him, "are you +thinning out up on the ridge?"</p> + +<p>Jerry nodded.</p> + +<p>"That's what you wrote," said he.</p> + +<p>"I've changed my mind," said Raven. "It looks mighty well up there as it +is, for the present, anyway. Didn't you say there was a lot of gray +birch that needed to go down in the river pasture?"</p> + +<p>Again Jerry nodded, and Charlotte, evidently not finding this definite +enough, put in:</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, Jerry, seems to me you said so. 'Twas in that letter you had +me write."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Raven, "I want you to get at the river woods. I want 'em +cleaned up. Couldn't you get somebody to help you? That man Tenney, how +about him?"</p> + +<p>Jerry, confronted by haste and emergency, two flying visitants he never +could encounter adequately, opened his mouth and looked at Charlotte.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said she. "He's a great hand to work. You said so yourself, +Jerry, only last week."</p> + +<p>"Then what if we should hire him?" said Raven. "What if I should go up +and ask him now?"</p> + +<p>Jerry was slowly coming to.</p> + +<p>"He's been by here to-day," said he, "axe in his hand. Went as if he's +sent for. Then he went back."</p> + +<p>"Well, that was an hour or more ago," said Charlotte. "You says to me, +'Where's he be'n?' says you. Yes, he's got home long 'fore this. You'll +find him some'r's round home."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Raven. "Don't go up on the ridge again, Jerry. I want +it left as it is."</p> + +<p>He hurried out through the shed and Charlotte and Jerry exchanged +glances, his entirely bemused and she sympathetically tender.</p> + +<p>"'Course he don't want you cuttin' on the ridge," she said. "He's goin' +up there to write his books. I should think you could see that."</p> + +<p>For Charlotte, when no third person was by to observe Jerry's sloth at +the uptake, had methods of her own to keep him mentally alive. If he did +lag a pace behind, it was his secret and hers, and sometimes, between +themselves, it was wholesome to recognize it.</p> + +<p>Raven walked at top speed. He could not, at his utmost, get to Tenney +soon enough. It was true, he was under vow not to assault or accuse him, +but it seemed to him the woman would not be even intermittently safe +unless the man were under his eye. As the picture of her flashed again +to his mind, sitting by his hearth, her head bowed in grief unspeakable, +he wondered what he should call her. Surely not, in his rage against +Tenney, by Tenney's name. She was "the woman," she was the pitiful type +of all suffering womanhood.</p> + +<p>There was the house, rather narrow in build, but painted white, with +green blinds. The narrowness gave it a look of unwelcoming meagerness, +this although it was of a good size. Raven wondered why some minds ran +to pointed roofs, inhospitable to the eye. This looked to him like +Tenney, his idea of him. The barn was spacious, and beautiful in silver +gray, and the woodpile, Raven decided ironically, a marvel of artistic +skill. He had never seen such a big woodpile, so accurately trimmed at +the corners, so perfect in the face of an extended length. It must, he +judged, represent a good many hours of jealous madness, if it was +entirely the product of those outbreaks when Tenney went out to smash +wood. And there, round one corner of the pile, was Tenney himself. Raven +realized that he had not expected to find him. Actually he had believed +the man was raging over snowy hillsides somewhere about, armed with his +axe and uttering those catamount cries. Tenney was not at work. He was +standing perfectly still, looking up the road.</p> + +<p>"Hullo!" called Raven, turning into the yard, and the man jerked back a +step and then stopped and awaited him.</p> + +<p>It was not a step actually. His feet did not leave the ground. He +merely, his whole body, seemed thrown out of position, to recover +instantly. Raven, watching him as he traversed the few steps between +them, decided that he was uncontrollably nervous, frightened, too, +perhaps, at what his apprehensive mind pictured: and that was good for +him. What was Tenney, according to his look? Raven, scrutinizing him as +he approached, determined to know something more than he had caught from +those preoccupied minutes in the woods. How, if he had his pen in hand, +would he describe Israel Tenney for one of the folk tales Anne had so +persistently urged him to? A thin, tall man with narrow shoulders and +yet somehow giving an impression of great wiry strength. He had a boldly +drawn line of profile, hair black and glossy and, as Raven saw with +distaste, rather long under his hat, vertical lines marking his cheeks, +lines deeper than seemed justified by his age, and, as he had noted +before, his eyes were also black with a spark in them. What was the +spark? It was, Raven concluded again, in this quick scrutiny, like that +in the eyes of inventors and visionaries. He wore clothes so threadbare +that it seemed as if he must have been cold. But they were patched with +a scrupulous nicety that made some revulsion in Raven rise up and +dramatically spur him to a new resentment. She had patched them. Her +faithful needle had spent its art on this murderer of her peace. He had +reached the woodpile now and Tenney came a step forward.</p> + +<p>"Great woodpile you've got here," said Raven.</p> + +<p>Tenney put out his hand and rested it on one of the sticks. He might +have been caressing a pet dog.</p> + +<p>"Stove wood length," he said briefly. Then he seemed to feel some +curiosity over being sought out after their meeting on the rise and +asked: "D'you find your knife?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said Raven. "Didn't you see me hold it up to you?"</p> + +<p>Tenney nodded, frowning. He seemed to conclude he was giving himself +away, showing more interest in the stranger than the stranger had in any +way earned. But he asked another question. It leaped from him. He had to +ask it.</p> + +<p>"D'you see anybody up round there after I come down?"</p> + +<p>Raven shook his head, looking, he hoped, vague.</p> + +<p>"I came down myself," he said. "I had to talk with Jerry about his +thinning out."</p> + +<p>The eagerness faded from Tenney's face.</p> + +<p>"I didn't see Jerry up there this mornin'," he volunteered, in an +indifferent contribution toward the talk.</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven. "You won't see him up there at all after this—for a +spell, that is. I write, you know, books. I like to go up to the hut to +work. Not so likely to be interrupted there. I don't want chopping going +on."</p> + +<p>Tenney, with a quick lift of the head, looked at him questioningly. +Raven saw anger also in the look, at last anger ready to spring. Both +men had the same thought. Tenney wondered if the owner of the wood was +going to taunt him again with yelling like a catamount, and Raven did +actually put aside an impulse toward it.</p> + +<p>"D'you come over here to forbid my goin' up in your woods?" Tenney +inquired.</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven. "I came to ask you if you could help Jerry do some +thinning out in the river pasture. I'm rather in a hurry about that."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," Tenney began. Then he added breathlessly, as if another part +of his mind (the suffering, uncontrolled part) broke in on his speech: +"Not yet, though. I can't do anything yet, not till I see how things +turn."</p> + +<p>Raven thought he understood. Tenney could settle to nothing until he +knew when his wife was coming back or whether she was coming at all. Now +that the vision of her had entered on their stage, he was conscious of +answering coldly:</p> + +<p>"All right. You can make up your mind and go over and see Jerry. He'll +arrange it with you."</p> + +<p>On these words, he was about turning away, when he found Tenney suddenly +oblivious of him. The man's thin face was quivering into a pathetic +disorder, flushed, quite beyond his control. He neither heard Raven nor +saw him, though he did speak brokenly:</p> + +<p>"There!" he said. "There she is now."</p> + +<p>Raven, turning, followed his gaze, directed up the road, not the way he +had come. There she was, walking toward them with swift, long steps, the +child held with the firmness that still seemed a careless buoyancy, as +he had seen her in the woods. She had come home, as she went, the back +way. Raven could have stood there through the long minute, motionless, +waiting for her to come to him, for it seemed as if it were to him she +came, not Tenney. But he recalled himself with a brusqueness so rough +and sudden that it was as if he gave himself a blow. That last glance +had shown him she had nothing more to fear from Tenney, for this time at +least. The man had been horribly frightened at her going. Now he was +under her heel. Raven did not give her another look. He turned homeward, +and called back to Tenney loudly enough for her to overhear him and be +under no apprehension as to what had passed:</p> + +<p>"Make up your mind, then come and talk it over with Jerry. It's +chopping, you understand, gray birches down in the river pasture."</p> + +<p>Tenney did not answer, and Raven, striding along the road, listened with +all possible intentness to hear whether husband and wife spoke together. +He thought not, but he did hear the closing of a door.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2> + + +<p>Thyatira—this was her name, and she was called Tira—passed her husband +apparently without a glance. Nevertheless she had, in approaching, +become adequately aware of his disordered look, and the fact of it +calmed her to a perfect self-possession. She could always, even from one +of these fleeting glimpses, guess at the stage his madman's progress had +reached, and the present drop in temperature restored her everyday sense +of safety. With it came a sudden ebbing of energy and endurance. The +"spell" was over for the time, but her escape from the shadow of it left +her nerveless and almost indifferent to its returning; apathetic, too, +to her tormentor. Going in, she closed the door behind her, apparently +not noticing that he followed her, and when he opened it and came in, +she was sitting in his great chair by the fire, taking off the baby's +coat, and, with the capable, anxious mother motion, feeling the little +hands. Tenney came up to her and the child, turning at his step, looking +up at him solemnly. Tira's heart seemed to contract within her. This was +the very glance, "lookin' up kinder droll," that had brought on the +storm. But for Tenney it evidently meant something now that fitted his +mood of passionate anxiety to get back into the warm security of +domestic peace.</p> + +<p>"You lemme take him," he said, "whilst you git off your things. You'll +ketch your death o' cold, carryin' on so."</p> + +<p>The last he had to add. She was, his defensive inner mind told him, all +wrong in flying out of the house "like a crazed creatur'" when she might +have stayed and told him, just told him, whether she was the kind of +woman he, at these unheralded mad moments, thought she was. That was the +undercurrent always in his mind: if she wouldn't be so still and +hateful, if she would only tell him. She might have some pity on a man, +that defensive inner mind advised him, when she saw him all worked up. +But the minute he warned her the devil of doubt was again tempting him, +she began to freeze up and wouldn't speak to him at all. No wonder, with +that devil inside whispering to him and hounding him on—no wonder he +said things and—he trembled here and dared not follow out that +thought—and was afraid he might do things. But she shook her head, at +his offer of taking the child.</p> + +<p>"You might go an' cut a slice o' ham," she said wearily. "It's 'most +dinner time. We might's well have that as anything."</p> + +<p>But the baby reached out and closed his little fingers about Tenney's +thumb. Tenney stood there, his heart swelling within him at the contrast +between the child's forgivingness and her cruelty. Now she had the +child's outer things off, and she rose with them in one hand, carrying +the child on the other arm, and it was her movement that dragged the +little fingers away and broke that significant clasp on Tenney's thumb. +How hateful she could be, he thought, his heart swelling more and more. +He stood where she left him, and she went to the low couch and set the +baby down there, and put into his hand a formless doll she wanted him to +love. He never really noticed it, but she felt he would sometime love +the doll. Then she glanced, with the air of being recalled to a +wearisome routine, at the table in the middle of the floor; it meant ham +and eggs. It seemed also to occur to her that she had not taken off her +cloak, and she hung it on its nail behind the door. Soon, as Tenney, +still motionless there by the stove, seemed mutely accusing her, mutely +imploring her not to be cruel, she did turn and look at him. The thought +of Raven was uppermost in her mind. It had been there every minute since +she had gone into his house in the woods, but now it roused +compellingly, stronger than even her present apprehension. Most of all, +she was penetrated by a wonder almost greater than any emotion she had +ever felt, at having laid before him at once and without persuasion, the +story of her life. Why should she have told him? She would have said no +decent woman could betray her husband to another man. It was entirely +mysterious, and she gave it up. But there was, behind the wonder, a +dazzling sense that he was different. As he had told her that strange +thing she hardly dared think of now, because it seemed as if she must +have misunderstood him—the thing about her looking so good and +wonderful when he came upon her—so he, in his kindness and compassion, +his implication of assuming a mysterious responsibility for her, seemed +unbelievably good, not a citizen of this bleak neighborhood—or even the +world (her mind, though stumblingly, ran as far as that) and, more +astounding still, the real miracle was that he had been sent for this: +to save her. And at that moment of dazed reflection, it all meant the +passionate necessity of obeying him. He had bade her show her husband +how she loved him. Seeing the man was jealous, he had pitied him. +Perhaps she had not thought, since these last apprehensive days with +Tenney, whether she loved him or not. He had simply, at the times of +recurrent tragedy, been the terror within the house, and she had lived a +life of breathless consecration to the one task of saving the child. Did +she love him? Raven had assumed she did, and in her devotion to him she +must, in some form, obey. Almost it seemed to her there would be shame +in not loving her husband, if Raven expected it of her. None of these +things were formulated in her mind. They were only shadowy impulses, +like the forces of nature, persuading, impelling her. She had no words; +she had scarcely, as to the abstractions she dimly felt and never saw, +any reasoned thought. But she did have an unrecognized life of the +emotions, and this was surging in her now.</p> + +<p>She stood for a second looking at Tenney, the distended beauty of her +eyes like a question, a challenge. She seemed, though this neither of +them could know, to be beseeching him to tell her what treatment he +deserved of her, or what would make their case whole. They were simple +people, these two, but she had leaped, without knowing it herself, to a +new plane of life. She was still with Raven in the hut, trying to speak +his language, follow out his thought for her. She gave a little quick +rush across the room and, to Tenney's overwhelming surprise, her hands +were on his shoulders, her face so close to his that her sweet breath +fanned him. He had never seen her so. She had to be pursued, coaxed, +tired out with persuasion before she would even accept the warmth he too +often had for her.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el," she said, "Isr'el Tenney! if you ever ag'in, so long as you +live, think wrong o' that baby there, you'll be the wickedest man on +God's earth."</p> + +<p>His arms closed about her and she stood passive. Yet she wanted to free +herself. Did she love him? The question Raven had seemed to illuminate +kept beating on in her tired head. Did she love him? And as Tenney's +arms clung closer and his lips were on hers, she threw back her head and +cried violently:</p> + +<p>"No, I don't."</p> + +<p>"Don't what?" he asked, releasing her slightly, and she drew away from +him and, still obeying Raven, made one disordered effort at assurance.</p> + +<p>"If you think"—here she stopped. She could not go on. It had always +seemed to her a wrong to the baby to put the vile suspicion into words. +"If you think," she tried again, "what you said this mornin'—O Isr'el, +I've been as true to you as you are to your God."</p> + +<p>He was religious, she often told herself, chiefly in her puzzled musings +after a "spell" was over, and this was the strongest vow she could +imagine. But it disconcerted him.</p> + +<p>"There! there!" he said. "Don't say such things."</p> + +<p>Evidently the name of God was for Sundays. But he was uneasily +reassured. He was, at least, in a way of sense, delighted. He put his +face to hers and thickly bade her kiss him. He was not for the moment +horrible to her unconsenting will. Rather she found herself rejoicing. +When she could escape from him (and she felt no fear, her wild belief in +herself was so great) she thought she could dance and sing. For now she +knew she did not love him, and it made her feel so free. Always there +had been some uneasy bond, first with the man who cajoled her to her +heart-break and the miserable certainty that, whatever magic was in a +good name, it was hers no more, and then with Tenney, whom she had +followed humbly, gratefully, because he had been so kind and told her +nothing mattered if she would marry him. But now she felt a sudden +snapping of the bond and she knew that, in her mind, at least, in her +moments of solitude with the baby, she could dance upon the hills of +life. It was an entirely new sense of ecstasy, a thrilling of her blood. +She laughed out, a low, excited laugh, and put him from her and called +gaily:</p> + +<p>"You slice the ham, an' I'll git out some eggs."</p> + +<p>Tenney stared at her a minute, perplexed and wondering. Then his face +relaxed slightly. It might have been said he smiled. There was +apparently a good feeling in the house, such as he had never been able +to create. She had always been kind, conformable, but she had never +laughed like this, nor in his sight taken up the baby and tossed him +until he, too, laughed gurglingly. She cooked the dinner and Tenney, not +able to take himself out of her bewildering presence, hung about and +watched her and, when the baby began to fret for food, took him up and +walked with him until Tira was free. And while they ate dinner the baby +slept again on the lounge: for the cradle, grim witness Tenney could not +bring himself to look at now, had been moved into the bedroom.</p> + +<p>"D'you see that feller jest goin' when you come into the yard?" Tenney +asked her, when his first hunger was over and he leaned back in his +chair to look at her where she sat, only picking at her food, he thought +anxiously. She seemed queer to him to-day, with the rapt, exalted look +of one who had seen strange things and been tired by them, the tremulous +eloquence of her lips. She was, he owned to himself, yet not with any +satisfaction, because any smallest allurement in her lessened his chance +of keeping her faith inviolate, a likely looking woman.</p> + +<p>"I wish," he said irritably, out of his uneasiness over her, "you'd eat +suthin.' You're all beat out."</p> + +<p>She smiled at him. She felt kindly toward him as to a part of the world +that had at least begun to show its softer side to her.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "I ain't beat out."</p> + +<p>"D'you see him?" he pursued, his thoughts recurring to Raven.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she responded, in a low tone, "I see him."</p> + +<p>"'Twas Raven. You knew he was comin' up to stay a spell. Don't ye +remember I see Jerry an' he told me? He wants me to go down in his river +pastur', choppin'. All of a whew to git at it. Jest like them city +folks. If a thing comes into their head, they'll shake the footstool but +they'll git it."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tira. "I think 's likely."</p> + +<p>She got up to bring the pie, warming in the oven, and when her back was +toward him she allowed herself a smile, happy, unrestrained, at Raven's +thought for her. She knew why Tenney was to be drawn off down to the +river pasture. This was a part of Raven's understanding and his +beneficence.</p> + +<p>"You goin'?" she asked, returning to her chair.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tenney. "Might 's well."</p> + +<p>When he had eaten he went out to his chores and she cleared the table +and walked about the house with a light step. She had been working +heavily of late, with a dull mind, but now there seemed to be a reason +for doing every task as perfectly as it could be done. There was not a +suspicion in her mind that Raven had a charm for her or that she could +possibly have a charm for him. He had simply opened a window for the +light to come in; he had shown her the door of escape. This was the +first simple kindness she had ever had. When she was little, the family +life had been a disorderly struggle for bare existence, and as she grew +into an ignorant girlhood she began to be angrily conscious that she +herself, she who did not recognize the power of her own beauty and with +it the strange force that lay beneath it, like a philter, for man's +undoing, was an object of pursuit by men made mad through passions she +hated. She had the simplest tastes, the most inconsiderable desires. She +would go off by herself then and spend a day wandering about the woods, +cooling her feet in brooks, sleeping under a tree. No man could make her +happiness completer, hanging about her steps, staring her down with +bold, impudent eyes. She even thought, in a formless way (for she had no +orderly inner life of wonder and conclusion) whether she should have +taken refuge with the light-haired man who was now driving Tenney to +madness, if he had not had that drollery of looking at you, like a boy +really, who cared only for a boy's fitful fun. But he was not kind. The +kindness had been only to lure her into trusting him, just as Tenney's +had turned into a rage of abusive jealousy. Raven's kindness was +different. It was not in any degree personal to her. She knew he would +have been as merciful to a squirrel caught in a trap. And the scars of +his own mental sufferings and restraints had done something to him, +something inexplicable that made him wonderful in her eyes. He seemed, +too, all-powerful. He was that miraculous combination of the human guide +and heavenly helper, with the wisdom to understand earthly trouble and +the power to administer what remedy there might be.</p> + +<p>Tenney did not come in until supper time. He had been over to Raven's, +he told her, and seen Jerry about the chopping. They were going in the +morning early. She made no reply. She was still at peace in the thought +of Raven's kindness, but the turmoil of the day had told on her, and she +was so tired that she could scarcely drag herself about; her eyes kept +closing as she moved. Tenney was still expectantly eager for an +awakening of her leniency. At eight o'clock he brought out the Bible and +stiffened himself into the rigidity that was the mail for his spiritual +combats. He was always referring to himself, at these times of religious +observance, as a servant of the Cross, and Tira used wearily to wonder +whether he felt obliged to arrange himself for combats that, so far as +she knew, never seemed to come off. There was a mysterious adversary he +was always describing with an apprehension that made her wonder if +Israel could really be afraid, and if that was why he announced so +belligerently that he was ready for him. Neither of them thought of the +combat as being simply the grim fight the will of men is doomed to on +the dark plain of man's mysterious sojourn. It seemed to them outside +somewhere, dramatic, imminent, and yet, if you prayed loudly enough and +read your chapter, not certain to happen at all. At least this seemed to +be what Tenney thought, and Tira, when she dwelt upon it, sleepily +followed him. To-night he was reading in Revelation, and when he had +finished that, he would begin, in due course, at Genesis, and go on with +an iron persistency of accomplishment as methodical as ploughing a +field. Tira, sitting at her side of the hearth, heard, through drowsy +ears, the incomprehensible vision of the tree of life with its twelve +manner of fruits, and when Israel shut the Bible with an air of virtuous +finality, she came awake and sat guiltily upright.</p> + +<p>"You've been asleep," he accused her frowningly. "Anybody'd think you +could keep yourself awake over the Word o' God."</p> + +<p>Tira leaned back in her chair and yawned with the simplicity of the +natural animal. Tenney caught his breath, the redness of her mouth and +the gleam of her teeth were so bewitching to him. He got up and carried +away the Bible. When he came back from the best room she was moving +about, setting away chairs and then brushing up the few chips on the +hearth.</p> + +<p>"I'm beat out," she acknowledged, with a wistful look at him, half +deprecating humility. "I guess I'll poke off to bed."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tenney, "le's go."</p> + +<p>At that minute there was a little waking call from the bedroom off the +sitting-room. Tenney gave her a startled glance.</p> + +<p>"Why," he said, "you got him in there?"</p> + +<p>They had been used to keeping the baby covered on the kitchen or the +sitting-room couch until their own bedtime and Tenney, preoccupied with +his last chore of reading the Scriptures, had not noticed that his wife +had carried him into the bedroom instead.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, with a significant quiet. "I thought 'twas full warmer +in the bed. I'm goin' to stay with him."</p> + +<p>"In there?" Tenney repeated. "All night?"</p> + +<p>She nodded at him. The afternoon brightness was again on her face, and +for an instant he felt afraid of her, she looked so strange. Then he +laughed a little. He thought he understood, and, advancing, put a hand +on her shoulder and spoke in an awkward tenderness.</p> + +<p>"Here," said he, "you ain't afraid o' me, be you? Why, I wouldn't no +more lay hands on him——"</p> + +<p>He had meant to add that she had reassured him by her disclaimer of the +morning. But he could not quite manage that. Words were not his +servants. They were his enemies, especially at such times as he was mad +with rage. Then they came too fast and got the better of him, and he +could hardly ever remember afterward what they were. Tira slipped from +under his hand and continued her ordered tasks about the room. But she +smiled at him in the friendliest way.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," she said, "I ain't the leastest mite afraid." She laughed a +little, in a manner mystifying to him, for it suddenly seemed to her she +should never be afraid of anything again.</p> + +<p>Tenney stood there, his eyes following her as she moved about the room, +and again the thought of her cruelty possessed him. Last of all her +orderly deeds, she lighted a little lamp and set it on the table near +him.</p> + +<p>"Don't you forgit to blow it out," she warned him. "I'm terrible afraid +o' fire, these winter nights. I won't put out the big lamp yet. I can +see to undress by it, an' then baby won't wake up."</p> + +<p>He took his lamp and set it down again and went to the bedroom door, her +eyes following him.</p> + +<p>"I dunno," he said, in a strangled voice, "as there's any need o' that +in there, for folks to tumble over."</p> + +<p>He stepped inside, took up the cradle with the telltale gash in the +hood, carried it through the kitchen and set it outside the door, in the +shed.</p> + +<p>"I'll carry it up into the shed chamber to-morrer," he said, in the same +tortured voice.</p> + +<p>Then he took his lamp and turned to go. He was as much surprised at +himself as she could have guessed. For some reason—and he did not know +the reason—he could not bear to leave her there in the dark with the +silent witness standing by to cry out against him. Yet this he did not +think. He only knew he must get the cradle out of the room and do it +quickly. When he had reached the door to the enclosed staircase, her +voice halted him so abruptly that the light quivered in his hand.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el," it called, "you're real good. Don't you be cold. There's a +blanket on the foot."</p> + +<p>But though he hesitated another minute, the voice had nothing more for +him, and he went slowly up to bed. As he undressed, his thoughts down +there with her, he wondered how her voice could have sounded so gay.</p> + +<p>In the middle of the night, Tira woke suddenly, with the sense of +something near. There was the moon flooding the little room, and in the +doorway stood a figure.</p> + +<p>"That you, Isr'el?" she called clearly.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, and then hesitated, "you all right?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she answered, in the same clear voice, with something commanding +in it now. "We're all right. You go back to bed, so's to git your sleep. +I'll call you if I'm up first."</p> + +<p>Tenney turned away, and she heard his hesitating step through the +kitchen and on the stairs. Then, as if this had been as commonplace an +interlude in her night as the baby's waking and drowsing off again, she +felt herself surging happily away to sleep.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2> + + +<p>Raven, tired to lethargy by the morning's turmoil, stayed in the house +until after dinner. He sat by the library fire, a book on his knee, +chiefly to convince Charlotte, who would inevitably detect his drop in +responsive liveliness, that he was merely absorbed and not moping. Once +or twice she did appear at the door, plainly to look at him, but, +finding he kept his eyes on the page, she did not speak. The life had +gone out of him. He wondered at himself for being so fagged. Yet it had +been a good deal of a strain, that anguish of a creature he was not +allowed to help; it was exacting a heavy penalty. He found his mind +dwelling on it, look by look, word by word, and finding no relief except +in the thought of Tenney in the river pasture, chopping. If that came to +pass, the woman would be safe for hours she could count upon.</p> + +<p>That afternoon, Jerry reported that Tenney had been over and promised to +appear next morning with his axe. Then Raven went off for a walk along +the road skirting the base of the mountain. Possibly he chose it because +it led to the woman's old home, and the thought of her was uppermost in +his mind. The road itself was still and dark, subdued to a moving +silence, it might almost seem, by the evergreens, watchers on the high +cliff at the left, and the quiet of the river, now under ice, on the +other side below. He kept on to the stepping stones, at the verge of the +scattered settlement of Mountain Brook. They were rough granite at +regular distances apart, only the tops of them visible above the ice, +and they made the concluding stage of the walk across lots from Wake +Hill to Mountain Brook. In spring the water swirled about them madly, +and it was one of the adventures of boyhood for a squad to go over to +the stepping stones and leap from one to another without splashing into +the foam below. This was "playing Moosewood," the Indian who had been +found there drowned, whether by his own act because the local palefaces +had got his hill-top, over beyond, or from prolonged fire-water, no one +knew. But always he was a noble red man and one boy acted his despairing +part, and the others hunted him across the stones. In the game, he +always escaped and "shinnied" up the cliff opposite, by fissures the +boys of every generation knew, and struck a pose among the evergreens +above, whooping down defiance.</p> + +<p>Raven stopped there and gave a thought to the boy he had been, and then +to Anne, who had once taken the walk across lots with him, and who, when +he told her how they used to play Moosewood, insisted on crossing, +though he had tried to dissuade her, noting her foolish shoes, and aware +that she had no adroitness of eye and muscle. But she had a will of +steel in these matters, as well as those of the spirit, and would not be +prevailed on. Three of the daring leaps she made from one stone to +another and at the fourth she slipped and he caught and held her, the +delicate slenderness of her, in his arms. He had felt awkward merely and +sorry for her, she so overprized doing things superlatively well, and +when they reached the bank she was flushed and shaken, and again he was +sorry, it seemed so slight a thing to care about. But as he looked down +there now he was thinking really about her he called "the woman" in his +mind. She would not slip. She was as perfectly adapted in every tempered +muscle to the rough conditions of natural life as the pioneer women who +helped their men clear the wilderness and set hearthstones. It darkened +between the firs and they began to stir a little, as if a wind were +coming up, and he turned back home, again growing uneasy about her, shut +up there with her tormentor and walled about by the dark.</p> + +<p>He had his supper early, and he did not again invite Charlotte and Jerry +to eat with him. Now, he felt, he should need all the solitude he could +get to think out this thing he seemed to have taken upon himself, and +keep a grip on his anxiety. After supper he asked Charlotte for blankets +and a pillow. She did not look at him, but he was clearly aware that she +was worried and would not let him read it in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"It's all right, Charlotte," he assured her. "I just want some things up +there at the hut, for the couch, that's all."</p> + +<p>"You ain't goin' to sleep up there, be you?" she asked quietly. +Charlotte, he knew, had felt his mood. She saw he was on edge.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "I shall be right back. Only I want to get them up there. +To-morrow I shall be carrying books and things."</p> + +<p>She got the blankets without a word, venturing only, as she gave them to +him:</p> + +<p>"Jerry'll be as mad as fire with me for not sendin' him up to lug 'em."</p> + +<p>Raven smiled at her and went off with his load. He carried also his +electric torch, and traversing the dark between the moving trees, +creaking now and complaining, at the door of the hut he flashed on the +light and lifted the stone. The key was there. That gave him a momentary +relief. She had understood and done her part toward his task of +defending her. He went in, tossed the things over a chair, and lighted +one of the candles on the mantel. The hearth was cold and he piled logs +and kindling. Then he put the pillow in its place on the couch and +spread the blankets. That was to show her she was to make herself +comfortable. The match-box he placed on the mantel, where it seemed +likely her hand would touch it, if she thought to feel there, and beside +it his torch. It might be a momentary defence against the impalpable +terrors of the night. But he was not sure she would feel any terrors, +save of the defined and tangible. That he considered absorbedly as he +went down the path after placing the key under the stone. It was not +that she was insensitive. He felt in her the alert readiness of a +perfectly acting nervous system. It showed itself in her self-control, +her readiness of courage, her persistent calm. She would not thrill with +apprehension over the tapping of those boughs against the walls: only at +a voice or a human tread.</p> + +<p>When he went in at his own door Charlotte appeared, with a quick step, +from the kitchen. She was relieved, he saw. Dear Charlotte! she did not +know how his anxieties were mounting, but she did feel the uneasiness he +had brought with him. He tried to throw her off the track of her silent +interrogations.</p> + +<p>"I'm dog tired," he told her. "I believe I'll go to bed."</p> + +<p>"That's right," said she. "Your fire's been blazed up quite a while."</p> + +<p>"Don't you know," he called back to her from the stairs, "how we always +sleep when we first come? I suppose it's the altitude."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Charlotte. "So 'tis, anyhow accordin' to Jerry."</p> + +<p>Raven carried the look of her anxious, warm-colored face with him. It +was all motherly. Yet she had no children. Jerry lived under the daily +chrism of that soft well-wishing. And there was the woman up the road, +looking like a spiritual mother of men and strangely, mysteriously, also +like the ancient lure that makes men mad, and she had to fight like a +tigress for the mere life of her child. The contrast leaped into the +kaleidoscopic disorder he saw now as life like a brilliant, bizarre +fragment to make the whole scheme (if the scheme could be even estimated +by mortal minds) more disorderly still. But he was tired and he slept. +It would be good, he had thought for many weeks now, when he felt +himself drifting off, to sleep forever. To-night he did not want that +everlasting sleep. He wanted life, life to its full of power and +probity, to stand between the woman and her terror. Suddenly he woke, +and lay, his heart beating hard at the sound of the pines in the grove. +Charlotte had done her best to put the breadth of the house between him +and their lamenting, but their voices crept round the corner and into +his open windows, and invaded his mind. He lay there, the wind on his +face and that sighing melancholy of theirs calling him to an answering +sadness of his own. And now it was not his inexplicable panic of +disaffection toward the earth as God had made it, but a pageant of +darkness where formless terrors moved, all hostile to the woman. At this +moment, she seemed to him the point of blinding pain about which the +general misery of the world revolved. She was beauty in the flesh. She +led the mind to the desire of holy things. At least, that was where she +had led his mind.</p> + +<p>But the cruelty of creation was not content with setting her loose in +the world of created things with the gift of beauty and holiness in her +hand. It had veiled her also with the mysterious magic that was simple +enough and directly compelling enough to rouse the beast of jealousy, +the beast of mastery, in the hearts of men. She did not seem to him an +Aphrodite, bearing in her hand the cup of love. There was something +childlike about her, something as virginal as in Nan. He could believe +she would be endlessly pleased with simple things, that she could be +made to laugh delightedly over the trivialities of daily life. But the +hand of creation having made her, the brain of creation (that inexorable +force bent only on perpetuation) saw she was too good a thing to be +lost, too innocently persuasive to the passion of men. So it had thrown +over her the veil of mystery and pronounced against her the ancient +curse that she should be desired of many and yet too soft of her heart, +too weak in her defenses, even to foresee the pitfalls that awaited her +wandering feet and would sometime break her bones.</p> + +<p>This was the worst of all the sleepless hours he had had, and in the +morning he was up and out before Charlotte was ready for him. Jerry had +breakfasted, when Raven came on him in the barn. He expected Tenney to +go chopping, and he wanted the chores done, to get off early. Raven went +in then and told Charlotte he would not have his own breakfast until +Jerry had gone. He wanted to say a word to him as to the gray birches. +But actually he could not down his impatience to know whether Tenney was +coming at all. So he hung about and hindered Jerry with unnecessary talk +for a half hour or so, and while they were standing in the yard +together, looking down toward the river pasture, and Raven was +specifying, with more emphasis than he felt, that a fringe of trees +should be kept along the mowing, Tenney came. Jerry at once said he'd go +in and get his dinner pail and Raven waited for Tenney. This was not the +man of yesterday. He carried his axe and dinner pail. He walked alertly, +as if his mind were on his day's work, and the pale face had quite lost +its livid excitement. It was grave and even sad. Raven, seeing that, +wondered if the fellow could feel remorse, and was conscious of a lift +in the cloud of his own anxiety. Tenney, not waiting to be addressed, +walked straight up to him. He spoke, as soon as he was within hearing +distance of a tone of ordinary volume, and what he said surprised Raven +even more than the catamount calls of yesterday:</p> + +<p>"Be you saved?"</p> + +<p>Raven knew the salient country phrases, but, so alien was the question +to his conception of the man, that he answered perplexedly:</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by saved?"</p> + +<p>Tenney set down his dinner pail, as if it hampered him, and began +rhythmically, in the voice of the exhorter:</p> + +<p>"Saved by the blood of the Lamb."</p> + +<p>Raven stepped back a pace.</p> + +<p>"No," he said coldly, "not that I'm aware of."</p> + +<p>Tenney came forward a step and Raven again backed. There was something +peculiarly distasteful in being exhorted by a fellow of unbridled temper +and a bestial mind.</p> + +<p>"You are a sinner," said Tenney. "If you reject the great atonement, you +are lost. Don't you know you be?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven. He was on the point of turning away, when he +remembered it was an ill-judged impetuosity he could not afford. It was +more important, in this world of persecution and unstable defense, to +keep your antagonist busy, cutting gray birches.</p> + +<p>"Do you reject Him?" Tenney, too, had his day's work on his mind and he +spoke rapidly, with a patent show of getting his exhortation done in +time to fall into step with Jerry, appearing, at the moment, axe in +hand. He picked up his dinner pail. "Do you reject Him?" he repeated, in +his former singsong. "Do you reject Christ crucified?"</p> + +<p>And in spite of the prudence his inner self had counseled, Raven found +he was, perhaps only from force of habit augmented by his distaste for +the man, answering truthfully:</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "as you mean it, I do."</p> + +<p>Jerry, in the road, had halted and was looking back inquiringly. Tenney +started after him. Instead of being rebuffed by Raven's attitude, he +seemed to be exhilarated. Raven concluded, as he saw the light of a +perhaps fanatical zeal playing over his face, that the fellow took it +for a challenge, an incentive to bring one more into the fold. It was +something in the nature of a dare.</p> + +<p>When he went in, Charlotte was about her tasks at the kitchen stove.</p> + +<p>"You're not going to fodder the cattle, you know," he said to her, +passing through. "I'll see to that. Jerry showed me the mow he is using +from."</p> + +<p>"I always do," said Charlotte, "when he's away all day. I admire to git +out there an' smell the creatur's and hear 'em rattlin' round the +stanchils till they see the hay afore 'em."</p> + +<p>"Never mind," said Raven. "I'll do it to-day." Then a thought struck +him. "I wonder," he said, "who Tenney leaves to do his chores."</p> + +<p>"Why," said Charlotte, "I s'pose she does 'em, same's I do when I'm +alone. 'Tain't no great of a job, 'specially if the hay's pitched round +beforehand."</p> + +<p>Raven, sitting down to his breakfast, thought it a good deal of a task +for a woman made for soft, kind ways with children and the small +domestic animals by the hearth. And then he did have the humor to laugh +at himself a little. It showed how she had unconsciously beguiled him, +how she had impressed him with her curious implication of belonging to +things afar from this world of homespun usages. She was strong and +undeniably homespun herself, in every word and look. Let her fodder the +cattle. Perhaps they would add to the lonesome tranquillity of her day, +with their needs and their sweet-breathed satisfactions.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2> + + +<p>For a week it was hard, clear weather, with a crystal sky and no wind. +Tenney appeared in the early mornings and he and Jerry went off to their +chopping. Raven's relief grew. By the last of the week he found his +apprehension really lessening. Every hour of her safety gave him new +reassurance, and he could even face the nights, the long hours when +Tenney was at home. Tenney he took pains not to meet. He distinctly +objected to being pressed into a corner by the revivalist cant of a man +he could not wisely offend. Nor did he see her whom he called "the +woman." Sometimes in the early dusk after Tenney had got home, he was +strongly moved to walk past the house and see if their light looked +cheerful, or if he could hear the sound of voices within. Smile at +himself as he might, at the childishness of the fancy, he alternately +thought of her as being pursued out of the house by a madman with an axe +and exhorted to save herself by the blood of the Lamb. And, Tenney being +what he was, the last was almost as disquieting as the actual torment. +Every morning he went up to the hut to find no slightest sign of her +having been there. If he stayed long enough to build a fire, he went +back, after it had time to die, and laid another, so that she might +light it without delay.</p> + +<p>On the Saturday night of that week the wind veered into the east and the +clouds banked up. The air had a grayness that meant snow. He had been up +at the hut all the afternoon. He had pulled out an old chest, the +sea-chest of a long dead Raven who had been marked with sea longing, as +it sometimes happens to those bred in the hills, and had run away and +become mate and captain. Raven had always been vaguely proud of him, and +so, perhaps, had other Ravens, for Old Crow, when he moved up here, had +brought the sea-chest with him, and his own books also were stowed away +in it. Old Captain Raven's were entirely consistent with his +profession—charts, a wonderful flat volume full of the starry heavens +and more enchanting to Raven than any modern astronomy; but Old Crow's, +in their diverse character, seemed to have been gathered together as it +happened, possibly as he came on them, in no sense an index of +individual taste. There were poets (strange company they made for one +another!) Milton, Ossian, Byron, Thompson, Herrick, and the Essays of +Montaigne, the Confessions of Rousseau. Also, the Age of Reason, which, +on the testimony of uncut leaves, had not been read. And there was a +worn, dog-eared Bible. Raven had never wanted to appropriate the books +so far as to set them with his own on the shelves. They seemed to him, +through their isolation, to keep something of the identity of Old Crow. +He believed Old Crow would like this. It was precious little earthly +immortality the old chap had ever got beyond the local derision, and if +Raven could please him by so small a thing, he would. He had them all +out on chairs and sat on the floor beside the chest, looking them over +idly until it began to grow dark and, realizing how early it was, he +glanced up at the windows and saw the veil of a fine falling snow. He +got up, left his books in disorder, and lighted the lamp. The fire had +been dying down and he kicked the sticks apart. It must die wholly so +that a fresh one would run no chance of catching the coals. Yet it was +unlikely she would come to-night. Tenney would be tired with his week's +work.</p> + +<p>And just as he was making himself reasons, in a mechanical way, while he +put the room in order, there was a knock, quick, imperative, the door +was thrown open and there she was. She was about to shut the door, but +he ran before her. He did it and turned the key. Then he passed her and +hurried to the fire and with both hands heaped on cones and kindling +until it flared. While he did this she stood as still as a stone and +when, having his fire, he turned to her, he saw she had nothing on her +head and that the fine snow had drifted into the folds of her clothing +and was melting on her hair. She looked more wildly disordered than when +he had seen her before, for she had wrapped a blanket about her, and the +child was under it, covered so closely that Raven wondered how he could +breathe. He tried to take the blanket from her, but she held it +desperately. It seemed as if, in unreasoning apprehension, she dared not +let the child be seen. But he laid his hand on hers, saying, "Please!" +authoritatively, and she let him unclasp the tense fingers, remove the +blanket, and then take the child. Raven had had no experience with +babies, but this one he took, in the heat of his compassion, with no +doubt that he should know what to do with him. He felt the little feet +and hands and, finding them warm, drew forward an arm-chair for her, +and, when she sank into it, set the child in her lap.</p> + +<p>"Put your feet to the fire," he said. "Your shoes are all snow. Better +take them off."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. She stretched her feet almost into the blaze and the +steam rose from them. Raven went to the cupboard at the side of the +fireplace and took down a bottle of chartreuse. But she shook her head.</p> + +<p>"I dassent," she said. "He'll smell it."</p> + +<p>Raven came near breaking into an oath. Did the beast own her, that he +should be able, after this new outrage, to get her sweet breath?</p> + +<p>"I ain't cold," she assured him, "not now. No, I won't drink any"—for +he was about to pour it for her—"I never took much stock in them +things. I've seen too much of 'em."</p> + +<p>Then Raven remembered that Charlotte had told him all the boys +drank—her brothers—and he seemed to have turned another page in her +piteous life. He set back the bottle and, to give her time to recover +herself, resumed his task of straightening the room. At her voice, he +was at once beside her.</p> + +<p>"Should you just as soon," she asked quietly, as if the question were of +no moment, "I'd stay up here all night?"</p> + +<p>"Of course you're to stay all night." It seemed to him too beautiful a +thing to have happened, to know she was here in safety with the trees +and the snow. "I'll go down and get some milk and things for him"—he +was indicating the baby who, under the ecstasy of warmth, was beginning +to talk strange matters, standing on his mother's knee—"I'll tell +Charlotte I'm staying up here all night."</p> + +<p>But now he saw, in surprise (for he had failed to guess how his words +would strike her) that she was terrified, perhaps more by him than she +had been by Tenney.</p> + +<p>"No," she cried violently. "You can't do that. You mustn't. If you stay, +I've got to go."</p> + +<p>"I can't have you up here in the woods alone," he reasoned.</p> + +<p>She gave a little laugh. The quality of it was ironic. It made him +wonder what her laughter would be if she were allowed to savor the +quaintness of sheer fun. She spoke obliquely, yet accounting for the +laugh.</p> + +<p>"What do you s'pose'd happen to me?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," he owned, comparing, as she meant him to, the safety of her +state up here, surrounded by the trees and the wind, and her prison with +the madman down below. "But I can't have it. Do you suppose I can go +down there and sleep in my bed?" He paused and began to coax. Charlotte +could have told her how beguiling he was when he coaxed. "I'll stay in +the other room and keep an eye out. I sha'n't sleep. I won't even +disturb you by tending the fire. You can do that. Come, is it a bargain. +It's the only safe thing to do, you know. Suppose he should come up here +in the night?"</p> + +<p>"That's it," she said quietly. "S'pose he should? Do you want I should +be found up here with a man, any man, even you?"</p> + +<p>He was silent, struck by her bitter logic. His heart, in the actual +physical state of it, ached for her. She would not let him save her, he +thought despairingly; indeed, perhaps she could not. For she alone knew +the noisome perils of her way. He relinquished his proposition, without +comment, and he could see at once what relief that gave her.</p> + +<p>"Very well," he said, "I'll go down. But I shall certainly come back and +bring you some milk. Something to heat it in, too. Old Crow used to have +dishes, but they're gone. Lock the door after me. I'll call when I +come."</p> + +<p>But she rose from her seat, put the baby on the couch and took the +blanket from the chair where he had spread it. There were still drops on +it, and she went to the other side of the room, at a safe distance from +the baby, and shook it. She had settled into a composure as determined +as his own.</p> + +<p>"It's no use talkin'," she said. "I've got to go back."</p> + +<p>"Go back?" He stared at her.</p> + +<p>"Yes. What we've just said shows me. Nothin's more likely than his +comin' up here. He might reason it out. He knows I wouldn't go to any o' +the neighbors, an' he'd know I wouldn't let baby ketch his death, a +night like this, the storm an' all. An' if he found me here locked in, +even if there wa'n't nobody here with me, I dunno what he'd do. Burn the +house down, I guess, over my head."</p> + +<p>The last she said absently. She was arranging the blanket about her with +an anxious care, evidently making it so secure that she need not use her +hands in holding. They would be given to the baby.</p> + +<p>"Burn my house down, will he? Let him try it," said Raven, under his +breath.</p> + +<p>She looked at him in a calm-eyed reproach that was all motherly.</p> + +<p>"We mustn't have no trouble," said she. "I dunno what I should do if I +brought that on you."</p> + +<p>"What does the man mean," Raven broke out, chiefly to attract her +attention and keep her there under shelter, "by going dotty half the +time and the other half butting in and asking people if they're saved?"</p> + +<p>"Did he ask you?" she inquired. She nodded, as if it were precisely what +might have been expected. "I s'pose he thinks he has to. He's a very +religious man."</p> + +<p>"Religious!" Raven muttered. "Does he have to do the other thing, too: +go off his nut?"</p> + +<p>She was looking at him gravely. Suddenly it came to him he must be more +sympathetic in his attitude. He must not let her feel rebuffed, thinking +he did not understand.</p> + +<p>"I dunno's I blame him," she said slowly, as if she found it a wearingly +difficult matter and meant to be entirely just. "You see he had +provocation." The red came flooding into her cheeks. "He come home from +work an' what should he see but the man, the one I told you——"</p> + +<p>She stopped, and Raven supplied, in what he hoped was an unmoved manner:</p> + +<p>"The one that looks up kinder droll?"</p> + +<p>For his life he could not have helped repeating the words as she had +given them to him. He had found them too poignant in their picturesque +drama to be paraphrased or forgotten.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said eagerly. She was relieved to be helped. "He drove up in +his sleigh, about fifteen minutes 'fore Isr'el come home. He come up to +the house. I went to the door. 'What do you want?' I says. Then he begun +to say things, foolish things same's he always did——"</p> + +<p>She stumbled there, as if in shame, and Raven knew what kind of things +they were: things about her eyes, her lips, insulting things to an +honest wife, taunting things, perhaps, touching the past. More and more +she seemed to him like a mother of sorrows, a child unjustly scourged +into the dark mysteries of passion and pain.</p> + +<p>"Never mind," he said reassuringly. "Don't try to tell me. Don't think +of them."</p> + +<p>But she would tell him. It seemed as if she had to justify herself.</p> + +<p>"He told me he wanted to come in. 'You can't,' says I, 'not whilst I +live.' An' he laughed an' stood there an' dug his heel into the snow an' +waited, kinder watchin' the road till Isr'el hove in sight with his +dinner pail. An' then I see it all. He'd drove along that way an' see +Isr'el an' Jerry comin' acrost from their work an' he meant to stan' +there drivin' me out o' my senses till Isr'el see him. An' soon as he +was sure Isr'el did see him, he turned an' run for the sleigh an' got in +an' give the hoss a cut, an' he was off same's he meant to be."</p> + +<p>"And you were left alone with Tenney," said Raven quietly. "There! don't +tell me any more."</p> + +<p>She smiled upon him, giving him an ineffable sense that she had, in +telling him, somehow dropped her burden. Now she said, with as calm a +resolution as that of the martyr marching to the fire he is sure his +Lord has called him to:</p> + +<p>"I'll go down along."</p> + +<p>She went over to the couch, took up the child, and began to tuck about +him the folds of her enveloping blanket. Raven moved to her side. He had +an overwhelming sense of their being at one in the power of their +resolution. If she would yield to his deliberate judgment! if only their +resolutions could coincide!</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "you're not going down there. I won't have it."</p> + +<p>She looked at him and faintly smiled.</p> + +<p>"I've got to," she said. "If I stay away all night an' he don't know +where, there wouldn't be any way o' piecin' on."</p> + +<p>And suddenly he knew, if she was to persist in "piecing on," she was +right.</p> + +<p>"Wait," he said. "Let me think."</p> + +<p>There must be some way, he reflected, some means, by violence or +diplomacy, to help her fulfill the outer rites of her bargain until he +could persuade her to be taken beyond the reach of persecution. He +wanted to fight for her; but if that was not the way, if his fists would +only bruise her as well as Tenney, he was ready to lie. He had his idea. +It might be good, it might not, but it was an emergency idea.</p> + +<p>"I'll go down," he said. "I'll go over to your house and offer to pay +him for his week's work. You follow. Give me time enough to go into my +house on the way and get some money. Then you come while I'm talking to +him and I'll stay a bit, as long as I can. When you come, we can see how +he is. If he's violent to you—if he looks it, even—you've got to come +away."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," she cried sharply, "I can't do that. You must see I can't."</p> + +<p>"I'll take you to my house," he said. "You know Charlotte. She'll be +nice to you. Why, if Charlotte found out a thing like this was going on +in the neighborhood, she'd go for him tooth and nail."</p> + +<p>"No," said she, in a dull decision. "I can't. It would all come on you."</p> + +<p>He understood. The madman would drag him into that range of jealous fury +and because he was a man.</p> + +<p>"I can look out for myself," he said roughly, "and you, too."</p> + +<p>Again she shook her head.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "he might kill you. Anyways, he'd burn your barn."</p> + +<p>"He won't kill me," said Raven, "and I don't care a hang about my barn. +Let him burn. Good thing. I'll clap him into jail and you'll know where +he is. Now!" He looked at the clock on the mantel. "I'm going. In just +twenty minutes you start and come along as fast as you want to. I'll be +at your house."</p> + +<p>She had begun to speak, but he paid no attention. He turned up his +collar and stepped out into the storm.</p> + +<p>"Lock the door," he called back to her. "Keep it locked till you go."</p> + +<p>The road down the slope was scarcely clogged at all. The firs, waving +now and interlocking their branches in that vague joy or trouble of the +winter wind, were keeping off the powdery drift. When he got to his +house he saw Jerry on the way to the barn, but he did not hail him. +Possibly Jerry had paid Tenney for his week, and although Raven's own +diplomacy would stick at nothing, he preferred to act in good faith, +possibly so that he might act the better. He smiled a little at that and +wondered, in passing, if he were never to be allowed any arrogance of +perfect behavior, if he had always got to be so sorry for the floating +wisps of humanity that seemed to blow his way as to go darting about, +out of his own straight course, to pluck them back to safety. There were +serious disadvantages, he concluded, as he often had before, in owning a +feminine vein of temperament. He went in at the front door and up the +stairs, took a roll of money from his desk and ran down again. Charlotte +had not seen him. She was singing in the kitchen in a fragmentary way +she had when life went well with her, and the sound filled Raven with an +unreasoning anger. Why should any woman, even so dear and all deserving +as Charlotte, live and thrive in the warmth and light while that other +creature, of as simply human cravings, battled her way along from cliff +to cliff, with the sea of doom below, beating against the land that was +so arid to her and waiting only to engulf her? That, he thought, was +another count in his indictment against the way things were made.</p> + +<p>The Tenney house, when he approached it, was cold in the darkness of the +storm. The windows were inhospitably blank, and his heart fell with +disappointment. He went up to the side door looking out on the pile of +wood that was the monument to Tenney's rages, and knocked sharply. No +one came. He knocked again, and suddenly there was a clatter within, as +if some one had overturned a chair, and steps came stumbling to the +door. A voice came with them, Tenney's voice.</p> + +<p>"That you?" he called.</p> + +<p>He called it three times. Then he flung open the door and leaned out +and, from his backward recoil, Raven knew he had hoped unreasonably to +find his wife, knocking at her own door. Raven kicked his feet against +the step, with an implication of being snow-clogged and cold.</p> + +<p>"How are you?" he said. "Let me come in, won't you? It's going to be an +awful night."</p> + +<p>Tenney stepped back, let him enter, and closed the door behind him. They +stood together in the darkness of the entry. Raven concluded he was not +to be told which way to go.</p> + +<p>"Smells warm in here," he said, taking a step to the doorway at the +left. "This the kitchen?"</p> + +<p>Tenney recovered herself.</p> + +<p>"Walk in," he said. "I'll light up."</p> + +<p>Raven, standing in the spacious kitchen, all a uniform darkness, it was +so black outside, could hear the man breathe in great rasping gulps, as +if he were recovering from past emotion or were still in its grasp. He +had taken a lamp down from the high mantel and set it on the table. Now +he was lighting it, and his hand shook. The lamp burning and bringing +not only light but a multitude of shadows into the kitchen, he turned +upon Raven.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, harshly. "Say it. Git it over."</p> + +<p>Raven heard in his voice new signs of a tremendous, almost an hysterical +excitement. It had got, he knew, to be quieted before she came.</p> + +<p>"If you'll allow me," he said, "I'll sit down. I'm devilish cold."</p> + +<p>"Don't swear," said Tenney, still in that sharp, exasperated voice, and +Raven guessed he was nervously afraid, at such a crisis, of antagonizing +the Most High.</p> + +<p>The vision of his own grandmother came up before him, she who would not +let him read a child's book in a thunder shower lest God should consider +the act too trivial in the face of elemental threatening and strike him +dead. He took one of the straight-backed chairs by the stove and leaned +forward with an absorbed pretense of warming his chilled hands. But he +was not reassuring Tenney. He was still more exasperating him.</p> + +<p>"Say it, can't you?" the man cried to him piercingly. "Tell it an' git +it over." Then, as Raven merely looked at him in a civil inquiry, +"You've got suthin' to break, ain't ye? Break it an' leave me be."</p> + +<p>Raven understood. The man's mind was on his wife, fled out into the +storm. His inflamed imagination was picturing disaster for her. He was +wild with apprehension. And it was well he should be wild. It was a pity +she was likely to come so soon. Raven would have been glad to see his +emotions run the whole scale from terror to remorse before she came, if +come she would, to allay them.</p> + +<p>"No," he said quietly, "I haven't anything to break. But it's going to +be an awful night. I guess there will be things to break about the folks +that are out in it."</p> + +<p>Tenney came up to him and peered down at him in blank terror.</p> + +<p>"Who's out in it?" he asked. "Who've you seen?"</p> + +<p>Raven laughed jarringly. It did seem to him grimly amusing to be +dallying thus with a man's fears. He was not used to playing games with +the human creature's destiny. He had always looked too seriously on all +such drama, perhaps because he had been so perplexed by drama of his +own. If his life was too puzzling a thing to be endured, was not all +life, perhaps, equally puzzling and therefore too delicate a matter to +be meddled with? But now the game was on, the game of sheer diplomacy. +The straight and obvious path wouldn't do if he was to save a woman who +handicapped him in advance by refusing to let herself be saved.</p> + +<p>"The night?" he repeated. "Who's out in it? Why, I'm out in it myself; +at least, I have been. But now I'm here by this stove, I don't know when +you'll get rid of me. Put in a stick, won't you, Tenney? These big rooms +have a way of cooling off before you know it."</p> + +<p>Tenney did put in a stick and more. He crammed the stove with light +stuff and opened draughts. Raven noted, in the keen way his mind had +taken up, of snatching at each least bit of safety for the woman, that +the tea kettle was boiling. She would be chilled. She would need hot +water. And suddenly he felt the blood in his face. There was a hand at +the latch of the side door. Tenney, too, heard it. He threw back into +the box the stick of wood he had selected and made three strides to the +entry. Again he called, in that voice of sharp anxiety:</p> + +<p>"That you?"</p> + +<p>She opened the door just before he could put out his hand to it, passed +him without a look, and came in. He shut the door and followed her. +Raven got up from his chair and stood, glancing at her with what he +hoped was a casual attention. Tenney came back and, when she had thrown +off the blanket, took it from her hand and dropped it on a chair. He was +all trembling eagerness. That act, the relieving her of the blanket, was +incredible to Raven. The man had wanted to kill her (or, at the least, +to kill his child), and he was humbly inducting her into the comforts of +her home. She had not looked toward Raven. With a decorum finer, he +thought, than his own, she would not play the game of diplomacy. She +knew him and she could not deny him, even to save her life. Suddenly +Tenney, brushing past to draw up a chair for her at the stove, became +aware of him. Raven believed that, up to the moment, he had, to the +man's absorbed gaze, been invisible. Now Tenney seemed to recognize the +decencies toward even an unbidden guest.</p> + +<p>"She's all beat out," he said, in uncouth apology. "It's my woman."</p> + +<p>Raven turned to her, waiting for her cue. Would she take a hand at the +game, as it imposed itself on him? Her silence and aloofness were his +answer. She was sitting forward in her chair, to get the baby's feet +nearer the warmth. But since she would not speak, Raven did.</p> + +<p>"I should think any one would be beat out, a night like this," he said, +as casually as he could manage, "carrying a baby, too, in such a storm. +You'd better be careful of the child, at least," he added curtly, +turning to Tenney, "if you want to keep him. Out in this cold and sleet! +You don't want their deaths on your hands, do you?"</p> + +<p>Tenney stared back at him in a wildness of apprehension.</p> + +<p>"Be you a doctor?" he managed to ask.</p> + +<p>Raven remembered the words: "Their tongue cleaved to the roof of their +mouth." That seemed to be what Tenney's tongue was doing now.</p> + +<p>"No," said he, "I'm not a doctor, but I've seen a good deal of sickness +in the War. Get them warm," he added authoritatively, "both of them. Put +the child into warm water."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tenney, in an anguished sort of haste. Then to his wife he +continued, in a humility Raven noted as her best guaranty of at least +temporary safety, "I'll bring you the foot tub, an' whilst you're doin' +it, I'll warm the bed."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said quietly, but with a composure of mastery in her voice. +"So do."</p> + +<p>Raven got up and made his way to the door. Then he bethought himself +that he had not given any reason for coming and that Tenney might +remember it afterward and wonder.</p> + +<p>"I thought I'd run up," he said, "and pay you for your week's work."</p> + +<p>Tenney was darting about with a small tin tub, filling it from the +kettle and trying the temperature with his hand.</p> + +<p>"No," he answered absorbedly, "I can't bother with that to-night. Let it +be till another time."</p> + +<p>He had drawn a chair to his wife's side and set the tub on it, and now +she also tried the temperature while he watched her anxiously. And at +once the baby who, in his solemnity of silence, had seemed to Raven +hitherto little more than a stage property, broke into a lusty yelling, +and Tenney put out his hands to him, took him to his shoulder and began +to walk the floor, while the woman poured more water into the tub. +Neither of them had a look for Raven, and he went out into the +blustering night with a picture etched so deeply on his brain that he +knew it would always be there while he, in his flesh, survived: the old +picture of the sacred three, behind the defenses of their common +interests, the father, mother and the child.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2> + + +<p>All that night Raven, through his light sleep, had a consciousness of +holding on to himself, refusing to think, refusing angrily to fear. The +sleep seemed to him like a thin, slippery coating over gulfs unplumbed; +it was insecure, yet it failed to let him down into blessed depths of +oblivion below. But he would not think to no purpose (he had a dread of +the wild, disordered clacking of the wheels in unproductive thought), +and he would not invite again the strange humiliation, the relief tinged +by aversion, that came over him when he felt, on leaving them, the +inviolability of the three in their legal bond. She had looked to him so +like heaven's own, he had upborne her in his thought almost to the gate +of heaven itself; and yet she was walled in by a bond she would not +repudiate with the brute who persecuted her. In spite of her uncouth +speech, in spite of her ignorance of delicate usage, she seemed to him a +creature infinitely removed from the rougher aspects of this New England +life; yet there she was in one of the most sordid scenes of it, and she +was absorbed by it, she fitted it as a Madonna fits a cave. And what +business had he, he asked angrily, to weave about her the web of a +glorifying sympathy, exalting her only from that pernicious habit of his +of being sorry? Yet, as he thought it, he knew she was different from +the ordinary country woman afraid of her man, and that any fine mantle +he wove for her could not equal the radiance of her pure courage and +undaunted truth.</p> + +<p>Once he rose from his bed and began to dress hastily, with what he +recognized at the same moment as the wild purpose of slipping out of the +house and going up to Tenney's, to see if there was a light or to listen +for the catamount voice. But that, he realized immediately, was folly. +Suppose Tenney saw him. What reason could he plant in the man's inflamed +mind, except one more hostile to her peace? So he went back to bed, +chilled, and was savagely glad of his discomfort. It gave him something, +however trivial, to think about besides the peril of a woman who looked +like motherhood incarnate, and so should have been heir to all the +worship and chivalry of men. With the first light he was up and had +built his fire, and Charlotte, hearing him, got, sooner than was her +wont, out of her warm bed. Charlotte owned to liking to "lay a spell" in +winter, to make up for the early activities of summer mornings when you +must be "up 'fore light" to keep pace with the day. For after nine +o'clock "the day's 'most gone." She looked up at him as he came into the +kitchen where she was brashing her fire for a quick oven, and he found +her eyes clearly worried in their questioning.</p> + +<p>"No toast, Charlotte," he said. He wondered if even his voice was +trembling in his haste. "No biscuits. I'm going up to the hut."</p> + +<p>Charlotte nodded and seemed to settle into understanding. She had a +sympathetic, almost a reverent tolerance for the activities of pen and +ink. To her, Raven was a well-beloved and in no wise a remarkable being +until he stepped into the clouded room of literary activity. There she +would have indulged him in any whim or unaccountable tyranny. Charlotte +had never heard of temperament, but she believed in it. Once only did +she speak to him while he was drinking his coffee:</p> + +<p>"You got any ink up there?"</p> + +<p>He started and looked at her a moment, dazed. Nothing was further from +his mind than ink. Other liquids, tears, waters of lethe, lakes of fire +and brimstone would not have sounded foreign to his thought. But ink! +how incalculably far was the life of the written word from this raw +anguish of reality he was caught in to-day! He recovered himself +instantly.</p> + +<p>"I've got my pen," he told her, "my stylograph."</p> + +<p>And presently he had put on his coat, bidden her a hasty good-by and was +plunging up the slope. Somehow, though the crest of the wave had been +reached the night before and that usually, Tira had assured him, meant a +following calm, he was certain of seeing her to-day. It was not that he +wanted to see her, but an inner conviction, implacably fixed as the laws +of nature that are at no point subject to the desires of man, told him +she would come. The hut must be warm for her. The fire must be relaid. +And, he told himself grimly, the apex had been reached. The end of the +thing was before them. He must not yield to her again. He must command +her, persuade and conquer her. She must let him send her away.</p> + +<p>At the hut he almost expected to see her footprints in the light snow by +the door. But the exquisite softness lay untouched. The day was a heaven +of clearness, the shadows were deep blue and the trees beginning the +slow waving motion of their majestic secrecies. He took out the key from +under the stone, went in and made his fire with a hand too practiced to +lose in efficacy from its haste. Presently it was roaring upward and, +after a glance about to see that the room was not in any disorder too +great for him to remedy quickly, he walked back and forth, and whenever +it died down enough to let him, fed the fire. It began to seem to him as +if he were going to be there days feeding the fire to keep her warm, but +it was only a little before ten when he heard a step and his heart +choked him with its swelling of relief. At once he was also calmer. A +moment ago even, he would have wondered how he could meet her, how keep +the storm of entreaty out of his voice if he was to beg her to let him +save her. But now he knew he should be himself as she had briefly known +him and though he must command, he should in no sense offend. He stood +still by the fire, half turning toward the door, to wait. It was an +unformulated delicacy of his attitude toward her that she should not +find him going forward to meet her as if she were a guest. She should +enter as if the house were her own. But she did not enter. There was a +hand at the door. It knocked. Then he called:</p> + +<p>"Come in."</p> + +<p>The door opened, under what seemed to him, in his first surprise, a +halting hand and a woman stepped in. It was Nan. She came a hesitating +pace into the room and stood looking at him, after the one interested +glance about her, smiling a little, half quizzically, as if aware she +had brought a surprise and yet not in doubt of its being welcome. Raven +stared back at her for one bewildered minute and then, so instant and +great was the revulsion, burst into a shout of laughter. Nan stood there +and laughed with him.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Rookie?" she asked, coming forward to him. "I'm funny, I +suppose, but not so funny as all that. What's the joke?"</p> + +<p>She was a finished sort of creature to come into his wood solitude, and +yet an outdoor creature, too, with her gray fur cap and coat. She looked +younger, less worn than when he saw her last, perhaps because her cheeks +were red from the frosty air and her eyes bright at finding him.</p> + +<p>"Let me have your coat," he said. "Come to the fire."</p> + +<p>She took off her coat and he dropped it on the couch. He pulled a chair +nearer the hearth (it was his own chair, not Tira's), and motioned her +to it. She did not sit. She put out her thickly shod foot to the blaze +and then withdrew it, for she was all aglow from her plunge up the hill, +and turned to him, her brows knitted, her eyes considering.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Rookie?" she asked. "Something's up and you wish I hadn't +come. That it?"</p> + +<p>"I haven't had time to wish you hadn't come," he said. He had to be +straight with her. "I never was more surprised in my life. You were the +last person I expected to see."</p> + +<p>"But why d'you laugh, Rookie?" she persisted, and then, as he hesitated, +evidently considering exactly why he did and what form he could put it +in, she concluded: "I know. You were taken aback. I've done the same +thing myself, often. Well!" She seemed to dismiss it as unimportant and +began where she had evidently meant to begin. "Now I'll tell you what +I'm here for."</p> + +<p>"Sit down, Nan," he bade her.</p> + +<p>Now that his first derangement was over, he was glad to see her. Tira +might not come. If she did, he could do something. He could even, at a +pinch and with Tira's consent, put the knowledge of the tawdry business +into Nan's hands. But she would not sit down. Plainly she had received a +setback. She was refusing to accept his hospitality to any informal +extent. And he saw he had hurt her. He was always reading the inner +minds of people, and that was where his disastrous sympathy was forever +leading him: to that pernicious yielding, that living of other people's +lives and not his own.</p> + +<p>"It was only," he said, trying to pick up the lost thread of her +confidence, "that I didn't expect you. I couldn't have dreamed of your +coming. How did you come so early?"</p> + +<p>"Took the early train," said Nan curtly.</p> + +<p>"Not the beastly old thing that starts before light?"</p> + +<p>She nodded.</p> + +<p>"What for?"</p> + +<p>"To get ahead of them," she answered, still curtly.</p> + +<p>"Them? Who?"</p> + +<p>"Dick and his mother and Doctor Brooke."</p> + +<p>"Dick and Amelia? What's Amelia on here for?"</p> + +<p>He had half expected her and yet, in the new turmoil about him, he had +actually forgotten she might come.</p> + +<p>"Because Dick sent her your letter. They both assume you've broken down, +and she's called in an alienist to come up here and eye you over, and +Dick's pretty sick over the whole business; so he's coming along, too. +He was prepared for mother, I fancy, but not the alienist."</p> + +<p>"But what's it all for?"</p> + +<p>"Why, you know, Rookie. You've broken down."</p> + +<p>Raven stared at her. Then he laughed.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "let 'em come. Charlotte'll give 'em some dinner and +they can look at the mountain and go back on the six to-night."</p> + +<p>"That's precisely what they won't do," said Nan, her lips tightening. +"At least your sister. She's going to stay."</p> + +<p>"The deuce she is," said Raven. "What for?"</p> + +<p>Then Nan did break out of the stiffness that seemed to have held her +like an armor since the momentary setback of her coming. Her own laugh +ran over her face and creased it into delighted merriment.</p> + +<p>"Why, don't you see?" she asked him. "To brighten your life."</p> + +<p>Raven's eyes met hers with a rueful terror. He reached, at a leap, the +motive for her coming.</p> + +<p>"And you rushed off up here to tell me," he said. "Dear Nan! Good child! +But you don't mean they're actually coming to-day?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I do," she said impatiently. "Didn't I tell you so? They were +going to take the nine. They're well on the way. They'll get a pung or +something at the station and be driving up to the house presently, and +your sister'll give Charlotte the hamper of provisions she brought and +tell her there'll be four to dinner. There'll be five, though. She +didn't know that. She didn't hear about me. I s'pose you'll ask me to +stay."</p> + +<p>Raven put out his hand and stroked her sleeve. This was the first time +she had seemed to him a woman grown. When she came back from school, +those years ago, she had changed to girlhood. It was the girl always +even when she came home from France with a world of hideous memories +sealed away in her heart and brain. They had not, these memories, seemed +so much as to scar her, she had obliterated them so carefully by the +decorum of her desire to make the world no sadder by her knowledge. But +now, at some call, the call of his personal extremity perhaps, she +looked suddenly forceful and mature, as if her knowledge of life had +escaped her restraining hand and burst out to the aid of a knowledge of +him.</p> + +<p>"I don't exactly know," he said, "what to do with them. I don't mind the +alienist of course; but what do you suppose put it into her +head—Amelia's—to bring him along?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Nan, "it's precisely the thing she would do. Don't you see? +She does everything by rule, by theory, the most modern, most advanced. +When Dick wrote her, she made up her mind like a shot. She had to put +you in a pigeon hole. Shell shock, <i>cafard</i>! So the next thing was to +set a specialist on the job. And there you are."</p> + +<p>Raven grinned. The whole thing was more and more fantastic to him.</p> + +<p>"I wonder how Dick likes the hornet's nest," he reflected, "now he's +stirred it up."</p> + +<p>"I can tell you," said Nan, a little white coming round her lips, as it +did when she was excited, "how he liked me. He told me the whole +business last night and I went for him. I told him he was a fool, a +plain downright fool, and he'd seen his last of me till he got us out of +the mess he'd got us into: you, me, and incidentally himself."</p> + +<p>"It is mighty nice of you to come into it," said Raven.</p> + +<p>"Well, how could I help it?" she asked impetuously, "when you're in? +Why, Rookie, wouldn't you——"</p> + +<p>There she stopped, and Raven answered the implication.</p> + +<p>"You bet I would. What concerns you concerns me. But I'd no business to +assume it's the other way about. That is, when it's Dick. You're bound, +you know," he said, in a tentative way he thought he ought to venture +and yet not quite sure of it, "to stand by Dick."</p> + +<p>Nan turned a little, to look at him fully. She seemed to be angry now, +and well it became her.</p> + +<p>"Why am I?" she demanded. "Why am I bound to stand by Dick? I'm bound to +nothing, with any man, Dick least of all, if he won't devote some of his +surplus energy to growing up. So I've told him. He's got to grow up." +But suddenly she seemed to recall herself to another question, put her +personal anger aside and veered to that. "Rookie," she said, "what about +Aunt Anne's will?"</p> + +<p>"Anne's will?" he repeated, staring at her. "Well, what about it?"</p> + +<p>"You've had notice of it, haven't you?" she asked. "Official notice, +that is?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," he said, "before I left town. Whitney went over the whole +ground." But he said it as if it did not interest him to any degree. And +yet, as she amazedly thought, it had, the last time she saw him, +interested him to the exclusion of everything else.</p> + +<p>"I thought I'd remind you," she said, "that it's been in the papers. You +are Miss Anne Hamilton's residuary legatee. Dick knows it. So does your +sister. She'll ask you things. I thought if you'd made up your mind to +refuse it or, in short, anything about it, you'd want to be prepared for +her. Those questions of hers—you can't evade them. They go to the +bottom of your soul—and then some."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Raven dazedly, recalling himself to a complexity he had all +but forgotten. "So they do. I dare say she will ask me. But I +don't—Nan, to tell the truth, I haven't thought of it at all."</p> + +<p>The inevitable comment sprung up in Nan's mind, as if his words had +touched a spring, releasing it:</p> + +<p>"What have you been thinking then?"</p> + +<p>And as if in exact comment upon that, came a sound at the door, a knock, +a hand on the latch and Tira stepped in. Nan turned sharply, and Raven +had only to lift his eyes to see the picture his mind had painted for +him. There she was, a little color in her cheeks from the air, her eyes +heavy, as if she had not slept. She carried the child in his little +white coat and cap, showing, Raven concluded, that she had not been +forced to leave the house in desperate haste. For an instant she +confronted Nan; the life in her face seemed to go out and leave her +haggard. Then, before Raven could take more than the one step forward to +meet her, she had turned and shut the door behind her.</p> + +<p>"Wait for me," he threw back over his shoulder at Nan and ran out.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2> + + +<p>Tira was hurrying through the snowy track, ankle deep at every step. +Raven, bareheaded, ran after. In a minute he had overtaken her.</p> + +<p>"Stop!" he called, breathless, more from his emotion than from haste. +"Stop! I tell you."</p> + +<p>She did stop, and he came up with her. Now, at last, there were tears in +her eyes, and he thought angrily that he had been the one to overthrow +her control more absolutely than the danger she apprehended. He had, he +thought, in this unreasoning anger, promised her asylum in the hut and +she found it invaded. But curiously he did not think of Nan, who had +come uninvited and scared the poor fugitive away. Nan, child and woman, +was always negligible, too near him to be dealt with. But he had offered +this woman the safety of a roof and walls, and she had fled out of it. +At sight of his face, its contrite kindliness, her own set again into +its determined composure. She seemed to see that she could not count on +aid outside herself and returned again uncomplainingly to her old +equilibrium of endurance.</p> + +<p>"Come back," he said. "She's going down to the house with me. Besides, +if she did stay, you'd like her. You'd love her. That's only Nan."</p> + +<p>He said "Nan" of set purpose. It was the custom of this country folk, +when they talked among themselves, to call all alike by their Christian +names, even when they scrupulously used the surname in direct address. +He meant to reassure her. It was a way of bringing Nan into a friendly +nearness.</p> + +<p>"You've heard of her," he said, "Miss Hamilton's niece. She owns the +next house to mine, the Hamilton house. She'll be here this summer. +You'll be neighbors. Come back and speak to her."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira, in a gentle obstinacy. "I guess I'll be gittin' along +toward——"</p> + +<p>Here she stopped. She did not know what the direction or the end of her +journey was to be.</p> + +<p>"You're not going off the place," said Raven bluffly. "That's flat. The +place is mine and you're safe on it. Do you want to go traipsing round +the woods in this snow"—he fell purposely into the country habit of +speech—"and get wet to your knees and have a cold?"</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't have a cold," she said, smiling dimly at him and looking, as +he realized, like a mother who was sorry her son could not have all he +grasped at, but still remained immovable. "I don't hardly remember +havin' one since I was little."</p> + +<p>The child had resumed the rôle of Buddhistic calm temporarily abandoned +last night when he screamed out his distaste for earthly complications, +and Raven, glancing at the solemn blue eyes, saw that the only hope of +moving her lay in him.</p> + +<p>"Do you want," he shot at random, "to have the baby get chilled—and +hungry?" There he broke off, though he saw that did move her. He had to +know from what extremity she fled. "Has this been going on all night?" +he asked.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, with the same air of gently reassuring him. "I slept +'most all night. So did he, Mr. Tenney, I guess. An' we started out all +right this mornin'. But after he'd read the chapter an' prayed, it all +come over him ag'in, an' I had to go."</p> + +<p>"After he'd read his chapter," said Raven. "And prayed! God!"</p> + +<p>The invocation sounded as if he also prayed.</p> + +<p>"This time," she continued, "he—he seemed to have a realizin' sense."</p> + +<p>She paused a perplexed moment. In the little she had said to Raven, he +had noted from the first that she was often blocked by a difficulty in +finding words she thought adequate. "He seemed to know what was comin'," +she said. "He give me warnin'."</p> + +<p>"Warning?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He come in an' he says to me, 'You don't want to go traipsin' +round in this snow.'"</p> + +<p>Raven noted the word and smiled slightly. He and Tenney were at one in +their care for her.</p> + +<p>"'You go up chamber,' he says, 'an' have a fire in the air-tight an' +turn the key. I dunno,' he says, 'what's goin' to happen, this day. I +dunno.'"</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you?" asked Raven.</p> + +<p>"I didn't hardly dast to," she said, with her clear look at him. "I knew +if he knew I's up there he never could stan' it till he—broke in the +door."</p> + +<p>Raven could only look at her.</p> + +<p>"Besides," she said, "even if I be safer in the house, I don't feel so, +somehow. I've always lived a good deal out door."</p> + +<p>"So you came away," said Raven quietly. "You came here." The words +really were, "You came to me," but he would not say them.</p> + +<p>"I did lock the chamber door," she said, "jest as he said. But I locked +it on the outside an' took away the key. I thought he'd think I was +there an' it might keep him out a spell, an' when he did git in, it'd +give him a kind of a shock an' bring him to. It does," she added simply. +"It always gives him a shock, not findin' me. He's asked me over 'n' +over ag'in, when he come to, not to make way with myself, but I never'd +answer. He's got it before him, an' that's about all there is in my +favor, far as I can see."</p> + +<p>The gentle monotony of her voice was maddening to Raven; it brought him +such terrible things, like a wind carrying the seeds of some poisonous +plant that, if they were allowed to spring up, would overrun the world +of his hopes for her.</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't promise him," he said thickly, "but you'll promise me. +Promise me now. Whatever happens to you, you won't make way with +yourself."</p> + +<p>"Why, of course I sha'n't," she said, as if in some surprise that he +should ask it. "How could I? Not while there's baby."</p> + +<p>This threw him back to the sanity of their common cause. They were both +to fight, he for her and she for the mother's one absorbing task: the +child. He returned to his old grave way with her.</p> + +<p>"Now," he said, "you're going to do exactly what I tell you. If you +won't go back to the hut and see Nan, you're to stay here until I've got +Nan and taken her down to the house. And we sha'n't come up here at all, +unless I come to bring you something to eat."</p> + +<p>"I don't want," she hesitated, "to put her out."</p> + +<p>"Nan? You don't put her out. She only came because she didn't find me at +the house. If you don't do precisely what I tell you, that'll be putting +everybody out. I shall make an awful row. Do you hear me?"</p> + +<p>She smiled, a little flicker of a smile. She might not like to be +pursued by jealousy incarnate, but she was, he saw, rather amused at +being fraternally tyrannized over.</p> + +<p>"Now," he said, "I'm going. You're to stand here in your tracks, and +when I've sent Nan down the path I'll come and get you."</p> + +<p>He gave her no time to object, but went back to the hut, and in to +solitude and a deadening fire. He threw open the door of the other room, +though Nan would surely not be there, and swore at not finding her. +Womenfolk were giving him a good deal of trouble with their exits and +their entrances. He mended the fire, snatched up his cap and gloves and +went out again, up the path to Tira. She was standing motionless +precisely, he thought, in the tracks where he had left her, and the +Buddhistic child indifferently regarded him.</p> + +<p>"Come on," Raven called to her, stopping at a pace from them. "She's on +her way down along, and there's a good fire."</p> + +<p>She started obediently after him and Raven, though he saw in her +slowness the hesitating desire to express her distaste for putting any +one out, paid no attention but went on ahead and opened the door.</p> + +<p>"Keep up the fire," he bade her. "I'll be back along about one and bring +you something to eat. The little chap, too. We mustn't forget him."</p> + +<p>She had stepped inside and he was about closing the door; but she turned +and seemed to recover her attitude of protest.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "don't you bring up anything. I shall be gone long 'fore +then."</p> + +<p>"Why, no, you won't," said Raven impatiently. "You're not going back +into that——" he paused, seeking a word that should not offend her. She +had clung to incredible loyalties. Perhaps she even clung to her home.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said earnestly, "it'll be over by then, an' he'll want his +dinner."</p> + +<p>Tenney would want his dinner! He had no words for that. He turned away. +But she seemed to feel the finality of his going. Was he giving her up? +She put the child down on the couch and turned to follow. Raven was just +closing the door.</p> + +<p>"Don't!" she cried. There was piercing entreaty in her voice. "Don't!"</p> + +<p>It was really begging him not to give her up, and though he did not +clearly understand it so, he knew he was forcing on her something to +bear, in addition to all the rest. She must not think that of him. She +must feel safe, in whatever manner it was easiest for her to accept +safety. He smiled back at her in that way Anne Hamilton, when she had +caught him smiling at Nan, thought so maddeningly beautiful. Poor Anne! +She had starved for the sweetness of what seemed to her, in her hunger +of the heart, an almost benedictory tenderness.</p> + +<p>"Don't you worry," he said to Tira, in the phrasing he unconsciously +adopted to her. "Everything's going to be exactly as you want it. Only," +he added whimsically—a tone she had never heard in her life before—"if +I could have my say for a few hours, it would be to find you here when I +come back."</p> + +<p>He closed the door and hurried down the path, moved even beyond his pity +by the certainty that she was nearer him. She had accepted that strange +community of interest between them. She had to be saved and he was to +save her. Now it would be easier. He had no thought but to find Nan down +at the house, but two-thirds of the way along the path he saw her, +sitting on a slant of the great boulder and looking grave. She was not +the Nan who had come to the hut, a half hour ago, so gaily certain of +her welcome. The two women had shied at the sight of each other. He had +cleared up the situation for the one, and now he had to do it for Nan. +That was simple. He had never known her to fail in understanding. He +came up to her and she raised her eyes, earnest now, startled, to his.</p> + +<p>"Aren't you too cold there?" he asked.</p> + +<p>She shook her head and smiled a little.</p> + +<p>"No, not with my fur. I'm afraid the gray squirrels will see me. What +would they think of skinning so many of their little brothers?"</p> + +<p>"Nan," he said, "you saw her."</p> + +<p>She nodded, slid off the rock and stood there, not looking at him. Of +course she saw her, Nan's inner self was answering. Didn't they meet +face to face? But she knew this was but his beginning and she would not +challenge it. He plunged into the turmoil of Tira's affairs, foreign to +him so short a time ago and yet his.</p> + +<p>"She's the wife of the man who bought the old Frye place, next to yours. +He's jealous of her, has fits of insane rage against her and she has to +get out. One day I found her hiding up here in the woods. I told her, +whenever she had to make tracks to come here to the hut, and build a +fire and stay. I leave the key under the stone."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan. "I see."</p> + +<p>"No, you don't," cried Raven, "or you wouldn't look like that. What is +it you don't see? What is it you don't like? Out with it, Nan."</p> + +<p>Nan said nothing, and suddenly he saw she was trembling. It was in her +lips, it must be all over her, because he could see it in her hands, the +tight shut ball of them under her long sleeves.</p> + +<p>"Now," he said, irritated beyond measure by the unkindness of +circumstance, "what is it I haven't made clear? Don't you like her? +Don't you believe in her? Or don't you take any stock in what I tell +you?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I believe you," said Nan quietly. He could see her relax. "As +for liking her—well, she's beautiful. I agree with you perfectly +there."</p> + +<p>But he had not said she was beautiful. That he did not remember.</p> + +<p>"She is, isn't she?" he agreed. "And so—Nan, she's the strangest +creature you ever saw in your life. I suppose I could count up the words +she's spoken to me. But the queer part of it is, I know they're all +true. I know she's true. I'd stake——" there he paused.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan quietly. "I've no doubt she's true. And she's a very +lucky woman."</p> + +<p>"Lucky?" repeated Raven, staring. "She's the most unfortunate creature I +ever saw. Lucky! what do you mean by that?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Nan, and now she spoke with an edge in her voice, "what's +she going to do about it? She's in danger of her life, you say." He +nodded absently, his mind going back to that word, lucky. "She's afraid +of her husband, afraid he'll kill her."</p> + +<p>"Not so much that as afraid he'll kill the child."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, isn't she going to leave him?"</p> + +<p>"No. She won't."</p> + +<p>"Have you asked her?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Raven. "I asked her at once. I told her I'd send her +away from here, find her something to do: just what anybody'd say in a +case like that."</p> + +<p>"And she wouldn't let you?"</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't let me."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" asked Nan. "Does she—love the brute?"</p> + +<p>She might have flicked a lash across his face and his nerves winced +under it. There was, she saw, in his mind, something disparaging to the +woman in coupling her with a softness misplaced.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he said, with a thoughtful precision. "Sometimes I think +she's all mother: doesn't care about anything but the child. I know +she's square, knew it at once, but that doesn't mean I know any more +about her. She's a locked door to me."</p> + +<p>His tone was low, but it told Nan how he wished the door would open and +let him in to persuade her to her own well-being. She looked at him a +moment, as he stood staring down at his feet where a ragged wisp of +yellowed brake came through the snow, looked as if he hurt her beyond +endurance, and yet she had to probe ill circumstance to its depths. Then +she spoke, but in her old voice of childlike gentleness toward him:</p> + +<p>"I see. I really believe, Rookie, I do see."</p> + +<p>He looked up at her in a palpable relief.</p> + +<p>"That's a good girl," he said. Again she was half child to him. "You'll +take a hand, too, won't you?"</p> + +<p>That was more than she had bargained for. She would believe in the +mysterious woman and leave him free to carry out any mission, however +sophistical or chivalrous, he would. But she had not expected to enter +the arena with him and defend the martyr thrown to the wild beast of +marital savagery. Raven felt her recoil.</p> + +<p>"I can't do anything for her," he pursued, with a discouragement she +read. "Anything real, that is. I can give her the shelter of the hut, +but he'll find that out some day and go crashing in. I can't be there +always. Fact is, I can't be there at all."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan. "I see." There was in her voice a sweetness new to him. +"I'll do anything you say, Rookie, to make your mind easy. What do you +want me to do. Take her away from here?"</p> + +<p>He considered a moment. Yes, that was really what he did want. She had +put the words into his mouth.</p> + +<p>"But," said Nan practically, "what you've got to do now is to go down to +the house and be tried for your life. Your sister'll be there something +after two. And Dick. And the alienist."</p> + +<p>Raven shrugged his shoulders as if he shook them free of a burden.</p> + +<p>"I don't care anything about the alienist," he said. "Nor Dick. I do +care a lot about Amelia. She's an awful bore. But it can't be helped. +Come on down."</p> + +<p>"You know," said Nan tentatively, as they took the road, "we could ask +Charlotte for a luncheon and go off over the mountain. You've got +snowshoes, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>Raven shook his head.</p> + +<p>"You can't foil Amelia," he said, "by running away from her. She'd camp +for the winter. Or she'd get on our trail and follow us. No, we've got +to see it through."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2> + + +<p>At the house they found Charlotte, in a silent alertness, making ready +for the guests whom Nan, before going up to the hut, had announced to +her. She was systematically refusing to be flurried, but Raven knew that +Amelia, with her rigid conventions and perilous activity, was a +disquieting guest. Remembering that, he took the incident with an +ostentatious lightness, and Nan followed his lead. Presently Charlotte's +kind face relaxed, and when they saw she was continuing her preparations +with a less troubled brow, Raven took Nan upstairs to the great west +room made ready for his sister with a fire roaringly active. There he +installed her, and when she reminded him that the room had been wakened +from its winter drowse to this exhilaration for Amelia, he bade her +"hush up and stay put." Two facts were paramount: she was the first +comer and this was the best room. But, Nan said, she wasn't going to +stay over night. She should get the six o'clock back to Boston. Raven +might here have reflected that, if she had merely the fact of Amelia's +coming to break to him, she could have done it by telephone. Was there +something in the unexpectedness of finding him immersed in the problem +of Tira that had overthrown her preconceived plan? Had she, finding him +absorbed in a new association, lost immediate interest in the drama she +had mischievously meant to share?</p> + +<p>"I take it for granted," she said, "you'll let Jerry carry me to the +station."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven, impishly determined, "you're going to stay. You'll +borrow nighties and things from Amelia."</p> + +<p>"Seethe the kid in its mother's milk?" inquired Nan, her own impishness +flashing up, irresistible. "Come up here to undermine her and then +borrow her things?"</p> + +<p>"Seethe the kid in its own tooth paste," said Raven. "Yes, you're simply +going to stay. It's foreordained. Actually you came up here to help me +out in more ways than one."</p> + +<p>"Did I?" she asked, and reflected. She had one of her moments of clever +guesswork over him. Rookie was a simple proposition. She could always, +she had once boasted to him, find him out. And reaching about for the +clue, suddenly she had it and proclaimed it in triumph.</p> + +<p>"I've got it. Your farmer's wife! you want me to do something, something +she won't let you do. It's what we said. You want me to take her back +with me."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "Just that."</p> + +<p>They stood looking at each other gravely in the silence of the gaily +flowered room with the great blaze rushing up the chimney. It might have +seemed that they were measuring each other. Yet they were inadequately +matched, for though Raven knew Nan, it was not especially in her +relation to him, and she knew herself and him intimately, in their +common bond. The woman was the more intuitive, but the man was no less +honest. She thought a moment now, her gaze unseeingly following the +pattern of the rug at her feet.</p> + +<p>"Very well," she said. "I'll go over to the house and get some things, +and I'll stay."</p> + +<p>There were, they both knew, bureau drawers full of Aunt Anne's things, +doubtless in the perfect order that was a part of her exquisite mastery +of life. She disliked traveling with a cumbersome outfit, even from the +city to this ancestral foothold. Everything possible was left behind her +in each place.</p> + +<p>"I'll go with you," said Raven. She should not poke into the cold house +alone for the first time since she had inherited it, and encounter the +desolation of change.</p> + +<p>They went downstairs and out into the road, Charlotte looking from the +window after them and wondering if they were bound on some jaunt that +would leave her to encounter Mrs. Powell undefended. Nan's spirits +always came up in the out-of-doors. She was a normal creature, needing +to be quickened only by full air. She began to laugh.</p> + +<p>"Rookie," she said, "I could tell you something funny."</p> + +<p>"Fire away," said Raven.</p> + +<p>"It's about my staying. I didn't bring any real things, because I knew I +could come over here and get some, but my toothbrush is right here in my +coat pocket. Don't you see, Rookie? I was going to stay if you made me, +but not if you didn't, and you weren't to know I so much as thought of +it."</p> + +<p>"Humbug!" said Raven. "I might ha' knowed."</p> + +<p>They came to the house, a great yellow square, well back from the road, +and there being no path through the snow, Nan boasted of her boots and +laughed at him for ordering her to wait until he went back for a shovel. +So he strode ahead and broke a path and she followed, and he was not +really concerned for her because she looked so fit; it seemed unlikely +the natural conditions of nature would hurt her, however hostile. She +opened the door with the key produced from her coat pocket and stepped +into the great hall, darkened from the obscurity of the rooms on each +side where shades had been drawn, and a winter coldness reigned. Nan +gave herself no time to shiver over the chill of her homecoming, but ran +up the stairs as if she expected to find the sun at the end, and Raven +stood in the hall, waiting, and the presence of Anne seemed suddenly +beside him, and something he tried to think of as the winter cold +(though it was far more penetrating and ethereal) struck him with a +chill. Anne, the poignant memory of her, was certainly there with him as +he stood absently following with his eyes the bridge-crossed road of the +old landscape paper and thinking how different it used to look when the +summer sunlight struck it through the open door; and Anne was beating, +with her beautiful hands, at his unwilling heart, crying:</p> + +<p>"Let me in! let me in to crowd Nan and that common woman out!"</p> + +<p>Nan, coming down with a roll under her arm, glanced at him, perturbed. +He had, she judged, been seeing ghosts. They went out and locked the +door behind them (locking in, Nan silently hoped, the ghosts also), and +hurried back along the road. And when they had gone into his house +again, Raven told her to run upstairs and put her things in the west +chamber.</p> + +<p>"Scatter 'em all over the place," said he. "Amelia'll fight for that +room. She'll fight tooth and nail. I sha'n't let her have it, not even +if you give it up. Understand?"</p> + +<p>"But what is she going to have?" Nan asked, from the stairs.</p> + +<p>"She's going to sleep down here, back of the dining-room," said Raven +perversely, "in the room they made over for Old Crow when they were +going to get him to give up the hut and come down here to die. Amelia's +scared out of her boots in the country, unless she hears voices on every +side of her. I know Amelia. Cut along and come down again and help me +set the scene."</p> + +<p>They did set the scene, with an exhilaration that played back and forth +between them like a heady atmosphere. Charlotte was bidden to make the +bed in Old Crow's room and while Raven built the fire, Nan helped +Charlotte. And when the pung drove up from the station at the moment Nan +had foreseen, she and Raven were sitting before the dining-room fire, +apparently deep in talk. Whether Charlotte took her cue from them they +did not know, but she was too busy in the back of the house to appear at +once, and Mrs. Powell and Dick came in unheralded, turning first to the +dining-room. There sat the two, absorbed. The visitors began, on an +according note.</p> + +<p>"John!" cried Amelia, and "Nan!" Dick cried, in an identical voice. +Raven and Nan had the same effect of unison. They laughed, it was so +exactly what they had known it would be, and Raven came forward, put his +hands on his sister's shoulders, and gave her a little shake.</p> + +<p>"Now, Milly," he said, "what the dickens are you up here for?"</p> + +<p>Nan, having alienists on her mind, and finding none, was plumping her +question at Dick:</p> + +<p>"Where's Doctor Brooke?"</p> + +<p>Dick evaded it by the self-evident statement that he hadn't come, and +ended in a morass of frowning confusion.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Powell turned to her with a surprised interrogation, a doubtful +warmth. It tried subtly to convey an entire acceptance of her as an +individual, combined with disapproval of finding her in the spot she had +no excuse for seeking. And while they were exchanging civil commonplaces +veiling unspoken implications, Raven was looking at his sister and +thinking, in a whimsical terror, what a very large grain of sand she was +likely to prove in the machinery of his daily life, and how little she +had changed during his absence from America. Here she was, so +indomitable in every particular that you could almost believe she was +going to be as lasting as the processes that went to her equipment. She +had, you learned to know, tackled life as a servant to be governed, an +enemy to be downed. If it had antidotes, she would lose no moment in +equipping herself with them. If circumstance proved unfriendly, she +would ignore it and forge ahead. She was, Raven had always recognized, +the feminine replica of his father's special type. As to her looks, she +was a thin, whip-like woman, who gave an impression of wiry endurance +and serviceable resiliency. You would expect her to be hard to the +touch, mental or moral, and yet she could double, evade, rebound. Put +her in a hole, and she soon proved to you that its obscurity was the +last place where she proposed to stay. She looked the latest thing +evolved by the art of man. Her clothes were the prevailing fantastic +creation, and yet, on her, they were not illogical. They were the +plumage of an eccentric bird hatched to look that way. Her face, in its +sandy monotone of color, fitted the art of her wonderful and yet not too +noticeable hat, and her gloves and veil were the last word of style. +Amelia had begun making herself, Raven used to think, long before God +stopped making her. As a girl, she had gone after strange gods of +culture and æstheticism, forsaking them, when they toppled, for newer +gods still; but always she was undaunted, always persisting in her +determined pose of governing the situation and her own attitude toward +it. And Amelia, he knew, could hang on like grim death.</p> + +<p>"But Nan!" she was exclaiming, "who'd have expected to find you here?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Nan, in the shock of realizing she hadn't quite remembered +what Amelia was like, and ranging herself to fight on Rookie's side, +"who'd have expected you, Mrs. Powell?"</p> + +<p>Dick stood frowning at them impartially and twisting his hat in his +hands like a sulky boy.</p> + +<p>"Have you opened your house?" Amelia persisted. "You're not staying——"</p> + +<p>"She's staying here," said Raven. "Nan's taken pity on me and come up +for a visit. Oh, Charlotte! here you are. Show Mrs. Powell to her room, +will you?"</p> + +<p>Charlotte appearing, white-aproned, in the doorway, looking like the +beneficent goddess of home, Mrs. Powell greeted her urbanely and asked +appropriate questions. Was she well, as well as she looked? And how was +her husband? Always well, she remembered. Yes, she would go to her room, +please. But she'd go up by herself. She knew the way. She should think +so, indeed! And her reminiscent laugh endowed them with the picture of +the little girl she had been, born and brought up in this very house.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but it isn't up," said Raven cheerfully. "It's the west bedroom."</p> + +<p>"Not——" she began, and he nodded, taking her coat from the chair.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Old Crow's room. What was going to be his if he hadn't given 'em +the slip. I put Nan into the west chamber. You'll be awfully comfortable +in that room, Milly. I'll take in your bag."</p> + +<p>Amelia, immediately circumspect when she did not see her way, did follow +him, but she was in as great a state of suppressed dudgeon as a +civilized lady, living by the latest rules, allows herself to be. Dick +and Nan, left alone in the dining-room, turned upon each other like two +young furies.</p> + +<p>"You came up here," said Dick, in a tone of ill-suppressed ire, "to tell +him we were coming. I call it a mean trick."</p> + +<p>"What about you?" inquired Nan. "You'd better not talk about tricks. Can +you think of a meaner one than giving him away to the entire middle +west?'"</p> + +<p>"The middle west!" echoed Dick bitterly. "I told my mother."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you told your mother. And she comes up here with her alienists."</p> + +<p>"You'll notice," said Dick icily, "the alienist didn't come."</p> + +<p>"I assume," said Nan, "he's expected on the next train. Or he's going to +pounce some time when Rookie isn't prepared."</p> + +<p>"You little beast!" said Dick. "You don't deserve it, but I'll inform +you he isn't coming at all. I choked him off. I told him mother's the +one that's dotty or she wouldn't have called him in, and Uncle Jack +wasn't a patient and never'd consent if he knew. And he was an awfully +decent fellow and said nothing would induce him to come."</p> + +<p>"You did, did you?" said Nan ungratefully. "Well, you'd better. You've +made enough mischief for one not very inventive young person, don't you +think? And wouldn't it seem to you you'd better use your influence with +your mother to-morrow morning and get out of here?"</p> + +<p>"Out of here?" repeated Dick. "Out of my uncle's house. You +act——" here he paused.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan, "I do act precisely that way. I act as if I had more +right here than you. And I have. For I adore Rookie. And that gives me a +right to stay with him and fight for him, and die for him, if I want to. +And you don't care a sixpence, or you wouldn't have brought this on +him."</p> + +<p>Dick, the man, cooled sooner than she. He paled, and stood looking at +her. Then he spoke in a voice dulled by wonder:</p> + +<p>"I believe you do adore him."</p> + +<p>"Of course I do," cried Nan, all her anger of impatience thrilling in +her voice. "I love him more than anything in this world or the next and +I always did and I always shall."</p> + +<p>This Raven, coming back through the hall, heard.</p> + +<p>"Good Lord!" he said to himself. "Good Lord!"</p> + +<p>So these two, with all the forces of probability and beckoning fortune +pushing them together, could not approach even within hailing distance. +It was the hideous irony of a world bent on disorder. He walked in on +them with a consciously grave aspect of recalling them to their more +reasonable selves.</p> + +<p>"What are you two scrapping for?" he inquired, and Nan looked at him +humbly. She hated to have him bothered by inconsiderable persons like +herself and Dick. "Don't you know you've got the universe in your fists +for the last time you'll ever have it? You're young——"</p> + +<p>There he stopped awkwardly in the enumeration of their presumable +blessedness. It was Nan's face that stopped him. It had paled out into a +gravity surprising to him: a weariness he had often expected to see on +it after her work abroad, but had not yet found there.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, in a tone that matched her tired face, "we're young +enough, if that's all."</p> + +<p>The talk displeased her. Nan never liked people to be dull and smudgy +with disorderly moods. She kept a firm hand on her own emotions and +perhaps she could not remember a time when they had got away from her +under other eyes. Aunt Anne was partly responsible for that, and partly +the proud shyness of her type.</p> + +<p>"No, Rookie," she said, "we won't fight. Not here, anyway. Not in your +house."</p> + +<p>She held out a careless hand to Dick, who looked at it an instant and +then turned sulkily away. "Young cub!" Raven thought. He should have +kissed it, even gone on his knees to do it, and placated her with a +laughing extravagance. He recalled the words he had caught from her lips +when he was coming in and flushed to his forehead over the ringing +warmth of them. He bent to the fine hand about relaxing to withdrawal, +after Dick's flouting, drew it to his own lips and kissed it: not as he +would have had Dick do it but yet with all his heart. As he lifted his +head he smiled into her eyes, and their look smote him. It was as if he +had somehow hurt her.</p> + +<p>"O Rookie!" she said, under her breath.</p> + +<p>And at the instant, while they stood awkwardly in the rebound from +emotions not recognized, Amelia came out from her bedroom, perfected as +to hair and raiment, but obviously on edge and cheerfully determined on +not showing it. Evidently she liked Old Crow's room no more than she +might have guessed.</p> + +<p>"O Lord!" said Raven ruefully to his inner self, "we're going to have a +cheerful house-party, now ain't we?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2> + + +<p>The afternoon went off moderately well. Nan forgot the late +unpleasantness between her and Dick and assumed they were on their usual +terms, a fashion of making up more exasperating to him than the quarrel +itself. He was too often, he suspected, out of the picture of her +immediate mind. But it was most unproductive to sulk. When she forgot +and he reproached her for it, she forgot that also; and now when she +suggested a walk he got his cap with a degree of cheerfulness and they +went out, leaving Raven and his sister together by the fire, for what +proved to be one of the rich afternoons of Raven's life. Amelia sat down +at the hearth and put her perfectly shod feet to the blaze.</p> + +<p>"Now, John," she said crisply, while he was fidgeting about, wondering +whether he dared offer her a book and take himself out of doors, "sit +down and tell me all about it."</p> + +<p>Raven went to the fire, but stood commanding it and her. He might, he +thought, as well meet the issue at once.</p> + +<p>"What?" he asked. "What do you want to know?"</p> + +<p>"You mustn't think I can't sympathize," she informed him, in the clear +tone he recognized as the appropriate one for an advanced woman who sees +a task before her—"damned meddlers," he was accustomed to call them in +his sessions of silent thought—"you mustn't think I'm not prepared. +I've heard lectures on it, and since Dick sent me your letter I've read +more or less."</p> + +<p>"My letter!" groaned Raven. "If ever a chap was punished for a minute's +drunkenness——"</p> + +<p>"Drunkenness?" interrupted Amelia incisively.</p> + +<p>"Oh, drunkenness of feeling—irresponsibility—don't you know? Didn't +you ever hear of a chap's killing himself in a minute of acute +discontent because he couldn't stand the blooming show an instant +longer? Well, I didn't kill myself. I did something worse. I wrote a +letter, and, by an evil chance, it was mailed, and Dick, like a fool, +sent it on to you."</p> + +<p>"Dick did absolutely right," said Dick's mother conclusively. "We won't +discuss that. We'll go into the thing itself."</p> + +<p>"What the deuce is the thing?" Raven inquired. "The letter, or my +bursting into tears, like a high-strung maiden lady, and calling Dick in +to be cried over?"</p> + +<p>"Don't evade it," she charged him, with unabated gravity. "We mustn't, +either of us. You know what I mean—<i>cafard</i>."</p> + +<p>"<i>Cafard!</i>" Then he remembered Dick also had caught up the word, like a +missile, and pelted him with it. He gulped. Ordinary speech wasn't going +to be adequate. She belonged to this infernal age that lived by phrases. +If he told her he was still of the opinion that the world was a +disordered place of torment you could only exist in by ignoring its real +complexion, she would merely consign him to a cell more scientifically +padded, and stand gazing at him through the bars, in solemn sympathy. +"So I've gone <i>cafard</i>," he said slowly, looking down at the fire and +wondering how to answer a fool according to her folly. Or was she +incredibly right? Had he some creeping sickness of the brain, the very +nature of which implied his own insensitiveness to it? "Or do you say +'got' <i>cafard</i>? And what's your personal impression of <i>cafard</i>, +anyway?"</p> + +<p>She had her answer ready. From the little bag in her lap she took out a +small sheaf of folded papers, memorandum slips, they seemed to be, and +whirled them over in capable fingers.</p> + +<p>"It ought to be here," she said absorbedly. "Yes, here it is. No, it +isn't either. It must be among my club notes. What Galsworthy says about +it, you know. He makes it so clear. Just what they mean by it, the +French, how you simply go to pieces. You know, John. Of course you +know."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven drily, "I heard of it remotely among the boys."</p> + +<p>"No wonder it happened to you. Really, you know, John, you ought not to +have gone over there at all, not at your age. It was fine of you. I'm +not denying that. But there were lots of things you could have done at +home: dollar a year men and all that. However, we must take it as we +find it. You've got <i>cafard</i>, and we must make sure you have the best +thing done for you. Do you see?"</p> + +<p>"And what," inquired Raven, curiously, "is the best thing?"</p> + +<p>"My idea," she said, pelting on in her habitual manner of manipulation +without much regard to the material she was working on, "would be for +you to see an alienist."</p> + +<p>"I thought," he was beginning mildly, and paused, with a sense of +danger. He must, he saw, forego the fun of chaffing her from his +awareness that the professional gentleman was to have been sprung on him +to-day, and that he knew equally the infliction could only be deferred. +But how, she would have questioned, did he get his news? Not, he would +have to convince her, through Nan. He amended his attack. "Why didn't +you scare one up and bring him along?"</p> + +<p>She frowned. Amelia was always restive under raillery.</p> + +<p>"We needn't," she said, "go into that. I did hope to arrange it, but +Dick upset things frightfully. He has behaved badly, very badly indeed. +I hope now to persuade you to call in Doctor Brooke yourself. I should +suppose he'd recommend your going into a sanitarium. However, we can't +judge till we see what he says. Only, John"—and here she looked at him +with some appearance of anxiety, as not knowing how he would take +it—"you must give yourself into our hands."</p> + +<p>"Whose hands?" asked Raven. "Yours? Dick's?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear, no, not Dick's." Again she mentally champed her bit. +Evidently Dick had exhausted her forbearance on the way up. "He's +behaved like a——" Invention failed her. "I do wish," she ended +plaintively, "the modern young man and woman had a vestige of respect +left—only a vestige—for their elders. They're queerness itself. Now +Nan! there's Nan. What's she posting off up here for and settling +herself in your house"—in the west chamber, Raven's inner mind +ironically supplied—"and acting as if you couldn't pry her out?"</p> + +<p>"You can't," said Raven. "Nan's here and I'm going to keep her, all +winter, if she doesn't get bored."</p> + +<p>Amelia gave a little staccato shriek.</p> + +<p>"All winter? I can't stay here all winter."</p> + +<p>"Dear old Milly, no," said Raven, with the utmost gentleness. "I +wouldn't have you for the world. It's Nan that's going to stay."</p> + +<p>"Why," said Amelia, "it isn't decent. You're not an old man, John. +Sometimes you don't even look middle-aged."</p> + +<p>"You said I was," he reminded her. "You said I was so old I went and got +<i>cafard</i>."</p> + +<p>"Besides," said Amelia, clutching at her vanishing argument, "age has +nothing to do with it. The older you are the more ridiculous they get +over you, these romantic girls. And you'd cut in and take her away from +Dick, right under his nose."</p> + +<p>Raven suddenly tired of it.</p> + +<p>"Amelia," he said, "don't be a fool. And don't say that sort of odious +thing about Nan. I won't have it. Nan's a child."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Amelia, shaking her waved head with an air of doom. +"Nan's no child. Don't make any mistake about that. She's no child."</p> + +<p>At this, Raven found he was so unreasonably tired of her that he had to +call himself to order and wonder if he really could be disgusted with +Amelia, old Milly who was such a sophisticated fool and yet meant so +well by everybody that you had to keep reproving yourself when you were +tempted to consign her—elsewhere.</p> + +<p>"Milly," he said, in the tone he always had toward her at her worst, a +tone of recalling her, bidding her remember she was a nice ordinary +woman, not an arbiter of social destinies, "Milly, sometimes you're an +awful idiot. Don't you know you are? Don't you see it won't do to keep +hitting me on the raw? I sha'n't stand it, you know. I shall have to +take Nan under my arm and get out and leave you the house to yourself. +It's all very well for you to call down alienists on me, and get me to +put myself under restraint, but Nan's rather sacred to me. You can't +meddle with Nan, and if you weren't so wrapped up in your own conceit, +you'd see you couldn't."</p> + +<p>Amelia seemed to be reflecting on something which resulted in shocking +her into a further uneasiness.</p> + +<p>"And the thing she said! I heard it with my own ears. She adored you! +That's what she said, adored you. To Dick, too, of all people, Dick +she's virtually engaged to."</p> + +<p>Raven remembered a scene in a play where a drunken man lifts a chair and +then, aware of his own possibilities, gently sets it down again. He +wanted to lift a chair. Only he wanted to complete the act and smash it.</p> + +<p>"Milly," he said gently, "I tell you Nan is a child. Doesn't that show +she's a child—the pretty extravagance of it! Why, I'm 'old Rookie' to +Nan. What else do you think I could possibly be?"</p> + +<p>"Heaven knows," said Amelia, tightening her lips. "I can't imagine what +her Aunt Anne would have said. John, wasn't it wonderful her leaving you +practically all her money? And just what might have been expected. She +was bound up in you."</p> + +<p>"O Lord!" said Raven.</p> + +<p>But Amelia, once started, knew no bounds.</p> + +<p>"And that's what I say, John. If you take hold of yourself now and get +into shape again, you've a great many years before you, and Anne's money +with yours—well, I don't see why you shouldn't look forward to a great +deal."</p> + +<p>Raven went over to the window and sat down there staring at the black +bare branches and the clear sky. It seemed to him unspeakably desolate +and even, in its indifference to his own mood, cruel. So was Amelia, he +thought. In spite of her platitudes about enjoying a great deal, she had +him dead and buried. He became absurdly conscious that he was afraid, +but of one thing only: to hear her voice again. Upon that, thinking how +it would actually sound, he turned about and ignominiously left the +room. And since there was no spot in the house where she might not +follow him he took his hat and jacket from the kitchen and went out +through the shed. Charlotte was washing dishes at the sink, but she did +not, according to her custom, look up to pass the time of day. A cloud +rested even on her brown hair and splendid shoulders. Amelia had brought +the cloud. She'd have to get out, even if he had to tell her so.</p> + +<p>With no intention, but an involuntary desire to be where Amelia would +not find him (and also, it was possible, where that other quietest of +women could be found) he went down the road to the maples, and then +plunged into the woods and up the hill. He had first gone along the road +to mislead Amelia, if she chanced to be looking out. He couldn't have +her following, and she was equal to it, pumps and all. Halfway up the +hill, making his way through undergrowth where the snow packed heavily, +he turned off at his left and so got into the wood road. And then, his +breath coming quick from haste and the vexation of the clogged way, he +did not slacken to cool off in the relief of easier going, but, +breathless as he was, began to run, and got more breathless still. Tira +was up there in the hut. He was sure of it. And for those first hurried +minutes he forgot her presence there meant only added misery, but dwelt +upon his own need of such a spirit as hers; the strength, the poise, the +ready coolness.</p> + +<p>At the door he felt rebuffed, it looked so inhospitable, so tight +against him. He tapped and waited. No one came. Then he tried it and +found it locked and the revulsion was bitter. He was about turning away +when it came to him that at least he might go in. The key would be under +the stone. He put his hand into the hollow and found it there, and only +when he was setting it in the lock realized that this meant a deeper +loneliness. It would be easier to think she was there, the key turned +against him, but still in his house, than to find the house itself void +of her presence. He shook himself, in anger at the incomprehensible way +the whole thing was moving him. Why should it move him? Then, finding it +cold, the deserted room, he made himself busy and laid the fire and set +the two chairs hospitably by the hearth. He did not light the fire. It +must be ready for her if she came. After it was in order (her house, it +seemed to him now, with a fatalism of belief he accepted and did not +dwell upon) he sat down by the cold hearth and tried to think. But never +of himself. He thought of her: beautiful, lustrous, caged bird with the +door of her prison open, and who yet would not go. His mind went back to +Milly, waiting there at home to apply scientific remedies to his +diseased spirit, and he laughed a little, Milly seemed of such small +consequence. But the thought of the misery of mind that had brought him +here gave him a new sense of the cruelty of the world. For it had been +the sad state of the whole world he had fled away from and here, as if +all misery had converged to a point, he had taken a straight path to the +direst tragedy of all: a mother trying against hope to save her child, +the most beautiful of women pursued by sex cruelty, the gentlest +threatened by brute force. How could he save her? He could not, for she +would not be saved. He sat there until the dark in the corners crept +toward him like fates, their mantles held up in shadowy hands, to +smother him, and then suddenly remembering Nan and hospitable duties +down below, he got up, chilled, went out, and locked the hut behind him. +The house he found was a blaze of windows. Charlotte had lighted lamps +and candles all over it. He was half amused by that, it gave such an air +of fictitious gayety. He did not know Nan had whispered her to make it +bright because he would see it, coming up the road.</p> + +<p>The three were in the library by the fire. Amelia had dressed for supper +in chiffon absurdly thin and curtailed, neck and hem, so that Dick had, +without being told, brought her fur coat and put it about her shoulders. +That was just like her, Raven thought, as he went in upon them, to go by +the clock and, because winter evenings necessitated evening dress, +ignore the creeping cold of a country house. Nan wore her gown of the +morning, and her stout shoes. Indeed she had to, Raven reminded himself, +when he was about to commend her for good taste. She had brought only +her little bag. Nan was now sweet reasonableness itself. No sleepiest +kitten, claws in drawn, could have been softer. Amelia was baiting her, +asking her, with a reproving implication that she ought not to have been +in a position to know, about the life over seas, and Nan was answering +by the card, compliantly, sincerely.</p> + +<p>She had determined, Raven could see, that there should be no more +ructions in his house. When he came in, they looked up at him, frankly +pleased, and Amelia as patently relieved.</p> + +<p>"I'm so glad you've come back," she said, getting up so that Dick could +set another chair, and Raven join them in the conventional family +circle. "I've been trying to send Dick out after you, but he wouldn't +go. John, you mustn't get into the habit of wandering off alone like +that. You really mustn't."</p> + +<p>Raven grimaced as he took the properly adjusted chair, and wondered +whether he'd got again to invite Milly to shut up. But Dick did it, in +an honest despair that seemed entirely adequate.</p> + +<p>"Ain't mother the limit?" he remarked, to no one but perhaps his own +wondering mind.</p> + +<p>Raven gave a little bark of laughter, and Amelia betrayed no sign of +having heard. But Raven caught the grateful tribute of Nan's tone.</p> + +<p>"My hanky," she said, "Dickie, dear."</p> + +<p>He saw it dropped, saw Dick dart for it, and Nan, accepting it, give his +fingers a little squeeze. Evidently Dick, who flushed red, was being +paid for having briefly illuminated mother. Supper was got through +successfully, Raven and Dick doing active service. Raven talked about +thinning out the lower woods and Dick played up beautifully, taking it +with the greatest attention and answering at length. Mother was to be +shunted imperceptibly from <i>cafard</i>. And when they had finished and +returned again to the library fire, Nan, after perhaps half an hour of +desultory talk, yawned rudely and asked if she might go to her bed. +Raven suspected her. He noted how she half closed the library door +behind her; so he took the chair she had lately left, commanding the +crack of it. In about the time he expected, he heard her in the hall. +She had come down the back stairs, he judged, and was now putting on her +hat and coat, with scarcely a rustle, the sly one!</p> + +<p>"Draught from this door?" he suggested, got up and closed it.</p> + +<p>At least Dick shouldn't know she was going. If anybody stole behind her +in the friendly "outdoors" it should be he, to guard her from her own +foolhardiness. These roads were paths of peace, but Nan was equal to +adventure more extended. She might have snatched snowshoes, in her +stealthy preparation, to go off wood wandering. She might brave the +darkness where, to country minds, lurked the recurring legend of the +"lucivee." There was no actual danger, but Pan might be wandering.</p> + +<p>"These old windows are draughty, too," said Raven. He paused at one of +them, fumbling with the catch. Really he was watching the path. There +she was, at the left, going toward her own house. He pulled down the +shade and lounged back to his seat by the fire.</p> + +<p>"You probably feel the cold," said Milly drowsily. The fur coat and +blazing logs were beginning to do their blessed work. "Your vitality is +low."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven piously. He would have sworn to anything. "Just so." +He went on talking to Dick, and Dick caught the ball neatly, so that +presently they could glance at each other in a community of +understanding. "She's off!" said Raven's face, and Dick's returned, +"Right you are!" while he droned on about "popple," the local word for +poplar, and the right month for peeling and whether it really paid to +cut it if you had to hire. Raven loved Dick at times like these, when he +was neither sulky over Nan's aloofness nor didactic about democracy and +free verse. Amelia choked and came awake.</p> + +<p>"Did I," she ventured, fearing a too frank reply, "did I—make a noise?"</p> + +<p>"No, dear," said Raven mellifluously.</p> + +<p>If Milly had been cleverer she would have remembered that when he was +deceiving her he spoke, "as if butter wouldn't melt," as if his vocal +arrangements dropped oil and balm.</p> + +<p>"Dick and I are talking out this lumber question. Don't you bother. You +don't know anything about popple."</p> + +<p>Milly, reassured, dropped her cheek, with a little breath, and closed +her eyes. "Gone?" Dick telegraphed Raven, who nodded "Gone!" took a step +to the door, opened it, and was himself away. He snatched, haphazard, at +a hat and coat on the great chest in the hall. Dick had a way of +throwing things down and leaving them where they fell. Yes, they were +Dick's, and Raven hastily shoved himself into them, judging it was +better, if Dick decided to go roaming, to keep him looking for them. +Then he went out and down the path and along the road where Nan had +gone. He came to her house and stopped, interrogating it. There was no +light. Still she might be in the back part, hunting about for something +she perversely couldn't wait for over night. He went up the path and +tried the front door. It was fastened and he called to her. But there +was no Nan, and he went back to the road and walked up and down, +waiting. If she wanted a run alone in the dark, she must have it. After +he had been pacing for what seemed to him a long time, he heard voices +and the crunch of snow. One voice was hers, and he went on to meet it. +The other, a man's, short-syllabled, replied at intervals. Nan seemed to +be holding forth. They were coming on briskly, Nan and a tall figure at +the other side of the road. She had seen Raven and called, clearly, +though not with any implication of relief:</p> + +<p>"That you, Rookie?"</p> + +<p>He came up to them and saw, with a surprise out of all proportion to the +event, in this neighborhood where anybody might join anybody else in +familiar intercourse, that it was Tenney. They stopped, Tenney a step +behind her. It looked as if he understood he had fulfilled his civility +to her and could be dismissed.</p> + +<p>"I've been calling on Mrs. Tenney," said Nan, "and I asked Mr. Tenney to +walk home with me. Thank you, Mr. Tenney. Good night. Think it over, +won't you?"</p> + +<p>Tenney turned, without a word, and went back along the road, with his +habitual look, Raven had time to note, in the one glance he cast after +him, of being blown by a hurrying wind. Raven faced about with Nan and +asked at once, in the excess of his curiosity:</p> + +<p>"Now what are you up to, calling on the Tenneys?"</p> + +<p>Nan answered seriously. There was trouble in her voice.</p> + +<p>"Well, I got thinking about them so I knew I shouldn't go to sleep, and +I just went up by, without any real plan, you know. The woman had such +an effect on me. I couldn't keep away from her."</p> + +<p>Raven was struck with the inevitableness of this. Yes, she had that +effect. You couldn't keep away from her.</p> + +<p>"I'd no idea of going in," said Nan. "And I did want a run. Isn't the +air heady? But just as I got to the house, she opened the door. She was +coming out, I suppose. She had the baby. The baby was all wrapped up. +She wasn't, though. She had just an apron on her head. And when the door +opened, I could hear him yelling inside. I don't know whether he was +driving her out or whether she'd started to run for it."</p> + +<p>"Well?" prompted Raven harshly. Why should she be so slow about it? +"What then?"</p> + +<p>"I went up the path," said Nan, in a half absent way, as if what she was +telling seemed far less important than the perplexing issues it had bred +in her. "I said good evening to her. I went by her: I think I did. I +must have got into the kitchen first. And there he was. He's a striking +fellow, isn't he, Rookie? Like a prophet out on the loose, foaming at +the mouth and foretelling to beat the band. He'd got something in his +hands. It was little and white; it might have been the baby's cap. He +was tearing it to rags. You ought to have seen him at it."</p> + +<p>"You shouldn't have gone in," said Raven angrily. "The fellow's dotty. +Don't you know he is? Did he speak to you?"</p> + +<p>Nan gave a little laugh. Suddenly the incongruity of it came over her.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "I spoke to him. Suddenly I seemed to see how Charlotte +would have spoken—that mother way, you know, men can't stand up +against. I said—I <i>think</i> I said—'Mr. Tenney, what under the sun are +you carrying on like this for? I should think you were in liquor.'"</p> + +<p>Raven, wondering if he should cry at the relief of having her safe out +of the ogre's den, had to laugh with her.</p> + +<p>"It caught him," said Nan, beginning to enjoy it, "as grandsir used to +say, between wind and water. He looked down at the thing in his +hands—the rags, you know—and dropped them into the wood-box. You see +that was the real wiliness of the serpent, my telling him he was in +drink. He's full of spiritual pride, all eat up with it. Then I played +Charlotte some more. I told Mrs. Tenney to come in, and remarked that +she'd get her death o' cold; and she did come in and her eyes—what eyes +they are, Rookie!—they were big as bread and butter plates. I suspected +she regarded me as specially sent. And I lit on him and told him, in +good set terms, that if I knew of his driving his wife out of the house +in one of his sprees, I'd have him hauled up and testify myself. Then I +ordered him to get his hat and walk home with me."</p> + +<p>"And he did!" cried Raven, in amazement at her. "Oh, yes, of course he +did. Go on."</p> + +<p>"Yes, he came to heel with a promptness that would have surprised you. +And I didn't let up a minute. I discoursed all the way, on the whole +duty of man."</p> + +<p>"Did he answer?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. That is, he spoke twice, the only times I'd let him. Once he broke +in: 'I ain't a drinkin' man.' That rankled, you see."</p> + +<p>"What did you say?"</p> + +<p>"I said: 'Yes, you are, too. No decent man would act as you've been +acting, unless he was drunk. And probably,' I said, 'you've been brewing +it in the cellar, and selling it to the neighbors.'"</p> + +<p>"That was a bliffer."</p> + +<p>"It was. I had an idea he might drop dead in his tracks."</p> + +<p>"That all he said?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Oh, no, there was one other thing. He asked me if I were saved."</p> + +<p>"What did you say?"</p> + +<p>"Told him not to be a fool."</p> + +<p>Raven lifted up his voice and laughed.</p> + +<p>They were opposite his own house, and Dick, who had just opened the +front door, heard him.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Dick icily, when they came up to him. "So that's where you +were. Uncle Jack"—for now he saw he had just cause for anger—"I'll +thank you to let my hat alone."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Dick," said Raven meekly. "But I saw it and it's such a dandy +hat."</p> + +<p>"Don't be rude to your only uncle," said Nan.</p> + +<p>She was slipping off her coat and Raven judged, seeing her so calm, that +her evening pleased her.</p> + +<p>"Mother in there?" Raven inquired of Dick.</p> + +<p>He had hung up the pilfered coat and hat, with great nicety of care, in +the hall closet.</p> + +<p>"No," said Dick. "She's gone to bed."</p> + +<p>The implication was that she shouldn't have been allowed to get bored +enough to go to bed.</p> + +<p>"I'm going, too," said Nan. She gave her hand to Raven. "'Night, +Rookie." Then she apparently remembered Dick, and shook her head at him. +"Silly!" she commented. "Nobody'll love you if you behave like that."</p> + +<p>Dick did not answer. He turned about and went into the library, and +Raven following, after he had seen Nan at the top of the stairs, found +him reading a day-old paper with a studied absorption it was evident he +was far from feeling.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2> + + +<p>Dick tossed the paper aside and turned upon Raven who, taking his chair +at the hearth, had bent to throw on a handful of light wood: the sticks +that wake and change a room so completely that they might almost lighten +the mood of the man their burning plays upon.</p> + +<p>"Look here," said Dick, "you put the devil into Nan. What do you do it +for?"</p> + +<p>Raven looked up at him in a complete surprise.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't. The devil? Nan's got less to do with the devil than +anybody you and I ever saw. She's kept herself unspotted. She's a +child."</p> + +<p>This last he said of sudden intent for, having noted its effect on +Milly, he wondered how it would strike Dick.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, she isn't," said Dick, with bitterness. "Unspotted—yes, of +course she is. But Nan knows her way about. She can play fast and loose +with the rest of 'em."</p> + +<p>He stopped, conscious of talking too much, and ashamed of it. Raven +remembered that quick interchange of ownership and repudiation between +the two as they flashed back at each other in his library, those weeks +ago, but he could not tell the boy Nan had kissed him out of her +impetuous bounty only because the terrors of the time had lifted her +beyond habit and because Dick's need was so great. She had put the +draught of life to his lips, that was all. He remembered Monna Vanna +going to the sacrificial tent, and his heart melted at the thought of +woman's wholesale giving even when the act is bound to recoil upon +herself alone.</p> + +<p>"You'd better not remind her of anything she said to you over there," he +allowed himself to advise. "Things were pretty strenuous then, Dick, +don't you remember? We've come back to a"—his voice failed him as he +thought how base a time they had returned to—"a different sort of thing +altogether. I'm an old fellow, according to you, but there's one thing I +know. You won't get a girl by 'flying off the handle,' as Charlotte +would say. Honest, old boy, when you have these fits of yours, you don't +seem, according to the prophet of your generation, as impressive as +usual."</p> + +<p>"Who is the prophet of my generation?" put in Dick sourly, as if that +were the issue between them.</p> + +<p>"G. B. S., I've understood," said Raven mildly. "Don't I recall your +telling me he was the greatest ever, at least since Aristophanes?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, cut it," said Dick, whose gods were subject to change.</p> + +<p>"Cut it by all means. But there is a thing or two I'd like your vote on. +Your mother now: what's your impression of her plans about staying along +here? Think she's game to tough it out as long as I do?"</p> + +<p>"She'll stay as long as Nan does." Dick was frowning into the fire, and +Raven doubted whether one of his admonitory words had sunk in. "I had an +idea I could go back to town to-morrow morning and wire her I'd broken +my leg or something. But Nan's got to go with me."</p> + +<p>"Nan will do as she pleases," said Raven. He rose from his chair +disgusted with young love so unpicturesque and cub-like. "Turn off the +lights, will you, when you go?" And he went off to bed.</p> + +<p>But in the morning, when he came down, Dick met him at the foot of the +stairs. It was a changed Dick. His lip was trembling. Raven concerned, +yet unable to deny himself a flippant inward comment, thought the boy +looked as if he'd been saying his prayers.</p> + +<p>"She's gone, Jack," said Dick.</p> + +<p>In stress of intimacy, he often dropped the prefatory title.</p> + +<p>"Gone?" Raven's mind flew to Tira. "Where?"</p> + +<p>"Back to Boston. Walked to the station. Took the milk train. Charlotte +says she simply walked out and said she wasn't coming back."</p> + +<p>"Your mother or—you don't mean Nan?"</p> + +<p>"Nan, yes. Do you see mother walking five miles to a train?" But if Dick +was unsettled, this was not his surly mood of the night before. "If I +drove her away"—he began, and then ended with an appealingness to be +remembered of the Dick who had not been nettled by life, "Jack, I wish +she wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"I'll ask Charlotte," said Raven. "Your mother out yet? No? Well, don't +bring her into it."</p> + +<p>He went off to the kitchen where Charlotte was just setting little +silver pots on a damask-covered tray. She glanced up at him, not +absently, because Charlotte always seemed so charged with energy that +she could turn from one task and give full attention to another.</p> + +<p>"For Mrs. Powell," she explained, setting her hands to the tray, as if +she expected him to make whatever remark he would without delaying her. +"She's havin' her breakfast in bed."</p> + +<p>"Dick tells me——" he began, and she nodded.</p> + +<p>"Yes, she's gone. Nan, you was inquirin' about, wa'n't you? It's all +right. I shouldn't ask any questions, if I was you: not yet anyways. +I've got a kind of an idea Dick'll be takin' the noon back to Boston. +Maybe his mother, too. But there!"</p> + +<p>This last was as if it were too much to hope for, and she lifted the +tray and hurried away with it to Old Crow's room. Raven went +thoughtfully back to the hall where Dick stood waiting, gnawing at his +lip, and looking curiously like the Dick who had been a boy and come to +Uncle Jack to have his fortunes mended as they affected kite or ball.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "she's gone. Don't take it that way, old man. Nan +knows what's best for her."</p> + +<p>"Walked to the station," said Dick bitterly. "Just plain cut stick and +ran. Probably carried a bag. All because I made it so sickening for her +she couldn't stay."</p> + +<p>Raven thought of the things Nan had carried in the work of the last +years—supplies, babies born on retreats. She had seen the fortunes of +war. But there was no need of bracing Dick by telling him he could +testify she hadn't any bag. If the boy could be melted into a passion of +ruth over Nan, instead of a passion of resentment, so much the better +for him.</p> + +<p>"Come and have breakfast," he said. "Charlotte's bringing it in."</p> + +<p>They went together, and when Dick had bolted his coffee and egg he said:</p> + +<p>"Of course I've got to take the 11.03."</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Raven. He knew if he were a young lover who had +offended Nan and driven her away, that was what he should do: follow and +humble himself before her. "Jerry'll drive you down."</p> + +<p>So it happened that when Amelia, carefully dressed, came out of her room +at noon, Dick had left without a word to her and her dignified +resentment was only diverted by hearing Nan, too, had gone.</p> + +<p>"John," said she, disposing herself by the fire, "I should like to know +how you account for that girl?"</p> + +<p>"For Nan?" said Raven absently. He was wishing Nan had found it easy to +tell him she was going. "I don't account for Nan. I don't have to."</p> + +<p>"So unexpected," said Amelia. "So absolutely impervious to everything +we've brought them up to reverence. It's all of a piece. Depend upon it, +no young girl could go over there and do the things she did and not feel +the effects of it: for life, absolutely for life. You yourself feel the +effects in one way, the young ones in another."</p> + +<p>Raven was very considerate of her, left stranded there with him. But +after the noon dinner, when they settled again by the fire, he began to +realize the magnitude of his task. He was simply saddled with Amelia. +She hadn't been able to get her alienist up here, but she had +constituted herself a psychic detective on her own account. At first he +didn't mind, she was so "simple honest" in her expedients. It was +amusing, to a moderate degree, to evade them. How did he sleep? Did he +dream? Did he know anything about the psychology of dreams? There was +Freud.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Raven interpolated. "Nasty fellow. Peeps and botanizes on his +mother's grave."</p> + +<p>Did the world still seem to him as hopeless as it did at the time of his +writing the letter? That gave him an idea.</p> + +<p>"Where is that letter?" he asked, cutting across the track of her +calculated approaches. "What became of it?"</p> + +<p>She did not evade him. She was too surprised.</p> + +<p>"I gave it," she owned, "to one of our doctors at home. For a medical +congress."</p> + +<p>"The devil you did!" Raven permitted himself. "Milly, sometimes I think +you advanced women—O Lord!"</p> + +<p>"What else could I do?" Milly inquired, with her deliberate +fair-mindedness, which was, he miserably knew, a part of her culture. +"Surely, you wouldn't suppress evidence. And it won't be traced to you. +You're simply Mr. X."</p> + +<p>Raven was silent. He was thinking what a fool he had been to unpack his +heart with words, and that if he told Milly so he should simply be +unpacking it some more. He looked at the clear winter day occupying +itself out there without him, and wondered why the deuce he couldn't put +on snowshoes and tramp off his discontent leaving her to fight her +boredom by the fire. She'd brought it on herself, hadn't she? Nobody +wanted her to come. Was there some hidden force in women, their apparent +vulnerability to the harsh world conditions that were bound to crush out +even them in the end? They seemed so weak you had, in mercy, to +reënforce them and then they proved so horribly strong, and used their +strength against you, depleted as you were by fighting for them. Anyway, +if he could get Milly's blood to moving and pump some of this hill air +into her she, too, might be a more wholesome citizen of even an +unfeeling earth.</p> + +<p>"Want to go to walk, Milly?" he suggested seductively, and she looked at +him pleasantly, grateful for the tone, at least.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "we're so cozy here."</p> + +<p>Cozy! it might be cozy, if that meant being choked. But he thought he +could stand a little more of it, and then he would at least drop asleep +and snore. The indiscretions of the body were terrible to Amelia. And he +did fall into a hopeless lethargy, and only about five o'clock, when the +early dark had come, threw it off and got to his feet.</p> + +<p>"'Bye," he said. "I'll be back for supper."</p> + +<p>Before she could answer, he was gone. Now he was afraid she might say, +with an ill-timed acquiescence, that after all she would have a little +walk, and he knew he simply couldn't stand it. By the fire, making an +inexorable assault on his senses, the calm, steady beat of her futile +talk could be borne. You bore it by listening through a dream. But out +of doors, when the crisp air had waked you, you'd simply have to swear +or run. He did run, snatching his hat as he went, up the road toward +Tenney's. It was not a reasoned flight, but he did want to calm himself +by the light burning through their windows, perhaps a glimpse of Tira +moving about. The night was going to be clear and not too cold for +pleasant lingering. Over beyond the rising slope opposite Nan's house he +heard an owl hooting and, nearer, the barking of a fox. He turned that +way and stood facing the dark slope. He knew what those trees were in +spring, pink and light brown in the marshes at the foot of the rise, +running up into a mist of sunshine with islands of evergreen. Then, +turning to go on, he cast a glance at the house and stopped with a word +of surprise. There was a light. Somebody had broken in (an incredible +happening here) and was beguiled by loneliness and silence into an +absurd security. He turned into the path and went softly up to the front +door, lifted the latch and was stepping in when some one came. It was +Nan. She was in the hall, a pile of blankets in her arms. Seeing him, +she did not start, only laughed a little, all the mischief of her face +running into it and waking it like the sun on moving water.</p> + +<p>"Nan," said Raven, "Nan, my darling, why are you here?"</p> + +<p>Nan did the incredible thing. She laid her pile of blankets in a chair, +came back to him and deliberately put arms over his shoulders and about +his neck. Her face, beautifully sweet in its new flush, was close to +his. It might well be flushed, for he had called her darling, and Nan, +feeling lorn and bewildered in losing the Rookie she used to think she +knew, felt for the instant that she had got home again. She had lost +him, she felt, when she saw the shaken look he gave the strange +beautiful woman up in the hut. Now here he was again, quite the same, +only it was true that she had not seemed to be, for years, what he +called her now.</p> + +<p>"Rookie, my darling," said Nan, seeing no reason why she shouldn't give +him the precious thing back again, "I'm terrible glad you've come. +Charlotte tell you?" She put her cheek against his for a minute, took +her arms away and turned into the west sitting-room where a fire was +leaping and making soft, living shadows on the ceiling. In the middle of +the room she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Look at the shadows," +she said, in a low voice, as if they might hear and flee away. "It's +exactly as if they lived here all the time and waited for us to come +back to them. Look at the ones behind those candlesticks. They've always +been just like this, little old scholarly gentlemen in queer hats +walking along a London street. I used to think they were going to old +second-hand shops to buy old second-hand books. I wouldn't have those +candlesticks moved by half an inch for fear the shadows would get mad +and go with them. Sit down, Rookie, there where you used to read to me. +I'll light up, so we can see each other."</p> + +<p>He did sit down without waiting for her, on the little squat, +old-fashioned sofa, and Nan went about the room with her match and +dotted it with candles. Raven looked after her in her housewifely +progress; he was still concerned, still grave over her leaving his house +for this. She had on her walking suit, whatever frills she might have +discovered upstairs, and she looked ready for outdoor enterprise. What a +hardy child she was, slender and supple, but taut for action in the +homespun service of the day! She threw her match into the fire and came +to him, sat down beside him and, like the Nan of a hundred years ago, +her childhood and his youth, put her head down on his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Nan," said he, abandoning what he sometimes considered the heavy father +attitude and jamming the silky head down into its hollow, "what did you +do it for? Didn't you like my house?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Rookie darling," she said, in a tone of drowsy happiness. "I meant +to stay—truly I did—and cut in when Mrs. Powell tried to get you to +give yourself away so she could tell her alienists how crazy you are. +But if I had, Dick would have stayed, too. He never'd have gone, never +in the world. And he's so quarrelsome."</p> + +<p>"How do you know he's gone?" Raven asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, of course he has. He would, the minute he thought I had. Hasn't +he?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "he has. Nan, why the dickens do you treat him so? +You mean to take him in the end."</p> + +<p>"Do I?" asked Nan, still most contentedly. "Rookie, what a lot you know. +Wake me if you hear a step."</p> + +<p>"A step? Who's coming?"</p> + +<p>"Charlotte. I told her I was no more afraid than up in your west +chamber. Not so much: Dick and his mother can't pounce on me here. I +didn't say that though. Charlotte thinks I just came over for a freak; +but she's coming to stay with me."</p> + +<p>"You don't know what Charlotte thinks," said Raven succinctly. "She's +got a pretty accurate idea of all of us. You're not going to stay here. +That's flat. We'll blow out the candles in a minute or two and poke off +home."</p> + +<p>"This is home," said Nan and rubbed her cheek on his coat. "Darling +Rookie!"</p> + +<p>"You're running away from Milly," said Raven. "That's all right. I wish +I could myself. But what are you going to say when she finds the house +is open and you're here? I found it out and so can she. I was going by +and saw the light."</p> + +<p>"She won't go by and see the light," said Nan, from the same far +distance. "Consider those pumps. She won't go out. If she does, you must +just take her the other way. Head her off, Rookie, that's what you do, +head her off."</p> + +<p>"Do you know, Nan," said Raven, with a sudden resolution, "what Dick +feels about you: I mean, what makes him so sore and ugly? He told me." +(There was a slight disturbance on his shoulder. Nan seemed to be +shaking her head.) "He apparently can't get at you. There's something in +you that baffles him, puts him off. It makes him mad as thunder. You +won't let him in, Nan. You don't let him see you as you are."</p> + +<p>"Why, Rookie!" said Nan. She sat up straight and looked him in the face. +Her eyes were beautifully calm. If her clinging to him was against the +rules of this present life, nothing in her expression showed it. She was +really like a child used to being loved and innocently demanding it. +"Why, Rookie, Dick's not more than half grown up."</p> + +<p>"He writes," said Raven obstinately, aware of having really no argument.</p> + +<p>"What kinds of books? Conventional rot. Verse. Anybody could do it by +the yard. No, you needn't look like that. 'Course I couldn't! But +anybody that could write at all. You could, Rookie, only you wouldn't +have the face. You'd feel such a fool."</p> + +<p>"Of course it's conventional," said Raven, "his poetry is. But that's +natural enough. He belongs to the new school. You don't find him +conventional himself, do you? Too conventional?"</p> + +<p>"He's precisely like his mother," said Nan. She had the air of wanting +to account for him, once for all, and sweep him out of the way. "Only +she's conventional about waving her hair and uplift and belonging to +societies, and he's conventional about brotherhood and a new world and +being too broad-minded to be healthy. Don't you know there are crude +things in a man that have got to stay there, if he is a man? War, now! +if some beast goes out on a prowl (like Germany) the normal man doesn't +call it a herd madness and quote the New Testament. He gets his gun. So +did Dick get his gun, but now he thinks it's all over, he's too +broad-minded to live. Oh, you can laugh, Rookie, but there is such a +thing as being too superior to be decent, and that's Dick. The only time +I come anywhere near liking him is when he forgets to call the world a +fraternal sewing circle and comes out with a healthy damn. That's the +streak of you in him. Don't you know the nicest thing about him is the +streak of you?"</p> + +<p>Raven was not aware of knowing that, but he had to own, though silently, +that there was an exasperating three-quarters of Dick he himself could +not, of late years, get along with. Was it youth? he wondered. Yet Nan +was young. Who so sweetly sympathetic as Nan?</p> + +<p>"Let's not talk about him," said she. "Yes, a minute more, though. I've +sent off a letter to him. Charlotte was to give it to Jerry to mail on +the train. It told him I shouldn't tell where I was, and I certainly +shouldn't come back till he got his mother away from here. He'd simply +got to do it. I told him plainly."</p> + +<p>"And then you're going back? You promised him?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't promise him anything. Because, how could I? I don't know how +things are coming out. There's the woman."</p> + +<p>"What woman?"</p> + +<p>He asked this in a perfect good faith.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Tenney." She withdrew from him slightly. If Tira made his heart +race, she wouldn't hear it. He should not be spied upon. "Don't you +know," said she clearly, "I've got to see this thing through?"</p> + +<p>"See it through?" he repeated. "You can't. She won't let you. She won't +let me."</p> + +<p>"Of course she won't let you. If the man's mad with jealousy, he won't +stand another man's supporting his wife."</p> + +<p>"I should very much doubt if she let you. She's got a loyalty—well, +it's the sort you read about when a brute breaks a woman and she says +she fell and hurt herself. It's been the surprise of my life that she +said a word to me."</p> + +<p>"That's easy," said Nan. "You're so awfully sorry for everybody. They +feel it in you. She thought you were an archangel."</p> + +<p>"An archangel!" groaned Raven. "Good Lord! Well, what do you propose +doing?"</p> + +<p>"Go over there to-morrow. Ask her to come here and help me get the house +in order."</p> + +<p>"Then what? Talk to her? You'll frighten her."</p> + +<p>But he knew Nan would frighten no one, not the least of the maimed and +spent.</p> + +<p>"No, but I thought maybe if things kept happening, I could take her back +with me to town, to work."</p> + +<p>"There's the child," suggested Raven.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's a drawback," she owned seriously. "On the other hand, it's +an advantage. The child might be made the reason: to have somebody look +at him, you know. I suppose you saw he isn't quite right."</p> + +<p>"Not right? what do you mean? Deficient?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Nan. "That or something. Deaf, maybe. But not +right. I hear something. It's Charlotte. Kiss me, Rookie. On my +forehead"—he did it—"on my forehead, on my right cheek, on my left +cheek, on my chin. No, that's all. That's good-night, Rookie—darling +Rookie! It is Charlotte. I'll let her in."</p> + +<p>She went to the door and opened it and Charlotte appeared, done up in an +old-fashioned shawl and—Raven noted in an amused incredulity—a +nondescript knitted thing, old-fashioned when he was a child.</p> + +<p>"A cloud," he said to himself. "That's what they called the thing."</p> + +<p>He felt absurdly thankful at seeing it again. It seemed to assure him +that although the surface of life might heave and sink with revolution +and the fate of dynasties, Charlotte and her equipment of bed-rock +integrity and clouds existed still. She paused in the doorway to take a +basket from Jerry, and closed the door on him, after a casual +good-night. Raven went into the hall. The basket was generous, in its +oval capacity, the contents covered with a napkin.</p> + +<p>"Want this carried upstairs?" he asked, but Charlotte shook her head.</p> + +<p>"No," she said. "It's for her breakfast. I shall be gone 'fore light." +She lifted her sincere gaze to Raven. "I thought I'd come over," she +added. "I shouldn't feel easy to have her here all alone. Jerry said he +wanted I should."</p> + +<p>Raven nodded at her and carried the basket off into the kitchen, and +when he came back both women were upstairs and he heard the interchange +of voices and their quick tread.</p> + +<p>"'Night, Rookie," Nan broke off her housewifely deeds to call, and he +called back:</p> + +<p>"Good night."</p> + +<p>Then he went out and home again, and fulfilled his destiny for the day +by another somnolent hour with Milly before the fire.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2> + + +<p>Nan and Charlotte, each in a front chamber, were soon cozily in warmed +sheets. But when Nan judged Charlotte must be asleep, she got up, put +more wood on the dying fire, slipped on her fur coat over a wrapper, did +up her knees in a blanket and sat down by the window she had not yet +opened, in anticipation of this hour of the silent night. Really she had +lived for it, ever since she entered the hut and found the strange +woman. The night at Raven's house had been as still as this, but there +were invisible disturbances in the air; they riddled her chamber through +and pierced her brain: what Amelia thought, what Dick thought. Here +there was only the calm island of Charlotte's beneficence, and even that +lay stiller than ever under the blanket of a tranquil sleep. She felt +alone in a world that wasn't troubling itself about her, because it +never troubled itself about anything.</p> + +<p>The moon was just up above the fringe of trees at the east and shadows +were black across the snow. She sat looking out with intentness as if +she were there at the window for the sole purpose of watching the silent +world, but really to get her mind in order for the next day and all the +coming days. She felt about the heart the strange dropping we know as +grief. No wonder the mortal creature, looking on at the commotions +within the frail refuge of his body, should have evolved the age-old +phrase that the heart bleeds. Nan's heart had been bleeding a long time. +There used to be drops on each shock of her meeting Raven after absence +and finding herself put away from the old childish state of delighted +possession. At first, she had believed this was one of the mysterious +cruelties of Aunt Anne's inexorable delicacy of behavior; but when she +grew older she had one day a great happy light of understanding, one of +those floods that sweep over youth after washing at the barriers of its +innocence. Rookie himself had put her away. It was one of the scrupulous +things he had done for her, because she had been too ignorant to do them +for herself. He had seen she was grown-up. It was true, Nan had to own, +that this was one of the lines, drawn across her life, that pleased Aunt +Anne most, because it removed her (or seemed to remove her) from Rookie. +Aunt Anne was jealous to her fingertips, the ends of those beautiful, +delicately prisoning hands. Nan had tried never to acknowledge that. It +always seemed such a barbarity to find in Aunt Anne the things that +would have shocked her in herself.</p> + +<p>To-night she looked it in the face. Aunt Anne was jealous. That was the +first count. All her own life, too, Nan had been vaguely irritated by +Raven's not marrying Aunt Anne. He was her property, wasn't he, in a +queer way, never questioned, never, on his part, rebelled against? Yet +it was a bondage. And if the real reason was that Aunt Anne wouldn't +have him, why didn't he play the man and batter down her scruples, even +that barrier of the years between them? But after that sudden look into +Raven's eyes, the night she told him about the will, she had never been +able to think of him as loving Aunt Anne at all. It was that horrible +compassion of his, she believed, that obedience of the male to the +weaker (and yet the stronger) principle of the demanding opposite. He +had always been in bondage through his affections, first to his mother, +then Aunt Anne, and then suddenly, terrifyingly, but most gloriously +because this was the only wildly spontaneous thing of all, to the +strange woman in the hut. He was innocent there, he was unthinking, he +didn't know what tale his eyes told of him. It wasn't earthly passion +they told. She had seen many things in her tumultuous life of the last +few years, this woman he called a child. The eyes told how his soul was +going down in a wreckage of worship of the charm that blooms in a few +women only, translated to him through the pity of this woman's wretched +state. Should she interpret him to himself? She could, without +offending. Rookie was sensitive to see, and she found her hand steady to +hold the torch. But there she saw herself slipping into Aunt Anne's +mandatory attitude, choking, dominating, sapping him, heart and brain. +It mustn't be done. It shouldn't. Rookie had had enough of spiritual +government. Above all, she wanted him to have his life: not the sterile +monotony of a man who renounced and served and deferred to managing +females.</p> + +<p>Had the woman any soul in her? If Rookie kidnaped her (and the child, it +would have to be, the doubtful child) would she pay in love for love, or +only an uncomprehending worship? One thing Nan had determined on, the +minute she opened her door to him this night and saw the quick concern +in his face and heard his tone in greeting: Rookie should feel there was +somebody in this disordered world who plainly adored him. If he could +believe that the better for her putting her cheek on his and loving him +to death, he should have it. Rookie should feel warm. As for her, she +was cold. She shivered there by the window and knew it was the inner +tremor of her nerves, for the fire still leaped and the room was +pulsing. "The amount of it is," said Nan to herself, "my heart's broken. +Oh, hang Aunt Anne!" Then she remembered Aunt Anne was dead. But she +would not have recalled the little missile hurled at the impalpable +ghost through the shade of removedness that enveloped her. Nan was +inexorable in standing for what she saw.</p> + +<p>In the morning she found the fires burning below stairs and her tray set +out, with cup and plate. Charlotte had gone. Nan felt the mounting of +spirit due a healthy body, with the new day, and made her toast and her +coffee with a great sense of the pleasure of it all. There was one +drawback. It was distinctly "no fair" to let Charlotte come over to +companion her at night when there was so much to do with the exigent +Amelia on board. But that must settle itself. If she could get Tira +(whom she also called "the woman" in her thoughts) to run away with her +to town, it could hardly be done too quickly. So immediately after her +breakfast she put on coat and hat and went "over to Tenney's," as the +country folk would put it. This was a day brightly blue, with mounting +warmth, the road a smoothness of packed snow. When she reached the +house, Tenney was just driving up to the side door in the sleigh, and +she rejoiced. It made her errand easier. He was going to town, and she +could see the woman alone. But immediately Tira, carrying the baby, a +little white lump in coat and hood, came out and stepped into the +sleigh. She, too, was going. Tenney waited while she settled herself and +tucked the robe about her. He was not solicitous, Nan saw, but the +typical country husband, soberly according her time to get herself and +the child "well fixed." Nan, waiting, her eyes on them, still halted +until they drove out, and nodded her good morning. Tenney drew up. His +sharp eyes signaled her.</p> + +<p>"I've got it in mind," he announced, "to have a prayer-meetin', come +Wednesday. I'm goin' to put up a notice in the post-office."</p> + +<p>He turned a reminding look on Tira who responded by what seemed to Nan +an unwilling confirmation:</p> + +<p>"You're invited to come."</p> + +<p>"You're all invited," said Tenney harshly, as if Tira had lagged in +urgency. "All on ye."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Nan, with a cheerful decisiveness. "I'll come."</p> + +<p>Tenney slapped the reins and they went on, to a jingling of bells thinly +melodious in the clear air, and Nan turned back to her house. How +beautiful she was, the strange woman, she thought, with a renewal of her +wonder over Tira, the calm majesty of her, the way she sat erect in the +old red sleigh as if she were queen of a triumphal progress, the sad +inscrutability of her wonderful eyes, the mouth with its evasive curves; +how would an artist indicate them delicately enough so that you kept +them in your memory as she saw herself doing, and were yet not able to +say whether it was the indented corner or the full bow? She found +herself remembering poetic lines about Grecian Helen, and then recalling +herself to New England and the unlikelihood of such bewitchingness. +There couldn't be a woman so compact of mystery and unconsidered +aloofness, and yet beauty, beauty to the bone.</p> + +<p>When the Tenneys drove by Raven's, each with face set forward, not +looking at the house, Raven was in the kitchen consulting Charlotte +about supplies. Jerry, also, was going to town, for, imperious even in +her unspoken needs, Amelia would have to be delicately fed. Charlotte, +hearing the bells, glanced absently at the window and Raven's eyes +followed. He felt his heart give a little added start, of relief, he +knew. At least Tenney wouldn't stop the horse and brain his wife on the +road.</p> + +<p>"There's the Tenneys," said Charlotte. "That's a queer kind of a woman, +that wife he's got."</p> + +<p>"Why is she?" Raven demanded.</p> + +<p>Whatever Charlotte felt, he must pluck it out of her. It was sure to be +true.</p> + +<p>She spoke thoughtfully, as if reviewing what was not altogether clear in +her own mind.</p> + +<p>"I dunno's I know. But she's so kind o' quiet. Pleasant enough, but you +al'ays feel as if she's a mile off."</p> + +<p>Yes, Raven owned to himself, Charlotte was right. That was the way he +felt, only it was not one mile but many miles off.</p> + +<p>"That baby, too," said Charlotte, her brows knitted, as if the whole +thing troubled her. "The baby ain't right."</p> + +<p>Just what Nan said. What witchery women had!</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with the baby?" he asked, and was nettled at the +roughness of his voice.</p> + +<p>Charlotte shook her head and seemed to shake off perplexed imaginings.</p> + +<p>"I dunno," she said again. "But suthin' is. An' that's the queer part +on't. You never'd know whether Mis' Tenney knows it or whether she +don't. But there!" Then her mind settled to its task. "No, you couldn't +git sweet-breads this time o' year, up here anyways. They don't kill."</p> + +<p>Raven, after the consultation was over and Charlotte had explained the +ease with which she could pack a hamper of hot dishes to carry over to +Nan, "come one o'clock," went to his social task in the library where +Amelia sat at the drowsy rite of warming her toes. He had a more or less +relaxed feeling with Amelia now; she had shot her bolt and sprung her +mine and could hardly have more in hiding. But she had, the completest +shock possible. She sat with her eyes fixed on the doorway, waiting, and +her question was ready:</p> + +<p>"John, what do you know about Uncle John? Great-uncle, of course I +mean."</p> + +<p>Raven advanced into the room and chose a seat by the window. Amelia, +still thinly clad above and ineffectually baking herself, made him +irrationally want to get away from fires.</p> + +<p>"Old Crow?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, if you want to call him that. I suppose that's what the +country people did call him."</p> + +<p>"Why," said Raven slowly, getting his recollections in order, prepared +to give her what was good for her and no more, "I suppose there's no +doubt he was an eccentric. He built the hut up there and moved into it +and finally went over the countryside doctoring, in an unscientific +way—and praying—and finally hauled in Billy Jones, a sort of old rake +they thought of sending to the poor farm, and took care of him till he +died. Billy was a tank. When we were little, there used to be stories we +got hold of about the way Billy's legs swelled. One of the boys 'down +along' told me he'd been up there and looked into the hut and Billy sat +there in a chair with his legs bandaged and the water dripping through +to the floor. We all wished our legs would drip. We thought it was +great. Mother wouldn't let me go up there after old Billy went into +residence. But we boys kept on hearing about him. I've no doubt we got +most of the salient points."</p> + +<p>He was giving her more than was good for her, after all. Amelia wouldn't +like this. She didn't like it.</p> + +<p>"Shocking!" she commented, shaking her head in repudiation.</p> + +<p>"I've thought since," said Raven, partly in musing recollection and +perhaps a little to show her what she got by fishing for old memories, +"Billy had cirrhosis of the liver. As I said, Billy was a tank."</p> + +<p>"We needn't go into the question of Jones," said Amelia, with dignity. +"He doesn't concern us. It was a perfectly unjustifiable thing for Uncle +John to do, this taking him into his own house and nursing him. +Perfectly. But it only shows how unbalanced Uncle John really was."</p> + +<p>"Call him Old Crow, Milly," Raven interrupted her, resolved she should +accept the picture as it was if she were bent on any picture at all. +"Everybody knew him by that: just Old Crow. At first, I suppose it was +the country way of trying to be funny over his name, as soon as he got +funny to them with his queerness. And then, after he'd gone round +nursing the sick and praying with the afflicted, they may have put real +affection into it. You can't tell. You see, Milly, Old Crow was a +practical Christian. From all I've heard, he was about the only one you +and I've ever met."</p> + +<p>"He was certainly not normal," said Amelia ingenuously, and while Raven +sat rolling that over in his delighted mind and getting the full logic +of it, she continued: "Do you know, John, he was a very commanding man, +very handsome really? You look like him."</p> + +<p>"Much obliged, Milly," said Raven. He was smiling broadly at her. His +eyes—the crinkles about them multiplied—withdrew in a way that always +made her uneasy, she was so unlikely, at such times, to guess what he +was thinking about. In another instant he was to inform her. It all came +over him, in a wave. He gasped under the force of it and then he roared +with laughter. "By George, Milly," he cried, "I've got you. As the +Scotch say (or are said to say) I hae it noo. Old Crow was dotty and my +nose is like Old Crow's. So I'm dotty, too."</p> + +<p>"I think," said Amelia, with dignity, "any specialist, if you could only +be persuaded to put your case into his hands, would inquire very closely +into family traits. And you and I, John, ought to help him by tabulating +everything we can."</p> + +<p>"Sure!" said Raven, relapsing into a vulgarism likely to set her teeth +on edge and possibly, in the spasm of it, close them momentarily on +reminiscence. "I'm willing to let you in for all I know about Old Crow. +To tell the truth, I'm rather proud of him myself."</p> + +<p>Charlotte was passing through the hall and Amelia called to her.</p> + +<p>"Charlotte, a minute, please. You know our uncle, Mr. John Raven."</p> + +<p>"Old Crow, Charlotte," Raven reminded her, seeing she needed prompting, +not yet guessing where the question was to lead. Curiously, he thought, +it was Milly's exasperating fate to put everybody on guard. But it was +inevitable. When you had a meddler in the family, you never knew where +you'd have to head her off.</p> + +<p>"What," continued Amelia, "has become of Uncle John's books?"</p> + +<p>"His books?" interrupted Raven, himself off the track now, "what the +deuce do you want with Old Crow's books?"</p> + +<p>"Where are they?" Amelia continued, now turning to him. "There's +something somewhere—a book—I know it perfectly well—and we've got to +have it. It came to me in the night."</p> + +<p>"What was it?" asked Raven. "Old Crow was rather a bookish chap, I +fancy, in a conventional way. I've got some of his stuff up in the hut: +rather academic, the kind daguerreotyped young men with high stocks used +to study by one candle. What do you suspect—a will, or a love-letter +slipped in behind a cover and forgotten? It can't be a will. Old Crow +didn't have anything to leave."</p> + +<p>Amelia's hands trembled a little. A brighter rose had encircled the +permanent red of her cheeks. She was, Raven saw with curiosity, much +excited.</p> + +<p>"There was certainly a book," she said, "a mottled blank book a third +full of writing. It was a sort of journal. I was in the room when mother +brought it from the hut and passed it to father to look at. He'd just +come down from your room. You were ill, you know: diphtheria. Mother +passed it to him without a word, the way people do when there are +children in the room. He looked at it and then at her, and they nodded. +I was little, you know, but I saw it was important, and I listened. And +father said: 'No, it won't do to have it lying around. I'll carry it up +attic and put it in the red chest.' That's what I mean, Charlotte," she +continued, turning to Charlotte, who stood with a frown of concentration +on her smooth forehead. "You know that old red chest, the one where +uncle's book was put."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Charlotte. "I know the old chest."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Amelia conclusively, having made her point, "then you go up +attic, will you, and open the chest, take out the blank book and bring +it down."</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" said Raven. "Charlotte's got her hands full. I'll run up by +and by."</p> + +<p>Charlotte gave him a serious, perhaps a warning look, he remembered +afterward, and went out of the room.</p> + +<p>"You recall it, don't you," Amelia continued, "how you had diphtheria +after Uncle John's death, and father had it next week."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, tasting the unchanged bitterness of an old misery.</p> + +<p>That had been one of the points where his life turned. His father had +taken the infection from him and nearly died, and the child he was then +had never been able to escape a shuddering belief that he might have +been guilty of his father's death. That had made him turn the more +passionately to the task of lightening his mother's burden in the wild +anxiety he had caused her. Poor little boy, he thought, poor little +fool! Making his life a business of compensating somebody for something, +and never, until these later years, even seeing the visible path his own +feet should have taken. He forgot Amelia and showed himself so absent +that she got huffy and fell into silence and only when he left the room +did she remind him:</p> + +<p>"Don't forget the journal. You'd better run up and look for it now."</p> + +<p>He did go upstairs, really with an idea it might be best to run over the +journal before Amelia pounced on it and turned it, in some manner, to +his own undoing. At the head of the stairs stood Charlotte, waiting. One +hand was under her apron. She stepped silently into his room, tacitly +inviting him to follow, and brought out the hand and the mottled book.</p> + +<p>"Here," she said. "Here 'tis. You lay it away safe some'r's. Don't seem +to me I'd let anybody see it, if I's you, till you've been over it +yourself."</p> + +<p>Raven, with a nod of understanding, took the book, put it into his desk +drawer and turned the key, and Charlotte hurried away to her kitchen. +When he went downstairs again, he found Amelia at the open door. She was +all an excitement of anticipation.</p> + +<p>"Law, Milly," said he, in the country phrasing he loved to use to her +when she was most securely on her high horse of the cultured life, "you +look as nervous as a witch."</p> + +<p>"Where is it?" said Amelia, beating a tattoo of impatience, with one +hand, on the door. "You've been up attic, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>"Bless you, no," said Raven. "I can't go up attic now. I've got to do an +errand for Charlotte." This was true. Nan's dinner had to be carried +over. "You run up, there's a good girl. Give you something to do. No! +no!" She was turning toward the kitchen. "Don't you go bothering +Charlotte. I won't have it. Cut along."</p> + +<p>And Amelia did, in a dignified haste, to show him how journals were +found, and later, when the moment came, Raven went with his hot hamper +to Nan's.</p> + +<p>She met him at the door, no such overflowing Nan as last night, but +serenely practical and quite settled into the accustomed comforts of her +house.</p> + +<p>"I'm as hungry as a bear," said she. "Come through to the kitchen. I eat +in there. The only drawback to this, Rookie, is that it takes it out of +Charlotte. Still, it won't last long, and I'll give her a kiss and a +blue charmeuse. That would pay anybody for anything."</p> + +<p>They unpacked the basket together, and Nan, her plate and knife and fork +ready on a napkin, began to eat. Raven sat down at the other end of the +table.</p> + +<p>"I wish you'd stay," he said, watching her in her pretty haste. "I don't +mean here: over with me. Come on, Nan. Amelia's settled down for good. +She won't bother you—much. Anyhow, you can run off up to the hut."</p> + +<p>Then he remembered what other fugitive she might find at the hut, and +saw she, too, remembered. Her words came pat upon it.</p> + +<p>"The Tenneys are going to have a prayer-meeting Wednesday night."</p> + +<p>"A prayer-meeting!" He heard himself echoing it incredulously.</p> + +<p>"Yes, and you're to take me, Rookie. Don't scowl. I've got to see that +man when he worships his idols, and you've got to see him, too. His god +must be an idol: burnt offerings, that sort of thing. Perhaps that's +what he's doing it all for: offering her up, as a kind of sacrifice. His +wife, I mean. What's her name, Rookie?"</p> + +<p>"Thyatira," said Raven, and got up, his mind suddenly dense to the +comfortable picture of Nan and her dinner, and went home.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2> + + +<p>The next few days went by, all alike cloudless and uneventful within the +house. Nan coaxed Charlotte into bringing her over meat and vegetables, +and, with a plea of liking it, cooked them herself. Raven swung back and +forth between the houses, but Nan found him silent and, she decided, +cross. Every day he went up to the hut to see whether the fire had been +lighted, and every day found the place in its chilly order. It seemed to +him as if the whole tragic background against which Tira had been moving +had been wiped away by some wide sweeping sponge of oblivion, as if he +had dreamed the story or at least its importance in his own life, as if +Nan had always been living alone in her house, and Amelia, tied up in +Charlotte's aprons, her lips compressed in implacable resolution, always +going through trunks in the attic, searching for a mottled book. He had +no compunction over Amelia. Let her search, he thought, when Charlotte +came to him with a worried brow and asked if he didn't think he could +put it somewheres in sight, so's 't she should know 'twas no use. Do her +good. If she didn't like it she could go back to her clubs and her +eugenics and her Freudians. And when the evening of the prayer-meeting +came he looked out at the brilliant weather, judged that the immediate +region might seize upon it as an excuse for sleigh-riding, and was +returning to his book for a brief minute more, when Amelia called from +the window:</p> + +<p>"Three sleighs! Where can they be going?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Raven, without raising his eyes from the page, "sleighing, +most likely."</p> + +<p>But the minute she left the window, he put down his book, got his hat +and coat from the hall, and went out through the kitchen where Charlotte +was sponging bread.</p> + +<p>"Going to the meeting?" he asked her.</p> + +<p>"No," said Charlotte, absorbedly dissolving her yeast cake. "I never +take much stock in——" There she paused, lest she might be uncharitably +expansive, and found refuge in Jerry. "He says Isr'el Tenney ain't so +much of a man, when all's said an' done, an' don't seem as if he could +stan' seein' him on his knees. But there!"</p> + +<p>Raven went on through the shed and up the road, to Nan's. She had seen +him from the window and came down the path.</p> + +<p>"Knew I'd come, did you?" he grumbled.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan. "We'd really better go."</p> + +<p>Raven hated it all, out of his element as he was, going to spy on Tenney +and hear him pray. What other reason was there? He and Nan simply wanted +to search out the reactions in Tenney's spiritual insides in order to +defeat him the more neatly.</p> + +<p>The house was brightly lighted downstairs. Six or eight sleighs stood in +the shelter of the long open shed at right angles to the barn. The +horses had been taken in and blanketed. When Raven and Nan arrived, no +one else was outside, and he was about to knock when Nan, who remembered +the ways of neighborhood prayer-meetings, opened the door and stepped +in. Men and women were seated in a couple of rows about the walls of the +two front rooms, and Tenney stood in the square entry beside a table +supplied with a hymn-book, a Bible, and a lamp. He had the unfamiliar +aspect of a man reduced to discomfort of mind by the strictures of a +Sunday suit. His eyes were burning and his mouth compressed. What did +they mean, that passion of the distended pupil, that line of tightened +lip? Was it the excitement of leadership, the responsibility of being +"in charge" of the solemn convention of prayer-meeting? It was the face, +Nan thought, of one who knew the purposes of God from the first word of +creation to the last, and meant to enforce them by every mastery known +to man: persuasion, rage, and cruelty. She gave him a good evening and +he jerked his head slightly in response. The occasion was evidently too +far out of the common to admit of ordinary greetings. A man and woman +just inside the doorway of the front room moved along, and signed Raven +and Nan to take their vacated seats. As soon as they were settled Tenney +began to "lead in prayer," and Raven, his mind straying from the words +as negligible and only likely to increase his aversion to the man, sat +studying the furnishings of the room, a typical one, like all the +parlors of the region from the time of his boyhood to that of his father +and Old Crow. There was the center table with the album and three red +volumes of Keepsakes and Garlands, a green worsted mat, hopefully +designed to imitate moss, and on the depression in its center the astral +lamp. On the wall opposite were pictures of Tenney's father and mother, +painful enlargements from stiff photographs, and on the neighboring wall +a glazed framing of wax flowers and a hair wreath. The furniture was +black walnut upholstered with horsehair. Tenney was of the more +prosperous line of farmers. And yet he had not begun so. All this +represented the pathetic ideal of one who toiled and saved and bought +after the fashion of his type.</p> + +<p>Raven's eyes strayed to the faces about him: these were the younger set, +boys and girls from sixteen to twenty. The first two or three had, by +chance perhaps, dropped into this room and the rest gravitated shyly to +it. There was always a line of cleavage at prayer-meeting, as at teas +and "socials," between old and young. Raven was glad he had chosen the +room at random. He liked the atmosphere of half-awed, half-tittering +youth. They were always on the verge, always ready to find hilarity in +untoward circumstance, and yet trained to a respect for meeting, doing +their conventional best. What hard red cheeks there were, what great +brown hands of boys, awkwardly holding hats, and yet, taken into the +open, how unerringly they gripped the tasks that fell to them. All of +them, boys and girls alike, were staring at him and Nan: at Nan with a +frank admiration, the girls perhaps with envy. At the corner of the room +corresponding to his own, two chairs had been left vacant, and when his +eyes came to them he saw a blue scarf depending from the back of one; it +had been dropped when the occupant of the chair had left it. It was +Tira's chair, and Tira herself appeared from the door opposite, leading +from the kitchen, crossed the room, took the scarf and wrapped it about +her shoulders and sat down. She had been called out, perhaps in response +to a cry from the child who seemed to be the center of commotion in this +house, though so mysteriously inactive. Raven felt the blood mounting to +his face, she was so movingly beautiful in this scene of honest but +unlovely mediocrity. Even her walk across the room, unconscious of +herself, yet with the rhythmic step of high processionals—how strange a +part she was of this New England picture! He could not see her now, +without turning, and tried to summon his mind home from her, to fix it +on Tenney, who, having finished his prayer, was calling on one and +another, with an unction that seemed merely a rejoicing tyranny, for +testimony. It was a scene of tension. Church members were timid before +the ordeal of experience or pleading, and the unconverted were strained +to the verge of hysteria over a prospect of being haled into the open +and prayed for. Neither Raven nor Nan knew how unpopular Tenney had +become, because he could not enter the conventional limits of a +prayer-meeting without turning it into something too tense, too +exciting, the atmosphere of the revival. Yet, though his fellow +Christians blamed him for it, they sought it like a drug. He played on +their unwilling nerves and they ran to be played on. He was their opera, +their jazz. Breath came faster and eyes shone. The likelihood of a +hysterical giggle was imminent, and some couples, safely out of range of +Tenney's gaze, were "holding hands" and mentally shuddering at their own +temerity.</p> + +<p>Now he was telling his own religious experience, with a mounting fervor +ready to froth over into frenzy. Raven, turning slightly, regarded him +with a cold dislike. This was the voice that had echoed through the +woods that day when Tira stood, her baby in her arms, in what chill of +fear Raven believed he knew. Tenney went on lashing himself into the +ecstasy of his emotional debauch. His eyes glittered. He was happy, he +asserted, because he had found salvation. His conversion was akin to +that of Saul. To his immense spiritual egotism, Raven concluded, nothing +short of a story colossally dramatic would serve. He had been a sinner, +perhaps not as to works but faith. He had kept the commandments, all but +one. Had he loved the Lord his God with all his heart, all his soul, all +his might? No: for he had not accepted the sacrifice the Lord God had +prepared for him, of His only Son. That Son of God had been with him +everywhere, in his down-sittings and his uprisings, as He was with every +man and woman on earth. But, like other sinful men and women, he had not +seen Him. He had not felt Him. But He was there. And one day he was +hoeing in the field and a voice at his side asked: "Why persecutest thou +me?" He looked up and saw——Here he paused dramatically, though Raven +concluded it was simply because he found himself at a loss to go on. He +had appropriated the story, but he was superstitiously afraid to +embroider it. For he (Raven gave him that credit) honestly believed in +his self-evolved God.</p> + +<p>"And then," said Tenney, in a broken voice, tears trickling down his +cheeks, "the voice said to me: 'Go ye out and preach the gospel.'"</p> + +<p>The front door opened and a little answering breeze flickered in the +flame of the lamp. A girl near Nan, her nerves on edge, gave a cry. A +man stepped in and closed the door behind him. He was a figure of +fashion evolved from cheap models and flashy materials. Tall, quick in +his movements, as if he found life a perpetual dance and +self-consciously adapted himself to it, with mocking blue eyes, red hair +and a long nose bent slightly to one side, he was, in every line and +act, vulgar, and yet so arrogantly bent on pleasing that you +unconsciously had to acknowledge his intention and refrain from turning +your back on him. He looked at Tenney in a calculated good humor, +nodded, had his great coat off with a quick gesture, and slung it over +his arm. Then he stepped past Tenney, who stood petrified as if he saw +the risen dead, and into the room. This was Eugene Martin. He seemed not +to be in the least subdued to the accepted rules of prayer-meeting, but +nodded and smiled impartially, and, as if he had flashed that look about +for the one niche waiting for him, stepped lightly over to Tira's corner +and took the chair at her side. Raven, from the tragic change in +Tenney's face, knew who he was and bent forward to see what Tira's eyes +would tell. She was, it seemed, frozen into endurance. Martin, in +seating himself, had given her a cordial good evening. She did not +answer, nor did she look at him. Her pale lips did not move. Nor did +she, on the other hand, withdraw from him. The chairs had been pushed +close, and, as she sat upright, scarcely moving a muscle with her +breath, the blue scarf touched his shoulder. Raven withdrew his gaze, +not to make the moment in any sense conspicuous, and, feeling the +silence, turned to Tenney to see if his leadership could surmount this +base assault. The assault was premeditated. The gay insolence of the +man's manner told him that. Tenney stood there silent, flaccid, a hand +on the casing of the door. Every vestige of religious excitement had +left his face. His overthrow was complete, and Raven, judging how Martin +must rejoice, was for the moment almost as sorry for Tenney as for his +wife. The little disturbance had lasted only a moment, but now all eyes +were turning on Tenney, who had ceased to "lead." In another minute the +eyes would be curious, the silence would be felt. As Raven wondered what +would break the evil spell, Nan's voice came out clear, untinged by the +prevailing somberness, warm with the confidence of youth:</p> + +<p>"Can't we sing one of the nice old hymns? Coronation! That's got such a +swing to it."</p> + +<p>She began it, and the young voices broke in pell-mell after her like a +joyous crowd, seeing a vine-clad procession, and losing no time in +joining for fear of losing step. Raven knew perfectly well the great old +hymn was no matter for a passionately remorseful, sin-laden meeting of +this sort. Nan knew it, too. He was sure she had not ventured it for the +protection of Tira. No one had ever told Nan about the man with the +devil in him who "looked up kinder droll." But she could see the tide of +human emotion had better be turned to the glorification of God than to +the abasement of man. Raven, in the swell of it, put his lips to her ear +and whispered:</p> + +<p>"I'm going to ask you to change your seat."</p> + +<p>She gave no sign of having heard, but sang on, in a delightful volume, +to "Crown Him Lord of all." The moment the last note died, Raven came to +his feet. He addressed Tenney:</p> + +<p>"One minute. There's a draught here by the door."</p> + +<p>He went over to Martin, Nan following:</p> + +<p>"Do you mind sitting by the door?" he asked the man. "There's a good +deal of a draught."</p> + +<p>Martin, his surprised look at Nan changing to a ready gallantry, got up +at once.</p> + +<p>"Anything," said he, "to oblige a lady."</p> + +<p>Nan sat down and Raven and Martin took the seats by the door. There, +too, Martin had advantage of a sort. He could stare down Tenney at short +range, and this he did with a broad smile. Tenney, Raven concluded, was +down and out. His comb was cut. Whatever passions might stir in him +later—however, in reviewing the scene, he might rage over the disturber +of his peace—now his spiritual leadership had passed from him and the +prayer-meeting itself was quashed. An air of curiosity hung over it. Two +or three of the older men and women in the other room offered testimony +and one man, the old clock-mender from the other side of the mountain, +who swore with a free tongue about his secular affairs, but always wept +when he went through the observance he called approaching the throne, +knelt and prayed in a high voice through sobs. This lightened the +atmosphere. No one ever regarded this performance seriously. He was the +comic relief. On his Amen, Nan (blessed Nan! thought Raven) proposed:</p> + +<p>"Let's sing again."</p> + +<p>"No!" said Tenney. He had got back his self-assertiveness. Raven could +guess his jealous anger, the tide of fury coming, flooding the stagnant +marshes of his soul. "I want to hear one more testimony. Thyatira +Tenney, get up and tell what God has done for you."</p> + +<p>Tira gave a start so violent that the blue scarf fell from her shoulders +and one end of it lay over Nan's arm. She did get up. She rose slowly +and stood there looking straight before her, eyes wide and dark, her +hands clasped. Her stiff lips moved. She did piteously, Raven saw, try +to speak. But she could not manage it and after the long moment she sank +back into her seat. Nan placed the blue scarf about her shoulders, +carefully, as if the quiet concern of doing it might tell the woman +something—that she was companioned, understood—and, one hand on the +knot of Tira's clasped fingers, began to sing. She sang the Doxology, +and after that, through unbreakable custom, the meeting was over and you +had to go home. Men and women came to their feet, there were greetings +and good nights and about Nan gathered a group of those who remembered +her. But she kept her left hand on Tira's, and after the others had gone +she said something quickly to the woman who stood, looking dead tired, +uttering mechanical good nights. Martin, with a jovial good night to +Tenney, had hurried off at once.</p> + +<p>"See you later," he called back to him at the door, and Tenney looked +after him with the livid concentration of a man who sends his curse +forward to warn where it is not yet time for a blow. A laughing group +followed Martin. There were girls who, horrified at the implications +that hung about his name, were yet swayed by his dashing gallantry, and +young men who sulkily held the girls back, swearing under their breath. +Tira broke loose from Nan and went, fast as running water, through the +room, to the back of the house. Raven made no pretense of saying good +night to Tenney. He forgot it, forgot Tenney, save as an element of +danger to be dealt with later. On the doorstep he stopped with Nan, in +the seclusion of the moment while the others were bringing out horses +and putting them into the sleighs.</p> + +<p>"We can't leave her here with him," he said.</p> + +<p>"What was the matter?" Nan returned as quickly. "What happened? That +man?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. The one he's jealous of. We can't leave her here."</p> + +<p>"No use," said Nan. "She won't go. I asked her, told her I was living +over at the house alone, wanted company. No use. She wouldn't go."</p> + +<p>"She must go."</p> + +<p>"She won't, I tell you. Then I asked if she'd let me stay over here and +she said no. She said——"</p> + +<p>"What?" urged Raven when she stopped.</p> + +<p>"I almost can't tell, it's so pathetic. Just a word—three words: 'You +don't know.' Then she stopped. Just that: 'You don't know.'"</p> + +<p>Raven gave a little sound she could not bear, a breath, a curse—what +was it? Anyway, the breaking impatience of a helpless man. He did not +stir. He meant, she saw, to stay there, doggedly stay, on the step, to +await what happened. She put her hand through his arm.</p> + +<p>"Come," she said authoritatively, "let's walk up the road and drop in +again when they've all gone. It's no use staying now."</p> + +<p>That, he saw, was wise, and they went out into the road, waited a moment +for the sleighs just starting, and then walked away from home. Some of +the people were singing "camp-meeting hymns," and there was one daring +burst of "Good night, ladies," and a chorused laugh. Prayer-meeting at +Tenney's was not, Raven concluded, regarded much more seriously than +Charlotte had foreseen. The bells jingled off into the distance. The +horses were bent on home. As if the sound only had torn up the night +into shreds of commotion, so now the bits of silence drew together into +a web and the web covered them. Nan, in spite of the perplexed question +of Tira, could have settled under the web, there with Raven, as under +wings. But he was hot with impatience. They had gone half a mile +perhaps, when he stopped.</p> + +<p>"Come back," he said. "I've got to know."</p> + +<p>Nan turned with him and they went on in silence but very fast. Once or +twice she was about asking him not to take such long steps, but she set +her teeth and swung forward. In front of Tenney's they stopped. The +rooms were lighted. The house was still. Raven drew a deep breath. What +he had expected he did not know, whether calls for help or Tenney's +voice of the woods shouting, "Hullo!" This, at any rate, was a reprieve.</p> + +<p>"Come on," he said. "I'll take you home and then come back."</p> + +<p>Again Nan stepped out in time. No use, she thought, to beg him to let +her come, too. But she could come back. Women were useful, she knew, +with their implied terrors and fragility, in holding up certain sorts of +horror. Nan was willing to fight, if need were, with all the weapons of +her sex. In the road in front of her own house, was Charlotte, waiting +for them. Nan left Raven, put a hand on Charlotte's arm, and called her +"Ducky."</p> + +<p>"You won't come in?" she said to Raven. "Don't you think you'd better. +Half an hour or so?"</p> + +<p>"Not a minute," said Raven. "Good night."</p> + +<p>He left them and after a few striding steps was aware of Charlotte, +calling him. She came up and spoke his name.</p> + +<p>"I've just met that woman."</p> + +<p>"What woman?" he asked impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Tira Tenney. With the baby. This time o' night."</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"Front o' the house, just as I come out."</p> + +<p>"Then she was coming there," he burst forth. "Too bad! too bad! Didn't +you know that? Didn't you ask her in?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Charlotte, "I asked her in an' she said no, she was goin' +down along. An' I stood an' watched her an' she turned off up the rise +into the woods."</p> + +<p>So it had begun, the terror, the flight. She was going to the hut and, +for some reason, not the back way.</p> + +<p>"There's somethin' 'tain't right," Charlotte was beginning, but he +seized her wrist and held it. To keep her attention, or to feel the +touch of something kindly and warm?</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "something's wrong. Don't tell, Charlotte. Not a +word—not to Nan or Jerry or—above all not to Tenney. I'll see to it."</p> + +<p>He left her and hurried loping along the road, almost at a run, and +Charlotte went in to Nan.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2> + + +<p>Raven passed his house and turned into the wood road. There he did not +slacken, but took the rise at a great gait. He was at the hut a moment +after Tira: she had had time for neither light nor fire.</p> + +<p>"It's Raven," he called. She did not come, and he added: "I'm alone. Let +me in."</p> + +<p>Waiting there at the door, he had time to note the stillness of the +woods, the creak of a branch now and then, and the half-drawn sigh from +the breeze you hardly felt. At the instant of his beginning to wonder +whether she might have fallen there from a hurt or whether she was even +terrified of him, he heard the sound of the key and the door opened. He +stepped in and her hand was at once on the key. She turned it and melted +noiselessly into the dark of the room, and he followed her.</p> + +<p>"No fire!" he reproached her, or perhaps himself, for it seemed, in the +poignancy of his tenderness, as if he should have had it burning night +and day. He set a match to the kindling and the flame answered it. She +had taken one of the chairs at the hearth and he saw, in the leaping +light, that she had put the child on the couch and covered him. She was +shuddering all over, shaking horribly, even her lips, and he went into +the bedroom, came back with a blanket and wrapped it about her. She held +it close, in that humble way she had of trying to spare him trouble, +indeed to make no confusion in the world she found so deranged already. +He remembered the chartreuse she had once refused and took it down from +the high cupboard, poured a little and set the glass in her shaking +hand, and, when the muscles did not answer, put it to her lips.</p> + +<p>"It won't hurt you," he said. "Down it."</p> + +<p>She drank, and the kindly fire of it warmed her. She looked up at him, +and what she said was more unexpected than anything he could have +imagined:</p> + +<p>"Do you believe it?"</p> + +<p>"Believe what?"</p> + +<p>He could only guess she meant something connected with Tenney's madness +of suspicion and the devil of a man.</p> + +<p>"What he said." She was looking at him with intensity, as if life and +death lay in his answer. "He said He was there to-night, there in the +room. Do you believe that?"</p> + +<p>"Who was there?" Raven prompted her, and the immediate reply staggered +him.</p> + +<p>"Jesus Christ."</p> + +<p>He temporized.</p> + +<p>"I've no doubt he believed it," he said, unwilling to speak Tenney's +name. It was doubly hateful to him at the moment of her being so +patently undone. He could only think she was trying to reconcile the +ugly contrast between her husband's expressed faith and his insane +action. "I'm sure he thought so."</p> + +<p>"That ain't what I mean," she hesitated, and he began to see how her +mind was striving in an anguish of interrogation. "What he +thinks—that's neither here nor there. What I want to know is whether +it's <i>so</i>. If there's Somebody"—she clasped her hands on her knees and +looked up at him, mutely imploring him who was so wise in books and life +to help her striving mind—"if there's Somebody that cares—that died +over it, He cared so much—if He's round here everywhere—if He sees it +all—an' feels terrible, same as we do ourselves—why, then it's +different."</p> + +<p>"What's different?" Raven asked, out of his fog.</p> + +<p>She was demanding something of him and he felt, in a sickness of +despair, that it was something he couldn't give her because he hadn't it +himself. Tenney could read her the alphabet of comfort, though he was +piling on her those horrors of persecution that made her hungry for it.</p> + +<p>"Why," she said, and the light and a bloom of something ineffable swept +over her face, changing its tragic mystery from the somberness of the +Fates to the imagined youthful glory of the angels, "if He's here all +the time, if He's in the room when things happen to us, an' wishes He +could stop it an' can't because"—again her mind labored and she saw she +had come up against the mysterious negatives of destiny—"anyways, He +would if He could—an' He knows how we feel inside when we feel the +worst, an' cares, cares same as——" here she was inarticulate. But she +turned for an instant toward the couch where the child lay, and her face +was the mother face. She meant, he knew, as she cared for her child. +"Why, then," she continued, "there wouldn't be anything to fret about, +ever. You never'd be afraid, not if you was killed, you wouldn't. You'd +know there was Somebody in the room."</p> + +<p>This was the most deeply considered speech of her whole life. The last +words, ingenuous as a child's unconscious betrayal, tore at him as, he +suddenly thought, it would be if he saw a child tortured and in fear: as +if he saw Nan. They told him how desperately lonesome and undefended she +had felt.</p> + +<p>"An' don't you see," she concluded, with the brightness of happy +discovery, "even if you was killed, what harm would it do you? He'd be +waitin'. You'd go with Him. Wherever it is He lives, you'd go."</p> + +<p>Raven turned abruptly, walked to a window and stood there looking into +the dark. The challenge of her face was impossible to bear. Suppose she +asked him again if he believed it? Did he believe in a God made man? By +no means. He believed in one God, benevolent, he had once assumed, but +in these latter years too well hidden behind His cloud for man to say. +Did the old story of a miraculous birth and an atonement move him even +to a desire to believe? It repelled him rather? What, to his honest +apprehension, was the God made man? An exemplar, a light upon the path +of duty, as others also had been. Had the world gone wrong, escaped from +its mysterious Maker, and did it need to be redeemed by any such +dramatic remedy? No, his God, the God who made, could not botch a job +and be disconcerted at the continuing bad results of His handiwork. The +only doubt about his God was whether He was in any degree benevolent. +When he reflected that He had made a world full to the brim of its cup +of bitterness, he sometimes, nowadays, thought not. All this swept +through his mind in a race of thoughts that had run on that course +before, and again he heard her and knew she was pulling him back to the +actual issue as it touched herself.</p> + +<p>"You tell me," she was calling him. Her voice insisted. He did not turn, +but he knew her face insisted even more commandingly. "You know. There's +nothin' you don't know. Is it true?"</p> + +<p>Nothing he didn't know! The irony of that was so innocently piercing +that he almost broke into a laugh. Nan was right then. Tira did regard +him, if not as an archangel, as something scarcely less authoritative. +He turned and went back to the fire, threw on an armful of sticks, and +stood looking into the blaze.</p> + +<p>"What makes you say that?" he asked her. "What makes you think I know?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said she, in a patent surprise, "'course you know. I've always +heard about you, writin' books an' all. An' that's the kind you be, too. +You're"—she paused to marshal her few words and ended in an awed +tone—"you're that way, too. When folks are in trouble, you're so sorry +it 'most kills you."</p> + +<p>This was a blow staggering enough to hit his actual heart and stop it +for a beat. What if he should say to her: "Yes, I do care. I care when +you are hurt. I don't know about the God made man, but isn't my caring +enough for you?"</p> + +<p>Then bitter certainties cut in and told him it wouldn't do. She had +learned her world lesson too terribly well. It would be only another +case of man's pursuing, promising—what had they promised in the past? +And after all, he thought recklessly, what did the private honor of his +testifying yes or no amount to anyway? What moral conceit! To save his +own impeccable soul by denying a woman the one consolation that would +save her reason.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Tira," he said quietly, and did not know he had used her name, +"it's all true."</p> + +<p>She gave a little sound, half sob, half ecstatic breath, and he saw she +had not been sure he would yield her the bright jewel she had begged of +him.</p> + +<p>"True!" she said, in the low tone of an almost somnolently brooding +calm. "All of it! Everywhere!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven steadily, "everywhere."</p> + +<p>"Over there where He was born, here!" That seemed to amaze her to a +glory of belief. "Why, if He's everywhere, He's here, too."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. He loved his task now. He was putting her sorrows to +sleep. "He's here, too."</p> + +<p>At that moment, incredibly, it seemed to him that a difference pervaded +the place, or at least that his eyes had been opened to a something +unsuspected, dwelling in all things. Did he, his unchanged mind asked +him, actually believe what he had not believed before? No, the inner +core of him signaled back to his mind. His belief had not changed. Yet +indubitably something had happened and happened blessedly, for it +brought her peace. Tira gave a little laugh, a child's laugh of +surprised content. He glanced at her. She was looking into the fire and +the haggardness of her face had softened. It was even, under the warmth +of the flames and her own inner delight, absorbed and dreamy. And Raven +knew he must wake her, and, he hoped, without flawing the dream, to +present action.</p> + +<p>"Now," he said, "I want you to come with me down to Nan's"—still he +dared not put her off a step from the intimacy of neighborly relations +by presenting Nan more formally—"and spend the night there. In the +morning, you'll go back to Boston with her. I shall enter a complaint +against your husband."</p> + +<p>It wasn't so hard to give Tenney the intimacy of that name, now she +looked so sweetly calm. She started from her dream, glanced up at him +and, to his renewed discomfort, broke into a little laugh. It was sheer +amusement, loving raillery too, of him who could give her the priceless +gift of a God made man and then ask her to forsake the arena where the +beasts were harmless now because she no longer feared them.</p> + +<p>"Why, bless your heart," she said, in a homespun fashion of address that +might have been Charlotte's, "I wouldn't no more run away! An' if you +should have him before the judge, I'd no more say a word ag'inst him! I +wouldn't git you into any trouble either," she explained, in an anxious +loyalty. "I'd say you was mistaken, that's all."</p> + +<p>Something seemed to break in him.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" he asked roughly. "What do you think you mean? I +suppose you're in love with him?"</p> + +<p>Tira looked at him patiently. She yielded to a little sigh.</p> + +<p>"Why," she said, "that's where I belong. I don't," she continued +hesitatingly, in her child's manner of explaining herself from her +inadequate vocabulary, "I guess I don't think about them things much, +not same as men-folks think. But there's one or two things I've got to +look out for." Here she gave that quick significant glance at the little +mound on the couch. "An' there ain't no way to do it less'n I stay right +there in my tracks."</p> + +<p>Raven, his hand gripping the mantel, rested his forehead on it and dark +thoughts came upon him. They quickened his breath and brought the blood +to his face and his aching eyes. It was all trouble, it seemed to him, +trouble from the first minute of his finding her in the woods. She might +draw some temporary comfort from his silent championship, in the +momentary safety of this refuge he had given her. But he could by no +means cut her knot of difficulty. She was as far from him as she had +been the moment before he saw her. She was speaking.</p> + +<p>"It ain't," she said, in a low voice, "it ain't that I don't keep in +mind what you've done for me, what you're doin' all the time. But I +guess you don't see what you've done this night's the most of all. Now +you've told me you know it's true"—here she was shy before the talk of +god-head—"why, I know it's so, too. An' I sha'n't ever be afraid any +more. I sha'n't ever feel alone."</p> + +<p>"But Tira," he felt himself saying to her weakly, "I feel alone."</p> + +<p>Did he actually say it, he wondered. No, for he lifted his face from his +shielding hand and turned miserable eyes upon her, and her eyes met him +clearly. Yet they were deeper, softer, moved by a sad compassion. There +was something patiently maternal in them, as if she had found herself +again before the old sad question of man's uncomprehended desires. She +spoke, strangely he thought then, and afterward he wondered if she +actually had said the thing at all.</p> + +<p>"There's nothin' in the world I wouldn't do for you, not if 'twas +anyways right. But——" and again she gave that fleeting glance of +allegiance to the child.</p> + +<p>He tried impatiently to pull himself together. She must see there was +something hideous in his inability to make her safe, something stupid, +also.</p> + +<p>"Tira," he said, "you don't understand. Sometimes I think you don't +realize what might happen to you. And it's silly to let it happen, +foolish, ignorant. If some one told you there was a man outside your +door and he wanted to kill you, you'd lock the door. Now there's a man +inside your house, inside your room, that wants to kill you. Yes, he +does," he insisted, answering the denial in her face, "when he's got one +of his brain storms. Is there anything to pride yourself on in staying +to be killed?"</p> + +<p>She answered first with a smile, the sweet reassurance of a confident +look.</p> + +<p>"He won't," she said, "he won't try to kill me, or kill him"—she made a +movement of the hand toward the couch—"no, not ever. You know why? I'm +goin' to remind him Who's in the room."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you remind him this time?" Raven queried, pushed to the +cynical logic of it. "You could have turned his own words against him. +It wasn't an hour since he'd said it himself."</p> + +<p>"Because," she answered, in a perfect good faith, "then I didn't know +'twas so."</p> + +<p>"Didn't know 'twas so? Why didn't you?"</p> + +<p>Her eyes were large with wonder.</p> + +<p>"Because," she said, "then you hadn't told me."</p> + +<p>Raven stared at her a full minute, realizing to the full the exact +measure of his lie coming back to him.</p> + +<p>"Tira," said he, "I believe you're not quite bright."</p> + +<p>"No," said she simply, with no apparent feeling, "I guess I ain't. 'Most +everybody's told me so, first or last."</p> + +<p>It sobered him.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn't mean that. I'm off my head a +little. I'm so worried, you see. I want to know you're safe. You're not +safe. It isn't easy to accept that—to lie down under it."</p> + +<p>Usually he had spoken to her in the homespun phrasing he instinctively +used with his country neighbors, but the last words were subtly +different to her, they were more distant, and she accepted them with a +grave humility.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," she said, and Raven awoke to the irritating knowledge that +she was calling him "sir." He smiled at her and she realized that, as +mysteriously as she had been pushed away, now she was taken back.</p> + +<p>"So," he said, "you won't go down to Nan's and spend the night?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head, watching him. Little as she meant to do what he told +her, she wanted less to offend him.</p> + +<p>"Then," said Raven, "you'll stay here. I'll bring in some more blankets, +and you lie on the couch. You'll have to keep an eye on the fire. Don't +let it go down entirely. It can get pretty cold."</p> + +<p>He got up, lighted a candle and went into the bedroom for the blankets. +Tira followed him and silently took the pair he gave her, came back to +the couch and spread them carefully, not to waken the child. He followed +with more and, while she finished arranging her couch, piled wood on the +fire. For a moment he had an idea of announcing that he would stay and +keep the fire up while she slept. But even if she submitted to that, she +would be uneasy. And she was a hardy woman. It would not hurt her to +come awake, as he knew she could, with the house-guarding instinct of +the woman trained to serve.</p> + +<p>"There," he said, beating the wood-dust from his hands, "now lock me +out. Remember, you're not to go back there to-night. You owe that to me. +You've given me bother enough."</p> + +<p>But his eyes, when hers sought them timidly, were smiling at her. She +laughed a little, happily. It was all right, then.</p> + +<p>"You ain't mad," she said, half in shy assertion, following him to the +door.</p> + +<p>"No," he said gravely. "I'm not mad. I couldn't be, with you. I never +shall be. Good night."</p> + +<p>He opened the door, went out and waited an instant to hear the key click +behind him and ran plunging down the snowy road. Once on the way he +looked up at the mysterious stars visible in the line of sky above the +track he followed. Deeper and deeper it was, the mystery. He had given +her a God to adore and keep her protecting company. He who did not +believe had wrought her faith out of his unbelief. When he turned into +the road, he thought he saw someone under the porch of his house and +hurried, his mind alive to the chance of meeting Tenney, searching for +her. The figure did not move and as he went up to the house a voice +called to him. It was Amelia's.</p> + +<p>"O John, is that you? I can't see how you can leave the house alone to +go wandering off in the woods and never saying a word."</p> + +<p>There she was in her fur coat, not so much frightened, he thought, as +hurt. She was querulous with agitation.</p> + +<p>"All right, Milly," he said, and put an arm through hers, "here I am. +And the house isn't alone. Don't get so nervous. Next thing you know, +you'll have to see a specialist."</p> + +<p>"And Charlotte's gone," she lamented sharply, allowing him to march her +in and turning, in the warm hall, to confront him. "Here I've been all +alone."</p> + +<p>"Where's Jerry?"</p> + +<p>Raven had thrown off his hat and coat and frankly owned himself tired.</p> + +<p>"In the kitchen. But he won't tell where Charlotte is. He says she's +gone up along."</p> + +<p>"Well, so she has, to a neighbor's. Come into the library and get 'het' +through before you go to bed."</p> + +<p>"And," she lamented, letting him give her a kindly push toward the door, +"I've got to pack, myself, if Charlotte doesn't come."</p> + +<p>"Pack?" He stared at her. "You're not leaving?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, John." She said it portentously, as bidding him remember he might +be sorry when she was no more. "I'm going. Dick has telegraphed."</p> + +<p>"Anything the matter?"</p> + +<p>"That's it. I don't know. If I did, I could decide. He orders me, simply +orders me, to take the early train. What do you make of it?"</p> + +<p>Raven considered. Actually, he thought, Dick was carrying out his +benevolent plan of getting her back, by hook or crook.</p> + +<p>"I don't believe I'd worry, Milly," he said, gravely, "but I think you'd +better go."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "that's it. I don't dare not to. Something may be the +matter. I've tried to telephone, but he doesn't answer. I must go."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2> + + +<p>Raven always remembered that as the night of his life, up to this +present moment, the mountain peak standing above the waters of his +discontent. The top of the mountain, that was what lifted itself in an +island inexpressibly green and fair above those sullen depths, and on +this, the island of deliverance, he was to stand. After he had reasoned +Amelia into her room and persuaded her to leave her packing till the +morning, he went up to his own chamber, mentally spent and yet keyed to +an exhausting pitch. He was excited yet tired, tied up into nervous +knots without the will to loose them. What sense in going to bed, when +he could not sleep? What need of reviewing the last chapter of his +knowledge of the woman who was so compelling in her helplessness and her +childlike faith? He would read: something silly, if he had it at hand. +The large matters of the mind and soul were not for this unwilling +vigil; and at this intruding thought of the soul he smiled, remembering +how glibly he had bartered the integrity of his own to add his fragment +to the rising temple of Tira's faith. He had strengthened her at the +expense of his own bitter certainties. It was done deliberately and it +was not to be regretted, but it did open a window upon his private +rectitude. Was his state of mind to be taken so very seriously, even by +himself? Not after that! Lounging before his book-shelves in search of a +soporific, suddenly he remembered the mottled book. It flashed into his +mind as if a hand had hurled it there. He would read Old Crow's journal.</p> + +<p>Settled in bed, the light beside him and the mottled book in his hand, +he paused a thoughtful minute before opening it. Poor old devil! Was +this the jangled record of an unsound mind, or was it the apologia for +an eccentricity probably not so uncommon, after all? Foolish, he +thought, to leave a record of any sort, unless you were a +heaven-accredited genius, entrusted with the leaves of life. Better to +recognize your own atomic insignificance, and sink willingly into the +predestined sea. He opened it and took a comprehensive glance over the +first page: an oblong of small neat handwriting. Many English hands were +like that. He was accustomed to call it a literary hand. Over the first +date he paused, to refer it back to his own years. How big was he when +Old Crow had begun the diary? Seven, that was all. He was a boy of seven +years, listening with an angry yet fascinated attention to the other +boys talking about Old Crow, who was, they said, luny, love-cracked. He +never could hear enough about the terrifying figure choosing to live up +there in the woods alone, and who yet seemed so gentle and so like other +folk when you met him and who gave you checker-berry lozenges. Still he +was furious when the boys hooted him and then ran, because, after all, +Old Crow was his own family. And with the first words, his mind started +to an alert attention. The words were to him.</p> + +<p>"I am going to write some things down for the boy," Old Crow began, in +the neat-handed script. "He is a good little boy. He looks like me at +his age. I had a kind of innocence. He has it, too. If he should grow up +anything like me, I want him to have this letter"—the last word was +crossed out and a more formal one substituted—"statement. If he thinks +about things anyways different from what the neighbors do, they will +begin to laugh at him, and try to make him believe he is not in his +right mind."</p> + +<p>Over and over, through the first pages of the book, there were +grammatical lapses when Old Crow, apparently from earnestness of +feeling, fell into colloquial speech. This was always when he got so +absorbed in his subject that he lacked the patience to go back and +rewrite according to rules he certainly knew but which had ceased to +govern his daily intercourse.</p> + +<p>"He must remember he may be in his right mind, for all that. If one man +thinks a thing, it might be true if forty thousand men think different. +The first man that thought the earth was round, when everybody else +thought it was flat, was one man. The boy will be told I was crazy. He +will be told I was love-cracked. I did want Selina James. She was a +sweet, pretty girl and high-headed, and the things some folks thought of +her were not so. But she was the kind that takes the world as it was +made and asks no questions, and when I couldn't take it so and tried to +explain to her how I felt about it, she didn't know any way but to +laugh. Perhaps she was afraid. And she did get sick of me and turned me +off. She married and went away. I was glad she went away, because it is +very hard to keep seeing anybody you thought liked you and find they +didn't, after all. It keeps reminding you. It was after that time I +built me the hut and came up here to live.</p> + +<p>"Now the boy will hear it was on account of Selina James that I came up +here, but it is not so, though it well might have been. It was about +that time I began to understand what a hard time 'most everybody is +having—except for a little while when they are young, and sometimes +then—and I couldn't stand it. And I thought how it might not be so if +everybody would turn to and help everybody else, and that might be the +kingdom of heaven, the same as we read about it. And then one day I went +out—I was always going round the fields and woods, kind of still, +because I liked to come on little animals living their own lives in +their own way—and I came to the open spot up above the hut where there +are the old apple trees left from the first house the Ravens lived in, +on the back road, before the other road went through. And on one of the +lower limbs of the apple tree was a robin and she was making that noise +a robin makes when she is scared 'most to pieces, and on another limb +there was a red squirrel, and he was chattering so I knew he was scared, +too. And down under the tree there was a snake pointed right at a little +toad, and I stamped my foot and hollered to scare him away; and that +same minute he struck and the toad fell over, whether poisoned to death +or scared to death I didn't know. And the snake slipped away, because he +was afraid of me, just as the toad was afraid of him. And the bird +smoothed down her feathers and flew away, and the squirrel run along +where he was going. They had got off that time, and I suppose the next +minute they forgot all about it. But I never forgot. It was just as if +something had painted a picture to show me what the world was. It was +full of fear. Everything was made to hunt down and kill everything else, +except the innocent things that eat grass and roots, and innocent as +they be—as they are—they are killed, too. And who made it so? God. So +what peace could I have—what peace could anybody ever have—in a world +where, from morning till night, it is war and murder and the fear of +death? And what good is there in trying to bring the kingdom of heaven +down to men? You can't bring it to the animals. What if you could die +for men? A good many have done that besides Jesus Christ. But who is +going to die for the animals? And the animals in captivity—I saw a bear +once, in a cage, walking up and down, up and down, and moaning. I saw a +polar bear once trying to cool himself on a cake of ice. I saw an eagle +with his wings clipped. An eagle ought to be up in the air. And all that +could be done away with, by law, if men would see to it. But even then +(and this is the strangest part of it, the part that won't bear thinking +about) it is not only that men are unmerciful to the animals, but the +animals, when they are hungry, are unmerciful to one another. I shall +come back to this.</p> + +<p>"Now about Jesus Christ. I hate to write this because, if the boy does +not see things as I do, maybe it will be bad for him to read it, and he +may think I am blaspheming holy things. I pray him to remember I write +in earnestness and love, love for him, for the earth and for the +animals. I want to tell him things look very black to me. When I think +how I felt over losing Selina James it seems to me as nothing compared +with the way I feel about the way the world is made. For it is all +uncertainty and 'most all pain. It seems to me it is not possible for +anything to be blacker than the earth is to me. I wake in the morning +with a cloud over me, and when I go to bed at night the cloud is there. +It settles down on me like—I don't know how to say what it is like—and +I call out, up here alone in the woods. I call to God. I remember how He +made the earth and I ask Him why He had to do it so. Over and over I ask +Him. He does not answer. He can't. I suppose that is what it is to be +God. You have to make a thing a certain way, and after it is done they +have to take it, the men and the animals, and do the best they can with +it. And one night when I was calling to God, there was a scream of an +animal—a little animal—just outside, and I knew an owl had got him. +And I covered my ears, for it seemed as if that was God's answer to me, +and I didn't want to hear any more. I even thought—and I tell the boy +this so that if he has thoughts that frighten him he will have the +comfort of knowing somebody has thought them before—I thought that +scream was God's answer. It was a good many months before I could pray +again, even to ask God why.</p> + +<p>"Now about religion. A great many people go to church and find comfort +in it, and they come home and eat meat for their dinners, meat +killed—they don't know how it is killed. Sometimes it is killed the +best you can and sometimes not. They don't seem to think about that. +They have done their duty and gone to church, and they go out to feed +the animals they are going to kill when they are fat enough, and +sometimes the animals will be killed the best they can and sometimes +not. And if they think about their sins, they quiet themselves by +thinking Christ has taken them on His own shoulders. And so, unless +somebody they love has died, or they are poor or disappointed, they say +it is a very pleasant world, and they ask for another slice of beef and +plan what they will do Monday, now Sunday is so far along. Now if the +boy is that kind of a boy, let him be like those people who do the best +they can without questioning. Let him do the best he can and not +question. But if he is different, if he has to think—sometimes I am +sure he will have to, for I cannot help seeing he looks out of his eyes +like me. His eyes are terrible to me, for they are always asking +questions, and that is what Grandmother Raven used to say to me. She +used to say: 'You are always asking questions with your eyes. Stop +staring and ask your questions right out.' But I couldn't. As long ago +as that, I knew my questions hadn't any answers.</p> + +<p>"Now if the boy begins to ask himself questions about Jesus Christ, +whether He is the son of God, and whether He could take on Himself the +sins of the world, I want to tell him that I am sure it is not so. I +want the boy to remember that nobody can take away his sins: nobody but +himself. He must accept his punishments. He must even go forward to meet +them, for through them alone can he learn how to keep away from sin. And +I want him to regard the life of Jesus Christ with love and reverence, +and make his own life as much like it as he can. But I want him to +remember, too, that God made him as he is, and made his father and +mother and all the rest back to the first man, and that there is no +guilt of sinfulness upon man as a race. There is only the burden of +ignorance. We live in the dark. We were born into it. As far as our +knowledge of right and wrong goes, so far are we guilty. But He has made +us as we are, and if there is guilt, it is not ours."</p> + +<p>As Raven read this, he found himself breathing heavily in the excitement +of knowing what it cost the man to write so nakedly for casual eyes. To +that elder generation, trained in the habit of thought that prevailed in +a country region, so many years ago, it was little short of blasphemy. +He turned a page, and had a cumulative surprise. For time had leaped. +The date was seven years later. Old Crow was now over sixty, and this +was the year before his death. Raven could hardly believe in the +likelihood of so wide a leap, but the first line showed him it was +actual. The subject matter was different and so was the style. The +sentences raced as if they were in a hurry to get themselves said before +the pen should drop from a palsied hand.</p> + +<p>"I gave up writing with that last line. I thought there was no more to +say. I didn't even want to read it over. If I hadn't said it well, still +I had said it and I didn't see any better way. I wanted to fortify the +boy against the loneliness of feeling there was nobody that understood. +I wanted to tell him I understood. That was all I could do for him at +that time. But a great deal more has happened. The last of it happened +over two years ago, but I was too busy to write it down. Besides, I +didn't know there would be such things to write. The boy knows me a +little now. He comes up oftener. His mother brings him. She is very +sweet and gentle, but she will not leave him alone with me because I am +queer and she is afraid I may teach him to be queer. She does not +understand. She wouldn't if I told her. She takes things as they are. +There are no questions in her mind. There will be in the boy's. They +have begun to come. I can see them more than ever by the look in his +eyes. Several years ago, about when I finished writing in this book, I +saw I should have to give up questioning myself and calling on God. +There were no answers. If there were, He didn't mean to let me have +them. I mustn't keep on. It was dangerous. I got no good out of it and I +should come to harm. And if I had got to live, I must be as near like +other folks as I could. So I must be as busy as I could. And it came to +me that over beyond the mountain there were folks poorer than I am, and +that knew less, a good deal less. I didn't know anything about God, but +I did know I must keep clean and eat the right food. So I begun to take +long tramps round the countryside, and wherever I went I'd try to find +out the sick and, if the family was poor, work for them a while and sit +up with the sick one, and, if he was discouraged, try to help him +through.</p> + +<p>"So it happened I was away from the hut a good deal of the time, and I +got an idea the Ravens liked that. It must have touched their pride to +have Old Crow living up here alone, queer as Dick's hat-band. Whichever +way I fixed it, I was a kind of a curse: for when I went off on my +wanderings I was a tramp and the news of it came back home, and I often +think the boy's mother was sorry and wished I wouldn't, though even that +was better than my being around, toleing off the boy. I liked my +wanderings, in summer best of all. But in winter the folks needed me +more, shut up so in tight houses, catching colds in bad air, and it got +so when they were sick they'd send for me and I was proper pleased to +go. And they came to have a kind of a trust in me, and I was nearer +being contented than I'd been in my whole life. Because the questions +didn't come hardly at all, now. I was too busy by day and too tired at +night. So it went on till one day I came to old Billy Jones's little +house, where he lived all alone in the dirt and filth. It was just at +the foot of the mountain and no neighbors under half a mile. I say he +lived there, but he wasn't there more than a third of the time. The boy +will remember how he used to go along the road, full as a tick, and the +school children making fun of him and then running before he could get +at them. I don't know as he would, though. There never was any harm in +him, only he did neglect himself so he was an awful sight. And the only +time he was in his little house was when he'd been hired out haying or +something, and got his money and spent it and come back with crackers +and cheese in his old carpet bag, to sober up.</p> + +<p>"This day I was speaking about (it was October and no wind) I was going +by his house and I saw a smoke coming out of the chimney, and I thought +old Billy had come home to sober up. But I hadn't hardly got to the +house before I heard him calling me, and I looked and there he was in +the front door leaning on a cane.</p> + +<p>"'You come in here,' says he, and I went in.</p> + +<p>"It was a terrible hog's nest, his front room was, but I paid no +attention, for that's the way he lived. He sat down in a chair and made +a motion with his hand for me to come near, and I did, and he took my +hand and put it on his knee.</p> + +<p>"'Feel that,' he says. And when I didn't know what he meant, nor care +hardly, for I thought he might be in drink, he called out, in a queer +voice—sharp it was, and pitiful—and says he: 'My legs are swelling. +Hard as a rock.'</p> + +<p>"Then I saw he was in a trouble of fear, and I asked him questions and +he told me how long it had been coming on and how he went to the doctor +down to the street, and the doctor told him he was a sick man, and how +he would grow worse instead of better and could never take care of +himself in the world, and the doctor would get him sent to the Poor +Farm. That was his trouble. He did not want to go to the Farm, and when +I told him it was the right way, he broke down and shook and cried and +said he was afraid to go. Then he told me why. The boy must not read +this until he is grown up, but when he is, he will hear there was a man +killed over across the mountain: Cyrus Graves, a poor, good-for-nothing +creature as it was said. (But God made him.) He was found by the side of +the road, and it was thought he had words with a peddler that went along +that day and never was found afterward. But some thought the authorities +never tried so hard as they might to find the peddler, because Cyrus was +such a poor good-for-nothing that he was well rid of, and if the peddler +was found and not convicted he might come back and burn their barns. And +when old Billy Jones was shaking there before me, I kept asking him what +he was afraid of, and he said:</p> + +<p>"'Will you promise not to tell?'</p> + +<p>"I said I would. And he said:</p> + +<p>"'It was me that killed Cyrus Graves. We were coming home together, and +we had both had a drop too much, and we had words about something, I +forget what. And which of us struck first I don't know, but I know I +struck him and he fell pitch-polling down the side of the road into the +gully and I went home and crawled into bed. And the next day they found +him, and I said I came home across lots, and there was a man that met me +and he said it was so and I was so far gone in liquor I never could have +raised my head again that night, once I'd laid down and begun to sleep +it off. But he never knew I did raise my head for I was not so well +started as common and I went out again about ten to fill up. And it was +then I met Cyrus Graves.'</p> + +<p>"I told him there was but one thing for him to do. He must send for the +sheriff and give himself up. But he cried out at that and said:</p> + +<p>"'Look at my poor legs. Do you think a man with such legs as mine has +got strength enough to be hung?'</p> + +<p>"I told him he would not be hung. He was a very sick man, and there was +no court of law in the world so unmerciful as not to take that into +account. But he would not do it. He had not meant to kill Cyrus Graves, +he said, and he would not die a murderer and known for one. And that was +why he would not go to the Poor Farm. As he got sicker, he might be +delirious or talk in his sleep. Rave, that was the word he used. He +might rave. After he stopped speaking, I sat thinking it over, and he +watched my face. He spoke first, and he spoke as if he could hardly wait +to hear the answer and yet was obliged to hear it.</p> + +<p>"'Ain't you goin' to say you'll come here an' take care of me?' he said. +'My time won't be long.'</p> + +<p>"Then I could see my going round taking care of the sick had made him +turn to me. That was the way with all of them round here. They turned to +me. It was the only comfort I had. I told him I could not take care of +him there. It was no fit place. I thought a spell longer, and he watched +me. His eyes were full of fear. The little animals look like that when +they are trapped. Then I told him I would have him brought over to the +hut if he would come, and he jumped at it. I scarcely ever saw a man so +wild with thankfulness. And the next day I hired a team and went over +after him, and I took care of him to the end."</p> + +<p>Here was a heavy dash. Raven could imagine Old Crow's drawing the line +with one impatient stroke because he had got so far in a story he could +ill stop to write, but that had to be written. Raven had forgotten Tira +up there in the lonesome woods, forgotten a day was very near when she +would have to make one more of her desperate decisions. He was thinking +of Old Crow.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2> + + +<p>He went on reading:</p> + +<p>"There is no need of going into old Billy's sickness. It made a great +change in my life. As soon as it got about that I had taken him to live +with me, folks began to say I was queer, the same as they did before, +and the children would hoot and run. He was known to be so bad (they had +always called him bad; they never once thought God made him) they +thought I liked to keep company with him because I must be bad, too. And +I could not go about any more doing for people because I was doing for +him and there was no time. But people kept sending for me, and when they +saw old Billy Jones sitting there with his bandaged legs, they would +feel hard toward me. They said I would rather do for him than for them, +and he ought, by rights, to be on the town. That meant his going to the +Farm. Sometimes I thought they felt so about it there might be action +taken to get him there—to the Poor Farm. He never thought of this, I am +sure. He had a peaceful time, as much so as a man could have that has +killed his body and begins to be afraid he has killed his soul. That was +the hardest time I had with him: about his soul. He was afraid to die. I +told him God made him and would see to him in the end, and that He well +knew he did not mean to kill Cyrus Graves. He said that was true, but if +he had been tried here in a court of law the jury would have pronounced +him guilty and it was very likely God would. And there was hell. These +things I could not answer because I did not know, and if I had any +convictions they were as dark as his, though of another sort. But I did +try to put heart into him, and I hoped the end would come before he +suffered any more.</p> + +<p>"I want the boy to know that all this time his mother was a very great +comfort to me. Of course she could not let the boy come up to the hut, +because old Billy Jones was too dreadful a sight for a child to see. But +she cooked a great many delicate things and brought them up or sent +them, and, one day I shall never forget, when I had a blind headache and +had to lie down in the dark, she sat with Billy a long time, to keep him +from being lonesome, and afterward I found she had bandaged his legs.</p> + +<p>"As time went on and he grew worse and worse, there was but one thing he +wanted. It was to be forgiven. I tried again to persuade him to tell +publicly the straight story of the killing and so die with a clean mind. +This he would not do. He had asked me to get him a headstone, with his +name on it all complete, and he was much set against being remembered as +a murderer. All his life he had lived outside the law, so to speak, and +he wanted to die respectable. I told him it might happen to him that, +after his death, somebody would be accused of the death of Cyrus Graves +and in that case I should break my promise to him and tell. To this he +consented, though unwillingly, and I am now telling, not only for the +sake of the boy, but for the sake of all to whom the boy may have to +pass on the strange things that came to Billy Jones. His sickness went +on in a very painful way, and when it got to be near the end he was +still more distressed in mind. He could not die, he said, unless he was +forgiven. And yet he had to die. For a while he seemed almost to hate me +because I could not show him the way.</p> + +<p>"'If I was a Roman Catholic,' he said, 'and you was a priest, you could +forgive me yourself. You would forgive me, I'll warrant ye.'</p> + +<p>"I did not deny it, though I felt very hopeless of anything I might do. +In those last days I could have denied him nothing. He seemed to me like +all the trouble in the world beating out there in the hut. God had made +him, and made him so that he did not rightly see good from evil, and he +had ruined his body, and now he was taking the consequences. And the +night before he died, he cried out a terrible voice:</p> + +<p>"'You don't say a word about Jesus Christ.'</p> + +<p>"I stood by his bed in anguish of mind perhaps as great as his. Yet not +as great, for he had no strength of body to bear the anguish with.</p> + +<p>"'You never have said anything,' he went on.</p> + +<p>"I felt as if he was accusing me of not giving him water when he was +fevered, or bread if he was hungry. Then he said he remembered something +he used to hear when he was little and he had hardly ever heard of it +since. But he had heard other things. And I guessed he was remembering +he had lived with the people who used the name of Jesus Christ only to +swear by. He had heard, he told me, that Jesus Christ was the son of +God, and God sent Him here to save sinners, and, if sinners called on +Him to save them, they would be saved. And then he looked at me for a +minute with that same look, as if he hated me, and he said:</p> + +<p>"'You don't believe it. You wouldn't let me suffer like this, if you +did.'</p> + +<p>"And all my spirit broke up in me, and my legs were weak under me, and +the tears ran down on my face, and I said to him:</p> + +<p>"'I do believe it.'</p> + +<p>"'Will you swear it?' he asked me. He was very wild then. 'Will you +swear by Jesus Christ it is so?'</p> + +<p>"'Yes,' I said, 'I will swear.'</p> + +<p>"And I fell on my knees by the bed and said: 'Let us pray.' And I +prayed, in what words I don't know, but my hand was on his, and when I +said Amen, he said Amen, too, and when I looked at him all the trouble +was smoothed out of his face and he said, 'Jesus Christ!' as he never +could have said it in his life before. It was as if you were speaking to +your mother or your friend (yet not just a friend, but a heavenly +friend) and shortly he died. And I had told him a lie. But I was not +sorry. I was glad. What was my keeping my poor soul clean to old Billy +Jones's dying in peace? It was the last thing I could give him, and he +was welcome to it.</p> + +<p>"It was in the early morning he died, and I did what I knew about making +him right for his coffin, and then went down to get one of the neighbors +that knew more, and all that day I was busy. The next day he would be +taken away and lie in the Methodist church at the Ridge, and the third +day he would be buried. And nobody had ever taken any interest in him +except to call him a poor good-for-nothing creature—nobody except your +mother (she is a good woman) but it looked as if he would have a +well-attended funeral. I was glad of that, for I knew he would be +pleased. He was laid out in the bedroom of the hut and the window was +open and the cold air blowing on him, and I lay down on the couch in the +large room. I didn't take my clothes off, for at such times it is +respectful to have watchers about the dead. It may not be necessary, but +it is the custom, and I wanted old Billy to have everything that was +fitting and right. I did not mean to go to sleep, but lie there a spell +and then get up and put on more wood and go into his cold room and let +him feel as if he was being taken care of to the last. And I lay there +thinking how I had heard there was diphtheria over beyond the mountain +and I would take a day or two to rest me and then I'd go over there and +help. I laughed a little to myself, and I see now it wasn't a very +pleasant kind of laugh, for I thought the people would begin to like me +again because I was free to do for them.</p> + +<p>"And I did go to sleep, being, as I said, very tired, and how long I +slept I don't know. But suddenly I waked up, just as wide awake as I am +this minute, and I knew as well as I ever knew anything, that Billy +Jones was in the room. I didn't see him. I didn't hear him. I didn't +hear anything, outside or in. It was a very still night, and there +wasn't even the creaking of the branches against each other. But Billy +Jones was in the room. I wasn't afraid, but I felt queer. I had a kind +of prickly feeling all over me. The hair on my head moved somehow, +according to the feeling it gave me. Perhaps that was being afraid, only +I don't take it so. The reason I think differently is that I didn't want +it to stop. If Billy Jones was there, I didn't want him to go away. If +he had anything to say, I wanted to hear it. And I was as sure as ever I +was of anything in my life that there was something to say. If this was +the beginning of something that was going to happen, it was only the +beginning. There was more to come. And I wanted to know what. I lay +there as still almost as Billy's body in the next room. I was afraid of +missing something. If there was something for me to hear I'd got to keep +still to hear it. But I said that before. I have to keep saying it, it +took such hold of me. The fire hadn't wholly died down. I could tell by +that I hadn't been asleep long. But I didn't dare to get up and put on +another stick. I was afraid if I moved I might jar something and it +would break. And I couldn't have it break till the end—the end of my +knowing what it was.</p> + +<p>"And now the boy must remember that what follows, if I live to write it, +is faithful and true. That is what the Bible says about things like +that: they are faithful and true. And mine are just as true. It seemed +to me as if the ceiling of the room raised up and the walls opened out +and the room was as if it was not. Whether I looked through it or +whether it was gone, I do not know. But I looked into a great space. And +it was dark and at one side of it there was a great light. And the light +was not angry, as a sunset looks when it flames and flares. It was +steady, and I knew it was to light the world. And there came into my +head some words: 'And the darkness comprehended it not.' When I waked +up, I found the words in the Bible, but that night it seemed to me they +were said for the first time. The boy must remember Billy Jones was in +all this. He was the chief part of it. As to the words, it was as if +Billy Jones said them. I was in the darkness, and I was to be made to +comprehend. And when I looked lower through the darkness—and I cannot +tell how, but I seemed to be in it and yet at the same time I was above +it, so that I looked down and saw what was going on—I saw multitudes of +men and women, trying to get through it. Sometimes they walked slowly, +as if it was hard to walk, and sometimes they jostled each other and +sometimes stopped to push one another about, and sometimes when some +were down the others stamped on them. But they were all going somewhere, +and it was toward the light. And as I say, I was in the darkness though +I could see through it, and I wondered if I was going, too.</p> + +<p>"And then I understood. I couldn't tell the boy how I understood, not if +he was here to ask me; but it was as if a voice spoke and told me in two +or three words, and few as they were, I took them in and I knew. Perhaps +there was a voice. Perhaps it was the voice of Billy Jones. There is no +reason why not. The minute after he got out of his body, he might have +known everything: I don't mean everything, I mean the one thing that +would explain it all. And he had a kindness for me, and if he learned +anything that smoothed out his trouble and turned it into joy, he would +want me to know, too. And this is it, though now I have got to the place +for telling it, I don't know how. It is like a dream. You have to tell +it the minute you wake, or it is gone. I saw that creation had been a +long time going on. I saw that although we have minds to think with, we +haven't really, in comparison with the things to be thought out. I saw +that we are so near the dust that we can no more account for the ways of +Almighty God than the owl hooting out there in the woods can read the +words I am writing here. I saw that nothing is to be told us. We are to +find out everything for ourselves, just as we have found electricity and +the laws of physics. And poisons—we have found out those, some of them, +even if we had to die to do it. And God lets us die trying to find out. +He doesn't care anything about our dying. And if He doesn't care +anything about our dying, He doesn't care anything about the rabbit +broken by the owl, or the toad struck by the snake.</p> + +<p>"Now, why doesn't He care? For the first time, I knew there was a reason +that was not a cruel reason. I knew His reasons were all good. And I saw +that though He could not break the rules of His plan by telling us +things, He could give us a kind of a something inside us that should +make us work it out ourselves. We had hungers. We had one hunger for +eternal life. We had to believe in it, to help us bear this present +life. We believed it so hard that men rose up and said it was so, and we +said God had put the words into their mouths. And out of our sufferings, +pity was born, and now and then a man would be raised up so full of pity +that other men believed in him and followed everything he said and even +called him a god. And this was well, because if they had not thought he +was a god, they might not have followed him. And I seemed to be told +that a great many men were born who were sent from God, but I have not +read many books and how can I prove whether it is true?</p> + +<p>"But Jesus Christ came, and His story is the story of the will of God. +For men believed His father was God. That is to keep in our minds always +the fatherhood of God. And his mother was believed to be a virgin. I do +not know how to say this, but I was given to believe that that was no +more true than I had thought, but still that it was the truest of all. +It is one of the things we are to believe. We are to learn from it—how +can I say?—that there is a heavenly birth out of purity and light. It +is a symbol. That is the word: a symbol. And His death for mankind is +the everlasting symbol of man's duty: to die for one another. And He +went into the grave, and ascended into heaven, and so shall we all die +and live again. But every observance of every church is a +symbol—nothing more. And the man that was a god is a symbol and nothing +more. But nothing could be more. For to find a symbol that has lasted, +in one form or another, since the beginning of the world is to learn +that it is something the world itself is built on. It is the picture +book we are given before we can read print. And it means that something +is working out—and is not yet—and the eye of man hath not seen or the +ear of man heard. And about fear—that is the most wonderful of all and +the hardest to tell. It is our friend. At first everything fed upon +everything else; and so it does now, for how shall I say the animal has +fear and the growing plant has not? And our fear tells us what to turn +away from, and it fits us for the fight of the mortal life. But in the +end will our fear be only the fear of evil? Fear is our counselor. It is +our friend.</p> + +<p>"Now perhaps I have done wrong in trying to write this out. Perhaps I +have not helped the boy or anybody he tells. Perhaps I have offended +them. I know the sound of what I must have heard and the sight of what I +saw was clearer to me before I tried to tell about them. At first I kept +them back somewhere in my mind and didn't try to see them or hear them +too close. And when I did that, the great light was always there and I +was running toward it. But now I have tried to tell, I see it is no more +than words. They darken counsel. And I have put it back into my mind, +not so much to be thought about as to have at hand. And all my trouble +has gone. It has been a long trouble. I am over sixty now. But I am not +afraid of anything and I am not in doubt. When I see men suffering, I +know they are suffering for a reason. When I find the bird with a broken +wing or the rabbit bit by the trap I know God knows about them, and if I +cannot know, it proves it is not necessary I should. For there is the +great light. (But it is not likely the boy will see this account of it +at all, because I shall try to write it over—to write it better—and if +I make it clearer this will be destroyed.)</p> + +<p>"Another thing: about the worship of God. He does not want us to worship +Him as we understand it, to crawl before Him as if He were an idol we +had set up to get us victories over our enemies and to fill us with +food. He wants us—what shall I say?—to open our hearts and our minds +and our ears and eyes to what He wants us to know. He is not an idol. He +is God. And all the way to Him, the horrible way through burnt +offerings, the blood of lambs and goats—blood, blood, all the way—is +the way that climbs up to the real sacrifice, the last of all: the man's +own heart.</p> + +<p>"One thing more: the greatest thing that ever happened to me was old +Billy Jones. Was it because I was sorry for him? Was it because I could +do something for him? I don't know. But I tell the boy that the man or +the woman that makes him shed his blood in pity for them, that is the +man or woman that will open his eyes to what we call Eternal Life. What +is Eternal Life? Is it living forever? I do not know. But the +words—those two words—stand for the great light ahead of us, the light +I truly saw. And what the light is, still I do not know. But this I +know: God is. He lives. And He is sorry. The boy may tell me this is no +more than the words about His caring for the sparrow that falleth. But I +tell him it is more to me, for this I have found out for myself. And I +have found it out through great tribulation. But the tribulation is not +now. It has stopped. It stopped with the sound of old Billy Jones's +voice I heard—somehow I heard it—when his body lay in there dead. And +I am not afraid. I am not afraid of fear—even for the little +animals—and that is more than for myself. And that is my legacy to the +boy. He must not be afraid."</p> + +<p>There it ended, and Raven sat for a long time looking at the fine +painstaking script and seeing, for the moment, at least, the vision of +Old Crow. He felt a great welling of love toward him, a longing to get +hold of him somehow and tell him the journal had done its work. He +understood. And it meant to him, in its halting simplicity, more than +all the books he had ever read on the destiny of man. Meager as it was, +it seemed to him something altogether new, because it had come out of +the mind of an ignorant man, if a man can be called ignorant who has +used his mind to its full capacity of thought and unconsciously fitted +it, so far as he might, to the majestic simplicities of the Bible. Old +Crow had never read anything about legend or the origins of belief. +There were no such books then at Wake Hill. He read no language but his +own. Whatever he had evolved, out of the roots of longing, had been done +in the loneliness of the remote shepherd who charts the stars. And in +the man himself Raven had found a curious companionship. Their lives +seemed to have run a parallel course. Old Crow, like himself, was a +victim of world sickness. And his wound had been cleansed; he had been +healed.</p> + +<p>Raven did give a little smile to the thought that, at least, the man had +been saved one thing: he had no authoritative Amelia on his track to +betray him to organized benevolence. And for himself something, he could +not adequately tell what, was as clear to him as a road of light to +unapprehended certainties. It was a symbol. It was the little language +men had to talk in because they could not use the language of the stars: +their picture language. But it was the rude token of ineffable reality. +As the savage's drawing of a man stands for the man, so the symbols +wrought out by the hungry world stand for what is somewhere, yet not +visibly here. For the man exists or the savage could not have drawn him. +Not all the mystics, he thought, smiling over his foolish inner +conviction that could not be reached through the mind but only through +the heart, not all the divines, could have set up within him the altar +of faith he seemed suddenly to see before him: it had to be Old Crow. +And he slept, and in the morning it did not need the mottled book at his +bedside to remind him. Still it was Old Crow.</p> + +<p>He put it all away in his mind to think over later, just as Old Crow had +turned aside from his vision for the more convincing clearness of an +oblique angle upon it, and dressed hastily. He got out of the house +without meeting even Charlotte, and was about crossing the road on the +way to the hut when he saw Tenney coming, axe and dinner pail in hand. +Raven swerved on his path, and affected to be looking down the road. He +could not proceed the way he was going. Tenney's mind must not be drawn +toward that living focus by even the most fragmentary hint. Yet if Tira +was still there, she and the child must be fed. After his glance down +the road he turned back to the house, nodding at Tenney as he neared. +But Tenney motioned to him.</p> + +<p>"Here," he called stridently. "You wait."</p> + +<p>Raven halted and as Tenney was approaching, at a quick stride, noted how +queerly he was hung. It was like a skeleton walking, the dry joints +acting spasmodically. When the man came up with him, he saw how ravaged +his face was, and yet lighted by what a curious eagerness. Ready, he +hoped, at all points for any possible attack involving Tira, Raven still +waited, and the question Tenney shot at him could not have been more +surprising:</p> + +<p>"Did you find salvation?"</p> + +<p>Raven stood looking at him for an instant, and suddenly he remembered +Old Crow, who had accomplished the salvation of a sick heart and +bequeathed the treasure to him.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, more tolerantly than he had ever spoken to Tenney. "I +think I did."</p> + +<p>Was it his imagination that Tenney looked disappointed?</p> + +<p>"Last night?" the man insisted. "Did you find it last night? Through +me?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven. "I didn't find it through you."</p> + +<p>Tenney was ingenuously taken aback.</p> + +<p>"There is one way," he said, "into the sheepfold—only one."</p> + +<p>He turned about, muttering, and Raven, looking after him, thought he was +an ugly customer. For a woman to be shut up alone with him, her young, +too, to defend! It was like being jailed with an irrational beast. But +Tenney paid no further attention to him. He walked away, swinging his +dinner pail, down across the meadow to the lower woods, and Raven, after +the fringe of birches had closed upon him, hurried off to the hut. He +did not expect to find her. The pail in Tenney's hand was sufficient +evidence, even if the man's going to his work were not. Tenney would +never have abandoned his search or his waiting for her, and if he had, +he would not have delayed to pack a dinner pail. The hut was empty of +human life, but the bricks were warm. She could not have left until the +early morning. Mechanically he piled kindling near the hearth. But +curiously, though the hut was warm not only with the fire but the +suggestion of her breathing presence, it was not she who seemed to be +with him but Old Crow.</p> + +<p>He went back to the house and found Amelia in traveling dress, her face +tuned to the note of concentration when something was to be done. She +was ready. She had the appearance of the traveler needing only to slip +on an outer garment to go, not merely from New Hampshire down to Boston, +but to uncharted fastnesses. It meant, he found, this droll look of +being prepared for anything, not the inconsiderable journey before her +but a new enterprise for him. And he would have to be persuaded to it. +Well, she knew that. She met him in the hall.</p> + +<p>"John," she said, with the firmness of her tone in active benevolences, +"I have asked Jerry to take me to the train. I want you to go with me."</p> + +<p>"Me?" said Raven, unaffectedly surprised. "What for?"</p> + +<p>"For several things. If Dick is in any sort of trouble——"</p> + +<p>"He's not," said Raven. "Take my word for that."</p> + +<p>"And," she concluded, "I want you to see somebody."</p> + +<p>"Somebody?" Raven repeated. He put his hand on her shoulder, smiling +down at her. Milly was a good sort. It was too bad she had to be, like +so many women benevolence mad, so disordered in her meddling. "I suppose +you mean an alienist."</p> + +<p>She nodded, her lips compressed. She would stick at nothing.</p> + +<p>"Now Milly," said Raven, "do I seem to you in the least dotty?"</p> + +<p>Tears came into her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I wish you wouldn't use such words," she said tremulously. It meant +much for Milly to tremble. "It's like calling that dreadful influenza +the flu."</p> + +<p>Raven was reminded of the old man down the road who forbade secular talk +in the household during a thunder shower. It "madded" the Almighty. You +might be struck.</p> + +<p>"I won't," he said, the more merciful of her because she was on the +point of going. "And I won't go back with you."</p> + +<p>"Will you come later?" she persisted, still tremulous.</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven, "probably not. If I do, I'll let you know. And you +mustn't come up here without notifying me well in advance."</p> + +<p>"That shows——" she began impulsively. "John, that isn't a normal thing +to say: to expect your own sister to notify you."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Raven cheerfully. "Then I'm not normal. The funny part +of it is, I don't care whether I'm normal or not. I've got too many +other things to think of. Here's Charlotte with your brekky. Come on."</p> + +<p>In the two hours before she went, he was, she told Dick afterward, +absolutely scintillating. She never knew John could be so brilliant. He +talked about things she never knew he had the slightest interest in: +theosophy and feminism and Americanization. She couldn't help wondering +whether he was trying to convince her of his mental soundness. But he +certainly was amazing. Dick received this in silence. He understood.</p> + +<p>It was true. Raven did fill the time from a racing impetuosity, only +slackened when Jerry appeared with the pung. Then he hurried her into +her coat, kissed her warmly—and she had to comment inwardly that she +had never found John so affectionate—and, standing bareheaded to watch +her away, saluted her when she turned at the bend in the road. Then, +when the scene was empty of her, he plunged in, past Charlotte, standing +with hands rolled in her apron, snatched his cap, and hurried up the +road to Nan.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2> + + +<p>Raven, relieved of his hindering Amelia, felt extraordinarily gay. He +went fast along the road, warm in the deepening sun, and saw Nan coming +toward him. He waved his cap and called to her:</p> + +<p>"She's gone."</p> + +<p>"Who?" Nan was coming on with her springing stride, and when she reached +him she looked keenly at him, adding: "What's happened to you, Rookie?"</p> + +<p>Nothing had happened to her, he could see. She was always like a piece +cut out of the morning and fitted into any part of the day she happened +to be found in: always of a gallant spirit, always wholesome as apples, +always ready. This was not altogether youth. It was, besides, something +notable and particular which was Nan. He laughed out, she caught his +mood so deftly.</p> + +<p>"Something has happened," he said. "First place, Milly's gone. Second, +I've found Old Crow."</p> + +<p>"You've found Old Crow? What do you mean by that?"</p> + +<p>"Can't tell you now. Wait till we sit down together."</p> + +<p>"And she's truly gone?"</p> + +<p>They stood there in the road as if Nan's house were not at hand; but the +air and the sun were pleasant to them.</p> + +<p>"Gone, bag and baggage. Dick wired and ordered her in some way she +didn't dare ignore. I suspect he did it to save me. He's a good boy."</p> + +<p>"He is a good boy," said Nan. There was a reminiscent look in her eyes. +"But he's a very little one. Were we ever so young, Rookie, you and I?"</p> + +<p>"You!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'm a sphinx compared with Dick. I didn't tell you last night, +there was so much else to say, but I had a letter from him, returned to +Boston from New York. He assumed, you know, if I wasn't in Boston I'd +gone to the Seaburys'. So he wrote there."</p> + +<p>"What's he want?"</p> + +<p>Nan hesitated a moment. Then she said:</p> + +<p>"It's a pretty serious letter, Rookie. I suppose it's a love-letter."</p> + +<p>"Don't you know?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I suppose I know. But it's so childish. He's furious, then he's +almost on his knees begging, and then he goes back to being mad again. +Rookie, he's so young."</p> + +<p>"When it comes to that," said Raven, "you're young, too. I've told you +that before."</p> + +<p>"Young! Oh! but not that way. I couldn't beg for anything. I couldn't +cry if I didn't get it. I don't know what girls used to do, but we're +different, Rookie, we that have been over there."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "but you mustn't let it do too much to you. You +mustn't let it take away your youth."</p> + +<p>Nan shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Youth isn't so very valuable," she said, "not that part of it. There's +lots of misery in it, Rookie. Don't you know there is?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "I know." Suddenly he remembered Anne and the bonds +she had laid on him. Had he not suffered them, in a dumb way, finding no +force within himself to strike them off? Had he been a coward, a dull +fellow tied to women's restraining wills? And he had by no means escaped +yet. Wasn't Anne inexorably by his side now, when he turned for an +instant from the problem of Tira, saying noiselessly, this invisible +force that was Anne: "What are you going to do about my last wish, my +last command? You are thinking about Nan, about that strange woman, +about yourself. Think about me." But he deliberately summoned his mind +from the accusing vision of her, and turned it to Nan. "Then," he said, +"there doesn't seem to be much hope for Dick, poor chap!"</p> + +<p>"Doesn't there?" she inquired, a certain indignant passion in her voice. +"Anyway, there's no hope for me. I'd like to marry Dick. I'd like to +feel perfectly crazy to marry him. He won't write his poetry always. +That's to the good, anyhow. If I don't marry him I shall be a miserable +old thing, more and more positive, more and more like all the women of +the family, the ones that didn't marry"—and they both knew Aunt Anne +was in her mind—"drying rose leaves and hunting up genealogical trash."</p> + +<p>"But, my own child," said Raven in a surge of pity for her, as if some +clearest lens had suddenly brought her nearer him, "you don't have to +marry Dick to get away from that. You'll simply marry somebody else."</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan, "you know I sha'n't."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Raven, "there is somebody else."</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"I'm an odd number, Rookie," she said, with a bitterness he found +foreign to her. "All those old stories of kindred souls may be true, but +they're not true for me."</p> + +<p>"You have probably," said Raven, a sharp light now on her, bringing out +the curves and angles of her positive mind, "you have done some perverse +thing to send him off, and you won't move a finger to bring him back."</p> + +<p>Nan laughed. She was no longer bitter. This was the child he knew.</p> + +<p>"Rookie," she said, "you are nearer an absolute fool than any human +being I ever saw. If I wanted a man back, it's likely I could get him. +Most of us can. But do you think I would?"</p> + +<p>"Then you're proud, sillykins."</p> + +<p>"I'm not proud," said Nan—and yet proudly. "If I loved anybody, I'd let +him walk over me. That's what Charlotte would say. Can't you hear her? +It isn't for my sake. It's for his. Do you think I'd bamboozle him and +half beckon and half persuade, the way women do, and trap him into the +great enchantment? It is an enchantment. You know it is. But I'd rather +he'd keep his grip on things—on himself—and walk away from me, if +that's where it took him. I'd rather he'd walk straight off to somebody +else, and break his heart, if it came that way."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord, Nan," said Raven, "where do you get such thoughts?"</p> + +<p>"Get them?" she repeated. "I got them from you first. You've been a +slave all your life. Don't you know you have? Don't you know you had +cobwebs spun round you, round and round, till she had you tight, hand +and foot, not hers but so you couldn't walk off to anybody else? And +even now, after her death——"</p> + +<p>"Stop," said Raven. "That's enough, Nan."</p> + +<p>Again Anne Hamilton was beside them on the wintry road, and they were +hurting her inexpressibly.</p> + +<p>"That's it," said Nan. "You're afraid she'll hear."</p> + +<p>"If I am," said Raven, "it's not——" There he stopped.</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan. She had relented. Her eyes were soft. "You're not afraid +of her. But you are afraid of hurting her. And even that's weak, +Rookie—in a man. Don't be so pitiful. Leave it to the women."</p> + +<p>Raven laughed a little now. Again she seemed a child, crying after the +swashbuckling hero modern man has put into the discard, where apparently +he has to stay, except now and then when he ventures out and struts a +little. But it avails him nothing. Somebody laughs, and back he has to +go.</p> + +<p>"I am pretty stupid," he said. "But never mind about an old stager like +me. Don't be afraid of showing him—the man, I mean—all your charm. +Don't be afraid of going to his head. You've got enough to justify every +possible hope you could hold out to him. You're the loveliest—Nan, +you're the loveliest thing I ever saw."</p> + +<p>"The loveliest?" said Nan, again recklessly. "Lovelier than Tira?"</p> + +<p>For an instant she struck him dumb. Was Tira so lovely? To him certainly +she had a beauty almost inexpressible. But was it really inherent in +her? Or was it something in the veil he found about her, that haze of +hopeless suffering?</p> + +<p>"Do you think she's beautiful?"</p> + +<p>His voice was keen; curiosity had thinned it to an edge. Nan answered it +with exactness.</p> + +<p>"I think she's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. She doesn't know it. +If she did, she'd probably wave her hair and put on strange chiffons, +what Charlotte calls dewdads. She'd have to be the cleverest woman on +earth to resist them. And because she's probably never been an inch out +of this country neighborhood, she'd rig herself up—Charlotte again!—in +the things the girls like round here. But she either doesn't know her +power or she doesn't care."</p> + +<p>"I'm inclined to think," said Raven slowly, "she never has looked at +herself in that way. It has brought her things she doesn't want, things +that made her suffer. And she's worked so hard trying to manage the +whole business—life and her sufferings—she hasn't had time to lay much +stress on her looks."</p> + +<p>"It's all so strange," said Nan, as if the barriers were down and she +wanted to indicate something hardly clear to herself. "You see, she +isn't merely beautiful. Most of us look like what we are. We're rather +nice looking, like me, or we're plain. But she 'takes back,' as +Charlotte would say. She reminds you of things, pictures, and music, and +dead queens—isn't there a verse about 'queens that died young and +fair'?—and—O heavens, Rookie! I can't say it—but all the old hungers +and happinesses, the whole business."</p> + +<p>"I wonder," said Raven impetuously, "if you think she's got any mind at +all. Or whether it's nothing but line and color?"</p> + +<p>Nan shook her head.</p> + +<p>"She's got something better than a mind. She has a faithful heart. And +if a man—a man I cared about—got bewitched by her, I'd tell him to +snatch her up and run off with her, and even if he found she was hollow +inside, he'd have had a minute worth living for, and he could take his +punishment and say 'twas none too much."</p> + +<p>"You'd tell him!" Raven suggested, smiling at her heat and yet moved by +it. "You weren't going to fetter your man by telling him anything."</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan, returned to her composure, which was of a careless sort, +"I shouldn't, really. I'd hope though. I'd allow myself to hope he'd +snatch her away from that queer devil's darning needle she's married to, +and buy her a divorce and marry her."</p> + +<p>"You would, indeed! Then you don't know love, my Nan, for you don't know +jealousy. And with a mystery woman like that, wouldn't the man be +forever wondering what's behind that smile of hers? Tenney wonders. It +isn't that flashy fellow at the prayer-meeting that makes him wonder. +It's the woman herself. Yet she's simplicity itself—she's truth—but +no, Nan, you don't know jealousy."</p> + +<p>"Don't I?" said Nan, unperturbed. "You're mighty clever, aren't you, +Rookie? But I tell you again I'd rather leave my man to live his life as +he wants it than live it with him. Now"—she threw off the moment as if +she had permanently done with it—"now, I went to see her this morning."</p> + +<p>"You did? What for?"</p> + +<p>"It was so horrible last night," said Nan. "Hideous! There was that +creature sitting there beside her, that perfumery man."</p> + +<p>"Perfumery?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He smelled like the soap the boys used to buy, the ones that lived +'down the road a piece.' He frightened her, just his sitting down beside +her. And it put some kind of a devil into that awful Tenney. I thought +about her all night, and this morning I went over and asked her to go +back with me now, while Tenney's away chopping. I told her I'd help her +pack, and Jerry'd take us to the train."</p> + +<p>"What did she say?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. Oh, yes, she did." Nan laughed, in the irritation of it. "She +said I was real good. Said Israel was going to kill soon."</p> + +<p>"Kill?"</p> + +<p>"Hogs. There were two. They'd weigh three hundred apiece. It was quite a +busy season, trying out and all, and no time for her to be away."</p> + +<p>It was irresistible. They both laughed. They had been dowering her with +the grace of Helen, and now she stood before them inexorably bent on +trying out.</p> + +<p>"I gather," said Nan, rather drily, "you're going over to see her +yourself."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. "But not till I've seen you. You ran away from Milly. +Now Milly's gone, and you're coming back."</p> + +<p>Her eyes roved from him to the steadfast green of the slope across the +road. She was moved. Her mouth twitched at the tight corners, her eyes +kindled.</p> + +<p>"It would be fun," said she.</p> + +<p>"Besides, think how silly to keep Charlotte provisioning you and tugging +over to spend nights, poor Charlotte!"</p> + +<p>"I really stayed," said Nan, temporizing, "for this Tira of yours—and +Tenney's."</p> + +<p>This form of statement sounded malicious to her own ears, but not to +his. Sometimes Nan wished he were not quite so "simple honest." It was, +she suspected, the woman's part—her own—to be unsuspecting and +obstinately good.</p> + +<p>"But if," she continued, "she won't have anything to do with you, I +might as well go back to town."</p> + +<p>"Not yet," said Raven. "I've got something to tell you."</p> + +<p>"What's it about?"</p> + +<p>"Old Crow."</p> + +<p>Nan thought a minute.</p> + +<p>"All right," she said. She looked at once unreasonably happy, like, he +extravagantly thought, a beautiful statue with the fountain of life +playing over it. "I'll come—for Old Crow."</p> + +<p>"Pick up your duds," said he, "and I'll go along and see if I can make +anything out of her. You be ready when I come back."</p> + +<p>Nan looked after him and thought how fast he walked and how Tira, as +well as Tira's troubles, drew him. If Tira knew the power of her own +beauty, how terribly decisive a moment this would be in the great dark +kitchen Nan had just left! And yet if Tira, having looked in her mirror +and the mirror of life, were cruelly sophisticated enough to play that +part, the man would be given odds to resist her. He was no ingenuous +youth.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2> + + +<p>Raven walked up to the side door of the house and knocked. She came at +once, her face blank of any expectation, though at seeing him she did +stand a little tenser and her lips parted with a quicker breath.</p> + +<p>"Good morning," said he. "Aren't you going to ask me in?"</p> + +<p>"Oh!" breathed Tira. It seemed she did actually consider keeping him +out. "I don't know," she blundered. "I'm alone, but I never feel +certain——"</p> + +<p>She never felt certain, he concluded, whether her peril might not be +upon her. But he had a sense of present security. He had seen Tenney +disappearing inside the fringe of woods.</p> + +<p>"Let me come in," he said quietly. "I want to talk to you. It's cold for +you out here."</p> + +<p>She moved aside and he followed her to the kitchen. The room was +steaming with warmth, the smell of apple sauce and a boiling ham. Her +moulding board, dusted with flour, was on the table, and her yellow +mixing bowl beside it. Raven did not think what household duties he +might be delaying, but the scene was sweet to him: a haven of homely +comfort where she ought to find herself secure. There was, in the one +casual glance he took, no sign of the child, and he was glad. That +strange, silent witness, since Nan and Charlotte had both, by a phrase, +banished the little creature into an alien room of its own, had begun to +embarrass him. He wanted to talk to Tira alone.</p> + +<p>"Baby's in the bedroom," said Tira, answering his thought. "When he's in +here, I wake him up steppin' round."</p> + +<p>Raven stood waiting for her to sit, and she drew forward a chair, +placing it to give her an oblique view from the window. Having seated +herself, she asked him, with a shy hospitality:</p> + +<p>"Won't you set?"</p> + +<p>He drew a chair nearer her and his eyes sought her in the light of what +Nan had said. Yes, she was beautiful. Her blue calico, faded to a +softness suited to old pictures, answered the blue of her eyes. The +wistful look of her face had deepened. It was all over a gentle +interrogation of sweet patience and unrest.</p> + +<p>"So Nan came over," he began. It seemed the only way to pierce her +reserve, at once, by a straight shaft. "You wouldn't do what she wanted +you to."</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Why wouldn't you?" he urged, and then she did answer, not ungraciously, +but with a shy courtesy:</p> + +<p>"I didn't feel to."</p> + +<p>"It would be"—he hesitated for a word and found an ineffectual +one—"nice, if you could talk to her. She wouldn't tell."</p> + +<p>"I don't," said Tira, still with the same gentle obstinacy, "hold much +with talkin'."</p> + +<p>Raven, because he had her to himself and the time was short, determined +not to spare her for lack of a searching word.</p> + +<p>"Tira," he said, and she smiled a little, mysteriously to him but really +because she loved to hear him use her name, "things aren't getting any +better here. They're getting worse."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," she hastened to say. "They're better."</p> + +<p>"Only last night you had to run away from him."</p> + +<p>"Things are ever so much better," said Tira, smiling at him, with a +radiance of conviction that lighted her face to a new sort of beauty. +"They're all right. I've found the Lord."</p> + +<p>What could he say? Old Crow had besought him, too, to abandon fear in +the certainty of a safe universe speaking through the symbols man could +understand. He tried to summon something that would reach and move her.</p> + +<p>"What if I were drowning," he said. "Suppose I knew I should"—he sought +for the accepted phrase—"go to heaven, if I drowned. Do you think I +should be right in not trying to save myself?"</p> + +<p>Tira knit her brows. It was only for an instant, though.</p> + +<p>"No," she said. "Certain you'd have to save yourself. You'd have to try +every way you knew. That's what I've done. I'm tryin' every way I know."</p> + +<p>"I'm telling you another way," said Raven sharply. "I'm telling you you +can't live with a crazy man——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," she interrupted earnestly. "He ain't that. He has spells, +that's all."</p> + +<p>"I'm not even asking you to go away with me. I'm asking you to go with +that good woman over there." Somehow he felt this was more appealing +than the name of Nan. "I trust her as I do myself, more than myself. +It's to save your life, Tira, your life and the baby's life."</p> + +<p>She was looking at him out of eyes warm with the whole force of her +worshiping love and gratitude.</p> + +<p>"No," she said softly. "I can't go. I ain't got a word to say ag'inst +her," she added eagerly. "She's terrible good. Anybody could see that. +But I can't talk to folks. I can't let 'em know. Not anybody," she added +softly, as if to herself, "but you."</p> + +<p>Raven forbade himself to be moved by this.</p> + +<p>"Then," he said, "you'll have to talk to other folks you may not like so +well. I shall complain of him. I shall be a witness to what I've seen +and what you've told me. I've threatened you with that before, but now +it's got to be done."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira, trying, he could see, through every fiber of will in +her to influence him. But never by her beauty: she was game there. "You +wouldn't tell what I've said to you. You couldn't. 'Twas said to you an' +nobody else. It couldn't ha' been said to anybody else on this livin' +earth."</p> + +<p>Here was a spark of passion, as if she struck it out unknowingly. But he +must not be moved, and by every means he would move her.</p> + +<p>"What is there," he said, in the roughness of an emotion she saw +plainly, "what is there I wouldn't do to save your life? To save you +from being knocked about, touched"—he was about to add "violated," the +purity of her seemed so virginal, but he stopped and she went on:</p> + +<p>"It's just as I told you before. If they asked me questions, I should +say 'twa'n't so. I should say you thought 'twas so, but 'twa'n't. I +should say you wrote books an' you got up things, I guessed. It made you +wrong in your head."</p> + +<p>Old Crow! The innocent observers of his life and Old Crow's were in a +mysterious conspiracy to prove them both unsound. He laughed out +suddenly and she looked at him, surprised.</p> + +<p>"Do you know why I would?" she continued earnestly. "Because he never'd +overlook it in this world. If they hauled him up before a judge, an' you +testified, the minute they let him go he'd take it out o' you. You'd be +in more danger'n I be now. Besides, I ain't in any danger. I tried it +this mornin' an' I found out." He sat with knitted brows and dry lips +waiting for her to go on. "Last night," she said, "after you went down +from the shack, I couldn't sleep. I never closed my eyes. But I wa'n't +lonesome nor afraid. I was thinkin' o' what you said. He was there. +Jesus Christ was there. An' I knew 'twas so because you said so. +Besides, I felt it. An' 'long about three I got up an' covered the coals +an' took baby an' come down along home. For, I says, if He was there +with me in the shack, He'll go with me when I go, an' my place is to +home. An' there was a light in the kitchen, an' I looked in through the +winder an' Isr'el was there. He was kneelin' before a chair, an' his +head was on his hands an' through the winder I heard him groan. An' I +stepped in an' he got up off his knees an' stood lookin' at me kinder +wild, an' he says: 'Where you been?' An' I says: 'No matter where I +been. Wherever I been He's come home with me.' An' he says, 'He? Who is +it now?' An' I felt as if I could laugh, it was so pleasant to me, an' +seemed to smooth everything out. An' I says, 'Jesus Christ. He's come +home with me.' An' he looked at me kinder scairt, an' says: 'I should +think you was out o' your head.' An' I went round the room an' kinder +got it in order an' brashed up the fire an' he set an' looked at me. An' +I begun to sing. I sung Coronation—it stayed in my mind from the +meetin'—I dunno when I've sung before—an' he set an' watched me. An' I +got us an early breakfast an' we eat, but he kep' watchin' me. I'd ketch +him doin' it while he stirred his tea. 'Twas as if he was afraid. I +wouldn't have him feel that way. You don't s'pose he is afraid o' me, do +you?"</p> + +<p>This she poured out in a haste unlike her usual halting utterance. But +there was a steadiness in it, a calm. He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"No," he said. "I wish he were afraid of you." He wanted to leave her +the comfort of belief and at the same time waken her to the actual +perils of her life. "Tira," he said, looking into her eyes and trying to +impress her with the force of his will, "he isn't right, you know, not +right in his head, or he never would behave to you as he does. Any man +in his senses would know you were true to him. He doesn't, and that's +why he's so dangerous."</p> + +<p>A convulsive movement passed over her face, slight as a twitching of +muscles could well be. The sweat broke out on her chin.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "any man wouldn't know. Because it's true. That man that +come into this house last night an' set down side o' me—an' glad enough +he was there happened to be that chair left, same as if I'd left it for +him—he's bad all through, an' every man in this township knows it, an' +they know how I know it, an' how I found it out." The drops on her +forehead had wet the curling rings of her hair and she put up her hand +and swept them impatiently away. Her eyes, large in their agonized +entreaty, were on Raven's, and he suffered for her as it was when he had +seen her at the moments of her flight into the woods. And now he seemed +to see, not her alone, but Nan, not a shred of human pathos that had +been tossed from hand to hot hand, but something childlike and +inviolate. And that was how he let himself speak.</p> + +<p>"But, dear child," he said, "Tenney knows how faithful you are. He knows +if you hadn't loved him you wouldn't have married him. And he knows if +you love anybody, you're true through everything."</p> + +<p>"That's it," she said loudly, in a tone that echoed strangely in the +great kitchen. "That's it."</p> + +<p>He knew what she meant. If she loved the man, she could convince him, +mad as he was. But she did not love him. She was merely clinging to him +with all the strength of her work-toughened hands.</p> + +<p>"But talk to him," he insisted. "Show him how well you mean toward him."</p> + +<p>"I can't," she said. "I never've talked to anybody, long as I lived. I +git"—she paused for a word and ended in a dash: "I git all froze up."</p> + +<p>She sat staring at him, as if her mind were tied into knots, as if she +could neither untie them, nor conceive of anybody's doing it. But he +could not know just what sort of turmoil was in her nor how it was so +strange to her that she felt no mental strength to meet it. In the +instinct to talk to him, that new impulse born out of the first human +companionship she had ever had, she felt strange troubles within her +mind, an anguish of desire, formless and untrained. She was like a child +who stretches out arms to something it dearly longs for and finds its +fingers will not close on it. She had never, before knowing him, felt +the least hunger to express anything that did not lie within the small +circle of her little vocabulary. But her mind was waking, stretching +itself toward another mind, and suffering from its own impotence.</p> + +<p>"O God!" she said, in a low tone, and then clapped her hand over her +mouth, because she had not meant to speak that name.</p> + +<p>There came a knock at the door. Instantly the look of life ebbed from +her face. It assumed at once its mask of stolid calm. She got up and +went to the door and Raven, waiting for her to come back, remembered +absently he had heard the clang of bells. Visualizing her face as she +had talked to him, trying to understand her at every point, the more as +she could not explain herself, he was suddenly and sharply recalled. He +heard her voice.</p> + +<p>"No," she cried, so distinctly that the sound came through the crack of +the door she had left ajar. "No, no, I tell you. You never've stepped +foot into this house by my will, an', so long as I'm in it, you never +shall."</p> + +<p>Raven rose and went to the door. He had not stopped to think what he +should find, but at least it was, from her tone, a menace of some sort. +There stood Eugene Martin, in his fur coat, his florid extravagance of +scarf and pin, on his face the ironic smile adapted to his preconceived +comedy with Tira. Martin, hearing the step behind her, started, +unprepared. He had passed Tenney, slowly making his way homeward, and +counted on a few minutes' speech with her and a quick exit, for his +butt, the fool of a husband, to see. But as Raven appeared, the fellow's +face broke up in a flouting amusement. Here was another, the satiric +lips were ready to swear. Deepest distrust of Tira shone forth in the +half smile; a low community of mean understanding was in his following +glance at Raven. He burst into a loud laugh, took off his hat and made +Tira an exaggerated bow.</p> + +<p>"Don't mention it," he said. "Didn't know you had company. Wouldn't +think o' comin' in."</p> + +<p>He turned away, his shoulders shaking with ostentatious mirth. It was +all in a minute, and Raven's following act, quite unreasoned, also +occupied a minute. He put Tira aside, stepped out after Martin and +walked behind him down the path. When Martin reached the sleigh, Raven +was at his side. Martin had ceased shaking his shoulders in that +fictitious mirth. Now in that last moment, it seemed, he took cognizance +of Raven, and turned, apprehension, in spite of him, leaping to his +face. Raven, still with no set purpose, grasped him by the collar with +one hand and with the other reached for the whip in the sleigh. It was +over quickly. Raven remembered afterward that the horse, startled by the +swish of the blows, jumped aside and that he called out to him. He did +not propose depriving Martin of the means of exit. The fellow did not +meet judgment lying down. He did a wild feat of struggling, but he was +soft in every muscle, a mean antagonist. The act over, Raven released +him, with an impetus that sent him staggering, set the whip in the +socket and turned back to the house. At that moment he saw Tenney coming +along the road, not with his usual hurried stride, but slowly, his head +lifted, his eyes upon the figures at his gate. Raven recoiled from the +possibility of a three-cornered wrangle when Tenney also should reach +the scene. It was an impossible predicament. Not for himself: he was +never troubled by any hampering sense of personal dignity, but for Tira, +who stood in silence watching them. She had advanced a few steps into +the snowy path and waited, immovable, the light breeze lifting her rings +of hair. To Raven, in the one glance he gave her, she was like a Fate, +choosing neither good nor ill, but watching the even course of time. If +Martin saw Tenney, he was not going to linger for any problematic issue. +He stepped into the sleigh and, without drawing the fur robe over his +knees, took up the reins. His face, turned upon Raven, was distorted +with rage.</p> + +<p>"That's assault," he called to him, "assault an' battery. I'll have the +law on you an' she's my witness."</p> + +<p>"Stop!" called Tira. She came down the path with long strides, her +garments blowing back. At three paces from the sleigh she halted and +called to him in a voice so clear and unrestrained that Raven thought +Tenney, coming on with his jerky action, might also have heard it.</p> + +<p>"You stir a step to git the law on him an' I'll tell what I know. What +did I find out about you? The money stole out o' the box after they had +the raffle for the War, the deed under old lady Blaisdell's feather bed, +because it wa'n't recorded an' it left you with the right an' title to +that forty feet o' land. Five counts!" She held up her left hand and +told off one finger after the other. "I've got 'em all down in my mind, +an' there they've been ever since I left you. What d' I leave you for? +Not because you treated me like a dog, whenever the fit was on ye, but +because you was meaner'n dirt."</p> + +<p>He sat there, the reins gathered in his hand, staring at her, his face +stiffened in a reflex of the cold passion of hers. Upon her last word, +he called to the horse with an oath as if it had been the beast that +offended him, turned the sleigh and drove off. Tenney, breathless, was +now on the scene. His thin lips curled and drew back, the snarl of the +angry feline.</p> + +<p>"Two on ye," he said to Raven. "Come to blows over her, have ye? An' +you're on top."</p> + +<p>Raven turned to Tira.</p> + +<p>"Go into the house," he said.</p> + +<p>Tenney laughed. It was not the laugh of the man who had just left them. +There was no light mockery in it, but a low intensity of misery, the +cynical recognition of a man whose house has been destroyed and who asks +his inner self how he could have expected anything different. But when +he spoke it was jeeringly, to Tira.</p> + +<p>"Go into the house," he mocked. "Didn't ye hear him? He tells ye to go +into the house, into my house, so's he can fight it out ag'in same's he +done with t'other one. You better go. He won't git no odds from me."</p> + +<p>He set his dinner pail down beside him, and his hand moved a few inches +along the helve of his axe. And Raven, like Tira, was sorry for him.</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira, "I sha'n't go into the house. An' this to-do ain't so +much about me as about you, Isr'el Tenney, because you're makin' a fool +o' yourself. You'll be town talk, an' you deserve to be. You've brought +it on yourself."</p> + +<p>Raven, his eyes on the man's face, saw it change slightly: something +tremulous had come into it, though it might have been only surprise. The +hand on the axe helve shook perceptibly. Now it looked to Raven as if it +might be his turn.</p> + +<p>"I came up here this morning," he said, "to see her." Curiously, at the +moment of saying "your wife," he balked at it. He would not, even by the +sanction of the word, seem to give her over to him.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tenney. The lividness of anger tautened his face. "You see +me off to my work. You knew you'd find her here."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. "I knew I should find her. I had to see her alone, +because I wanted to ask her to leave you, go away from here, and be +safe."</p> + +<p>Tenney stared at him. The brusque fact was too much for him. Why should +Raven have told it?</p> + +<p>"You are known," Raven continued steadily, "to abuse your wife."</p> + +<p>Tenney's lips again curled back.</p> + +<p>"I ain't laid a finger on her," he snarled. "Anybody but a liar 'd tell +you so."</p> + +<p>"She has told me so," continued Raven. "I came to warn her I should +complain of you and have you bound over to keep the peace. She said if I +did that she would refuse to testify against you. She said she would +rather"—here a slight bitterness came into his voice and, for an +instant, he had a foolish satisfaction in reminding Tira of her +unfriendliness in blocking him—"she would rather have me considered out +of my mind than let you get your just deserts."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" snarled Tenney. "I wa'n't born yesterday."</p> + +<p>This interchange had had on Tira all the effect Raven could have wished. +She started forward a step, with a murmured sound. But Tenney was +unmoved.</p> + +<p>"Now you know," said Raven, "you're not going to tell me I'm a liar. I +draw the line at that. You'll have to drop your axe—that's a cowardly +streak in you, Tenney, a mighty mean streak, that axe business—and I'll +give you your punishment without waiting for judge or jury."</p> + +<p>Tenney looked down at the axe frowningly, and the hand holding it sank +to his side.</p> + +<p>"Besides saying she wouldn't testify against you," Raven continued, "she +refused to leave you. She is a foolish woman, but she's like most of +them. They hang on to the beast that abuses 'em, God knows why. But the +rest of us won't let you off so easy. Don't think it, for a minute. The +next time she's seen wandering round the woods with her baby and you +after her, yelling like a catamount, you're going to be hauled up and, +even if she won't testify, there's enough against you to make it go hard +with you."</p> + +<p>Tenney ceased staring at the axe and looked up at Raven. Was it hatred +in the eyes? The gleam in them flickered, in a curious way, cross +currents of strange light. He tried to speak, gulped, and moistened his +dry lips. Then he managed it:</p> + +<p>"What business is it o' yourn?"</p> + +<p>"It's every man's business," said Raven. "When you began running over +the woods, yelling like a catamount"—he returned to this of set +purpose, because it evidently bit—"I thought it was queer, that's all. +Thought you were out of your head. But it got to be too much of a good +thing. And it's one thing to make yourself a laughing-stock. It's +another to be indicted for murder."</p> + +<p>"I don't," said Tenney, "stan' any man's interferin' with me. I give ye +fair warnin' not to meddle nor make."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Raven, "we've both got our warning. I've had yours and +you've had mine. You're a mighty mean man, Tenney. A mean cuss, that's +what you are."</p> + +<p>Tenney, in the surprise and mortification of this, barked out at him:</p> + +<p>"Don't ye call me a cuss. I'm a professin' Christian."</p> + +<p>"Stuff!" said Raven. "That's all talk. I wonder a man of your sense +shouldn't see how ridiculous it is. You're not a Christian. When you +stand up in meeting and testify, you're simply a hypocrite. No, I don't +call you a Christian. I call you a scamp, on the way to being locked +up."</p> + +<p>Tenney's mind leaped back a space.</p> + +<p>"You're tryin' to throw me off the track," he announced. "Ye can't do +it. When I come up the road you an' Eugene Martin was out there an' you +knocked him down. I see ye. You horsewhipped him. Now if it's anybody's +business to horsewhip Eugene Martin, it's mine. What business is it o' +yourn horsewhippin' a man that's hangin' round another man's wife +unless——"</p> + +<p>"Hold on there," said Raven. "I gave him his medicine because he was too +fresh." Here he allowed himself a salutary instant of swagger. Tenney +might as well think him a devil of a fellow, quick to act and hard to +hold. "It happens to be my way. I don't propose taking back talk from +anybody of his sort—or yours. He's a mean cuss, too, Tenney, ready to +think every man's as bad as he is—a foul-mouthed fool. And"—he +hesitated here and spoke with an emphasis that did strike upon Tenney's +hostile attention—"he is the kind of cheap fellow that would like +nothing better than to insult a woman. That was what he sat down by your +wife for, last night. That was why I made an excuse to get him away from +her. I wouldn't allow him within ten feet of a woman of my own family. +You ought to be mighty glad I looked out for yours."</p> + +<p>Tenney was in a coil of doubt. Suddenly he glanced round at Tira, +standing there in the path, her eyes upon one and the other as they +spoke. Raven would not willingly have looked at her. He felt her +presence in his inmost heart; he knew how cold she must be in the wintry +air with nothing about her shoulders and the breeze strong enough to +stir those rings of hair about her forehead. But she must suffer it +while he raked Tenney by the only language Tenney knew.</p> + +<p>"But here be you," cried Tenney, as if his mind, unsatisfied, went back +to one flaw after another in Raven's argument. "You see me go by to my +work, an' you come up here to talk over my folks behind my back an' tole +'em off to run away with you."</p> + +<p>"I have explained all that once," said Raven. "You'll have to take it or +leave it."</p> + +<p>At that instant Tira stepped forward. She gave a little cry.</p> + +<p>"You've hurt your foot!"</p> + +<p>Raven's glance followed hers to the ground and he saw a red stain +creeping from Tenney's boot into the snow. Tenney also glanced at it +indifferently. It was true that, although the cold was growing anguish +to a numbing wound, he was hardly aware of it as a pain that could be +remedied. This was only one misery the more.</p> + +<p>"Course I've hurt my foot," he said savagely. "What d'ye s'pose I come +home for, this time o' day?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Tira, in an innocent good faith, "I s'posed you come back to +spy on me."</p> + +<p>That did take hold of him. He looked at her in an almost childish +reproach. Now he put the foot to the ground—he had been, though +unconsciously, easing it—but at the first step winced and his face +whitened.</p> + +<p>"God A'mighty!" Raven heard him mutter, and was glad. He seemed more of +a man invoking God in his pain than in waving deity like a portent +before unbelievers.</p> + +<p>Tira had gone to him.</p> + +<p>"You put your hand on my shoulder," she said, something so sweetly +thrilling in her voice that Raven wondered how Tenney could hear it and +not feel his heart dissolve into water. For himself, he was relieved at +the warming tone, but it mysteriously hurt him, it seemed so horrible +that all the tenderness of which it was witness had to be dammed in her +with no outlet save over the child who was "not right." Tenney paid no +attention to her, and Raven took him by the arm. The snow was reddening +thinly and Raven could see the cut in the boot.</p> + +<p>"Open the door," he said to Tira. "I'll help him in."</p> + +<p>Curiously, though Tenney had forgotten the hurt except as a part of his +mental pain, now that his mind was directed toward it he winced, and +made much of getting to the door. Yet it seemed to be in no sense to +challenge sympathy. He was simply sorry for himself, bewildered at his +misfortune, and so intently was his mind set on it now that he did not +seem annoyed by Raven's supporting him. Tira hurried on in advance, and +when they entered she was putting wood into the stove and opening +drafts, to start up the neglected fire. Raven led him to the chair by +the hearth, knelt, without paying any attention to his muttered +remonstrance, and, with much difficulty of frequent easements, got off +the boot and the soaked stocking. It was an ugly cut. Tenney, glancing +down at it, groaned and looked away, and Tira brought a pillow and +tucked it behind his head. Raven, glancing up at him, saw he was white +and sick and Tira said:</p> + +<p>"He never can stan' the sight o' blood."</p> + +<p>Evidently the irony of it did not strike her at all, but Raven wrinkled +his brows over it. He sent her here and there, for water to wash the +wound and for clean cloth. He rolled a bandage and put it on deftly +while Tenney stared.</p> + +<p>"Now," said he, coming to his feet, "you'd better telephone the doctor. +This is all I know."</p> + +<p>Tira went to the telephone in the next room and Raven cleared away the +confusion he had made and again Tenney watched him. At intervals he +looked down at his bandaged foot as if he pitied it. Tira, having given +her message, came back and reported that the doctor would be there +shortly.</p> + +<p>"Then," said Raven, "I'll be off. Telephone if you need anything. +Perhaps I'd better come over anyway. He'll have to be got to bed. I'll +call you up."</p> + +<p>He felt a sudden easement of the strain between himself and Tira. Tenney +himself, through his hurt, had cleared the way. Their intercourse, void +of secrecy, was suddenly commonplace; at the moment there was nothing in +it to light a flash of feeling. Tenney did not look at him. Then Raven, +in a sudden mounting of desire to show Tira how sorry he was for her, +said to her impetuously:</p> + +<p>"I hate to leave you alone."</p> + +<p>And again she surprised him as she had the night before in implicit +acceptance of her new faith, something as tangible as divine. She spoke +in a perfect simplicity.</p> + +<p>"I ain't alone," she said.</p> + +<p>Tenney had turned his head, to listen.</p> + +<p>"We ain't alone, Isr'el, be we?" she challenged breathlessly.</p> + +<p>"I dunno what you're talkin' about," said Tenney uneasily, and she +laughed.</p> + +<p>It was, Raven wonderingly thought, a light-hearted laugh, as if she had +no longer anything to bear.</p> + +<p>"Why," said she, "same as I told you. We ain't alone a minute o' the +time, if we don't feel to be. He's with us, the Lord Jesus Christ."</p> + +<p>The telephone bell rang and she went off to answer it. Tenney, as if +with a hopeful conviction that another man would understand, turned his +eyes upon Raven.</p> + +<p>"What's anybody want to talk like that for?" he questioned +irrepressibly.</p> + +<p>"It's the way you talk yourself," said Raven. "That's precisely what you +said last night."</p> + +<p>"It's no kind of a way——" Tenney began, and then pulled himself up. +Raven believed that he meant it was one thing to invoke the Founder of +his religion in a sacerdotal sense, but not for the comforting certainty +of a real Presence. "Seems if anybody's crazed. Seems if——" Here he +broke off again, and Raven took satisfaction in the concluding phrase: +"It's no way to talk when a man's lamed himself so's't he can't git +round the room 'thout bleedin' to death."</p> + +<p>By this Raven understood the man was, in an hysterical way, afraid of +Tira and her surprising invocation. He judged things were looking rather +better for her, and went off almost cheerfully, without waiting for her +return.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h2> + + +<p>When Raven came to Nan's, he went in without knocking and found the +house still. He called her name, and she answered from an upper +distance. Presently she appeared, traveling bag in hand, and came down +to him.</p> + +<p>"You really want me, Rookie?" she asked him, pausing at the closet door +where she had hung her hat and coat. "You want an unattached female, +unchaperoned, very much at large?"</p> + +<p>"I want her," said Raven, "more than anything else I'm likely to get in +this frowsy world. As to chaperons, Charlotte will do very well, without +legging it over here every night to keep you in countenance."</p> + +<p>Nan put on her hat and coat, and he picked up the bag.</p> + +<p>"Back door locked?" he asked.</p> + +<p>She laughed.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said she. "That shows I meant to come. Go ahead, Rookie. I'll +lock this door." Mid-way down the path, she glanced at him and then +ventured: "You look very much set up. What is it, Rookie? what +happened?"</p> + +<p>"The thing that's happened," said Raven, with a little reminiscent +laugh, "is that Tenney's afraid of his wife. And he's cut his foot and +can't get away from her. I call it the most ironical of time's revenges +I've ever had the pleasure of seeing."</p> + +<p>He went on and told her the story of Tenney's disabled foot. Nan, +listening, did not take it in.</p> + +<p>"But I don't see," she offered, "why it makes him afraid of her."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't. Though it makes it more difficult for him to get at her. +The thing that's bowled him over is that she's taken him at his word. +He's told her the Founder of his religion is everywhere present, and now +she's accepted it and assumes the Presence is there in the kitchen, it +scares him. He assumes she's dotty. Hence he's afraid of her. You see, +Nan, the Presence he's in the habit of invoking is something he +conceives of as belonging to strictly sacerdotal occasions. Really, it's +a form of words. But she believes it and that, as I told you, scares +him. It's like raising a ghost. He's raised it and somebody's seen it +and he's scared."</p> + +<p>"Can't the queerest things happen," Nan asked him, in a discursiveness +he found nevertheless relevant, "here in New England? There isn't a +human trait or a morbid outcrop but we've got it. See! Charlotte's at +the window. S'pose she'll want me?"</p> + +<p>"She'll love it," said Raven. He lifted up his voice and called and +Charlotte left the window to appear at the door. "I've got her, +Charlotte," said Raven. "She's going to make us a visit. Give us almond +pudding for dinner, can't you?"</p> + +<p>It was too late for that, Charlotte told him indulgently, but she +guessed there'd be suthin'. She lingered in the hall while Nan took off +her coat, and volunteered information about the fire being lighted in +the west chamber.</p> + +<p>"I 'most thought you'd come," she said, in a way softly confidential. +"You can settle right down now, you two, an' visit."</p> + +<p>She put a hand for an instant on Nan's shoulder and Nan felt the glow of +her beneficence. Did Charlotte know what it was to her to have even one +evening alone with Rookie? Charlotte knew most things. Probably she knew +that.</p> + +<p>Nan and Raven had their noon dinner and went for a walk, up the road. +That led them past Tenney's and when they reached the house Raven said:</p> + +<p>"You wait a jiff and I'll ask how he is."</p> + +<p>Tira came, in answer to his knock. She was gravely calm, not even +disturbed in her secret mind, Raven concluded, not keyed up by inner +apprehension, and keeping herself firm. Where, he wondered absently, at +the same instant, did she get those clothes, blue, always worn to the +exact point of soft loveliness, the very moral of her eyes? She glanced +down the path at Nan, and Nan waved to her. Tira gave a serious little +bow and turned her glance to Raven, who inquired:</p> + +<p>"How's his foot?"</p> + +<p>"It pains him a good deal," she said, with that softness he had noted in +her voice while they dressed the hurt. "He has to set with it in a +chair. It worries him to death not to git round."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord!" said Raven. "You must think I'm a nice chap. Who's doing +the barn work?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Tira, "that's all right. I can see to that. I always do when +he's gone for day's works."</p> + +<p>"You can't water the stock."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I can." Now she smiled at him, beautifully, bewilderingly, for +his kindness in asking. "I done it before dinner. That's nothin'. +Besides, I like it: takes me out door."</p> + +<p>"Don't do any more," said Raven. "We'll be over, 'long about four +o'clock, Jerry or I." Then, for he had forgotten Tenney, in his +awareness of her, he remembered to ask: "The doctor came, did he?"</p> + +<p>She nodded gravely.</p> + +<p>"Say anything?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head, and then offered, it seemed unwillingly:</p> + +<p>"He thought he might be laid up quite a spell."</p> + +<p>To Raven, that seemed so desirable, that he wondered at the +commiseration in her voice; evidently she could be sorry for Tenney +without an admixture of relief at having him safely fettered for a +while.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "I'll be over. And if there's anything——" he stopped +and looked her in the eyes, gravely authoritative. It was the first time +their two inner selves had met in such unrestrained interchange. If +there was anything he could do for her, the glance said, she was to know +he would do it, to the very limit of allegiance. What did her own glance +say? Was there acceptance in it? Not so much that as a grave +understanding and gratitude. He was her refuge, her strength. She might +still go winging brokenly about the obscurity that made her life, but he +was the shelter where she might take cover if she would. Their gaze +broke (it was locked there an instant only) and however she felt in +turning from him, Raven had the sensation of dragging his eyes away.</p> + +<p>"I'll be over," he said, "in time to fodder and milk."</p> + +<p>He was leaving, but she called after him:</p> + +<p>"No, don't you come. You send Jerry."</p> + +<p>"I can do it as well as Jerry," he answered impatiently, and again she +called:</p> + +<p>"No, don't you come. I don't think best."</p> + +<p>Immediately Raven knew, if she put it in that tone (the mother tone it +was) he himself didn't "think best." He joined Nan and they walked on, +not speaking. Suddenly he stopped for an instant, without warning, and +she too stopped and looked at him. He took off his hat and was glad of +the cold air on his forehead.</p> + +<p>"Mystery of mysteries!" he said. There was bitterness in his tone, +exasperation, revolt. Evidently he saw himself in a situation he neither +invited nor understood. "Who'd think of finding a woman like that on a +New England doorstep talking about foddering the cows?"</p> + +<p>Nan considered the wisely circumspect thing to say and managed tamely:</p> + +<p>"She's a good woman."</p> + +<p>They went on.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, after a while, "she's a good woman. But does she want +to be? Or isn't there anything inside her to make her want to be +anything else?"</p> + +<p>"I have an idea," said Nan, going carefully, "most of the men she's +known have wanted her to be something else."</p> + +<p>"Now what do you mean by that?" said Raven irritably. "And what do you +know about it anyway? You're nothing but a little girl."</p> + +<p>"You keep saying that," said Nan, with composure, "because it gives you +less responsibility."</p> + +<p>He stared at her, forgetting Tira.</p> + +<p>"Responsibility?" he repeated. "What responsibility is there I don't +want to take—about you?"</p> + +<p>"You don't want me to be a woman," said Nan. "You want me to be a little +girl, always adoring you, just enough, not too much. You've been adored +enough by women, Rookie."</p> + +<p>They both knew she was talking in a hidden language. It was not women +she meant; it was Aunt Anne.</p> + +<p>"But," said she, persisting, "I'm quite grown up. I've been in the War, +just as deep as you have, as deep as Dick. I've taken it all at a +gulp—the whole business, I mean, life, things as they are. I couldn't +any more go back to the Victorian striped candy state of mind I was +taught to pattern by than you could yourself."</p> + +<p>"You let the Victorians alone," growled Raven. "Much you know about +'em."</p> + +<p>"They were darlings," said Nan. "They had more brains, any ten of 'em, +than a million of us put together. But it does happen to be true they +didn't see what human nature is, under the skin. We do. We've scratched +it and we know. It's a horrible sight, Rookie."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" said Raven. "What is under the skin?"</p> + +<p>Nan considered.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said finally, "there's something savage. Not strong, +splendid savage, you know, but pretending to be big Injun and not +fetching it. Wearing red blankets, and whooping, and tearing raw meat. O +Rookie, how do folks talk? I can't, even to you. But the world +isn't—well, it isn't as nice as I thought it: not so clean. You ought +to know. You don't like it either."</p> + +<p>"So," said Raven, meditatively, "you don't like it."</p> + +<p>"It's no matter whether I like it or not," said Nan, in a chilly way he +interpreted as pride. "I'm in it. And I'm going to play the game."</p> + +<p>They went on for a while without speaking, and then Raven looked round +at her, a whimsical look.</p> + +<p>"So you give notice," he said, "you're grown up."</p> + +<p>"I give notice," said Nan tersely. "I'm a very old lady really, older +than you are, Rookie." Then she judged the moment had come for setting +him right on a point that might be debatable. "If you think I was a +little girl when I sat there and loved you the other night, you might as +well know I wasn't. And I wasn't a woman either: not then. I was just a +person, a creatur', Charlotte would say, that wanted you to get under +your tough lonesome old hide there's somebody that loves you to death +and believes in you and knows everything you feel."</p> + +<p>"Am I lonesome, Nan?" he asked quickly, picking out the word that struck +him deepest. "I don't know."</p> + +<p>"I do," said Nan. "You haven't had any of the things men ought to have +to keep them from growing into those queer he-birds stuck all over with +ridiculous little habits like pin feathers that make you want to +laugh—and cry, too. Old bachelors. Lord!"</p> + +<p>"Look out," said Raven. "You'll get me interested in myself. I've gone +too far that way already. The end of that road is Milly and +psycho-analysis and my breaking everybody's head because they won't let +me alone."</p> + +<p>"Break 'em then," said Nan concisely. "And run away. Take this Tira with +you and run off to the Malay Peninsula or somewhere. That sounds further +away than most places. Or an island: there must be an island left +somewhere, for a homesick old dear like you."</p> + +<p>"Now, in God's name," said Raven, "what do you say that for?"</p> + +<p>"Tira?" Nan inquired recklessly. "What do I tell you to take her for? +Because I want to see you mad, Rookie, humanly mad. And she's got the +look that makes us mad, men and women, too."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" Raven asked thickly. "What is the look?"</p> + +<p>"Mystery. It's beauty first, and then mystery spread over that. She's +like—why, Rookie, she's like life itself—mystery."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven, surprising her, "you're not a little girl any more: +that's true enough. I don't know you."</p> + +<p>"Likely not," said Nan, undisturbed. "You can't have your cake and eat +it. You can't have a little Nan begging for stories and a Nan that's on +her job of seeing you get something out of life, if she can manage it, +before it's too late."</p> + +<p>There she stopped, on the verge, she suddenly realized, of blundering. +He was not to guess she had too controlling an interest in that +comprehensive mystery which was his life. How horrible beyond measure if +she took over Aunt Anne's frantic task of beneficent guidance! Rookie +should be free. He began to laugh, and, without waiting for the reason, +she joined him.</p> + +<p>"Maybe I will," he said, "the Malay prescription, half of it. But I +should want you with me. You may not be little, but you're a great Nan +to play with. We won't drag Tira's name into it," he added gravely. +"Poor Tira's name! We'll take good care of it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'll go," said Nan recklessly. "But we'll take Tira. And we'll +build her a temple in a jungle and put her up on a pedestal and feed her +with tropical fruits and sit cross-legged before her so many hours a day +and meditate on her mystery."</p> + +<p>"What would she say?" Raven wondered, and then laughed out in a quick +conviction. "No, she wouldn't say anything. She'd accept it, as she does +foddering the cows."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," said Nan. "That's Tira."</p> + +<p>"You've forgotten the baby."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan, soberly. "Poor little boy!"</p> + +<p>They were serious and could play no more, and presently turned into the +back road and so home. At supper they had a beautiful time, the lights +soft, the fire purring, and the shades up so that the cold austerities +of night could look in without getting them. Nan had done a foolish +thing, one of those for which women can give no reason, for usually they +do not know which one it is out of the braided strands of all the +reasons that make emotion. She had unearthed a short pink crêpe frock +she used to wear in her childish days, and let her heavy hair hang in +two braids tied with pink ribbons. Did she want to lull Rookie's +new-born suspicion of her as a too mature female thing, by stressing the +little girl note, or did she slip into the masquerading gown because it +was restful to go back the long road that lay between the present and +the days when there was no war? Actually she did not know. She did know +she had flown wildly "up attic," the minute Rookie announced the daring +plan of the visit, and flung open chest after chest, packed by Aunt +Anne's exact hands, with this and that period of her clothes. Why had +Aunt Anne kept them, she straightened herself to wonder, at one point, +throwing them out in a disorderly pile, ginghams, muslins, a favorite +China silk. Could it be Aunt Anne had loved her, not so much as she +loved Rookie, but in the same hidden, inflexible way, and wanted to +preserve the image of her as she grew to girlhood, in the clothes she +had worn? It was not likely, she concluded, and was relieved to dismiss +even the possibility. It would have made too much to live up to, a +present loyalty of obedience which, if Aunt Anne in the heavenly courts +had anything like her earthly disposition, would be the only thing to +satisfy her. Nan didn't mean to do anything definitely displeasing, +especially to Aunt Anne. She simply meant to enjoy to the full the +ecstasy of living, just as if it were going on for a lifetime, under the +same roof with Rookie and having him all to herself. Then she came on +the pink crêpe, with its black bows, and gave a tiny nod of satisfaction +there in the attic dusk, and was all in a glow, though it was so cold.</p> + +<p>When she came down to supper that night, Raven was reading his paper by +the fire. He glanced up as if she came in so every night, Nan thought. +She liked that. But she was a little awkward, conscious of her +masquerade and so really adding to the illusion of girlhood, ill used to +its own charm. Raven threw down his paper and got up.</p> + +<p>"Lord!" said he. "Come here, you witch. Let me look at you."</p> + +<p>Nan was actually shy now.</p> + +<p>"Why, my darling," said Raven, in a tone so moved she was almost sorry +she had brought it all about. It made too many responsibilities. Which +Nan was she going to be? ("But no kissing!" she reminded herself.) +"You've come back to me."</p> + +<p>"I haven't been away," said Nan, recovering herself and treating him to +a cool little nod, "not actually. Like it, Charlotte?" For Charlotte had +come in with a platter, and Nan turned about, peacocking before her +unsurprised gaze. "I found it up attic."</p> + +<p>"It's real pretty," said Charlotte. "Them scant things they're wearin' +now, they ain't to be thought of in the same day."</p> + +<p>Then, having given the room a last glance (almost a caressing touch +Charlotte had, a little anxious, too, because all comforts were so +important) she went out, and Nan was sitting opposite Raven at the +table, demure, self-contained, yet playing her wildest. It was a game +she knew she was to have entirely alone. The game was that she and +Rookie were living here in this house in some such potency of possessive +bliss that nothing could separate them. She was careless over the terms +of it. She was a child, she was a woman, she was everything Rookie +wanted her to be. Here they were together, and the universe, finding the +combination, Nan and Rookie, too strong to fight against, had given up +the losing battle, turned sulkily and left them alone.</p> + +<p>They were hungry and in high spirits, and they ate and talked a great +deal. Nan meant to remember what they talked about. Even the words were +so dear to her she would have liked to set them down in a book to keep +for her old age that was to be as desolate as Aunt Anne's. But it +shouldn't be as conventional. There should be waves on that sea. Then +Charlotte had come in to clear the table and afterward, by Raven's +invitation, sat ten minutes or so by the fire and talked of neighborhood +things, and they were left alone again, and he was suddenly grave. Was +the game over, Nan wondered, and then went on into a more unbridled +speculation whether he was finding himself reminded of the old scruples, +the old withholdings when Aunt Anne, unable to keep up with their +galloping horses of fun, restrained them delicately but with what a hand +of steel! And suddenly she realized he was not thinking of her. Was the +grim house over the rise of the road calling to his anxious heart?</p> + +<p>"Nan," he said, as if he had suddenly made up his mind, "I've got +something to show you."</p> + +<p>He left the room and she heard him running upstairs. Presently he was +back, carrying the mottled book. Instantly it had a vivid interest for +her, he held it so reverently and, it seemed, so tenderly. She was at +the fire and he told her to get up and take the other chair. It would +bring the light at her back. With the book still in his hand, he sat +down before the fire and began to tell her the story of Old Crow. Nan +had known it, in its outer eccentricities; but had Old Crow been +unhappy? That was new to her. She had heard of him as queer, the country +oddity who, being frenzied over God or love, had madly incarcerated +himself in the loneliness of his own eccentricity.</p> + +<p>"At odds with life as he found it," Raven concluded, "not actually able +to bear it. That's how it looked to the rest of us. Now, this is how it +looked to him."</p> + +<p>"Is it a journal?" Nan asked.</p> + +<p>She had forgotten her game. She was no child now, but a serious woman +with an intensely frowning glance.</p> + +<p>"Yes. This is his journal. Want to read it, or me read it to you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you," said Nan.</p> + +<p>"I'd better, I guess. His punctuation's queer, and so's his spelling +sometimes. But I wish I could write as good a fist."</p> + +<p>So he began. Nan sat perfectly still while the reading lasted. Once +getting up to tend the fire, she went back to a higher chair and sat +tense, her hands clasped about her knees. Old Crow seemed to have +entered the room, a singularly vital figure with extraordinary things to +say. Whether you believed the things or not, you had to listen, Old Crow +believed them so tremendously. He was like a shock, an assault from the +atmosphere itself. He affected Nan profoundly. Her perched attitude in +the chair was, in an unreasoned way, her own tribute of strained +attention. She was not combating him, but she had to tune herself up +high not to be overwhelmed. When Raven had finished, he turned and laid +the book on the table behind him, but lingeringly as if, Nan thought, he +had an affection for it.</p> + +<p>"Well," he asked, "what do you think?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h2> + + +<p>"What do I think?" Nan repeated. "About Old Crow, or his religion? It is +that, isn't it, Rookie? It is a religion."</p> + +<p>"It's a religion, all right," said Raven. "And curiously, Nan, it's +given me a tremendous boost."</p> + +<p>"Because you think——"</p> + +<p>"Not because I think anything. I've an idea that with religions you'd +better not think. You'd better believe."</p> + +<p>"If you can," said she.</p> + +<p>"But don't you believe?" he asked her, out of an impetuosity like her +own. "I never thought to wonder what you believed. I remember though, +one time."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan. A deeper red ran into her cheeks, and her brows came +down a little over her eyes. Raven could see she was visualizing +something. "You're going back to the time when I wouldn't be confirmed."</p> + +<p>"I remember. Mighty disagreeable, that was."</p> + +<p>"Yes. I was in disgrace. She looked at me as if she'd been frozen. And +you brought me a peach. Do you remember that peach?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head. But he did remember, though he said nothing, his mind +on the poor little girl chilled by Aunt Anne's frozen look.</p> + +<p>"It was the most beautiful peach," said Nan, looking into the fire, and +continuing to hug her knees. "It wasn't that I didn't have peaches. +There were plenty to be eaten like a lady with a silver knife, or even +stolen off the sideboard and gobbled in the garden with the juice +squshing over your white frock. But this one—you slipped it into my +hand and I knew it was because you were sorry for me. And I took it out +of the room and went into the garden with it. And what do you s'pose I +did then, Rookie?"</p> + +<p>"Ate it, I hope," said Raven. He felt his eyes hot with angry sorrow +over her. "That's the only thing I know of to do with a peach."</p> + +<p>"I went round behind the lilacs, where the lily bed is, and stood there +and cried like—like a water spout, I guess, and I kissed the peach. I +kissed it and kissed it. It was like a rough check. And then I buried it +among the lilies because the dirt there looked so soft."</p> + +<p>"Did it come up?"</p> + +<p>He wanted, though so late, to turn it into childish comedy. Nan laughed +out.</p> + +<p>"No," she said ruefully, "not the way you'd expect. It did come up. I +saw her troweling there the next morning. She'd called me to bring her +other gardening gloves. She'd found a hole in one she had on. You know +how exquisitely she kept her hands. And just as I came, she turned up +the peach, and looked at it as if it had done something disgraceful to +get there, and tossed it into her basket."</p> + +<p>"Now," said Raven, "you can't make me think anybody"—he couldn't allow +himself to say Aunt Anne—"went hunting out your poor little peach."</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan, bending on him a limpid gaze. "Of course not, +consciously. Only there was something——" But even she, with all her +recklessness, could not follow this out. To her own consciousness was +the certainty that deep in Aunt Anne, deep as the principle of life +itself, was an intuition which led her will to the evidence it needed +for its own victories. "And the queer thing about it was," she ended, "I +didn't refuse to be confirmed because I doubted things. I refused +because I believed. I believed in God; I believed so hard I was afraid."</p> + +<p>"What of?"</p> + +<p>"Afraid of standing in with what I didn't like. Afraid I couldn't carry +it through, and if I didn't, there'd be ginger for me somewhere. So +queer, Rookie, like all the things that keep happening to us. Little +ironies, you know, that sort of thing. For she thought I was behaving +shockingly toward God. And really, Rookie, it was because I was so +afraid of Him. I believed in Him so much I couldn't say I believed in a +way I didn't."</p> + +<p>"Like Old Crow," said Raven. "Only you didn't go far enough. You didn't +say it's only a symbol."</p> + +<p>"I tried not to think much about it, anyway," she owned. "I couldn't +believe what she did. But I couldn't go into it. I can't now. Don't you +know, Rookie, there are things you can't talk about? It's bad manners."</p> + +<p>"I wish the learned divines thought so," said Raven. "Dear Nan!" he +added, his mind returning to her. "I didn't know you so very well, after +all. I must have seen you were having a beast of a time, or I mightn't +have butted in with the peach, but I didn't know how deep it went."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it always goes deep with children," said Nan, carelessly, as if the +child he was pitying being snowed under by the years, it made no great +difference about her, anyway. "You get gashed to the bone and the scars +are like welts. But so far as I see, it has to be, coming into a world +you don't even know the rules of till they're banged into you."</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't be willing," said Raven, spurred on by a mounting +curiosity over her, the inner mind of her he seemed never to have +touched before, "you wouldn't be willing to tell me what it was in the +church you didn't like?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan decisively, "I should mind. Oh, I'd tell you, Rookie, if +I could anybody. But I can't. Maybe I could if I hadn't seen it working: +over there, you know—seen boys clinging to it so at the +end—confession—the crucifix. (The vestments, do you remember? over +that faded horizon blue!) I couldn't do it, Rookie, what they did, not +if I died this minute. Only," she added, struck by a thought, "I might +want it to remind me. I might touch the crucifix, you know, or look at +something or feel the holy water on my forehead. I might be too far gone +to think up to God but—yes, it might remind me."</p> + +<p>"Symbols," said Raven, profoundly moved by the vision of the bright +spirit in her mortal beauty flickering out. "Old Crow."</p> + +<p>"And when I said," she hesitated, anxious to give him everything he +asked of her, "the things I didn't like, I meant the things they tell +us, Rookie. You know: facts, details. And then you think of God and—no +use, Rookie, no use!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "that's where Old Crow was up against it. But picture +writing, because it's the only kind of writing we can read—picture +writing, Nan, because we're savages—he could take that and not wince."</p> + +<p>"Anyway," said Nan, "I'm happiest not thinking of it. I say my prayers: +God bless Rookie. God bless me. That's all."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe it."</p> + +<p>"Don't believe what? That I say 'God bless Rookie'? Course I do. Why +not?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm blessed!" said Raven, at a loss. Then, recovering himself, +"Nan, I never've known you in the least. How am I getting at you now?"</p> + +<p>"Because we're shut up here with the quiet and the snow," said Nan.</p> + +<p>She looked at the fire, not at him. He thought, with a startled delight +in her, he had never seen a more contented figure and, the beauty of it +was, entirely oblivious of him. It made no demands.</p> + +<p>"It's a fact," he reflected, "I've really never seen you since you grew +up. First you were a child, then you went over there. You had to take +life whole, as Old Crow took his religion."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan, "I guess we're all queer, we young ones, that have been +in service. You see we've had to take things as they are. You can't veil +them from us. We've seen 'em. We know." She laughed out. "Rookie, it's +queer, but I'm a good deal more like the old-fashioned girl we read +about than the rest of the crowd I run with."</p> + +<p>"Why?" Raven ventured.</p> + +<p>If Nan was in a mood to unveil her dear mind, he wanted her voice to +rush on and on in that sweet staccato. And her answer was in itself +surprising:</p> + +<p>"Aunt Anne."</p> + +<p>Raven sat looking at her, a slow smile dawning. There she was, "prim as +a dish," Charlotte would say, her two braids down her back, her hands +clasped about her knees. He had never, the undercurrent in his mind +still reminded him, been so alone with her since the days when they had, +with an unspoken sense of lawlessness, slipped away together for a day's +fishing or a breathless orchid hunt in the woods. The adventures had +been less and less frequent as time ran on and it had begun to dawn on +Raven that they were entirely contrary to Aunt Anne's sense of New +England decencies. After each occasion Nan would be mysteriously absent +for a half day, at least, and when she reappeared she was a little shyer +of him, more silent toward Aunt Anne. Had she been put to bed, or shut +up with tasks, to pay the tax on her stolen pleasures? He never knew. He +did know, however, that when he proposed taking her off to wild delights +that made her eyes glow with anticipation she always refused, unless he +acceded to her plea to slip away: always to slip away, not to tell. +Could it be she had known by a child's hard road to knowledge—of +observation, silence, unaided conclusion—that Aunt Anne would never +allow them to run away to play? Curious, pathetic, abnormal even, to +have been jealous of a child! Then he pulled himself up with the shocked +sense, now become recurrent, that he had never allowed himself to attack +Anne's fair dignity with the weapon of unsuppressed guesswork about her +inner motives. He had assumed, he had felt obliged to assume, they were +as fine as her white hands. All the more reason for not assailing them +now when she was withdrawn into her strange distance. Yet one source of +wonder might be allowed him to explore unhindered: the presence of Nan +here at his hearth, inviting him to know her to the last corner of her +honest mind. She was even eager in this loving hospitality. He would +hardly have seen how to define the closeness of their relation. She had +turned her eyes from the fire to meet his.</p> + +<p>"Well?" she said. "What?"</p> + +<p>"I was thinking how queer it is," said Raven, "we never've been alone +together very much—'all told' as Charlotte would say—and here we sit +as if we were going to be here forever and talk out all the things."</p> + +<p>"What things?" asked Nan.</p> + +<p>She was not looking at him now, but back into the fire and she had a +defensive air, as if she expected to find herself on her guard.</p> + +<p>"Lots of 'em," said Raven. "The money." His voice sounded to her as if +he cursed it, and again he pulled himself up. "What are we going to do +with it?"</p> + +<p>"Aunt Anne's," she said, not as a question but a confirmation.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I can't refuse it. That means throwing it back on you. If I won't +decide, I'm simply making you do it for me. I don't see anything for it +but our talking the thing out and making up our minds together."</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan. "I sha'n't help you."</p> + +<p>"You won't?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose it amounts to that."</p> + +<p>"Now why the dickens not?"</p> + +<p>Nan kept up her stare at the fire. She seemed to be debating deeply, +even painfully.</p> + +<p>"Rookie," she said, at last, in a tumultuous rush, "I never meant to say +this. I don't know what'll come of saying it. But you've had a terrible +sort of life. It's almost worse than any life I know. You've been +smothered—by women." This last she said with difficulty, and Raven +reddened, in a reflecting shame. "You've done what they expected you to. +And it's all been because you're too kind. And too humble. You think it +doesn't matter very much what happens to you."</p> + +<p>"You've hit it there," said Raven, with a sudden distaste for himself. +"It doesn't."</p> + +<p>"And if I could clear your way of every sort of bugbear just by deciding +things for you, I wouldn't do it."</p> + +<p>"Don't try to change my destiny," said Raven, plucking up spirit to +laugh at her and lead her away from this unexpected clarity of analysis +that could only mean pain for both of them. "I'm old, dear. I'm not very +malleable, very plastic. We're not, at forty-odd."</p> + +<p>"And if," said Nan deliberately, "I loved you better, yes, even better +than I do (if I could!) I wouldn't tell you. It would be putting bonds +on you. It would be setting up the old slavery. The more I loved you, +the more I should be taking over the old tyranny: direct succession, +Rookie, don't you see?"</p> + +<p>Here she laughed, though with some slight bitterness, and he did see. +Aunt Anne had ruled his life, to the drying up of normal springs in it. +Nan didn't mean to accept the inheritance. He was profoundly touched, by +her giving so much grave thought to it, at least.</p> + +<p>"But, dearest child," he said, "what does it matter now? I'm rather a +meager person. You couldn't dress me up with attributes, out of your +dear mind. I shouldn't know how to wear 'em. I'm no end grateful to you +for wanting to. But if you gave me the earth for a football now I'm too +stiff to kick it. It's a curve, life is. Don't you know that? You're on +the up-grade, you and Dick. I may not have got very far, but I'm on the +down."</p> + +<p>"And yet," said Nan, turning and laying a finger on the book at her +side, "you can read a thing like that, a man's life turned inside out +for you to see, and understand what he meant by it, and then say the +game's up. You make me tired."</p> + +<p>If he made her tired, she made him unaffectedly surprised.</p> + +<p>"But, Nan," he said, "I didn't know you caught on so tremendously to the +old chap. I didn't know it meant so very much to you."</p> + +<p>"Of course it means things to me," she said. "Anyway because it does to +you. You came up here sick, sick at heart, sick in your mind, because +you've been through the War and you've seen what's underneath our +proprieties and our hypocrisies. You see we're still in the jungle. And +it's nearly killed you out, Rookie, the dear you inside you that's not +at home in the jungle. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what kind +of a Rookie you are. Things hurt you like blazes. And then here comes +Old Crow, just as if he rose out of his grave and pointed a finger at +you. And he says, 'Don't be afraid, even of the jungle.' And suddenly +you weren't afraid. And now you're afraid again, and talk about downward +curves, and all that. Why, Rookie, I'm older than you are, years and +years."</p> + +<p>Raven's mouth and eyes were wide open in amazement at her.</p> + +<p>"I'm damned!" said he conversationally. "The way you young things go on. +You put us in our places. Dick does, too. You've heard him. But, as I +remember, then you had a tendency to choke him off."</p> + +<p>"We won't discuss Dick," said she, again prim as a dish. "And I'm not +putting you in your place because I belong to my own generation. It's +only because you fill up the foreground. I have to look at you. I can't +see anything else. I never could. And as a matter of fact, I don't +belong to this generation. I haven't got their conceit and their +swagger. Sometimes I wish I had. I can't even talk their slang. I can't +smoke a cigarette."</p> + +<p>Then Raven remembered, as if she had invited a beam of light to throw up +what would appeal to him as her perfections, that she did seem to him an +alien among her youthful kind, and a shy alien at that, as if she hoped +they might not discover how different she was and put her through some +of those subtle tortures the young have in wait for a strange creature +in the herd.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "you're not like the rest of them. I should have said it +was because you're more beautiful. But it's something beyond that. What +is it?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you know?" said Nan, turning to him, incredulous and even a +little accusatory, as if he should long ago have settled it for her +doubting mind whether it was a gain for her or irreparable loss. "No, I +see you don't. Well, it's Aunt Anne."</p> + +<p>"Aunt Anne?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I never had the college life girls have now. When she sent me to +the seminary, it was the privatest one she could find. If she could have +exiled me to mid-Victorianism she would. I don't say I should have liked +college life. Maybe I shouldn't. Except the athletics. Anyhow, I can +hold my own there. I was enough of a tomboy to get into training and +keep fit. And Rookie—now don't tell—I never do—I see lots of girls, +perfectly nice girls, too, doing things Aunt Anne would have died before +she'd let me do. And what do you think? I don't envy them because +they're emancipated. I look at them, and I feel precisely what Aunt Anne +would feel, though I don't seem to get excited about it. The same word +comes into my mind, that word all the girls have run away from: +unladylike! Isn't that a joke, Rookie? Charlotte would say it's the +crowner."</p> + +<p>"You're a sweet thing, Nan," said Raven, musing. He did wonder whether +she was really in revolt against Aunt Anne's immovable finger.</p> + +<p>"Smoking!" said Nan, her eyebrows raised in humorous recollection. "I +used to be half dead over there, dog tired, keyed up to the last notch. +You know! I'd have given a year of life for a cigarette, when I saw what +the others got out of it. I was perfectly willing to smoke. I was eager +to. But I'd think of Aunt Anne, and I simply couldn't do it."</p> + +<p>Then it seemed to him that, since Aunt Anne's steel finger had resulted +in such a superfine product of youth, they'd better not blame her too +radically. It was her tyranny, but it was a tyranny lineally sprung from +a stately past.</p> + +<p>"I don't believe it was Aunt Anne alone," he said. "It was your +remembering a rather fine inheritance. Your crowd think they're very +much emancipated, but they've lost the sense of form, beauty, tradition. +You couldn't go all the way with them. You couldn't be rough-haired."</p> + +<p>"At any rate," said Nan, "I can't be young: in the sense they're young. +I'm a 'strayed reveler,' that's all. But I don't know why I'm painting a +Sargent portrait of me. Yes, I do. I want to squeeze everything I can +out of this darling minute together, so when we don't have any more +minutes I can go back to this. And you can remember, in case you ever +need me, just what sort of an old Nan I am."</p> + +<p>"And you suggest," said Raven, "my kidnaping a nice New England woman +and her baby and carting them off to the Malay Peninsula."</p> + +<p>Nan turned upon him delightedly. He could not know what he did for her +by juggling the Tira myth into raillery.</p> + +<p>"But think, Rookie," she said, "a woman so beautiful she's more than +that. She's mystery. Now, isn't she beautiful?"</p> + +<p>"Beautiful," Raven agreed, and the picture of her, madonna-like, in the +woods, suddenly smote the eyes of his mind and blinded them to all but +Tira.</p> + +<p>She saw him wince, and went on more falteringly, but still determined to +go all the way.</p> + +<p>"Into a new world, Rookie, all ferns and palms."</p> + +<p>"And snakes!"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly honest, perfectly free, and no jungle except the kind that +grows up in a night."</p> + +<p>"And you," said Raven, "with your New England traditions and your +inherited panic over a cigarette!"</p> + +<p>They looked at each other across the length of the hearth, and it all +seemed delightfully funny to them—their solitude, their oneness of +mind—and they began to laugh. And at the combined shout of their +merriment (almost competitive it was, in the eagerness of each to +justify the particular preciousness of the moment) the door opened and +Dick came in, halted, stared, in a surprise that elicited one last hoot +at the unexpectedness of things, and indulged himself in a satirical +comment of greeting, far from what he had intended. Poor Dick! he was +always making sage resolutions on the chance of finding Raven and Nan +together, but the actuality as inevitably overthrew him.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said he, "that's it, is it? So I thought."</p> + +<p>If he thought it, he was none the less unwise in saying so. He knew +that, knew the effect he had produced, and yet was powerless to modify +it. Nan was plainly taken aback, and she knew why. He was destroying her +happy moment, snatching it out of any possible sequence of hours here +with Rookie. Dick had come and he would stay. Raven read the boy's face +and was bored. He had seen that look too much of late. But he rose and +went forward with the appropriate air of welcome.</p> + +<p>"Well, old boy," said he, his hand on Dick's shoulder, "why didn't you +'phone up? There'd have been something ready for you. No matter. We'll +make a raid on the pantry."</p> + +<p>"I don't want anything," said Dick morosely.</p> + +<p>His eyes never left Nan. They traveled from her braids to her feet. Why, +his angry gaze demanded, was she sitting here in a beguiling +masquerade—silly, too! The masquerade was silly. But it made her into +something so unapproachable in the citadel of a childhood she had no +lien on any longer that his heart ached within him. Except for that one +kiss in France—a kiss so cruelly repudiated after (most cruelly because +she had made it seem as if it were only a part of her largess to the +War) he had found little pleasure in Nan. Yet there could be such +pleasure with her. The generous beauties of her mind and heart looked to +him a domain large enough for a life's exploring. But even the woman who +had given him the kiss in France had vanished, withdrawn into the little +girl Raven seemed to be forever wakening in her. He got out of his +driving coat and stepped into the hall to drop it. When he came back, +Nan had made room at the fire and Raven had drawn up another chair.</p> + +<p>"Now," said Raven, "I'll forage for some grub."</p> + +<p>At that, he left them, and Nan thought bitterly it was the cowardice of +man. Dick was in the sulks and she was to suffer them alone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h2> + + +<p>Dick, looking down upon Nan, had that congealed aspect she alone had the +present power of freezing him into. She knew all the possibilities of +that face. There was the angry look: that had reigned of late when she +flouted or denied him. There was the sulky frown, index of his jealousy +of Rookie, and there had been, what seemed a long time ago, before they +went through this disintegrating turmoil of war, the look of a boy's +devotion. Nan had prized him very much then, when he was not flaunting +angry rights over her. Now she sat perversely staring into the fire, +realizing that everything about her angered him: the childish vanity of +her dress, assumed, he would be sure, to charm the Rookie of old days +into renewed remembrance. But he had to be faced finally, since Rookie +was gone so long, stirring up Charlotte to the task of a cold bite, and +with a little shrug she lifted her eyes to face exactly the Dick she had +expected to see: dignified reproach in every line. Nice boy! she had the +honest impartiality to give him that grace only to wish he would let her +enjoy him as she easily could. What a team he and she and Rookie would +be if they could only eliminate this idea of marriage. How they could +make the room ring, here by the fire, with all the quips of their old +memories. Yet wouldn't Dick have been an interruption, even then? Wasn't +the lovely glow of this one evening the amazing reality of her sitting +by the fire with Rookie alone for the first time in many years, and, if +he fell into the enchantment of Malaysia and the mysteries of an +empty-headed Tira, the last? And now here she was dreaming off on Rookie +when she must, at this very instant, to seize any advantage at all, be +facing Dick. She began by laughing at him.</p> + +<p>"Dick," she said, "how funny you are. I don't know much about Byron, but +I kind of think you're trying to do the old melancholia act: Manfred or +what d'you call 'em? You just stand there like old style opera, +glowering; if you had a cloak you'd throw an end over your shoulder."</p> + +<p>"Nan!" said he, and she was the more out of heart because the voice +trembled with an honest supplication.</p> + +<p>"There!" she hastened to put in, "that's it. You're 'choked with +emotion.' Why do you want to sound as if you're speaking into a barrel? +In another minute you'll be talking 'bitterly.'"</p> + +<p>Dick was not particular about countering her gibes. That was +unproductive. He had too much of his own to say.</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose I'm here for?" he asked, as if, whatever it might +be, it was in itself accusatory.</p> + +<p>"Search me," said Nan, with the flippancy he hated.</p> + +<p>She knew, by instinct as by long acquaintance, that one charm for him +lay in her old-fashioned reticences and chiefly her ordered speech. +Almost he would have liked her to be the girl Aunt Anne had tried to +make her. That, she paused to note, in passing, was part of the general +injustice of things. He could write free verse you couldn't read aloud +without squirming (even in the company of the all-knowing young), but +she was to lace herself into Victorian stays.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," said she, "you came to see whether I mightn't be having the +time of my life sitting here with Rookie by the fire."</p> + +<p>"I did," he frankly owned. "Mother said you'd gone to New York. So she +went on."</p> + +<p>"Now what the dickens for? Haven't I a perfect right to go to New York +without notice?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Dick, "you'd disappeared. You'd gone away from here, and you +were lost, virtually lost. You weren't anywhere."</p> + +<p>"If she thought I was in New York, why didn't that settle it? What did +she have to go trailing on after me for?"</p> + +<p>"Because," said Dick, "we didn't know. She wanted to telephone. I +wouldn't let her. I couldn't have the Seaburys started up. I couldn't +have you get into the papers."</p> + +<p>"Into the papers!" said Nan. "Heavens! I suppose if I'm not in at curfew +I'm to be arrested."</p> + +<p>"I let her go," repeated Dick. "But I knew as well as I wanted to you'd +doubled back here and you were with him."</p> + +<p>"Then, for God's sake," said Nan, in a conversational tone, knowing the +adjuration would be bitter to him, "if I wanted to be with him, as you +put it—I'm glad I ain't a poet—why didn't you let me?"</p> + +<p>"Because," said Dick promptly, "it's indecent."</p> + +<p>She had no difficulty in facing him now. It was a cheap means of +subjugating, but, being an advantage, she would not forego it. And, +indeed, she was too angry.</p> + +<p>"Dick," she said, "you're a sickening little whelp. More than that, +you're a hypocrite. You write yards and yards of your free verse to tell +us how bold and brave you are and how generally go-as-you-please we've +got to be if we're going to play big Injun, and then you tell me it's +indecent to sit here with Rookie, of all people in the world. My God! +Rookie!"</p> + +<p>Again she had invoked her Maker because Dick would shiver at the +impropriety. "No violence," she thought satirically, remembering he was +himself the instigator of violence in verse. But Dick was sorry. He had +not chosen his word. It had lain in his angry mind and leaped to be +used. It could not be taken back.</p> + +<p>"You can't deny," said he, "you are perfectly happy here with him. Or +you were a minute ago before I came."</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan, "I don't deny it. Is that indecent?"</p> + +<p>Now she had the whip hand, for he was not merely angry: he was plainly +suffering. The boyish look had subtly taken possession of his face. This +was the Dick she had loved always, next to Rookie. But his following +words, honest as they were, lost him his advantage of the softened look. +He was hanging to his point.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "He's old. You're young. So am I. We belong together. We +can be awfully fond of him. We are. But it's got to be in the right way. +He could live with us. We'd simply devote ourselves to him. But Nan, the +world belongs to us. We're young."</p> + +<p>At that instant Raven came in and set down his tray. Nan glanced up at +him fearfully, but it was apparent he had not heard. She was no longer +angry. The occasion was too big. Dick seemed to her to be speaking out +of his ignorance and not from any wilful cruelty. She got up and went to +Raven, as he stood there, put her hand through his arm and smiled up at +him.</p> + +<p>"Rookie," she said, with a half laugh that was really a caress, +"darlingest Rookie! Charlotte never got that supper together in the +world. You did it yourself, not to disturb her. I never saw so much food +at one time, in all my life."</p> + +<p>It was a monstrous feast, bread, butter, cheese, ham: very neatly +assembled, but for a giant's appetite.</p> + +<p>"We'll all have some," sad Raven. "Draw up, old son. Nan'll butter for +us."</p> + +<p>For the first minutes it seemed to Dick he could not eat, the lump in +his throat had risen so. But Nan buttered and they did eat and felt +better. Raven avoided looking at them, wondering what they were +quarreling about now. It must, he thought, be the way of this new +generation starting out avowedly "on its own."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h2> + + +<p>The blessed diversion of eating ended, a blank moment stared them in the +face. What to say next? Were Nan and Dick, Raven wondered, to go on +fighting? Was it the inevitable course of up-to-date courtship? Perhaps +the new generation, from its outlook on elemental things, was taking to +marriage by capture, clubbing the damsel and striding off, her limpness +flung over a brawny arm. It seemed to him a singularly bare, unshaded +way to the rose-leaf bowers his poets had been used to sing; but +undoubtedly the roads were many, and this was one. Possibly the poets +wouldn't say the same now. Dick ought to know. But at least there must +be no warfare here in this warm patch of shelter snatched out of the +cold and dark. His hand was on Old Crow's journal, Dick's inheritance, +he thought, as well as his, and now a fortunate pretext to stave off an +awkward moment.</p> + +<p>"Run over this," he said. "Nan and I've been doing it. I don't believe +we're in any hurry for bed."</p> + +<p>Dick took it, with no show of interest. How should he have been +interested, forced to switch his mind from the pulsating dreams of youth +to worn mottled covers?</p> + +<p>"What is it?" he asked indifferently.</p> + +<p>Raven was rather curious now. What impression would Old Crow make, +slipping in like this, unheralded?</p> + +<p>"Never mind," he said. "Run over it and get on to it, if you can. I'd +like to know what you think."</p> + +<p>Dick, without much heart, began to read, and Raven lighted a pipe. +First, a tribute to Nan's abstinence, he passed her the cigarettes, and +when she shook her head, smiled back at her, as if he reminded her of +secrets they had together. Presently she got up, and Dick, closing the +book, threw it on the table.</p> + +<p>"Bed?" Raven asked, also getting up, and Nan said good night and was +gone.</p> + +<p>The two men sat down, each with the certainty that here they were to +stick until something determining had been said, Raven irritated by the +prospect and Dick angrily ready.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Raven, indicating the book, "what do you think?"</p> + +<p>"That?" said Dick absently. "Oh, I don't know. Somebody trying to write +without knowing how?"</p> + +<p>Raven gave it up. Either he had not read far, or he had not hungered or +battled enough to be moved by it.</p> + +<p>"Now, look here," said Dick, "I may not be interested in that, but +there's something I am interested in. And we've got to talk it out, on +the spot."</p> + +<p>"Well!" said Raven. He mended the fire which didn't need it, and then +sat down and filled his pipe. He wasn't smoking so very much but, he +thought, with a bored abandonment to the situation, gratefully taking +advantage of a pipe's proneness to go out. While he attended to it he +could escape the too evidently condemnatory gaze from those young eyes +that never wavered, chiefly because they could not be deflected by a +doubt of perfectly apprehending everything they saw.</p> + +<p>"Now," said Dick, plunging, "what do you want to do this kind of thing +for?"</p> + +<p>"What kind of thing?" asked Raven, lighting up. "Smoke?"</p> + +<p>Dick looked at him accusingly, sure of his own rightness and the clarity +of the issue.</p> + +<p>"You know," he said. "This business. Compromising Nan."</p> + +<p>Raven felt that slight quickening of the blood, the nervous thrill along +the spine a dog must feel when his hair rises in canine emergency. He +smoked silently while he was getting himself in hand, and, in the space +of it, he had time for a good deal of rapid thinking. The outrage and +folly of it struck him first and then the irony. Here was Dick, who +flaunted his right to leave nothing unsaid where realistic verse +demanded it, and he was consigning Nan to the decorum Aunt Anne herself +demanded. Was the young animal of the present day really unchanged from +the first man who protected his own by a fettering seclusion, simply +because it was his own? Was Dick's general revolt only the yeasty +turmoil sure to take one form or another, being simply the swiftness of +young blood? Was his general bravado only skin deep? Raven hardly knew +how to take him. He wouldn't be angry, outwardly at least. The things +Dick had said, the things he was prepared to say, he would be expected +to resent, but he must deny himself. It was bad for the boy, and more, a +subtle slur on Nan. They mustn't squabble over her, as if her sweet +inviolateness could be in any way touched by either of them. Presently +he took his pipe out, looked at it curiously as if it did not altogether +please him and remarked:</p> + +<p>"Dick, you're a fool."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Dick, with a bitterness that curled his lip a little, +"I'm a young fool, too, I suppose. Well, thank God for that. I am young, +and I know it, and just what I'm getting out of it and what I've a right +to get. You can't play that game with me, Uncle Jack. You simply can't +do it. The old game's played out."</p> + +<p>"And what," said Raven mildly, "is the old game? And what's the new one +going to be? You'll have to tell me. I don't know."</p> + +<p>"The old game," said Dick, "was precisely what it was in politics. The +old men made the rules and the young were expected to conform. The old +men made wars and the young fought 'em. The old men lied and skulked and +the young had to pull them out of the holes they got into. I suppose +you'd say the War was won at Chequers Court. Well, I shouldn't. I should +say it was won by the young men who had their brains blown out, and lost +their eyes and their legs."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven quietly, "I shouldn't say the War was won at Chequers +Court. We needn't fight over that. The thing that gets me is why we need +to fight at all. There's been a general armistice and Eastern Europe +doesn't seem to have heard of it. They go on scrapping. You don't seem +to have heard of it either. You come home here and find me peaceably +retired to Charlotte and Jerry and my Sabine Farm, and you proceed to +declare war on me. What the devil possesses you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Dick, the muscle twitching in his lip, "I do find you here. +And Nan with you."</p> + +<p>"Dick," said Raven sharply, "we'll leave Nan out of this."</p> + +<p>Dick, though the tone was one that had called him to attention years +ago, told himself he wasn't afraid of it now. Those old bugaboos +wouldn't work.</p> + +<p>"I am going," he said, "to marry Nan."</p> + +<p>"Good for you," responded Raven. "No man could do better."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to tell me," countered Dick, "you're not bluffing? Or do +you actually want to let her marry me and you—you'd continue this under +my nose?"</p> + +<p>Raven stared at him a full minute, and Dick angrily met him. "Stare +away," Dick was thinking. "I'm in the right. I can look you down."</p> + +<p>"Dick," said Raven finally, "I called you a fool. It isn't such a bad +thing to be a fool. We're most of us fools, of one sort or another. But +don't let me think you're a dirty-minded little cad. Now I don't want to +bring Nan into this, but I rather think I've got to. What are you +driving at? Come, out with it!"</p> + +<p>To his wonderment, his pain amounting to a shock of perplexity and +grief, he saw Dick's face redden and the tears spring to his eyes. How +horribly the boy cared, perhaps up to the measure of Nan's deserts, and +yet with what a childish lack of values! For he had no faith either in +Nan or in old Jack. The ties of blood, of friendship, were not holding. +He was as jealous as Othello, and no sane certainties were standing him +in stead. Dick, feeling the painful tears, felt also the shame of them. +He wanted to answer on the instant, now Raven had given him his chance; +but so unused was he to the menace of betraying emotion that he was not +even sure of not blubbering like a boy. He swallowed and came out with +it:</p> + +<p>"You've got some sort of hold on her nobody else has. You've hynotized +her. She eats out of your hand."</p> + +<p>Raven, in despair, sat looking at him. He ought, he felt, to be able to +laugh it all away, but he was too bewildered and too sorry.</p> + +<p>"Dick," said he finally, "I shall have to say it again. You're an awful +fool. Nan and I were always the best of friends. I rather think I have +known her in a way none of the rest of you have. But—hypnotized her! +Look at me, Dick. Remember me plodding along while you grew up; think +what sort of a chap I am. You won't find anything spectacular about me. +Never has been, never will be. And Nan, of all people! little Nan!"</p> + +<p>Dick forgot the imminence of a breaking voice and humid eyes. Raven, he +felt, wasn't playing the game. He was skulking out of it.</p> + +<p>"Do you deny," he said, in a voice so loud and hoarse that it startled +him as it did Raven, "that you're in love with her?"</p> + +<p>"Good God!" said Raven. He rose, laid his pipe on the mantel and stood, +trembling, even in his clenched hands. "What is there to answer," he got +out at length, "to a question like that? You've just reminded me I'm +past my youth. Why don't you remember it yourself when it'll do you some +good? I'm an old chap, and you——"</p> + +<p>"You're as fit as ever you were in your life," said Dick, as if he +grudged it to him. "And more fascinating, I suppose, to a girl like her. +There's something pathetic about it. It's half pity, too! Nothing so +dangerous in the world."</p> + +<p>Raven swung round, walked to the window and, hands in his pockets, stood +looking out. In love with Nan! well, he did love Nan better than any +created thing. All the old tests, the old obediences, would be nothing +to him if he could consecrate them to Nan, her happiness, her safety in +this dark world. How about his life? Yes, he would give that, a small +thing, if Nan needed the red current of it to quicken her own. But "in +love" as Dick understood it! If you were to judge Dick's comprehension +of it from his verse, love was a sex madness, a mortal lure for the +earth's continuance, by the earth begot. And who had unconsciously held +out that lure to him but the woman of mystery up there on the road in +that desolate house with her brutal husband and her deficient child? He +had seen the innocent lure, he had longed to put out his hand to the +hand unconsciously beckoning. Through the chill wintry night the message +came to him now. And only Nan could understand that the message might +come and that it was a part of the earth and to be forgotten, like a hot +wind or a thrilling song out of the dark—Nan, his darling, a part of +him, his understanding mind, as well as the fiber of his heart. Suddenly +he turned on Dick who was watching him, ready, it seemed, to pounce on +his first change of look.</p> + +<p>"Dick," he said, "I adore Nan."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Dick, "I know you do. I told you——"</p> + +<p>"But," broke in Raven, "you don't know anything about it."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Dick, "then I don't adore her, too."</p> + +<p>Raven reflected. No, his inner mind told him, there was no community of +understanding between them. How should Dick traverse with him the long +road of rebuff and downfall he had traveled? How should youth ever be +expected to name the cup it has not tasted? For Dick, he thought again, +what is known as love was a simple, however overwhelming, matter of the +mounting blood, the growing year. For him it would be the ashes of +forgotten fire, the strange alembic mixed of bitter with the sweet. In +that moment he faced an acknowledged regret that he had not lived the +normal life of marriage at the start, the quieting of foolish fevers, +the witness of children. We are not, he reflected, quite solvent unless +we pay tribute before we go. He mused off into the vista of life as it +accomplishes itself not in great triumphal sweeps, but fitful music +hushed at intervals by the crash of brutal mischance, and only, at the +end, a solution of broken chords. Meantime Dick watched him, and Raven +at last, feeling the boy's eyes on him, came awake with a start.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Dick," he answered gently, "of course you love her. And it ought +to do you good. It's a big thing to love Nan."</p> + +<p>"Very well then," said Dick, his voice trembling a little in answer to +that gentler tone, "you let her alone, can't you? Nan's a different girl +when she's with you. It's no use denying it. You do hypnotize her."</p> + +<p>"Dick," said Raven, "that's a beastly thing to say. If you mean it to be +as offensive as it sounds, you ought to be booted for it."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Dick, with a simple certainty in what he knew, "I don't blame +you as I should any other fellow that wasn't going through what you are. +That would be a simple matter to deal with: a chap that knew what he was +doing. You don't, old man. You may not know it, but you don't."</p> + +<p>"For the land's sake!" said Raven, echoing Charlotte, "And what, again +for the land's sake, am I going through?"</p> + +<p>"You know," said Dick uneasily because he did hope to avoid putting it +into words. "<i>Cafard.</i>"</p> + +<p>Raven had one of his moments of silence, getting hold of himself, taking +the matter in, with its forgotten enormity.</p> + +<p>"So," he said, "you've adopted your mother's word for it. I hadn't +realized that."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mum's no such fool," said Dick. "She may be an aggravation and a +curse—I'll own that—but she's up to date. Why, Jack, anybody that ever +knew you'd know you're not yourself."</p> + +<p>"No," thought Raven, "few of us are ourselves. We've been through the +War, my son. So have you; but you didn't have such a brittle old world +inside you to try to put together again after it was smashed. Your inner +world was in the making. Whatever you might feel in its collision with +the runaway planet of the mad human mind, it could right itself; its +atoms might cohere."</p> + +<p>"You needn't think," proceeded Dick generously if a trifle too +magnificently, "I can't see. There's a lot of things I see that don't +bear talking about. I've pitched into you about Nan, but you needn't +suppose I don't know it's all a matter of hidden complexes."</p> + +<p>Again recurring to Charlotte in this moment of need, Raven reflected +that he didn't know whether he was afoot or a-horseback.</p> + +<p>"You don't mind, I hope," he said, with humility before this perfectly +equipped intelligence, "explaining a little."</p> + +<p>"Why," said Dick, "there's all your previous life. It's a case of +inhibition. There was Miss Anne."</p> + +<p>"Stop," said Raven, his curiosity over the boy's mind dying in a crash. +"Stop right there, Dick; you're making a fool of yourself. Now we'll go +to bed."</p> + +<p>He got up and waited, and Dick, sulkily, rose too.</p> + +<p>"You needn't think," he began, and Raven broke in:</p> + +<p>"You needn't think I shall stand another word of your half-baked +psycho-deviltries. You can believe what you like. It'll harm nobody but +yourself. But you don't talk it here, or out you go. Now!"</p> + +<p>The last word meant he was waiting to put out the light and Dick, +without another look at him, strode out of the room, snatched his +suit-case and went up the stairs. Raven heard the decisive click of his +door and, his own heart beating in a quick response to what he knew must +happen, turned on the light again and stood there silent, waiting. It +did happen. A soft rustle, like a breeze blowing down the stairs, and +Nan came in. She had taken off her child's dress, as if to show him she +had left their game behind her. The long braids were pinned up, and she +wore her dark walking dress. She was paler, much older, and he was +renewedly angry with Dick for banishing the Nan that was but an hour +ago. Perhaps that Nan would never come back.</p> + +<p>"Darling Rookie," she said, so softly that the sound of it could not +have got half way up the stairs, "what's it all about?"</p> + +<p>"About you, Nan," he answered, and denied himself the darling Nan he had +for her. "And being in love. And Dick's wanting you."</p> + +<p>"It's more than that," said Nan wistfully. "He's been at you somehow. +He's dug ditches across your dear forehead and down your cheeks. What +d'he say, Rookie? What d'you say to him?"</p> + +<p>Raven shook his head. He had no idea of inviting her into the +psycho-analytic ward of Dick's mind.</p> + +<p>"Nan," he said, "the boy's unhappy. He's in love with you. No doubt +about it."</p> + +<p>Nan, on her part, had nothing to say to this.</p> + +<p>"What made you change your dress?" asked Raven. "You give me a funny +feeling, as if you'd put the little Nan to bed and come down here to say +you're going, in a minute, and never coming back."</p> + +<p>"I am going," said Nan, "only not in a minute. Charlotte says Jerry +shall take me to the early train."</p> + +<p>"Now, by George!" said Raven, so loudly she put her finger to her lip, +"if that's what Dick's done, he shall go himself, and know the reason, +too. Spoil my visit with you, break it all up? Why, I never had a visit +from you before."</p> + +<p>"It's broken," said Nan. "You couldn't put it together again." The red +had come into her cheeks and her eyes showed a surface glitter he did +not know. "I'm going to leave you to Tenney—and Tira—and your +destiny—and Old Crow."</p> + +<p>"Is this a part of your scheme?" asked Raven roughly. He was curiously +dashed, almost shamed by her repudiating him. "You're as bad as Dick. +He's been bringing all his psychopathic patter to bear on me, and you're +deserting me. Oh, come! Let's be safe and sane, like the Fourth."</p> + +<p>"So we will be," said Nan. She was retreating toward the door. There +were simple natural things she wanted at that moment. She wanted to go +to him, put her arms about him, mother or child arms, as he might wish, +and bid him a good-by that would wrap him about like a cloak while they +were absent one from the other. He should have her lips as he had her +heart. Nan was an adventurer on the high seas of life. She cared very +little whether her boat rode the wave or sank, so it could unload the +gold and gems it carried on the sand of the world she loved. Rookie was +the home of her heart. The gold was all for him. But if he did not want +it—and meantime she was at the door. "Don't get up," she said, "to see +me off. If you do, he will, too, and there'll be more fireworks. No, no, +Rookie. Don't look like that. I'm not hateful about him, really, only he +has spoiled my fun."</p> + +<p>"Why you should go," said Raven, advancing; "why you should leave this +house just because he's come!"</p> + +<p>"No fun!" said Nan. "Do you see us, the three of us, sitting down to +meals together? No, Rookie. Can't be done. Good night."</p> + +<p>Here she did turn definitely and went up the stairs, and Raven presently +followed. In his room he stood for a moment thinking, not of Dick, who +was troublesome, in an irritating way incident to biting young cubs just +aware of their teeth, but of the challenge that was Nan. Here she was, +all beauty, all wisdom, in the natal gifts of her, telling him, with +every breath, she loved him and only him. And yet, his knowledge of life +was quick to answer, it was the accretion of long hungers, the sum of +all desires since she was little and consigned to Aunt Anne's delicate +frigidities for nurture and, as the event proved, for penury. She had no +conception of a love as irresistible as hers was now abounding. In a +year or two, youth would meet her on the road of youth, and they would +kiss and old Rookie would become the dim duty of remembered custom. And +as he thought these things, his overwhelming revolt against earth and +its cruelty came over him, and he stood there gripping his hands into +their palms, again at open war with life. It was a question without an +answer, a hunger unfed, a promise broken. Eternal life was the soporific +distilled by man, in his pathetic cunning, to dull the anguish of +anticipated death. Standing there in the silence, he felt the waves of +loneliness going over him, and thought of Nan in her chamber across the +hall, angelic in her compassion, her arms ready for him as a mother is +ready for her child. The moonlight made arabesques on the walls, and he +walked to the window with an instinctive craving for the open. He stood +gripping the casing with both hands and looking up over the hillside +where also the light lay revealingly. Up there was the hut where Tira +might be now if Tenney had not wounded himself, fleeing in her turn from +earthly cruelty. Up there Old Crow had lived in his own revolt against +earth cruelty. And, with the thought, Old Crow seemed to be, not on the +hillside, but beside him, reading to him the testimony of the mottled +book, but more insistently, in a clearer voice. If it could be so, if +God had intention, not only toward his own colossal inventiveness, but +as touching the well-being of man—yes, and of the other creatures, too, +the pathetically oppressing and oppressed—if He had given man the +problem with no solution indicated, to work it out as he had worked out +pottery and fabrics, and light and talking over space—always in +conformity to law—it was stupendous. No matter how many million men +went to the building of the safeguarding reefs, no matter through what +blood and tears the garden of the earth was watered if the flower of +faith could grow at last.</p> + +<p>"That is my legacy to the boy," he seemed to hear Old Crow repeating. +"He must not be afraid."</p> + +<p>And as he was sinking off to sleep he had an idea he was praying, +perhaps to God; or was it to Old Crow? At any rate, he was saying:</p> + +<p>"For God's sake look out for Nan. You don't need to make it so devilish +hard for Nan."</p> + +<p>He was downstairs early. At the foot of the stairs stood Charlotte, +waiting. She looked—what? compassionate?</p> + +<p>"She's gone," said Charlotte. "Jerry was up 'fore light."</p> + +<p>"Gone?" echoed Raven. "At this time of day? What for? She'll have an +hour to wait."</p> + +<p>"She would have it so," said Charlotte. "She was terrible anxious to git +off."</p> + +<p>So, Raven thought, she didn't want to see either of them. She was tired +of them, of him with his stiff withdrawals and Dick's young puppyhood. +He ran upstairs, snatched some old riding breeches out of a closet, put +them on and, without a word to Charlotte, went to the barn. But her eye +was on him and she called out of the shed door:</p> + +<p>"You took your saddle with you. Don't you know you did? There's nothin' +but your father's hangin' there, old as the hills."</p> + +<p>Raven did not answer, or even turn his head. He went into the harness +room, found the old saddle hanging in its place, led out Nellie, +surprised at being expected to leave her oats, saddled her and rode +away. He was angry, with Nan, with all the childish trouble of the +business, and—as two neighbors agreed, seeing him gallop past—rode +like the devil, yet not coming upon Nan and Jerry until they were at the +station platform. Nan saw him first. She was gloriously glad, waving her +hand and laughing out. Jerry stood with mouth open, silent but +incurious, and Raven dismounted and threw him the reins.</p> + +<p>"Hitch her behind," he said. "I'll go back with you. Got something extra +to blanket her?"</p> + +<p>He came up to Nan, and they took hands and went into the waiting room +together. It was steaming hot from the monster stove and they retreated +again to the platform.</p> + +<p>"Come out and walk," said Raven, "up to Pine Grove. You've got an hour, +you little simpleton. What did you run away for?"</p> + +<p>The station is in a cluster of houses, awake early every morning when +the milk goes away. But the road across the track leads up a little rise +into Pine Grove, where church and sociables have picnics, the merrier +for the neighborliness of the few trains. Raven and Nan climbed the rise +almost at a run, and when they reached the shadowing pines, looked in at +the pure spaces, remembering, for the first time, the snow would bar +them out. They must keep to the road.</p> + +<p>"Forty-eight minutes," said Raven. "We'll walk twenty and then cut back. +Come on."</p> + +<p>They walked a little, raced a little, talked—not much—and laughed a +great deal. Raven was in the highest spirits, sure he was sending her +off happy, since she would go. Never afterward could they remember what +they talked about: only it seemed a fortunate moment stolen from the +penury of years. Again he took out his watch.</p> + +<p>"Time's up!" he said, and they went back.</p> + +<p>The station was alive with its small activities. Jerry was walking +Nellie up and down. The train came in and when Nan left him Raven +remembered they had not said good-by. There was a kind of permanence in +it; the moment had cemented something into bonds. When she had gone he +and Jerry got into the pung and drove away leading Nellie, and then +Raven remembered he had not breakfasted. They talked horse all the way +home, and when Dick, appearing on the porch, called to them:</p> + +<p>"What you got Nellie for?"</p> + +<p>Raven answered cheerfully:</p> + +<p>"I took a notion."</p> + +<p>Then he and Dick went in to breakfast, and Nan's name was not mentioned. +Charlotte, Raven concluded, had told the boy she was gone. He seemed to +detect in Dick some watchful kindness toward himself, the responsible +care attendants manifest toward the incapable. Dick was, he concluded, +bent on therapeutic measures.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h2> + + +<p>Tira, from the forenoon of Tenney's accident, entered on uneventful +days. He lowered over his helplessness; he was angry with it. But the +anger was not against her, and she could bear it. For the first time she +saw his activities fettered, and the mother in her answered. She +ventured no outspoken sympathy, but he was dependent on her and in that, +much as it chafed him, she found solace. He was chained to his chair, +his wounded foot on a rest, and he had no diversions. Tira sometimes +wondered what he was thinking when he sat looking out at the road, +smooth with the grinding of sleds and slipping of sleighs. Once she +brought the Bible and laid it before him on a stand. If its exposition +was so precious to him at evening meeting, there would be comfort in it +now. But he glanced at her in what looked like a quick suspicion—did it +mean he thought she meant to taunt him with the unreality of his +faith?—and, after it had lain there a forenoon untouched, he said to +her uneasily:</p> + +<p>"You put that away."</p> + +<p>She took it back to its place on the parlor stand under Grandsir +Tenney's hatchet-faced photograph, wondering in her heart why it was not +what she had heard them read of God: "A very present help in time of +trouble." If you knew it was so, Tira reasoned, you never had to fret +yourself any more. And if that place was waiting for you—the good place +they talked about—even a long lifetime was not too much to face before +you got to it. After she had laid the book down and turned away from it +to cross the ordered stillness of the room, she stopped, with a sudden +hungry impulse, and opened it at random. "Let not your heart be +troubled," she read, and closed it again, quickly lest the next words +qualify so rich a message. It might say further on that you were not to +be troubled if you fulfilled the law and gospel, and that, she knew, was +only fair. But in her dearth she wanted no sacerdotal bargaining. She +needed the heavens to rain down plenty while she held out her hands to +take. When she entered the kitchen again Tenney, glancing round at her, +saw the change in her look. She was flushed, her mouth was tremulous, +and her eyes humid. He wondered, out of his ready suspicion, whether she +had seen anyone going by.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?" he asked sharply.</p> + +<p>"Nothin's the matter," she answered. But her hands were trembling. She +was like Mary when she had seen her Lord.</p> + +<p>"Who's gone by?" he persisted. "I didn't hear no bells."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira. "I don't believe anybody's gone by, except the +choppers. It's a proper nice day for them."</p> + +<p>The child woke and cried from the bedroom and she brought him out in the +pink sweetness of his sleep, got the little tub and began to give him +his bath by the fire. As she bent over him and dried his smooth soft +flesh, the passion of motherhood rose in her and she forgot he was "not +right," and sang a low, formless song. When he was bathed she stood him +naked on her knee, and it was then she found Tenney including them both +in the livid look she knew. And she saw what he saw. The child's hair +was more like shining copper every day, his small nose had the tiniest +curve. By whatever trick of nature, which is implacable, he was not like +her, he was not like Tenney. He was a message from her bitter, ignorant +past. Her strong shoulders began to shake and her hands that steadied +the child shook, too, so that he gave a little whimper at finding +himself insecure.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el," she broke out, "before God!"</p> + +<p>"Well," said he, in the snarl she had heard from him at those times when +his devil quite got the better of him, "what? What you got to tell?"</p> + +<p>"It ain't so," she said, her voice broken by her chattering lips. +"Before God, it ain't so."</p> + +<p>"So ye know what I mean," he jeered, and even at the moment she had +compassion for him, reading his unhappy mind and knowing he hurt himself +unspeakably. "Ye know, or ye wouldn't say 'tain't so."</p> + +<p>Words of his own sprang up in her memory like witnesses against him, +half phrases embodying his suspicion of her, wild accusations when, like +a drunken man, he had let himself go. But this he did not remember. She +knew that. Shut up in his cell of impeccable righteousness, he believed +he had dealt justly with her and no more. She would not taunt him with +his words. She had a compassion for him that reached into his future of +possible remorse. Tira saw, and had seen for a long time, a catastrophe, +a "wind-up" before them both. Sometimes it looked like a wall that +brought them up short, sometimes a height they were both destined to +fall from and a gulf ready to receive them, and she meant, if she could, +to save him from the recognition of the wall as something he had built +or the gulf as something he had dug. As she sat looking at him now, +wide-eyed, imploring, and the child trod her knee impatiently, a man +went past the window to the barn. It was Jerry, gone to fodder the +cattle, and Jerry brought Raven to her mind who, if he was obeying her +by absence, was none the less protecting her. The trouble of her face +vanished and she drew a quick breath Tenney was quick to note.</p> + +<p>"Who's that?" he asked her sharply, turning in his chair to command the +other window.</p> + +<p>"Jerry," she said. Her heart stilled, and she began to dress the child, +with her mother's deftness. "He comes a little early to fodder, 'fore he +does his own."</p> + +<p>"I dunno," said Tenney, irritably because he had to wear out his spleen, +"why you can't fodder the cows when anybody's laid up. There's women +that do it all the time if their folks are called away."</p> + +<p>"Why, I could," said Tira, with a clear glance at him, "only he won't +let me."</p> + +<p>"What's he got to do with it," said Tenney, in surprise. "Won't let ye? +Jerry Slate won't let ye? Jerry ain't one to meddle nor make. I guess if +you told him 'twas your place to do it an' you'd ruther stan' up to it, +he'd have no more to say."</p> + +<p>The blood came again to her face. She had almost, she felt, spoken +Raven's name, and a swift intuition told her she must bury even the +thought of it.</p> + +<p>"There ain't," she said, "two nicer folks in this township than +Charlotte an' Jerry, nor two that's readier to turn a hand."</p> + +<p>Tenney was silent, and Jerry did the chores and went home. Sometimes he +came to the house to ask how Tenney was getting on, but to-day he had to +get back to his own work.</p> + +<p>This was perhaps a week after Tenney's accident, when he was getting +impatient over inaction, and next day the doctor came and pronounced the +wound healing well. If Tenney had a crutch, he might try it carefully, +and Tenney remembered Grandsir had used a crutch when he broke his hip +at eighty-two, and healed miraculously though tradition pronounced him +done for. It had come to the house among a load of outlawed relics, too +identified with the meager family life to be thrown away, and Tira found +it "up attic" and brought it down to him. She waited, in a sympathetic +interest, to see him try it, and when he did and swung across the +kitchen with an angry capability, she caught her breath, in a new fear +of him. The crutch looked less a prop to his insufficiency than like a +weapon. He could reach her with it. He could reach the child. And then +she began to see how his helplessness had built up in her a false +security. He was on the way to strength again, and the security was +gone.</p> + +<p>The first use he made of the crutch was to swing to the door and tell +Jerry he need not come again. Tira was glad to hear him add:</p> + +<p>"Much obleeged. I'll do the same for you."</p> + +<p>Afterward she went to the barn with him and fed and watered while he +supplemented her and winced when he hurt himself, making strange sounds +under his breath that might have been oaths from a less religious man. +And Tira was the more patient because the doctor had told her the foot +would always trouble him.</p> + +<p>It was two days after he had begun to use his crutches, that Tira, after +doing the noon chores in the barn and house, sat by the front window in +her afternoon dress, a tidy housewife. The baby was having his nap and +Tenney, at the other window, his crutch against the chair beside him, +was opening the weekly paper that morning come. Tira looked up from her +mending to glance about her sitting-room, and, for an instant, she felt +to the full the pride of a clean hearth, a shining floor, the sun lying +in pale wintry kindliness across the yellow paint and braided rugs. If +she had led a gypsy life, it was not because her starved heart yearned +the less tumultuously for order and the seemliness of walls. For the +moment, she felt safe. The child was not in evidence, innocently calling +the eye to his mysterious golden beauty. Tenney had been less irascible +all the forenoon because he had acquired a fortunate control over his +foot, and (she thought it shyly, yet believingly) the Lord Jesus Christ +was with them. Disregarded or not, in these moments of wild disordered +living, He was there.</p> + +<p>She heard sleigh-bells, and looked out. Tenney glanced up over his +glasses, an unwonted look, curiously like benevolence. She liked that +look. It always gave her a thrill of faith that sometime, by a miracle, +it might linger for more than the one instant of a changed visual focus. +She caught it now, with that responsive hope of its continuance, and +knew, for the first time, what it recalled to her: the old minister +beyond Mountain Brook looked over his glasses in precisely that way, +kindly, gentle, and forgiving. But mingled with the remembrance, came +the nearing of the bells and the shock to her heart in the man they +heralded: Eugene Martin, driving fast, and staring at the house. The +horse was moving with a fine jaunty action when Martin pulled him up, +held him a quieting minute, and got out. He paused an instant, his hand +on the robe, as if uncertain how long he should stay, seemed to decide +against covering the horse and ran up the path. He must have seen Tira +and Tenney, each at a window, but his eyes were on the woman only. Half +way along the path, he took off his hat and waved it at her in +exaggerated salute, as if bidding her rejoice that he had come. In the +same instant he seemed, for the first time, to see Tenney. His eyes +rested on him with a surprise excellently feigned. He replaced his hat, +turned about like a man blankly disconcerted and went back down the +path, with the decisive tread of one who cannot take himself off too +soon. He stepped into the sleigh and, drawing the robe about him, drove +off, the horse answering buoyantly. Tira sat, the stillest thing out of +a wood where stalking danger lurks, her eyes on her sewing. Tenney was +staring at her; she knew it, and could not raise her lids. Often she +failed to meet his glance because she so shrank, not from his conviction +of her guilt, but the fear of seeing what she must remember in blank +night watches, to shudder over. For things were different at night, +things you could bear quite well by day. Now he spoke, with a restrained +certainty she trembled at. He had drawn his conclusions; nothing she +could possibly say would alter them.</p> + +<p>"Comin' in, wa'n't he?" the assured voice asked her. "See me, didn't he, +an' give it up?"</p> + +<p>Tira forced herself to look at him, and the anguished depths of her eyes +were moving to him only because they seemed to mourn over his having +found her out.</p> + +<p>"No, Isr'el," she said quietly. "He wa'n't comin' in. He drew up because +he see you, an' he knew 'twould be wormwood to both of us to have him do +just what he done."</p> + +<p>Tenney laughed, a little bitter note. Tira could not remember ever +having heard him laugh with an unstinted mirth. At first, when he came +courting her, he was too worn with the years of work that had brought +him to her, and after that too wild with the misery of revolt. She was +sorry for that, with an increasing sorrow. Tira could bear no +unhappiness but her own.</p> + +<p>"Wormwood!" he repeated, as if the word struck him curiously. "D'he +think 'twas goin' to be wormwood for a woman to find a man comin' all +fixed up like courtin' time, to steal a minute's talk? You make me +laugh."</p> + +<p>He did laugh, and the laugh, though it might have frightened her, made +her the more sorry. She had the sense of keeping her hand on him, of +holding him back from some rushing course that would be his own +destruction.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she answered steadily. "'Twould be nothin' but wormwood for me, +an' well he knows it. He don't—love me, Isr'el."</p> + +<p>She hesitated before the word, and with it the thought of Raven came to +her, as she saw him, unvaryingly kind and standing for quiet, steadfast +things. "He hates me."</p> + +<p>"Hates ye," he repeated curiously. "What's he hate ye for?"</p> + +<p>"Because," said Tira, bound to keep quietly on in this new way of reason +with him, "I left him. An' I left him 'fore he got tired o' me. He +never'd overlook that."</p> + +<p>"You left him, did ye?" he repeated. "Then that proves you was with him, +or ye couldn't ha' left him."</p> + +<p>"Why, Isr'el," said she, her clear gaze on his turbid answering one, "I +told you. I told you long 'fore you married me. First time you ever +mentioned it, I told you, so's to have things fair an' square. I told +you, Isr'el."</p> + +<p>He said nothing, but she knew the answer at the back of his mind, and it +seemed to her wise now to provoke it, to dare the accusation and meet +it, not as she always had, by silence, but a passionate testimony.</p> + +<p>"You said," she continued, "it shouldn't make no difference, what I'd +done 'fore you married me. You said we couldn't help the past, but we +could what's comin' to us. An' I thought you was an angel, Isr'el, with +your religion an' all. Not many men would ha' said that. I didn't know +one. An' we were married an' you—changed."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. His hands were shaking as they did at the beginning of +his rages, but Tira, embarked on a course she had long been coming to, +was the more calm. "Yes, I changed, didn't I? An' when d' I change? When +that"—he paused and seemed to choke down the word he would have given +the child—"when that creatur' in there turned into the livin' pictur' +of the man that drew up here this day. Can you deny he's the image of +him?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira, looking at him squarely. "He is the image of him."</p> + +<p>"What do folks think about it?" he asked her. "What do you s'pose the +neighbors think? What'll it be when it grows worse an' worse? What'll +the school children say when he's old enough to go to school? They'll +see it, too, the little devils. The livin' image, they'll say, o' 'Gene +Martin."</p> + +<p>Tira laid her work on the table in front of her. The moment of +restraining him had failed her, but another moment had come. This she +had seen approaching for many months and had pushed away from her.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el," she said, "I guess you won't have that to worry over. There's +no danger of his goin' to school. He—ain't right."</p> + +<p>He stared at her a long moment, puzzling instances accumulating in his +mind, evidences that the child was not like other children he had seen. +Then he began to laugh, a laugh full of wildness and despair.</p> + +<p>"O my Lord!" he cried. "My Lord God! if I wanted any evidence I hadn't +got, You've give it to me now. You've laid Your hand on her. You've laid +Your hand on both of 'em. He can't ride by here an' see a red-headed +bastard playin' round the yard an' laugh to himself when he says, +'That's mine.' You've laid Your hand on 'em."</p> + +<p>Tira rose from her chair and went to him. She slipped to the floor, put +her head on his unwelcoming shoulder and her arms about his neck.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el," said she, "you hear to me. If you can't for the sake o' me, +you hear to me for the sake o' him,—sleepin' there, the pitifullest +little creatur' God ever made. How's he goin' to meet things, as he is? +'Twould be hard enough with a father 'n' mother that set by him as they +did their lives, but you half-crazed about him—what'll he do, Isr'el? +What'll the poor little creatur' do?"</p> + +<p>Tenney sat rigid under her touch, and she went on, pouring out the +mother sorrow that was the more overwhelming because it had been locked +in her so long.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el, I could tell you every minute o' my life sence you married me. +If 'twas wrote down, you could read it, an' 'twould be Bible truth. An' +if God has laid His hand on that poor baby—Isr'el, you take that back. +It's like cursin' your own flesh an' blood."</p> + +<p>"I do curse him," he muttered. "I curse him for that—not bein' my flesh +an' blood." With the renewed accusation, his anger against her seemed to +mount like a wave and sweep him with it, and he shook himself free of +her. "Jezebel!" he cried. "Let go o' me."</p> + +<p>Tira rose and went back to her chair. But she did not sit down. She +stood there, looking out of the window and wondering. What to do next? +With a man beside himself, what did a woman do? He was talking now, +drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair and looking at her.</p> + +<p>"Sometimes," he said, "when it all comes over me, I think I'll shet you +up. I'll leave him asleep in there an' lock you in, up chamber, an' you +can hear him cry but you can't git to him. An' mebbe you can work it out +that way. He'll be the scapegoat goin' into the wilderness, cryin' in +there alone, an' you'll be workin' out your punishment, hearin' him +cry."</p> + +<p>Tira stood listening and thinking. This was a new danger. If he shut her +away from the child (and he might do it easily, when his foot would +serve him again) nobody would hear. They were too far away. He was +frightening her. She would frighten him. She walked up to him and stood +looking down on him.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el," said she quietly, "don't you git it into your head you could +shet me up."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said he, and his tone was as ominous as her own, "I guess I could +shet you up all right."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tira, "mebbe you could. But if you do, I'll break out. An' +when I've broke out"—she towered over him—"I'll break your neck."</p> + +<p>Tenney, looking up and seeing in her eyes the mother rage that sweeps +creation from man to brute, was afraid, and Tira knew it. She looked him +down. Then her gaze broke, not as if she could not have held his +forever, but haughtily, in scorn of what was weaker than herself.</p> + +<p>"I've been a true wife to you, Isr'el," she said. "You remember it now, +'fore it's too late. For as God's my witness, if you turn your hand +ag'inst a little child—whether it's your own or whether it ain't—an' +that baby in there is yourn an' no man but you has got part nor lot in +him—if you turn ag'inst him, I turn ag'inst you. An' when I've done +that, you'll find me as crazy as you be, an' I can't say no worse."</p> + +<p>She went into the bedroom and he heard her crooning there, defiantly he +thought, even through the low sweetness of her voice. But her passion +had shaken him briefly. For the moment, the inner self in him could not +help believing her. He went back to his newspaper, trying, though the +print was dim before him, to recover his hold on the commonplace of the +day. He, too, would be unmoved; she should see he was not afraid of her +tantrums. But he had not read half a column before an evil chance drew +his eyes to a paragraph in the gossip from the various towns about. This +was under the caption of his own town:</p> + +<p>"A certain gentleman appeared last week with a black eye, gained, it is +said, in a scrap with a non-resident interested in keeping the peace in +country towns. It is said both combatants bore themselves gallantly, but +that suit for assault and battery is to be brought by the party +attacked."</p> + +<p>Tenney sat staring at the words, and his mind told him what a fool he +was. That meant the encounter at his gate. He had ignored that. He had +been deflected from it simply because he had cut his foot and let +himself be drawn off the track of plain testimony by his own pain and +helplessness. Was Raven in it, too? Was there a shameless assault of all +the men about on Tira's honesty? While he was the dupe of Martin, was +Martin Raven's dupe? Did such a woman bring perpetual ruin in her path? +This he did not ask himself in such words or indeed through any +connected interrogation. It was passion within him, disordered, dim, but +horrible to bear. He got up presently, took her scissors, cut out the +paragraph and laid it on her basket where her eyes must fall upon it. +When he had gone back to his chair, she appeared from the bedroom and +went up to him. He did not look at her, but her voice was sweeter, +gentler than the song had been, with no defiance in it, and, in spite of +him, it moved his sick heart, not to belief in her, or even a momentary +rest on her good intent toward him, but to a misery he could hardly +face. Every nerve in him cried out in revolt against his lot, his aching +love for her, his passion forever unsatisfied because she was not +entirely his, the anguish of the atom tossed about in the welter of +elemental life.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el," said she, "there's one thing we forgot when we spoke so to +each other as we did a minute ago."</p> + +<p>She waited, and he looked up at her, and the hunger of his eyes was as +moving to her as if, like the child they had fought over, he was himself +a child and "not right."</p> + +<p>"We forgot," she said, in a soft shyness at having to remind him who was +a professing Christian of what he knew far better than she, "Who was +with us all the time: the Lord Jesus Christ."</p> + +<p>She turned away from him, in a continued timidity at seeming to preach +to him, and seated herself again by the other window. The newspaper +clipping arrested her eye. She took it up, read it over slowly, read it +again and Tenney watched her. Then she crumpled it in her hand and +tossed it on the table. She glanced across at Tenney and spoke gravely, +threading her needle with fingers that did not tremble.</p> + +<p>"That's jest like him," she said. "Anybody 't knew him 'd know 'twas +what he'd do. He's hand in glove with Edson that carries on that paper. +They go to horse-trots together. He's willin' to call attention to +himself, black eye an' all, if he can call attention to somebody else, +same time. That's wormwood, too, Isr'el. We're the ones it's meant for, +you an' me."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h2> + + +<p>In a day or two Raven had convinced himself that Dick, firm-lipped, +self-controlled, as if he had set himself a task, did not mean to leave +him. Raven, half amused, half touched, accommodated his behavior to +their closer relation and waited for Dick to disclose himself. He would +have been light-heartedly glad of the boy's company if he had found no +strangeness in it, no purpose he could not, from point to point, divine. +Dick sent for more clothes, and a case came by post. He wrote in his +chamber, for an hour or two every morning, and after that, Raven became +conscious that the boy was keeping a watchful eye on him. If Raven went +up to the hut, Dick was sure to appear there, in ten minutes at the +most. Once, after a heavy snow, Raven had the wood road broken out, and +Dick looked on in a darkling conjecture. And when Raven, now even to +Jerry's wonder, proceeded to break from the hut to the back road, Dick +found it not only impossible to restrain himself but wise to speak. They +were standing by the hearth in the hut, after Raven had swept it and +laid a careful fire. He had worked with all possible haste, for he never +was there now without wondering whether she might come. He had been +resting in the certainty of Tenney's crippled state, but the wounded +foot, he knew, was bettering every day, and with it Tira's security +lessened. Jerry's dismissal from the chores had troubled him so much +that he had gone up, immediately after, to reason with Tenney. But +Tenney was entering the barn door at the moment of his turning into the +yard, and Tira, following, stopped an instant and made Raven a little +gesture that seemed to him one of hasty dismissal, and he went back home +again.</p> + +<p>"Jack," said Dick, this morning in the hut—it was as if he had to +speak—"what are you getting this place ready for, and breaking out the +back road? You don't need to come up here, in weather like this. If you +do, you've got your snowshoes. What the deuce are you breaking out for?"</p> + +<p>Raven stood a moment looking down at Tira's fire. It seemed a sacred +pile, consecrated to holy use. What would Dick say if he told him the +paths had been broken for a woman's flying feet, the fire was laid to +warm her when she came here hunted by man's cruelty? Dick was said to +have written some very strong verse, but how if he found himself up +against life itself?</p> + +<p>"It's a jolly old place," Raven said, rousing himself out of his musing. +"As for breaking out, that's what oxen are for."</p> + +<p>Dick was looking at him in a manifest concern. It was true affection. +The boy might find it difficult to hail him across the interval of years +between them, but he did love old Jack, though with the precise measure +of patronage due the old.</p> + +<p>"You know," said Dick, "it worries me like the deuce to see you coming +up here like——"</p> + +<p>He paused as if the matter were too complex to be gone into lightly.</p> + +<p>"Like what?" Raven asked him.</p> + +<p>"Well, we've been over that. You know who built this. You know what he +did in it. He brought an old rip up here to live with him, and—oh, +confound it, Jack! don't pretend you don't even remember old Crow."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven gravely, "I remember Old Crow."</p> + +<p>"Well, anyhow," said Dick, "he was a family disgrace, and the less said +about him the better."</p> + +<p>"I showed you, the night you came," said Raven, "the story of Old Crow's +life. You didn't quite catch on. Want another try at it?"</p> + +<p>Dick had to search his memory. The only thing he had kept in mind about +that night was his anger against Nan. There was a book, he recalled +vaguely: some sort of stuff in a crabbed hand.</p> + +<p>"Old Crow?" he said. "Old Crow never wrote anything."</p> + +<p>"You think," said Raven, "he brought his bum up here and they sat and +guzzled. Well, you're wrong, my son. Come, let's go down, and though I +don't know whether it'll mean anything to you, you shall have another +hack at Old Crow."</p> + +<p>He was not easy until he had turned the key on the safety of the hut and +started down the hill. When they had rounded the curve made by the three +jutting firs, he stopped.</p> + +<p>"Go on," he said. "I'll overtake you."</p> + +<p>He ran back and slipped the key under the stone. It was a part of her +security to keep the secret from Dick also.</p> + +<p>No more was said of Old Crow that day, but, in the early evening, when +they were before the fire, Raven brought down the book, always in the +drawer of the little table by his bed. It was, in an undefined way, +kindliness and company, always reminding him that, whatever his +undesirable status now, he had been "the boy," and this was his own +personal message from Old Crow.</p> + +<p>"There you are," he said. He laid it on the table. "Don't read it unless +you'd really rather. It's meant a good deal to me. Maybe it won't to +you. I don't know much about the processes of your mind. You may feel at +home in this particular world. I never do. Old Crow didn't either. But +you'll see."</p> + +<p>Dick began to read and, since Nan was not by to be loved and hated, with +an intent mind. Once or twice he turned back, Raven saw, to ponder some +passage again. It was slow reading. He had not the passionate haste of +one who has thirsted for some such community of assurance, and flies +over the ground, plucking a leaf here and there, meaning to return. When +he had finished he closed the book, laid it on the table, and pushed it +aside as if he had definitely done with it.</p> + +<p>"Jackie," said he, "I'm mighty glad you showed me this."</p> + +<p>"Good!" said Raven. "Got inside it, have you?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said Dick, with assurance. "That's easy enough. It isn't +new, you know. And it isn't so much my getting inside that as getting +inside Old Crow."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Raven mildly, "so you got inside Old Crow. Now what did you +find there?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Dick, "whether you'd better be told. From a +psychopathic point of view, that is. But I rather guess you ought."</p> + +<p>"Dick," said Raven, "in the name of all the gods you worship, what +shouldn't I be told? And exactly how do you see us two living along +here, mild as milk? What's our relation? Sometimes, when I find you +plodding after me, I feel as if you were my trainer. Sometimes I have a +suspicion I really am off my nut and you're my keeper. Out with it, boy? +How do you see it? Come!"</p> + +<p>Dick, from a patent embarrassment, was staring down at the hearth, and +now he looked quickly up in a frankness truly engaging.</p> + +<p>"Jack," he said, "you needn't think you're going to be left here alone, +to work things out by yourself. There's no danger of mother. I told her +to keep off. She only irritates you. But she hasn't gone back home. +She's right there in Boston, waiting to come."</p> + +<p>Raven got up and walked back and forth through the room. Then he +returned to his chair.</p> + +<p>"Dick," he said conversationally, "if you were as young in years as you +are in your mind, I'd mellow you."</p> + +<p>Dick generously ignored this. He had the impeccable good nature of the +sane set in authority over the sick.</p> + +<p>"What I think, is," he said, with a soothing intonation Raven +despairingly recognized as the note of strength pitting itself against +weakness, "we can work it out together, you and I. We can do it better +than anybody else. I suppose if I went back you'd send for Nan. But that +won't do, Jack. You'll see it for yourself, when you're all right again. +Now what I mean about Old Crow is, that his complexes are like yours—or +rather yours are like his. Don't you see what an influence he's had on +you? More than Miss Anne even."</p> + +<p>"Hold up," said Raven. "I'm being mighty patient with you, but certain +things, you know, you don't say."</p> + +<p>"You used to go up there and see him," said Dick, willingly +relinquishing Miss Anne. There were times when, as he remembered from +boyhood, old Jack was dangerous. "Some of the things about him shocked +you. Some appealed to you. Pity, too: you must have pitied him +tremendously. You probably knew about his craze over this girl he +mentions here. You may have heard things about her, just as he did. +Jack, I can see—the whole thing has come to me in the last ten +minutes—Old Crow has been the big influence in your life. Everything +else has come from that. And then the war knocked you out and you got +<i>cafard</i> and the whole blasted business blew up and came to the surface +and—there you are."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "here we are."</p> + +<p>He leaned back in his chair and laughed until he could have cried. Never +had he found anything funnier than the boy's honest face and his honest +voice pouring forth undigested scraps from haphazard gleanings.</p> + +<p>"Dick," he said, "you're a dear fellow. But you're an awful ass. The +trouble is with you, old man, you've no imagination. It was left out. +You're too much like your mother and it'll be the death of you as it is +of her if you don't stop being intelligent. That sort of popular science +stuff, you know. Be a little sloppy, boy. Come off your high horse."</p> + +<p>Dick was still unassailably good-natured. Raven was his job, and he +could hold himself down with a steady hand.</p> + +<p>"Now," said Raven, "for heaven's sake scrap your complexes, even if you +scrap Old Crow with 'em, and let's see if we can't be moderately +peaceable. That is, if we've got to be marooned here together."</p> + +<p>And by dint of giving his mind to it, he was himself peaceable and even +amusing, but as the dark came on he found he had much ado to keep up the +game; he was too sensitively awake to Tira. With no new reason for it, +he was plainly worried, and, leaving Dick reading by the fire, went up +to his own room. He sat down by a front window, facing the dark wall of +the hill, but when, after another hour, he heard Dick come up and shut +himself in, he slipped down the stairs, took his cap and went off to the +hut. The sky was dark, but clear, and the stars burned in galaxies of +wonder. But the beauty of the night only excited and oppressed him until +he could assure himself she was not out in it on one of her dreadful +flights. If he found her in the hut, he could go home to bed. He reached +the door, stopped, and put his hand under the stone. The key was there, +and he laughed out in his thankfulness. The laugh was at his fears, and +he wondered whether he would rather think of her there in her prison or +here, still under sentence, due at her prison again. Then he heard a +step: a man's crashing on regardless of underbrush. Was it Tenney? +Should he hear that voice as he had before in its wild "Hullo"?</p> + +<p>"Where are you?" came the voice. "Where are you, old man?"</p> + +<p>Dick had followed him and was, in his affectionate solicitude, warning +him against surprise. Raven ran down to meet him, and by the turn of the +fir trees they faced each other.</p> + +<p>"Dick," said Raven, "what are you up here for?"</p> + +<p>"Can't help it, old man," said Dick. The eagerness of his voice made it +very moving. "Really, you know, I can't have you trotting round, this +time of night, all by your lonesome. If you want to hang round here, you +let me come, too. We'll light the fire and smoke a pipe and finish the +night, if you say so. Come, old man. Come on."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven quietly, "we won't light fires and smoke pipes. We'll +go down now, to bed. Dick, you're a fool. I've had to tell you so more +than once. But you're a dear fool, and sometime I may be able to +remember that and nothing else. Just now I can't seem to want to do +anything but pitch you, neck and crop, into the snow."</p> + +<p>They went down together, Dick still doggedly conscious of doing the only +thing possible, and when they were near the foot of the hill, Raven +yelled at him, the old Moosewood whoop, and sprang. It was the signal +between them when one or the other had a mind to "wrastle," and they +stood there in the road and assailed each other scientifically and with +vigor, to the great benefit of each. It was a beneficent outburst, and +Charlotte, roused by the cry, ran to a chamber window and stood there in +her nightgown, watching.</p> + +<p>"How they do carry on!" she commented to Jerry, when they had separated +and come in, chaffing volubly. "For all the world like two toms."</p> + +<p>Things were easier between them, now they had mauled each other, and +they ran upstairs together, "best friends" as they used to be when Dick +learned the game. He was wonderfully encouraged. This was the Uncle Jack +he used to tag about the place. He went to bed with a hopeful +presentiment that, if things kept on like this, he might take Raven back +to town presently, reasonable enough to place himself voluntarily in the +right hands.</p> + +<p>To Tira, the week dragged on with a malicious implication of never +meaning to end until it ended her. Strange things could be done in a +week, it reminded her, conclusive, sinister things. The old fears were +on in full force, and though it had not looked as if they could be much +augmented, now they piled up mountain high. And she presently found out +they were not the old fears at all. There was a fresh menace, +ingeniously new. She had studied the weather of Tenney's mind and knew +the signs of it. She could even anticipate them. But this new menace she +could never have foreseen. It was simply his crutch. An evil magic +seemed to have fallen upon it, and it was no longer a crutch but a +weapon. Tenney would not abandon it. His foot was improving fast, and +the doctor had suggested his dropping the crutch for a cane; but he kept +on with it, kept on obstinately without a spoken pretext. To Tira, there +was something sinister in that. She saw him not relying on it to any +extent, but sedulously keeping it by him. Sometimes he gesticulated with +it. He had, with great difficulty, brought in the cradle again, as if to +emphasize his callousness to the gash in it, and once he tapped it with +the crutch, while the baby lay there asleep, and set it rocking. Tira, +cooking at the table, felt her heart stand still. An actual weapon she +could flee from, but was this a weapon? The uncertainty was in itself +terrifying.</p> + +<p>It was the day he set the cradle rocking that she awoke in the night, +her fear full upon her. He was at her side, sleeping heavily. The baby +was on her other arm. Yet it seemed to her that the menace from Tenney +had pierced her to reach the child and, on its passage, stabbed through +her racing heart. Then her temptation came upon her, so simple a thing +she seemed stupid never to have thought of it before. She rose to a +sitting posture, put her feet out of bed, took the child, and carried +him with her into the sitting-room. She laid him on the couch and +covered him, and then stole back into the bedroom. The crutch was there, +in its habitual place at night, leaning against the foot of the bed. She +could put her hand on it in the dark. Tenney, too, she had begun to +reflect, could put his hand on it. What deeds might he not do with it in +those hours when the sanities of life also sleep? She took it gently and +went out again through the sitting-room and kitchen into the shed. Her +purpose had been to hide it behind the wood. But if he came on it there, +it would not be a crutch he found. It would be a weapon. She put her +hand on an upright beam, as she stood painfully thinking it out, and +touched the handle of a saw, hanging there on a nail; immediately she +knew. She went back into the kitchen, lighted the lantern and carried it +into the shed. There stood the crutch leaning against the beam below the +saw, a weapon beyond doubt. She set down her lantern, laid the crutch on +the block Tenney used to split kindlings, set her foot upon it and +methodically sawed it into stove wood lengths. When it was done she +gathered up the pieces, carried them into the sitting-room, to the stove +where Tenney always, in winter weather, left a log to smoulder, dropped +them in and opened the draught. Then she went back to the shed, swept up +her scattering of sawdust, hung the saw in its place, gave a glance +about her to see that everything was in its usual order, and returned +into the kitchen. She put out the lantern, hung it on its nail, went +into the sitting-room and partially shut the draft on the noisy blaze. +She did not dare quite shut it, lest a bit of the weapon should be left +to cry out from the ashes and tell. When she was back in bed again, the +child on her arm, Tenney, disturbed by her coming, woke and turned. He +lifted his head from the pillow, to listen, and she wondered if he could +hear the beating of her heart.</p> + +<p>"You there?" he asked. "What's that stove started out roarin' for? The +chimbly ain't afire?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira. "Mebbe somethin's ketched." She got out of bed, ran +into the sitting-room, noiselessly shut the crack of draught, and came +back. "Them knots are kinder gummy," she said calmly, and was heartened +by the evenness of her voice. "I guess 'twon't roar long."</p> + +<p>They listened together until the sound diminished, and Tira knew when he +relaxed and dropped off again. It did not seem to her that she dropped +off at all, she was so relieved to think of her enemy smouldering and +done for.</p> + +<p>This was the night Raven had had his premonition of her and gone up to +the hut to find her, and the next night he was aware of her again, as if +she had put a hand out through the darkness and given him an imploring +touch. He and Dick had had an almost jovial day. Their wrestling bout +had proved sound medicine. It had, Raven thought, cleared the air of the +fool things they had been thinking about each other. This evening they +had talked, straight talk, as between men, chiefly of Dick's future and +his fitness for literature. There was no hint of Nan, though each +believed she was the pivot on which Dick's fortunes turned. About ten +they went up to bed, and again Raven found himself too uneasy to sleep, +and again he sat down by the window in the dark. Incredibly, yet as he +found he knew it would happen, he saw a figure running up the path. It +came almost to the front door, halted a moment, as if in doubt, stooped +and threw up a clutch of snow against a window. The snow was full of icy +pellets; they rattled against the pane. But it was not his window, which +was dark; the hand had cast its signaling pellets to the room where a +light was burning and where the outline of a man's figure had just been +visible. And the man was Dick. But Raven knew. He opened his door and +shut it as softly, stole down the stairs, opened the outer door, and +drew her in. Then, in the instant of snapping on the light, he saw Tira +recoil; for there, at the foot of the stairs, was Dick. She would have +slipped out again, but Raven's hand was on her. He still held hers, as +he had taken it, and now he turned her to the library door. It was all +done quickly, and meantime he said to Dick, "Go back to bed," and Dick +perhaps not responding exactly, commented under his breath, "Good God!" +Raven followed Tira into the library, turned the key in the lock, +switched on the light in his reading lamp, and drew a chair to the +smouldering fire.</p> + +<p>"Sit down," he said. "You must get warm."</p> + +<p>He threw on cones and roused a leaping blaze. Then he made himself look +at her. He forgot Dick and Dick's shocked bewilderment. He was calm as +men are calm in an accomplished certainty. She had come. She did not +seem cold or in any sense excited, though she put her hands to the blaze +and bent toward it absently, as if in courtesy because he had given it +to her. As she sat, drawing long breaths that meant the ebbing of +emotion, he let his eyes feed on her face. She was paler than he had +seen her. There were shadows under her eyes, and the lashes on her cheek +looked incredibly long: a curved inky splash. Her hood had fallen back, +but she kept the blue cloak about her to her chin, as if it made a +seclusion, a protection even against him. But it was only an instant +before she withdrew her hands from the blaze and turned to him, with a +little smile. She began to speak at once, as if she had scant time, +either for indulging her own weakness or troubling him.</p> + +<p>"You'll think it's queer," she said. "I've come here routin' you out o' +bed when you've give me that nice place up there to run away to."</p> + +<p>Raven found himself ready to break out into asseverations that it was +the only natural thing for her to do. Where should she go, if not to +him?</p> + +<p>"No," he said, the more gravely because he was counseling himself while +he answered her. "You did right. But," he added, "where's——?"</p> + +<p>She understood. Where was the baby who always made the reason for her +flight?</p> + +<p>"He's up there," she answered, with a motion of her hand toward the +road.</p> + +<p>"In the hut?" he exclaimed. "You left him there?"</p> + +<p>It seemed impossible.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said quietly, "all soul alone. I run out with him, same as I +always have. I run up there. I found the road all broke out. I wa'n't +surprised. I knew you'd do it. That is, I'd ha' known it if I'd thought +anything about it. An' I found the key an' started the fire. An' then I +knew I'd got to see you this night, an' I put him on the lounge an' set +chairs so's he wouldn't fall out, an' packed him round with pillers, an' +locked him in an' left him."</p> + +<p>She paused and Raven nodded at her as if he wanted to find it as simple +as it seemed to her.</p> + +<p>"You see, I couldn't bring him down here," she said. "He might cry. An' +there's Charlotte. An' Jerry. An' the young man. I'm sorry the young man +see me. That's too bad."</p> + +<p>"It's all right," said Raven briefly, though he was aware it was, from +Dick's present point of view, all wrong. "I'll attend to that."</p> + +<p>"He's safe enough," said Tira, her eyes darkening as she recurred to the +baby. "If he cries, 'twon't do no hurt up there. Well!" She seemed to +remind herself that there was much to say. "I must be gittin' along with +my story." She looked at him in a most moving wistfulness, and added: "I +got scared."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII</h2> + + +<p>Raven gave his answering nod. That seemed to be about all he could +respond with, in his danger of saying the rash thing.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "scared. Same way?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said. "Worse. I guess I never've been so scared. An' I've got +myself to thank. You see, last night——"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. "I got wind of it last night."</p> + +<p>This, though it puzzled her, she could not stay to follow out, with the +baby up in the hut defended only by pillows and Tenney perhaps turning +to ask: "You there?"</p> + +<p>"You see," she said, "it's his crutch."</p> + +<p>"You mean," supplied Raven, brute anger rising up in him against brute +man, "he's struck you with it?"</p> + +<p>"No, no," she hastened to assure him. "He ain't even threatened me. Only +somehow it was like his havin' somethin' always by him, somethin' he +could strike with, an'—I dunno what come over me—I burnt it up."</p> + +<p>At once Raven faced the picture of it, the mad impulse, the resulting +danger. But he would not add his apprehensiveness to hers.</p> + +<p>"I dunno," she said, "as you'll hardly see what I mean: but it begun to +look kinder queer to me, that crutch did. All I could think of was how +much better 'twould be for everybody concerned if 'twas burnt up."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. "I see. We all feel so sometimes, when we're tired +out." The moderation of these words but ill expressed his tumultuous +mind. That was it, his passionate understanding told him. The natural +world throws its distorted shadows, and our eyes have to be at their +strongest not to recoil in panic, while we turn back to strike. "And," +he said, because she seemed to be mired here in the bog of her own +wonderment, "in the morning of course he found it out."</p> + +<p>The strangest look came into her face: she was horrified, and more than +that, indubitably more, she was perplexed.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "he found it out. 'Course he found it out first thing, +'fore he dressed him even. I got up early an' made the fires. I've been +makin' 'em sence he's laid up. So I don't know no more'n the dead how he +looked when it first come over him the crutch wa'n't there. But he come +out int' the kitchen—I'd been t' the barn then an' give the cows some +fodder—an' he carried a cane, his gran'ther's it was, same's the +crutch. It's got a crook handle, an' I've kep' it in the chimney corner +to pull down boxes an' things from the upper cupboard. An' he went out +to the barn an' come in an' eat his breakfast, an' eat his dinner an' +his supper, when they come round, an' we done the barn work together, +an' he ain't mentioned the crutch from first to last."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Raven, in a futile reassurance, "perhaps he thinks he's +left it somewhere, and if he doesn't particularly need it—Jerry told me +only this morning the doctor said he might as well be getting used to a +cane."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira conclusively, "he don't think he's left it anywheres. +He's keepin' still, that's all."</p> + +<p>Immediately Raven saw the menacing significance of Tenney's keeping +still. His mind ran with a quick foot over the imprisonment of the two +there together. Was there a moment, he wondered, when the suffering +brute was not threatening to her, when her heart could rest itself for +the next hurried flight? He ventured his question.</p> + +<p>"Has he been"—he hesitated for a word and found what sounded to him a +mawkish one—"good to you at all, these last weeks?"</p> + +<p>Tira reflected a moment and then, for the first time since she came in +from the cold, the blood rushed to her haggard cheeks. She remembered a +moment, the day before the burning of the crutch, when he had found her +doing her hair before the bedroom glass and had caught her to him +wildly. She had put him away from her, though gently, because his +violence, whether it took the form of starved passion or raging hate, +always seemed to her the unbecoming riot of a forward child, and he had +left her in a shamefaced anger, a grumbling attempt to recover his lost +dignity. Tira hid even from herself the miserable secrets of marital +savagery. No sacrifice was too great to hide from Tenney her knowledge +of his abasement. Most of all must she hide it from another man, and +that man Raven. Her answer was not ready, but she had it for him, and he +understood, in his unfailing knowledge of her, that it was the first +crooked one she had ever given him, and for the first time he felt anger +toward her. She was defending her enemy, and against him.</p> + +<p>"He does the best he can," she said. "He takes things terrible hard. I +dunno's I ever see anybody that took 'em so hard."</p> + +<p>Then, as he did not speak, she looked at him and meeting the cold +unresponsiveness in his face her composure broke and she stretched out +her hands to him in a wildness of entreaty.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't you look like that," she cried. "If you turn from me 'twill +be my death."</p> + +<p>He was not cold now. He bent to her and took her hands in his.</p> + +<p>"Tira," he said, "come away with me. You can't bear this any longer. +Take the child and come. You'd be safe. You'd be happy, if you weren't +afraid. Don't go back there for another minute. Stay here over night, +and to-morrow I'll take you away."</p> + +<p>He was looking at her, his eyes holding hers as his hands held her +hands. And, whatever he had meant, the strangest, swiftest retribution +of his life came to him through the change in her face. How could flesh +and muscle bring about such an alteration in human line and texture, the +Mother of Sorrows transformed to a Medusa head? Her lips parted, +trembling over words they could not bring themselves to say. Her eyes +widened into darkness. Her brows drew together in a pitiful questioning. +And her voice, when she did speak, was a vibrating protest against what +her eyes knew and her mind.</p> + +<p>"You don't mean," she said, "<i>that</i>?"</p> + +<p>Raven dropped her hands as if they had struck him. The question was a +rushing commentary on his life and hers. Was he, she meant, only another +actor in this drama of man's hunger and savagery? Was he a trader in the +desire of beauty, that tragic dower nature had thrown over her like a +veil, so that whoever saw it with a covetous eye, longed to possess and +rend it? Probably Tira never did what would be called thinking. But her +heart had a vital life of its own, her instinct was the genius of +intuition. He had been kind to her, compassionate. She had built up a +temple out of her trust in him, and now he had smoked the altar with the +incense that was rank in her nostrils. He had brought, not flowers and +fruits, but the sacrifice of blood. And he, on his part, what did he +think? Only that he must save her.</p> + +<p>"No, Tira," he said, "I don't mean that. I mean—what you want me to +mean. You can't understand what it is to a man to know you're afraid, to +know you're in danger and he can't help you. I didn't ask you as I +ought. I asked you to come away with me. I ask you again. Come away with +me and I'll take you to the best place I know. I'll take you to Nan."</p> + +<p>He had not guessed he was going to say this. Only, as he spoke, he knew +in his inner mind the best place was Nan. Suddenly she seemed to be in +the room with them. What was it but her cool fragrant presence? And she +understood. Tira might not. She might feel these turbid waves of his +response to he knew not what: the beauty and mystery of the world, the +urge of tyrant life, all bound up in the presence of this one woman. She +was woman, hunted and oppressed. He was man, created, according to the +mandate of his will, to save or to undo her. But the world and the +demands of it, clean or unclean, could not be taken at a gulp. He must +get hold of himself and put his hand on Tira's will. For she could only +be saved against her own desire. Whatever he had seemed to ask her, or +whatever his naked mind and rebellious lips had really asked, he could +not beg her to forgive him. He must not own to a fault in their +relation, lest he seem, as he had at that moment, an enemy the more.</p> + +<p>"That's exactly what you must do," he said. "You must let me take you to +Nan."</p> + +<p>A soft revulsion seemed to melt her to an acquiescence infinitely +grateful to her.</p> + +<p>"That," she said, "was what I had in mind. If she'd take him—the +baby—an' put him somewhere. She said there were places. She said so +herself. I dunno's you knew it, but she talked to me about him. She said +there was ways folks know now about doin' things for 'em when they ain't +right, an' makin' the most you can of 'em. She told me if I said the +word, she'd come here an' carry him back with her."</p> + +<p>"But," said Raven, "what about you? I'm ready to stand by the child, +just as Nan is. But I'm doing it for your sake. What about you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Tira, with a movement of her eloquent hands, as if she tossed +away something that hindered her, "tain't no matter about me. I've got +to stay here. Mr. Raven"—her voice appealed to him sweetly. He +remembered she had not so used his name before—"I told you that. I +can't leave him."</p> + +<p>The last word she accented slightly, and Raven could not tell whether +the stress on it was the tenderness of affection, or something as +moving, yet austere. And now he had to know.</p> + +<p>"You want to stay with him"——he began, and Tira interrupted him +softly, looking at him meantime, as if she besought him to understand:</p> + +<p>"I promised to."</p> + +<p>Raven sat there and looked into the fire, thinking desperately. At that +moment, he wanted nothing in the world so much as to snatch her away +from Tenney and set her feet in a safe place. But did he want it solely +for her or partly for himself? What did it matter? Casuistry was far +outside the tumult of desire. He would kick over anything, law or +gospel, to keep her from going back there this night. Yet he spoke +quietly:</p> + +<p>"We'll go up and get the baby, and I'll call Charlotte, and you'll stay +here to-night. To-morrow we'll go."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira, gently but immovably, "I couldn't have Charlotte an' +Jerry brought into it. Not anyways in the world."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" asked Raven.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't," she said. "They're neighbors. They're terrible nice folks, +but folks have to talk—they can't help it—an', 'fore you knew it, it'd +be all over the neighborhood. An' he's a professin' Christian. 'Twould +be terrible for him."</p> + +<p>Sometimes he only knew from the tone of her voice, in this general +vagueness of expecting him to understand her, whether she meant Tenney +or the child.</p> + +<p>"What I thought was," she went on timidly, "if she'd come an' git +him"—and here "him" evidently meant the child—"'twould be reasonable +she was takin' him back where he could be brought up right. She'd just +as soon do it," she assured him earnestly, as if he had no part in Nan. +"Some folks are like that. They're so good."</p> + +<p>He was insatiate in his desire to understand her.</p> + +<p>"And you mean," he said, with a directness he was willing to tincture +with a cruelty sharp enough to serve, "to send the child off somewhere +where he will be safe, and then live here with this brute, have more +children by him——"</p> + +<p>"No! no!" she cried sharply. "Not that! don't you say that to me. I +can't bear it. Not from you! My God help me! not from you."</p> + +<p>He understood her. She loved him. He was set apart by her overwhelming +belief in him, but she was in all ways, the ways of the flesh as well as +the spirit, consecrated to him. Her body might become the prey of man's +natural cruelty, and yet, while she wept her tears of blood in this +unreasoning slavery, she held one worship. There he would be alone. The +insight of the awakened mind told him another thing: that, in spite of +her despairing loyalty, he could conquer her scruples. He could, by the +sheer weight of a loving will, force her to follow him. A warm entreaty, +one word of his own need, and she would answer. And while he thought, +the jungle feeling came upon him, hot, hateful to his conscious mind, +the feeling of the complexity of it all, strange beasts of emotion out +for prey, the reason drugged with nature's sophistries. The jungle! That +was what Nan had called it, this welter of human misery. Who else had +been talking to him about it? Why, Old Crow! He had not called it the +jungle, but he had been lost in its tortuous ways. This prescience to +Old Crow brought a queer feeling, as if a cool air blew on him. The +jungle feeling passed. Almost he had the vision of an eternal city, +built up by the broken but never wholly failing strength of man, and Old +Crow there beckoning him into it and telling him he'd kept a place for +him. And the cool breeze which was Old Crow told him that although Tira +must be rescued, if it could be brought about, it must not be through +any of the jungle ways. She must not be drugged by jungle odors and +carried off unwillingly, even to the Holy City itself, by that road. He +and Tira—yes, he and Tira and Nan—would march along together with +their eyes open. He hastened to speak, to commit himself to what he must +deliberately wish:</p> + +<p>"Then we'll telephone Nan."</p> + +<p>She looked at him, all gratitude. Her friend had gone away into strange +dark corners of life where only her instinct followed him, and here he +was back again.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "don't you telephone. Somebody'd listen in. You write. I +guess mebbe nothin'll happen right off, even if I did burn the crutch. I +guess I got kinder beside myself to-night. I ain't likely to be so +ag'in."</p> + +<p>"I'll walk up to the hut with you," said Raven, rising as she did, "and +see you safe inside."</p> + +<p>"No," said she, "I couldn't let you no ways. It's bad enough as 'tis."</p> + +<p>By this she meant the paragraph in the paper which had laid an insulting +finger on him; but he had not seen it and did not understand. Only it +was plain to him that she would not let him go. She drew her hood up, +and made it secure under her chin. Then she looked at him and smiled a +little. She had to smile, her woman's instinct told her, to reassure +him. She opened the door, and though he followed her quickly, had +slipped through the outer door as softly and was gone. He stood there on +the sill watching her hurrying to the road. When she had turned to the +right, she began to run, and he went down the path after her to look up +the road, lest she had seen something pursuing her. But the night was +still. There was no sound of footsteps on the snow, and the far-off +barking of a fox made the silence more complete. She was only hurrying, +because her mother heart had wakened suddenly to the loneliness of the +child up there among the pillows, torturing herself with wonders that +she could leave him. He went out into the road and continued on her +track, until he saw her turn into the woods. Then, waiting until she +should be far enough in advance not to catch the sound of his pursuit, +he suddenly heard footsteps on the road and turned. A man was coming +rapidly. It was Dick.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII</h2> + + +<p>In his relief—for, in spite of the man's lameness, he had made sure it +was Tenney—Raven laughed out. At once he sobered, for why was Dick here +but to spy on him?</p> + +<p>"Well," he inquired brusquely, "what is it?"</p> + +<p>They turned together, and Dick did not speak. When they had gone in and +Raven closed the hall door and glanced at him, he was suddenly aware +that the boy had not spoken because he could not trust himself. His +brows were knit, his face dark with reproachful anger.</p> + +<p>"Think the old man shouldn't have gone out in the cold without his hat +and muffler?" asked Raven satirically.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Dick, in a quick outburst. "I think just that. It's a risk +you've no business to take. In your condition, too. Oh, yes, I know you +do look fit enough, but you can't depend on that. Besides—Jack, who's +that woman? What's she going up into the woods for? She's not going to +the hut? Is that why——?"</p> + +<p>Raven stood looking at him, studying not so much his face as the +situation. He turned to the library door.</p> + +<p>"Come in, Dick," he said. "We'll talk it out. We can't either of us +sleep."</p> + +<p>Dick followed him in and they took their accustomed chairs. Raven +reached for his pipe, but he did not fill it: only sat holding it, +passing his thumb back and forth over the bowl. He was determining to be +temperate, to be fair. Dick could not forget he was old, but he must +force himself not to gibe at Dick for being young.</p> + +<p>"Do you feel able," he said, "to hear a queer story and keep mum over +it? Or do you feel that a chap like me, who ought to be in the +Psychopathic, hasn't any right to a square deal? When you see me going +off my nut, as you expect, shall you feel obliged to give in your +evidence, same as families do to the doctor and the clergyman if a man's +all in?"</p> + +<p>Dick was straight.</p> + +<p>"I'll do my best," he said. "But a woman—like that—and you meeting her +as you did! It's not like you, Jack. You never'd have done such a thing +in all your born days if you weren't so rattled."</p> + +<p>There were arguments at the back of his mind he could not, in decency, +use. He remembered Raven's look when he drew her in, and the tragic one +that mirrored it: passionate entreaty on the woman's face, on the man's +passionate welcome. As usual, it was the real witnesses of life standing +dumb in the background that alone had the power to convict. But they +could not be brought into court. Custom forbade it, the code between man +and man. Yet there they were, all the same.</p> + +<p>"Well!" said Raven. He had responded with only a little whimsical lift +of the eyebrows to this last. "If you won't trust me, I must you. That's +all there is about it. The woman is our neighbor. Israel Tenney's wife, +and she's in danger of her life from her husband, and she won't leave +him."</p> + +<p>Dick stared as at the last thing he had expected. He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Too thin," he said. "I've seen Tenney and I've heard him spoken of. +He's a psalm-singing Methody, or something of that sort. Why, I met him +one day, Jerry and I, and he stared at me as if he wanted to know me +again. And Jerry said afterward he was probably going to ask me if I'd +found the Lord; but he changed his mind or something. No, Jack, don't +you be taken in. That woman's pulling your leg."</p> + +<p>"Dick," said Raven, "I've been told you have a very vivid sense of drama +in your narrative verse. You couldn't, by any possibility, apply it to +real life?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know," said Dick, "New England's chock full of tragedy. But I +tell you I've seen Tenney. He's only a kind of a Praise-God Barebones. +Put him back a few hundred years, and you'd see him sailing for +Plymouth, for freedom to worship God. (Obstinate, too, like the rest of +'em. He wouldn't worship anybody else's God, only the one he'd set up +for himself.) If his wife didn't mind him, he might pray with her or +growl over the dinner table, but he wouldn't bash her head in. +Understand, Jack, I've seen Tenney."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven drily, "I've seen Tenney, too. And seen him in action. +Now, Dickie, you put away your man-of-the-world attitude toward battle, +murder, and sudden death, and you let me tell you a few things about +Tenney."</p> + +<p>He began with the day when he had found Tira in the woods. He touched on +the facts briefly, omitting to confess what the woman looked to his +dazzled eyes. It was a drawing austerely black and white. Could he tell +anyone—anyone but Nan—how she had seemed to him there, the old, old +picture of motherhood, divine yet human? It was too much to risk. If he +did lay his mind bare about that moment which was his alone, and Dick +met it with his unimaginative astuteness, he could not trust himself to +be patient with the boy. He said little more than that he had given her +the freedom of the hut, and that he meant always to have it ready for +her. Then he came to this last night of all, when she had run away from +Tenney, not because he had been violent, but because he had "kept +still." That did take hold on Dick's imagination, the imagination he +seemed able to divorce from the realities of life and kept for the +printed page.</p> + +<p>"By thunder!" he said. "Burned the crutch, did she? That's a story in +itself, a real story: Mary Wilkins, Robert Frost. That's great!"</p> + +<p>"Sounds pretty big to me," said Raven quietly. "But it's not for print. +See you don't feel tempted to use it. Now, here we are with Tira up +against it. She's got to make a quick decision. And she's made it."</p> + +<p>"Do you call her by her first name?" asked Dick, leaping the main issue +to frown over the one possibly significant of Raven's state of mind.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven steadily, "I rather think I call her by her first +name. I don't know whether I ever have 'to her head,' as Charlotte would +say, but I don't seem to feel like calling her by Tenney's name. Well, +Tira's decided. She's going to give her baby to Nan."</p> + +<p>Dick's eyes enlarged to such an extent, his mouth opened so vacuously, +that Raven laughed out. Evidently Dick wasn't regarding the matter from +Tira's standpoint, or even Raven's now, but his own.</p> + +<p>"Nan!" he echoed, when he could get his lips into action. "Where does +Nan come in?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Raven, with a most matter-of-fact coolness, "Nan came in long +ago. I told her about it, and it seems she went to see Tira off her own +bat, and offered to take the baby."</p> + +<p>"She sha'n't do it," proclaimed Dick. "I simply won't have it, that's +all."</p> + +<p>"I fancy," said Raven, "Nan'll tell you you've got nothing whatever to +do with it. And really, Dick, you never'll get Nan by bullying her. +Don't you know you won't?"</p> + +<p>Dick, having a perfectly good chance, turned the tables on him neatly.</p> + +<p>"That'll do," said he, remembering how Raven had shut him up when he +dragged in Anne Hamilton. "We won't discuss Nan."</p> + +<p>Now it was Raven's turn to gape, but on the heels of it, seeing the +neatness of the thrust, he smiled.</p> + +<p>"Right, boy," he said. "Good for you. We won't discuss Nan, and we won't +discuss Tira. But you'll hold your tongue about this business, and if +you find me opening the door of my house at midnight, you'll remember +it's my business, and keep your mouth shut. Now I'm going up the hill to +see she's safe, and if you follow me, in your general policy of keeping +on my trail, I don't quite know what will happen. But something will—to +one of us."</p> + +<p>He got up, went into the hall and found his cap and leather jacket. Dick +meantime stood in the library door regarding him from so troubled a mind +that Raven halted and put a hand on his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Cut it out, boy," he said, "all this guardian angel business. You let +me alone and I'll let you alone. We're both decent chaps, but when you +begin with your psychotherapy and that other word I don't know how to +pronounce——"</p> + +<p>Dick, having, at this period of his life only an inactive sense of +humor, mechanically supplied it: "Psychiatry."</p> + +<p>"What a beast of a word! Yes, that's it. Well, they're red rags to me, +all these gadgets out of the half-baked mess they've stirred up by +spying on our insides. I can't be half decent to you. But I want to be. +I want us to be decent to each other. It's damnable if we can't. Go to +bed, and I'll run up and see if poor Tira's safe."</p> + +<p>He did not wait for an answer, but went out at the front door, and Dick +heard him whistling down the path. The whistle seemed like an +intentional confirmation of his being in a cheerfully normal frame of +mind, not likely to be led too far afield by premonitions of New England +tragedy. Perhaps that was why he did whistle, for when he reached the +road he stopped and completed the first half of the ascent in silence. +Then, as the whistle might mean something reassuring to Tira, he began +again with a bright loudness, bold as the oriole's song. He reached the +hut, whistling up to the very door, and then his breath failed him on a +note, the place looked so forbiddingly black in the shadow, the woods +were so still. It did not seem possible that a woman's warm heart was +beating inside there, Tira's heart, home of loves unquenchable. He put +his hand down under the stone. The key was there, and rising, he felt +his mind heavy with reproaches of her. She had gone back to Tenney. The +night's work was undone. What was the use of drawing her a step along +the path of safety if she turned back the instant he trusted her alone? +He went down the hill again in a dull distaste for himself. It seemed to +him another man might have managed it better, swept her off her feet and +bound her in an allegiance where she would obey. When he reached his own +house, he was too discontented even to glance at Dick's window and +wonder whether the boy was watching for him. The place was silent, and +he put out the lights and went to bed.</p> + +<p>Next morning he had got hold of himself and, with that obstinate +patience which is living, went to the library after breakfast and called +up Nan. It was wonderful to hear her fresh voice. It broke in upon his +discouragements and made them fly, like birds feeding on evil food. +Would she listen carefully, he asked. Would she translate him, because +he couldn't speak in any detail. And when he had got thus far, he +remembered another medium, and began the story of last night in French. +Nan listened with hardly a commenting word, and when he had finished her +bald answer was ridiculously reassuring.</p> + +<p>"Sure!" said Nan. "I'll be there to-night. Send Jerry for me. Eight +o'clock."</p> + +<p>"God bless you!" said Raven. "You needn't bring any luggage. It'll +probably be wiser to go right back."</p> + +<p>Nan said "Sure!" again, no doubt, Raven thought, as indicating her view +of her errand as a homespun one there was no doubt of her carrying out +with the utmost simplicity. Then he went to tell Jerry he was to meet +the evening train, and on the way he told Dick:</p> + +<p>"Nan's coming to-night."</p> + +<p>"Nan!" said Dick. "Not——"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. "I telephoned her. Buck up, old man. Here's another +chance for you, don't you see? We're in a nasty hole, Tira and +incidentally Nan and I. Play the game, old son, and help us out."</p> + +<p>"What," inquired Dick, "do you expect me to do?"</p> + +<p>"Chiefly," said Raven, "keep out. It's my game and Nan's and Tira's. But +you play yours. Don't sulk. Show her what a noble Red Man you can be."</p> + +<p>Dick turned away, guiltily, Raven thought, as if he had plans of his +own. What the deuce did he mean to do? But their day passed amicably +enough, though they were not long together. Raven went up to the hut and +stayed most of the afternoon. It was not so much that he expected Tira +to come as that he felt the nearness of her there in the room she had +disarranged with barricading chairs and pillows and then put in order +again before she left. He could see her stepping softly about, with her +deft, ordered movements, making it comely for him to find. She had left +pictures of herself on the air, sad pictures, most of them, telling the +tale of her terror and foreboding, but others of them quite different. +There were moments he remembered when, in pauses of her talk with him, +she glanced at the child, and still others when she sat immobile, her +hands clasped on her knee, her gaze on the fire. Henceforth the hut +would be full of her presence, hers and Old Crow's. And, unlike as they +were, they seemed to harmonize. Both were pitiful and yet austere in +their sincerity; and for both life had been a coil of tangled meanings. +He stayed there until nearly dark, and his musings waxed arid and dull +with the growing chill of the room. For he would not light the fire. It +had to be left in readiness.</p> + +<p>When he went down he found Dick uneasily tramping the veranda.</p> + +<p>"Charlotte wants us to have a cup of tea," said Dick. "She said supper's +put off till they come."</p> + +<p>"They?" inquired Raven. "Who's they?"</p> + +<p>"It's no use, Jack," Dick broke forth. "I might as well tell you. I +s'pose if I didn't you'd kick up some kind of a row later. I telephoned +Mum."</p> + +<p>"You don't mean," said Raven, in a voice of what used to be called +"ominous calm," before we shook off the old catch-words and got +indirections of our own, "you don't mean you've sent for her!"</p> + +<p>"It's no use," said Dick again, though with a changed implication, "you +might as well take things as they are. Nan can't come up here slumming +without an older woman. It isn't the thing. It simply isn't done."</p> + +<p>Raven, through the window, saw Charlotte hovering in the library with +the tea tray. He watched her absently, as if his mind were entirely with +her. Yet really it was on the queerness of things as they are in the +uniform jacket of propriety and the same things when circumstance +thrusts the human creature out of his enveloping customs and sends him +into battle. He thought of Dick's philosophy of the printed word. He +thought of Nan's desperate life of daily emergency in France. Yet they +were all, he whimsically concluded, being squared to Aunt Anne's +rigidity of line. But why hers? Why not Old Crow's? Old Crow would have +had him rescue Tira, even through difficult ways. He opened the door.</p> + +<p>"Come on in," he said. "Charlotte's buttered the toast."</p> + +<p>Dick followed him, and they sat down to their abundant tea, Charlotte +pausing a moment to regard them with her all-enveloping lavishment of +kindliness. Were they satisfied? Could she bring something more?</p> + +<p>"The trouble with you, Dick," said Raven, after his third slice of +toast, buttered, he approvingly noted, to the last degree of drippiness, +"is poverty of invention. You repeat your climax. Now, this sending for +Milly: it's precisely what you did before. That's a mistake the actors +make: repeated farewells."</p> + +<p>Dick made no answer. He, too, ate toast prodigiously.</p> + +<p>"Now," said Raven, when they had finished, "do I understand you mean to +put your mother wise about what I told you last night? Yes or no?"</p> + +<p>"I shall do——" said Dick, and at his pause Raven interrupted him.</p> + +<p>"No, you won't," said he. "You won't do what you think best. Take it +from me, you won't. What I told you wasn't my secret. It's poor Tira's. +If you give her away to your mother—good God! think of it, Milly, with +her expensive modern theories and her psychiatry—got it right, that +time!—muddling up things for a woman like her! Where was I? Well, +simply, if you play a dirty trick like that on me, I'll pack you off, +you and your mother both. I don't like to remind you but, after all, old +man, the place is mine."</p> + +<p>The blood came into Dick's face. He felt misjudged in his affection and +abused.</p> + +<p>"You can't see," he said. "I don't believe it's because you can't. You +won't. It isn't Nan alone. It's you. You're not fit. You're no more fit +than you were when Mum was here before. And you can pack me off, but, by +thunder! I won't go."</p> + +<p>"Very well," said Raven, with a happy inspiration. "You needn't. I'll go +myself. And I'll take Nan with me." A picture of Nan and her own vision +of happy isles came up before him, and he concluded: "Yes, by George! +I'll take Nan. And we'll sail for the Malay Peninsula, or an +undiscovered island, and wear Mother Hubbards and live on breadfruit, +and you and your precious conventions can go to pot."</p> + +<p>So, having soothed himself by his own intemperance, he got up, found his +pipe and a foolish novel he made a point of reading once a year—it +would hardly do to tell what it was, lest the reader of this true story +fail to sympathize with his literary views and so with all his +views—and sat down to await his guests in a serviceable state of good +humor. He had brought Dick to what Charlotte would call "a realizing +sense." He could afford a bit of tolerance. Dick got up and flung out of +the room, finding Raven, he told himself, in one of his extravagant +moods. Nine times out of ten the moods meant nothing. On the other hand, +in this present erratic state of a changed Raven, they might mean +anything. For himself, he was impatient, with the headlong rush of young +love. Nan was coming. She was on the way. Would she be the same, distant +with her cool kindliness, her old lovely self to Raven only, or might +she be changed into the Nan who kissed him that one moment of his need? +He snatched his hat and tore out of the house, and Raven, glancing up +from his novel, saw him striding down the path and thought approvingly +he was a wise young dog to walk off some of his headiness before Nan +came. As for him, he would doze a little over his foolish book, as +became a man along in years. That was what Charlotte would say, "along +in years." Was it so? What a devil of an expression, like all the rest +of them that were so much worse than the thing itself: "elderly," +"middle-aged," what a grotesque vocabulary! And he surprised himself by +throwing his foolish book, with an accurate aim, at a space in the +shelves, where it lodged and hung miserably, and getting up and tearing +down the walk at a pace emulating Dick's, but in the opposite direction: +the result of these athletic measures being that when Amelia and Nan +drove up with Jerry, the station master's pung following with two small +trunks that seemed to wink at Raven, with an implication of their +competitive resolve to stay, two correctly clad gentlemen were waiting +on the veranda in a state of high decorum. As to the decorum, it didn't +last, so far as Raven was concerned. Messages of a mutual understanding +passed between his eyes and Nan's. He burst into sudden laughter, but +Nan, more sagely alive to the dangers of the occasion, kept her gravity.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Amelia, as Raven, still laughing, solicitously lifted her +out, "you seem to be in a very happy frame of mind. I'm glad you <i>can</i> +laugh."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV</h2> + + +<p>Thereafter they all behaved as if they had separated yesterday and +nothing was more natural than to find themselves together again. Amelia, +with bitterness in her heart, accepted the room she again longed to +repudiate, and Nan, with a lifted eyebrow at Raven, as if wondering +whether she'd really better be as daring as he indicated, followed +Charlotte up the stairs. At supper they talked decorously of the state +of the nation, which Raven frankly conceived of as going to the dogs, +and Amelia upheld, from an optimism which assumed Raven to be amenable +to only the most hopeful of atmospheres. After supper, when they +hesitated before the library door, Nan said quite openly, as one who has +decided that only the straight course will do:</p> + +<p>"Rookie, could I see you a minute? In the dining-room?" She took in +Amelia with her frank smile. "Please, Mrs. Powell! It's business."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," Amelia said, rather stiffly. "Come, Dick. We'll keep up the +fire."</p> + +<p>They had evidently, she and Dick, resolved, though independently of each +other, to behave their best, and Dick, in excess of social virtue, shut +the library door, so that no wisp of talk would float that way and +settle on them. Nan confronted Raven with gayest eyes.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever!" she said, recurring to the Charlottian form of comment. +"At the last minute, if you please, when I was taking the train. There +she was behind me. We talked all the way, 'stiddy stream' (Charlotte!) +and not a thing you could put your finger on. Did he send for her?"</p> + +<p>"I rather think so," said Raven, giving Dick every possible advantage. +Then, rallied by her smiling eyes, "Well, yes, of course he did. Don't +look at me like that. I have to turn myself inside out, you she-tyrant!"</p> + +<p>"Does Dick know?" she hastened to ask. "About Tira?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Know what I'm here for?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Given his word not to blab? Hope to die?" That was their childish form +of vow, hers and Dick's.</p> + +<p>"I hope so," said Raven doubtfully. "I represented it to him as being +necessary."</p> + +<p>"I'll represent it, too," said Nan. "Now, Rookie, I'm going over there, +first thing to-morrow morning. I'm going to see Tenney."</p> + +<p>"The deuce you are! I'm afraid that won't do."</p> + +<p>"Nothing else will," said Nan. "Tenney's got to give his consent. We +can't do any kidnaping business. That's no good."</p> + +<p>She said it with the peremptory implication of extinguishing middle-aged +scruples, and Raven also felt it to be "no good."</p> + +<p>"Very well," said he. "You know best. I'll go with you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, you won't. There are too many men-folks in it now. I'm going +alone. Now, come back and talk to the family. Oh, I hope and pray +Dick'll be good! Doesn't he look dear to-night, all red, as if he'd been +logging? Has he? Have you? You look just the same. Oh, I do love Dick! I +wish he'd let me, the way I want to."</p> + +<p>Meantime Charlotte had come in, and Nan went to her and put her hands on +her shoulders and rubbed cheeks, as she used to do with Raven.</p> + +<p>"Come on," she said to him. "Time!"</p> + +<p>So they went into the library and conversed, with every conventional +flourish, until Amelia set the pace of retirement by a ladylike yawn. +But she had a word to say before parting, reserved perhaps to the last +because she found herself doubtful of Raven's response. If she had to be +snubbed she could simply keep on her way out of the room.</p> + +<p>"John," said she, at the door, with the effect of a sudden thought, "how +about Anne's estate? Are they getting it settled?"</p> + +<p>Raven hesitated a perceptible instant. He somehow had an idea the estate +was an affair of his, not to say Nan's.</p> + +<p>"I suppose so," he answered, frowning. "Whitney's likely to do the right +thing."</p> + +<p>Amelia was never especially astute in the manner of danger signals.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she said, "you've made up your mind what to invest in. Or +are the things in pretty good shape? Can you leave them as they are?"</p> + +<p>Dick was standing by the hearth, wishing hard for a word with Nan. She +had smiled at him once or twice, so peaceably! The next step might be to +a truce and then everlasting bliss. Now, suddenly aware of his mother, +he ungratefully kicked the fire that was making him such pretty dreams, +went to her, took her by the arm and proceeded with her across the hall.</p> + +<p>"You talk too much," said Dick, when he had her inside her room. "Don't +you know better than to drag in Miss Anne? He's touchy as the devil."</p> + +<p>"Then he must get over it," said Amelia, in her best manner of the +intelligent mentor. "Of course, she was a great loss to him."</p> + +<p>"Don't you believe it," said Dick conclusively. "She had her paw on him. +What the deuce is it in him that makes all the women want to dry-nurse +him and build him up and make him over?"</p> + +<p>Then he wondered what Nan was saying to Raven at the moment, remembered +also Raven's injunction to play a square game with her and, though his +feet were twitching to carry him back to the library, sat doggedly down +at his mother's hearth and encouraged her to talk interminably. Amelia +was delighted. She didn't know Dick had so earnest an interest in the +Federation of Clubs and her popular course in economics. She was +probably never more sustainedly intelligent than in that half hour, +until Dick heard Nan going up to bed, sighed heavily, and lost interest +in the woman citizen.</p> + +<p>Nan and Raven, standing by the fire, in their unexpected minute of +solitude, looked at each other and smiled in recognizing that they were +alone and that when that happened things grew simple and straight. To +Raven there was also the sense of another presence. Anne had somehow +been invoked. Amelia, with her unfailing dexterity in putting her foot +in, had done it: but still there Anne was, with the unspoken question on +her silent lips. What was he going to do? He knew her wish. Presently he +would have her money. He caught the interrogation in Nan's eyes. What +was he going to do?</p> + +<p>"I don't know, Nan," he said. "I don't know."</p> + +<p>"Never mind," said Nan. "You'll know when the time comes."</p> + +<p>And he was aware that she was still in her mood of forcing him on to +make his own decisions. But, easily as he read her mind, there were many +things he did not see there. It was a turmoil of questions, and of these +the question of Aunt Anne was least. Did he love Tira? This headed the +list. Did he want to tear down his carefully built edifice of culture +and the habit of conventional life, and run away with Tira to elemental +simplicities and sweet deliriums? And if he did love Tira, if he did +want to tear down his house of life and live in the open, she would help +him. But all she said was:</p> + +<p>"Good night, Rookie. I'm sleepy, too."</p> + +<p>To leap a dull interval of breakfast banalities is to find Nan, on a +crisp day, blue above and white below, at the Tenneys' door. Tira, +frankly apprehensive, came to let her in. Tira had had a bad night. The +burning of the crutch fanned a fire of torment in her uneasy mind. She +had hardly slept, and though she heard Tenney's regular breathing at her +side, she began to have a suspicion it was not a natural breathing. She +was persuaded he meant now to keep track of her, by night as well as +day. It began to seem to her a colossal misfortune that the crutch was +not there leaning against the foot of the bed, and now its absence was +not so much her fault as a part of its own malice. Nan, noting the worn +pallor of her face and the dread in her eyes, gathered that Tenney was +at home. She put out her hand, and Tira, after an instant's hesitation, +gave hers. Nan wondered if she were in a terror wild enough to paralyze +her power of action. Still, she had given her hand, and when Nan stepped +up on the sill, with a cheerful implication of intending, against any +argument, to come in, she stood aside and followed her. But at the +instant of her stepping aside, Nan was aware that she threw both hands +up slightly. It was the merest movement, an unstudied gesture of +despair. Tenney was sitting by the kitchen stove, and Nan went to him +with outstretched hand.</p> + +<p>"I thought I should find you if I came early enough," she said. "How's +your foot?"</p> + +<p>She had a direct address country folk liked. She was never "stand-off," +"stuck-up." It was as easy talking with her as with John Raven.</p> + +<p>"Some better, I guess," said Tenney. He eyed her curiously. Had Raven +sent her, for some hidden reason, to spy out the land?</p> + +<p>"You get round, don't you?" pursued Nan.</p> + +<p>She took the chair Tira brought her and regarded him across the shining +stove. Tira withdrew to a distance, and stood immovable by the scullery +door, as if, Nan thought, she meant to keep open her line of retreat.</p> + +<p>"No," said Tenney grimly, "I don't git about much. Three times a day I +git from the house to the barn. I expect to do better, as time goes on. +I've got my eye on a cord wood stick, an' I'm plannin' how I can whittle +me out a crutch."</p> + +<p>Nan, glancing at Tira, caught the tremor that went over her and +understood this was, in a veiled way, a threat. She came, at a leap, to +the purpose of her call.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Tenney," she said, "I'm an awfully interfering person. I've come to +ask you and your wife to let me do something."</p> + +<p>Tenney was staring at her with lacklustre eyes. In these latter days, +the old mad spark in them had gone.</p> + +<p>"Your baby," said Nan, feeling her heart beat hard, "isn't right. I know +places where such poor little children are made—right—if they can be. +They're studied and looked after. I want you to let me take him away +with me and see if something can be done. His mother could go, too, if +she likes. You could go. Only, I'll be responsible. I'll arrange it +all."</p> + +<p>Tenney still stared at her, and she found the dull gaze disconcerting.</p> + +<p>"So," he said at length, not even glancing at Tira, "so she's put that +into your head."</p> + +<p>"So far as that goes," said Nan boldly, "I've put it into hers. I saw he +wasn't right. I told her I'd do everything in my power, in anybody's +power, to have him"—she hesitated here for a homely word he might take +in—"seen to. And now (you're his father) I've come to you."</p> + +<p>Tenney sat a long time, motionless, his eyes on the window at the end of +the room where a woodbine spray was tapping, and again Nan became +conscious of the increased tremor in Tira's frame. For now it seemed to +have run over her and strangely to keep time to the woodbine spray +outside. One would have said the woodbine, looking in, had, in a mad, +irritating way, made itself the reflex of these human emotions within +the room. Tenney spoke, drily yet without emphasis:</p> + +<p>"Then he put ye up to this?"</p> + +<p>"Who?" asked Nan.</p> + +<p>For some obscure reason he would not mention Raven's name. But he spoke +with a mildness of courtesy surprising to her and evidently the more +alarming to Tira, for she shook the more and the vine appallingly knew +and kept her company.</p> + +<p>"I'm obleeged to ye," said Tenney. "But I don't want nothin' done for me +nor mine. He's mine, ye see. He's in there asleep"—he pointed to the +open bedroom door—"an' asleep or awake, he's mine, same's any man's +property is his. An' if he ain't right, he ain't, an' I know why, an' +it's the will o' the Lord, an' the Lord's will is goin' to be fulfilled +now an' forever after, amen!"</p> + +<p>The tang of scripture phrasing led him further to the channel his mind +was always fumbling for.</p> + +<p>"Do you," he asked Nan, not with any great show of fervor, but as if +this were his appointed task, "do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ +yet? Be ye saved?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Tenney," said Nan, "I don't care a scrap whether I'm saved or not, +if I can make this world swing a little easier on its hinges." That +seemed to her a figure not markedly vivid, and she continued. "It needs +a sight of oiling. Don't you see it does? O, Mr. Tenney, think of the +poor little boy that's got to live along"—the one phrase still seemed +to her the best—"not right, and grow to be a man, and you may die and +leave him, and his mother may die. What's he going to do then?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Tenney quietly, with the slightest glance at Tira in her +tremor there by the door, "I ain't goin' to die, not this v'y'ge. If +anybody's goin' to, it ain't me."</p> + +<p>"O Isr'el!" said Tira. Her voice rose scarcely above a whisper and she +bent toward him in a beseeching way as if she might, in another instant, +run to him. "You let him go. You an' me'll stay here together, long as +we live. There sha'n't nothin' come betwixt us, Isr'el." In this Nan +heard a hidden anguish of avowal. "But you let him go."</p> + +<p>Tenney did not regard her. He spoke, pointedly to Nan:</p> + +<p>"I'm obleeged to ye." He rose from his chair. He was dismissing her. His +action approached a dignity not to be ignored, and Nan also rose.</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't give it up," she said. "I shall come again."</p> + +<p>She tried to smile at him with composure, including Tira in the +friendliness of it, but Tira, oblivious of her, was staring at Tenney, +and Nan found herself outside, trouble in her mind. Tira had not gone to +the door with her. She had staid still staring, in that fixed +interrogation, at Tenney. He looked at her now, met her eyes, and gave a +little grimace. He had done well, the movement said. He had seen through +it all. He was pleased with himself. Now he spoke to her, so affably +that she frowned with perplexity at finding him kind.</p> + +<p>"'Tain't so terrible hard," said Tenney, "to see through folks, once ye +set your mind on it. He started her out on that, he an' you together, +mebbe. ''F I git rid o' the young one,' you says, 'I shall have more +freedom to range round, outdoor.' Mebbe you said it to him. Mebbe he +said it to you. Mebbe 'twas t'other one—Martin—that said it an' you +took it up. No, 'tain't so hard to see through folks, once ye git a +start."</p> + +<p>He turned and took, with a difficulty half assumed, the few steps to the +wood-box, selected a couple of sticks and, with a quiet deftness that +seemed to indicate a mind bent only on the act itself, put them in the +stove. Tira watched him, fascinated by him, the strength in abeyance, +the wayward will. When he set on the stove cover, it seemed to break the +spell of her rigidity and she turned, hurried into the scullery and came +back. She had, he saw, a knife. That was not alarming. It was a small +kitchen knife, but he recognized it as the one she made a great fuss +about, asking him to sharpen it often and keeping it for special use. +But she gripped it strangely. Besides, there was the strangeness of her +face.</p> + +<p>"Here! here!" he said. "What you doin' o' that knife?"</p> + +<p>Tira was not thinking of him. She had gone, with her quick, lithe step, +to the window where the vine was tapping, and thrown it up.</p> + +<p>"Here!" he called again, his uneasiness shifting; whatever a woman was +doing, with a face like that, she must be stopped. "What you openin' +winders for, a day like this, coldin' off the room?"</p> + +<p>Tira reached out and seized the woodbine spray, cut it savagely and then +shut the window. She came back with the spray in her hand, took off the +stove cover and thrust it in, twining and writhing as if it had life and +rebelled against the flame.</p> + +<p>"There!" she said. "I ain't goin' to have no vines knockin' at winders +an' scarin' anybody to death."</p> + +<p>Then she went into the scullery and put the knife in its place, blade up +in a little frame over the sink, and came back into the bedroom where +the child was whimpering. She stayed there a long time, and Tenney stood +where she left him, listening for her crooning song. When it began, as +it did presently, he gave a nod of relief and started moving about the +room. Once he went into the scullery, and Tira heard him pumping. But +when she had got the child dressed, and had gone out there herself, to +prepare the vegetables for dinner, she put her hand mechanically, +without looking, on the rack above the sink. The hand knew what it +should find, but it did not find it. The knife was gone. Tira stood a +long time looking, not at the empty place, but down at her feet. It was +not alarming to miss the knife. It was reassuring. It was not to be +believed, yet she must believe it. Tenney was taking precautions. He was +afraid.</p> + +<p>Nan, halfway home, met Raven. He had been walking up and down, to meet +her. Defeat, he saw, with a glance at her face.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan, coming up with him. "No go, Rookie. He was civil. But +he was dreadful. I don't know whether I should have known it, but it's +the way she looked at him. Rookie, she was scared blue."</p> + +<p>Raven said nothing. He felt a poor stick indeed, to have brought Nan +into it and given her over to defeat.</p> + +<p>"Can't we walk a spell?" said she. "Couldn't we take the back road to +the hut? I do so want to talk to you."</p> + +<p>They turned back and passed the Tenneys' at a smart pace. Raven gave the +house a swift glance. He was always expecting to hear Tira cry out, she +who never did and who, he knew, would endure torture like an Indian. +They turned into the back road where the track was soft with the latest +snow, and came into the woods again opposite the hut. When they reached +it and Raven put down his hand for the key, Nan asked:</p> + +<p>"Does she come here often?"</p> + +<p>"Not lately," he said, fitting the key in the lock. "She had rather a +quiet time of it while he was lame."</p> + +<p>They went in and Nan kept on her coat while he lighted the fire and +piled on brush.</p> + +<p>"Rookie," she said, when he had it leaping, "it's an awful state of +things. The man's insane."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven, "I don't feel altogether sure of that. We're too ready +to call a man insane, now there's the fashion of keeping tabs. Look at +me. I do something outside the ordinary—I kick over the traces—and +Milly says I'm to go to the Psychopathic. Dick more than half thinks so, +too. Perhaps I ought. Perhaps most of us ought. We deflect just enough +from what the majority are thinking and doing to warrant them in +shutting us up. No, I don't believe you could call him insane."</p> + +<p>They talked it out from all quarters of argument. Nan proposed emergency +activities and Raven supplied the counter reason, always, he owned, +going back to Tira's obstinacy. Nan was game to kidnap the child, even +from Tira's arms. Couldn't be done, Raven told her. Not longer ago than +yesterday, Tira would have consented, but now, he reminded her, Tenney's +crazy mind was on him. Yes, it was a crazy mind, he owned, but Tenney +was not on that account to be pronounced insane. He couldn't be shut up, +at least without Tira's concurrence. And she never would concur. She +had, if you could put it so, an insane determination equal in measure to +Tenney's insane distrust, to keep the letter of her word. Then, Nan +argued, Tira and the child together must go back with her. To Tenney, +used only to the remote reaches of his home, the labyrinth of city life +was impenetrable. He couldn't possibly find them. He wouldn't be +reasonable enough, intelligent enough, to take even the first step. And +Raven could stay here and fight out the battle. Tenney wouldn't do +anything dramatically silly. Tira was "'way off" in fearing that. He +would only fix Raven with those unpleasant eyes and ask if he were +saved. Very well, Raven agreed. It was worth trying. They must catch the +first chance of seeing Tira alone.</p> + +<p>Then, though his mind was on Tira, it reverted to Anne. Again she seemed +to be inexorably beside him, reminding him, with that delicate touch of +her invisible finger, that he was not thinking of her, not even putting +his attention uninterruptedly on what she had bidden him do: her last +request, he seemed to hear her remonstrating, half sighing it to +herself, as if it were only one more of the denials life had made her. +Even if he did not agree with her, in his way of taking things (throwing +away his strength, persuading young men to throw away theirs, that the +limited barbarism called love of country might be served) could he not +act for her, in fulfilling her rarer virtue of universal love?</p> + +<p>"I tell you what, Nan," he said, with a leap from Tira to the woman more +potent now in her unseen might than she had ever been when her subtle +ways of mastery had been in action before him, "it's an impossible +situation."</p> + +<p>How did she know he was talking, not of Tira but of Anne? Yet she did +know. There had been a moment's pause and perhaps her mind leaped with +his.</p> + +<p>It was, she agreed, impossible. Yet, after all, so many things weren't, +that looked so at the start. Think of surgery: the way they'd both seen +men made over. Well! He didn't remind her that they had also seen a +mountain of men, if fate had piled their bodies as high as it was piling +the fame of their endeavor, who couldn't be made over.</p> + +<p>"If we refuse her," he said—and though Nan was determined he should +make his decision alone, she loved him for the coupling of their +intent—"we seem to repudiate her. And that's perfectly devilish, with +her where she is."</p> + +<p>It was devilish, Nan agreed. Her part here seemed to be acquiescence in +his attitude of mind, going step by step with him as he broke his path.</p> + +<p>"And," said Raven, lapsing into a confidence he had not meant to +make—for would Anne in her jealous possessiveness, allow him to share +one intimate thought about her, especially with Nan?—"the strange part +of it is, I do seem to feel she's somewhere. I seem to feel she's here. +Reminding me, you know, just as a person can by looking at you, though +he doesn't say a word. Have you felt that? Do you now?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan, with her uncalculated decisiveness that made you sure +she was not merely speaking the truth as she saw it, but that she did +see it clearly. "I have felt it, though, about other people. About two +or three of the boys over there, you know. They were the ones I knew +rather well. And Old Crow! up here, Rookie, alone with you, I have that +sense of Old Crow's being alive, very much alive. Is it the thoughts +he's left behind him, written on the air, or is it really Old Crow?"</p> + +<p>"The air's been changed a good many times since he was here," said Raven +lightly. It was not good for little girls to be wrestling forever with +things formless and dark.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said she, "but there's something left. Our minds make pictures. +They don't get rubbed out. Why, I can see old Billy Jones sitting here +and Old Crow bandaging his legs, and your mother and little Jack coming +up to bring things in a basket. You can say that's because Old Crow told +it so vividly I can't get it out of my mind. But that isn't all. Things +don't get rubbed out."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV"></a>XXXV</h2> + + +<p>The next day Raven saw Tenney driving by, probably to the street where +all the neighbors went for supplies. Up to this time Jerry had offered, +whenever he was going, to do Tira's "arrants," and Tenney had even +allowed him to bring home grain. Raven at once summoned Nan. It was +their chance. Tira must be taken by storm. Let her leave the house as it +was and run away. Nan hurried on her things, and they went up the road.</p> + +<p>"There she is," said Nan, "at the window."</p> + +<p>Raven, too, saw her white face for the moment before it disappeared. She +was coming, he thought, making haste to let them in. He knocked and +waited. No one came. He knocked again, sharply, with his stick, and +then, in the after silence, held his breath to listen. It seemed to him +he had never heard a house so still. That was the way his mind absurdly +put it: actively, ominously still.</p> + +<p>"She was at the window," said Nan, in a tone that sounded to him as +apprehensive as the beating of his own heart. "I saw her."</p> + +<p>He knocked again and, after another interval, the window opened above +their heads and Tira leaned over the sill.</p> + +<p>"You go away," she said quietly, yet with a thrilling apprehension. "I +can't let you in."</p> + +<p>They stepped back from the door and looked up at her. She seemed even +thinner than when Nan had seen her last, and to Raven all the sorrows of +woman were darkling in the anguish of her eyes. He spoke quietly, making +his voice reassuring to her.</p> + +<p>"Why can't you? Have you been told not to?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira, quick, he thought, to shield her persecutor, "nobody's +said a word. But they've gone off, an' you can't be certain when they'll +be back."</p> + +<p>"Hasn't he gone to the street?" Raven asked her, and now her voice, in +its imploring hurry, could not urge him earnestly enough.</p> + +<p>"He said he was goin'. You can't tell. He may turn round an' come back. +An' I wouldn't have you here—either o' you—for anything in this +world."</p> + +<p>But though she said "either of you," her eyes were on Raven, beseeching +him to go. He did not answer that. In a few words he set forth their +plan. She was to take the child and come. It was to be now. But she +would hardly listen.</p> + +<p>"No," she called, in any pause between his words. "No! no! no!"</p> + +<p>"Don't you want to save the child?" Raven asked her sternly. "Have you +forgotten what may happen to him?"</p> + +<p>She had her answer ready.</p> + +<p>"It's his," she said. "He spoke the truth, though it wa'n't as he mean +it. But the baby's his, an' baby as he is, an' <i>as</i> he is, he's got to +fight it out along o' me. You go now, an' don't you come a-nigh me +ag'in. An' if you stay here knockin' at my door, I'll scream so's I +sha'n't hear you."</p> + +<p>She withdrew her head from the window, but instantly looked out again.</p> + +<p>"God Almighty bless you!" she said. "But you go! you go!"</p> + +<p>"Tira!" called Raven sharply, "don't you know you're in danger? Don't +you know if anything happens to you it'll——" He paused, and Nan +wondered if he meant to say, "It will break my heart!" and scarcely felt +the pain of it, she was so tense with misery for them both.</p> + +<p>Tira leaned out again and seemed to bend even protectingly toward them. +She smiled at them, and the softening of her face was exquisite.</p> + +<p>"I ain't in danger," she said. "I've said things to him. He's afraid."</p> + +<p>"Threatened him?" Raven asked.</p> + +<p>"I've kep' tellin' him," said Tira, in that same tone of tender +reasonableness such as mothers use when they persuade children to the +necessities of things, "he must remember we ain't alone. An' somehow it +seems to scare him. He don't see Him as I do: the Lord Jesus Christ."</p> + +<p>She shut the window quietly, and Raven and Nan went away. They walked +soberly home without a word, but when Nan was taking off her hat she +heard bells and went to the library window. Raven was standing by the +table, trying to find some occupation to steady his anxious mind.</p> + +<p>"Look!" said Nan.</p> + +<p>It was Tenney, and he was "whipping up."</p> + +<p>"She knew, didn't she?" commented Nan, and he answered:</p> + +<p>"Yes, she knew."</p> + +<p>Here his trouble of mind broke forth. He had to be enlightened. A woman +must guess what a woman thought.</p> + +<p>"I can't understand her," he said. "I believe I have understood her, up +to now. But to say the child's got to bear it with her! Why, a woman's +feeling about her child! It's as old as the world. A woman will +sacrifice herself, but she won't sacrifice her child."</p> + +<p>He looked at her with such trouble in his face that Nan had to turn +away. He understood her too well. Could he read in her eyes what her +mind had resolved not to tell him? Yet she would tell him. He shouldn't +grope about in the dark among these mysteries. She wanted, as much as +Old Crow wanted it, to be a light to his feet.</p> + +<p>"She would," she told him quietly, "sacrifice herself in a minute. Only +she can't do it the way we've offered her, because now you've come into +it."</p> + +<p>"I've been in it from the first," frowned Raven. "Ever since the day I +found her up there in the woods."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but then that poor crazy idiot was jealous only of him, the +creature that sat down by her at prayer-meeting; and now he's jealous of +you. And she's saving you, Rookie. At any risk. Even her own child."</p> + +<p>Nan thought she could add what had been in her mind, keeping time to +every step of the way home: "For now she loves you better than the +child." But it proved impossible to say that, and she went out of the +room, not looking at him, and only waiting to put away her hat and coat +in the hall. She went upstairs with the same unhurried step and shut the +door of her room behind her. She stood there near the door, as if she +were guarding it against even the thoughts of any human creature. They +must not get at her, those compassionate thoughts, not Charlotte's, +certainly not Raven's. For at that moment Nan found herself a little +absurd, as many a woman has who knows herself to be starving for a man's +love. She began to tremble, and remembered Tira shaking there by the +door that morning that seemed now years away. The tremor got hold of her +savagely and shook her. It might have been shaking her in its teeth.</p> + +<p>"Nervous chill!" said Nan to herself, insisting on saying it aloud to +see if her teeth would actually chatter and finding they did. She had +seen plenty of such nervous whirlwinds among her boys and helped to +quiet them. "I'm an interesting specimen," chattered Nan. "Talk about +<i>cafard</i>!"</p> + +<p>All that forenoon, Dick fretted about the house, waiting for her, hoping +she would go to walk, let him read to her—Dick had a persistent habit +of reading verse to you when he found you weren't likely to get into the +modern movement by yourself—but no Nan. At dinner, there she was, +rather talkative, in a way that took Amelia into the circle of intimacy, +and seemed to link up everybody with everybody else in a nice manner. +Nan had the deftest social sense, when she troubled herself to use it. +Aunt Anne would have been proud of her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></a>XXXVI</h2> + + +<p>Then everything, so far as Raven and Nan were concerned, quieted to an +unbroken commonplace, and the four—for Amelia and Dick held to their +purpose of "standing by"—again settled down to country life, full of +the amenities and personal abnegations of a house party likely to be +continued. Charlotte was delighted, in her brooding way, and ascribed +the emotion to Jerry who, she said, "liked somethin' goin' on." Nan and +Dick had vaulted back to their past: the old terms of a boy and girl +intimacy in robust pursuits admitting much laughter and homespun talk. +They went snowshoeing over the hills, Raven, though Nan begged him to +come, electing to stay at home with Amelia, who would stand at the door +to see them off, half persuaded she was up to going herself and, indeed, +almost feeling she had gone, after considering it so exhaustively, and +then retreating to the library where she was cramming for next year's +economics. Raven was very good to her. He would sit down by the blazing +hearth, listening with an outward interest to her acquired formulae of +life, and then, after perfunctory assent or lax denial, retire to his +own seclusion over a book. But he seldom read nowadays. He merely, in +this semblance of studious absorption, found refuge from Amelia. He was +mortally anxious for Tira, still face to face with brute +irresponsibility, and when the mental picture of it flamed too lividly +and could not be endured, he threw down his book and hurried up to the +hut, to find her. She never came. The fire, faithfully laid for her, was +unlighted. The room breathed the loneliness of a place that has known a +beloved presence and knows it no more. Nearly every day he and Nan had a +word about her, and often he saw Nan going "up along" and knew she was, +in the uneasiness of no news, bent on walking past the house, if only +for a glance at the windows and the sight of Tira's face. Three times +within a few weeks Tenney had driven past, and each time Nan, refusing +Dick's company, hurried up the road. But she came back puzzled and +dispirited, and called to Raven, who, in a fever of impatience, had gone +out to meet her:</p> + +<p>"No. The door is locked."</p> + +<p>She would put a hand on his arm and they would walk together while she +told him her unvarying tale. When she had knocked persistently, Tira +would appear at the chamber window, and shake her head, and her lips +seemed to be saying, "No! no! no!" And each time Tenney returned +shortly, and they were sure his going was a blind. He never went to the +street, and even Charlotte remarked the strangeness of his short +absences.</p> + +<p>"What under the sun makes Isr'el Tenney start out an' turn round an' +come back ag'in?" she inquired of Jerry. "He ain't gone twenty minutes +'fore he's home."</p> + +<p>Jerry didn't know. He "'sposed Isr'el forgot suthin'."</p> + +<p>How was Tira? Raven asked after Nan had seen her at the window, and she +did not spare him. Pale, she said, paler than ever, a shadow of herself. +But Nan had faith that her courage would hold. It was like the winter +and the spring. Tenney stood for the forces of darkness, but the spring +had to come in the end. Also she owned that her great reason for +believing in Tira's endurance was that Tira was not alone. She had, like +Old Crow, her sustaining symbol. She had, whatever the terrifying +circumstance of her daily life, divine companionship. She had her Lord, +Jesus Christ.</p> + +<p>"I believe," said Raven abruptly, one day when they were tramping the +snowy road and she was answering the panic of his apprehensive mind, +"you swear by Old Crow's book."</p> + +<p>"I do," said Nan simply, "seem to be hanging on to Old Crow. I've read +it over and over. And it does somehow get me. Picture writing! And human +beings drawing the lines and half the time not getting them straight! +But if there's something to draw, I don't care how bad the drawing is. +If there's actually something there! There is, Rookie. Tira's got hold +of it because she's pure in heart. It's something real, and it'll see +her through."</p> + +<p>Raven was not content with its seeing her through until he could be told +what the appointed end was likely to be. If Tira was to fight this +desperate battle all her mortal life, he wasn't to be placated by the +rewarding certainty of a heavenly refuge at the end.</p> + +<p>"I can never," he said, "get over the monstrous queerness of it all. +Here's a woman that's got to be saved, and she's so infernally obstinate +we can't save her. When I think of it at night, I swear I'm a fool not +to complain of the fellow in spite of her, and then in the morning I +know it can't be done. She'd block me, and I should only have got her in +for something worse than she's in for now."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan, "she'd block you. Wait, Rookie. Something will happen. +Something always does."</p> + +<p>Yes, Raven thought, something always does, and sometimes, in country +tragedies, so brutal a thing that the remorseful mind shudders at itself +for not preventing it. But Nan, equably as she might counsel him, was +herself apprehensive. She expected something. She had a sense of waiting +for it. Dick must be prepared. He must be found on their side. Whatever +the outcome, Raven must not suffer the distrust and censure of his own +house.</p> + +<p>Dick had been reading to her by the fire while Raven was taking Amelia +for a sober walk. Nan wished Dick wouldn't read his verse to her. It +made her sorry for him. What was he doing, a fellow who had seen such +things, met life and death at their crimson flood, pottering about in +these bizarre commonplaces of a literary jog-trot? They sounded right +enough, if you stood for that kind of thing, but they betrayed him, his +defective imagination, his straining mind. He didn't see the earth as it +was. He was so enamored of metaphorical indirection that he tried to see +everything in the terms of something else. But to-day she had her own +thoughts. She sat staring into the fire, her cheeks burned by the +leaping heat, and Dick, looking up at her, stopped on an uncompleted +line.</p> + +<p>"You haven't," he said, "heard a word."</p> + +<p>"Not much of it," said Nan. She looked at him disarmingly. When her eyes +were like that, Dick's heart was as water. "I was thinking about Tira."</p> + +<p>He had to place this. Who was Tira?</p> + +<p>"Oh," said he, "the Tenney woman. Jack needn't have dragged you into +that. It's a dirty country story."</p> + +<p>"Not dirty," said Nan. "You'd love it if you'd thought of it yourself. +You'd write a play about it."</p> + +<p>Dick frowned.</p> + +<p>"Well, I didn't think of it," said he, "and if I had, I shouldn't be +eating and sleeping it as you and Jack are. Whatever's happening up +there, it isn't our hunt. It's hers, the woman's. Or the authorities'. +The man ought to be shut up."</p> + +<p>Nan began telling him how it all was, how they wanted definitely to do +the right thing and how Tira herself blocked them. Dick listened, +commended the drama of it, and yet found it drama only.</p> + +<p>"But it's a beastly shame," he commented, "to have this come on Jack +just now when he isn't fit."</p> + +<p>Nan had her sudden hot angers.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to tell me," she countered, "you believe that now, now +you've lived with him and seen he's exactly what he used to be, only +more darling—you believe he's broken, dotty? Heavens! I don't know what +you'd call it."</p> + +<p>Dick did not answer. He scarcely heard. One word only hit him like a +shot and drew blood.</p> + +<p>"Stop that!" he ordered.</p> + +<p>They faced each other with eyes either angry or full of a tumultuous +passion an onlooker would have been puzzled to name.</p> + +<p>"Stop what?"</p> + +<p>"Calling him darling. I won't have it."</p> + +<p>Nan found this truly funny, and broke into a laugh.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," she said, "how every talk of ours ends? Rookie! It always +comes round to him. I call him darling and you won't have it. But you'll +have to."</p> + +<p>"No," said Dick, "I won't have it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. +You little devil! I believe you do it to work me up. That's all right if +it stopped there. But it won't. Some day he'll hear you and then——!"</p> + +<p>She was flaming again.</p> + +<p>"Hear me? Hear me call him darling? Why, he's heard it so often it's no +more to him than your calling him Jack. But if he asked me what I meant +by it! do you know what would happen then?"</p> + +<p>"What would?"</p> + +<p>"Then," said Nan enigmatically, "I should tell him, that's all."</p> + +<p>She would say no more, though he hurled questions at her, and hardly +remembered afterward what they were. He was of an impression that he +begged her to love him, to marry him, though Dick, prodigal as he was of +great words in his verse, scarcely believed he used them in the direct +address of love-making. But certainly he did beg her, and Nan was gentle +with him, though always, like Tira, as she remembered afterward, +repeating, "No! no!" At the end, his passion softened into something +appealing, as if they were together considering the sad case he found +himself in and he depended on her to help him through.</p> + +<p>"Nan," he said, in the boyish way she loved, "don't you see it's got to +be in the end? We've always been together. We're always going to be. +Don't you see, old Nan?"</p> + +<p>Nan smiled at him, brilliantly, cruelly, he thought. But she was sorry +for him, and it was only a show of cruelty. It came out of her kindness, +really. Dick mustn't suffer so for want of her. Bully him, abuse him, +anything to anger him and keep him from sheer weak, unavailing regret. +Nan had a great idea of what men should be: "tough as a knot," she +thought, seasoned all through. If they whimpered, she was aghast.</p> + +<p>"No," she said again, with the brilliant smile, "no! no! I can't. I +won't. Not unless"—and this, too, was calculated cruelty—"unless +Rookie tells me to."</p> + +<p>They sat staring at each other as if each wondered what the outcome was +to be. Nan was excitedly ready for it. Or had the last word been +actually said? But Dick altogether surprised her. He got up and stood +looking down at her in a dignity she found new to him.</p> + +<p>"When you come to me," he said, "you'll come because I ask you. It won't +be because any other man tells you to."</p> + +<p>He walked past her, out of the room. Did he, Nan wondered, in her +ingenuous surprise, look a very little like Rookie? When he was twenty +years older, was he going to look as Rookie did now? His expression, +that is. For, after all, there was Dick's nose.</p> + +<p>And in these days what of Tira? She, too, was on an edge of nervous +apprehension. Tenney was about the house a great deal. He still made +much of his lameness, though never in words. Every step he took seemed +an implication that a cane was far from sufficient. He needed his +crutch. And as the period of his silence lengthened, Tira was driven by +her fear to another greater fear: that she might mention it herself. +What if she should tell him how the crutch, leaning there at the foot of +the bed, had seemed to her a weapon, not a crutch? What if she appealed +to his pity and even played a part with him, dwelling on her woman's +weakness of nature, her tremors, deprived of the protection that should +be hers? Artifice was foreign to her. Yet what was there, short of +implicating Raven, she would not do for the child? But a glance at +Tenney's face, the tightness of reserve, the fanatical eyes, closed her +lips, and they moved about together dumbly at their common tasks. As she +grew paler and the outline of her cheek the purer over the bones +beneath, he watched her the more intently, but still furtively. One +forenoon when the sky was gray and a soft snow fell in great flakes that +melted as they came, he went haltingly up to the shed chamber and came +down with his gun. He was not a huntsman, and when they moved into the +house it had been left there with a disorder of things not likely to be +needed. He drew a chair to the table and then addressed her almost +urbanely. He wanted, she guessed, to call her attention in some explicit +way.</p> + +<p>"You git me some kind of a rag," he bade her. "I'm goin' to clean up +this old musket. You might's well hand me that oiler, too, off'n the +sink shelf. I can't git about any too well."</p> + +<p>She brought him the cloth and the oiler and went away to the sink again, +determined not to be drawn into any uneasiness of questioning. But it +fascinated her, the sight of him bending to his task, and her will +weakened. In spite of herself, she went over to the table and stood +looking down at him. Presently he glanced up at her and smiled a little +in a way she did not like. It seemed to imply some recognition of a +common knowledge between them. He had, the look said, more than the +apparent reason for what he was doing. The oiling of the gun was not +all. Something at the back of his mind was more significant than this +act of his hands, and this something, the look said, she also knew. All +through the moment of her gazing down at him Tira was telling herself +she must not speak. Yet she spoke:</p> + +<p>"You goin' gunnin'?"</p> + +<p>"I dunno but I be," he returned, his eyes again on his work. "I've had +it in mind quite a spell, an' I dunno's there's any reason for puttin' +on't off."</p> + +<p>"What you goin' after, Isr'el?" she asked, against her will, and he was +silent for what seemed so long, that she pursued: "You goin' rabbitin'?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Tenney. "I dunno's I be. What's the use o' shootin' down +four-footed creatur's? T'other ones'll do well enough for me."</p> + +<p>Again he glanced up at her and her look of frozen horror evidently +warned him against terrifying her unduly. She must be shaken enough to +obey him, not to fight.</p> + +<p>"You look kinder peaked," he said, with what she found a false air of +interest. "You don't git out enough. Mebbe you'd ought to git out +nights. I've been noticin' how peaked you look, an' I thought mebbe I'd +git the old musket loaded up an' go out an' shoot ye a pa'tridge. Tempt +your appetite, mebbe, a mite o' the breast."</p> + +<p>"I dunno," said Tira, speaking with difficulty through her rigid misery, +"as you'd ought to, so near nestin' time. I dunno's as it's the season +to kill."</p> + +<p>"All seasons are the same to me," said Tenney. "When it's time to kill, +then kill, I say. Kill!"</p> + +<p>He spoke the word as if he loved it, and Tira walked away from him into +the bedroom, and stretched herself on the bed, her hand on the sleeping +child. When it was time to get dinner she came out again and found him +reading his paper by the stove. He had set the gun away in a corner. But +directly after dinner he shaved at the little glass by the kitchen +window and told her, again with the air of abundant explanation she +found foreign to him, that he was going to the street, to get the colt +shod. The colt did need to be shod. She knew that. Perhaps this time he +was actually going.</p> + +<p>"You want to take along the eggs?" she said, and he assented.</p> + +<p>He asked her, too, for a list of groceries she needed. He would have to +wait his turn at the blacksmith's. He might be a long time. She need not +expect him before dark. She might as well go out, he told her, and +again:</p> + +<p>"You're lookin' peaked. You need the air."</p> + +<p>She heard him drive briskly out of the yard, but she would not, for some +reason she did not herself know, go to the window to look after him. It +was all a plan, she told herself. She was not to be taken in by it. She +would force herself to sit down to her sewing. She would not leave the +house while he was gone. If he wanted to tempt her out, to trap her, let +him have his will. It was better, she thought, with a moment's satirical +comment, for him to be driving off on a fictitious mission than roaming +the neighborhood with a gun in his hand. She glanced involuntarily at +the corner where the gun had stood not many minutes before he left the +house. It was gone. Then she knew. She threw down her work, went to the +telephone, and called Raven. He was there, and she felt her heart answer +wildly when, at her first word, he broke in:</p> + +<p>"Is it you?" Not her name, only the intimacy of the significant word. +"The hut?" he added.</p> + +<p>"Up there," said Tira, breathless. "Both of you. I've got to see you +both. Come quick."</p> + +<p>She got her cloak and threw it down again, remembering it was what she +was used to wearing and that Tenney would most certainly recognize her +outline in it, even though a long way off. Grandmother Tenney's black +blanket shawl was in the parlor chest of drawers, that and her hood, +disfiguring ancientry of dress. She ran into the parlor, snatched them +out, tied on the black knitted hood and, not unfolding the shawl, +wrapped it about her shoulders. The baby was in his cradle, and she gave +him one glance. If he waked, he would cry. Let him cry. But she did lock +the door behind her, and put the key on the sill, a place Tenney would +know. Half way down the path, she went back, took the key again and +dropped it into her apron pocket. Tenney might come, but he should not +go into the house and find the child alone. Lest he should come the way +he went, she took the back road, and there, when she was about to turn +into the wood road, she heard sleigh-bells behind her, the horse going, +as her ear told her, "step and step." But she was actually on the wood +road when the driver whipped up and the bells came clashingly. She did +not turn to look. It was not Tenney. She would have known his bells. The +horse drew up, the driver called to him a peremptory and jovial word, +and she knew the voice. It was Eugene Martin's, and instinct told her to +stop and face him. He stepped out of the sleigh and threw the robe, with +a quick motion, over the horse. Then he came on to her, smiling, +effusively cordial, and Tira waited. A pace away he took off his hat and +made her an exaggerated bow. He was carefully dressed, but then he was +always that, according to his lights. Only Tira, who knew him so well, +all his vain schemes of personal fitness, judged this to be a day of +especial preparation. For what? He took the step between them and put +out both hands.</p> + +<p>"If this ain't luck!" he beamed. "How are you, girl? I made up my mind +I'd see you, but I hadn't an idea you'd be on the road."</p> + +<p>Tira rolled her hands in her apron, as if they were cold. His extended +hands she did not seem to see.</p> + +<p>"I ain't waitin' for you," she said quietly, her eyes on his. "You +better go right straight along about your business an' leave me to +mine."</p> + +<p>"I ain't done right, Tira," said Martin, with the specious warmth she +knew. "I did try to git you in bad with Tenney, but don't you know what +that sprung from? I'm jealous as the devil. Don't you know I be?"</p> + +<p>"You've no call to be jealous nor anything else," said Tira steadily. +"You an' me are as fur apart"—she hesitated for a word, and her eyes +rested for a moment on one of the tall evergreens moving slightly in the +breeze. "We couldn't any more come together than I could climb up to the +pick o' that pine tree."</p> + +<p>He still regarded her solicitously. He was determined not to abandon his +part.</p> + +<p>"Ain't somebody come betwixt us?" he demanded, with that vibration of +the voice once so moving to her. "You can't deny it. Can you now?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody's come betwixt us," said Tira. "If you was the only man on this +earth to-day, I'd run from you as I would a snake. I hate you. No, I +don't. I look on you as if you was the dirt under my feet."</p> + +<p>But as she said it she glanced down, wistfully troubled, as if she +begged forgiveness of the good earth. The quick anger she knew in him +flared like a licking flame. He threw his arms about her and held her to +him as tightly, it seemed to her, as if he were hostile to the very +breath within her body. And she was still, not only because he gripped +her so but because she had called upon that terrible endurance women +recognize within themselves. He kissed her, angry, insulting kisses she +could bear more patiently than the kisses of unwelcome love. But as his +lips defiled her face, he was suddenly aware that it was wet. Great +tears were rolling down her cheeks. He laughed.</p> + +<p>"Cryin'?" he jeered. "Poor little cry-baby! wipe her eyes."</p> + +<p>While he held her with one arm, the other hand plunged into her apron +pocket and brought out her handkerchief. It also touched the key. His +instincts, she knew, had a scope of devilish cunning, and at once he +knew what key it was. He laughed. Looking off through the trees, he had +seen what gave him another clue.</p> + +<p>"Smoke!" he called, as if he shouted it to an unseen listener who might +not have been clever enough to guess. "Smoke from that shack Raven lazes +round in same as Old Crow did afore him. That's where you were goin'. +The wood road all broke out for you. I might ha' known it when I see +that. Go along, my lady. He'll be there waitin' for you. Go along. But +jest for the fun o' the thing, you leave the key with me."</p> + +<p>She answered with a desperate wrench; but though one of her hands +reached the pocket where the key lay, she could only twitch the fingers, +and while he laughed softly he pulled the tie of her apron and, +releasing her with a little push, snatched the apron from her, rolled it +and thrust it into his pocket. She sprang at him, but he gave her +another push that sent her staggering and ran laughing to the sleigh.</p> + +<p>"So long!" he called back at her.</p> + +<p>She recovered herself and started after him. But the horse plunged +forward and Martin was shouting at her jovially, in what words she did +not hear. She only knew, through the bewilderment of her despair, that +the tone was merciless.</p> + +<p>She stood there a moment, looking after him, and realizing that he had +forced her into a corner from which there was no possible way out. But +then another fear beat in her numbed brain. She had not accomplished the +task for which she came here. Martin and his trick must wait. That other +need was more important. There was the hut and its welcoming smoke and +there Raven must be looking for her. She started running along the snowy +path, reached the door, found it unlocked and went in.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII"></a>XXXVII</h2> + + +<p>Raven, as soon as he had Tira's message, went to find Nan. She was not +in her room, but Charlotte, when he finally brought up at the kitchen, +told him Nan and Dick had gone to walk. Down the road, she said. They +had called to him, but he was in the barn.</p> + +<p>"Then," said Raven, getting into his jacket, "see her the minute she +comes back and send her up to the hut."</p> + +<p>Yes, Charlotte meant to be in the kitchen all the afternoon. She would +see Nan. Raven left the house and hurried up the hill. He found the hut +in order, the fire laid as he had left it. That was, foolishly, always a +surprise. Her presence hung so inevitably about the place that he was +taken aback to find no visible sign of it. Now when she appeared it was +breathlessly, not, as he thought, from haste, but from her encounter +with Martin. And she came stripped of her reserves, the decorum of +respectful observance she always kept toward him. At first glance he was +shocked by the change in her appearance and could not account for it, +not knowing he missed the familiar folds of the blue cloak about her, +not seeing that her black shawl and the knitted hood accentuated the +tragic paleness of her face. She came straight to him and he took her +hands and, finding them so cold, held them in one of his and chafed +them. This she did not notice. She neither knew that they were cold nor +that he was holding them.</p> + +<p>"You must go away," she said, surprising him because he thought she had +come to say she herself was ready to go. "Where is she?" Tira asked, +with a quick glance about the room, as if the least deviation in her +plan fretted her desperately. "I depended on seein' her."</p> + +<p>"Nan?" asked Raven. "I couldn't find her. What is it, Tira?"</p> + +<p>"She'd ha' helped me out," said Tira despairingly. "She'd ha' seen +you've got to go away from here an' go quick. Couldn't you pack up an' +git off by the nine o'clock?"</p> + +<p>"Don't be foolish," said Raven. He released her hands and drew a chair +nearer the fire. "Sit down. I haven't the least idea of going anywhere. +Do you suppose I should go and leave you in danger?"</p> + +<p>But she did not even seem to see the chair he had indicated or the fire. +She stood wringing her hands, in a regardless way, under her shawl, and +looking at him imploringly.</p> + +<p>"I ain't in any danger," she said, "not compared to what you be. He's +stopped dwellin' on that man an' his mind is on you."</p> + +<p>The shame of this did not move her now. Her fear had burned every +reticence to ashes and her heart looked out nakedly.</p> + +<p>"He's got out the old gun," she went on. "I dunno's he's fired a gun +sence we've been here unless it might be at a hawk sailin' over. He says +he's goin' to shoot me a pa'tridge—for me! a pa'tridge for me to +eat!—an' he looked at me when he said it, an' the look was enough. You +go. You go to-night an' put the railroad betwixt you an' me."</p> + +<p>"Don't be foolish, Tira," said Raven again. "I've been in more dangerous +places than this, and run bigger risks than Tenney's old musket. That's +all talk, what he says to you, all bluff. I begin to think he isn't +equal to anything but scaring a woman to death. But"—now he saw his +argument—"I will go. Nan and I will go to-night, but only if you go +with us. Now is your chance, Tira. Run back to the house and get the +boy. Bring him here, if you like, to stay till train time and then +come."</p> + +<p>He stretched out his hand to her and waited, his eyes on hers. Would she +put her hand into his in obedience, in fealty? She began to cry, +silently yet rendingly. He saw the great breaths rising in her, and was +sick at heart to see her hand—the hand she should have laid in +his—clutching her throat to still its agony.</p> + +<p>"I dunno," she said brokenly. "Yes, I s'pose I do know. I've got to do +it. It's been pushin' me an' pushin' me, an' now I've got to give up +beat. You won't save yourself, an' somehow or another you've got to be +saved."</p> + +<p>Raven felt the incredible joy of his triumph. He had yielded to her +obstinacy, he had actually given up hope, and now, scourged by her +devotion to him, she was walking straight into the security he had urged +upon her. Yet he dared not betray his triumph, lest outspoken emotion of +any sort should awaken her to a fear of—what? Of him? Of man's nature +she had learned to abhor?</p> + +<p>"That's right, Tira," he said quietly. "Now you've given up +responsibility. You've put yourself and the boy in my hands, mine and +Nan's. You've promised, remember. There's no going back."</p> + +<p>Still he held out his hand, and though she ignored it, her dumbly +agonized look was aware of it. It was waiting for her, the +authoritative, kind hand, and she took hers from her throat and laid it +in his grasp. Tira seemed to herself to be giving up something she had +been fighting to keep. What was she giving up? Nothing it was right to +keep, she would have said. For at that minute, as it had been in all the +minutes that led to it, she believed in him as she did in her Lord, +Jesus Christ. Yet she was aware, with that emotional certainty which is +more piercing than the keenness of the most brilliant mind, that she had +surrendered, the inner heart of her, and whatever he asked her to do +would now be humbly done.</p> + +<p>In the instant of their standing there, hand clasped in hand, the +current of life between them rushed to mingle—humble adoration in her, +a triumphant certainty in him. But scarcely had the impetuous forces met +before they were dissolved and lost. The sharp crack of a gun broke the +stillness outside, and Tira tore her hand from his and screamed +piercingly. She threw herself upon Raven, holding him with both hands.</p> + +<p>"Hear that!" she whispered. "It's right outside here. He's shot to make +you come out an' see what 'tis. In the name o' God, don't you open the +door."</p> + +<p>Raven shook himself free from her, and then, because she was sobbing +wildly, took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the chair by the +hearth.</p> + +<p>"Stop that," he said sternly. "Stay there till I come back."</p> + +<p>He took the key from the lock, opened the door and stepped out. There +lay Dick on his face, his head close by the door-stone, and Tenney, gun +in hand, stood stupidly staring at him.</p> + +<p>"I shot at a pa'tridge," Tenney babbled, "I shot——"</p> + +<p>But Raven was kneeling by Dick in the reddening snow.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXVIII" id="XXXVIII"></a>XXXVIII</h2> + + +<p>Eugene Martin had driven at a quick pace through the back road and down +again to the point where it met the highway. He had stuffed Tira's apron +into his pocket, and through his passion he was aware of it as something +he could use, how he did not yet know. But the key: that was a weapon in +itself. She could not get into her house without it. Tenney could not +get in. So far as Tira was concerned, it was lost, and Tenney would have +to be told. And as he turned into the other road, there was Tenney +himself driving toward home, and Martin knew what he was to do.</p> + +<p>"Hi!" he called, but Tenney did not stop. He drew out slightly to the +side of the road, the implication that Martin might pass. Martin drove +up alongside and, the way growing narrower, seemed bent on crowding him. +The horses were abreast and presently the road narrowed to a point +where, if they continued, one would be in the ditch.</p> + +<p>"I've got something o' yourn," called Martin. He was good humor itself. +The chances of the road had played patly into his hand. "Anyways, I +s'pose 'tis. I come across your woman on the back road. She turned into +the loggin' road, to Raven's shack. She dropped her apron an' I picked +it up. There's a key in the pocket. Looks like a key to somebody's outer +door. Yourn, ain't it? Here 'tis, rolled up in the apron. Ketch!"</p> + +<p>He had taken out the apron, rolled it tighter and then, as Tenney made +no movement, tossed it into the sleigh. He shook the reins and passed, +narrowly escaping an over-turn, but, at the same moment, he was aware +that Tenney had stooped slightly and lifted something. It was a familiar +motion. What had he lifted? It could not be a gun, he told himself. Yet +he knew it could be nothing else. Was this the next move in the mad +game? For the first time he began to wonder whether Tenney's religion +would really keep him cool and questioned whether, having neatly +balanced his own account, he might close it now before he found himself +in danger. Driving fast, he was aware that Tenney, behind him, was also +coming on. But he would not look until he had passed Tenney's house, and +then he did give one backward glance. Tenney had turned into the yard, +and Martin relaxed, satisfied with the day's job. Perhaps it was really +finished, and he and Tira were square.</p> + +<p>Tenney, having driven into the yard, blanketed the horse and thrust the +apron under the seat of the sleigh. He stood for a moment, thinking. +Should he unlock the door, go into the house, and lock it against the +woman who had run away to Raven's shack? He could not think clearly, but +it did seem to him best to open the door and look about. How had she +left things behind her? Was her absence deliberately planned? Inside, he +proceeded mechanically with the acts he would ordinarily have done after +an absence. The familiar surroundings seemed to suggest them to him. He +fitted the key into the lock again, took off his great-coat and hung it +up, chiefly because the nail reminded him, and then, the house suddenly +attacking him with all the force of lonely silence, he turned and went +out again and shut the door behind him. There was the horse. Why had he +covered him? He would naturally have unharnessed. But then he saw the +gun in the sleigh, and that, like the silent house, seemed to push him +on to something he had lost the power to will, and he took the gun and +walked fast out of the yard. Now at once he felt clear in the head. He +was going to find Raven. That was the next step. Wherever Raven was, he +must find him. But when he turned out of the yard to go up the back +road, he was aware of a strange dislike to coming upon him at the hut. +Tira was there, he knew, but if Raven also was, then there would be +something to do. It was something in the back of his mind, very dark and +formless as yet, but it was, he told himself again, something that had +to be done. Perhaps after all, even though it was to be done sometime, +it need not be to-day. Even though Tira was up there, the job was a +terrifying one to tackle when he felt so weak in his disabled foot, so +cold after Martin's jeering voice when he tossed over the key. He turned +again and went down the road to Raven's. His foot ached badly, but he +did not mind it so much now, the confusion and pain of his mind had +grown so great. It seemed, like this doubt that surrounded Tira, a curse +that was to be always with him. At Raven's, he went to the kitchen door +and knocked, and Charlotte came.</p> + +<p>"He to home?" he asked, not looking at her, but standing there a +drooping, miserable figure.</p> + +<p>"Jerry?" she asked. "Yes. He's in the barn, gone to feed an' water."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tenney. "John Raven. Is he to home?"</p> + +<p>"Why, no," said Charlotte. "Not round the house. He said he's goin' up +to the hut."</p> + +<p>At that he stared at her desperately, as if begging her to take back her +words; they might have been a command to him, a verdict against him. She +stepped out a pace.</p> + +<p>"Why, Mr. Tenney," she said, "what you round with a gun for, this time +o' night? You can't see nothin'. It'll be dusk in a minute."</p> + +<p>"Pa'tridges," he called back to her, adding darkly, "I guess I can see +well enough, come to that."</p> + +<p>Charlotte stood there watching him out of the yard and noted that he +turned toward home. When Nan and Dick came up the road the other way, +she had gone in, and they had been in the house five minutes or more +before she knew of it. Then Dick wandered into the kitchen, on one of +the vague quests always bringing the family there in search of her, and +she called to him from the pantry:</p> + +<p>"D'you see anything of Isr'el Tenney on the road?"</p> + +<p>No, Dick had seen nobody. He stood leaning against the casing, watching +her floury hands at their deft work.</p> + +<p>"He come here, not ten minutes ago," said Charlotte, "after your Uncle +John. He had a gun. I never see Isr'el Tenney with a gun. 'Pa'tridge +shootin,' he said. Pa'tridges, when you can't see your hand afore you in +the woods! I told him Uncle John'd gone up to the hut. When Uncle John +went off, he said he wanted Nan should come up there, quick as ever she +could. You tell her, won't you? I forgot."</p> + +<p>Then Dick knew. Tira was up there. And Tenney was out with a gun: New +England tragedy. It was impossible, the sanctimonious Tenney. Yet there +was New England tragedy, a streak of it, darkly visible, through all New +England life. It would be ridiculous: old Tenney with his +prayer-meetings and his wild appeals. And yet, he reflected, all tragedy +was ridiculous to the sane, and saw before his mind's eye a satiric poem +wherein he should arraign the great sad stories of the world and prove +their ironic futility. But all this was the hurried commentary of the +mind really bent on something actual, and from that actuality he spoke:</p> + +<p>"Don't tell Nan, Charlotte. I'll see what he wants."</p> + +<p>He went off and Charlotte thought he was right, the afternoon waning as +it was. She would tell Nan later, a good deal later, when Raven and Dick +had had time to come down again. And this was how Dick climbed the slope +and was approaching the door of the hut when Tenney stole behind him +through the dusk and fired.</p> + +<p>Raven, in the instant of seeing Dick there on the ground, locked the +door of the hut, dropped the key in his pocket, knelt by him and, with a +hand on his pulse, snapped out his orders to Tenney, standing there +staring vacuously:</p> + +<p>"Go down to the house. Get Jerry and the sled. Come back with him. Get a +move on. Run!"</p> + +<p>Tenney continued looking emptily at him, still babbling about +pa'tridges, and Raven got up and wrenched the gun from his hand, calling +loudly, though they were close together:</p> + +<p>"Don't you hear me? Get Jerry and the sled. Run, man, run."</p> + +<p>Tenney started away in a dazed indecisiveness and Raven remembered his +hurt and that he probably could not run. At the same instant Tenney's +mind cleared. He was plunging down the slope and, whatever anguish it +caused him, insensible to it.</p> + +<p>Raven unlocked the door, stepped in and found Tira facing him.</p> + +<p>"Go home," he said. "Get the boy and go down to my house. You're to stay +there now."</p> + +<p>At the instant of saying this, he set the gun inside the door, snatched +some blankets from the bedroom and came out again. Tira stepped aside to +let him pass. It looked as if he would have walked over her. He covered +Dick warmly, picked up the boy's glasses from the snow and dropped them +into his pocket. With that involuntary act, the emotional assault of the +whole thing nearly had him. He remembered Dick's eyes as he had +sometimes seen them without their glasses, wistful and vaguely soft. +Always his eyes, denuded of the lenses behind which they lived, had a +child's look of helpless innocence, and here he was floored by life's +regardless cruelty. Though, if he was not only floored but actually done +for, he was not yet the one to suffer. He was away in that sanctuary of +the assaulted body known as unconsciousness, and Raven did not dwell for +more than an instant on "the pity of it" all.</p> + +<p>Tira had come out of the hut and, at sight of Dick under his mound of +covering, she gave a little cry and stooped to him with outstretched +hand, perhaps with an idea of somehow easing him. But Raven caught her +wrist before she touched him.</p> + +<p>"Don't," said he. "I've sent down for the sled."</p> + +<p>"Is he——?" she whispered, stepping back as he released her.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said he. "You can't do anything. Don't stay here."</p> + +<p>But she stood still, staring down at the mound of blankets and Raven +again on his knees beside it, his fingers on Dick's wrist.</p> + +<p>"Didn't you hear me?" said he curtly. "You're to get the child and come +to my house for the night."</p> + +<p>"Will he"—and now he saw her mind was with Tenney—"will he be +arrested?"</p> + +<p>"I hope," Raven allowed himself the bitterness of saying, "I hope he'll +get imprisonment for life."</p> + +<p>And there was such sternness in the kind voice that Tira turned and +went, half running, up the path to the back road and home.</p> + +<p>That night at eleven, when the house had quieted, and Raven was alone in +the library, he permitted himself a glimpse at the denied emotional +aspect of the day. Jerry had got quickly to the top of the hill and Dick +had been moved down without disaster, Tenney, white-faced and +bewildered, lending his strength as he was told. Raven called upon him +for this and that, and kept him by them on the way down to the house, so +that Tira might have time to snatch the child and hurry away. At the +moment of nearing the house he remembered her, and that if Tenney went +directly back by the high road, he might meet her.</p> + +<p>"Here!" This to Tenney, who was sagging on behind the sled, and who at +once hurried along to his side. "Go back to the hut and see if I've left +the key in the door. If it's there, you can lock up and bring it down to +me. If it isn't, don't come back."</p> + +<p>Then, he assumed, Tenney would go home by the back road, the shortest +route. For he would not find the key, which was still in Raven's pocket. +Tenney looked at him, seemed to have something to say, and finally +managed it. As Raven remembered, it was something about pa'tridges and +his gun. Whether he was shaken by fright, one could not have told, but +he was, as Charlotte remarked upon it afterward, "all to pieces." Raven +ignored the mumble, whatever it was, and Tenney, finally understanding +that he might as well be as far off the earth as Dick, for all the +attention anybody was going to pay him, turned, limping, and then Raven, +with that mechanical sensitiveness to physical need always awake in him +now, caught up a stick lying in the dooryard and tossed it to him.</p> + +<p>"Here!" said he. "That'll do for a cane."</p> + +<p>Tenney could not catch; he was too stupid from bewilderment of mind. But +he picked it up, and went limping off across the road and up the hill. +Then the women had to be told, and when Jerry brought the horses to a +standstill at the door, Raven ran in, pushing Charlotte aside—dear +Charlotte! she was too used to life and death to need palliatives of +indirection in breaking even such news as this—and believed now, as he +thought it over, that he met Milly and Nan, who had seen their approach, +running to meet him, and that he said something about accident and, as +if it were an echo of Tenney, a fool shooting partridges. Milly, shocked +out of her neat composure, gave a cry, but Nan turned on her, bade her +be quiet, and called Charlotte to the bedroom to get it ready. It was +Milly's room, but the most accessible place. Raven telephoned for the +doctor at the street and called a long-distance for a Boston surgeon of +repute, asking him to bring two nurses; and he and Nan rapidly dressed +the wound, with Dick still mercifully off in the refuge called +unconsciousness. Raven remembered that Milly, as she got in his way, +kept telling him she ought to have taken a course in first aid, and that +Dick was her son and if a mother didn't know, who did? But he fancied he +did not answer at all, and that he and Nan worked together, with quick +interrogative looks at each other here and there, a lifted eyebrow, a +confirming nod. And now the local doctor had arrived, had professed +himself glad his distinguished colleague had been summoned and approved +Raven's work. He was gone in answer to another urgent call, and the +surgeon had not come, could not come for hours. But Dick was conscious, +though either too weak or too wisely cautious to lift an eyelid, and Nan +was with him. That Raven had ordered, and told Milly she was to come to +the library after Jerry moved her things upstairs and she was settled +for the night.</p> + +<p>Milly was badly shaken. She looked, her strained eyes and mouth +compressed, as if not only was she robbed of the desire of sleep, but +had sworn never, in her distrust of what life could do to her, to sleep +again. But she had not appeared, and as Raven sat there waiting for her, +Charlotte came down the stairs and glanced in, a comprehensive look at +the light, the fire, and at him, as if to assure him, whatever the need +in the sick room, she kept him also in mind. Raven signed to her and she +nodded. He had a question to ask. It had alternated in his mind with +queer little heart-beats of alarm about Dick: hemorrhage, shock, +hemorrhage—recurrent beats of prophetic disaster.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen Tira?" he asked. "I told her to come here and stay till +we could get her off somewhere."</p> + +<p>Then he remembered that, so wide-reaching did Charlotte always seem to +him in her knowledge of the life about her, he had not explained why +Tira must be got out of the way, and that also was before him. But in +her amazing habit of knowing, she knew.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "she ain't b'en near. She won't leave Tenney. She's one +o' them that sticks by."</p> + +<p>Immediately he was curious to hear what she had imagined, how she knew. +Was the neighborhood awake to even the most obscure local drama? While +Tira thought she was, at the expense of her own safety, covering +Tenney's wildness of jealousy, were they all walking in the sun?</p> + +<p>"Who told you?" he asked her.</p> + +<p>"Why, nobody," said Charlotte. "It didn't take no tellin'. Jerry heard +him hollerin' after her that day you was up in the woods, an' when you +kep' the loggin' road broke, I knew you was givin' her some kind of a +hole to creep into."</p> + +<p>So they had known, she and Jerry. But they had not told. They would +never tell.</p> + +<p>"One thing," said Charlotte, smoothing her apron and looking at him in +an anxious interrogation, "what be we goin' to say? That was the first +thing doctor asked: 'Who done it?' (You know I let him in.) ''Twas a +poor crazed creatur,' says I, 'after pa'tridges.' I was goin' to say +Dick had a gun an' tripped up over a root; but that never'd do in the +world, shot in the back so."</p> + +<p>"The partridges'll do for the present," said Raven grimly. "He's +certainly crazy enough. He said he was shooting partridges. We'll take +it at that."</p> + +<p>Charlotte went on, and he sat thinking. So Tira had chosen not to come. +So fixed was his mind on the stern exigency of the situation, as it now +stood, that her disobedience in itself irritated him. The right of +decision, as he reasoned, had passed out of her hands into his. He was, +in a sense, holding the converging lines of all this sudden confusion; +he was her commanding officer. At that moment, when he was recognizing +his anger against her and far from palliating, cherishing it as one of +the tools in his hand, to keep him safely away from enfeebling doubt, +Milly came noiselessly down the stairs. She would, he realized, in her +unflinching determination to do the efficient thing, be as silent as a +shadow. She appeared in the doorway, and her face, her bearing, were no +longer Milly's. This was a paper semblance of a woman, drawn on her +lines, but made to express grief and terror. Quiet as she was, the shock +had thrown her out of her studied calm. She was elemental woman, +despising the rigidities of training, scourged into revolt. Even her +dress, though fitted to the technical needs of the hour, was unstudied. +Her hair, ordinarily waved, even in the country, by the intelligence of +her capable fingers, was twisted in a knot on the back of her head. +Raven, so effective had been the success of her ameliorating devices, +thought Milly's hair conspicuously pretty. But now there was a little +button of it only, as if she had prepared for exacting service where one +displaced lock might undo her. A blue silk negligée was wrapped about +her, with a furled effect of tightening to the blast, and her face was +set in a mask of grief that was not grief alone, but terror. She came in +and sat down in one of the chairs by the hearth, not relaxing in the +act, but as if she could no longer stand.</p> + +<p>"John!" she said, in a broken interrogation. "John!"</p> + +<p>He got up and elaborately tended the fire, laying the sticks together +with an extreme care, and thinking, as he did it, by one of those idle +divagations of the mind, like a grace note on the full chord of action, +that a failing fire had helped a man out of more than one hole in this +disturbing life. It gave your strung nerves and rasped endurance a +minute's salutary pause. He put down the tongs and returned to his +chair.</p> + +<p>"Buck up, Milly," said he. "Everything's being done. Now it'll be up to +Dick."</p> + +<p>But he realized, as if it were another trial setting upon him at the +moment when he had borne enough, that his eyes were suddenly hot. This +was not for Milly, not for himself. Again, for some obscure reason, he +saw Dick's eyes, softened, childlike, as he had recalled them without +their glasses. Through these past weeks of strain, he had been irritated +with the boy, he had jeered at him for the extravagances of his gusty +youth. Why, the boy was only a boy, after all! But Milly, leaning +forward to the fire, her trembling hands over the blaze, was talking +with amazing intensity, but still quietly, not to disturb the stillness +of the expectant house. For the house, suddenly changed, seemed itself +to be waiting, as houses do in time of trouble. Was it for Dick to die +or to take on life again? Houses are seldom kind at such times, even in +their outward tranquillity. They are sinister.</p> + +<p>And when Milly began to speak, Raven found he had to deal with a woman +surprisingly different from the one who had striven to heal him through +her borrowed aphorisms.</p> + +<p>"To think," she began, "to think he should escape, after being over +there—over there, John, in blood and dirt and death—and come home to +be shot in the back by a tramp with a gun! Where is the man? You +detained him, didn't you? Don't tell me you let him go."</p> + +<p>"I know where to find him," Raven temporized. "He'd no idea of going."</p> + +<p>She insisted.</p> + +<p>"You think it was an accident? He couldn't have had a grudge. Dick +hadn't an enemy."</p> + +<p>"You can make your mind easy about that," said Raven, taking refuge in a +detached sincerity. "It wasn't meant for Dick. He was as far from the +fellow's thoughts as the moon."</p> + +<p>He remembered the fringe of somber woods and the curve of the new moon.</p> + +<p>"It isn't so much the misfortunes of life," Milly kept on. She was +beating her knee now with one closed hand and her voice kept time. "It's +the chances, the horrible way things come and knock you down because +you're in their path. If he doesn't"—here she stopped and Raven knew +she added, in her own mind, "if he doesn't live—I shall never believe +in anything again. Never, John, never!"</p> + +<p>Raven was silent, not only because it seemed well for her to free her +mind, but because he had a sudden curiosity to hear more. This was Milly +outside her armor at last. When she had caught him out of his armor, she +had proposed sending him to the Psychopathic, and here she was herself, +raving against heaven and earth as unrestrainedly as a savage woman +might beat her head against a cliff.</p> + +<p>"Chance!" she repeated. "That's what it is, chance! He got in the way +and he was struck. I lived through the War. I gave my son. What more +could I do? But now, to have him come home to our old house and be shot +in the back! How can you sit there and not move a muscle or say a word? +What are you thinking about?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Raven quietly, "if you'll believe me, I'm thinking about +you. I'm mighty sorry for you, Milly. And I'm keeping one ear cocked for +Nan."</p> + +<p>"There's no change," she interrupted him. "Charlotte would tell us. I +left Nan on purpose. I want him, every time he opens his eyes, to see +her there. She's the one he wants. Mothers don't count." Here again the +elemental woman flashed out and Raven welcomed the reality of it. "She +couldn't help being kind, with him as he is."</p> + +<p>No, he inwardly concurred, Nan, who had kissed the boy to hearten him in +his need, would be ready with her medicinal love again. She'd pour +herself out: trust her for that.</p> + +<p>"Besides," he said, "besides you and Dick and Nan, I was thinking of Old +Crow."</p> + +<p>"Old Crow?" This threw her out for an instant and she went back to her +conception of Raven as a victim of complexes of which Old Crow was +chief. "It's no time for dwelling on things that are past and gone. You +think far too much about Old Crow. It weakens you."</p> + +<p>"Old Crow," said Raven quietly, "is the chap you and I need here +to-night. I'd like mighty well to sit down and talk it over with him. So +would you, if you knew him better. Old Crow went through what you and I +are going through now. He found the world a deuced puzzling place and he +didn't see the conventional God as any sort of a solution. And then—I +don't suppose you're going to bed right off. You won't feel like sleep?"</p> + +<p>"Bed!" she flung out. "Sleep!"</p> + +<p>"Then look here, Milly," said Raven, "you do what I tell you." He opened +a drawer in his desk and took out the mottled book. "Here's Old Crow's +journal. You sit here by the fire and read it while I take Nan's place +and send her off to bed. And if it doesn't give you an idea Old Crow's +got his mind on us to-night, wherever he is, I'm mistaken."</p> + +<p>He brought her the book. She took it, with no interest, leaving it +unopened on her knee.</p> + +<p>"Wherever he is," she repeated, not precisely curious, but as if she +might be on the verge of it when she again had time. "I didn't know you +believed in immortality."</p> + +<p>"I didn't, either," said Raven. "But," he added, "I believe in Old +Crow."</p> + +<p>She was holding the book mechanically and he left her sitting with it +still unopened and went in to Dick. He found him restless, not in any +movement of his body but in the glance of his dilated eyes. Nan looked +up, grave, steady, gone back, as Raven saw, to her trained habit of +action, emotionless, concentrated on the moment.</p> + +<p>"You'd better go up to bed," said Raven. "I'll stay now. He can have you +to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"He can have me all the time," said Nan clearly, and Dick's eyes turned +upon her with an indifferent sort of query. How much did she mean by +that? It sounded as if she meant everything, and yet Raven, his heart +constricting, knew it might not be more than impetuous sacrifice, the +antidote given in haste. But now Dick spoke and Raven bent to him, for +either he was too weak to speak clearly or he was saving himself.</p> + +<p>"Don't arrest him. No end of talk."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven. "It wasn't you he was out for."</p> + +<p>The restless eyes turned on Nan.</p> + +<p>"Go to bed," said Dick.</p> + +<p>Her hand had been on his and she took it gently away, and got up.</p> + +<p>"I'm not sleepy," she said. "I'll camp in the library a while."</p> + +<p>When she had gone Raven, sitting there by Dick, who did not speak again, +listened for the murmur of voices from the library. Would they keep +companionable vigil, the two women, heartening each other by a word, or +would they sit aloof, each wrapped in her own grief? There was not a +sound. They were falling in with that determination of the house to +maintain its sinister stillness, its air of knowing more than it would +tell.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXXIX" id="XXXIX"></a>XXXIX</h2> + + +<p>Tenney, not finding the key of the hut, and increasingly alive to the +anguish flaring in his foot, went home by the back way. Tira was waiting +at the door. She saw him coming, and, for that first moment, he could +ignore the pain in a savage recognition of her plight. She had, he +thought, having missed the key, not even tried the door. But this brief +summary of her guilty folly angered him for the moment only. He was +suddenly tired, and his foot did ache outrageously. He gave way to the +pain of it, and limped heavily. As he neared the house, however, his +face did relax into a mirthless smile. There were tracks under the +kitchen window. She had hoped to get in that way and had found the +window fastened. And all the time there was the door, ready for a +confident hand. But the ill chance of it amused him for not much more +than the instant of its occurrence. His mind recoiled upon his own +miserable state. He had gone out in search of justice, and he had come +home in terror of what he had himself unjustly done. If he had been +imaginative enough to predict the righteous satisfaction he expected +from his vengeance on Raven, he might have foreseen himself coming back +to bring Tira the evil news, and smiling, out of his general rectitude, +at her grief and terror. Perhaps he would have been wrong in those +unformulated assumptions. Perhaps he would not have been calm enough for +satisfaction in the completed deed, since the mind does, after a red +act, become at once fugitive before the furies of inherited beliefs and +fears. Perhaps it would have shrunk cowering back from the old, old +penalty against the letting of blood, as it did now when he was faced +with the tragic irony of the deed as it was. He had shed blood and, by +one of the savage mischances of life, the blood of a man innocent of +offense against him. After the first glance at Tira, he did not look at +her again, but passed her, threw open the door, and went in. His +thoughts, becoming every instant more confused, as the appalling moments +in the woods beat themselves out noisily, seemed to favor closing the +door behind him. It was she who had brought him to this pass. It was she +who had locked his door upon herself and, in her wantonness, as good as +thrown away the key. Let her stay outside. But he was not equal to even +that sharpness of decision and Tira, after she found the door swinging +free, went in.</p> + +<p>Tenney had seated himself in his arm-chair by the window. He had not +taken off his hat, and he sat there, hands clasped upon the stick Raven +had tossed him, his head bent over them. He looked like a man far gone +in age and misery, and Tira, returning from the bedroom, the child in +her arms, felt a mounting of compassion and was no longer afraid. She +laid the child in its cradle and, with a cheerful clatter, put wood in +the stove. The child cried fretfully and, still stepping about the room, +she began to sing, as if to distract it, though she knew she was making +the sounds of life about Tenney to draw him forth from the dark cavern +where his spirit had taken refuge. But he did not look up, and presently +she spoke to him:</p> + +<p>"Ain't you goin' to unharness? I'm 'most afraid Charlie'll be cold."</p> + +<p>The form of her speech was a deliberate challenge, a fashion of rousing +him to an old contention. For it was one of her loving habits with +animals to name them, and Tenney, finding that "all foolishness," would +never accept the pretty intimacies. To him, the two horses were the bay +and the colt, and now Tira, with an anxious intent of stirring him even +to contradiction, longed to hear him repeat, "Charlie?" adding, "D'you +mean the bay?" But he neither spoke nor moved, and she suddenly realized +that if she screamed at him he would not hear. She went on stepping +about the room, and presently, when the dusk had fallen so that she +could see the horse in the yard only as an indeterminate bulk, she +slipped out, unharnessed him, and led him into his stall. She began to +fodder the cattle, pausing now and then to listen for Tenney's step. But +he did not come. She returned to the house for her pails, lighted a +lantern, and went back to milk. Still he did not come, and when she +carried in her milk, there he sat in the dark kitchen, his head bent +upon his hands. Tira shut up the barn, came back to the kitchen, and put +out her lantern; then she was suddenly spent, and sat down a moment by +the stove, her hands in her lap. And so they sat together, the man and +woman, and the child was as still as they. He had whimpered himself off +to sleep.</p> + +<p>Tira, recognizing herself, with a dull indifference, as too tired to +move, was not at first conscious of thinking either about what she had +gone through or what was before her. But as her muscles relaxed, her +mind, as it was always doing now for its rest and comfort, left this +present scene where, for the first active moments, Tenney had filled her +thoughts, and settled upon Raven. He had told her to come to him. He had +ordered it, as if she belonged to him, and there was heavenly sweetness +in that. Tira loved this new aspect of him. She rested in it, as a power +alive to her, protecting her, awake to her well-being. Yet, after that +first glance at Tenney, sitting there with head bent over the stick, she +had not a moment's belief in her right to go. It was sweet to be +commanded, to her own safety, but here before her were the dark +necessities she must share. And suddenly, as she sat there, and the +sense of Raven's protectingness enfolded her and she grew more rested, a +feeling of calmness fell upon her, of something friendly nearer her than +Raven even (though it had seemed to her lately as if nothing could be +more near), and she almost spoke aloud, voicing her surprised delight: +"Why, the Lord Jesus Christ!" But she did not speak the words aloud. She +refrained in time, for fear of disturbing Tenney in some way not wise +for him; but her lips formed them and they comforted her. Then, suddenly +tranquillized and feeling strong, she rose and fed the child and made +some bustling ado, talking about milk and bread, hoping to rouse Tenney +to the thought of food. But he sat there darkly, and by and by she put +the kettle on and, in the most ordinary manner, made tea and spread +their table.</p> + +<p>"Come," she said to him. "Supper's ready. We might's well draw up."</p> + +<p>He did glance at her then, as if she had surprised him, and she smiled, +to give him confidence. At that time Tira felt all her strength, her +wholesome rude endurance, to the full, and stood tall and steady there +in the room with the two who were her charge and who now, it seemed to +her, needed her equally. Tenney rose with difficulty and stood a moment +to get control of his foot. He walked to the table and was about to sit +down. But suddenly his eyes seemed to be drawn by his hand resting on +the back of the chair. He raised it, turned it palm up and scrutinized +it, and then he looked at the other hand with the same questioning gaze, +and, after a moment, when Tira, reading his mind, felt her heart beating +wildly, he went to the sink and pumped water into the basin. He began to +wash his hands. There was nothing on them, no stain such as his fearful +mind projected, but he washed them furiously and without looking.</p> + +<p>"You stop a minute," said Tira quietly. "I'll give you a mite o' hot +water, if you'll wait."</p> + +<p>She filled a dipper from the tea kettle, and, tipping the water from his +basin into the sink, mixed hot and cold, trying it solicitously, and +left him to use it.</p> + +<p>"There!" she said, standing by the table waiting for him, "you come as +quick's you can. Your tea'll be cold."</p> + +<p>So they drank their tea together, and Tira forced herself to eat, and, +from the store of woman's experience within her, knew she ought to urge +him also to hearten himself with meat and bread. But she did not dare. +She could feel the misery of his sick mind. She had always felt it. But +there were reactions, of obstinacy, of rage almost, in the obscurity of +its workings, and these she could not challenge. But she poured him +strong tea, and when he would take no more, got up and cleared the +table. And he kept his place, staring down at his hand. He was studying +it with a look curiously detached, precisely as he had regarded it at +the moment when he seemed to become aware of its invisible stain. Tira, +as she went back and forth about the room, found herself also, by force +of his attitude, glancing at the hand. Almost she expected to find it +red. When her work was done, she sat down by the stove and undressed the +baby, who was fretful still and crying in a way she was thankful to +hear. It made a small commotion in the room. If it irritated Tenney into +waking from his daze, so much the better.</p> + +<p>Ten o'clock came, and Tenney had not stirred. When eleven struck she +roused from her doze and saw his head had sunken forward; he was at the +nodding point of sleep. She had been keeping up the fire, and presently +she rose to put in wood, knocking down a stick she had left on the end +of the stove to be reached for noiselessly. He started awake and rose, +pushing back his chair.</p> + +<p>"Is that them?" he asked her, with a disordered wildness of mien. "Have +they come?"</p> + +<p>By this she knew he expected arrest for what he had done.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, in her quietest voice. "Nobody's comin' here to-night. I +dropped a stick o' wood, that's all. Don't you think you better poke off +to bed?"</p> + +<p>He did not answer her, but went to the window, put his hands to his face +and peered out. Then he turned, stood a moment looking about the room as +if for some suggestion of refuge, went to the couch, and lay down. Tira +stood for a moment considering. Almost at once, he was asleep. She threw +a shawl over him and went into the bedroom and stretched herself as she +was on the bed.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XL" id="XL"></a>XL</h2> + + +<p>Raven, to his sorry amusement, discovered something. It was Milly, and +she had changed. Indubitably Milly regarded him with a mixture of wonder +and of awe. He had taken command of the situation in the house and +developed it rationally. The house itself had become a converging point +for all medical science could do for a man hit in a vital spot and +having little chance of recovery. But what Raven knew to be the common +sense of the measures he brought to pass, Milly, in her wildness of +anxiety, looked upon as the miracles of genius. She even conciliated +him, as the poor human conciliates his god. She brought him the burnt +offering of her expressed belief, her humility of admiration. And +whenever one of the family was allowed to supplement the nurses, by day +or night, she effaced herself in favor of Raven or Nan. Raven was the +magician who knew where healing lay. Nan was warmth and coolness, air +and light. Dick's eyes followed Nan and she answered them, comforting, +sustaining him, Raven and Milly fully believed, in his hold on earth. +But as to Milly, Raven had to keep on wondering over her as she wondered +at him. So implicit had been his belief in her acquired equipment for +applying accepted remedies to the mischances of life, that he was amazed +at seeing her devastated, overthrown. She was even less calm than the +women he remembered here in this country neighborhood. When sickness +entered their homes, they were, for the most part, models of efficient +calm. They had reserves of energy. He wondered if Milly had crumbled so +because she had not only to act but to decide how to seem to act. She +had to keep up the wearisome routine of fitting her feelings to her +behavior, her behavior to her feelings. There were not only things to be +done; there were also the social standards of what ought, in crises, to +be felt. She had to satisfy her gods. And she simply wasn't strong +enough. Her hold was broken. She knew it, clutched at him and hung on +him, a dead weight, while he buoyed her up. Were they all, he wondered, +victims of the War? Milly, as she said that night when she came to him +in her stark sincerity while Dick lay unconscious, had given him up +once. She had given him to the War, and done the act with the high +decorum suited to it. And the country had returned him to her. But now, +grotesque, bizarre beyond words, she had to surrender him to a fool +"shooting pa'tridges." For facing a travesty like that, she had no +decorum left.</p> + +<p>Dick, too, was the victim of abnormal conditions. He had been summoned +to the great act of sacrifice to save the world, and the call had +challenged him to after judgments he was not ripe enough to meet. It had +beguiled him into a natural sophistry. For had not the world, in its +need, called mightily on the sheer strength and endurance of youth to +slay the dragon of brute strength in her enemies? Youth had done it. +Therefore there was no dragon, whether of the mind or soul, it could not +also slay. His fellows told him so, and because they were his fellows +and spoke the tongue he understood, he believed it with a simple honesty +that was Dick.</p> + +<p>As to Nan, she seemed to Raven the one sane thing in a bewildered world; +and for himself: "I'm blest if I believe I'm so dotty, after all," he +mused. "What do you think about it?" And this last he addressed, not to +himself, but to the ever-present intelligence of Old Crow. He kept +testing things by what Old Crow would think. He spoke of him often, as +of a mind active in the universe, but only to Nan. And one night, late +enough in the spring for the sound of running water and a bitterness of +buds in the air, he said it to her when she came down the path to him +where he stood listening to the stillness broken by the ticking of the +season's clock—steady, familiar sounds, that told him winter had broken +and the heart of things was beating on to leaf and bloom. He had, if he +was not actually waiting for her, hoped she would come out, and now he +saw her coming, saw her step back into the hall for a scarf and appear +again, holding it about her shoulders. At last, firm as she was in +spirit, she had changed. She was thinner, with more than the graceful +meagerness of youth, and her eyes looked pathetically large from her +pale face. She had seen Dick go slipping down the slope, and now that +beneficent reactions were drawing him slowly back again, she was feeling +the waste of her own bodily fortitude.</p> + +<p>"Where shall we go?" she asked him. "Been to the hut lately?"</p> + +<p>No, Raven told her, he hadn't been there for days. They crossed the road +and began the ascent into the woods.</p> + +<p>"So you don't know whether she's been there?" Nan asked. She stopped to +breathe in the wood fragrances, coming now like a surprise. She had +almost forgotten "outdoors."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. "I know. Sometimes I fancy she won't need to go there +again. Tenney's a wreck. He sits there in the kitchen and doesn't speak. +He isn't thinking about her. He's thinking of himself."</p> + +<p>"How do you know? You haven't been over?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I went over the morning after the shooting. I intended to tell +Tira to get her things on and come down to the house. But when I saw +him—saw them—I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"You were sorry for him?" Nan prompted.</p> + +<p>They had reached the hut, and Raven took out the key from under the +stone. Close by, there was a velvet fern frond ready to unfurl. He +unlocked the door and they went in. Her last question he did not answer +until he had thrown up windows and brought out chairs to the veranda at +the west. When they were seated, he went on probing for his past +impression and speaking thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't know that I was particularly sorry for him. But somehow the +two of them there together, with that poor little devil between +them—well, it seemed to me I couldn't separate them. That's marriage, I +suppose. Anyhow it looked to me like it: something you couldn't undo +because they wouldn't have it undone."</p> + +<p>Nan turned on him her old impetuous look.</p> + +<p>"You simpleton!" she had it on her tongue to say. "She doesn't want it +undone because anybody that lifts a finger will get you—not her—deeper +into the mire." But she did say: "I don't believe you can even guess +what she wants, chiefly because she doesn't want anything for herself. +But if you didn't ask her to leave him, what did you do?"</p> + +<p>"I told him to hold himself ready for arrest."</p> + +<p>"You're a funny child," commented Nan. "You warn the criminal and give +him a chance to skip."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven unsmilingly. "I hoped he would. I thought I was giving +her one more chance. If he did skip, so much the better for her."</p> + +<p>"How did she look?" asked Nan, and then added, tormenting herself, +"Beautiful?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, beautiful. Not like an angel, as we've seen her. Like a saint: +haggard, with hungry eyes. I suppose the saints hunger, don't you? And +thirst." He was looking off through the tree boles and Nan, also +looking, found the distance dim and felt the sorrow of youth and spring. +"Everything," said Raven, "seems to be in waves. It has its climax and +goes down. Tenney's reached the climax of his jealousy. Now he's got +himself to think about, and the other thing will go down. Rather a big +price for Dick to pay, to make Tira safe, but he has paid and I fancy +she's safe." He turned to her suddenly. "Milly's very nice to you," he +asserted, half interrogatively.</p> + +<p>He saw the corner of her mouth deepen a little as she smiled. Milly had +not, they knew, been always nice.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she agreed, "very nice. She gives me all the credit she doesn't +give you about doctors and nurses and radiographs and Dick's hanging on +by his eyelids. She says I've saved him."</p> + +<p>"So you have," said Raven. "You've kept his heart up. And now you're +tired, my dear, and I want you to go away."</p> + +<p>"To go away?" said Nan. "Where?"</p> + +<p>"Anywhere, away from us. We drain you like the deuce."</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan, turning from him and speaking half absently, "I can't go +away."</p> + +<p>"Why can't you?"</p> + +<p>"He'd miss me."</p> + +<p>"He'd know why you went."</p> + +<p>Her old habit of audacious truth-telling constrained her.</p> + +<p>"I should have to write to him," she said. "And I couldn't. I couldn't +keep it up. I can baby him all kinds of ways when he's looking at me +with those big eyes. But I couldn't write him as he'd want me to. I +couldn't, Rookie. It would be a promise."</p> + +<p>"Milly thinks you have promised." This he ventured, though against his +judgment.</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan. "No, I haven't promised. Do you want me to?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," Raven answered, without a pause, as if he had been +thinking about it interminably. "If it had some red blood in it, if you +were—well, if you loved him, Nan, I should be mighty glad. I'd like to +see you living, up to the top notch, having something you knew was the +only thing on earth you wanted. But these half and half things, these +falterings and doing things because somebody wants us to! God above us! +I've faltered too much myself. I'd rather have made all the mistakes a +man can compass, done it without second thought, than have ridden up to +the wall and refused to take it."</p> + +<p>"Do you think of her all the time?" she ventured, in her turn, and +perversely wondered if he would think she meant Tira and not Aunt Anne.</p> + +<p>But he knew. "No," he said, "I give you my word she's farther away from +me than she ever was in her life. For a while she was here, at my elbow, +asking me what I was going to do about her Palace of Peace. But +suddenly—I don't know whether it's because my mind has been on +Dick—suddenly I realized she was gone. It's the first time." Here he +stopped, and Nan knew he meant it was the first time since his boyhood +that he had felt definitely free from that delicate tyranny. And being +jealous for him and his dominance over his life, she wondered if another +woman had crowded out the memory of Aunt Anne. Had Tira done it?</p> + +<p>"And you haven't decided about the money."</p> + +<p>"I've decided," he surprised her by saying at once, "to talk it out with +Anne."</p> + +<p>She could only look at him.</p> + +<p>"One night," he continued, "when Dick was at his worst, I was there +alone with him, an hour or so, and I was pretty well keyed up. I seemed +to see things in a stark, clear way. Nothing mattered: not even Dick, +though I knew I never loved the boy so much as I did at that minute. I +seemed to see how we're all mixed up together. And the things we do to +help the game along, the futility of them. And suddenly I thought I +wouldn't stand for any futility I could help, and I believe I asked Old +Crow if I wasn't right. 'Would you?' I said. I knew I spoke out loud, +for Dick stirred. I felt a letter in my pocket—it was about the estate, +those bonds, you remember—and I knew I'd got to make up my mind about +Anne's Palace of Peace."</p> + +<p>Nan's heart was beating hard. Was he going to follow Aunt Anne's +command, the poor, pitiful letter that seemed so generous to mankind and +was yet so futile in its emotional tyranny?</p> + +<p>"And I made up my mind," he said, with the same simplicity of hanging to +the fact and finding no necessity for explaining it, "to get hold of +Anne, put it to her, let her see I meant to be square about it, but it +had got to be as I saw it and not as she did. Really because I'm here +and she isn't."</p> + +<p>Her eyes filled with tears, and as she made no effort to restrain them, +they ran over and spilled in her lap. She had thought hard for him, but +never so simply, so sternly as this.</p> + +<p>"How do you mean, Rookie," she asked humbly, in some doubt as to her +understanding. "How can you get hold of Aunt Anne?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said he. "But I've got to. I may not be able to get at +her, but she must be able to get at me. She's got to. She's got to +listen and understand I'm doing my best for her and what she wants. Old +Crow understands me. And when Anne does—why, then I shall feel free."</p> + +<p>And while he implied it was freedom from the tyranny of the bequest, she +knew it implied, too, a continued freedom from Aunt Anne. Would he ever +have set his face so fixedly toward that if he had not found Tira? And +what was Tira's silent call to him? Was it of the blood only, because +she was one of those women nature has manacled with the heaviness of the +earth's demands? Strangely, she knew, nature acts, sometimes sending a +woman child into the world with the seeds of life shut in her baby hand, +a wafer for men to taste, a perfume to draw them across mountain and +plain. The woman may be dutiful and sound, and then she suffers +bewildered anguish from its potency; or she may league herself with the +powers of darkness, and then she is a harlot of Babylon or old Rome. And +Tira was good. Whether or not Raven heard the call of her +womanhood—here Nan drew back as from mysteries not hers to touch—he +did feel to the full the extremity of her peril, the pathos of her +helplessness, the spell of her beauty. She was as strong as the earth +because it was the maternal that spoke in her, and all the forces of +nature must guard the maternal, that its purpose may be fulfilled. Tira +could not speak the English language with purity, but this was +immaterial. She was Tira, and as Tira she had innocently laid on Raven +the old, dark magic. Nan was under no illusion as to his present +abandonment of Tira's cause. That he seemed to have accepted the ebbing +of her peril, that he should speak of it with something approaching +indifference, did not mean that he had relaxed his vigilance over her. +He was not thinking of her with any disordered warmth of sympathy. But +he was thinking. Suddenly she spoke, not knowing what she was going to +say, but out of the unconscious part of her:</p> + +<p>"Rookie, you don't want anything really, do you, except to stand by and +give us all a boost when we're down?"</p> + +<p>Raven considered a moment.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he said, "precisely what I do want. If you told me Old +Crow didn't want anything but giving folks a boost, I'm with you there. +He actually didn't. You can tell from his book."</p> + +<p>"I can't seem to bear it," said Nan. She was looking at the darkening +woods and her wet eyes blurred them more than the falling dusk. "It +isn't healthy. It isn't right. I want you to want things like fury, and +I don't know whether I should care so very much if you banged yourself +up pretty well not getting them. And if you actually got them! O Rookie! +I'd be so glad."</p> + +<p>"You're a dear child," said Raven, "a darling child."</p> + +<p>"That's it," said Nan. "If you didn't think I was a child, perhaps you'd +want me. O Rookie! I wish you wanted me!"</p> + +<p>Into Raven's mind flashed the picture of Anne on her knees beside him +saying, in that sharp gasp of her sorrow, "You don't love me." This was +no such thing, yet, in some phase, was life going to repeat itself over +and over in the endless earth journeys he might have to make, futilities +of mismated minds, the outcry of defrauded souls? But at least this +wasn't his cowardly silence on the heel of Anne's gasping cry. He could +be honest here, for this was Nan.</p> + +<p>"My darling," he said, "you're nearer to me than anything in this +world—or out of it. Don't you make any mistake about that. And if I +don't want things 'like fury,' as you say, it's a matter of the +calendar, that's all. Dick wants them like fury. So do you. I'm an old +chap, dear. You can't set back the clock."</p> + +<p>But he had pushed her away, as his aloofness had pushed Anne. He had +thrown Anne back upon her humiliated self. He had tossed Nan forward +into Dick's generation and hers. But here was the difference. She wasn't +going to cry out, "You don't love me." Instead, she turned to him, +shivering a little and drawing her scarf about her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"We'd better go down," she said. "It's getting cold. Dick'll be +wondering."</p> + +<p>They got up and Raven set the chairs inside the hut and took his glance +about to see if all was in order: for he did not abandon the unwilling +hope that Tira might sometime come. As they went down the hill the talk +turned to the hylas and the spring, but when they reached the house Nan +did not go in to Dick. She went to her own room and lay down on her bed +and thought passionately of leaving Rookie free. How was it possible? +Could he be free while she was bound? Sometimes of late she had been so +tired that she could conceive of no refuge but wild and reckless outcry. +And what could he think she meant when she said: "I wished you wanted +me"?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLI" id="XLI"></a>XLI</h2> + + +<p>Spring came on fast and Nan, partly to assure Milly she wasn't to be +under foot forever, talked of opening her house and beginning to live +there, for the first time without Aunt Anne. But she predicted it, even +to Milly, with no great interest, and Raven, though he had urged her to +run away from the cloudy weather Milly and Dick made for her, protested +against her living alone. Dick was now strong enough to walk from his +room to the porch, and Raven, watching him, saw in him a greater change +than the languor of low vitality. He had the bright-eyed pallor of the +man knocked down into the abyss and now crawling up a few paces (only a +few, tremulous, hesitating) to get his foothold on the ground again. He +was largely silent, not, it sometimes seemed, from weakness, but the +torpor of a tired mind. He was responsive to their care for him, ready +with the fitting word and look and yet, underneath the good manners of +it all, patently acquiescent.</p> + +<p>Then Nan found herself rested, suddenly, in the way of youth. One +morning she got up quite herself again, and wrote her housekeeper to +assemble servants and bring them up, and told Raven he couldn't block +her any longer. She had done it for herself, and she quoted the +over-worked commonplace of the psychological moment. He, also believing +in the moment, refrained from argument and went over to open doors and +windows. He was curiously glad of a word with her house, not so much to +keep up old acquaintance as to ask its unresponsiveness whether it was +going to mean Nan alone for him hence-forth or whether, at a time like +this when he stood interrogating it, Anne Hamilton also stood there, in +her turn interrogating him. Was she there to-day? Everything spoke +mutely of her, the wall-paper she had prized for its ancient quaintness, +the furniture in the lines of grace she loved. At that desk she had sat, +slender figure of the gentlewoman of a time older than her own. Was her +presence so etched in impalpable tracery on the air that he ought to +feel it? Was she aching with defeated hopes because she might almost be +expecting him, not only to remember but even to hear and see? No death +could be more complete than the death of her presence here. He could +not, even by the most remorseful determination, conjure up the living +thought of her. Somehow it had seemed that here at least he might +explain himself to her, feel that he had made himself clear. He did +actually speak to her:</p> + +<p>"I can't do it, Anne. Don't you see I can't?"</p> + +<p>This was what he had meant when he told Nan he must get hold of her. +What place could be so fortunate as this, full of the broken threads of +her personality? They only needed knitting up by his passionate +challenge, to be Anne. He called upon her, he caught the fluttering +fringes of her presence in his trembling hands. But he could not knit +them up. They broke, they floated away. It seemed, from the dead +unresponsiveness of her house, as if there had never been any Anne. So +he gave it up, and, in extreme dullness of mind, went about opening +windows, and as the breeze idled in and stirred the waiting air and the +sunlight rushed to it, he seemed to be sweeping the last earthly +vestiges of her from the place that had known her best. And at once it +appeared to him that he had done an inexorable, perhaps even a cruel +thing, and he hurried out, leaving the air and sun to be more merciful +than he.</p> + +<p>When he went into his own yard he saw Dick sitting under the western +pines, where Raven had set a couple of chairs and had a hammock swung. +Dick had ignored the hammock. He scarcely sat at ease, and Raven had an +idea he was meeting discomfort halfway, with the idea of making himself +fit. He did say a word of thanks for the chairs.</p> + +<p>"Only," he added, "don't let it look too sociable. That'll be as bad as +the porch." He laughed a little, and concluded: "I don't mean you, Jack. +You know that, don't you?"</p> + +<p>Raven guessed he was allowing himself the indulgence of avoiding his +mother. For now Milly, as he recovered, had struggled hard for her lost +poise and regained it, in a slightly altered form, it is true; but still +she had it pretty well in hand, she was unweariedly attentive to him and +inexorably self-sacrificing in leaving Nan the right of way. Her life +had again become a severely ritualistic social enterprise, but now she +was just far enough lacking in spontaneity to fail in playing her game +as prettily as she used. It was tiring to watch, chiefly because you +could see how it tired her to play.</p> + +<p>Raven went down the little foot-path to Dick, and he thought anew how +illness had ravaged him. He had the tired eyes, the hollow cheek of +ineffective youth.</p> + +<p>"Hoping you'd come," said Dick. "Now, where's Tenney?"</p> + +<p>"Tenney," said Raven, "is at home, so far as I know. I saw him last +night."</p> + +<p>"Go up there?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"What for?"</p> + +<p>Raven smiled a little, as if he found himself foolish or at best +incomprehensible.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "I gave him every chance to skip. I hoped he would. +That would be the simplest way out. But when I found he wasn't going to, +I began to go there every night to let him see I was keeping an eye on +him. I don't go in. I just call him out and we stare over each other's +heads and I inform him you're better or not so well (the probation +dodge, you know) and he never hears me, apparently, and then I go away. +I've got used to doing it. Maybe he's got used to having it done. Maybe +it's a relief to him. I don't know."</p> + +<p>"Does he still look like a lunatic at large?"</p> + +<p>"More or less. His eyes are less like infuriated shoe buttons, but on +the whole he seems to have quieted a lot."</p> + +<p>"You don't suppose," said Dick, "you've put the fear of God into him?"</p> + +<p>"Not much. If anybody has, it was you when he saw you topple over and +knew he'd got the wrong man."</p> + +<p>"He was laying for you, then," said Dick.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said Raven. "Tira was there, telling me he'd set up a gun, +and she'd got to the point of letting Nan take her away, when he fired. +What the dickens were you up there for, anyhow?" he ended, not quite +able to deny himself reassurance.</p> + +<p>"I'd heard he was out with a gun," said Dick briefly. "Charlotte told +me. And I gathered from your leaving word for Nan that the Tenney woman +was there—at the hut, you know."</p> + +<p>"Don't say 'the Tenney woman,'" Raven suggested. "I can't say I feel +much like calling her by his name myself, but 'the Tenney woman' isn't +quite——"</p> + +<p>"No," said Dick temperately. "All right, old man, I won't."</p> + +<p>"Awfully sorry you got it instead of me," said Raven, apparently without +feeling. He had wanted to say this for a long time. "Wish it had been +the other way round."</p> + +<p>"I don't, then," said Dick, gruffly in his turn. "It's been an +eye-opener, the whole business."</p> + +<p>"What has?"</p> + +<p>"This." He evidently meant his own hurt and the general viewpoint +induced by it. "I'm not going to stay round here, you know," he +continued, presenting this as a proposition he had got to state abruptly +or not at all.</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"I don't believe I could say," Dick temporized, in a way that suggested +he didn't mean to try. "There's Mum, you know. She's going to be at me +again to go in for my degree. Oh, yes, she will, soon as she thinks I +won't come unglued. Well, I don't want it. I simply don't. And I don't +want what she calls a profession: any old thing, you know, so long as +it's a profession. I couldn't go in for that either, Jack. If I do +anything, it's got to be on my own, absolutely on my own. Fact is, I'd +like to go back to France."</p> + +<p>"Reconstruction?" Raven suggested, after a minute.</p> + +<p>"Maybe. Not that I'm specially valuable. Only it would be something to +get my teeth into."</p> + +<p>Was this, too, Raven wondered, an aftermath of the War? Had it shaken +the atoms of his young purpose too far astray for them ever to cohere +again? Dick had had one purpose. Even that didn't seem to be surviving, +in any operative form.</p> + +<p>"Writing?" he suggested. "Oxford—and poetry?"</p> + +<p>Dick shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Raven, "if it's France then, maybe I'll go with you."</p> + +<p>Dick smiled slightly. Did his lip tremble?</p> + +<p>"No," he said, at once, as if he'd been waiting for it, "you stay here +and look after Nan."</p> + +<p>This gave Raven the slightest opening.</p> + +<p>"That's the devil of it," he said, "your leaving Nan."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Dick quietly, his eyes on an orchard tree where an unseen +robin sang, "I'm leaving her."</p> + +<p>"She's been devoted to you," Raven ventured.</p> + +<p>"Quite so. I've been lying there and seeing——"</p> + +<p>He paused and Raven prompted:</p> + +<p>"Seeing what?"</p> + +<p>Dick finished, with a deeper quiet:</p> + +<p>"Seeing her look at you."</p> + +<p>Raven, too, stared at the tree where the robin kept up the bright beauty +of his lay. He was conscious, not of any need to combat this finality of +Dick's, but of a sense, more poignant than he could support without +calling on his practiced endurance, of the pity of it, the "tears of +things." Here was youth, its first bitter draught in hand, not recoiling +from it, but taking it with the calmness of the older man who has fewer +years to taste it in. He could not ask the boy to consider, to make no +hasty judgment. Whatever lay behind the words, it was something of a +grave consequence. And Dick himself led the way out of the slough where +they were both caught.</p> + +<p>"Curious things come to you," he said, "when you're laid by the heels +and can't do anything but think: I mean, as soon as you get the nerve to +think."</p> + +<p>"Such as?"</p> + +<p>"Well, poetry, for one thing. When I began to think—and I didn't want +it to be about Nan any more than I could help—I used to have a +temperature, you know—puzzled them, doctor, nurse, all of you. Nan, +that was! I knew it, though the rest of you hadn't the sense. Well, I +made my mind run away from it. I said I'd think about poetry, my long +poem. I'd lie there and say it over to myself, and see if the rest of it +wouldn't come." He laughed a little, though not bitterly. He was frankly +amused. "What do you think? I couldn't even remember the confounded +thing. But I could other things: the verse I despised. Wasn't that the +limit? Omar Khayyám! I lay there and remembered it by the yard."</p> + +<p>"That's easy," said Raven. "Nothing like the first impressions. They +stick."</p> + +<p>"Evidently," said Dick. "They did stick. And my stuff didn't."</p> + +<p>"Is this," Raven ventured, not seeing whether the boy was quivering +under his calm, "a case against the moderns?"</p> + +<p>Dick answered promptly, though Raven could only wonder, after all, just +what he meant:</p> + +<p>"It's a case against me." He went on, his eyes still on the melodious +orchard converts. It must have been a vagabond robin swaggering there, +really deriding nests, he found so much leisure to sing about them. "I +wanted to say I didn't get you that time when you told me you'd pretty +much done with the world. I though Mum was right: <i>cafard</i>, you +remember. But I've swung round into the same rut. It's a rotten system. +I'm done with it."</p> + +<p>Raven looked at him in a sudden sharp misery of apprehension. First, Old +Crow, then he, then Dick, one generation following another.</p> + +<p>"Don't you go that path, old man," he said. "You'll only lose your way +and have to come back."</p> + +<p>"Come back?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Old Crow did. Remember the book. He challenged the whole business, +and then he swung round to adoring it all, the world and Whoever made +it. He didn't understand it a whit better, but he believed, he accepted, +he adored."</p> + +<p>"What would you say?" Dick asked curiously, after a moment. "Just what +happened to him?"</p> + +<p>"Why, I suppose," said Raven, "in the common phrase, he found God."</p> + +<p>They were silent for a time and both of them tried desperately to think +of the vagabond robin. Raven, his mind released by this fascination of +dwelling on Dick apart from any responsibility of talking to him, found +it running here, there, back and forth, over these weeks of their stay +together. It halted, it ran on, it stopped again to consider, but always +it was of Dick and incidentally of himself who didn't matter so much, +but who had to be in it all. Were they at one in this epidemic of world +sickness? As the great explosive forces of destruction and decay seemed +to have released actual germs to attack the physical well-being of +races, had the terrible crashes of spiritual destinies unsettled the +very air of life, poisoned it, drugged it with madness and despair? Was +there a universal disease of the mind, following this wholesale +slaughter, which the human animal hadn't been able really to bear though +it had come to a lull in it, so that now it was, in sheer shrieking +panic, clutching at its various antidotes to keep on living? One +antidote was forgetfulness. They were forgetting the War, some thousands +of decent folk who clearly had meant to remember. A horrible antidote +that, but perhaps they had to take it to save themselves. Too big a +price to pay for living (and such thread-paper lives!) but still there +did seem to be a prejudice in favor of the mere drawing of breath. Maybe +you couldn't blame them, spinning in the sunshine like insects of a day. +Some of the others had to save themselves by the wildness of a new +intoxication. They danced, their spirits danced: a carmagnole it was, a +dance of death, the death of the spirit as he saw it. But maybe, with +this preposterous love of life in them they, too, had to do it. Maybe +you couldn't blame them. He and Dick—they had been like two children, +scared out of their wits, crying out, hitting at each other in the dark. +Youth and age, that was what they had fought about. It had been an +unseemly scrap, a "you're another." Dick had been brought up against +life as it looks when you see it naked, the world—and what a world! No +wonder he swore it was a world such as neither he nor his fellows, like +him aghast, would have made. He would simply have to live some quarter +century to find out what sort of a world he and his fellows did actually +make.</p> + +<p>And Raven: Lord! Lord! what was the use of having traveled his own +quarter century along the everlasting road if it didn't make him at +least silent in sheer pity of it: youth singing along to the Dark Tower, +jingling spurs and caracoling nag, something it didn't quite know the +feeling of shut in its nervous hand? What was it shut there? The key, +that was it: the key to the Dark Tower. Youth made no doubt it was the +key, easy to hold, quick to turn, and the gate would fly open and, if +youth judged best, even the walls would fall. And yet, and yet, hasn't +all youth held the key for that borrowed interval and do the walls ever +really fall? But if age doesn't know enough to include youth in its +understanding, as youth (except the poets) couldn't possibly include +age, why then!</p> + +<p>"I am," thought Raven, returning to the Charlottian vernacular, "very +small potatoes and few in a hill."</p> + +<p>And what was the Dick, the permanent Dick who would remain after a few +more years had stripped him of the merely imitative coloring he caught +from his fellows? Dick talked about "herd madness," and here was he, at +one with his own herd. He piped in verse because a few could sing, +he—but what was the use hammering along on the old dissonance: youth, +age, age, youth. And yet they needn't be dissonant. They weren't always. +There was Nan! But as to Dick, he was simply Dick, a good substratum of +his father, Anthony Powell, in him, a man who had had long views on +trade and commerce and could manage men. And a streak of Raven, not too +much but enough to imagine the great things the Powell streak would show +him how to put his hand to.</p> + +<p>Dick had been staring at him, finding him a long way off, and now he +spoke, shyly if still curiously:</p> + +<p>"Would you say you'd found God?"</p> + +<p>Raven came back; he considered.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, at last, "I couldn't say anything of the sort: it sounds +like such awful swank. But I rather stand in with Old Crow. The fact is, +Dick"—it was almost impossible to get this clarified in his own mind to +the point of passing it on—"Old Crow's made me feel somehow—warm. As +if there's a continuity, you know. As if they keep a hand on us, the +generations that have passed. If that's so, we needn't be so infernally +lonesome, now need we?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Dick, "we are pretty much alone."</p> + +<p>"But we needn't be," said Raven, painfully sticking to his text, +"because there are the generations. The being loyal to what the +generations tried to build up, what they demand of us. And behind the +whole caboodle of 'em, there's something else, something bigger, +something warmer still. Really, you know, if only as a matter of +convenience, we might call it—God."</p> + +<p>A silence came here and he rather forgot Dick in fantastically thinking +how you might have to climb to the shoulders of a man (Old Crow's, for +instance) to make your leap to God. You couldn't do it from the ground. +Dick had taken off his glasses to wipe them and Raven, recalling himself +and glancing up, found his eyes suffused and soft.</p> + +<p>"Jackie," said Dick, "you're a great old sport."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLII" id="XLII"></a>XLII</h2> + + +<p>The spring had two voices for Tira, the voice of a fainting hope and the +voice of fear. The days grew so capriciously lovely that her heart tried +a few notes in answer, and she would stand at her door and look off over +the mountain, fancying herself back there on the other side with the +spirit of girlhood in her, drawing her, in spite of dreary +circumstances, to run, to throw herself on the ground by cool violet +banks to dream and wake, all flushed and trembling, and know she must +not tell that dream. But when the dusk came down and the hylas peeped +and the moist air touched her cheek, she would lose courage and her +heart beat miserably in tune with the melancholy of spring. Still, on +the whole, she was coming alive, and no one knew better than she that +life, to be life, must be also a matter of pain. Tenney was leaving her +to a great extent free. He was off now, doing his fencing, and he would +even, returning at noon or night, forget to fall into the exaggerated +limp he kept in reserve to remind her of his grievance. She had not seen +Raven for a long time now, except as he and Nan went by, always looking +at the house, once or twice halting a moment in the road, as if debating +whether they should call. And Tira, when she saw them, from her hiding +behind the curtain, would step to the door and fasten it against them. +She would not answer, she told herself, if they knocked. But they never +did knock. They went on and left her to her chosen loneliness. For an +instant she would be unreasonably hurt, and then smile at herself, +knowing it was she who had denied them.</p> + +<p>It was an April morning when the spring so got into her blood that she +began to wish for things. They were simple things she wished for: +chiefly to feel herself active in the air and sun. She wanted to go +away, to tire herself out with motion, and she made up her mind that, if +Tenney went to the long pasture fencing, she would shut the house and +run off with the baby into the woods. The baby was heavy now, but +to-day, in her fullness of strength, his weight was nothing to her. They +might even go over to Mountain Brook by the path "'cross lots" where the +high stepping stones led to the track round the mountain. She loved the +look of the stepping stones in spring when the river swirled about them +and they dared you to cross and then jeered at you because the water +foamed and threatened. She sang a little, finishing her morning tasks, +and Tenney, coming from the barn with his axe, to start on his day's +fencing, heard her sing. Tira, when she saw him, was in such haste to be +off herself that she called to him from the window:</p> + +<p>"Here! don't you forget your luncheon. I've got it 'most put up."</p> + +<p>He glanced back over his shoulder, and spoke curtly:</p> + +<p>"I don't want it. I'm goin' over on the knoll."</p> + +<p>Her heart fell. The day was done. She would have to stay and get his +dinner. Even an hour's vagabondage would be impossible, for the knoll +was across the road overlooking the house and he would see her go. All +these weeks she had held herself to a strict routine, so that every +minute could be accounted for. This day only she had meant to break her +habit and run. It was over then. She was bitterly disappointed, as if +this, she thought, smiling a little to herself, was the only day there +was. She might as well wash blankets. She went to the bedroom to slip +off her dress and put on a thick short-sleeved apron: for Tira was not +of those delicate-handed housewives who can wash without splashing. She +dripped, in the process, as if, Tenney used to tell her in the first +days of their marriage, she got in all over. In her bedroom, with the +sweet air on her bare arms and the robins calling and the general tumult +and busy ecstasy outside, she stopped to wonder. Could she take the baby +and slip out by the side door, and come back in time to fry Tenney's ham +for dinner? No, it wouldn't do. He would be in for a drink, or the cow +shut up in the barn with her calf would "loo" and he would wonder if +anything was happening to them. A dozen things might come up to call him +back. She would wash blankets. Then she saw the baby, through the +doorway, sitting where she had put him, on the kitchen rug, and a quick +anger for him possessed her.</p> + +<p>"In that hot kitchen," she said aloud, "when there's all outdoors!"</p> + +<p>She dragged one of the blankets from the bed, ran out as she was, +bare-armed, bare-necked, and spread it on the grass in front of the +house.</p> + +<p>"It's goin' to be washed anyways," she placated the housewifely instinct +within her, and she ran in for the baby and set him on the blanket. One +heart-breaking thing about this baby who was "not right" was that there +were no answers in him. She had tried all the wiles of motherhood to +show him how she loved him, and coax him to respond, not so much in +actual sentience to her as a baby's rejoinder to the world he could see +and touch. He had no answers. But this morning when the sun fell warmly +on him and the breeze stirred his coppery hair, he did, it seemed, hear +for an instant the voice of earth. He put out his fat hands and gurgled +into a laugh. Tira went mad. She was immediately possessed by an +overwhelming desire to hear him laugh again. She called to him, in +little cooing shouts, she stretched out her arms to him, and then, when +he would not be persuaded even to turn his head to her, she began to +dance. Perhaps after the first step she really forgot about him. Perhaps +the mother ecstasy ran into the ecstasy of spring. Perhaps, since she +could not answer the lure of the woods by running to them that morning, +the woods ran to her, the green magic of them, and threw their spell on +her. She hardly saw what was about her, even the child. The cherry tree +in bloom was a great whiteness at her right, the sun was a splendor, the +breeze stirred her hair, and the child's head was a coppery ball she +fixed her eyes upon. And while she waved her arms and danced, Martin, +who had seen her from the road, and left his horse there, was coming +toward her across the grass. Why could she not have seen him stop? Why +was he nothing more than a tree trunk in the woods, standing there while +she flung up her white arms and danced? The earth spirits may know. Pan +might know. They had got Tira that day, released from her winter's +chill. She did not, and still less Martin, his own blood rising with +every pulse.</p> + +<p>"Hooray!" he yelled. "That's the talk."</p> + +<p>He made a stride and Tira darted back. But it was not she he ran toward. +It was the child. He bent to the baby, caught him up and tossed him +knowingly and the baby, again incredibly, laughed. Tira, taken aback at +the sight of Martin, like a sudden cloud on her day, was arrested, in +her first rush toward him, by the pretty laugh. Her baby in Martin's +hands: that was calamity unspeakable. But the child had laughed. She +would hardly have known what price she would refuse even to the most +desperate of evil spirits that could conjure up that laugh. She stood +there breathless waiting on the moment, afraid of the event yet not +daring to interrupt it, and Martin tossed the baby and the baby laughed +again, as if it were "right." For Martin himself, except as the +instrument of the miracle, she had hardly a thought. It might have been +a hand out of heaven that had caught up the child, a hand from hell. But +the child laughed. Martin, for the interval, was neither malevolent nor +calculating. This was not one of his impish pleasantries. It might have +been in the beginning, but he was enormously flattered at having touched +the spring of that gurgling delight. For this was, he knew, a solemn +baby. He had glanced at it, when he came Tira's way, but only carelessly +and with no idea it was not like all babies. He supposed they began to +take notice sometime, when they got good and ready. Queer little devils! +But he was as vain and eager in his enjoyment of the response to his own +charm as he was prodigal in using it. The spring day had got into his +blood, too, and when he saw Tira dancing, the baby a part of the bright +picture, he had taken the little devil up, with no purpose but somehow +because it seemed natural, and when the child laughed he knew he had +made a hit and kept on, singing now, not a cradle song but a man's song, +something he had not himself thought of since he heard his old +grandmother drone it between smokes, while she sat by the fire and +dreamed of times past. It was something about Malbrook—"gone to the +army"—"hope he never'll come back." And there was Tira now, within the +circle of his fascination, bending a little toward him, her eyes darker +than he had seen them for many a day, her white arms wide, as if she +invited him. He wondered how a woman with her black hair could have a +skin so white; but he never guessed the lovely arms were stretched +toward the child and not to him, and that they would have snatched the +baby but for that amazing laugh. He stopped, breathless more from his +thoughts than his gay exertion, and gave a shout.</p> + +<p>"Here!" he cried, to Tira, in a joviality of finding her at one with him +and the day (this first prime day of spring, a day that ought to make a +person shake a leg), "you take him. Fine little chap! Set him on the +ground ag'in an' you an' me'll have a tell."</p> + +<p>Tira took the step toward him and lifted her arms for the child. She was +glad the wild game had ended. Martin put the baby into her arms, but +instantly she felt his hands on her elbows, holding her.</p> + +<p>"Guess that's the way to git you, ain't it?" he inquired, in jovial good +humor. "You can't scratch with the youngster between us. You can't cut +an' run. By thunder, Tira! you're as handsome as you were that day I see +you first an' followed you home? Remember? You're like"—his quick mind +saw it at a leap—"you're like this cherry tree, all a-bloom."</p> + +<p>He bent his head to her arm, almost as white as the cherry bloom and +kissed it. A shadow dropped upon them. It was only a little sailing +cloud but it startled Tira more than the kiss; the look of the day had +changed so suddenly and as if it were changing for them alone. For there +outside was the bright affluence of spring just as it had been but over +them the warning cloud. She glanced about, in the one instant of +darkening, and on the knoll across the road saw what the kind little +cloud might have been sent to tell her. Tenney stood there, a stark +figure, watching them. Her numbness to the presence of Martin who stood +holding her broke in a throb of fear. The instant before, his lips on +her arm had been no more than the touch of a leaf that might have blown +there. She did not even remember it. She lifted her face to his and, +seeing the fear in it, he involuntarily released her and she stepped +away from him.</p> + +<p>"You go," she said. "Go quick. He's over there on the knoll. My God! +don't look. Don't you know no better'n to look? He's fencin'. He's got +his axe."</p> + +<p>But Martin had looked. He gave a little disconcerted laugh and turned +away.</p> + +<p>"So long!" he called back over his shoulder. "Glad the little chap took +to me. Have him out here an' whenever I'm goin' by——"</p> + +<p>She did not hear. She had run, as if from nearing danger, into the house +and closed the door behind her. It was warmer even in the few minutes +since she had come out, but she had lost her delight in the open. She +was afraid, and as Martin stepped into his wagon, he wondered why. Tira +was a good, strong, husky girl, a streak of the gypsy in her. Sometimes +in the old days he'd been half afraid of her himself when things didn't +suit, mostly after he got carrying on with some other girl. The way her +eyes opened on a chap! Why didn't she open 'em that way on Tenney? Queer +proposition, a woman was, anyways.</p> + +<p>Tira carried the baby into the front room and sat down by the window, +still holding him. She pushed her chair back until the curtain hid her +and, through the narrow strip between curtain and casing, kept her eyes +on Tenney. For several minutes after Martin had driven away, he stood +there, still as a tree. Then the tree came alive. Tenney moved back to +the left, where the fence ran between field and pasture, and she lost +him. But she could not hear his axe. In her anxiety she strained the +child against her until he struggled and gave a fitful cry. She did not +heed the cry. This, her instinct told her, was the only safe place for +him on earth: his mother's arms.</p> + +<p>All through the morning she sat there, looking now and then from the +window, and still holding the child. When the clock struck eleven, the +sound awoke her. If she was to get dinner, she must be about it. Was she +to get dinner? Or was she to assume that this day marked the settlement +of the long account? The house itself, still in its morning disorder, +told her the moment had come. The house itself, it seemed to whisper, +could not possibly go on listening to the things it had listened to +through the winter or holding itself against the horror of the more +horrible silence. Who would think of eating on the verge of this last +inevitable settlement? And what would the settlement be? What was +there—she thought over the enemies she had feared. The crutch: that was +gone. She had made sure of that. The gun: but if it were here she +doubted whether Tenney would dare even look at it again, remembering +that night when he washed at the invisible stain on his hands. A quarter +of an hour had gone in these imaginings, and then she did get up, went +into the kitchen, built her fire, and set the table. But as she moved +about the room, she carried the baby with her, working awkwardly against +his weight and putting him down for a minute only at a time and +snatching him up again at an unexpected sound. Once a robin called just +outside the window, a bold bright note; it might have been the vagabond +robin from Raven's orchard who sang about nests but seemed never to +break off singing long enough to find a straw for one. She caught up the +child from the couch and stood breathless, listening. It seemed as if +the robin knew, and somehow, like Martin, felt like laughing at her.</p> + +<p>Tenney was there, at a few minutes after twelve, but dinner was not on +time. He came in, washed his hands at the sink and glanced about him. +The table was set, and Tira, at the stove, the child on her hip, was +trying the potatoes. She did not look at him. If he looked strange, it +seemed to her she might not be able to go on.</p> + +<p>"I ain't dished up," she said. "I'm kinder late."</p> + +<p>Tenney spoke immediately and his voice sounded merely quiet, not, she +reasoned anxiously, as if he tried to make it so, but just—quiet.</p> + +<p>"You ain't washed the breakfast dishes neither. Ain't you feelin' well?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tira, "well as common. I left 'em, that's all."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Tenney. "Wanted to git at suthin' else."</p> + +<p>She turned and looked at him. Yes, he was different, not paler, nor, as +she had seen him, aflame in a livid way, but different.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el," she said, "I never knew 'Gene Martin was goin' to stop here. I +knew no more'n the dead."</p> + +<p>"Was that him?" asked Tenney indifferently. "I see somebody stopped. I +thought mebbe 'twas the butcher. Then I remembered he comes of a +Wednesday."</p> + +<p>That settled it in her mind. The weekly call of the butcher was as fixed +as church on Sunday. Tenney was playing for something, and she +understood. The moment had come. The house and she both knew it. She was +not sorry, and perhaps, though she had been good to it and kept it in +faithful order, the house was not sorry either. Perhaps it would rather +rest and fall into disorder the way Tenney would let it, if he were here +alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with +the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence +that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law. +He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did +not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind. +Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning—three together in May +sunshine—had confirmed his ugly doubts, he was relieved to wash his +hands of them both. The phrase came into her mind, and that in itself +startled her more than any fear of him. Wash his hands! How pitiful he +had been that night he washed his hands!</p> + +<p>They sat down to dinner together, and though Tira could not eat, she +made pretense of being too busy, getting up from the table for this and +that, and brewing herself a cup of tea. Tenney had coffee left over from +breakfast, and when her tea was done she drank it hastily, standing at +the sink where she could spill a part of it unnoticed. And when dinner +was over he went peaceably away to the knoll again, and she hastily set +the house in order while the baby slept.</p> + +<p>When Tenney came home he was quite the same, silent but unmoved, and +after milking he took off his boots by the stove and seemed to doze, +while Tira strained the milk and washed her dishes. She was still sure +that she and the child were to go. When would it be? Would the warning +come quickly? She wanted to leave the waiting house in order, the house +that seemed to know so much more about it all than she did. The fire had +gone down in the stove, but though the night was warm, Tenney still sat +by the hearth, huddled now in his chair, as if he wanted the comforting +of that special spot: the idea of the hearthstone, the beneficence of +man's cooking place. Tira's mind was on the night, the warmth of it, the +moist cool breath bringing the hylas' peeping. It made her melancholy as +spring nights always had, even when she was most happy. She thought of +the willows feathering out on the road to her old home, and how the +sight of them against the sky, that and the distant frogs, made her +throat thick with the clamor of a rising fear. The river road was the +one she would take when she was turned out, even if the willows did look +at her as she went by and lay that moist, cool hand of foreboding on her +heart. She had a plan, sprung together like the pieces of a puzzle since +she had known he was to send her away. There was a sawmill over the +other side of the mountain and the men's boarding house. She could get +work there. It would be strange if a woman so strong and capable could +not get work.</p> + +<p>Tenney stirred in his chair, roused himself from his huddled posture and +got up. Was he going to tell her now?</p> + +<p>"I guess mebbe I'll poke off to bed," he said, in his commonplace manner +of that noon. "I've got to be up bright an' early."</p> + +<p>"Ain't you finished on the knoll?" she ventured.</p> + +<p>"Yes, or next to it. But I've got quite a number o' jobs to do round +home."</p> + +<p>He went up the stairs without a light, carrying his shoes in his hand, +and Tira shivered once, thinking how horrible it was to go so softly in +stockinged feet. She was not afraid of him. Only she did wish his feet +would sound. She did not sleep that night. She brought in the cradle, +put the baby in it, and drew it to the window and there she sat beside +it, the night through, her hand on the broken hood. She had chosen a +high, straight chair, so that she might be too uncomfortable to sleep, +but she had no temptation to drop off. All her nerves were taut, her +senses broad awake. She was ready, she knew, for anything. The night was +peaceful, thrilled by little sounds of stirring life, and the house, +whatever it guessed, had forgotten all about her. Toward three o'clock +she suddenly lost her sense of vitality. She was cold, and so sleepy now +that the thought of bed was an ache of longing. She got up, found +herself stiff and heavy-footed, lifted the child from his cradle and +went into the bedroom with him. There she put him inside the sheets, and +lay down beside him on the outside of the bed. She slept at once, but +almost at once she was recalled. Tenney was standing in the bedroom +door, looking at her.</p> + +<p>"Wake up," he was saying, not unkindly. "Wake up."</p> + +<p>She came drowsily awake, but before she was fully herself her feet were +on the floor and she was rubbing her heavy eyes. The sun was streaming +in.</p> + +<p>"I've blazed the fire an' het me up some coffee," he said, still in that +impersonal way which was so disturbing only because it was not his way. +"I've harnessed up. I'm goin' to the street. You remember where that +Brahma stole her nest? I've got to have two eggs for even dozens."</p> + +<p>"Up in the high mow," said Tira. "Right under the beam."</p> + +<p>She heard him go out through the shed, and she followed, to the kitchen, +slowly, with the squalid feeling that comes of sleeping in one's day +clothes, and there she found the fire low and his cup and plate on the +bare table. She could see him through the window. There was the horse, +hitched to the staple in the corner of the barn, there was the basket of +eggs on the ground waiting for its even dozens.</p> + +<p>"D'you find any?" she called.</p> + +<p>He did not answer, and she ran out to the barn and called up to the mow:</p> + +<p>"You there? You find any?"</p> + +<p>But the barn, in its soft darkness, with a beam of dusty light here and +there, knew nothing about him. He had not climbed to the mow, for the +ladder was on the other side of the barn floor. She lifted it, brought +it over, set it against the hay and climbed. She was broad awake now, +and her taut muscles obeyed and liked it. She stepped on the hay, found +the dark hole old Brahma chose for her secret hoarding place, and put in +her hand, once, twice. Three eggs! Brahma must have thought she was +pretty smart to lay three without having them stolen away from her. Tira +put the eggs carefully in her apron pocket and hurried down the ladder, +and out to the basket waiting on the ground. How many eggs did he want +to make even dozens? Did he tell her? She could not remember. Probably +he had forgotten himself, by now. She sat down on the step and took the +eggs out in her lap, and then began to count and put them back again. +The sun lay on them and they looked pretty to her in their brown +fairness. She liked them, she thought, as she counted, liked all the +farm things, the touch of them, the smell. Even old Charlie, standing +there, smelled of the barn, and that was good, too. Five dozen, that was +it, and one over. She put the extra egg in her pocket, got up and +carried the basket to the wagon, placing it in front where it could sit +safely between Tenney's feet. And at that minute Tenney himself came +round the corner from the front of the house, and the day was so kind +and the sun so warm on her face that it seemed a long time ago she had +thought he meant to send her away, and she called to him:</p> + +<p>"You might git a quarter o' tea, the kind they call English breakfast. +An' a half a dozen lemons. It's terrible hard to think up any kind of a +pie these days, 'twixt hay an' grass."</p> + +<p>"Tea," said Tenney, as if he were putting it down in his mind. "An' +lemons. You might go out, in a half an hour or so, an' look at that +calf."</p> + +<p>He stepped into the wagon, took up the reins and drove away. Tira +watched him out of the yard, and at last she had no suspicion of his +coming back, as he had done so often, to surprise her. He was +somehow—different. He was really gone. She went in, got her breakfast +and ate it, this with more appetite than she had had for many weeks, and +smiled at herself, thinking she was not sleepy yet, but when sleep came +on her it would come like a cloud and smother her. She moved fast about +the kitchen to get her work done before it came, and in perhaps an hour +she remembered Tenney's telling her to have an eye to the calf. She +smiled a little, grateful for even the tiniest impulse to smile, and +told herself she wouldn't go out to look after any calf until she had +looked at somebody else who ought to be awake. She went into the +bedroom, and stopped a choked instant at the strangeness of the bed. The +little coppery head was what she should have seen, but there was only +the straight expanse of quilt, and a pillow, disarranged, lying +crookedly near the top. She snatched up the pillow. There was the little +coppery head. The baby was lying on his back, and over his face, +carefully folded into a square, was her apron, the one Eugene Martin had +torn away from her. The baby was dead.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLIII" id="XLIII"></a>XLIII</h2> + + +<p>Tenney did not come home until two o'clock. When he drove into the yard +he found Tira there, standing on the step. This was a day of clear +sunlight, like that of yesterday, and the breeze moved her light rings +of hair. Tenney glanced at her once, but, saying nothing, got out and +began to unharness. Tira stood waiting. He led the horse into the barn, +and when he came out and walked toward the house she was still waiting, +a woman without breath even, one might have thought. When he was perhaps +three feet from her she spoke, but in a quiet voice:</p> + +<p>"Stop! You stan' right there an' I'll tell you. The doctor's been. I +'phoned him. I told him I overlaid the baby."</p> + +<p>"Overlaid?" muttered Tenney, in a puzzled way.</p> + +<p>Now a little feeling did manifest itself in her voice, as if he must be +a fool not to have known these tragedies that come to mothers.</p> + +<p>"Overlaid," she repeated, with the slightest tinge of scorn. "That's +what women do sometimes, big heavy women! Roll over on the little +creatur's an' lay on 'em so 't they can't breathe. I s'pose they can't +help it, though. They're tired. I told him I done that. He was sorry for +me. I asked him if the crowner'd come, an' I'd have to swear to't, an' +he said no. I was glad o' that, though mebbe it's no worse to swear to +anything than 'tis to say it. He was terrible good to me. I told him +baby'd got to lay over to Mountain Brook, side o' mother, an' he said he +was goin' there an' he'd git one of 'em to dig the little grave. I told +him you're all run down, your foot behavin' so, an' you wouldn't be able +to do nothin', an' I was 'most afraid o' your givin' out, when I told +you. So he's goin' to send the man with the little coffin."</p> + +<p>There was no faintest tremor of bitterness or gibing in this. It was the +simplest statement of facts. Tenney had stood perfectly still, but now +he lifted one hand and looked at it casually, as he had that other time. +He made an uncertain step, as if to pass her and enter the house, but +Tira stretched out her arms. They barred the way.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "you ain't comin' in."</p> + +<p>"Ain't comin' in?" repeated Tenney.</p> + +<p>He looked up at her, but his glance fell at once to the trembling hand.</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira, "you ain't comin' into this house ag'in till he's +carried out of it. I've made you up a bed in the lower barn an' I've set +you out suthin' to eat there. Day after to-morrer mornin' the doctor's +comin' over after me an' baby—or send somebody, if he can't come—an' +he's goin' to see to the minister an' all. He was terrible sorry for me. +An' that night, day after to-morrer night, you can come back into the +house; but you can't come before."</p> + +<p>She went in and shut the door behind her, and Tenney heard the key turn +sharply in the lock. He stood there several minutes, moistening his dry +lips and looking down at his hands, and then he, too, turned about and +went down to the lower barn, where he found a bed made up and a cold +lunch on a little table. But while he ate he wondered, in an absent +muse, about the bed. It was the old four-poster he had packed away in +the shed chamber. How had she carried the heavy hardwood pieces down, +fitted them together and corded them? He was curious enough to lift the +tick to find out what she had used for cord. Her new clothes-line; and +there was the bed wrench in the corner by the chopping block. It looked +as if, having done with it, she had thrown it there in a wild haste to +get on with these things that must be done before he came. Even then, +with his mind on his hands—not hands, it seemed to him, he could quite +bear to touch food with—he wondered if some man had helped her. Had +Martin been here again, or was it Raven? But, after all, nothing seemed +to matter: only the queer state of his hands. That was the trouble now.</p> + +<p>All through the next day he hung about the place, doing the barn work, +milking, taking the milk to the house, but stopping there, for Tira met +him at the door, took the pails from him, and carried them in without a +word. He wondered vaguely whether, having denied him entrance to his own +house, she meant to refuse him food also, but presently she appeared +with a tray: meat and vegetables carefully arranged and the coffee he +depended on. Then she pointed out a wooden box, a little chest that had +lived up in the shed chamber, lifted the lid and bade him note the +folded garments within: he must change to-morrow, and these were his +clean clothes. Occasionally he glanced at her, but he could not see that +she looked very different. She was always pale. Early in the morning of +the third day she appeared with hot water and a basket filled with what +seemed to him at first a queer assortment of odds and ends.</p> + +<p>"Here," she said, "here's your shavin' things. I'll set the little +lookin' glass up ag'inst the beam. Here's your razor. I'll fill the mug. +Now, you shave you. If anybody should happen to see you, they'd say +'twa'n't fittin' for a man to have his baird all over his face, day of +his baby's funeral."</p> + +<p>The glass, with its picture of a red and blue house and a cedar tree, +she set against a beam, but it escaped her fingers and fell forward and +cracked straight across the little house. She picked it up, balanced it +against the beam and held it, with a frowning care, until it was secure.</p> + +<p>"Sign of a death!" she said, as if to herself, but indifferently. +"There! you shave you now, an' then I'll bring you out your breakfast +an' carry in the things."</p> + +<p>Tenney shaved before the little mirror with its crack across the house, +and, as if she had been watching him, she appeared at the minute of his +finishing. Now she was carrying a breakfast tray, poising it absorbedly, +with the intentness of a mind on one thing only. It was a good +breakfast, eggs and coffee and bacon, and the thick corn-cake he liked; +also, there was his tin lunch box. She pulled out the little table, set +the tray on it and brought his chair.</p> + +<p>"There!" said she. "Now soon as ever you've finished eatin' you take +your luncheon an' your axe an' go over to the long pastur' an' don't you +show your head back here till it's time to fetch the cows. You can bring +'em along with you, an' I'll have the pails out on the step so 't you +can start right off milkin'. An' when you've got through, you fetch the +milk into the house, same as usual."</p> + +<p>As she was leaving the barn she turned and the breeze lifted those +little rings of her hair and Tenney, looking full at her now, groaned. +It was not, he felt, any of the other things that had happened to them: +only there was always breeze enough, even on the stillest day, to stir +her hair. Now it seemed to be the only thing in the world with life in +it.</p> + +<p>"I shall tell 'em," she said clearly, as if she wanted him to understand +and remember—and she did not look at him, but across the road and up +the slope where the hut stood waiting for her—"the doctor an' all the +rest I've got to see, you was so sick over it, you couldn't come."</p> + +<p>Then she stepped out of the picture she had made against the smiling +day, the dark interior of the barn framing her, and walked, with her +free-swinging step, to the house. And Tenney ate his breakfast, took his +luncheon box and axe, and started for the woods. But he had not got out +of the yard when she called to him. He stopped and she came running; she +was no longer pale, and her eyes were rimmed with red. She came up with +him.</p> + +<p>"Isr'el," she said, "you think o' this. You think of it all day long. +'I'm goin' through it alone,' you says to yourself mebbe, after you've +got off there into the woods. 'But I ain't alone. He'll be with me, the +Lord Jesus Christ.' An' you remember there's that to think on. An' +there's forgiveness. Isr'el, you lay down your axe. You let me take holt +o' your hand."</p> + +<p>He could only stare at her, and she took the axe from his hand and laid +it at their feet. She took his hand and put it to her cheek. Then she +took his other hand and laid that also on her cheek, and murmured a +little formlessly, but in a way he sharply remembered as a means of +stilling the baby. She lifted her head then, smiling a little, and still +holding the hands. But before releasing them she stroked them softly and +said, "There! there! Poor souls," she added, "poor souls!" Did she mean +the unhappy hands, or all souls of men caught in the network of +mysterious life? She picked up his axe and gave it to him as a mother +might dismiss a child who was going to a distasteful task. "There!" she +said again. "Now, you remember." She turned from him, and Tenney went, +head down, to his work.</p> + +<p>That afternoon, about three o'clock, Nan was in her garden, busy with +the peony bed. She was dressed in cotton crêpe the color of the soil, +and her cheeks were red, like wild roses, and her ungloved hands also +the color of mould. She was delightfully happy getting into the earth +and the earth into her, and she looked it. Charlotte, coming on her +across the grass, thought her face was like a bloom the rest of her had +somehow made, as the earth was going to make red peonies. That is, I +think Charlotte thought something of this sort, though she would not +have put it in that way. Only she did have a great sense of Nan's entire +harmony with the garden bed and the garden bed with her. Charlotte had +other things on her mind, and she spoke without preamble:</p> + +<p>"D'you know what's happened over to Tenney's?"</p> + +<p>Nan got up from her knees, and her face was no longer the April-May face +she had bent above the peonies.</p> + +<p>"No," she said. "What is it?"</p> + +<p>"I see doctor go by this mornin' in his car," said Charlotte, "carryin' +Tira. In a couple of hours they come back. An' then he went by ag'in, +goin' down home. I was on the lookout an' stopped him. I was kind of +uneasy. An' he says: 'Yes, Mis' Tenney's baby's dead. She overlaid it,' +he says. 'They feel terribly about it,' he says. 'Tenney run away from +the services.'"</p> + +<p>Nan stood staring. She was thinking not only about the baby and the +Tenneys' feeling terribly—this Charlotte saw—but something farther +behind, thinking back, and thinking keenly.</p> + +<p>"I didn't say nothin' to nobody," Charlotte continued, "but the more I +thought on't the more stirred up I got. The baby gone, an' she there all +alone! So I run over. I knocked an' knocked, an' not a sound. Then, as I +was turnin' away, I got a glimpse inside the kitchen winder, an' if +you'll believe me there she set, hat an' all on, an' her hands full o' +daffies. You know them big double daffies always come up in their grass. +Well!"</p> + +<p>Nan threw down her trowel.</p> + +<p>"I'll go over," she said. "We'll both go."</p> + +<p>"What I come for," Charlotte hesitated, as they crossed the grass, "was +whether I better say anything to anybody."</p> + +<p>Nan knew she meant Raven.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "Oh, I don't know! We can't tell till we see."</p> + +<p>Nan remembered she had not washed the earth off her hands, and yet, +though they were passing her door, she could not stop. When they came in +sight of the house, there was Tira in the doorway. She had taken off her +hat now, and there was no daffies in her hands. She looked so +commonplace, if her height and nobility could ever be less august, that +Nan felt a sudden drop in her own anxiety. Tira called to them.</p> + +<p>"Couldn't you come in a minute? I'd be pleased to have you."</p> + +<p>They went up the path, and when they stood at the foot of the steps, +confronting her, Nan saw how she had changed. And yet not tragically: +she was merely, one would have said, entirely calm, the stillest thing +in that pageant of the moving day.</p> + +<p>"I'd be pleased," she said, "if you'd walk in."</p> + +<p>She looked at Nan, and Charlotte at once turned away, saying, as she +went:</p> + +<p>"If there's anything—well, I'll be over."</p> + +<p>Nan and Tira went in, Nan holding Tira's hand in her earthy one.</p> + +<p>"Let's sit here," said Nan, crossing the room to the sofa between the +side windows. She was not sure of anything about this talk except that +she must keep her hand on Tira. She noticed that the double daffies, a +great bunch of them, were lying on the table. Tira was smiling faintly. +She drew a deep breath. It sounded as if she had been holding herself up +to something and had suddenly let go.</p> + +<p>"Seems good to set," she said. "I ain't hardly set down to-day +except——" She had it in mind to say except when she was in the car, +carrying the baby over to Mountain Brook, but it seemed too hard a thing +to say.</p> + +<p>"If you'd just lie down," said Nan, "I'd sit here."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira, "I can't do that. I'm goin' over to Mountain Brook."</p> + +<p>"Not again? Not to-day?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, right off. I'm goin' to carry them daffies. He didn't have no +flowers, the baby didn't. I never thought on't—then. But he never had +none. He played with a daffy, 'most the last thing. I've got to git 'em +over there."</p> + +<p>"Not to-day, Tira," urged Nan. "You wouldn't get back till after dark."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't come back to-night," said Tira. "The Donnyhills were real +good to me. They come to the grave. They'd admire to have me pass the +night."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Nan, "you wait till I go home and wash my hands, and I'll +ask Mr. Raven for his car and you and I'll go over. Just we two."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira. "'Twouldn't do me no good to ride. When I've got +anything on my mind I can't do better'n walk it off. You let me be!"</p> + +<p>The last was a sharp, sudden cry, like the recoil from an unlooked-for +hurt.</p> + +<p>"I see," said Nan. "Yes, you must walk. I should want to, myself. But in +the morning, Tira—mayn't I come over after you?"</p> + +<p>Tira considered, her eyes on Nan's hand and her own clasped, lying on +Nan's knee.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "you better. You come to the Donnyhills'. Yes, you +come."</p> + +<p>Then she considered again, and began one of her slow, difficult +meanderings, where the quickness of her heart and brain ran ahead of her +tongue's art to interpret them.</p> + +<p>"Seems if you knew," she said, "'most everything that's gone on."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan, at a venture, and yet truthfully. "I think I've known."</p> + +<p>"An' now it's come to an end," said Tira. "Or if it ain't, it's on the +way to it. An' seems if you ought to know the whole. You're tough enough +to stan' up to 't."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan simply, "I'm very tough. Nothing's going to hurt me."</p> + +<p>"I bring," said Tira, still with difficulty, "bad luck. Some folks do. +Folks set by me a spell. Then they stop. They think I'm goin' to be +suthin' they'd do 'most anything for, an' then they seem to feel as if I +wa'n't. An' there's no"—she sought for a word here and came out +blunderingly—"no peace nor rest. Nor for me, neither. I ain't had peace +nor rest. Except"—here she paused again and ended gravely, and not this +time inadequately—"in him."</p> + +<p>Nan understood. She was grave in her answer.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Raven," she said. "I know."</p> + +<p>The color flowed into Tira's face and she looked at Nan, with her +jewel-like eyes.</p> + +<p>"I'm goin' to tell you," she said, "the whole story. He's like—my God. +Anything I could do for him—'twould be nothin'. Anything he asked of +me——"</p> + +<p>Here the light faded out from her face and the flesh of it had that +curious look of curdling, as if with muscular horror.</p> + +<p>"But," she said, "here 'tis. S'pose it come on him, that—that"—she +threw back her head in despair over her poverty of words—"s'pose it +made him like——Oh, I tell you there's suthin' queer about me, there's +suthin' wrong. It ain't that I look different from other folks. I ain't +ever meant to act different. I swear to my God I've acted like a decent +woman—an' a decent girl—an' when I was little I never even had a +thought! You tell me. You'd know."</p> + +<p>Nan felt the hand on hers tighten. She put her other hand over it, and +thought. What could she tell her? These matters were too deep in the +causes of things for man to have caught a glimpse of them, except now +and then darkly through some poet's mind. There was one word that, to a +poet's mind only, might have illumined the darkness if only for an +instant: beauty, that was the word. Mankind could not look on beauty +such as this and not desire, for a moment at least, to possess it +utterly. But these things belonged to the dark places where brute nature +wrought her spells. And there were other beauties, other enchantments, +and of these, what could Tira, her mind moulded by the brutal influences +of her life, see, except as dreams of her own, not as having wholesome +correspondences in the mind of man? Could she guess what the appeal of +her loveliness would meet in Raven? Fastidious standards, pride of +honor, pride of race. The jungle, in itself, was as hateful to him as it +could be to her, who had been dragged through its fetid undergrowth with +a violence that had cut indelible marks into her. But for him, Raven—as +Nan believed she knew him and as Tira, her striving mind obscured by the +veil of her remembered past, could never know—hadn't the jungle +something for him beyond choking savors and fierce destructive poisons? +Didn't he know that even that miasma nourished wholesome virtues, +strength, abstinence, infinite compassion, if you crossed the horrible +expanse to the clear air beyond? Tira, fair as her mind was in its +untouched integrity, hated the jungle, but it was a part of the wrong +life had done her that she could not, highly as she worshiped Raven, +keep herself from seeing his kinship to the natural earth as Martin's +kinship with it, Tenney's—all the beasts who had desired her. How to +tell her that? How to tell her that although it was most loving of her +to save Raven from the curse she believed to be upon all men, he would +save himself?</p> + +<p>"They think," Tira continued, in a voice rough enough to hurt the ear, +"there's suthin' about me—different. An' they feel as if, if they owned +me body an' soul they'd be—I dunno what they'd be."</p> + +<p>"They think they'd be gods," Nan's mind supplied. "You are beauty, Tira. +You are the cup. They think if they could drink of you they would never +thirst again."</p> + +<p>"An' now," said Tira, "s'pose a man like—like him—s'pose it looked to +him some minute he never'd so much as expected—s'pose it looked to him +as if he'd be made if he owned me body an' soul. Well! That's easy, you +say. If I love him, what's my body an' what's my soul? Offer 'em to him, +quick. An' wouldn't I, if that was all? Wouldn't I?"</p> + +<p>She called it sharply, in an angry challenge.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan quietly, "I know you would."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Tira, "what then? It wouldn't be any more"—her eyes, +glancing here and there in troubled search for help in her impossible +task of speech—"like them daffies over there. 'Twould be—mud."</p> + +<p>This, though it did not satisfy her, carried an ineffable loathing, the +loathing that had its seed in the pathway of her difficult life.</p> + +<p>"Now," she said, "you set by him, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan.</p> + +<p>"If 'twas your body an' soul, they'd be nothin' to you if he needed +'em."</p> + +<p>"Nothing."</p> + +<p>"An' you're goin' to stan' by him, an' if you marry away from him——"</p> + +<p>"Never mind that," said Nan. "What do you want me to do?"</p> + +<p>"I want you," said Tira, "to see what I mean. An' I want you to tell it +or not to tell it, as it seems best. An' if ever the time comes, when +it'll do him good to know I run away from him because he was my life an' +my soul an' my God, you tell him. An' if it ain't best for him to know, +you let it rest betwixt you an' me."</p> + +<p>"But, Tira," said Nan, "you're coming back?"</p> + +<p>Tira considered.</p> + +<p>"You see," she answered finally, "I've got my walkin' papers, as you +might say. The baby's gone. 'Twas the baby that made trouble betwixt his +father an' me. An' now there won't be no reason for my hidin' in the +shack up there or even passin' the time o' day with you, either of you. +An' that's a kind of a runnin' away, ain't it? Shouldn't you call it +runnin' away?"</p> + +<p>She smiled dimly, and Nan said:</p> + +<p>"Yes. But I shall come over to the Donnyhills' to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tira, "so do. Now I'd better go."</p> + +<p>They got up and Nan put her hands on Tira's shoulders—and one hand was +numb from that iron clasp—and stood looking at her. Nan was not a +kissing woman, but she considered whether she should kiss her, to show +she loved her. She thought not. Tira's body had so revolted against +life, the life of the earth that had grown up into a jungle, that it +would be kinder to leave it inviolate even by a touch.</p> + +<p>"Don't you want to change your mind?" Nan asked. "Mayn't I get the car? +It's seven long miles, Tira."</p> + +<p>"Not the way I'm goin'," said Tira. There was a little smile at the +corners of her mouth. It was a kind smile, a mother smile. She meant to +leave Nan reassured. "I go 'cross lots, by old Moosewood's steppin' +stones."</p> + +<p>Nan withdrew her hands and thought absently how thin Tira's shoulders +were under her dress. She was like a ship, built for endurance and +speed, but with all her loveliness in the beauty of bare line. Tira put +on her hat and took up her daffodils and followed, out at the front door +and down the path. Nan looked back.</p> + +<p>"You've left the door open," said she. "Don't you want to lock up?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Tira, "he'll see to it."</p> + +<p>At the gate they parted, with a little smile from Tira, the kind that so +strangely changed her into something more childlike than her youth.</p> + +<p>"You come," she said, "in the mornin'. I shall be there, an' glad enough +to have you."</p> + +<p>She turned away and broke at once into her easy stride. Nan stood a +minute watching her. Then something came up in her, a surge of human +love, the pity of it all—Tira, Raven, the world, and perhaps a little +of it Nan—and she ran after her. The tears were splashing down her face +and blurring the bright day.</p> + +<p>"Tira!" she called, and, as she came up with her, "darling Tira!"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Tira, "you're cryin'! Don't you cry, darlin'. I never so +much as thought I'd make you cry."</p> + +<p>They put their arms about each other and their cheeks were together, wet +with Nan's tears, and then—Nan thought afterward it was Tira who did +it—they kissed, and loosed each other and were parted. Nan went home +shaken, trembling, the tears unquenchably coming, and now she did not +turn to look.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLIV" id="XLIV"></a>XLIV</h2> + + +<p>Nan was very tired. She went to bed soon after dark and slept deeply. +But she woke with the first dawn, roused into a full activity of mind +that in itself startled her. There was the robin outside her window—was +it still that one robin who had nothing to do but show you how bravely +he could sing?—and she had an irritated feeling he had tried to call +her. Her room was on the east and the dawn was still gray. She lay +looking at it a minute perhaps after her eyes came open: frightened, +that was it, frightened. Things seemed to have been battering at her +brain in the night, and all the windows of her mind had been closed, the +shutters fast, and they could not get in. But now the light was coming +and they kept on battering. And whatever they wanted, she was +frightened, too frightened to give herself the panic of thinking it +over, finding out what she was frightened about; but she got up and +hurried through her dressing, left a line on her pillow for the maid and +went downstairs, out into a dewy morning. She had taken her coat, her +motor cap and gloves. Once in the road she started to run, and then +remembered she must not pass Tenney's running, as if the world were +afire, as things were in her mind. But she did walk rapidly, and +glancing up when she was opposite the house, saw the front door open as +Tira had left it, and a figure in one of the back rooms outlined against +the window of the front one where she and Tira had sat. That would be +Tenney. He must be accounting to himself for the lonesome house, though +indeed Tira would have left some word for him. When she went up the path +to Raven's door she was praying to the little imps of luck that Amelia +might not be the first to hear her. She tapped softly, once, twice, and +then Raven's screen came up and he looked down at her. They spoke a word +each.</p> + +<p>"Hurry," said Nan.</p> + +<p>"Wait," he answered, and put down the screen.</p> + +<p>When he came out, Nan met him on the top step where she had been +sitting, trying harder still not to be frightened. But he, too, was +frightened, she saw, and that this, to him also, meant Tira.</p> + +<p>"Get your coat," she said. "She's gone. Over to Mountain Brook."</p> + +<p>Raven's face did not alter from its set attention.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan, "the car. I'll tell you the rest of it on the way."</p> + +<p>He got his coat and cap, and they went down to the garage together. +Shortly, they were slipping out of the yard, and she, with one oblique +glance, saw Amelia at a window in her nightie, and forgot to be +frightened for the instant while she thought Amelia would be accounting +for this as one of her tricks and compressing her lips and honorably +saying nothing to Dick about it. Raven turned down the road and Nan +wondered if she had even spoken the name of Mountain Brook.</p> + +<p>"Let her out," said she.</p> + +<p>Raven did let her out. He settled himself to his driving, and still he +had not questioned her. Nan turned her face to him and spoke incisively +against the wind of their going:</p> + +<p>"The baby died. Tira lay on it in her sleep. That was Monday. It was +buried yesterday. At Mountain Brook. Tira went back to Mountain Brook +yesterday afternoon, to carry the baby some flowers"—the moment she +said this she saw how silly it was and wondered why she had not seen it, +why she had been such a fool as not to be frightened sooner. "She said +she would spend the night with those Donnyhills." But had Tira thrown in +the Donnyhills to keep Nan from being frightened?</p> + +<p>Raven gave no sign of having heard. They were speeding. The east behind +them was a line of light, and the mists were clearing away. When they +turned into the narrow river road, the gray seemed to be there waiting +for them, for this was the gorge with the steep cliff on one side and +the river on the other, always dark, even at midday, with moss patches +on the cliffs and small streams escaping from their fissures and +tumbling: always the sound of falling water.</p> + +<p>"The Donnyhills?" Raven asked. "Don't I remember them? Sort of gypsy +tribe, shif'less."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's it. She must have known them when she lived over there, +before she married."</p> + +<p>"That's where we go, is it?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan, and now she wondered if she could keep her voice from +getting away from her. "Stop where the cross cut comes out! Old +Moosewood's stepping stones. She was going to cross by them, where old +Moosewood——" There she stopped, to get a hand on herself, knowing she +was going to tell him, who knew it before she was born, the story of +Moosewood, the Indian, found there dead.</p> + +<p>If the stab of her disclosures drew blood from Raven she could not have +told. The road was narrower still, and rougher. Nan had forgotten where +the stepping stones came out. He was slackening now. She knew the curve +and the point where the cliff broke on the left, for the little path +that continued the cross cut on the other side of the road. He got out +without a glance at her, stepped to the water side of the roadway, and +she followed him. And it was exactly what her fear had wakened her to +say. There was no sign of Tira, but, grotesquely, her hat was lying on +one of the stepping stones, as if she had reckoned upon its telling +them. Raven ran down the path and into the shallow water near the bank, +and again Nan followed him, and, at the edge of the water, stopped and +waited. When the water was above his waist, he stooped, put down his +arms and brought up something that, against the unwilling river, took +all his strength. And this was Tira. He came in shore, carrying her, and +walking with difficulty, and Nan ran up the bank before him. He laid +Tira's body on the ground, and stood for an instant getting his breath, +not looking at her, not looking at Nan.</p> + +<p>"It's over," he said then quietly. "It's been over for hours." That was +the instant of reaction, and he shook himself free of it. "Where do they +live?" he asked Nan brusquely. "Yes, I know. We'll take her there. I'll +hold her. You drive."</p> + +<p>He lifted Tira again, put her into the car as if a touch might hurt her, +and sat there holding her, waiting for Nan. And Nan got in and drove on +to the Donnyhills'.</p> + +<p>All that forenoon was a madness of haste and strangeness. It is as well +to look at it through the eyes of Nan, for Raven, though he seemed like +himself and was a model of crisp action, had no thoughts at all. To Nan +it was a long interval from the moment of stopping before the little +gray Donnyhill house (and rousing more squalid Donnyhills than you would +have imagined in an underground burrow of wintering animals), through +indignities they had to show Tira's body, the hopeless effort of rousing +it again to its abjured relations with an unfriendly world. And while +they worked on the tenant-less body, the Donnyhill boy, a giant with a +gentle face, said he could drive, and was sent with Raven's car to the +farmer who had a telephone, and the doctor came and Nan heard herself +explaining to him that she woke up worried over Tira, because Tira had +spoken of the stepping stones. The doctor shook his head over it all. +The woman had been almost beside herself after the child's death. +Perfectly quiet about it, too. But that was the kind. Nan didn't think +she had any intention—any design?—and Nan hastened to say Tira had +told why she was going, told it quite simply. She had forgotten to give +the child any flowers. Of course, that did show how wrought up she was. +And there were the stepping stones. They were always tricky. Here the +doctor brought up old Moosewood, and said there were queer things. When +you came to think of it, New England's a queer place. Suicide? No! +Inquest? No! He guessed he knew. Then he went away and promised to send +the other man who would be the last to meddle with the body of Tira.</p> + +<p>The Donnyhill house was still, for all the children, with consolatory +chunks of bread in hand, had been sent off into the spacious playing +places about them. Mrs. Donnyhill, who looked like a weather-worn gypsy, +went about muttering to herself passionately sorrowful lamentations: +"God help us! poor creatur'! poor soul!" and she and Nan bathed Tira's +body—somehow they were glad to wash off the river water—and put on it +a set of clothes Nan suspected of being Mrs. Donnyhill's only decent +wear. For the folded garments were all by themselves in the bedroom +bureau, and it was true that the women in this region had forethought +for a set to be buried in. When this was over and before the coming of +the other man who was to have rights over Tira's body, Mrs. Donnyhill +remembered Raven and Nan might not have breakfasted, and gave them bread +and strong tea—brewed over night, it seemed to have been. They ate and +drank, and she moved about tucking children's tyers and sweaters into +holes of concealment and making her house fitting for Tira's majesty, +all the time muttering her pleas to God.</p> + +<p>About noon, when Tira was lying in the front room, in her solitude, no +more to be touched until she was put into her coffin, Raven came in from +his steady walk up and down before the house and went to Nan, where she +sat by the window in the other front room. The strength had gone out of +her. She sat up straight and strong, but her lips were ashen. As they +confronted each other, each saw chiefly great weariness. Raven's face, +Nan thought, was like a mask. It was grave, it was intent, but it did +not really show that he felt anything beyond the general seriousness of +the moment.</p> + +<p>"Get your things," he said to her. "We'll go back. Tenney's got to be +told, and I suppose Charlotte or somebody will have to do something to +his house."</p> + +<p>They both knew the strange commotion attendant here on funerals. +Sometimes houses were upturned from top to bottom and cleaned, even to +the paint. Nan put out a hand and touched his arm.</p> + +<p>"Don't do that, Rookie," she said, "don't take her back there. She +mustn't go into that house again. She wouldn't want it."</p> + +<p>Raven considered a moment. His face did not lose its mask-like calm.</p> + +<p>"No," he said then, "she mustn't. She must come to my house—or yours."</p> + +<p>"No," said Nan again, still keeping her hand on his arm, and aching so +with pity that she was humbly grateful to him for letting her touch his +sleeve, "she mustn't do that either. It would be queer, Rookie. It would +'make talk.' She wouldn't like that. Don't you see?"</p> + +<p>He did see. He gave a concurring motion of the head and was turning away +from her, but Nan rose and, still with her hand on his arm, detained +him.</p> + +<p>"We'll leave her here," she said. "That woman—she's darling. We can +make up to her afterward. But you mustn't appear in it again, except to +tell Tenney, if you'd rather. Though I could do that. Now, let's go."</p> + +<p>He was ready. But when he had reached the little entry between this room +and the one where Tira's body lay, she ran to him.</p> + +<p>"Rookie," she said, "Mrs. Donnyhill's out there with the children. Don't +you want to go in and see Tira?"</p> + +<p>Raven stood for a minute, considering. Then he crossed the entry and +Nan, finding he could not, for some reason, put his hand on the latch, +opened the door for him, and he went in. But only a step. He stood +there, his eyes on the poor bed where Tira lay, and then, as if he were +leaving a presence, he stepped back into the entry, and Nan understood +that he was not even carrying with him the memory of her great majesty +of beauty. She thought she understood. Even Tira's face was to be left +covered. She was to be inviolate from the eyes of men. In a few minutes +he had brought round the car, Nan had arranged things with Mrs. +Donnyhill, and they drove out into the day—blazing now, like +midsummer—and so home. And all the way they did not speak, until, +passing Tenney's, the door open and the house with a strange look of +being asleep in the sun, Nan said:</p> + +<p>"Leave me here. I'll see him and then go on."</p> + +<p>Raven did not answer. He drove past, to her own gate, and Nan, +understanding she was not to move further in any direction, got out. +Raven, perhaps feeling his silence had been unmerciful to her, spoke +quietly:</p> + +<p>"Run and get a bath and a sleep. I'll see him. I'll come for you if +you're needed."</p> + +<p>He turned the car and drove back, and Nan went in to her waiting house. +Raven stopped before Tenney's and, since the front door was open, halted +there and knocked. No answer. Then he went round to the side door and +knocked again, and called out several times, and the sound of his voice +brought back to him, like a sickness, the memory of Tenney's catamount +yell when he had heard it that day in the woods. No answer. The house +was asleep and a calf blared from the barn. He went back to the car, +drove home, and found Jerry waiting in the yard and Charlotte at the +door. Dick was in his chair down under the trees, his mother beside him, +reading. It was so unusual to see Amelia there that Raven wondered +idly—not that it mattered—he could meet a regiment of Amelias with +this callousness upon him—if Dick had beguiled her away so that she +might not pounce on him when he returned. He got out of the car stiffly. +He was, he felt at that instant, an old man. But if physical ineptitude +meant age, Jerry and Charlotte were also old, for Jerry was bewildered +beyond the possibility of speech and Charlotte shaken out of her calm.</p> + +<p>"You come into the kitchen," she said, and Raven followed her, and sank +into a chair, set his elbows on the table, and leaned his head in his +hands. He was very tired, but Mrs. Donnyhill's boiled tea was inexorably +keeping him up. Charlotte, standing above him, put her hand on his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Johnnie," she said, "Isr'el Tenney's been here. He wants you to give +him back his gun."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Raven, taking his head out of his hands and sitting up. "His +gun?"</p> + +<p>"He says," Charlotte continued, her voice shaking, "Tira's run away. I +told him the last I see o' Tira was yesterday afternoon standin' in her +own door, an' he asked if she had her things on an' I didn't know what +to say. An' he said somebody down the road said you went by 'fore light, +drivin' like blazes. An' you had a woman in the car. An' Tira'd run +away."</p> + +<p>Raven was looking up at her, a little smile on his lips, but in his eyes +such strange things that Charlotte caught his head to her and held it +against her breast.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "yes, Charlotte, Tira has run away. She went yesterday, +over to Mountain Brook. She tried to cross the stepping stones. She's +over at the Donnyhills' now. She's going to stay there till she's +buried. I'll go and tell him. Where do you think he is?"</p> + +<p>Charlotte still held his head against her warm heart.</p> + +<p>"You don't s'pose," she whispered, "you don't believe she done <i>that</i>?"</p> + +<p>"What?" he answered, and then her meaning came to him as his first hint +of what Tira might have done. He drew himself away from the kind hand +and sat up straight. "No," he said sharply. "It was an accident. She +never meant"—it had come upon him that this was what she had meant and +what she had done. But it must not be told of her, even to Nan. "Where's +Tenney?" he said. "Where do you think he is?"</p> + +<p>Charlotte hesitated.</p> + +<p>"He's up there," she said, after a moment while Raven waited, "up to the +hut. He said he's goin' to git his gun out o' there if he had to break +an' enter. He said he see it through the winder not two days ago. An' +Jerry hollered after him if he laid hand to your property he'd have the +law on him. Jerry was follerin' on after him, but you went by in the car +an' I called on him to stop. O Johnnie, don't you go up there, or you +let Jerry an' me go with you. If ever a man was crazed, that man's +Isr'el Tenney, an' if you go up there an' stir him up!"</p> + +<p>"Nonsense!" said Raven, in his old kind tone toward her, and Charlotte +gave a little sob of relief at hearing it again. "I've got to see him +and tell him what I've told you. You and Jerry stay where you are. +Tenney's not dangerous. Except to her," he added bitterly to himself, as +he left the house. "And a child in its cradle. My God! he was dangerous +to her!" And Charlotte, watching from the window, saw him go striding +across the road and up the hill.</p> + +<p>Raven, halfway up, began to hear an unexpected sound: blows, loud and +regular, wood on wood. When he had passed the turning by the three firs +he knew, really before his eyes confirmed it. Tenney was there at the +hut, and he had a short but moderately large tree trunk—almost heavier +than he could manage—and was using it as a battering ram. He was +breaking down the door. Raven, striding on, shouted, but he was close at +hand before Tenney was aware of him and turned, breathless, letting the +log fall. He had actually not heard, and Raven's presence seemed to take +him aback. Yet he was in no sense balked of his purpose. He faced about, +breathless from his lifting and ramming, and Raven saw how intense was +the passion in him: witnessed by the whiteness of his face, the burning +of his eyes.</p> + +<p>"I come up here," said Tenney, "after my gun. You can git it for me an' +save your door."</p> + +<p>Raven paid no attention to this.</p> + +<p>"You'd better come along down," he said. "We'll stop at my house and +talk things over."</p> + +<p>This he offered in that futile effort the herald of bad news inevitably +makes, to approach it slowly.</p> + +<p>"Then," said Tenney, "you hand me out my gun. I don't leave here till I +have my gun."</p> + +<p>"Tenney," said Raven, "I've got bad news for you."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tenney blankly. "She's run away. You carried her off this +mornin'. You don't need to tell me that."</p> + +<p>"I didn't carry her off," said Raven, speaking slowly and clearly, for +he had a feeling that Tenney was somehow deaf to him. "Tira went over to +Mountain Brook yesterday. Nan knew she was going, and this morning she +was worried, because she got thinking of Tira's crossing the stepping +stones. She asked me to take her over there. We found her. She was +drowned."</p> + +<p>Tenney's eyes had shifted from Raven's face. The light had gone out of +them, and they clung blankly to the tree spaces and the distance.</p> + +<p>"Have it your own way," said Tenney, in as blank a tone. "Settle it +amongst ye."</p> + +<p>"We shall go over to-morrow," said Raven. "Will you go with us?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Tenney.</p> + +<p>"Drownded herself," he said, at length. "Well, that's where it led to. +It's all led to that."</p> + +<p>"She slipped," said Raven roughly. "Don't you understand? Anybody could, +off those wet stones."</p> + +<p>"You open that door," said Tenney, "an' gimme my gun."</p> + +<p>But Raven went on talking to him, telling him quietly and reasonably +what they had judged it best to do, he and Nan. If Tira had wanted the +baby buried over there by her mother, wouldn't she want to be buried +there herself?</p> + +<p>"Very well, then. We'll arrange things. The day after"—he could not +bring himself to put the bare ceremonial that would see her out of the +world into the words familiar to the country ear—"that will be the day. +We shall go over. We'll take you with us."</p> + +<p>"No," said Tenney, "you needn't trouble yourselves. I sha'n't go over +there. Nor I sha'n't keep nobody else from goin'."</p> + +<p>By this Raven judged he meant that he would not interfere with their +seeing Tira out of the world in their own way. The man had repudiated +her. It was a relief. It seemed to leave her, in her great freedom, the +more free.</p> + +<p>"Come down now," said Raven, "to my house. We'll have something to eat."</p> + +<p>That was all he could think of, to keep the stricken creature within +sound of human voices.</p> + +<p>"I ain't hungry," said Tenney. "An' if I was"—here he stopped an +instant and a spasm shot across his face—"she left me cooked up."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Raven. "Then you go home now, and later in the day +I'll come over and see if you've thought of anything else."</p> + +<p>He believed the man should not, in his despairing frame of mind, be left +alone. Tenney turned, without a look at him, and went off down the +slope. Raven watched him round the curve. Then he took out the key from +under the stone, remembering it need never be put there again, went in +and locked the door. Suddenly he felt deadly sick. He went to the couch, +lay down and closed his eyes on the blackness before them. If he had a +wish, in this infinitude of desolation, it was that he might never open +them again on the dark defiles of this world. It was dusk when he did +open them, and for a minute he had difficulty in remembering why he was +there and the blow that had struck him down to such a quivering +apprehension of what was coming next. Then, before he quite found out, +he learned what had waked him. There was a voice outside—Tenney's +voice, only not Tenney's as he had known it—whimpering, begging in a +wild humility:</p> + +<p>"You there? You let me in. You there? For God's sake let me in."</p> + +<p>Raven was at once clearly awake. His mind was, after its interlude of +darkness, ready. He got up, and opened the door.</p> + +<p>"Come in," he said. "Yes, leave the door open. I've been asleep. It's +close in here."</p> + +<p>Tenney came in, not so much limping as stumbling. He seemed to be +shorter in stature. His head was bent, his body had sagged together as +if not a muscle of it had strength to do its part. Raven pulled forward +a chair, and he sank into it.</p> + +<p>"What do you s'pose," he began—and the voice was so nearly a whimper +that Raven was not surprised to see tears on his cheeks—"what do you +s'pose I wanted my gun for? To use on you? Or him? No. On me. But I +don't know now as I've got the strength to use it. I'm done."</p> + +<p>This was his remorse for the past as he had made it, and Raven had no +triumph in it, only a sickness of distaste for the man's suffering and a +frank hatred of having to meet it with him.</p> + +<p>"You know," said Tenney, looking up at him, sharply now, as if to +ascertain how much he knew, "she didn't do it. The baby wa'n't overlaid. +God! did anybody believe she could do a thing like that? She slep' like +a cat for fear suthin' would happen to him."</p> + +<p>"What," asked Raven, in horror of what he felt was coming, and yet +obliged to hear, "what did happen to him?"</p> + +<p>Tenney stretched out his hands. He was looking at them, not at Raven.</p> + +<p>"I can't git it out o' my head," he continued, in a broken whisper, +"there's suthin' on 'em. You don't see nothin', do you? They look to +me——"</p> + +<p>There he stopped, and Raven was glad he did not venture the word. What +had Raven to say to him? There seemed not to be anything in the language +of man, to say. But Tenney came alive. He was shaking with a great +eagerness.</p> + +<p>"I tell you," he said, "a man don't know what to do. There was +that—that—what I done it to—he wa'n't mine."</p> + +<p>He looked at Raven in a hunger of supplication. He was almost dying to +be denied.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven steadily. "He was yours."</p> + +<p>"How do you know?" shrieked Tenney, as if he had caught him. "She talk +things over?"</p> + +<p>Raven considered. What could he say to him?</p> + +<p>"Tenney," he said at last, "you haven't understood. You haven't seen her +as she was, the best woman, the most beautiful——"</p> + +<p>Here he stopped, and Tenney threw in angrily, as if it were a part of +his quarrel with her:</p> + +<p>"She was likely enough. But what made her," he continued violently, +"what made her let a man feel as if her mind was somewheres else? Where +was her mind?"</p> + +<p>That was it, Raven told himself. Beauty! it promised ineffable things, +even to these eyes of jealous greed, and it could not fulfil the promise +because everything it whispered of lay in the upper heavens, not on +earth. But Tenney would not have heard the answer even if Raven could +have made it. He was broken. He bent his head into his hands and sobbed +aloud.</p> + +<p>"Good? 'Course she was good. Don't I know it? An' she's gone. An' +me—what be I goin' to do?"</p> + +<p>Somehow Raven understood that he was not thinking of his desolate house +and lonesome mind, but of himself in relation to the law he had broken +and the woman's heart, broken, too. Grotesquely almost, came to his mind +Tira's grave reminder: "He's a very religious man." And Tenney seemed to +have come, by some path of his own, round to the same thing.</p> + +<p>"If there was a God——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," Raven threw in, moved by some power outside himself, "there +is a God."</p> + +<p>"If there was," said Tenney, "he couldn't forgive me no more'n He could +Cain. There's <i>that</i> on my hands. When there's that——"</p> + +<p>He stopped before the vision of the man God had scourged into exile for +the shedding of blood. To Raven there was suddenly a presence beside +them: not a Holy Presence, such as they might well have invoked, but Old +Crow. And he remembered how Old Crow had eased the mind of Billy Jones.</p> + +<p>"Tenney," he said, "don't you remember what Tira believed in? She +believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. She believed He could forgive sins."</p> + +<p>"Do you believe it?" Tenney hurled at him. "Can He forgive—that?"</p> + +<p>Again he stretched out his hands.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. "He can forgive that."</p> + +<p>"An' I be," Tenney continued, in his scriptural phrasing, "whiter than +snow?"</p> + +<p>Raven found himself halting. There were, behind this vision of the +symbol by which God made Himself manifest to man, reserves of strict +integrities.</p> + +<p>"Tenney," he said, "you've killed a child. Your child. You're a +criminal. The only thing you can do to get back among men is to give +yourself up. To the law. And take your medicine."</p> + +<p>"O my God!" cried Tenney. "Tell it? Tell that? Bring it up afore judge +an' jury how I thought——"</p> + +<p>"Don't tell me what you thought," said Raven sharply. "You've said it +once. You were crazy, and you killed your child."</p> + +<p>"An' what if——" he began, and Raven finished for him:</p> + +<p>"What if they hang you? We can't go into that. There's your first step. +Give yourself up."</p> + +<p>The next instant he was sorry for the brutality of this. But Tenney did +not find it brutal. Strangely it seemed to him a way out, the only way. +He was brooding. Suddenly he looked up.</p> + +<p>"You told me," he said, apparently in wonder, "you didn't believe."</p> + +<p>What to say? "I believe in God Who is letting me—tenderly, oh, with +such pity for my human foolishness—seize whatever crutch I can to help +you over this dark mortal way?" Could he say that? No, it was true, but +somehow it couldn't be said.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he answered gravely, "I believe."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Tenney eagerly, "you pray with me."</p> + +<p>Raven, thinking on this afterward, knew he did pray, in what words he +never could recall, and that the substance of it was Forgiveness: +Forgive our sins. And that when he had finished Tenney completed his +faltering close with "For Christ's sake. Amen!" And that because Tenney +looked at him for confirmation, he, Raven, repeated it after him, humbly +and with sincerity. And when, shaken both of them beyond the possibility +of speech, they rose from their knees, they heard a voice outside, Nan's +voice:</p> + +<p>"Rookie, let me in."</p> + +<p>Raven opened the door, and found her there, and Dick was with her.</p> + +<p>"You shouldn't have come up here," he said to Dick. "You're not supposed +to climb hills."</p> + +<p>"He had to," said Nan. "I came up and listened and I heard voices. So I +went back again and asked Charlotte for sandwiches. And Dick would come. +But I carried the basket." She had gone past him into the room and was +unpacking food. "No, Mr. Tenney, you stay. They're for you, too. We're +all tired out, you know. Let's keep together all we can. We're so +lonesome. Tira! but she's the only one that isn't lonesome. <i>She's</i> gone +to heaven. Look! hot coffee, too. Now you eat, both of you. There's +nothing like grub."</p> + +<p>In the midst of this, Dick had gone round the table and put out his hand +to Tenney and said:</p> + +<p>"H' are you, Tenney?" and Tenney, dazed, had given his.</p> + +<p>Raven found he was hungry and began to eat, and Nan somehow saw to it +that Tenney also ate. And Raven, at least, felt in the breath of the +spring night, something ebbing there in the hut. What was it: waves of +wild human turmoil finding a channel where they could flow equably? Nan +and Dick went out on the veranda while the two finished, and Raven noted +the murmur of their voices and wondered a little, idly, whether they +were better friends—lovers or only better friends. Presently Nan was +back again. She brushed up their crumbs and packed the dishes into the +basket.</p> + +<p>"Now, Mr. Tenney," she said, "this is what we've done. When I found you +were both up here, I had Jerry go over and get your cows. He milked and +I strained the milk. I locked up the house, too. Here's your key. What +makes you go back to-night? It'll be easier by daylight. Rookie, +couldn't he sleep up here?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "of course he can. We'll be down to breakfast, tell +Charlotte."</p> + +<p>Tenney offered no preference or opinion. He sat there, his key—the key +Tira had lost, he did remember vaguely—on the table before him. Nan, +with the air of there being no more to do, wafted Dick away with her. +And Raven and Tenney spent the night together in the hut. Raven did not +sleep. He had an impression that Tenney did not, either. It seemed to +him a watch with the dead.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLV" id="XLV"></a>XLV</h2> + + +<p>In that darkest minute when it seems as if dawn will never come or, if +it does, to bring with it a deeper chill, Raven, for the first time in +weeks, found his old enemies upon him: the fear of life, the terrible +distaste for continuance in a world where there is no escape, even in +going on. Was this grief for Tira? Her needs had pulled him out from his +own sickness of mind, and now that she would never need anything again, +must he return to the dark dwelling of his mental discontent and crouch +there whimpering as Tenney had whimpered when he came to him here a few +hours ago? And slowly, achingly, his mind renewedly accepted the iron +necessity which is living. There was no giving up. There was no escape. +He had to live because the other choice—was it the fool's choice or the +coward's?—was not only unthinkable, but it did no good. There was no +escape. And side by side with the sickness of distaste for life as he +found it, was another distaste, as strong: for this malady of nostalgia +itself. He could not abide it another instant. It was squalid, it was +unclean, and he found his mind crying out: "Help me! for God's sake help +me!" But it was not to God he cried. It was to Old Crow. And Old Crow +heard. Indubitably he heard. For there was an answer. "Yes! yes!" the +answer kept beating in his mind. He would help.</p> + +<p>And what of Tira? Was she resolved into the earth that made her? Or +would she also help? He wondered why she had died. Was it because she +had been unable to face the idea of the little boy who was not right +taking his maimed innocence into some other state alone? No. Tira had +her starkly simple faith. She had her Lord Jesus Christ. She would, as +simply as she believed, have trusted the child to Him. Did she so fear +to face her life with Tenney—the hurtling, blind, elemental creature +with blood on his hands—that she took herself away? No. Tira was no +such person. There was a wild, high courage in her that, the more +terrible the challenge, responded the more valiantly. Why did she take +herself away? And what was she in these walls that had been dedicated to +her safety? Was she existent, like Old Crow? Was she here with Raven +when his mind clamored for peace? Did she, too, answer "Yes, yes!" She +had, he concluded, gone. It seemed as if she had withdrawn herself, by +her own will, for some inexorable reason. He remembered threnodies that +saw the beloved dead absorbed into the course of nature: the dawn, the +sunset, the season's round, the flowers that spring ever renewed to deck +the laureate hearse. And as his mind sought her in the night breeze that +came in to fan him and Tenney alike, in the sky where the stars, through +arboreal spaces, never looked so piercingly bright, he did seem to be +aware of an actual intelligence. But it was assuredly not Tira and it +was not Old Crow. It was Anne.</p> + +<p>Whether his mind had been so occupied by these other more immediate +things that she could not get the connection between her will and his, +whether she now found him, bereft of Tira, free to do her unchanged +bidding, he could not see. But Anne was there. At least, the knowledge +of her was in his mind, insisting on being heard, and insisting as it +never had in this present life. For whereas then her attack had been +subtly organized, Anne herself, the directing general, behind almost +invisible potencies of suggestion and finesse, now here she was in the +open, plainly commanding him, as if this might be the only fight she +should be able to manage, and it must be to the finish. And what she +wanted was plain obedience touching the disposal of her trust. It was +not his love she was asking for now. That, he concluded, though without +bitterness, might not look desirable to her any more. Or perhaps she had +learned how futile it was to ask it. Or, indeed, was all love futile +beyond the grave? No, for he loved Tira withdrawn into her impenetrable +seclusion—but that he must not think of. The fight was on, the +conclusive fight with Anne. And he seemed to be battling for the +integrity of his own soul, the freedom of his will. He sat up on his +couch, and heard himself say aloud:</p> + +<p>"No. I won't do it. You can't make me."</p> + +<p>Was this the way to speak to Anne, to whom all the reticences and +delicacies of life were native air? But she was not Anne now so much as +the enemy of sane conduct here in this world and of his struggling will.</p> + +<p>"D'you speak?" called Tenney from the next room.</p> + +<p>"All right," said Raven, and realized he must not speak again.</p> + +<p>Thereafter the fight with Anne went on within the arena of his mind. He +poured himself forth to her. For the first time in his life, he admitted +her to his inner beliefs and sympathies. He would not, he told her, +devote her money to the debasing of the world. Wherever she was, she had +not learned a page more than she had known when she wrote that letter to +him about the things that help the world and the things that hinder. He +didn't believe, he told her, she really wanted to learn. She wanted only +to be obeyed, to put her money where she had ordered it to go merely +because she had ordered it.</p> + +<p>"You can't have it, Anne," he repeated, whenever his mind halted in +argument, and she kept pressing him back, back into his old hopeless +subserviency. "I'll tell you where it's going. It's going to France. +There won't be any palace, Anne. It's going into the land. It's going to +help little French boys and French girls to grow up with time enough and +strength enough to put their beautiful intelligence into saving the +earth. It's going to be that sort of a bulwark between them and the +enemies of the earth. And that's the only road to peace. Don't you see +it is, Anne? Don't you see it? You won't get peace by talking about it. +You wasted your money when you did it, all through war-time. You harmed +and hindered. Don't you know you did? If you don't, what's the use of +dying? Don't they know any more there than we do here? Anyway, I know +more than you did when you made your will, and that's what I'm going to +do. Train up beautiful intelligences, Anne, the ones that are likeliest +to work it all out practically: how to live, that's what they're going +to work out, how to live, how to help the world to live. Don't you see, +Anne? For God's sake, don't you see?"</p> + +<p>She didn't see, or, if she did, she was too angry to give him the +comfort of knowing she did. But suddenly, in the midst of her anger, +there was a break, a stillness, though it had been still before. Perhaps +it was most like a stillness of mind, and he felt himself as suddenly +awake to a certainty that Anne had done with him. Once before she had +seemed to leave him, but this time it was for good. She had gone, +wherever the road was open to her. He had armed his will and sent it out +to fight her will. She was routed, and she would never challenge him +again. Perhaps, in her scorn, she had repudiated him. Perhaps the world, +if it were called on to pronounce judgment, would repudiate him for +betraying a dead woman's trust. Well, let it. The impeccability of his +own soul wasn't so very valuable, after all, weighed against what he saw +as the indisputable values of mortal life. He lay back on his bed, +exhausted by the fight, foolishly exhausted because, he told himself, +there hadn't been any real Anne. Only her mind, as he had known it, and +his own mind had been grappling, like two sides of an argument. But +while he tried to dull himself with this denial of the possibilities +beyond our sense, he knew underneath that there had been Anne. And she +had gone. She would not come again.</p> + +<p>Then he must have slept, for there was a gulf of forgetfulness, and when +his eyes came open, it was on Tenney standing there in the doorway. +Raven felt squalid after the night in his clothes, and Tenney looked to +him in much the same case. Also Tenney was shrunken, even since he had +come to the hut the day before, and then he had seemed not +three-quarters of his height. He asked now, not as if he cared, but as +if he wondered idly:</p> + +<p>"D' I leave my ammunition up here?"</p> + +<p>He had the gun in his hand.</p> + +<p>"Let the gun alone," said Raven. He got up and took it away from him, +and Tenney dumbly suffered it. "We'll go down now and have some +breakfast, and Jerry'll do your chores."</p> + +<p>"I can do my own chores," said Tenney. "I can go into the barn, I +guess."</p> + +<p>By this Raven understood that he did not mean to go into the house. +Perhaps he was afraid of it. Men are afraid of houses that have grown +sinister because of knowing too much.</p> + +<p>That day was a curious medley of watchfulness over Tenney: for Raven +felt the necessity of following him about to see he did himself no harm. +He called him in to breakfast, but Tenney did not even seem to hear, and +stood brooding in the yard, looking curiously down at his lame foot and +lifting it as if to judge how far it would serve him. Then Charlotte, +who had been watching from the window, went out and told him she had a +bite for him in the shed, and he went in with her at once and drank +coffee and ate the bread she buttered. He didn't, so he told her, want +to touch things any more. So she broke the bread and he carried the +pieces to his mouth with an air of hating them and fearing. When he went +over to his house, Raven went with him, and, finding Jerry had milked +and driven the cows to pasture, they stood outside, miserably loitering, +because Tenney had evidently made that resolve not to go in.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," said Raven, after a little, to recall him, "the milk is in +there."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Tenney. "I s'pose 'tis."</p> + +<p>"It isn't strained, you know. What do you mean to do about it?"</p> + +<p>"Do?" said Tenney. "Let it set."</p> + +<p>Again they loitered, back and forth, sometimes on one side of the +woodpile, sometimes the other, each with a pretense of finding the +woodpile itself a point of interest. Suddenly Tenney ceased his foolish +walk up and down.</p> + +<p>"Look here," said he, "should you jest as lieves go in?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. "Only you'd better come with me. Get it over. You've +got to go into your own house."</p> + +<p>"What I want," said Tenney, "is a blue apron, blue with white specks. I +don't believe it's there, but if 'tis I want it."</p> + +<p>To Raven, this was not strange. It was Tira's apron he wanted, something +that belonged to her, to touch, perhaps to carry about with him as a +reminder of the warmth and kindliness that lay in everything she owned. +Blue! that was her Madonna color. No wonder Tenney remembered it, if it +was blue.</p> + +<p>"It ain't hangin' up," said Tenney, with a particularity that seemed to +cause him an intense pain of concentration. "She never'd hang it up with +t'others. It's folded. Mebbe in her work-basket, mebbe—my God in +heaven! she wouldn't ha' kep' it. She's burnt it up. You take off the +cover o' the kitchen stove. You look there an' see if you can't find the +leastest scrid. Blue, you remember, all folded up."</p> + +<p>Raven went into the kitchen where the pails of milk were on the table, +waiting. He took off the stove cover and looked in, still an idle +compliance, to quiet the man's mind. It was like an outcome to a dream. +For there it was, a soft disorder easily indicating burned cloth, and +one shred of blue, a piece perhaps an inch and a half square, hemmed on +three sides: the end of an apron string. He took this carefully out, and +stood there looking at it a tense moment, as if it could summon Tira +back to tell him what it meant; look out his pocketbook, laid it in, and +put the pocketbook away. Then he went back to Tenney.</p> + +<p>"You were right," he said. "She burned it up."</p> + +<p>Tenney stared at him for what seemed a long time.</p> + +<p>"Oh," he said, as if it had been Raven who suggested it, "so she burnt +it up. Wa'n't there any left—not a scrid?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven, "there was. What do you want of it?"</p> + +<p>"Nothin'," said Tenney. "No, I don't want it. If 'twas the whole on't I +shouldn't want it, come to think. A man couldn't hang himself by an +apron. Even that one you couldn't. I guess"—he turned upon Raven so +sick a gaze that Raven advanced to him and put a hand on his arm—"I +guess," said Tenney, "I'm done. I've got to git some sleep. Should you +jest as soon I'd go up to that shack o' yourn an' lay down a spell?"</p> + +<p>Again they went up to the hut, and Tenney, throwing himself on the +couch, was at once asleep. All that day Raven watched by him, and that +night also they were there together: a strange day and night, Raven +remembered afterward, with Charlotte coming and Nan and finally Dick, +all with food or wistful companionship, and Nan's assuring him, in her +way of finding nothing out of the common, that everything had been done +for Tira, and she would go over to the service. Charlotte would go with +her. It would be better—her eyes questioned him, and he nodded, not +answering. It would be better he should not go. On the third day she +appeared again, in the middle of the afternoon, and said she had just +come from Mountain Brook and everything was——That she did not finish, +Tenney's somber eyes waited upon her with such a dumb expectancy. What +was going to be done, she wondered. Tenney couldn't stay in the hut, +keeping Raven there with him, as Billy Jones had kept Old Crow. Yet she +wasn't sure Raven wouldn't stay. But while she thought it, Tenney was +answering her, though he didn't seem to be speaking to either of them. +He might have been appealing to something invisible in the room.</p> + +<p>"I'll shave me," he said, "an' then I'll see." Something passed over him +like a great moving wind. "Why, God A'mighty!" he cried. "I can't stop +to shave me. It's now or never, don't you know 'tis?"</p> + +<p>He snatched his hat from the chair where he had thrown it, and went out +of the hut, limping down the hill. And Raven was with him. He was with +him as he hurried along the road so fast that it seemed as if the next +step meant breaking into a run. He was with him when, halfway to the +street, Eugene Martin passed them, in his buggy, stopped further on and +called to them: "Ride?" He was not laughing now, he was not jibing. He +seemed to be constrained to ask them to ride, they were hurrying so. +Raven threw a curse at him, but Tenney broke into a limping run and +jumped into the tail of the wagon and sat there, his legs dangling. And +he called so piercingly to Martin to drive along, to "Hurry, for God's +sake, hurry!" that Martin did whip up, and the wagon whirled away, and +Raven hurried on alone.</p> + +<p>That night, at eight o'clock, Nan went over to ask if Raven had come +home, and finding he had not, loitered back to her own gate and waited. +She could not go in. If she kept her mind on him, he might come. And +presently he came. She walked to meet him and put her hand through his +arm. He was walking firmly, but he looked "all in."</p> + +<p>"Come," she said. "Supper's waiting."</p> + +<p>"No," said Raven, "not yet. I got a fellow to bring me back from the +street. Dick said you'd been over."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Nan. "I was horribly worried. Where's Tenney?"</p> + +<p>"Gone."</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"To jail. He had Martin take him to a man he knew about at the street. +Sworn in special constable in the War. Had him telephone the sheriff. +Then I got there. Had to inquire round, to find out where he'd gone. +When I went in, Tenney was sitting there telling the sheriff he'd killed +his child. Sheriff asked what for. Said he had to do it. Then I came in +and he began to ask me questions about the Lord Jesus Christ."</p> + +<p>"But, Rookie," said Nan, "he didn't. He couldn't. Tira told me she——"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven heavily. "You may be called to testify."</p> + +<p>"But when he asked that," said Nan, "about——" she hesitated.</p> + +<p>"About the Lord Jesus Christ? It was whether his sins were whiter than +snow."</p> + +<p>"What did you tell him?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Raven, "I told him yes. If he was sorry, they were. Of course +I told him yes. What could I tell him? But I don't believe I'd have told +Martin yes, if he'd asked me about his sins. He's scared blue. He was +there at the gate when I went in. Shook like a palsy, kept saying he +didn't know—didn't think—nobody need ask him——"</p> + +<p>"What did you say, Rookie?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. I went in to Tenney. Now I'll go back."</p> + +<p>"You won't come in and have a bite? Nice supper, Rookie. Saved for you."</p> + +<p>"No. Not to-night." He turned away from her as if she were as actually +the outside shell of herself as he was of himself. They were mechanical +agents in a too terrible world. But he called back to her: "Nan, I've +told her."</p> + +<p>She was at his side, hoping for more, perhaps a touch of his hand.</p> + +<p>"Anne. I got word to her somehow. She understood."</p> + +<p>"Was she——" Nan paused.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Raven. "But it's over—done."</p> + +<p>He turned away from her and went fast along the road home. He had, she +saw, escaped Aunt Anne. He had got himself back. Did his quick steps +along the road say he meant to escape her, too? That was easy. Darling +Rookie! he should if he wanted to.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XLVI" id="XLVI"></a>XLVI</h2> + + +<p>The story ends, as it began, with a letter. It was written by Raven, in +Boston, to Dick, in France, about a year after Tenney gave himself up. +The first half of it had to do with accounts, money paid over by Raven +to Dick, requisitions sent in by Dick to Raven, concise statements of +what Raven judged it best to do in certain contingencies Dick had asked +instructions upon. Then it continued on a new page, an intimate letter +from Raven to the nephew who was administering the Anne Hamilton Fund. +The previous pages would be submitted to the two Frenchmen, who, with +Dick, formed the acting board. These last pages were for Dick alone.</p> + +<p>"No, Tenney wasn't even indicted. There was the whirlwind of talk you +can imagine. Reminiscent, too! 'Don't you remember?' from house to +house, and whenever two men met in the road or hung over the fence to +spit and yarn. It was amazing, the number of folks who had set him down +as 'queer,' 'odd,' all the country verdicts on the chap that's got to be +accounted for. Even his religion was brought up against him. The chief +argument there was that he always behaved as if the things he believed +were actually so. He believed in hell and told you you were bound for +it. But I can't go into that. They couldn't, the ones that tried to. +They got all balled up, just as their intellectual betters do when they +tackle theology. All this, of course, began before you went away, and it +continued in mounting volume. If you want New England psychology, you +have it there, to the last word. That curious mixture of condemnation +and acceptance! They believed him capable of doing things unspeakable, +and yet there wasn't a public voice to demand an inquiry as to whether +he really had done them. They cheerfully accepted the worst and believed +the best. And it's true he had behaved more or less queer for a long +time, wouldn't speak to people when he met them, didn't seem to know +them, and then suddenly breaking out, in the blacksmith's shop or buying +his grain at the store, and asking if they were saved. The women were +the queerest. They said he set his life by the child. Why, he couldn't +even bear to go to the funeral of his wife or the child either, and +hadn't they seen him and Tira drivin' by, time and again, the baby in +Tira's lap, in his little white coat and hood? I don't know how many +times I heard the evidence of that little white hood. Even Charlotte +caught it and plumped it at me.</p> + +<p>"You remember yourself how disgusted the authorities were when he +trotted about like a homeless dog and insisted on being arrested for a +crime they knew he didn't commit. Poor old Tenney! they said, any man +might be crazed, losing his wife and child in one week. They were very +gentle with him. They told him if he hung round talking much longer he'd +be late for his planting. Of course the doctor did set the pace. He'd +told, everywhere he went, how Tira had sent for him at once, and how she +had said she had, in that hideous country phrase, 'overlaid' the child. +One interesting psychological part of it has persisted to this day: the +effect Tira had on the doctor, his entire belief in her simple statement +which she was never asked to swear to. (You remember there was no +inquest.) He never, he said, was so sorry for a woman in his life. He +seems to have been so determined to prove her a tragic figure that he +wouldn't for a moment have the disaster lightened by denying her that +last misfortune of having done it herself. Lots of these things I +haven't told you, they're so grim and, to me now, so wearing. They've +got on all our nerves like the devil, and I fancy even the Wake Hill +natives are pretty well fed up with 'em. At first they couldn't get +enough. When Tenney couldn't get the law to believe in him so far as to +indict him, the embattled farmers took it on themselves to cross-examine +him, not because they thought for a minute he was guilty, but because +they itched to hear him say so: drama, don't you see? And he never +wavered in asserting he did it: only when they asked him how, he just +stared, and once told a particularly smart Alec, he guessed it was a +man's own business how he killed his own child. And he stayed up in the +hut, just as he was doing when you went away, and night after night I +had to stay with him. Stuck to me like a burr and wore me threadbare +asking if he was forgiven, and if that didn't mean he was whiter than +snow. I tell you, Dick, it was all so involved that I believe, although +he used the set phrases about the Lord Jesus Christ, he really believed +it was I that had forgiven him. He used to ask me to tell God to do it +for my sake; and I remembered Old Crow and how he played up to Billy +Jones, and, if you'll believe it, I <i>did</i> ask God (though not for my +sake!), and horrible as it is, grotesque as it is (no, by George, it +isn't grotesque to speak to a man in the only language he can +understand! he wanted God and he couldn't any more reach Him! he had to +climb up on another man's shoulders), well, I told him it was all right. +He was forgiven. Then he scared me blue by saying he was going round +preaching the gospel—his farm is sold, you know, stock gone, everything +wiped out—and I told him he'd proved too dangerous to be let loose on +the world again. But he had me there. He asked if he was forgiven, why +wasn't he whiter than snow? And he hung to me like my shadow, and asked +if he couldn't keep on living in the hut, till he felt strong enough to +preach. I told him he could, and blest if I didn't see him and me there +together, world without end, like Old Crow and Billy Jones, for nothing +was ever going to persuade him to let go of me again. You'd better +laugh, Dick. Nan and I had to. We almost cried. It is funny. I bet Old +Crow laughed. But Tenney saved me. He took it into his own hands. And +what do you think did it? We went down to the house one morning for +breakfast, and Charlotte came out to meet us, tying on a clean apron. It +was blue with white spots (I forgot you don't see any significance in +that, but Tenney did) and he stopped short and said: 'God A'mighty! I +was in hopes I never should set eyes on a woman's apron again.'</p> + +<p>"I went up to have a bath (my staying at the hut was a kind of emergency +business, you see) and he disappeared, and Charlotte and Jerry didn't +get on to it that he was really gone, and later on he was seen wading +into the water over at Mountain Brook, there by the stepping stones. The +Donnyhills saw him, and at first they thought he knew what he was about, +but kept on watching him. He stooped and dipped himself, and they had an +idea it was some kind of a self-conducted baptism. I believe it was. Nan +often has to remind me that 'he's a very religious man.' But they +watched, and presently he went under, and they knew then he was making +way with himself, and the Donnyhill boy, that calm young giant, fished +him out, Tenney fighting him furiously. And it began to look to me as if +he ought to be under a mild supervision (it wasn't for nothing you and +your mother let fly at me with your psychiatry! I escaped myself, but I +learned the formula). And now Tenney, agreeing to it like a lamb, is at +that little sanitarium Miss Anne Hamilton started 'up state,' and very +well contented. Nan goes to see him, and so do I. He is as mild—you +can't think! Reads his Bible every minute of the day when he isn't doing +the work they give him or converting the staff.</p> + +<p>"You'll say he's insane. I don't know whether he is or not. I don't know +whether they'll say so, the psychopathic experts they've let loose on +him. I simply think he found the difficulties of his way too much for +him and he revolted. He tried to right the balance of some of the most +mysteriously devilish inequalities a poorly equipped chap ever found +himself up against (strange forces that struck at him in the dark) and +being ignorant and at the same time moved by more volts of energy than +even the experts will be able to compute, he took the only path he saw, +slam-bang into the thick of the fight. As to his spouting his Bible like +a geyser—well, if he believes in it as the actual word of God, a word +addressed to him, why shouldn't he spout it? And if it tells him that, +after certain formulae of repentance, his sins shall be whiter than +snow, why shouldn't he believe that and say so with the simplicity he +does? All the same, I don't think he's exactly the person to wander at +large, and I've no idea what will happen when his good conduct and +general mildness come it over the psychiatrists. I grin over it +sometimes, all by myself, for I remember Old Crow and Billy Jones and I +wonder if the logic of inherited events is going to herd Tenney and me +together into the hut to live out our destiny together. But I don't +think so, chiefly because I want to keep my finger in this pie of the +French Fund and because it would distress Nan. Distress you, too, I +guess! And me!</p> + +<p>"Now, as to Nan. You gave it to me straight from the shoulder, and I've +got to give you one back. I agree with you. There's no hope for you. +She's enormously fond of you, but it's not <i>that kind</i>. And Nan's +old-fashioned enough to insist on that or nothing. I was so meddlesome +as to bring it up with her before you went away. She put me in my place, +told me practically it was nobody's business but hers—and yours—and +that she'd already talked it out with you and that you're a 'dear' and +you 'saw.' So, old man, as you say, that's that. <i>Finis.</i> But when, +after I've butted in, you butt in and accuse me of not 'seeing,' so far +as I myself am concerned, of holding her off, of being unfair to her, +all the rest of it (very intemperate letter, you must own) I've got to +give you your quietus as Nan gave me mine. First place, you say, with a +cheek that makes my backbone crawl, that Nan 'loves' me. (Do you really +want to be as Victorian as that, you slang-slinging young modern? But I +know! You think I mightn't catch on to your shibboleths and you borrow +what you judge to be mine, give me the choice of weapons, as it were.) +And you're a trump, Dick! Don't think I don't know that, and if I poke +fun at you it's to keep from slopping all over you with the Victorian +lavishness you'd expect. What did we ever fight for about your youth and +my age? Or wasn't it about that, after all? Was it really about—Nan?</p> + +<p>"Well, when it comes to 'love', I do love Nan. There you have it, good +old-fashioned direct address. She is as immediate to me as my own skin +and veins. She always has been. She began to grow into me when she was +little, and she kept on growing. There are fibers and rootlets of Nan +all through me, and the funny part of it is I love to feel them there. I +can't remember being dominated by anybody without resenting it, wanting +to get away—escape! escape!—but I never for an instant have felt that +about Nan. She's the better part of me. Good Lord! she's the only part +of me I take any particular pleasure in or that I can conceive of as +existing after I join Old Crow. (Not that I'm allowed to take much +pleasure in her now. She sees me when I call, answers when I consult her +about the Fund—and she's been tremendously sympathetic and valuable +there—but she seems to feel and, I've no doubt, for very good reasons, +that we're better apart. She has, I believe, a theory about it; but we +needn't go into that. And I don't quarrel with it.)</p> + +<p>"The queer part of it is that I feel Nan herself couldn't break the bond +between us, couldn't if she tried. It's as deep as nature, as actual as +Old Crow. I can give you a curious proof of it. I might be almost +swamped by somebody—yes, I mean Tira. I might as well say so as hear +you saying it over this letter—somebody that is beauty and mystery and +a thousand potencies that take hold on nature itself. But that doesn't +push Nan away by an inch. If I'm swamped, Nan's swamped with me. If I +mourn the beauty and the piteousness withdrawn, Nan mourns, too. It's +Nan and I against the world. But it isn't Nan and I with the world. The +world is against us. Do you see? For I'm a year older than when I saw +you last. And though many of the things you felt about the years weren't +true, a lot of 'em were, and they're a little truer now. And one of them +is that I've got to give Nan a fighting chance to mate with youth +and—oh, exactly what you've got. I wish you had her—no, I'm damned if +I do. I may not be young enough for jealousy, but I am unregenerate +enough. I probably mean I wish I wished it. For in spite of my revolt +against the earth, I'd like to give Nan the cup, not of earth sorceries +but earth loveliness, and let her swig it to the bottom. And then, if +Old Crow's right and this is only a symbol and we've got to live by +symbols till we get the real thing, why, then I'm sentimental +enough—Victorian! yes, say it, and be hanged!—to want to believe Nan +and I shall some time—some time——Anyhow, I'm not going to ask her to +spend her middle years—just think! 'figure to yourself!'—when Nan's +forty, what will your revered uncle be?</p> + +<p>"Now I've told you. This is the whole story, the outline of it. And why +do I tell you instead of merely inviting you to shut up as Nan did me? +Because if you retain in your dear meddlesome head any idea that Nan, as +you say, 'loves' me, you're to remember also that Nan is not in any +sense an Ariadne on a French clock, her arm over her head, deserted and +forlorn. You are to remember I adore her and, if I thought we could both +in a dozen years or so perish by shipwreck or Tenney's axe (poor +Tenney!) I should get down on my knees to her and beg her (can't you +hear our Nan laugh?) to let me marry her. (Probably she wouldn't, old +man—marry me, I mean. We're seldom as clever as we think, even you. So +there's that.) But, in spite of my erratic leanings toward Old Crow-ism +and sundry alarming dissatisfactions with the universe, I still retain +the common sense to see Nan, at forty, worrying over my advancing +arteriosclerosis and the general damned breaking up of my corporeal +frame. Not on your life. Now—shut up!</p> + +<p>"Yes, your mother continues to be dissatisfied over your being there. +She thinks it's all too desultory, but is consoled at your being +mentioned in the same breath with 'two such distinguished Frenchmen.' I +tell her you can't stop for a degree, and maybe if you follow out your +destiny you'll get one anyway, and that, if you still want to write +books, this will give you something to write about. But she doesn't mind +so much since she's gone into politics, hammer and tongs."</p> + +<p>Now this letter reached Richard Powell in the dingy office in Paris, +where he happened to be in consultation with his two advisers who were, +with an untiring genius of patience and foresight, interpreting to him +daily the soul of France. He went over the first part of the letter with +them, article by article, point by point, very proud, under his +composure, of their uniform agreement with the admirable Monsieur Raven. +And after their business session was concluded and the two Frenchmen had +gone, Dick addressed himself to the last part of the letter, given in +these pages. He bent himself to it with the concentration that turns a +young face, even though but for the moment, into a prophetic hint of its +far-off middle age. If he had kept enough of his shy self-consciousness +to glance at himself in the glass, he would have been able to smile at +the old fear of what the years might do to him. No heaviness there, such +as he remembered in his father's face: only trouble, pain, and their +mysteriously refining tracery. But the heaviness was in his heart. He +had to understand the letter absolutely, not only what it said but all +it implied. If it actually meant what he believed it to mean at first +reading, it drew a heavy line across his own life. Nan had drawn the +line before, but this broadened it, reënforced it with a band of black +absolutely impossible to cross. And it did mean it, and, having seen +that, without a possibility of doubt, he enclosed the letter in an +envelope, addressed it to Nan, and leaned back in his chair, never, he +believed, to think it over again, never so long as he and Nan lived. +There was no residuum of sentiment in his mind as there was in Raven's +that, after Nan had finished with this life, according to her own ideas, +there might be hope of another Nan bloomed out of this one somewhere +else and another Dick, risen out of his ashes, to try his luck again. +No, the line across the page was the line across their lives, and, said +Dick: "That's that." But he caught his breath, as he said it, and was +glad there was no one by to hear. Anybody who heard would have said it +was a sob. He was, he concluded, rather fagged with the day. These +confounded Frenchmen, with their wits you couldn't keep up with, they +took it out of you.</p> + +<p>This was why Raven, in Wake Hill, on the morning the letter came to Nan +in Boston, got a telegram from her, saying: "Come back." He had gone +there to stay over a night, after a few hours' visit with Tenney, who +was eagerly glad to see him, and again begging to be confirmed in his +condition of spiritual whiteness. Raven had just got to his house when +the message was telephoned up from the station, and its urgency made him +horribly anxious. He had been especially aware of Nan all day. Little +threads of feeling between them had been thrilling to messages he +couldn't quite get, as if they were whispers purposely mysterious, to +scare a man. He was on edge with them. They quickened the apprehension +the message brought upon him overwhelmingly. She never would have +summoned him like that if she hadn't needed him, not a word by +telephone, but his actual presence. He had Jerry take him back again to +the station, and in the late afternoon he walked in on Nan waiting for +him in one of the rooms Anne Hamilton had kept faithful to the +traditions of bygone Hamiltons, but that now knew her no more. It was +Nan the room knew, Nan in her dull blue dress against the background of +pink roses she made for herself and the room, Nan white with the pallor +of extreme emotion, bright anxiety in her eyes and a tremor about her +mouth. She went to him at once, not as the schoolgirl had run, the last +time she offered her child lips to him, but as if the moment were a +strange moment, a dazzling peak of a moment to be approached—how should +she know the way to her heart's desire?</p> + +<p>"What is it, dear?" asked Raven, not putting her off, as he had the +schoolgirl, but only unspeakably thankful for the bare fact of having +found her safe. "What's happened?"</p> + +<p>"I had to tell you straight off," said Nan, "or I couldn't do it at all. +He sent me your letter—Dick. The one about me."</p> + +<p>Raven was conscious of thinking clearly of two things at once. He was, +in the first place, aware of the live atoms which were the letter, +arranging themselves in his mind, telling him what they had told Nan. He +was also absently aware that Nan's face was so near his eyes it was +nothing but a blur of white, and that when he bent to it, the white ran, +in a rush, into a blur of pink.</p> + +<p>"So Dick sent it to you," he said. "Well, God bless him for it. Kiss me, +my Nan."</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3>By Alice Brown</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The Prisoner</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">My Love and I</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">One Act Plays</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The Black Drop</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Vanishing Points</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Robin Hood's Barn</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Children of Earth</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Homespun and Gold</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The Flying Teuton</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The Road To Castaly</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Louise Imogen Guiney</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Bromley Neighborhood</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The Secret of the Clan</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The Wind Between the Worlds</span><br /></span> +</div></div> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Crow, by Alice Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CROW *** + +***** This file should be named 31372-h.htm or 31372-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/3/7/31372/ + +Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Old Crow + +Author: Alice Brown + +Release Date: February 24, 2010 [EBook #31372] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CROW *** + + + + +Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + OLD CROW + + BY ALICE BROWN + + +New York +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY +1922 + +_All rights reserved_ + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. + +Copyright, 1922, +By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. + +Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1922. + + + + +OLD CROW + + + + +I + + +John Raven sat in the library of his shabby, yet dignified Boston house, +waiting for Richard Powell, his nephew, whom he had summoned for an +intimate talk. He was sitting by the fire making a pretense of reading +the evening paper, but really he was prefiguring the coming interview, +dreading it a good deal, and chiefly for the reason that there was an +argument to be presented, and for this he was insufficiently prepared, +and must be, however long it might be delayed. When he telephoned Dick +to come he was at last armed with a bold conviction of being able to +proffer a certain case to him (his own case, in fact); but, as these +last moments went on, he weakened sensibly in any hope he might have had +that Dick would be able to meet him from any illuminating viewpoint of +his own. This was mid-winter, two years after the end of the War, where +Dick and his uncle had worked in the Ambulance Corps to the limit of +their capacities--Dick, no soldier, because of what seemed to him a +diabolic eccentricity of imperfect sight, and Raven, blocked by what he +felt to be the negligible disability of age. John Raven had, with the +beginning of the War--which, as early as 1914 he had decided to be his +war--made up his mind that although he was over forty and of a business +training with inconsiderable excursions into literature, he wanted +nothing so much as to get into the thick of it and the rough of it, so +far as a man might who was past his physical best, and now he was back +again, more fit than when he went, but at this present moment breathless +at the realization that he had been up against life as it actually is, +and that he found it a brute business and hated it. And this was not so +much the horror of life in the field where, however the human heart +cried out against the argument of desecrated flesh, the spirit could +call mightily upon God, challenging Him to grant the chrism of +fulfilment in return for this wild sacrifice of blood, as the horror of +life when peace was exercising her rights in unbelievable ways. This he +was going to explain to Dick, if he could manage it, while he set forth +also his need of retreating from the active scene and leaving some of +his formerly accepted duties on Dick's shoulders. As he sat there, +gaunt, long, lean man, with a thin brown face and the eagle's look, a +fineness of aquiline curve that made him significant in a dominant type, +he fitted his room as the room fitted him. The house was old; nothing +had been changed in it since the year when, in his first-won prosperity, +he persuaded his mother up from the country and let her furnish it with +her shyly modest taste, a sense of values that bade her keep within the +boundary of the atmosphere she brought with her in good old pieces +tenderly used. The room was dim, even by day, from these shadows of the +brooding past, and the dull blue draperies at the windows, while they +touched it to a more inspiriting tone, still spoke softly of the repose +a man wanted when he escaped from the outer world to the assuagement of +silence and his books. + +To-night, when Raven had just about come to the conclusion that he could +not possibly enter upon certain things with Dick because, although Dick +elected to be a poet, there was no recognized form of words that would +make him understand, and he'd better telephone him to put the interview +off, he heard his voice in the hall, and, answering it, even breaking +over it, like bright bubbles of a vocal stream, the voice of the girl +they both loved, in ways becoming to their differences. Raven drew a +comfortable breath. The intimate conference with Dick would have to be +deferred, though he would quite as willingly have had Nan listen to it, +except for the chance of her carrying it away with her, in that +sympathetic tenderness of hers, to burden her young heart. Nan would +have made quick work of understanding. She translated you as you went, +and even ran ahead of you, in her haste, just as she sometimes cut in on +your speech, not rudely rebuking you for being too slow, but in her +eagerness to assure you she caught at the first toss. And then they came +in, she full of anticipatory delight at seeing Raven, and Dick so full +of her that he seemed not to know whether his uncle were there or not, +except as an habitual figure in the furnishing of the room. + +We must pause a dull minute, while they were projecting themselves into +the scene, to find out how they looked and whether they also fitted the +room and Raven. Nan, known to her larger world as Annette Hamilton, was +a tall, slim, yet muscular girl, graced with as many physical +contradictions as you are likely to imagine. While she stood for an +instant before, puppy-like, precipitating herself upon Raven, her eyes +crinkled up like Mary Seraskier's, and she showed a line of milk-white +teeth. Altogether nature--for she had only the most inconsiderable help +from art--had done her exceedingly well. She had the hurling +impetuosities of the puppy when she found herself anywhere near persons +familiarly dear to her; but, unlike the puppy, she was a thing of grace. +Her hands and slim arms had a girl's loveliest contours, and yet, hidden +somewhere under that satin flesh with its rose and silver lustre, were +muscles serviceably strong. Her eyes were grey like Athena's, her hair +fine and thick and pale, and her face altogether too irregular to talk +about reasonably. + +How is it possible to delineate Dick, even with all profuse generosity +of comment, without suggesting that he was not of the type to please +himself, or tagging him with a priggishness afar from him? He certainly +was not the sort of hero his dramatic poems described with a choppy +vigor of detail, and whom there is no doubt he would have chosen to +resemble. But nature had given him a slimness and an actual grace he +found, in his private self-scrutiny, almost girlish, nor could he wholly +outwit and supplement her by the athletic training he never intermitted. +Dick's face, too, he found much against him, being of a round solidity +with a nose too thick and a mouth a thought too small. How could such +despite have happened to him, he asked himself in moments of depression +when, confronting the mirror, he recognized the wrongs inheritance had +done him. But he knew. It was father's people, that was it. They were +all round and owlish, and they thickened up in middle life. If he could +have shared Uncle Jack's lean aquilinity, people would have looked at +him twice, as they did at Uncle Jack, which in itself would be a bore, +except that Nan also might look. Aware of these things and hiding them +in his soul, he held himself tight, shut his mouth close, and challenged +you with a spectacled eye, pinning you down as if to say: "I am born in +every particular as I didn't want to be, but take notice that I'll have +no light recognition of the hateful trick they did me. I am in training +for a husky fellow. I haven't let up on myself one instant since I found +out how horrible it was to be a good deal more of a fellow than I shall +ever look. I never shall let up. And don't you let me catch you letting +up either, in the way you treat me." + +Nan, to go back to the minute of their entrance, made a swift assault +upon Raven. In the old days when he was a youngish man and she a little +girl, a growing thing, elongating like Alice, she used to hurl herself +into his arms and insist on staying there. Her aunt, Miss Anne Hamilton, +who had brought her up from babyhood, was always detaching her from +Raven; but Nan clung as persistently. Raven would look at Miss Anne, +over the girl's rumpled silk poll, with whimsically imploring eyes. Why +couldn't Nan be allowed to break upon him like a salty, fragrant wave of +the sea, he seemed to ask Miss Anne, bringing all sorts of floating +richness, the outcrop of her fancies and affections? Aunt Anne would +return the glance with her sweet, immovable deprecation and go on +detaching, while Nan, with an equal obstinacy--though hers was +protesting, vocable, sometimes shrill to the point of anguish--stuck to +her self-assumed rights. It was Raven himself who involuntarily stepped +over to Aunt Anne's side and finished the detaching process. When Nan +came back after her first term at the seminary Aunt Anne preferred to +college, and was running to him with her challenge of welcome, he was +taken aback by the nymph-like grace and beauty of her, the poise of the +small head with its braided crown--the girls at the seminary told her +she might have been a Victorian by the way she wore her hair--and he +instinctively caught her arms, about to enwreath his neck, held her +still and looked at her. She could not know what vision, overwhelming in +its suddenness, she brought before him, of childhood gone and maidenhood +come and the sacredness of this new state. Aunt Anne knew and frowned a +little to herself, from her silent, savage jealousy, realizing, though +she would never, in her proud integrity, allow herself to think it, that +this hushed veneration of Raven's was worse than the old tumultuous +intercourse. What Raven really might have said was: + +"Darling, you're a woman and you're a beauty. You don't know it, but you +don't want to hug a jaded old reveler like me." + +He was not, by any means, a reveler. His life had been little more than +a series of walks to business. But those were the words that came to +him, catching her adorable freshness of body and mind, and determining +to keep it untouched by dusty old pantaloons such as he saw himself. Nan +stood for a minute paling out under his eyes, and then drew away from +him and left the room, her braid-crowned head high. She had to meet him +at dinner, and he knew she had cried and Aunt Anne knew it and was hard +on her over the little things she could reprove her for, in a silky, +affectionate way, and Raven's heart swelled until he thought they both +must know its congestion, and tried to put round it another bond of +quiet, kind affection. Since that time, Nan had never kissed him; but +now, this two months since the death of Aunt Anne, she had adopted a +greeting of her own. She put her hands on his arm and bent her forehead +for a minute to his shoulder. The first time she did it, he wanted to +kiss the bright hair, but forbade himself, and the second time he said, +he was so curious over it: + +"A rite?" + +She was ready with her answer. He suspected she must have thought it out +ingeniously beforehand. + +"It's because I'm sorry for you." + +"Sorry?" he repeated. + +"Yes," she said, "about Aunt Anne." + +Then he realized she was sorry because Aunt Anne was dead, and he was +more and more conscious of the unbecoming lightness and freedom where he +found himself at the death of Aunt Anne. He had not dared acknowledge it +to himself. He couldn't, for shame. But whereas, in the past years, when +he ventured to formulate his own life a little and see what it had done +to him and how he could go on meeting it, he had had a sense of +harassment and of being driven too hard, after Aunt Anne's death he +began to recognize the stillness of the space she had left behind. Now +to-day, before Nan had accomplished the little rite of the bowed head on +his shoulder, something queer about it seemed to strike Dick, and he +said to her: + +"He's your uncle, too, you know." + +Raven took this with composure, as signifying the length as well as the +depth of his adoptive relation toward her, but Nan met it with +resentment. She left him and turned upon Dick. + +"Now what," she said, "do you mean by that?" + +"Why, Nan," said the poor youth, keeping a stiff upper lip, because he +recognized the signs of an approaching squabble, "I've told him. I'll +tell him again. Jack, we're engaged." + +"We're nothing of the sort," said Nan, either in pure surprise or an +excellent simulation of it. + +Dick met this doggedly. + +"We are, too," he said. "You promised me." + +"Maybe I did," Nan yielded. "But it was that awful night when you were +going out. We won't talk about that. I'd have promised you anything +then. I'd have promised anybody, just as I'd have given 'em coffee or a +smoke. But when we got back and you expected to begin from there, didn't +I tell you to shut up? I've told you to ever since. And I believe," she +added, with an acumen that struck him in the center, "you're only +dragging it out now to catch me--before him." + +"I did shut up," said Dick, holding himself straight and using his mouth +tautly, "because your aunt was sick and then because she was worse. But +you needn't think I've shut up for good. Besides, it's only Jack I told. +He's nobody." + +"No," said Raven mildly, "I'm nobody. Only I wish you wouldn't come here +to fight. Why can't you get it over on the steps, and then act like +Christians after you come in?" + +Nan laughed. She was instantly and most obligingly sweet, as if wholly +bent on pleasing him. But Richard glowered. It was quite like her, he +thought, to sprinkle herself over with that May morning look of hers +when she knew she had the horrible advantage not only of being adorable +in herself, but a female to boot, within all the sanctities that still +do hedge the sex, however it behaves. + +"You see," said Nan maternally, "in France we were living at high +pressure. Now everything's different. We mustn't be silly. Run away, +Dick, just as I told you, and leave me to talk to Rookie." + +This was her name for Raven, saved over from childish days. + +"All right then," said Dick. "But I sha'n't wait for you. I shall go to +Cambridge." + +It was such an anticlimax of a threat, delivered in so determined a +voice, that he expected them to laugh, in a silly way they had of seeing +the merest foolishness always from the same angle. But, as he turned to +go, it was with the chill certainty that they had forgotten all about +him. Nan had settled herself by the fire and his uncle was bringing her +a footstool, an elderly attention, Dick floutingly thought, very well +suited to Aunt Anne, but pure silliness for a girl who flung herself +about all over the place. At any rate, he wasn't wanted, and he did go +to Cambridge and hunted up some of the fellows likely to talk sense; but +no sooner had he settled within their circle of geniality than he found +himself glooming over Nan and tempted to go back and break in on that +mysterious conclave. + +It was mysterious. Nan herself had made it so. Her face, on Dick's +going, had fallen into a grave repose, and she turned at once to Raven, +saying: + +"You see, Dick ran in on the way over here, and when he told me you'd +sent for him, I said I'd come along, because I'd got to see you instead. +Was that cheeky? I really have got to. Couldn't the other thing wait?" + +"Perfectly well," said Raven, with a ready cheerfulness he was aware she +could not understand. How should she? He had not been in the habit of +troubling Dick, or indeed any one, with his vaporings. He had lived, of +late years, as a sedate, middle-aged gentleman should, with no +implication of finding the world any less roseate than his hopes had +promised. As to Dick, the very sight of him had shown him beyond a doubt +how little disposed he was to take the lad into that area of tumultuous +discontent which was now his mind. "Fire away," he bade her. "You in +trouble, dear? You want patriarchal advice?" + +Nan might not have heard. She was looking, with a frowning gravity, into +the fire. How should she begin? He saw the question beating about in her +mind and hoped he could give her a lead. But she found the way for +herself. She turned to him with a sudden lovely smile. + +"Aunt Anne," she said, "has done something beautiful." + +He felt his heart shrinking within him as he combated the ungracious +feeling which, it seemed, would not down: that he was never to be done +with Aunt Anne's deeds, so often demanding, as they did, a reciprocal +action from him. What he wanted, he realized grimly, was to have his +cake and eat it, if he might use so homespun a simile for a woman who +had persistently lived for him and in him and then had made clear spaces +about him by going away in the dignity of death. He wanted to breathe in +the space she had left, and he also wanted to be spared the indecency of +recognizing his relief. But Nan, studying the fire persistently, to +allow his eyes all possible liberty of searching her face while she +generously avoided his, was going on in what was evidently a +preconceived task of breaking something to him. + +"Yes, she's done something beautiful, and done it for you." + +Raven's heart had shrunk so now that he wondered it could weigh so +heavily. How could a woman, his rebellious intelligence asked him, +manage to pursue a man with her benefits even from the grave? All his +grown-up life he had fought them, but still they hung about him him like +shackles. When he tore them off from one member--always wounding himself +only, and scrupulously sure of never, except by the inevitability of his +refusals, hurting her--they fastened on him somewhere else. When he was +under twenty--for he was fourteen years younger than she--had come the +question of her endowing him for the period of his apprenticeship to +literature, that he might write with a free mind. He had, tempting as +that was and safe as it seemed to his arrogant youth, found the decency +and prudence to refuse. He wondered now how he had been spared, saved +really by the prophetic gods from taking that guarantee, though he was +then so sure of his ability to justify the risk and pay it all back. +Perhaps his mother had helped him. She was a woman of rare sanity, and +though he could not remember her uttering a dissuading word, he was +sure, in the light of his own middle-aged vision, that she must have +been throwing the weight of her clear-mindedness into the scale. + +Then there was the question of a college course and of European travel: +those were among the colossal gifts Anne Hamilton had sought to lavish +on him. But again he had saved himself, accepting one thing only, a +benefit that must have hurt her heart like a stone, she was so bent on +his beautiful, bright aptitude at writing taking its place as soon as +possible, and with no dimming from a prosaic drudgery, in the world as +she knew it: the Boston world, the New England world, the court of +judgment that sits across the Atlantic. This benefit he asked for and +received, from her father: a clerk's place in the mills--Hamilton was a +wool magnate--and a chance to earn steady money for himself and his +mother, who was every year, in spite of her stout heart, slipping into +the weakness of the chronic invalid. Raven wrote his books at the fag +end of days given to his dull industry, and he succeeded in calling +attention to himself as a classical scholar, and then, as he impatiently +hit out with what he called pot-boilers in dialect, he got a popular +hearing and more money as well. All the time he was advancing in the +mills, and, as he advanced, he never failed to see before him the +flutter of Anne's discreet draperies or hear the click of her determined +heel. She never appeared in the business at all, but he was perfectly +sure there wasn't a preferment offered him by her father for which he +wasn't indebted to her manipulation of Hamilton in long, skillful hours +beforehand. Hamilton had no slightest idea he was being influenced, but, +as the years went on, he grew in appreciation of young Raven's business +abilities to such a degree that John, reading his mind like a familiar +tongue, wondered whether after all it was true, and he hadn't a genius +for the affairs of wool. Was he doing the thing that seemed so dull to +him with such mechanical and yet consummate cleverness that he was worth +all this unripe advancement, or was it indeed Anne's white hand that was +turning the wheel of power, her wand that was keeping the augmented +vision of him ever before her father's credulous eyes? But he could not +retard the wheels of his progress without making a fool of himself, and +by the time his sister had prosperously married and his mother had died, +he was a partner in the business, and then Hamilton also died and Raven +was asking Dick, hoping all the time he would refuse, if he wanted to +come in. Dick did refuse, with an instant hearty decision for which his +uncle inwardly blessed him. Raven had got so restive by this time over +the position he had himself won through Anne's generalship that he felt +the curse was going down through the family, and that Dick, if he should +come in, would wake up at forty-odd and find himself under the too heavy +shade of the Hamilton benevolence. + +"Not on your life," said Dick, when he was halfheartedly offered the +chance of battening on wool, "not while Mum's got the dough. There's +only one of me, and she's bound to keep me going." + +"You couldn't marry on it," said Raven. + +For that also Dick was cheerfully prepared. + +"By the time Nan's ready," he said, having at that point asked her +intermittently for several years, "I shall be getting barrelfuls out of +my plays." + +"'If,'" quoted Raven, "'Medina Sidonia had waited for the skin of the +bear that was not yet killed, he might have catched a great cold.'" + +"That's all right," said Dick. "You needn't worry, not till it begins to +worry me. The only thing that gets me is not pinning Nan down." + +"Yes," said Raven, "she's a difficult person to pin." + +And saying it, he had a vision of a bright butterfly with "dye-dusty +wings" in stiff, glass-covered brittleness. He wondered if marrying +might pin Nan down like that. + +Another thought troubled him a little: whether Dick had built even +obscurely in his own mind on the money Nan would have from Aunt Anne, +and the more modest sum she had now from her dead father and mother. He +concluded not. He hadn't got to worry about that. Dick had lived in the +atmosphere of money and he took its permanence for granted. + +But we are keeping Nan looking at the fire and trying to get her news +out adequately, waiting a long time for these explanatory excursions +into past history. Raven also was waiting, a good deal excited and +conscious of his apprehensive heart. And when she spoke, in a studied +quietude, he found the words were the very last he expected to hear: + +"I wanted to be the one to tell you. We've found her will." + + + + +II + + +They sat there silent for several minutes. Raven was keeping desperate +clutch on the inner self lashed by his hurrying heart, and telling it +there was no danger of his saying any of the things it was hounding him +on to say. He wanted to break out with an untempered violence: + +"Of course you've found it. And of course she's left a lot of it to me." + +He did not really believe that: only it so linked up with the chain of +her unceasing benevolences toward him that it seemed the only thing to +complete them adequately. And Nan, as if his premonition had prompted +her, too, was saying, after the minute she had left him to get his pace +even with hers, as if to assure him that, although she knew so much more +than he, she wouldn't hurry ahead: + +"Rookie, dear, she's left it all to you." + +Raven felt himself tighten up, every nerve and sinew of him, to do +something before it should be too late. He bent forward to her and said, +a sharp query: + +"Who found it?" + +"Why," said Nan, smiling as if she couldn't ask anything better, "I +found it, in a perfectly innocent looking envelope with some old deeds +and mortgages." + +"You haven't got it here, have you?" he pelted on. "You didn't bring it +with you?" + +His eyes interrogated her with his voice, and she shook her head, +wondering at him. + +"Nothing to you?" he asked sharply. "I'm the sole legatee?" + +"Oh, I have the house, of course," said Nan, "the one here and the place +at Wake Hill. She had those only for her lifetime, you know. Yes, you're +the sole legatee." + +"You haven't told anybody, have you?" he asked, in a despairing haste, +as if he were seeking about for ways to suppress the document. + +She broke into an amused giggle, the note he sometimes fancied she kept +for him alone. + +"Why, yes," she said, "of course I have. I telephoned Mr. Whitney, and +he was in a great state over it. He came round, and I gave it to him." + +"A lawyer!" said Raven, in disgust. "A damned accurate, +precedent-preaching lawyer! Well, the fat's in the fire now. What did +you have to be so confounded previous for?" + +Nan was smiling at him as if she found herself wiser than he. + +"You didn't think you could tear it up, did you, Rookie?" she inquired. +"You can't, you know, except in stories." + +"I don't know what I thought," he said. "Only I wish it hadn't been +done, that's all. It's a"--he ended blankly--"a mistake." + +She was looking at him now in a warm, sweet way, to tell him she +understood and thanked him. + +"You're afraid I sha'n't have enough," she said. "I shall. I'd ever so +much rather you had it, Rookie." + +"It isn't a question," said Raven curtly, in his disaffection, "of how +much you're worth. It's simply yours, that's all, and you've got to have +it. Well, I can refuse it, I suppose. Only that's so boorish. It drags +everybody out into the open. What made her! Oh, what made her!" + +"I think it's nice," said Nan comfortably. "It seems to make everything +so right. As to other people--why, it's telling them, don't you know, +you really were the one she cared most about, though she couldn't care +quite in the way you wanted her to." + +He sat staring at her. What did she mean? What had she made up, in her +adequate mind, about his relation to Aunt Anne? She couldn't know how he +had fought off the yearly increasing benefits Anne had showered him +with, unless indeed Anne had told her. And it wasn't like her. Anne was +dignity itself. She kept her own counsel. She took her stately course +without the least recognition that there were peculiarities in the pace +she kept or the road she chose. She had the unconscious arrogance of her +class, a class perhaps, except as surviving in individuals, almost +extinct. She never accounted for herself, because it could not have +forced its way into her mind, from birth to death, that there was +anything in her conduct save the inevitable best, as ordered as the +stars. So, Raven knew, she had probably never talked over his nebulous +relation with her to Nan; but he was suddenly alive with curiosity to +know. He couldn't coax Nan into betraying that confidence, but he was +nevertheless set on getting at it somehow. He wondered if it might be +decent to do it by direct attack. + +"Nan," said he, "just what was my relation to your Aunt Anne? What do +you assume it to have been?" + +She looked at him as if in reproach, a hurt pride flushing her cheek and +giving a sort of wounded appeal to her glance. + +"Why," she stumbled, "I know. Of course I know. Everybody did that heard +how long you'd been devoted to her." + +This gave him so sharp a pang that it might almost have seemed she had +been told off to avenge some of Aunt Anne's wrongs of omission suffered +at his hands. He had never been devoted to her, even with his decent +show of deference in return for the benefits he had to reject. And now +Nan was accusing him of having kept up the relation he had been all his +life repudiating, and since Aunt Anne was gone (in the pathetic immunity +that shuts the lips of the living as it does those of the dead), he +could not repudiate it any more. Nan was looking at him now in her +clear-eyed gravity, but still with that unconscious implication of there +being something in it all to hurt her personally. The words came as if +in spite of her, so impetuously that she might easily not have seen how +significant they were: + +"There's nothing to be ashamed of in not getting the woman you want, +especially with that reason. She adored you, Rookie. I know she did. And +it was pretty heroic in her to keep her mind fixed on all those years +between you. I wouldn't, I can tell you. Do you s'pose I'd let a matter +of fourteen years keep me from the only man? No, sir. Not me." + +They sat gazing at each other, she as self-willed as her words and he +abjectly afraid of her finding out. Why? He could not have told. But it +did seem as if he must protect Anne, in the shadows where she lived now, +from the flashing directness of this terrible young glance. It was all +he could do for her. It was bad enough to have Nan build up a beautiful +dream house of eternal love and renunciation. It was infinitely worse to +be the cause of her demolishing it. And as his eyes, in sheer terror of +leaving her to reflect any more astutely and productively on this, held +hers, and hers answered back, suddenly he saw a new knowledge dawn in +their clear depths. She had somehow read him, underneath his evasions. +She knew. And before she could turn that involuntary discovery of hers +over in her mind and blur it with some of the discretions he was trying +to maintain, she burst out, in the extremity of her wonder: + +"Good heavens! I don't believe it was so at all. You weren't in love +with her. She was with you, and that was the only way she----" Here she +saw the morass her crude candor was leading them both into, and stopped, +but not soon enough for him to miss the look of eager relief sprung into +her eyes. He turned from her and spoke roughly: + +"We don't know what we're talking about. Going into things now--why, +it's the merest folly. Haven't we enough to worry over in the matter of +the will? That's the thing we've got to meet next." + +She had now, he saw, the consciously sweet and warming smile she had for +him when she wanted to coax him into doing something or ignoring +something she had done. + +"I'm in hopes," she said, "you may feel differently after you've read +her letter." + +"Her letter?" he repeated, as if that were a superadded shock. "What +letter?" + +"It was in the envelope," said Nan soothingly, "with the will." + +"Who's it to?" + +He was a writer of English, but his extremity was such that only the +briefest slovenliness would serve. + +"To you," she said, unclasping her little bag and bringing it out, the +familiar superscription uppermost and the very size and texture of the +envelope so reminiscent of Anne's unchanging habits that he felt again +the pressure of her fine indomitable hand on his. + +"Have you," he asked bleakly, "shown that to Whitney?" + +"Why, no," said she, in a clear-eyed surprise. "Of course not. It's +addressed to you." + +She held it out to him and, after a perceptible pause, he took it from +her and sat holding it, looking over it into the fire, as if he saw his +fate there, or as if he should determine it for himself by tossing the +letter in, to be devoured. Then he became aware that Nan was gathering +herself up to go. It was rather a mental intimation than anything +tangible. She was tight furled, like all the women of that moment of +fashion, and had no flying draperies to collect. But he felt her +flitting and knew at the same instant that he could not lose her, since, +determined as he was to bar her out of the inner recesses of his +unfurnished mental prison, where he and the memory of Aunt Anne dwelt so +miserably together, it was still a comfort to keep her human presence +within call. + +"Don't go," he implored her, and she, surprised, settled back, saying: + +"No, of course not, if you don't want me to. I thought you'd like to +read it straight off. Wouldn't it be easier to read it alone?" + +"I don't know whether I can ever read it," said Raven, and then, seeing +what a great booby he must sound, he ended savagely: "I'll read it now." + +Nan took a paper-knife from the table and offered it to him. Evidently +she felt an unformulated tenderness there, a guess that if he tore it +open it would seem as if he were somehow tearing at Aunt Anne's vanished +and helpless delicacies. Then, as he did not accept the knife, or, +indeed, seem to see it, she took the letter from his hand, ran the blade +noiselessly under the flap, withdrew the folded sheets, and gave them to +him. Raven, with a little shake of the head, as if he were reminding +himself not to be a fool, opened the letter, fixed his attention on it +and, without looking up, hurried through the closely written pages. Nan +sat as still as an image of silence, and when he had done and she heard +him folding the sheets and putting them back into the envelope, she did +not look up. + +"Well," said he, his voice so harsh and dry that now she did glance at +him in a quick inquiry, "it's as bad as it can be. No, it couldn't very +well be worse." + +Harrying thoughts raced through her mind. Had Aunt Anne reproached him +for any friendliness unreturned, any old hurt time had never healed? No, +Aunt Anne was too effectually armored by an exquisite propriety. She +would have been too proud to make any egotistical demand for herself +during life. Assuredly she could not have done it after death. Raven may +have guessed what she was thinking. + +"No," he said, in the same tone of dry distaste. All at once it seemed +he could be definitely allowed to treat himself to a little wholesome +rebuttal of Anne and her ways. "It's nothing you could possibly imagine. +She leaves the money to me to be used for a certain purpose. She doesn't +leave it to any association of the people that think as she does, +because she doesn't absolutely trust them never to divert it into some +channel she wouldn't approve. She leaves it to me to administer because +I know precisely what she means and I'd feel bound to do it in her way +and no other." + +"But what is the purpose?" Nan asked him. She was thoroughly surprised +and very curious. "So it's for a cause. Aren't you glad, Rookie? A +minute ago you didn't want it. What is the cause?" + +"The cause," said Raven, with infinite distaste, as if it galled him +even to say it, "is the cause of Peace." + +"Good Lord!" said Nan breathlessly. "O my stars!" She thought of it a +moment, and he thought also, and then she gathered herself hopefully. +"But, Rookie dear, you believe in peace. You don't have to carry it out +in her way. You can carry it out in yours--and mine--and Dick's--we that +have seen things over there. Why, bless you, Rookie, it's a great idea. +It's a chance: Liberty enlightening the world! a big educational fund, +and you to administer it. Cheer up, Rookie dear. It's a chance." + +"Oh, no, it's not a chance," said Raven bitterly. "She's seen to that. +She's tied me up, hand and foot. It's got to be done in her way, the way +she'd been doing it herself since 1914." + +"The acutely sentimental?" asked Nan ruthlessly. Then the misery of his +face--a look, too, of mortification as if somebody had put him to public +shame--hurt her so that she spoke with an impetuous bitterness of her +own: "It was a cruel thing to do. Well, it was like her." + +Raven put in heavily: + +"She never meant to be cruel." + +"No," said Nan, "but the whole thing--all the things she had to do +with--came out of her being absolutely stupid and absolutely sure she +was right." + +Raven thought apathetically for a moment. His mind went plodding back +over the years of his acquaintance with Anne, as he had never meant it +should again. There had been moments, of late, when he wondered if he +need ever go back to that guiding hand of hers on his unresponsive life. +Of herself, he would have protested, he must have the decency to think. +Just now, recurring to that also, he wondered, with a grim amusement, +whether he had perhaps meant to set apart a day for it, say Thursdays +from ten to twelve, to think gratefully of Anne. But here he was again +at war with her, and the curious part of it seemed to be that he +couldn't undertake the warfare with the old, steady, hopeless +persistence he had got used to in their past; the mere thought of it had +roused him to a certain alarming wildness of revolt. + +"Well," he found himself saying to Nan, because there might be a +propriety in curbing her impetuous conclusions, "she had a way of being +right--conventionally, you might say." + +"Was she right about the War?" Nan threw back at him. + +"No," he felt obliged to own. + +"Is she right about this, trying to fetter you, hand and foot, against +what she knew you believed, and banking on your doing it because she's +crowded you and rushed you so many times and you've never failed her?" + +"Oh, yes," said Raven miserably, "I've failed her often enough." + +"But answer me that: was she right when she left you her money to do +this fool thing and give the world another kick down hill where the +sentimentalists are sending it? Now I ask you, Rookie, was she right?" + +"No," he owned again. + +"Then," said Nan triumphantly, "you mean she's right about teas and +dinners and women's clubs and old portraits and genealogy and believing +our family tree was the tree of life. That's what you mean, isn't it, +Rookie?" + +Raven looked at her, an unhappy smile dawning. He was moderately sure, +in his unspoken certainties, that this was what he did mean. She had +been the perfect product of a certain form of civilization, her +proprieties, her cruelties even--though, so civilized were they, they +seemed to rank only as spiritual necessities. + +"I'd rather see a monkey climbing our family tree," said Nan, with a +rash irrelevance she hoped might shock him into the reaction of a +wholesome disapproval, "than all those stiffs she used to hold up for me +to imitate." + +"Don't!" said Raven involuntarily. "It would hurt her like the mischief +to hear you say a thing like that." + +"Why, Rookie," said Nan, with a tenderness for him alone, he saw, not +for Aunt Anne, "you act as if she might be--in the room." She kept a +merciful restraint on herself there. She had almost said: "You act as if +you were afraid she might be in the room." + +He sat staring at her from under frowning brows. Was it possible, his +startled consciousness asked itself, that the spell of Anne's tenacity +of will had not lifted in the least and he did think she might be in the +room? Not to intimidate him: he had never feared her. He had been under +the yoke, not only of his decent gratitude, but his knowledge of the +frightful hurts he could deal her. He wondered what Nan would say if he +could tell her that, if he could paint for her the most awful hour in +his remembrance, more terrible even than that of seeing his mother +suffer under mortal disease, when Anne had actually given way before +him, the only time in her ordered life, and accused him of the cruelty +of not loving her. This had not been the thin passion of the family +portraits smiling down on them from her walls, but the terrible +nerve-destroying anguish of a woman scorned. That was one of the things +in his life he never allowed himself to think about; but it would, in +moments of physical weariness, come beating at the door. He would hear +it leave the threshold while he sat, hands clenched and lips shut tight, +and go prowling round the house, peering in at him through the windows, +bidding him waken and remember. And when he did find himself forced to +remember before he could get out of doors and walk or ride, it was +always with an incredulous amazement that he had, in that moment of her +downfall, found the courage to withstand her. When the implacable ghost +of remembrance flashed on his mind the picture of her, face wet with +streaming tears, hands outstretched to him--beautiful hands, the product +of five generations of idleness and care--why did he not meet her +passion with some decency of response, swear he did love her, and spend +the rest of his life in making good? Would a lifetime of dogged +endurance be too much for a man to give, to save all this inherited +delicacy of type from the ruin of knowing it had betrayed itself and was +delicate no more?--the keenest pang it could feel in a world made, to +that circumscribed, over-cultured intelligence, for the nurture of such +flowers of life. He felt, as he stood there looking despairingly upon +her, as if he had seen all the manufactured expensiveness of the world, +lustrous silks, bloom of velvet, filigreed jewels, in rags and ruin. Yet +there was more, and this it was that had brought enduring remorse to his +mind. It was pride. That was in ruins. If she had assaulted him with the +reproaches of an unfed passion, there would have been some savage +response of rebuttal in him, to save them both from this meager sort of +shame. But what could heal in a man's mind the vision of a woman's +murdered pride, as deep as the pride of queens, in the days when the +world itself bowed its neck for queens to set their feet on? Nan was +looking at him curiously. He became aware of it, and returned to himself +with a start. He must, he judged, have been acting queerly. It had never +happened before that he had been under other eyes when the vision rose +to plague him. + +"You've been such a long time without speaking," said Nan gently. "What +is it, Rookie dear?" + +He shook his head. His forehead was damp with the sweat of his renewed +remorses. + +"There's such a lot of things, Nan," he answered, "that can't be said." + +"Yes," she agreed, "that's true. Want me to go home?" + +He didn't want her to go home. He caught at her dear presence. Almost he +wished he might tell her how horrible it was, not only to repudiate +Anne's last request of him, but to feel he was repudiating it on the +heels of that other refusal years ago. + +"No, dear," he said, "not yet. I'll go with you when you must." + +"I don't believe," Nan ventured, "it's as bad as you think. She did do +some foolish things," she meditated, "these last years." + +"She did some hideous things," said Raven, "because they weren't normal. +They weren't decent. And so they weren't right." + +"Maybe I don't know so much as you do about them," said Nan. "You see +she was so furious with me for going to France----" + +"Oh, don't say she was furious," urged Raven, still out of that sense of +her being in the room. "It would hurt her so confoundedly." + +"Well, she was, you see," said Nan. "I thought you knew about it. But I +remember, you'd gone. And when I told her I was going over, she was +furious. Oh, she was, Rookie! You can't say anything else. I know Aunt +Anne." + +"But just cut out some of the adjectives," said Raven, still with that +sense of Anne's being in the room and the unsportsmanlike business of +putting her in her place when she could not, even from her place, defend +herself. "She never was furious. She simply didn't believe in war and +she wouldn't join any relief work and didn't want you to." + +"She wouldn't join any relief work," said Nan, relentlessly rehearsing. +"She said the most frightful things and said them publicly. She ought to +have been arrested, only they didn't take the trouble. She wasn't a +Quaker. There was nothing inbred to excuse her. We're decent folks, +Rookie, we Hamiltons. But she stood for non-resistance. She said Belgium +shouldn't have resisted, and England shouldn't have gone in, and France +shouldn't have lifted a finger or thrown a bomb, and when you told +her--that is, I told her--she was crazy, she said something awful." + +Raven was startled out of his determination to show no curiosity. + +"What did she say?" he asked. "What was it that was awful?" + +Nan seemed to have paled a little under the rose-leaf texture of her +cheek. + +"Why, you know," she said, "what they all come back to. Whatever they +believe, they come back to that. I don't see how they can. I couldn't, +it scares me so. They tell you what He said--Christ." + +Raven sat looking at her, wondering absently, in the unregarded depths +of his mind, how they could go on with a talk that was ploughing deeper +and deeper and yet could get nowhere in the end. For certainly they were +both mercifully bent on saving Anne, and Anne, under this shadow of her +latest past, herself would not let them. + +"She absolutely forbade my going to France," said Nan, this with no +special feeling, but as if she had dwelt on it until there was no +emotion left to put into it. "She said it was notoriety I wanted. I told +her I'd scrub floors over there, if they wanted me to. It proved I did, +too, you know. I did it remarkably well. And then she said she forbade +me, and I reminded her I was of age and had my own money. And I went." + +Raven nodded. He thought they had said enough, but Nan's calm +impartiality did rest him. It was something he could not himself attain. + +"And now," said Nan, "she wants you to keep on doing the fool things +she'd have done then, if they'd let her. She probably wants to get up a +big scheme of propaganda and put it into the schools. And every blessed +boy and girl in this country is to be taught not to serve the truth and +do his job but--safety first." + +"Yes," said Raven, drearily "I suppose that's about it." + +"But actually," said Nan, suddenly aware that he had not told her, "what +does she say? Does she specify? What does she say?" + +"She says," Raven answered, in a toneless voice, glancing at the letter +but making no movement toward sharing it with her more definitely, "that +her money is to build a Palace of Peace--she doesn't say where--for +lectures, demonstrations of the sort I know she approves, all the +activities possible in the lines she has been following--for the +doctrine of non-resistance and the consequent abolishment of war." + +Again he ended drearily. + +"Well," said Nan, "what are you going to do about it? going to spend +your life and the lives of a lot of more or less intelligent pacifists +teaching children to compute the number of movies they could go to for +the money spent on one battleship----" + +"But, good God, Nan!" Raven broke in, "you and I don't want to preach +war." + +"No," said Nan, "but we can't let Aunt Anne preach peace: not her brand, +as we've seen it. O Rookie! what's the use of taking the world as it +isn't? Why don't we see if we can't make something of the old thing as +it is and has been? and blest if I don't believe as it always will be?" + +Raven looked at her in a maze of interrogation. Was this the fragility +of girlhood speaking, or was it womanhood, old as time itself, with the +knowledge of good and evil? She answered the look. + +"No," she said, "I'm not a kid. Don't think it. I suppose it's because +I've seen--life." + +The pause before the last word, the drop on the word itself was not from +bitterness, he knew. But it was sad. + +"Well," he said irrepressibly, "you've seen life, and what do you think +of it?" + +She hesitated. Then she put out her hand and touched the petal of a +rose, one of a great dome of splendor in a bowl. + +"I like--roses," she said whimsically. + +She looked at him with that most moving look of a lovely face: the +knitted brows of rueful questioning, the smiling lips. Raven, staring +back at her, felt a sudden impulse to speak, to tell. It was the form of +her reply that invited him. + +"I don't believe, Nan," he said, "I even care about roses. I don't care +about the whole infernal scheme. That's what I sent for Dick for--to +tell him. Practically, you know I should have to tell Dick. And I +haven't done it and now I'm telling you." + + + + +III + + +Nan sat looking at him with an air of patient alertness, ready, he saw, +to meet what he had to say and do the best she could with it. He had an +irritated apprehension that, as her work through the last few years had +lain chiefly in meeting emergencies, so now he was an emergency. And as +Dick, poet though the inner circle of journalism had listed him, might +not understand in the least what he was driving at, so there was danger +of Nan's understanding too quickly and too much, with the resultant +embarrassment of thinking something could be done. And nothing could be +done beyond the palliatives he meant to allow himself. He would try her. +He might see how far she would insist on going with him along his dreary +way. What if she had Anne's over-developed and thwarted maternity of +helpfulness? What if she insisted on going all the way and never leaving +him to the blessed seclusion of his own soul? + +"You see, Nan," he adventured, "I'm sick of the whole show." + +She nodded. + +"Yes," she said, "I know. Coming back. Finding we aren't any better than +we were before we got frightened and said our prayers and promised God +if He'd stop the War we'd be different forever and ever, amen. That's +it, Rookie, isn't it?" + +"Why, yes," said Raven, staring at her, she seemed so accurate, +according to his own mental gauging, and so unmoved in her flippancy, +"that's pretty nearly it." + +She nodded at him again, whether to hearten him or to assure him of +their perfect unison he could not tell. + +"It was an awful jolt, wasn't it?" she inquired frankly. "You know, I +should think it might make some of them laugh, the ones they say observe +us from--where is it from? Mars? up in the heavens somewhere. It's like +reading a bitter sort of book. It is funny. Rookie, don't you think it's +funny?" + +Raven remembered a character in Mr. Owen Wister's "Virginian," the hen +crazed by her thwarted destiny. + +"Well," he said, quoting "The Virginian," "not so damned funny either. +But how the dickens did you know what I was going to say?" + +"Because it's what we've all come back to," said she, "and what +everybody that stayed at home feels, or ought to if they've got anything +inside their nuts. Just think, Rookie! we were like the great multitude +in the Bible, somewhere, praising God. We broke our idols and--I don't +know what we didn't do. And now we're not scared any more, we've set 'em +up again: same old idols. Rookie, I bet you the only reason we ever +sacrificed to God at all was because we thought He was the biggest joss +and things were so desperate and all, we'd better make a sure thing of +it. And now we think we aren't in any particular danger, seems as if the +little gods would do, same as they did before; and they're not so +expensive." + +"Goodness, Nan!" said Raven, "how naughty you are. You didn't use to run +on so." + +"I haven't talked very much to you," said Nan drily, "not since I grew +up." + +He knew it was true, and knew also that the reason was, if she had +allowed her lips to utter it, "Aunt Anne wouldn't let me." + +"But," she said, "I don't understand altogether. I know you're mad and +discouraged and all the rest of it. But I don't see what Dick has got to +do with it." + +"It's simply this," said Raven. "I'm going away." + +She looked at him in what seemed to be serious alarm. + +"Relief work?" she asked. "Reconstruction?" + +"No," said Raven. "I don't believe I should be any good to them. There +isn't a blamed thing I can do, so far as I see, except for what money +I've got. I'm no good, Nan. I shouldn't sell for my hide and horns. And +I hate the whole blamed show. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the system, +from the beasts that devour one another to the rest of us. And I'm +simply going to desert. I'm going to run away." + +"Where?" asked Nan. "You can't run away from the earth." + +"No," said Raven, "I can't jump off. So I'm going to do the next +convenient thing. I'm going up to Wake Hill and shovel snow with Jerry, +and maybe get into the woods and do some thinning out and, if I remember +anything about the millennium we've just shaved the edge of, just say to +myself there ain't a-going to be no millenium, so I can shut up." + +"You've taken advice, haven't you?" she concluded. "That's what they've +prescribed. I suppose it's all right." + +"Good God, no!" said Raven. "Do you think I've been to a doctor and +turned myself inside out? I'm going because Wake Hill is as far out of +the world as I can manage. If the whole earth hadn't gone crazy, I'd cut +stick for Tartary or some confounded place that isn't on the map. But +they're all on the map. There isn't an inch of ground that isn't under +some sort of moral searchlight. No, I'll be hanged if it's moral. It's +only the mites in the cheese getting busy and stirring up fermentation." + +Nan laughed out and then looked up at him in her rueful apology. + +"I couldn't help it," she said. "I thought of Dick, your telling him. +Dick's just got his book ready for the printer: Democracy, you know, in +three-legged verse. And they'll say it's full of insight and prophecy. +That's what they said about the other one: insight, prophecy! But Dick +won't have the least idea what you're driving at." + +"You see," said Raven, "he's thinking of doing some stiff work and +getting a degree: a sort of sop to his mother. She's as wild as a hawk, +you know, to get him to distinguish himself, doesn't much care how. I'd +meant to ask him to camp here with me this winter. I believe I did +actually ask him, now I think of it." + +"Yes, you did," said Nan. "It'll make a lot of difference to him, your +being away." + +"I don't think so," said Raven. "Anyhow, he'll have to get used to it, +especially as I'm not merely going away. I'm getting out, out of the +business and all." + +He was really surprising her now. She had grown up in the atmosphere of +belief in that particular business. When a Hamilton said his earthly +creed, he would have begun, if he had been honest, "I believe in wool." + +"You're not retiring?" she hesitated. + +"Yes." + +"Made your pile, Rookie?" + +At once they thought of Anne and the new complication she had saddled +him with. + +"That isn't the question," he evaded. "The amount of it is, I couldn't +go to the office every morning and come home and go the next day, +without--well, Nan, frankly, going off my nut. I hate it. I hate the +whole business of what we call civilized life. I even think of giving +Dick power of attorney and passing all my stuff over into his hands." + +"Oh, no," said Nan quickly, "you mustn't do that." + +He frowned at her, perplexedly. + +"Don't you trust him?" he asked. "Don't you trust Dick?" + +"Of course I trust Dick," said she impatiently, "his intentions, that +is." + +"You ought to," said Raven. "You're bound to, the man you're going to +marry." + +She kept her eyes on him, but she said nothing. And suddenly Raven +realized that he wanted to know about this business of marrying Dick. He +wanted to know tremendously. Yet, though this was the little Nan who +sometimes used to seem more his child than anybody's, he could not ask +her. She looked difficult, if not wayward. + +"Well," he compromised, "that's about where it is. I'm going into the +country, to get away from the clack of men. My income, all but the +little of it I set aside for food and taxes, will go to France. It may +go through Dick or it may----Oh, well, well," he added, seeing the +quick rebuttal again on her face, "that hasn't got to be decided in a +hurry. But ultimately it goes to France." + +"Why France?" asked Nan. "I see, though. They're all deserting her." + +"It isn't altogether that," said Raven, as if he hadn't finished +thinking it out. "It's because I believe in her so tremendously, that +quick intelligence of hers. She mustn't be downed, mustn't be kept +depleted. It's a loss too horrible to face. She sees the world as it is. +She knows the dangers. She's got to be protected from them, so she can +go on seeing." + +"What does she see?" asked Nan curiously. "What kind of thing?" + +"Everything. Life. When it comes to what the collective brain can do, +you can't limit her. You never'll make her believe in miracles, but she +can find out how they're done." + +"Mercy!" said Nan. "You talk like a book." + +"Notes, for an essay: 'France.' I've been thinking 'em out. How she +ought to be given a hand, so she doesn't have to spend the next thirty +years or so outwitting the German devil. That's hard sledding for her +beautiful intelligence. She ought to be safe, so she can turn it to +other things: the science of living, hers, ours, everybody's." + +"Ah," said Nan, "but they'll tell you it won't be for everybody: only +France." + +"That's the point," said Raven. "It's a gamble. But they can't deny +she's got the beautiful intelligence. I can trust anything so perfect. I +trust it absolutely." + +"Why don't we do it ourselves? Build a fire under us, Rookie. Come on!" + +"We aren't homogeneous," said Raven. "We've no race spirit, no live +nerve through the whole of us. France has. That mind of hers, that +leaping intelligence! If she were as holy as she is keen, she'd make the +world the poets dreamed of." + +"Then go to it," said Nan. "Turn in your money. I will mine. Stump you!" + +"Not yet," said Raven. "You sit tight and see how I come out. I haven't +got enough to set the Seine afire, but such as it is, I'd like to turn +it over to her for what she needs most: agriculture, schools, research. +Administered so it could be withdrawn if she didn't make good and turned +in somewhere else. Oh, it's a gamble! I told you it was. But +administered, mind you. That's the point." + +"Through Dick," she commented, plainly with dissatisfaction. "Now, why +Dick?" + +"Because," said Raven, "Dick's got a head for organizing. He's his +father over again, plus the Raven streak. And the Raven streak doesn't +do him any harm. It isn't soft, like Old Crow--and me. It's his mother +in him, and she takes back--but O Lord! what's the sense of going into +that?" + +"Anyhow," said Nan, with decision, "you keep your affairs in your own +hands." + +"For the present, yes," said Raven. "And I do want to think it out in +detail. I can do it at Wake Hill. I shall get on my pins enough for +that." + +"Isn't it funny?" said she. "Aunt Anne with her Palace of Peace and you +with your invincible France. But, Rookie, you hear to me. Whatever you +do with your own money, you do it your own way. Don't be a slacker." + +Raven sat looking at her, a slow smile dawning. He rather liked Nan's +taking him in hand. + +"That's it, is it?" he asked, with a relish she was glad to see. "A +slacker! so be it. If I'm a slacker, I am. I'm a conscientious objector. +What I object to is the universe, the pattern it's made on. I object to +the way we're running it, and, being made as we are, I don't see how we +can be expected to do anything but what we're doing. It's a perfectly +logical proposition. And except for a few minor chores I've got to see +to, I simply won't play." + +Nan was thinking. She looked down at her hands, lying in her lap. Raven +looked at them also and wondered, as he often had, since they came home, +how such hands could have done the tasks she set them to. She looked up +and met his eyes gravely with something imperative in hers. It is a way +women have sometimes. They seem to be calling on the boy in man and +bidding him take heed. + +"I wouldn't," said she, "talk to Dick about going to Wake Hill." + +"What would you do? Cut stick, and let him wonder what in the deuce it's +all about?" + +"I wouldn't talk; I'd write." + +"Oh, write!--what's the difference?" + +"If you talk, he'll say something that'll shut you up and you'll be just +as far apart as you are to-day. If you write, you can tell him as much +as you want to and no more. And the first thing he'll do will be to +bring the letter to me." + +"I see," said Raven. "And you'll interpret." + +"I'll interpret. I can, Rookie. I know you, don't I? and I know Dick." + +"You ought to," said Raven rashly again because he was again curious, +"the man you're going to marry." + +"Yes," said Nan calmly, rising, "the man I'm going to marry. Only"--her +face, as she turned it to him, brimmed over with a childish sort of +fun--"don't tell him that, Rookie. It's perfectly true I haven't +promised him. And I don't mean to--yet." + +"Quite right," said Raven, rising. He felt a distinct relief. He, too, +wanted to see what Dick would make of himself. "You do your own +telling." + +"There he is," said Nan, "just as it is in a play. We've got to a climax +and he comes in at the door. But, Rookie----" She stopped, for Dick was +nearing in the hall, and Raven knew what she would have said. It was in +both their minds. They hadn't finished their talk. It had merely strayed +into another channel, or bolted and run away there. Aunt Anne's money +and her Palace of Peace still stared them in the face. Dick put his head +in at the door. He looked rather sheepish, as if his dignified going had +been invalidated by this impetuous coming back, as if he couldn't live +without Nan and she was bound to see through it. + +"Well?" he said gruffly. "Talked out?" + +They both laughed, with the sudden absurdity of it. How should they, +their eyes questioned each other, ever be talked out, what with Aunt +Anne and the universe and France? + +"Absolutely," said Nan. "Good night, Rookie. Going to write your letter? +Come on, Dick." + + + + +IV + + +Raven sat down at the table and began his letter. He was wrestling with +it at once, to give himself no time to argue over the point of its being +no ordinary letter such as he had been accustomed to write to Dick. He +began with the succinct statement of what he meant to do. He had made +all his arrangements for getting out of the business. They could be +concluded in short order. As to the business itself, he had no complaint +to make. The old man--he permitted himself this indulgence as he never +could have in Anne's lifetime, as touching her father--the old man had +been square all through. He was as good as they make 'em. But there was +nothing for him, Raven, in the concern except its cumulative capacity +for making money. He'd no traditional pride in it, as the old man had. +He'd worked for all he was worth, to squeeze every drop he could out of +it so that his mother--"your grandmother, you know, Dick"--might have +every last luxury she wanted. Well, she'd had 'em, though one of the +ironical things about it was that she didn't want so very many, and he +needn't have worked so hard or so long. However, that's neither here nor +there. What's done is done. The War's done--they say--and the thing that +would please Raven best would be----Here he brought up with a full stop. +He was running into dangerous revelations, going back to a previous +state of mind, one he had begun cherishing as soon as his mother died, +and even caressed, with a sort of denied passion, when Anne also died, +and he felt so shamefacedly free. All his life he had wanted to wander, +to explore, to bruise himself against the earth and pick himself up and +go on and get bruised again. He loved the earth, he wanted her, in her +magnificence and cruelty, wanted to write about her, and make the +portrait of her for stay-at-homes who weren't adventurous and were +content with reading about her in the blank moments after the office +grind. Yet he was a stay-at-home himself. Why? in God's name why? + +He asked himself the question, as he sat with lifted pen, almost the +words dropping off it, to tell Dick the things it would be simply +disconcerting to know. Raven saw, with a sad clearness, why he hadn't +written the books he wanted to about the earth. They would have been +rough books, full of rock and clay and the tumbling of rivers and +thunder grumbling in the clouds. If he had been really afraid of Anne +and her ordered ambitions for him, he could have printed them under an +assumed name. She need never have known at all. They wouldn't have been +the books he could have written if he had been foot-loose and gone +blundering along in strange trails over the earth, but they might have +held something of the sort his inner man wanted to fashion. And if the +secret of them had been kept, they needn't have interfered with his smug +little folk stories Anne and her women's clubs prized so much. Had he +been actually afraid of Anne? Was he one of the men who are shamefully +under the feminine finger, subject to mother, subject to wife, without +the nerve--scarcely the wish, indeed--to break away? He was not afraid +of his mother, or, if he had been, it was the fear of hurting her who +had been so hurt already. Ever since he could remember, he saw himself, +even as a little boy, trying to get her away from his father who had a +positive cast of mind, a perfect certainty of being right and a +confirmed belief that robust measures always were the thing. If you did +wrong, you were to be punished, promptly and effectually. If you were +afraid of the dark, and came downstairs in your nightgown upon the +family sitting by the lamp, you were whaled for it, to teach you there +was something worse than bed even in the dark. If you said your head +ached and you couldn't eat bacon and greens, which father elected to +consider a normal dish, you were made to eat a lot with no matter what +dire result, because there wasn't a physical ill which couldn't be +mended by treating it robustly. He was God. He knew. And he was +perfectly well and had never once for half a minute entered into those +disordered cells of bodily ill where the atom cries to its Creator in an +anguish of bewilderment and pain. And when his body met the fate +appointed for its destruction, as all bodies must, and he was brought +home broken after the runaway that made him a thing almost too terrible +to look upon, except by eyes so full of compassion that they love the +more, Raven, then a very little John, found himself wondering how it +seemed to father now. Even runaways, father had appeared to think, could +always be governed, if you kept your head. + +They never knew what he thought. He died quickly, under opiates, and +John believed his mother was so thankful for the merciful haste of it +that she could not, until long after, recall herself to mourn. And she +did honestly mourn. The little John was glad of that. So ill and tired +had she been for years and yet so bound upon the rack of her husband's +Spartan theories for her, that John thought he could not have borne it +if she had not adored her righteous tormentor, if she had had to look on +him as her master, not her lord by love. It seemed to him he was always +mourning over his mother, in those days, always lying awake and +wondering if she were awake, too, always trying to save her from some +task too heavy for her and too heavy for him also, so that, if she were +to be saved, it had to be by stratagem. But stratagem was difficult in +that house, because his older sister, who became Dick's mother, was of +her father's temperament, always perfectly well and also an inferior god +who knew at every point what to do, and she had not merely imbibed +father's certainty that the only thing mother needed was to take a +brace: she had it by nature. And when, father being gone to heaven--and +John, young John now, not little any more, made no doubt he had gone, it +pleased mother so to say it and be obligingly agreed with--Amelia, his +sister, took her departure, on the night of her marriage with a very +prosperous Mr. Powell, for the middle west, John Raven, then beginning +his apprenticeship to wool, danced a fantastic fling in the sitting-room +where the wedding gifts still lay displayed and whooped with emotion at +last let loose. His mother, in the gray silk and commendable lace Amelia +had selected and he had paid for, did smile unwillingly, but she spoke +to him in the reproving tone which was the limit of severity his boyhood +had known from her and which he had learned, in those earliest days, +meant nothing at all: + +"I'd be ashamed! Any one would think you were glad your sister had +gone!" + +John did not say he was glad. He knew too much to stir up loyal +reactions in mother's conscience. He simply wove a dance of intricate +mazes about her, as she sat in her chair, and his inner mind was one +paean of thanksgiving to God, not the spurious gods who had been his +father and sister, but the mysterious Deity who had, for obscure +purposes, called them into being, because now John had at last full +swing and could let mother out of bondage. What difference did it make +that he wasn't trekking through darkest Africa or being hunted by the +jungle in India, so long as mother was out of bondage? He even took his +allegiance to Anne rather lightly, those first years, he was so +absent-minded about everything but hypnotising mother into thinking she +was going to be very happy and live a long time doing it. And that was +the part of his life when there seemed to be a great deal of it, and if +he didn't have a thing now there would be plenty of chances to snatch at +it later. He had simply been eaten up, the energy of him, the will, +perhaps, by compassion. And then his mother had died and he knew he +could have done no more for her than he had done, and while he was +turning round to look about him--and ah! in that lean year came Anne's +horrible accusation that he did not love her!--the War broke out, and he +felt himself shocked into action. The very atoms of his body seemed to +fall asunder and rearrange themselves and, as soon as he could decently +get away, without throwing the bewilderment of the business on Anne, he +had gone, and he had never seen her again. + +He had written to her faithfully, and with the compassion that was +either natally or by the habit of life a part of him, but he had not +obeyed her. For she begged him, almost, at intervals, commanded him, to +return to work with her for the peace of mankind. At first he tried to +explain himself and assuage her grief over what she called his desertion +of their common ideals. He answered the arguments in the letters that +had become a misery to him to receive as his had become an inexpressible +burden to write. Finally, with a wrench to himself, he ceased, and, with +infinite pains, compiled data that might interest without offending her. +The letters continued, but as soon as he found she was sending him +abstractions valueless because they had no roots in the living issues of +things, he had to stop. That, not her death, had been their lasting +farewell. + +What, in the name of all that was mysterious, he reflected, had made +Anne--and so early--assume the burden of an unasked allegiance to him? +His family and hers had been next-door neighbors at Wake Hill, but on no +equality of worldly footing. The Hamiltons, thriving on wool, had been +able to buy for themselves all the picturesque luxuries of civilized +life. Their women toiled not. Their delicate air was the product of +tuition in dainty ways. Their men had acquired the unconscious pose of +dominance, of knowing what was their due and expecting to get it without +argument. Sometimes up there at Wake Hill they did receive a +disconcerting knock or two from some "embattled farmer" whom they called +"my man," and who didn't like the sound of it. But the answering rebuff +never penetrated the fine mail of their acquired arrogance. It meant, +they smilingly said, "New England," and tolerantly passed it by. Raven's +people were of a different stripe, "brainy," he thought with an unspoken +pride of his own, yet deficient in a certain practical quality of taking +the world "but as the world," and consequently always poor. Their ways +were rougher ways. Their women had to work to trim the edges of their +plainer surroundings with the alleviating prettinesses the Hamiltons +cast aside with every changing style. And Anne, coming home from Europe +one summer, where she had not only seen wonder and beauty, already +familiar to her--for she was a young lady then--and where he knew she +had met men and women whose names were trumpet calls in his +ears--singled him out, in his shyness and obscurity, and offered him the +key to the fulfilment of his dreams. Education, travel, the life of +books--all were in her hand, the potential fruit of her father's doting +affection for her, and all were to be his. What could have inspired her +with so wholesale and fantastic a philanthropy? He could never +adequately guess, and he was no nearer doing it now than in the old +bewildering days when the Hesperidean apples were dropping over him and +he was, from some shy instinct, dodging to avoid them. And the reason he +had never guessed and never could guess was that he left out of all the +data at his hand the one first moving factor: that he was a beautiful +youth and Anne had imperiously loved him and had never ceased to love. + +As he sat there, the pen lifted, his mind going back over the things +that had led him away from adventure into wool, and were now leading him +as far from wool as might be, he was tempted. What if, in spite of Nan, +he should risk it and tell Dick, once for all, why he was going away, +make it clear so there should be no after-persuasions, no clutter of +half understanding? He was tired of thinking about his life as a life. +The temptation to such morose musing had come upon him in the last six +months, and once yielded to, he felt the egotistical disease of it +through his very blood and bones. If he were Catholic, he could confess +and get rid of it. He was not Catholic, only pagan, the natural man. The +Church had a wisdom of her own. All her rites and ceremonies found their +root in something salutary for the human mind. Confession was salutary. +You might not be absolved, but if you were pagan you could believe that +the very act of it absolved you. Nan said Dick never would understand. +So much the better. Let him carry off the burden of it. If he +understood, he'd see the extreme sacredness of a confidence entrusted to +him. If he didn't, he'd hide it as a thing you'd better say as little +about as possible. So he tucked his first letter into its envelope and +began to write again, with no date and no direct address, but from a +sense that it was going to be an enormously comforting thing to do. + + + + +V + + +"I think I'll tell you the real reason why I'm going to Wake Hill. I've +told you I'm going, but just as my nerves move the muscles that move my +legs to go, so my will moves my nerves and the me that is inside +somewhere and is a perfect stranger to you--and also to the me I am used +to myself--moves my will. You see, the me inside me knows there's +something wrong. Something mighty bad--or it may be merely +inevitable--has happened to me. I went through the War all right, on a +pretty even keel, because I thought I saw a bright light at the end. I +thought we all saw the light. And the light wasn't any electric +signboard out to say there never would be any more wars, but it was a +light you could see to read by. You could see the stars and see them +differently from the old way we'd been seeing them. We could see the +moon and the Milky Way--but I suppose that comes under stars--and the +upshot of it was that we thought we saw God. And after you'd seen God, +you knew saying there shouldn't be any more war was only beginning at +the wrong end of the puzzle. Of course war is a damnable business, +perhaps the most damnable we go into because it's so wholesale. But if +you begin at the right end of the puzzle and not the wrong, the thing we +learn is that the only reality in this universe for which it's worth +going through the obscene hells of which war is one, is God. To be aware +of Him, not to explain Him. You can't explain Him. You can't explain +what He's done to you or means to do. All you can do is to keep your eye +on Him and fall in. + +"I came home. I was rather cracked, when I got here, I was so pleased +with my little plaything. I'd seen God. I was only one of a good many +millions that saw Him. And it was exactly as if you went into an +enchanter's cave and expected to find some dream you'd dreamed made +real, and all you found was the Forty Thieves sitting there counting +over their spoils. No! no! it isn't an allegory. I don't mean America +and profiteers. I don't mean anybody particularly. But it began to come +over me more and more every day that we and everybody else on the round +world, if they had seen God, had forgotten all about it. Just as the +old-fashioned men at Wake Hill used to read their Bible Sunday and put +it away on the parlor table with the album and go out early Monday +morning to carry the apples to market all deaconed on top. By George! we +were the same old lot. And worse, for we'd had our look through the +peep-hole into eternities, and now we said, 'It makes my eyes ache. I'm +going to wear a shade.' No, son, I don't mean Leagues of Nations and +Internationalism or any of the quack remedies. I mean just God. We'd +been badly scared--Nan said so to-day--and we got down on our knees and +howled to the Highest and offered Him tribute. + +"Now you may say that even if the whole world had forgotten God, if I'd +seen Him why couldn't I still remember Him? Why couldn't I consider the +millions of years that go to the making of man and do my little bit and +wait on His will? Because my temptation came on me. I was tempted in the +wilderness of my own credulity and conceit. For I looked back over time +past and I said like Solomon--I don't know whether he ever said it, but +he's the most blase Johnnie I remember--'All is vanity.' As it was in +the beginning, so it ever shall be. We are not made in the image of God. +We are made rather grotesquely out of dust, and to dust we shall return, +all our hopes, all our aspirations, all the pretty plans we form for +defeating death and time. And who made us and put us on this dark planet +where it is next to impossible to see a step before us? God. Who is +responsible for us? God. Can we find out His will? Never. Can we hope +for any alleviation of misery on our dark planet? Never: for if we seek +out many inventions to down disease and poverty, we shall unloose as +many by-products of discovery and bring new plagues upon us. And so I +had to turn away from God. Do you see? I didn't deny He exists. I didn't +accuse Him of bad faith to us. How can He show either good faith or bad +when He has made us no promises? He has merely set us on the dark planet +and forced us to whirl with it on the wheel of time. And so, do you see, +having turned away from God--and I had to, I had to in mere honesty--I +simply lost Him. And having lost Him, there is nothing left to lose. +Also, having once seen Him and then lost Him, I can't take up the puzzle +again. I can't play the game. If I hadn't what we New Englanders call +common sense, I suppose I should put an end to myself. What would be the +good? He would simply catch me, like a rabbit out of a cage, and chuck +me back again on the dark planet. Don't think I blame Him. He wouldn't +do it out of cruelty. He'd have to put me back. That's the way His laws +are made. So I'm going up to Wake Hill and live with Charlotte and +Jerry, and see if I can't get tired enough every day to sleep at night. +I couldn't keep on here. I couldn't. What we call civilization is too +sickening to me. I should simply go off my nut. And when you come to +that, it's an awful complication, besides the suffering of it. That I +shrink from, too. I'm talking a good deal, but actually it's the thing I +least want to do. I don't want a fuss." + +Here he paused, wondered if he had more to say, thinking Dick must be +unusually dull, even for a poet, if he couldn't understand such a plain +state of things, and then took an irrational satisfaction in carefully +folding these last pages and putting them in the envelope with what he +had written first. He addressed the envelope to Dick, sealed and weighed +it, got up and stretched himself and felt distinctly better. He had, in +a way, confessed, and it was having the effect on him he had so sagely +anticipated. He could sleep to-night. And he did sleep. It was one of +the nights he used to have after long tramps about Wake Hill, when his +tired legs thrilled deliciously before they sank into a swoon of +nothingness. + +In the morning, he leaped the chasm from four to six, a wakeful misery +of late, when he was accustomed to go over and over the last harassing +pages in his book of doubts. He did not wake until seven, and then it +was with a clear-eyed resumption of consciousness. And here he was, +exactly as he had found himself on other mornings when the bath of +oblivion had not been so deep. Here was his world, the world he was +trying to run away from, waiting for him in all its ordered hostilities. +Immediately it struck him full in the center that, instead of having +something less to brood upon by reason of his confession to Dick, he had +saddled himself with more. He had the letter itself to repent of. He had +given, not his unhappiness but his actual self away, and, no matter how +clearly Dick understood, he had conjured up another anguish in admitting +to his disordered inner world the lenses of another mind. This was only +a matter of a second's disconcerting thought. It was also immediately +clear to him that the letter must not go, and he spoke from his bedside +to the kitchen and gave orders that nothing should be mailed until he +came down. A contrite voice replied. The letters were mailed: that is, +the thick one on the library table. Mary had gone in last night to lock +the windows, and saw it, and knew he had forgotten to leave it in the +hall. He often did forget. It was stamped and sealed. And the furnace +man came then. Raven thought he might, in another minute, be groaning +into her sympathetic ear; so he shut her up with an assurance that it +was all right. But he felt the sweat start on his forehead at the +picture of Dick sitting down to breakfast--Dick always ordered a big +breakfast, having a hunter's appetite and a general impression that, the +more he nourished himself, the more manly it would make his nose--and +poring over the fable of his uncle's soul, or what seemed to be his +soul, with eyes strained to their limit of credulity. However, it was of +no use. Nothing was of any use when destiny had one of those ironic fits +of hers and sat down to make a caricature of you, just for the fun of +bursting her old sides over it. He dressed in a dogged haste, wondering +if he'd better telephone Dick and ask him not to open any letter he +might have from him that morning, and then dismissing it, because it had +assuredly been received and Dick was now absorbing it with his chops and +eggs. + +Raven went down to his own eggs in a grim and sulky frame of mind. He +would repudiate the letter, if need be, tell Dick it was only something +he had written as a literary experiment and thought he'd try it on the +dog. But the moment he heard the boy's key in the door and then his step +through the hall, he knew he could not, for some unexplained reason +inherent in his own frame of mind, "put it over." It was as if Dick +represented the universe Raven was arraigning, was counsel for it, so to +speak, and Raven had got, in sheer decency of honor, to stand to his +guns. But it was all worse than he thought. Dick's entrance was so +quick, his onslaught so unstudied, his glance so full of alarmed +commiseration, that Raven saw at once he had been shocked out of all +manly proprieties. Dick caught at a chair, on the way to the table, +brought it with him and, placing it at a near angle to Raven's, dropped +into it as if exhausted. + +"I'd no idea," he began, "why, I'd no more idea----" + +Raven's hand tightened on his fork. Then he laid the fork down, for, +after all, he had finished breakfast, and might as well make the most of +running his hands into his pockets and shutting them there. + +"Morning, Dick," he said. "Have in some toast and eggs?" + +Dick, in no mind even to weigh the significance of toast and eggs, was +staring at him. He was cheated by a poverty of words when he most needed +them, and could only repeat: + +"I hadn't the least idea. I tell you it never occurred to me. I don't +believe it did to Nan, either." + +"What?" asked Raven. "What is it that didn't occur to you?" + +"I did think of it when you first spoke of going to France, you know," +said Dick, in a justification of himself that seemed more for his own +ease than Raven's. "I didn't believe you could pull it off, a man of +your years. You took it so easy! You never turned a hair. But I might +have known you'd have to pay for it afterward." + +"What is it I've taken so admirably?" asked Raven. "What is it I've got +to pay for?" + +"Why," said Dick, "your slogging over there--a man of your age----" + +"Well," said Raven curtly, cracking his voice at him in a way Dick had +never had to take from him, "how is it I'm paying? What's the matter +with me?" + +"Why," said Dick, in a perfect innocence of any offense in it, "don't +you know? You've seen enough of it. I should think you'd be the first to +know." + +Raven simply looked at him. Dick had a feeling that his uncle was about +to roar out something, and braced himself for the unbelievable event. +However, it would not surprise him. That, he knew, was a part of it. But +Raven was putting his question again, smoothly and tolerantly, as if to +assure him there was time enough to make a well considered reply: + +"Just what, in your opinion, is the matter with me?" + +"Why," said Dick, that innocent gaze still upon him, "shell shock." + +Raven jumped. Every nerve in him seemed to give a little twitch of pure +surprise with every other. + +"O Lord!" said he. "Who could ever have expected that? It's worse than I +thought." + +"Why, it's no disgrace," Dick assured him eagerly. "Think how many +fellows have had it. They haven't got over it. They're having it now. +The only thing to do is to recognize it and put yourself under +treatment." + +"That'll do," said Raven, with a determined calm. "Your diagnosis has +gone far enough. And now I shall have to ask you to do two things for +me." + +"Two!" Dick echoed, and Raven, though at the end of his patience, was +touched to see the suffused look of the boy's eyes. "You needn't cut it +down to two. Just you tell me----" + +There, though he was poetically eloquent and diffuse in print, he +stopped and could literally say no more without an emotion he considered +unworthy of him. + +"Two things," said Raven. "One is to forget every blamed word of the +screed I was jackass enough to send you. The other is to give me your +word you won't mention it, even to me. Oh, there's another thing. Go +home and burn the thing up." + +Dick's eyes were all a wild apprehension. + +"Oh," said he, "I can't burn it. I haven't got it." + +"You haven't it? Who has?" + +"Nobody--not yet." + +"Oh, then you've destroyed it already." + +"No," said Dick miserably. "I've sent it off." + +"Who to? Nan?" + +"No. Mother." + +Raven could hardly believe him. He did not remember any illuminating +confidences from Dick on the subject of mother, but he made no doubt the +boy looked upon her as he did, as a force too eccentrically +irresponsible to be unloosed. + +"Well!" he said. The state of things struck him as too bad to be taken +otherwise than calmly. You couldn't spend on it the amount of emotion it +deserved, so you might as well get the credit with yourself and your +antagonist of an attack unexpectedly gentle. "Now, what did you think +you were doing when you sent it off to your mother?" + +"Uncle Jack," said Dick, rather awkwardly blundering about his mental +armory for some reasonable defense, "she's your sister." + +"Yes," said Raven, "Milly is my sister. What then?" + +"Then, why, then," said Dick, "when a thing like this happens to you, +she'd feel it, wouldn't she?" + +"You're perfectly sure you know what has happened to me? You trust your +own diagnosis?" + +"Of course I trust it," Dick burst forth. "Your letter--why, your letter +isn't normal. Shell shock's a perfectly legitimate thing. You know it +is. You're just the one to be hit. You did perfectly crazy things over +there, entirely beyond any man of your years. And I'm mighty thankful we +can put our finger on it. For if it isn't shell shock, it's something +worse." + +"You mean," said Raven, "I've gone off my nut." + +Dick did not answer, but there could be no doubt of his own mental +excitement, and he was apprehensive in a measure that moved Raven to an +amused compassion. Raven sat looking at him a long minute. Then he got +up and took his newspaper from the table beside him. + +"Come," he said. "We'll go into the library and see if we can get +anywhere." + +Dick followed him, and they sat down together by the fire, this after +Raven had moved a third chair into the space between them. He smiled at +himself as he did it. It was the chair Nan had sat in the night before. +He had a foolish feeling that he was invoking her remembered presence, +calling on her to help them out. + +"Now, Dick," he began, when they were seated, "you said something about +my letter's not being normal. What is normal, when you come to that?" + +Dick frowned into the fire. This, he felt, had some hidden leading, and +he wasn't going to be caught. + +"What's the use of asking fool questions?" he inquired, in his turn. +"You know." + +"Can't help it," said Raven. "I've got to be Socratic. Help me out, old +man. Let me have my little game. What is normal?" + +"Why," said Dick, floundering, "I suppose it's what the general run of +people think--and do. It's keeping to the rules. It's trotting on the +course. It isn't going off at some tangent of your own." + +Dick felt rather proud of this, its fluency and general appositeness. He +plucked up his spirits, thinking he might be going to manage Raven, +after all. + +"Now, see here," said Raven, suddenly leaning forward and looking at him +in the friendliest community of feeling, "it means a good deal when a +fellow of my years, as you say, gets a biff that sends him staggering." + +"Just what I said," Dick assured him. "It's mighty serious. It's awful." + +"Has it occurred to you," said Raven, "that I may be right?" + +"Right? How right?" + +Thereupon question and answer piled up fast. + +"I've indicted the universe, as it were. How can you prove the universe +hasn't laid herself open to it? How do you know the indictment of the +creature she made and then ground under her heel isn't the very thing +she's been waiting for all these millions of years?" + +"Oh, come, Jack! the universe hasn't been waiting for you. That's a part +of it, don't you see? You've got delusions, delusions of greatness, +delusions----" + +"Shut up. Don't use your spurious jargon on me. Just answer my +questions. How do you know it isn't the healthiest thing that ever +happened in this rotten tissue of pretense we call civilization for even +one man--just one--to get up and swear at the whole system and swear +again that, so far as his little midge's existence goes, he won't +subscribe to it? What business have you to call that disease? How do you +know it isn't health? How do you know I'm not one of the few normal +atoms in the whole blamed carcass?" + +Dick felt himself profoundly shocked. He was having to reverse his +conclusions. Uncle Jack had stood for a well ordered sanity, conversant +with wool and books and mysteriously devoted to Miss Anne Hamilton, +whose conventional perfections evidently held within their limit Uncle +Jack's highest ideals. Uncle Jack had shown a neat talent with his pen. +He had grown middle-aged at an imperceptible and blameless pace, and now +he was raging about like a sort of cave man with nothing less than the +universe to bound his wild leaps and curvetings. + +"But you know, Jack," he remonstrated feebly, "there isn't anything new +in saying the nation's going to the dogs. The Britishers say it, we say +it----" + +"I don't say it," Raven asserted. "We're not going to the dogs. We've +gone. We're there. We're the dogs ourselves, and nothing worse could +happen to a criminal--from Mars, for example--than to be sent to us. We +ought to be the convict colony of the universe." + +"Don't," said Dick, with an affectionate sweetness as exasperating as it +was moving. "It only excites you. Come on out and have a tramp. We could +motor out to----" + +"O Lord!" groaned Raven. "Why don't you beguile me up to the +Psychopathic?" + +Then he was, for the first time, aghast at what he had set going. Dick +was looking at him again with that suffused glance of an affection too +great to mind disclosing itself in all its pathetic abnegation. + +"I couldn't say it myself," he began brokenly. "But you've said it; you +see yourself. If you would----" + +There he stopped and Raven sat staring at him. He felt as if the words +had got inside his body and were somehow draining his heart. When he +spoke, his voice sounded hoarse in his own ears. + +"Dick, old man," he said, "I'm not--that." + +"No! no!" Dick hastened to assure him, and somehow his hand had found +Raven's and gripped it. "Only--O good God!" he ended, and got out of his +chair and turned his back. + +Raven, too, rose. + +"Dick," said he quietly, "you go home now. And don't you speak about +this to anybody, not to Nan even. You understand." + +Dick nodded, still with his back turned, and got out of the room, and +Raven thought he must have caught at his hat in the hall, and made one +stride for the door. The door banged and Raven was alone. + + + + +VI + + +The next day Nan telephoned Raven that she was taking train for New York +for perhaps a week's stay with the Seaburys. These were her nearest +relatives, cousins at a remove Raven never really untangled, and of late +they had been spending persuasive energy in trying to induce her to live +with them. Since she had come home from France and Aunt Anne had died, +they were always descending upon her for brief visits in the house where +she succeeded Aunt Anne, and liking her so tumultuously, in her grown-up +state, that they pelted her with arguments based on her presumable +loneliness there and the silliness of carrying on the establishment +really as a species of home for superannuated servants. Nan honestly +liked the cousins, in a casual way, though it was as inconceivable to +her that the Boston house might be given up as it would have been to +Aunt Anne. There was, she felt, again in Aunt Anne's way, a certain +continuity of things you didn't even think of breaking. Now she was +seeking the Seaburys for reasons of her own. They had to be suitably +told that Aunt Anne had left her money away from them as from her, and +naturally, though ridiculously, to "that Raven she was always making a +fool of herself about." They were ruthless of speech within family +conclave, though any one of them would have thought more than twice +about calling Aunt Anne any sort of fool, in her lifetime, even at a +distance safely beyond hearing. Raven was not, if Nan could forestall +the possibility, to be assaulted by mounting waves of family animosity. + +Raven was glad, for once, to get rid of her, to find she was removing +herself from the domestic turmoil he had created. There could not be the +triangular discussions inevitable if she and Dick fell upon him at once, +nor should he have to bear the warmth of her tumultous sympathy. Dick +had evidently told her nothing, and he even gathered that she was going +without notice to Dick. Then Raven began a systematic and rapid +onslaught on his immediate affairs, to put them in order. Mr. Whitney, +Anne's lawyer, who had always seemed to regard him in a disconcerting +way as belonging to Anne, or her belonging in some undefined fashion to +him, opened out expansively on the provisions of the will. He most +sincerely congratulated Raven. Of course it was to have been expected, +but----! Raven kept miserably to the proprieties of the moment. He +listened with all due reserve, silent on the subject of Anne's letter. +That was his affair, he thought, his and Nan's; unless, indeed, it was +nobody's affair but Anne Hamilton's, and he was blindly to constitute +himself the unreasoning agent of her trust. That must be thought out +later. If he undertook it now, piling it on the pack of unsubstantial +miseries he was carrying, he would be swamped utterly. He could only +drop it into a dark pocket of his mind where an ill-assorted medley of +dreads and fear lay waiting--for what? For a future less confusing than +this inscrutable present? At least, they could not be even glanced at +now. He wrote Charlotte and Jerry, his caretakers on the place at Wake +Hill, that he was coming for an indefinite stay. He instructed his +housekeeper in Boston that the house was to be kept open; possibly Mr. +Richard would be there a good deal. Then he sat down to write his +sister. That was the problem: what should he say to her who would +presently be receiving his unfortunate screed with some inflammatory +introduction from Dick and would--he knew her!--scarcely have finished +it before she took steps toward flooding him with epistolary advice and +comment. He could see her now at her desk, assembling data of conduct, +bodily well-being, and putting it all down in that masterful hand of +hers. That settled it. He mustn't write her. He must telegraph and +forestall Dick. And he did telegraph her, on the moment, a message of +noncommittal brevity: + +"Letter Dick sent you is all poppycock. Forget it." + +That might, he concluded, yet without hope, keep her from rushing her +pen to the rescue, even if it did not prevent her fuming. And as he sat +at the library table with a disorder of papers before him, Dick appeared +at the door: good boy, full of zeal and pity. He looked so overflowing +with honest affection, so eagerly ready to help that Raven exasperatedly +loved him for his kind officiousness. Yet he had nothing for him but a +gruff: + +"Now what do you think you're here for?" + +Dick was prepared for repulse, this or any other. He had armed himself +against all possible whims and obstinacies, and he wore the air of a +carefully adjusted patience. + +"Can't I help there?" he inquired, advancing to the table and drawing up +a chair. "Couldn't you let me run over those and just tell you what they +are?" + +"You go to thunder," said Raven, rapidly assorting, clapping into +bundles and casting aside. "Yes, you can, too. Take this basket and +empty it into the fireplace. Behind the log and smash it down so it +won't set the chimney afire. Remember how your grandmother used to keep +a scare going all the time for fear of chimneys? I guess I've inherited +it. I have to use the formula." + +Dick emptied the papers with a grave care foreign to him, as if even so +small a service, at such a moment, bore a weightier meaning, and brought +the basket back. He sat down and waited in a silence Raven felt more +portentously vocal than the loudest outcry. + +"Dick!" he said. He stopped work and looked at the youth, an unwilling +smile twisting his mouth. He was not sure of its being well to take it +humorously; yet it was funny. "Dick, if you've got anything to say, say +it. If you haven't, clear out. This is my busy day." + +Dick shook his head despairingly and yet obstinately. He wasn't going to +leave Uncle Jack to the powers of darkness. + +"Just tell me what you're winding things up for?" he ventured. "I ought +to know." + +"Then don't ask as if you were whispering into the ear of Buddha, or +trying not to wake baby," said Raven, tearing a package of letters with +a sudden savage haste. They were Anne's letters to him when he was in +France, and he had meant to keep them because she would have an ideal of +the sacredness they ought to bear, and exasperatingly the suggestion +seemed to include a power of imposing itself on him. And if Dick hadn't +come in to bait him with irrelevant questions, his perverse inner self +excused itself, he might not be defying the ideal and tearing the +letters up. As it was, he found them a salutary sacrifice. + +"If you mean my going to Wake Hill, yes, I'm going. I've written +Charlotte. Or rather I've addressed it to Jerry, she's so careful about +his prerogative as a male." + +"When?" asked Dick. + +"The minute I get some boots and things to go logging in. This house +will be open. You can come in and roost if you want to. If you marry +Nan"--this was an audacity that occurred to him at the moment. It +suddenly seemed to him a blessed comfort to think of Nan in his +house--"you can come here and live." + +Dick lost his sacrificial air and turned sulky. + +"I don't know about Nan," he said. "I never know about her, not since +we've come back. She was soft as--as silk over there." + +"The maternal," said Raven briefly, tearing one of Anne's letters, with +a crack, across the pages. "It was what you needed to keep you going. +Not personal, only because you were a sojer boy." + +The mortification of it all, the despite of not holding his own with her +now he was not serving a cause, was plainly evident in Dick's face. He +had had a bad night of it, after Nan's flouting and Uncle Jack's letter +on top of that. + +"She was beastly," he said, with no further elaboration. + +But Raven knew he was returning to his walk home with her and some +disconcerting circumstances of it. No doubt Nan had been ruthless. Her +mind had been on Aunt Anne and the Palace of Peace. Little boys in love +couldn't joggle her fighting arm and expect to escape irritated reproof. + +"Nan's got a good deal to think of just now," he said. "Besides, you may +not be man enough for her yet. Nan's very much of a woman. She'll expect +things." + +Dick sat glowering. + +"I'm as much of a man as I was in France," he said obstinately. "More. +I'm older." Then his sacrificial manner came back, and, remembering what +he was there for, he resumed, all humble sweetness, like the little Dick +who used to climb on Raven's knee and ask for a tell-story: "I'm going +down with you. I've made all my plans." + +Raven looked up at him in a new surprise. + +"The deuce you are," said he. "No, you're not, boy. If I catch you down +there I'll play the game as you've mapped it out for me. I'll grab +Jerry's axe or pitchfork and run amuck, blest if I don't. You'll wake up +and find yourself sending for the doctor." + +Glancing cheerfully up, he was instantly aware, from the boy's unhappy +face, that Dick believed him. Raven burst into a laugh, but he quickly +sobered. What a snare they were getting themselves into, and only by an +impish destiny of haphazard speech. + +"Don't look so shocked, Dickie," he said flippantly. "I'm no more dotty +than--Hamlet." + +There he stopped again to wonder whimsically at the ill fate of it all. +For Hamlet was mad; at least, Dick thought so. He couldn't have caught +at anything more injurious to his cause. + +"'They fool me to the top of my bent,'" he reflected ruefully. + +That was what Dick was ready to do. But sister Amelia wouldn't fool him, +if she got East with her emergency dressing bag and her perfectly +equipped energy. She would clap him into the Psychopathic before he had +time for even half as much blank verse as Hamlet had. They wouldn't +allow him a first act. + +"Don't look like that," he suggested again and kindly, because it was +evident that, however irritating Dick might be as a prospective +guardian, he was actually suffering an honest misery. + +"I don't," said Dick. "I mean, I don't mean to look different. But +somehow it's got me, this whole business has, and I can't get away from +it. I've thought of it every minute since you told me. It isn't so much +you I'm thinking about. It's him." + +Raven, as a writer of English, paused to make a mental note that, in +cases of extreme emotion, the nominative case, after the verb to be, is +practically no good. You simply have to scrap it. + +"Who?" he inquired, in the same line of natural language. + +"Old Crow." + +Dick uttered the name in a low and hesitating tone. He seemed to offer +it unwillingly. Raven stared at him in a perfect surprise, now uncolored +by any expectation he might have had of what was coming. + +"Old Crow?" he repeated. "What do you know about Old Crow?" + +"Well," said Dick, defensively, "I know as much as you do. That is, I +suppose I do. I know as much as all Wake Hill does, anyway." + +"Who told you?" + +"Mother. I didn't suppose it was any secret." + +"No," said Raven thoughtfully, "it's no secret. Only he was queer, he +was eccentric, and so I've always assumed he had a pretty bad time of +it. That's why I never've talked about him." + +"Mother did," said Dick, in a sudden expansion. It seemed to ease him up +a little, this leading Raven to the source of his own apprehension. +Indeed, he had felt, since Raven's letter, that they must approach the +matter of his tired wits with clearness, from the scientific standpoint. +The more mental facts and theories they recognized the better. "She told +me once you looked just like him, that old daguerreotype." + +"Had sister Amelia concluded from that," inquired Raven quietly, "that I +was bound to follow Old Crow, live in the woods and go missionarying +across the mountain?" + +"No," said Dick, so absorbed in his line of argument that he was +innocently unaware of any intended irony. "She just happened to speak of +it one day when we found the daguerreotype. Uncle Jack, just what do you +know about him?" + +Raven considered a moment. He was scanning his memory for old +impressions and also, in his mild surprise over the pertinency of +reviving them, wondering whether he had better pass them on. Or would +they knot another tangle in the snarl he and Dick seemed to be, almost +without their volition, making? + +"Old Crow," he began slowly, "was my great-uncle. His name was John +Raven. He was poor, like all the rest of us of that generation and the +next, and did the usual things to advance himself, the things in +successful men's biographies. He studied by the kitchen fire, not by +pine knots, I fancy--that probably was the formula of a time just +earlier. Anyhow he fitted himself for the college of the day, for some +reason never went, but did go into a lawyer's office instead, was said +to have trotted round after a gypsy sort of girl the other side of the +mountain, found she was no good, went up into the woods and built the +old hut I got into shape in the spring of 1914. Queer! I expected to go +up there to study and write. I'd got to the point, I s'pose, where I +thought if I had a different place to write in I could write better. +Sure sign of waning powers! Well, he lived there by himself, and folks +thought he was queer and began to call him Old Crow. I saw him several +times when I was a little chap, never alone. Father took me with him +when he went up to the hut to carry food. Mother never approved of my +going. She disapproved of it so much that father stopped taking me." + +"Well, you saw him," said Dick, in a way of holding him to his +narrative, so that Raven, wondering why it was of such importance, bent +a frowning look on him. + +"Yes, I saw him. And he was nice to me, uncommon nice. He put his hand +on my shoulder and looked down at me in a way--well, not the +patronizing, grown-up way, but as if, now I come to think of it, as if +he pitied me." + +"How did he look?" + +Dick was catching at things, Raven saw, the slightest clue to Old Crow's +withdrawn personality. He seemed, on his side, to be constructing a +portrait. Raven sought about in the closed chambers of his mind and +produced one significant bit of remembrance after another. They were +retrieved with difficulty out of the disorder of things regarded as of +no importance: but here they were. + +"He was tall, thin, rather hatchet-faced, something as I am. Oh, you +knew that, didn't you? No beard, and I think he was the neatest person I +ever saw. Father was clean shaven, you remember; but there were days +when he either got lazy or was too busy to shave. I remember how +exquisitely nice and peeled his face used to look on Sunday. But Old +Crow was shaved all the time, judging from the way he looked the few +times I saw him. I've heard father and mother speak of it, too. +Charlotte told me once she'd seen him and he was neat as a new pin." + +"How old was he when he went up there into the woods?" + +"To live alone? I don't know. Forty, maybe. Comparatively young, +anyway." + +"Was it the woman? Was there a cause for it, a cause people knew?" + +"There wasn't any cause I knew. He simply, so far as I ever heard, +passed the place over to father--that was his nephew, you know--and went +up the hill and built himself a log hut. It was well built. I only had +to calk it some more and put in another flooring when I came into it." + +As Raven went on, he became uncomfortably aware of the resemblance +between his own proposed withdrawal and Old Crow's; but he stuck to it +doggedly. It was all playing into Dick's hands and Amelia's, assuming he +could predicate her mind; but he was resolved they shouldn't have it all +their own way. He would give them every last straw of evidence, and it +should do them no good in the end. There was a bravado about it. If +Dick, in his affectionate virtue and Amelia in her energy of well-doing, +wanted to challenge him to the proof, he'd give them a pretty tussle for +it. + +"What I want to know is," said Dick, "what he thought he was going off +there for? Didn't anybody know?" + +"They may have," said Raven. "I didn't know." + +"And he lived his life out there, till he died?" + +"Yes. And died in a very gentlemanly fashion, of pneumonia, and was +found in a dignified position on his bed, hands folded, and everything +in a great state of order, as if he'd known he was going and arranged +things to give as little trouble as he could." + +"What did he do up there all by himself? Read? Write?" + +"He read a good deal, I believe. We found him reading when we went up." + +"What sort of books?" + +"Oh, hang it, Dick," said Raven, beginning to fidget under examination, +"you're district-attorneying it a trifle too much to interest me. I'm +getting bored, son. This isn't a third degree." + +But Dick was not to be curbed or reasoned with. + +"I think," he said, "if you don't mind, we'd better talk it out. You see +I do really need to know about him, and you're the only one that can +tell me. Mother's is chiefly hearsay." + +"Fire away," said Raven easily, accepting the situation. He leaned back +in his chair and began making patterns on the block of paper before him +with a silver dagger at his hand. "What is it you want to know?" + +"Everything. How the neighbors regarded him, what they said." + +"The neighbors didn't regard him at all, in your sense. Don't you know +the way country folks have of passing over the most eccentric things as +if they're all in the day's work? They gossip like thunder, and, if they +can whip up a scandal, they're made. But they never seem so awfully +shocked. Perhaps it's because they're used to the plain facts of life, +death, birth, madness, suicide. Maybe there's a sort of _gaucherie_ +about it. There are things you're shocked about that you wouldn't dare +discuss at Cambridge or the Club. You'd be afraid it wasn't good form. +Maybe you would though, now. Sometimes I forget the world's moved on a +peg." + +"But what did they say?" + +"Can't tell you, Dick. I belong to the family, you know, and maybe they +had some decency about talking over Old Crow when I was round. I don't +think there was anything they could say. He was a perfectly clean, +decent citizen. He kept on voting. He didn't meddle with them and they +didn't with him. The only eccentricity about him was that he lived alone +and that, the last ten years or so of his life, he tramped all round +that region, over the mountain, too, taking care of the sick, if there +were any. The last five years he went round preaching, and the very last +year of all he took old Billy Jones into his hut, an awful old rip, if +ever there was one, and tended him till his death--Billy's death, I +mean. And if you consider that as indicating queerness--except that +people don't do it--I don't. I should call any conventional disapproval +of it an indictment rather, an indictment of Christianity. If it's too +eccentric to fit into a so-called Christian civilization, that is." + +Dick wasn't going to call it anything at the moment. He sat staring at +the table, evidently reflecting, digesting and bowed down by his own +gravity in a way that always amused Raven even when he loved the boy +most. He fancied, when Dick looked like that, he was brooding over his +nose. + +"Take it easy, son," he advised him pleasantly. "You won't get anywhere +with Old Crow. Guess again." + +"No," said Dick, oblivious of the flippancy of this, "we sha'n't get +anywhere. We haven't enough data." + +"Now," said Raven, coming up from his lounging posture, "I've got to +hustle. You run along and we'll go out somewhere to-night: dine, if you +want to, and drop in at a show. But, for heaven's sake, don't go to +digging up graveyards and expecting me to reconstruct your ancestors +from as few bones as we've got of Old Crow's. You bore me sometimes, +horribly, Dick. And that's the truth." + +Dick did go away, though with an inarticulate remonstrance on his +tongue. But Raven was good-natured and yet decided, and even went to the +door with him, propelling him by a firm yet affectionate hand on his +shoulder. + +They did dine out that night in a manner mildly bohemian, really +determined upon by Raven to show Dick he wasn't incapable yet of the +accepted forms of diversion, afflictingly dull though they might prove. + + + + +VII + + +In less than a week Raven, hurried beyond any design of his own by +Dick's anxious attentions, had actually gone. Once in the train on the +way into the uplands where Wake Hill lies, he reflected, with a smile, +that Dick had really helped him inconceivably in this matter of haste. +He might have loitered along, dallying with the wisdom of going, and +possibly ended by not going at all. But Dick's insistence on formulating +the situation, his neatness and energy in getting all the emotions of +the case into their proper pigeon holes, had so harassed and then bored +him that he had worked like a beaver, he told himself, to get off and +escape them altogether. And not a word from Amelia, either to his +telegram or Dick's letter. Things were looking up. It might be Amelia +had been elected to some new and absorbing organization for putting the +social edifice still more irretrievably into the disorder it seemed bent +for, in which case she might forget the inner wobblings of such an +inconspicuous nomad as a brother in metaphysical pangs. He became +recklessly optimistic, as the train climbed higher into the hills, and +luxuriated in it, conscious all the time that it was altitude that was +intoxicating him, not any real hope of hoodwinking Amelia. You couldn't +do that so easily. + +The first glimpse of a far-away mountain brought the surprising tears to +his eyes. It was an inconsiderable ridge with an outline of no +distinction, but it had the old charm, the power of clutching at his +heart and dragging it up from the glories and sorrows of the sea. Raven +always insisted that he loved the sea best, with its terrors and +multitudinous activities; but the mountains did pull him up somewhere +into a region he did not inhabit all the time. He had an idea that this +was simply a plane of physical exhilaration; but it didn't matter. It +was an easement of a sort, if only the difference of change. When he +stepped out of the train at Wake Hill he was in a tranquil frame of +mind, and the more the minute he saw Jerry Slate there in the pung, +enveloped in the buffalo coat he had worn through the winter months ever +since he attained his present height. Jerry was a typical man of Wake +Hill. He was ten years, at least, older than Raven and had lived here, +man and boy, all his life, and his wife, Charlotte, was the presiding +benevolence of the Raven home. Seeing his passenger, he lifted his +whip-stock in salute and stepped out of the pung to meet him. Jerry was +yellow and freckled and blue-eyed, with a face, Raven always thought, +like a baked apple. It had still a rosy bloom, but the puckers +overspread it, precisely like an apple's after fervent heat. They shook +hands, Jerry having extracted a gnarled member from his mitten. + +"You take a look an' see 'f your trunk's come," he recommended, +restoring his hand to its beautifully knit sheath. "You're better +acquainted with the looks on't than I be. There 'tis now. Anyways it's +the only one there." + +It was Raven's own, and he and Jerry lifted it into the back of the +pung, and were presently jogging temperately homeward. Jerry never had +horses with any go in them. In the old days, when Raven used to come to +the farm with his mother, he would write Jerry to see that he had a +horse. + +"Get me a horse," he would write, "a horse, a horse, with four feet and +a mane and tail. Not a wooden freak out of Noah's ark, whittled out with +a jack-knife, such as I had last year. Get me a horse." + +And he would arrive to find some aged specimen, raw-boned and +indifferent, waiting for him in the stable. And Jerry would slap the +creature's haunches with a fictitious jollity and prophesy, the while he +kept an anxious eye on Raven, "I guess he'll suit ye all right." + +He never did suit. He had to be swapped off or, as it happened once or +twice, given away, and yet Raven was obtuse to the real reason until +Charlotte enlightened him. She took him aside, one day in the autumn, +when he and his mother were going back to town. + +"I guess if you want any horses next spring," she said, with one eye on +the door where Jerry might appear, "you better fetch 'em along with +you." + +"Why, yes," said Raven, "of course I can. Only I had an idea Jerry liked +to do the buying for the place." + +"Not horses," said Charlotte firmly. "Jerry's a peculiar sort of man. +They know it an' they kinder take advantage of him. I dunno why." + +Then Raven realized that Charlotte herself was responsible for his faith +in Jerry's bargaining prowess. She had hypnotized him into considering +Jerry a great fellow at a trade as at everything else manly and +invincible. She was watching him now with a doubtful and anxious eye. + +"No," she repeated, "I dunno why." + +"No," said Raven, "I don't know why either. But I'll look out for it." +At that instant he understood her way with Jerry and loved her for it. +She was tall and heavy-browed and dark, with warm, brown tints of eyes +and skin, and seven times the man Jerry was, but it was her passionate +intent to hold him supreme at home and market. + +Meantime they were jingling along, with a chill clashing of bells, and +Raven had heard all about the prospects of an open winter and the +difficulties of ice-cutting, and he gathered that Jerry and Charlotte +were extremely pleased to have him come. + +"Didn't know's we should ever set eyes on ye ag'in," said Jerry, with an +innocuous flick of his whiplash, hitting the dasher by intent. "That War +an' all." + +Raven thought he detected in his tone a general hostility to the War as +a disturber even of Wake Hill, and wondered if he should have to fight +it all over again with the imperfectly satisfied ideals of Jerry and +Charlotte. But Jerry laid that bogey to rest. + +"Not that I wouldn't ha' had ye go," he announced. "I'd ha' gone myself +if I hadn't been a leetle mite over age. I dunno but I could ha' been +some use as 'twas. I'm spry for my years. I never so much as thought +you'd git into it. Charlotte an' I were talkin' it over last night, an' +she says, 'He's forty-three, if he's a day.' How old be you?" + +"Forty-five," said Raven. "I wasn't in the trenches, you know. Ambulance +Corps." + +"Sho!" said Jerry. "Never come nigh the fightin' line, I s'pose." + +"Sometimes," said Raven, smiling a little to himself. "But the boys in +the trenches, you know, they're the ones that did the business. I +suppose the Hamilton house was closed all summer?" + +Jerry gave him a quick look and then took off a mitten to pass his hand +across his mouth. Raven knew what the look meant. It meant Anne +Hamilton: how had her death affected him? would he ask about her? and +the mild inquisitive neighborhood mind would go back to the old question +it had probably dropped and taken up intermittently for years: why, in +their curious intimacy, had he never married her? + +"Yes," said Jerry, "all summer. Little Nan was over there, too, where +you were, I understood." + +"Yes, she was over there. She's home now." + +"You knew her aunt died?" said Jerry speciously. It was foolish, he knew +it was foolish, and yet he could not, in his craving for some +amplification of the fact, help saying it. + +"Yes," said Raven, "I knew it." + +There the topic died. They were passing the last stretch of woods that +fringed the road before Raven's own house. Up on that slope at the +right, draped about by a dense woodland, occasional patches of pines +girdled by birch and maple, was the hut where Old Crow had lived. A +logging road came down from the ridge, and Raven saw with interest that +it had been broken out. + +"Chopping?" he asked, Jerry following his glance to the ascending road. + +Jerry grinned and clucked to the horse. He looked well satisfied with +himself. + +"No," he said. "But the minute you wrote you was comin', I yoked up the +oxen an' broke her out. Charlotte said you'd want to be goin' up there." + +Raven laughed. It was funny, too grimly funny. Even Charlotte and Jerry +were pushing him on up the rise to Old Crow's hut. Dick had begun it and +they were adding the impulse of their kindly forethought. + +"Yes," he said, "I shall. I'll go up at once." ("And have it over!" his +mind cynically added.) + +They were descending the last slope and the mild-mannered horse caught +the idea of stables and put on a gait. Raven could see the house, +delightful to him in its hospitable amplitude and starkly fitting the +wintry landscape. There in the columned front porch running away at each +side into wide verandas, stood a woman, tall, of proportions that +looked, at this first glance, heroic. She wore a shawl about her +shoulders, but her head was bare. + +"There she is," said Jerry, with an evident pride in so splendid a fact. +"I tell her she never can wait a minute to let anybody turn round." + +It was true. Charlotte could not wait. She began to wave--no short, +staccato, pump-handle wave, but a sweep indicative of breadth, like the +horizon line. Raven, while they were jingling up to the house, took one +more look at it, recognizing, with a surprise that was almost poignant, +how much it meant to him. He might not be glad to get back to it--in his +present state of disaffection he could not believe there was a spot on +earth he should be glad to see--but it touched the chord of old memories +and his eyes were hot with the assault of it. A square house with many +additions, so that it rambled comfortably away, threaded over at +advantageous points by leafless lines of woodbine and bitter-sweet and +murmured over by a great grove of pines at the west: his roots of life +were here, he recognized, with a renewed pang of surprise. He was not +used to thinking about himself. Now that the changed bias of his mind +had bred new habits, he was thinking a great deal. + +They stopped at the porch and Charlotte came down to them, stepping +lightly yet with deliberation. Raven knew she probably moved slowly +because she was so heavy, but it gave the effect of majesty walking. She +was unchanged, he thought, as he grasped her firm hand: her smooth brown +hair was as thick, her healthy face unlined. When he touched Charlotte +he always felt as if he touched the earth itself. Her hand was the hand +of earth, ready to lead you to wholesome and satisfying things. + +"Well," said she, "if I ain't pleased to see you! Jerry, you goin' to +take the trunk in this way?" + +Jerry gave her a quick look of inquiry. They had subtle modes of +communication. Charlotte could command him by the flicker of an eyelash +or a modulation of tone, so that Jerry seemed, in the resultant act, to +be following only his own careless or deliberate will. + +"Yep," said he, "I'll see to her." + +Raven laid hold of it with him and they carried it upstairs to the great +front room looking out to the eastern sky. And Raven was again moved, as +he went, by another surprising discovery: Charlotte had tears in her +eyes. He had at all times a moderate estimate of his own value in the +world, his own appeal to it. Perhaps that was one reason, aside from the +natural sex revulsion, why Anne's exaggerated fostering had roused in +him that wearied perversity. But it was warming to see Charlotte glad +enough to cry over him. When they had set down the trunk and the two had +gone downstairs, he looked about the room and found it good. The walls +were chiefly paneling, all but some expanses of a rich rose and blue +paper; the hangings were of a delicious blue, and a roaring fire was +making great headway. He could guess Charlotte had timed that birch log, +relative to their approach, for the curling bark had not yet blackened +and the fat chuckle of it was still insistent. He laughed a little at +himself. He might have repudiated the scheme of creation and his own +place in it, but he did love things: dear, homespun, familiar things, +potent to eke out man's well-being with their own benevolence and make +him temporarily content in an inhospitable world. + +When he went downstairs, the smells from the kitchen were something +overwhelming in their rich pervasiveness. He went directly in where +Charlotte bent at the oven door for a frowning inspection and a +resultant basting. + +"Yes," she said, glancing up, "turkey. Terry set him aside, sort of--he +was so well formed and had such nice, pretty ways. Jerry said we'd have +him first time you come. He's always be'n a terrible nice turkey." + +Raven had seen his place laid in the dining-room with bravery of damask +and old china. + +"I'm not going to eat alone," he said. "I couldn't face a whole turkey. +You and Jerry come on in and back me up. You set on two more plates." + +"Oh, no," said Charlotte, closing the oven door and rising. "I guess +I'll give him a minute longer. No. It's real nice of you, but we +couldn't. Jerry never would in the world." + +"Jerry be hanged!" said Raven. He wandered into the pantry and began +helping himself to the celery waiting by the cool window-pane. "Tell him +it's all decided. Jerry's got to do what we say." + +"If that ain't just like you," said Charlotte, with what seemed a pride +in his knowing ways. "Eatin' up the celery an' all, the minute 'fore +dinner, too. I wonder you don't pry into the cooky jar." + +"I will, now you mention it," said Raven, bending to it where it lurked, +with its secretive look, under the lower shelf. He lifted the cover with +an involuntary care. He had been there so often when he wanted a handful +of cookies and knew, if he clinked the cover, he might hear his father's +voice from the dining-room where he sat reading his paper: "What are you +doing out there?" The cookies were waiting for him, unchanged, as if +there were an everlasting pattern of cookies and you couldn't get away +from it: oak-leaf, discreetly specked with caraway. "Hurry up," said he, +coming out to Charlotte with his clutch of oak-leaves. "Put on your +plate and Jerry's or the turkey'll be done before you know it." + +Charlotte glanced round at him, absently took the cookies from his hand, +as if he were a child whose greed must be regulated, and laid them in a +plate on the table. + +"Don't you spoil your appetite," she said, still absently, for her mind +was with the turkey. "Well, I'll go an' ask Jerry. I don't believe he'll +feel to. Miss Anne----" + +Raven was sure he heard the last two words as she made her light way out +into the shed in a fictitious search for Jerry. He stood staring after +her and wondering. It was inconceivable that Anne, by sheer force of a +mind absolutely convinced of its own rightness, should have had such a +grip on everybody she came in contact with. It had been Anne's house +next door. She had spent her summers in it, and even Charlotte had +imbibed through its walls the pronouncements of a social code. Anne was +dead, but when Charlotte and Jerry were asked to sit down to turkey with +their employer and familiar friend, it was Anne's unforgotten ideal that +rose before her, the illuminated copy of the social code in its rigid +hand. As he stood, he saw Jerry pulling the pung under a shed at the +back of the barn. He knew Charlotte hadn't seen him, didn't intend to +take the time to see him, but would presently be back with Jerry's +ultimatum. That was her system. She implicitly followed Jerry's command, +a command she had already put into his mouth. It was so accepted a part +of the household routine that he had ceased to think of it as in the +least unusual. She was back again almost at once. + +"Jerry says he'd be happy to, to-day," she announced, "so long's as he +ain't changed back into his barn clo'es. We'll be kinder company. But +after this, he says, we'll begin as usual." + +So presently they sat down together to the crackly brown turkey and +Raven carved and fought off Charlotte, who rose from her place in a +majestic authority which seemed the highest decorum to take the fork and +pick out titbits for his plate, and they talked of countryside affairs, +but never, Raven was grateful to notice, of his absence or of France. +Once Jerry did begin a question relative to "them long range guns," but +Charlotte bore him down before Raven could lay hold of the question, +even if he had been eager for it. + +"Jerry's forbid me to ask you the leastest thing about how 'twas over +there," she said smoothly, without a look at Jerry, but a direct +intention that was like a swift secret communication between them, a +line not even to be tapped. "He says, 'We won't say one word about what +Mr. Raven's been through, not if he begins to talk about it himself. +He's been through enough,' says he. 'Now le's let him turn his mind to +suthin' else.'" + +"Yes," said Jerry boldly, "I guess that's pretty nigh what I said--what +I'd say now, anyways." + +Raven smiled a little inwardly, as he often did at "Mr. Raven." He and +Jerry and Charlotte had been neighbors, and he, being younger, was +always "young John" to them, and sometimes, in excess of friendliness or +exhortation, "Jack." He wondered if it had been the social idealism of +Anne that had made them attain the proper title, or if, when the crust +of renewed convention broke through, they would, under the stress of +common activities, flounder about as they did before he went away, in an +intermittent familiarity. + +"All the houses shut up," he said, "the summer houses?" + +"Yes," said Charlotte, eating her wing delicately, perhaps with a +thought of Anne. "City folks all gone. Went early this year, too. Wood's +so high now, if they ain't cut their own they don't seem to want to lay +in. Jerry says they'd ought to think further ahead." + +"Yes," said Jerry, with his mechanical acquiescence, "they'd ought to +think further ahead." + +"Who's bought the old Frye place?" asked Raven. "Or is it empty?" + +"No," said Charlotte, "it ain't empty. I dunno's you remember the +Tenneys that used to live over the mountain, what they call Mountain +Brook. Kind of a shif'less lot they were. Some of 'em drinked." + +"Why, yes," said Raven, "I remember 'em. The boys used to do a lot of +trapping. One of 'em--what was his name? Israel, yes, that's it. +Israel--he seemed to be of a different stripe. Used to work out. Seemed +to want to make something of himself." + +"That's him," said Charlotte. "Well, he's bought the Frye place." + +"Married?" + +"Yes, he married a girl over there, at Mountain Brook. He'd been away +years an' years, sence he was a growin' boy, an' he come back, an' seems +he had money laid up, an' he bought the Frye farm an' went straight off +over to Mountain Brook an' hunted her up an' married her. She used to +have folks, but they've all moved away. Seems if he'd had her in mind +all the time. Kind o' that way, he is, lays his fires a good while +beforehand." + +"Nice girl?" Raven inquired. + +Charlotte hesitated. Her brown cheek flushed. + +"Well," she said, "I never've heard anything ag'inst her, not anything I +should be willin' to repeat. You know what they be, there over the +mountain. There's the Donnyhills. Good folks, but shif'less! my soul! +Though she ain't that." + +"Called on her, haven't you?" + +"No," said Charlotte. She wore the flush of resentful matronhood. "I was +goin' to. I started, one afternoon. An' after I'd knocked, I heard him +jawin'. Well! You never heard a man talk so in all your life. I never +did, anyways! twittin' her with everything under the sun." + +"Nice for you," said Raven, "butting in on a row." + +"I didn't butt in," said Charlotte. "I turned round an' come straight +home. An' the next day they rode by, as budge as you please, she with +the baby in her lap. Baby had on a nice white coat. I didn't go ag'in. I +didn't feel to." + +Then Raven, seeing that Jerry had regretfully but inevitably laid down +his knife and fork, as one who can no more, relinquished the Tenneys, +and there was a period of that silence so blessed among intimates, and +Charlotte brought in the pudding. And after dinner, while she washed the +dishes, Raven sat in the kitchen and smoked a pipe with Jerry and +thought intermittently, in the inmost cell of his most secret mind, +about the blessed beauties of things. Here they were all about him, +inherited treasures of memory, some of them homely and of little value, +many of them far less convenient than the appliances of the present day. +He even thought he recognized ancient utensils, as Charlotte washed +them, the great iron spider where crullers were fried--always with a few +cut in hands with straight fat fingers, to suit a boyish fancy--and the +colander he had once been found utilizing as a helmet in a play of +chivalry. Such smells came out of this kitchen, like no other smells in +any house he knew. The outlines of things, the tints of time and use! +There was the red door into the buttery, where once, when he was a +little boy, he had caught for a few minutes only an enchanting glow from +the setting sun. Sunrise and rubies and roses: none of them had ever +equaled the western light on the old red paint. Over and over again he +had tried to recall the magic, to set the door at the precise angle to +catch the level rays, but in vain. It was a moment of beauty, fleeting +as the sunset itself, and only to be found in the one permanence that is +memory. He remembered it now with a thousand other impressions as +lasting and as lost, and childhood and youth came alive in him and hurt +and helped him. Yes, this was home. In a hostile universe there was one +spot where he and the past could safely rest. + + + + +VIII + + +Raven went to sleep thinking simply about the house, while the fire +flickered down on the hearth and shadows all about the room flickered +with it and then went out. He always loved shadows, their beauties and +grotesqueries, and he was unfeignedly glad he had no scientific +understanding of them, why they played this way or that and translated +the substance that made them so delicately and sometimes with such an +adorable foolishness. He liked it better that way, liked to make out of +them a game of surprises and pretend they were in good form and doing +particularly well, or again far below their highest. And following his +childishly enchanting game he began to feel rather abashed over what had +brought him here. He was glad to have come. It was the only place for +him, disordered as he was, with its wholesome calm, and he wondered +further if the state of mind that had become habitual to him was now a +state of mind at all. Was it not rather a temporary drop in mental +temperature now calming to normal? Hadn't he exaggerated the +complication of Anne's bequest? There was a way out of it; there must +be, a sane, practical way to satisfy what she wished and what she might +be supposed to wish now. He comforted himself with the pious sophistry +of an Anne raised on the wind of death above early inconclusions and so, +of course, agreeing with him who didn't have to pass the gates of +mystery to be so raised. He knew enough, evidently, so that he didn't +need to die to know more. His letter to Dick seemed of inconsiderable +importance, even the disaster of its reaching Amelia. If she held him up +to it, he could laugh it off. Anything could be laughed off. So, the +shadows mingling with the inconsequence of his thoughts, he drifted away +to sleep, catching himself back, now and then, to luxuriate in the +assurance that he was in the right place, finding comfortable +assuagements, and that inexplicably, because so suddenly, everything was +for the best in a mysterious but probably entirely unaccountable world. + +At four o'clock he woke. He had not for a moment last night expected +this. Four o'clock had been for months the hour of his tryst with the +powers of darkness. They hovered over him then with dull grey wings +extended, from sunrise to sunset, from east to west. He never had the +courage to peer up at them and see how far the wings really did reach. +They covered his mortal sky, and when he refused to stare up into their +leaden pinions, they stooped to him and buffeted and smothered him, +until he was such a mass of bruised suffering within that he could +almost believe his body also was quivering into the numbness of +acquiescent misery. And here were the wings again. They were even lower, +in spite of this clear air. They did not merely shut it out from his +nostrils, but the filthy pinions swept his face and roused in him the +uttermost revulsion of mortal man against the accident of his mortality. +The trouble of earth passed before him in its unceasing panorama, a +pageant of pain and death. Every atom of creation was against every +other atom, because everywhere was warfare, murder and rapine, for the +mere chance of living. He had won his inherited chance by sheer luck of +contest through millions of years while his forebears came up from the +slime and the cave. The little hunted creature, shrieking out there in +the wood in the clutch of a predatory enemy was not so lucky. It was the +enemy who was lucky to-night, but to-morrow night the enemy himself +might go down under longer claws and be torn by fangs stronger than his +own. And God had made it so. And God did not care. + +Raven lay there panting under the horror of it. The sweat started on his +skin. He was afraid. It was not his own well-being he feared for. Man's +life was short at the most. A few years might finish him up. It was +unlikely that he need live again. But he feared seeing still more of the +acts of this unmindful God, who could make, and set the wheel of being +to turning and then stand aside and let them grind out their +immeasurable grist of woe. And when he asked himself how he knew God was +standing aside, letting the days and years fulfil their sum, he believed +it was because he had suddenly become aware that time was a boundless +sea and that the human soul was sometimes in the trough of it and +sometimes on the crest. But never would the sea cast its derelicts upon +warm shores where they might build the house of life and live in peace +and innocence. Ever would they find themselves tossed from low to high +and fall from high to low again in the salt wash of the retreating wave. +For after all, it was the mysterious sea God had a mind to, never the +derelict atoms afloat on it. They would have to take sea weather to +time's extremest verge, as they always had taken it. They were +derelicts. + +As the light came, the leaden wings lifted and he went down to the early +breakfast Charlotte and Jerry intended to eat alone. Charlotte, with her +good morning, gave him a quick glance. He found she had not expected him +so early and knew she saw at once how harassed he was. He insisted on +sitting down to breakfast with them and, after Jerry had gone out, went +over the house in a mindless way, into all the rooms, to give himself +something to do. Also there seemed to be a propriety in it, a +fittingness in presenting himself to his own walls and accepting their +silent recognition. Then, hearing Charlotte upstairs, he went back into +the kitchen, as straight as if he had meant to go there all the time and +had merely idled on these delaying quests, and up to the nail by the +shed door where the key always hung, the key to Old Crow's hut. He took +it off the nail, dropped it in his pocket, got a leather jacket from the +hall and went out into the road. As he went, he heard Jerry moving about +in the barn and walked the faster, not to be halted or offered friendly +company. At the great maples he paused, two of them marking the entrance +to the wood road, and looked about him. The world was resolutely still. +The snow was not deep, but none of it had melted. It was of a uniform +whiteness and luster and the shadows in it were deeply blue. There were +tracks frozen into it all along the road, many of them old ones, others +just broken, the story of some animal's wandering. Then he turned into +the wood road and began to climb the rise, and as he went he was +conscious of an unaccountable excitement. Dick was responsible for that, +he told himself. Dick had waked his mind to old memories. This was, in +effect, and all owing to Dick, a tryst with Old Crow. + +He remembered every step of the way, what he might find if he could +sweep off the snow or wait until June and let the mounting sun sweep it +according to its own method. Here at the right would be the great patch +of clintonia. Further in at the left was tiarella, with its darling +leaf, and along under the yellow birches the lady's slipper he had +transplanted, year after year, and that finally took root and showed a +fine sturdiness he had never seen exceeded elsewhere. He went on musing +over the permanence of things and the mutability of mortal joy, +wondering if, in this world He had made without remedies for its native +ills, God could take pleasure in the bleak framework of it. And when he +had nearly reached the top of the slope, the three firs, where a turn to +the left would bring him to the log cabin door, suddenly he stopped as +if his inner self heard the command to halt. He looked about him, and +his heart began to beat hard. But he was not surprised. What could be +more moving than the winter stillness of the woods in a spot all +memories? Yet he was in no welcoming mood for high emotion, and looking +up and about, to shake off the wood magic, there at a little distance at +his right, between pine boles, he saw her, the woman. She was tall and +slender, yet grandly formed. A blue cloak was wrapped about her and her +head was bare. Her face had a gaunt beauty such as he had never seen. +The eyes, richly blue but darkened by the startled pupil, were +bewildering in their soft yet steady appealingness. Her hair was parted +and carried back in waves extraordinarily thick and probably knotted +behind. That, of course, he could not see. But the little soft rings of +it about her forehead he noted absently. And her look was so full of +dramatic tension, of patient, noble gravity, even grief, that one phrase +flashed into his mind, "The Mother of Sorrows!" and stayed there. So +moving was her face that, although he had at the first instant taken in +her entire outline, the significance of it had not struck him until now. +On her arm, in the immemorial mother's fashion, she carried a child. The +child was in white and a blue scarf was tied about his head. When Raven +saw the scarf, his tension relaxed. There was something about the scarf +that was real, was earthly: a ragged break in one free corner. In the +relief of seeing the break, and being thus brought back to tangible +things, he realized that he had, in a perfect seriousness, for one +amazing minute, believed the woman and the child to be not human but +divine. They were, as they struck upon his eyes, a vision, and he would +have been in no sense surprised to see the vision fade. It was the +Virgin Mary and her Son. Now, as he realized with the lightning rapidity +of a morbidly excited mind how terribly sensitive to his own needs he +must be to have clutched so irrationally at a world-old remedy, he took +off his hat and called to her: + +"You startled me." + +Without waiting for any response, he turned to the left, because the +probabilities were that he had startled her also, and that was why she +had stood there, petrified into the catalepsy of wood animals struck by +cautionary fear. But, as he turned, a man's voice sounded through the +woods, and waked an echo: + +"Hullo!" it called. "Hullo!" + +Raven involuntarily paused, and saw the woman running toward him. There +were stumps in her way, but she stepped over them lightly, and once, +when she had to cross a hollow where the snow lay deep, she sank in up +to her knees, and Raven involuntarily stepped forward to help her. But +she freed herself with incredible quickness and came on. It might have +been water she was wading in, so little did it check her. She halted +before him, only a pace away, as if she must be near in order to speak +cautiously, and Raven noted the exquisite texture of her pale skin and +the pathos of her eyes, the pupils distended now so that he wondered if +they could be blue. Meantime the voice kept on calling, "Hullo! hullo!" + +She spoke tremulously, in haste: + +"He'll be up here in a minute. You say you ain't seen me." + +"Is it some one you're afraid of?" Raven asked. + +She nodded, in a dumb anguish. + +"Then," said he, "we'll both stay here till he comes, and afterward I'll +go with you, wherever you're going." + +This, it seemed, moved her to a terror more acute. + +"No! no!" she said, and she appeared to have so little breath to say it +that, if he had not been watching her lips, he could not have caught it. +"Not you. That would make him madder'n ever. You go away. Hide you +somewheres, quick." + +"No," said Raven, "I sha'n't hide. I'll hide you. Come along." + +He took her by the arm and, though she was remonstrating breathlessly, +hurried her to the left. They passed the three firs at the turn and he +smiled a little, noting Jerry's good road and thinking there was some +use in this combined insistence on his following the steps of Old Crow. +There was the hut, in its rough kindliness, and there, the smoke told +him, was a fire. Jerry had been up that morning, because Charlotte must +have known he'd come there the first thing. Still smoothing the road to +Old Crow! He had been fumbling with one hand for the key, the while he +kept the other on her arm. She was so terrified a creature now that he +did not trust her not to break blindly away and run. He unlocked the +door, pushed her in, closed and locked it. Then he dropped the key in +his pocket and went back to the wood road. With a sudden thought, he +took his knife from his pocket and tossed it down the road into a little +heap of brush. Meanwhile the man was coming nearer and, as he came, he +called: "Hullo!" + +Raven, waiting for him, speculated on the tone. What did it mean? It was +a breathless tone, though not in any manner like the woman's. It was as +if he had run and stumbled and caught himself up, and all the time been +strangled from within by rage or some like madness. The woman's +breathlessness had simply meant life's going out of her with sheer +fright. Now the man was coming up the slope, bent at the shoulders, as +if he carried a heavy load or as if almost doubling himself helped him +to go the faster. He was a thin man with long arms and he carried an +axe. Raven called to him: + +"Hullo, there! Take a look as you come along and see if you can find my +knife." + +The man stopped short, straightened, and looked at him. Meantime Raven, +bending in his search, went toward him, scrutinizing the road from side +to side. He had a good idea of the fellow in the one glance he gave him: +a pale, thin face, black eyes with a strange spark in them, a burning +glance like the inventor's or the fanatic's, and black hair. It was an +ascetic face, and yet there was passion of an unnamed sort ready to +flash out and do strange things, overthrow the fabric of an ordered life +perhaps, or contradict the restraint of years. He stood motionless until +Raven, still searching, had got within three feet of him. Then he spoke: + +"Who be you?" + +He had a low voice, agreeable, even musical. Raven concluded he must +have been strangely moved to break into that mad "Hullo." It had been +more, he thought, that wild repetition with the echo throwing it back, +like the Gabriel hounds. But Raven took no notice of the question. He +spoke with a calculated peevishness. + +"I'm willing to bet my knife is within three feet, and see how the +confounded thing's hidden itself. It was right along here. Let me take +your axe and I'll blaze a tree." + +The man, without a word, passed him the axe and Raven notched a sapling. +Then, still holding the axe, he turned to the man with a smile. No one +had ever told him what a charming smile it was. Anne used to wonder, in +her dignified anguishes of love forbidden, if she could ever make him +understand how he looked when he smiled. + +"Well," said Raven, "who may you be?" + +"My name's Tenney," said the man, in the low, vibrant voice. + +"Oho!" said Raven, remembering Charlotte's confidences. Then, as Tenney +frowned slightly and glanced at him in a questioning suspicion, he +continued, "Then we're neighbors. My name's Raven." + +The man nodded. + +"They said you were comin'," he remarked. + +He held out his hand for the axe. Raven, loath to give it to him, yet +saw no excuse for withholding it. After all, she was safely locked in. +So he tossed the axe and Tenney caught it lightly, and was turning away. +But he stopped, considered a moment, looking down at the ground, and +then, evidently concluding the question had to be put, broke out, and, +Raven thought, shamefacedly: + +"You seen anything of her up here?" + +"Her?" Raven repeated, though he knew the country shyness over family +terms. + +"Yes. My woman." + +"Your wife?" insisted Raven. "I don't believe I know her. No, I'm sure I +don't. I've been away several years. On the road, you mean? No--not a +soul." + +A swift rage passed over Tenney's face. It licked it like a flash of +evil light and Raven thought he saw how dangerous he could be. + +"No," he said, "I don't mean on the road. I mean in the woods." + +"Up here?" persisted Raven. "No, certainly not. This is no place for a +woman. A woman would have to be off her head to come traipsing up here +in the snow. Is that what you were yelling about? I thought you were a +catamount, at least." + +He laughed. He had an idea, suddenly conceived, that the man, having a +keen sense of personal dignity, was subject to ridicule, and that a +laugh would be salutary for him. And he was right. Tenney straightened, +put his axe over his shoulder, and walked away down the hill. + + + + +IX + + +Raven stood looking after him a minute and then began an ostentatious +search for his knife, went to the little pile of brush and saw it--the +steel tip of the handle shining there--and pulled the brush aside to get +it. As he was rising with it in his hand, he saw Tenney turn and look +back at him. He held up the knife and called: + +"I've got it." + +Tenney, not answering even by a sign, went on over the rise and +disappeared below. Then Raven, after lingering a little to make sure he +did not reappear, turned up the slope and into the path at the left and +so came again to the hut. He unlocked the door and went in. She was +sitting by the fire and the child was on the floor, staring rather +vacuously at his little fingers, as if they interested him, but not +much. The woman was looking at the child, but only in a mechanical sort +of way, as if it were her job to look and she did it without intention +even when the child was safe. But she was also watching the door, +waiting for him; it was in an agony of expectation, and her eyes +questioned him the instant he stepped in. + +"Warm enough?" he inquired, as incidentally, he hoped, as if it were not +unusual to find her here. "Let me throw on a log." + +He did throw on two and the fire answered. The solemn child, who proved, +at closer view, to have an unusual beauty of pink cheeks, blue eyes, and +reddish hair, did not intermit his serious gaze at his fingers. When +Raven had put on the logs and dusted himself off, he found himself at a +loss. How should he begin? Was Tenney, with his catamount yells and his +axe, to be ignored altogether, or should he reassure her by telling her +the man had gone? But she herself began. + +"I suppose," she said, in the eloquent low voice that seemed to make the +smallest word significant, "you think it's funny." + +Raven knew what sense the word was meant to convey. + +"No," he said, "not in the least. It's pretty bad for you, though," he +added gravely, on second thought that he might. + +She made a little gesture with her hand. It was a beautifully formed +hand, but reddened with work. The gesture was as if she threw something +away. + +"He won't hurt me," she said. + +"No," Raven returned, "I should hope not." + +He drew up a chair to the hearth and was about to take it when she spoke +again. The blood ran into her cheeks, as she did it, and she put her +request with difficulty. It seemed to Raven that she was suddenly +engulfed in shame. + +"Should you just as soon," she asked, "take the key inside an' lock the +door?" + +She put it humbly, and Raven rose at once. + +"Of course," he said. "Good idea." + +He locked the door and came back to his chair and she began, never +omitting to share her attention with the child: + +"I know who you be. It's too bad this has come upon you. I'll have to +ask you not to let it go any further." + +Raven was about to assure her that nothing had come upon him, and then +he bethought himself that a great deal had. She had looked to him like +the Mother of Sorrows and, though the shock of that vision was over, she +seemed to him now scarcely less touching in her beautiful maternity and +her undefended state. So he only glanced at her and said gravely: + +"Nobody will know anything about it from me. After all"--he was bound to +reassure her if he could--"I've nothing to tell." + +Her face flashed into an intensity of revolt against any subterfuge, the +matter was so terrible. + +"Why, yes, you have," said she. "Isr'el Tenney chased his woman up into +the woods with an axe. An' you heard him yellin' after her. That's God's +truth." + +Raven felt rising in him the rage of the natural man, a passion of +protection for the woman who is invincibly beautiful yet physically +weak. + +"An'," she went on, "you might ha' seen him out there, axe an' all." + +"Oh," said Raven, as if it were of no great account, "I did see him." + +"O my soul!" she breathed. "You see him? I'm glad you come in. He might +ha' asked you if you'd seen me." + +"He did." + +This was a new terror and she was undone. + +"How'd you do it?" she asked breathlessly. "You must ha' put it better'n +I could or he'd be here now." + +"I didn't 'put it,'" said Raven, easily. "I lied, and he went off down +the hill." + +Extravagant as it seemed, he did get an impression, like a flash, that +she was disappointed in him because he had lied. But this was no time +for casuistry. There were steps to be taken. + +"You won't go back to him," he said, and said it definitively as if it +were a matter he had thought out, said it like a command. + +She stared at him. + +"Not go back to him?" she repeated. "Why, I've got to go back to him. +I've got to go home. Where do you expect I'm goin', if I don't go home?" + +"Haven't you any people?" Raven asked her. "Can't you go to them?" + +She laughed a little, softly, showing fine white teeth. The spell of her +beauty was moving to him. He might never, he thought, have noticed her +at all in other circumstances, if he had not seen her there in the woods +and felt her need knock at his heart with the imperative summons of the +outraged maternal. Was this the feeling rising in him that had made his +mother's servitude to his father so sickening in those years gone by? +Was the old string still throbbing? Did it need but a woman's hand to +play upon it? And yet must he not have noted her, wherever they had met? +Would not any man? + +"I've got four brothers," she said. "They'd laugh at me. They'd tell me +I'd married well an' got a better home than any of them could scrape +together if they begun at the beginnin' an' lived their lives over. +There's nothin' in Isr'el Tenney to be afraid of, they'd tell me. And +there ain't--for them." + +"No," said Raven quietly. He felt an intense desire to feel his way, +make no mistakes, run no risk of shutting off her confidence. "It's a +different thing for you." + +Now she turned her face more fully upon him, in a challenging surprise. + +"Why," she said, "I ain't afraid--except for him." + +By the smallest motion of her hand she indicated the child, who was now, +in sudden sleepiness, toppling back against the wall. + +"Put him up here," said Raven, indicating the couch. + +He opened the folded rug and held it until she had disposed the little +lax figure among the pillows. Then she took the rug from him and covered +the child, with quick, capable movements of her beautiful worn hands. +Raven, watching her, felt a clutch at his throat. Surely there was +nothing in the known world of plastic action so wonderful as these +movements of mothers' hands in their work of easing a child. With a last +quick touch on the rug, drawing it slightly away from the baby cheek, +she returned to her chair, and Raven again took his. He was afraid lest +she repent her open-mindedness toward him and talk no more. But she was +looking at him earnestly. It was evidently a part of her precautionary +foresight that he should know. Did she think he could help her? His +blood quickened at the thought. It seemed enough to have lived for, in +so brutal a world. She veered for a moment from her terror to the +necessity for justifying herself. + +"You needn't think," she said, almost aggressively, "I'd talk to +everybody like this." + +He was holding himself down to a moderation he knew she wanted, and +replied: + +"No, of course not. But you can talk to me." + +"Yes," she said, "I can." She dismissed that, having said it, as if she +saw no need of finding the underlying reasons they were both going by. +"You see," she said, "it's the baby. When he gits one o' them spells, +it's the baby he pitches on." + +Raven picked out from her confusion of pronouns the fact that Tenney, in +his spells, incredibly threatened the baby. + +"Don't you think," he said, "you make too much of it--I mean, as to the +baby. He wouldn't hurt his own child." + +Again the blood ran into her cheeks, and she looked a suffering so acute +that Raven got up and walked through the room to the window. It seemed +an indecency to scan the anguished page of her face. + +"That's it," she said, in a strangled voice. "When he has his spells he +don't believe the baby's his." + +"God!" muttered Raven. He turned and came back to her. "You don't mean +to live with him," he said. "You can't. You mustn't. The man's a brute." + +She was looking up at him proudly. + +"But," she said, "baby is his own child." + +"Good God! of course it is," broke out Raven, in a fever of impatience. +"Of course it's his child. You don't need to tell me that." + +Then, incredibly, she smiled and two dimples appeared at the corners of +her mouth and altered her face from a mask of tragic suffering to the +sweetest playfulness. + +"You mustn't say 'it,'" she reproved him. "You must say 'he.' Anybody'd +know you ain't a family man." + +Raven stood looking at her a moment, his own smile coming. Then he sat +down in his chair. He wanted to tell her how game she was, and there +seemed no way to manage it. But now he could ask her questions. Her +friendliness, her amazing confidence, had opened the door. + +"Exactly what do you mean?" he asked, yet cautiously, for even after her +own avowals he might frighten her off the bough. "Does he drink?" + +She looked at him reprovingly. + +"No, indeed," she said. "He's a very religious man." + +"The devil he is!" Raven found himself muttering, remembering the +catamount yells and the axe. "Then what," he continued, with as complete +an air as he could manage of taking it as all in the day's work, "what +do you mean by his spells?" + +She was silent a moment. Her mind seemed to be going back. + +"He gits--mad," she said slowly. "Crazy, kind of. It's when he looks at +baby and baby looks different to him." + +"Different? How different?" + +"Why," she said, in a burst of pride turning for an instant to the +little figure on the couch, "baby's got awful cunnin' little ways. An' +he's got a little way o' lookin' up sideways, kind o' droll, an' when he +does that an' Mr. Tenney sees it"--here Raven glanced at her quickly, +wondering what accounted for her being so scrupulous with her "Mr. +Tenney"--"he can't help noticin' it an' he can't help thinkin' how baby +ain't colored like either of us--we're both dark----" + +There she stopped, at last in irreparable confusion, and Raven was +relieved. How could he let her, he had been thinking, go on with the +sordid revelation? When he spoke, it was more to himself than to her, +but conclusively: + +"The man's a beast." + +"No, he ain't," said she indignantly. "Baby's light complected. You see +he is. An' I'm dark an' so's Mr. Tenney. An' I told him--I told him +about me before we were married, an' he thought he could stand it then. +But we went over to the county fair an' he see--_him_. He come up an' +spoke to him, that man did, spoke to us both, an' Mr. Tenney looked at +him as if he never meant to forgit him, an' he ain't forgot him, not a +minute since. He's light complected, blue eyes an' all. An' he stood +there, that man did, talkin' to us, kinder laughin' an' bein' funny, an' +all to scare me out o' my life for fear o' what he'd say. He didn't say +a word he hadn't ought to, an' when he'd had his joke he walked off. But +he had just that way o' lookin' up kinder droll, an' baby's got it. Mr. +Raven, for God's sake tell me why my baby's got to look like that man?" + +She was shaking him into a passion as unendurable as her own. He had +never felt such pity for any human being, not even the men blinded and +broken in the War. And he understood her now. Even through his belief in +her, that sudden belief born of her beauty and her extremity, he had +been amazed at her accepting him so absolutely. Now he saw. He was her +last hope and perhaps because he was different from the neighbors to +whom she could not speak, she was throwing herself into the arms of his +compassion. And she had to hurry lest she might not see him again. He +sat there, his hands clenched between his knees, his head bent. He must +not look at her. + +"Poor chap!" he said finally, his altered thoughts now on Tenney. "He's +jealous." + +She broke into a sob that seemed to rend her and then pulled herself up +and sat silent. But he could see, from her shadowy outline through his +oblique vision, that she was shaking horribly. + +"Can't you," he said, "make him understand, make him see how--how +tremendously you love him?" + +That was pretty mawkish, he thought, as he said it, but he meant it, he +meant volumes more. Flood the man with kindness, open the doors of her +beauty and let him see how really incorruptible she was, how loyal, how +wronged. For, with every minute of her company, he was the more +convinced of her inviolate self. Whatever the self had been through, now +it was motherhood incarnate. What was she saying to this last? + +"Be nice to him?" she asked, "that kind o' way?" And he saw, as she did, +that he had meant her to drown the man's jealous passion in passion of +her own. "He thinks," she said bitterly, "that's the kind o' woman I +am." + +Then he looked with her upon the barricaded road of her endeavor. + +"I can't even," she said, "have the house pretty when he comes home an' +be dressed up so's he'll have a pleasant evenin' but he thinks--that's +the kind o' woman I am." The last she said as if she had said it many +times before and it held the concentrated bitterness of her hateful +life. "An'," she added, turning upon him and speaking fiercely, as if he +had been the one to accuse her, "it's true. It is the kind o' woman I +am. An' I don't want to be. I want to set down with my sewin' an' watch +the baby playin' round. What is it about me? What makes 'em foller me +an' offer me things an' try, one way or another, to bring me down? What +is it?" + +She was panting with the passion of what seemed an accusation of him +with all mankind. He added one more to his list of indictments against +nature as God had made it. Here she was, a lure, innocent, he could have +sworn, backed up against the defenses of her ignorance, and the whole +machinery of nature was moving upon her, seeking, with its multitudinous +hands, to pull her in and utilize her for its own ends. + +"Never mind," he said harshly. "Don't try to understand things. You +can't. We can't any of us. Only I'll tell you how you looked to me, that +first minute. You looked like the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ." + +She shrank a little. He had touched, he saw, innocent prejudices. + +"Are you a Roman Catholic?" she asked. + +"No," he said, "not that nor anything. But you see how good you looked +to me. It doesn't hurt any of us to be Catholic, if we're good." + +"I didn't mean anything," she said humbly. "Only there ain't many round +here." + +"You say your husband is religious. Does he go to church?" + +"Yes," she answered soberly, and also with a kind of wonder at a man's +accomplishing so dull an observance. "We go twice every Sunday, an' +Sunday school an' evenin' meetin' besides." + +"Do you like it?" + +"No," she said, looking rueful, as if trusting he might forgive her. "I +git sleepy." + +At this Raven laughed and she glanced at him mildly, as if wandering +what he had found to please him. He had been thinking. + +"Now," he said, "we must plan what you're going to do. You won't let me +send you and the baby away to stay awhile?" + +She shook her head. + +"Then what are we going to do? Can't you let me go to him and tell him, +man to man, what an infernal fool he is?" + +A wild alarm flew into her face. + +"No! no!" she said. + +"What is going to happen? You can't go home." + +"Oh, yes, I can," said she. "I always do. It works off. Maybe it's +worked off now. He gits all wore out actin' the way he does, an' then +he's terrible scared for fear I've made way with myself, an' he's all +bowed down." + +"Oh!" said Raven. "And you've got him where you want him. And you settle +down and wait for another spell. How long do you generally stay away?" + +"Long's I can," she answered simply. "Till I'm afraid baby'll git cold. +I keep his little things where I can ketch 'em up an' run. But sometimes +he 'most gits a chill." + +The yearning of anxiety in her voice was intense enough, he thought, to +balance the grief of all the mothers bereft by Herod. + +"I don't see," he said, "how you get up here anyway. You must come by +the road? Why doesn't he follow you?" + +The slow red surged into her face. She was hesitating. There was +evidently worse to come. + +"He gits so mad," she said, with frequent pauses between the words, "he +don't stay in the house after he's had a spell. I guess he don't dare +to. He's afraid of what he'll do. He goes out an' smashes away at the +woodpile or suthin.' An' it's then I ketch up the baby an' run. I go out +the side door an' up the road a piece an' into the back road. Then I +come down the loggin' road the back way an' end up here. It's God's +mercy," she said passionately, "they've broke out that loggin' road or +there wouldn't be any path an' he'd see my tracks in the snow." + +"Then," said Raven, "if he has sense enough to go and work it off on the +woodpile, perhaps you aren't in any real danger, after all." + +She looked at him piteously. Her eyes narrowed with a frowning return to +a scene of terror past and persistently avoided in retrospect. + +"'Most always," she said, in a low tone, "it comes on him ag'in, an' +then, 'fore you know it, he's back in the house. Once he brought the axe +with him. Baby was in the cradle. The cradle head's split right square +acrost." + +"Good God!" said Raven. "And you won't let me send you away from here?" + +"Why, Mr. Raven," said she, and her voice was only less exquisite in its +tenderness than when she spoke of the baby, "ain't I married to him?" + +They sat looking at each other, and the suffused beauty of her face was +so moving to him that he got up and went to the window and stared out at +the tree branches in their winter calm. He made himself stand there +looking at them and thinking persistently of them, not of her. She would +not bear thinking of, this thing of beauty and need and, at the same +time, inexorability of endurance. Unless she would let him help her, he +was only driving the hot ploughshare of her misery through his own heart +for nothing. So he stood there, mechanically studying the trees and +remembering how they would wake from this frozen calm on a night when +the north wind got at them and made them thrash at one another in the +fury of their destiny. Her voice recalled him. + +"I don't mean," she said, "to make you feel bad. I hadn't ought to put +it on anybody else's shoulders, anyway." + +Then Raven realized that the tenderness in her voice was for him. He +turned and came back to his place by the fire. But he did not sit. He +stood looking at her as she looked anxiously up at him. + +"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "for the present, anyway. I'm +going now, and you're to stay here as long as you think best. When you +go, lock the door and put the key under the flat stone out by the step. +I often leave the key there. I'll make sure the stone isn't frozen down. +Now, you understand, don't you? You're to come up here whenever you +like. If there isn't a fire, you're to build one. Nobody will disturb +you. Jerry won't be cutting up here. I'll send him down into the lower +woods." + +"But," she said, in evident concern, "I can't do that. You come up here +to write your books. Mr. Tenney said so, when he was tellin' me who all +the neighbors were. He said you had the shack repaired so's to write +your books." + +Raven smiled. Books seemed far removed from this naked face of life. + +"I'm not writing books now," he said. "I'm just hanging round. I may go +over and see your husband, ask him to do some work for me." + +The quick look of alarm ran into her face. + +"Oh," she breathed, "you won't----" + +"No," he answered steadily, "I won't say a word about you. Of course I +sha'n't. And I won't to anybody." + +"An'," she broke in tumultuously, "if you should see me--oh, it's an +awful thing to say, after what you've done for me this day--but you +won't act as if you ever see me before?" + +That was the only wisdom, Raven saw, but a band seemed to tighten about +his heart. Deny her before men, she whom he had not yet untangled from +the rapt vision of their meeting? + +"No," he said, "I won't even look at you. Now I'm going. I'll loosen up +the stone." + +She rose to her imposing height and came to him where he stood, his hand +on the latch. Her eyes brimmed. In the one glance he had of her, he +thought such extremity of gratitude might, in another instant, break in +a flood of words. + +"Go back," he said, "where nobody can see you when I open the door. +Jerry may have taken a notion to come up." + +She turned obediently and he did not look at her again. He opened the +door and stepped out. The stone was there beside the larger one below +the sill. He bent and wrenched it up from the ground where the frost was +holding it, and with such unregarding force that the edges hurt his +hands. He smiled a little at the savage satisfaction of the act, +wondering if this was how Tenney felt when he smashed away at the wood. +Then he remembered that the key was inside, tapped on the door, opened +it and spoke to her: + +"You'd better lock the door. Keep it locked till you go." + +She was sitting before the fire, her head bent almost to her knee, her +face in her hands. He closed the door and waited until he heard her step +and the turning of the key. Then he strode out into the logging road and +down the slope. One certainty surged and trembled in him: that he had +never been so sorry for anybody in his life. + + + + +X + + +Raven, determinedly shedding his emotion, plunged fast down the hill and +into the house where Charlotte was busy in a steam of fragrances from +stove and cooking table and Jerry sat smoothing an axe helve. + +"See here," said Raven, pulling off his gloves and advancing to the +stove, where Jerry, looking mildly up, made room for him, "are you +thinning out up on the ridge?" + +Jerry nodded. + +"That's what you wrote," said he. + +"I've changed my mind," said Raven. "It looks mighty well up there as it +is, for the present, anyway. Didn't you say there was a lot of gray +birch that needed to go down in the river pasture?" + +Again Jerry nodded, and Charlotte, evidently not finding this definite +enough, put in: + +"Why, yes, Jerry, seems to me you said so. 'Twas in that letter you had +me write." + +"Well," said Raven, "I want you to get at the river woods. I want 'em +cleaned up. Couldn't you get somebody to help you? That man Tenney, how +about him?" + +Jerry, confronted by haste and emergency, two flying visitants he never +could encounter adequately, opened his mouth and looked at Charlotte. + +"Why, yes," said she. "He's a great hand to work. You said so yourself, +Jerry, only last week." + +"Then what if we should hire him?" said Raven. "What if I should go up +and ask him now?" + +Jerry was slowly coming to. + +"He's been by here to-day," said he, "axe in his hand. Went as if he's +sent for. Then he went back." + +"Well, that was an hour or more ago," said Charlotte. "You says to me, +'Where's he be'n?' says you. Yes, he's got home long 'fore this. You'll +find him some'r's round home." + +"All right," said Raven. "Don't go up on the ridge again, Jerry. I want +it left as it is." + +He hurried out through the shed and Charlotte and Jerry exchanged +glances, his entirely bemused and she sympathetically tender. + +"'Course he don't want you cuttin' on the ridge," she said. "He's goin' +up there to write his books. I should think you could see that." + +For Charlotte, when no third person was by to observe Jerry's sloth at +the uptake, had methods of her own to keep him mentally alive. If he did +lag a pace behind, it was his secret and hers, and sometimes, between +themselves, it was wholesome to recognize it. + +Raven walked at top speed. He could not, at his utmost, get to Tenney +soon enough. It was true, he was under vow not to assault or accuse him, +but it seemed to him the woman would not be even intermittently safe +unless the man were under his eye. As the picture of her flashed again +to his mind, sitting by his hearth, her head bowed in grief unspeakable, +he wondered what he should call her. Surely not, in his rage against +Tenney, by Tenney's name. She was "the woman," she was the pitiful type +of all suffering womanhood. + +There was the house, rather narrow in build, but painted white, with +green blinds. The narrowness gave it a look of unwelcoming meagerness, +this although it was of a good size. Raven wondered why some minds ran +to pointed roofs, inhospitable to the eye. This looked to him like +Tenney, his idea of him. The barn was spacious, and beautiful in silver +gray, and the woodpile, Raven decided ironically, a marvel of artistic +skill. He had never seen such a big woodpile, so accurately trimmed at +the corners, so perfect in the face of an extended length. It must, he +judged, represent a good many hours of jealous madness, if it was +entirely the product of those outbreaks when Tenney went out to smash +wood. And there, round one corner of the pile, was Tenney himself. Raven +realized that he had not expected to find him. Actually he had believed +the man was raging over snowy hillsides somewhere about, armed with his +axe and uttering those catamount cries. Tenney was not at work. He was +standing perfectly still, looking up the road. + +"Hullo!" called Raven, turning into the yard, and the man jerked back a +step and then stopped and awaited him. + +It was not a step actually. His feet did not leave the ground. He +merely, his whole body, seemed thrown out of position, to recover +instantly. Raven, watching him as he traversed the few steps between +them, decided that he was uncontrollably nervous, frightened, too, +perhaps, at what his apprehensive mind pictured: and that was good for +him. What was Tenney, according to his look? Raven, scrutinizing him as +he approached, determined to know something more than he had caught from +those preoccupied minutes in the woods. How, if he had his pen in hand, +would he describe Israel Tenney for one of the folk tales Anne had so +persistently urged him to? A thin, tall man with narrow shoulders and +yet somehow giving an impression of great wiry strength. He had a boldly +drawn line of profile, hair black and glossy and, as Raven saw with +distaste, rather long under his hat, vertical lines marking his cheeks, +lines deeper than seemed justified by his age, and, as he had noted +before, his eyes were also black with a spark in them. What was the +spark? It was, Raven concluded again, in this quick scrutiny, like that +in the eyes of inventors and visionaries. He wore clothes so threadbare +that it seemed as if he must have been cold. But they were patched with +a scrupulous nicety that made some revulsion in Raven rise up and +dramatically spur him to a new resentment. She had patched them. Her +faithful needle had spent its art on this murderer of her peace. He had +reached the woodpile now and Tenney came a step forward. + +"Great woodpile you've got here," said Raven. + +Tenney put out his hand and rested it on one of the sticks. He might +have been caressing a pet dog. + +"Stove wood length," he said briefly. Then he seemed to feel some +curiosity over being sought out after their meeting on the rise and +asked: "D'you find your knife?" + +"Why, yes," said Raven. "Didn't you see me hold it up to you?" + +Tenney nodded, frowning. He seemed to conclude he was giving himself +away, showing more interest in the stranger than the stranger had in any +way earned. But he asked another question. It leaped from him. He had to +ask it. + +"D'you see anybody up round there after I come down?" + +Raven shook his head, looking, he hoped, vague. + +"I came down myself," he said. "I had to talk with Jerry about his +thinning out." + +The eagerness faded from Tenney's face. + +"I didn't see Jerry up there this mornin'," he volunteered, in an +indifferent contribution toward the talk. + +"No," said Raven. "You won't see him up there at all after this--for a +spell, that is. I write, you know, books. I like to go up to the hut to +work. Not so likely to be interrupted there. I don't want chopping going +on." + +Tenney, with a quick lift of the head, looked at him questioningly. +Raven saw anger also in the look, at last anger ready to spring. Both +men had the same thought. Tenney wondered if the owner of the wood was +going to taunt him again with yelling like a catamount, and Raven did +actually put aside an impulse toward it. + +"D'you come over here to forbid my goin' up in your woods?" Tenney +inquired. + +"No," said Raven. "I came to ask you if you could help Jerry do some +thinning out in the river pasture. I'm rather in a hurry about that." + +"Why, yes," Tenney began. Then he added breathlessly, as if another part +of his mind (the suffering, uncontrolled part) broke in on his speech: +"Not yet, though. I can't do anything yet, not till I see how things +turn." + +Raven thought he understood. Tenney could settle to nothing until he +knew when his wife was coming back or whether she was coming at all. Now +that the vision of her had entered on their stage, he was conscious of +answering coldly: + +"All right. You can make up your mind and go over and see Jerry. He'll +arrange it with you." + +On these words, he was about turning away, when he found Tenney suddenly +oblivious of him. The man's thin face was quivering into a pathetic +disorder, flushed, quite beyond his control. He neither heard Raven nor +saw him, though he did speak brokenly: + +"There!" he said. "There she is now." + +Raven, turning, followed his gaze, directed up the road, not the way he +had come. There she was, walking toward them with swift, long steps, the +child held with the firmness that still seemed a careless buoyancy, as +he had seen her in the woods. She had come home, as she went, the back +way. Raven could have stood there through the long minute, motionless, +waiting for her to come to him, for it seemed as if it were to him she +came, not Tenney. But he recalled himself with a brusqueness so rough +and sudden that it was as if he gave himself a blow. That last glance +had shown him she had nothing more to fear from Tenney, for this time at +least. The man had been horribly frightened at her going. Now he was +under her heel. Raven did not give her another look. He turned homeward, +and called back to Tenney loudly enough for her to overhear him and be +under no apprehension as to what had passed: + +"Make up your mind, then come and talk it over with Jerry. It's +chopping, you understand, gray birches down in the river pasture." + +Tenney did not answer, and Raven, striding along the road, listened with +all possible intentness to hear whether husband and wife spoke together. +He thought not, but he did hear the closing of a door. + + + + +XI + + +Thyatira--this was her name, and she was called Tira--passed her husband +apparently without a glance. Nevertheless she had, in approaching, +become adequately aware of his disordered look, and the fact of it +calmed her to a perfect self-possession. She could always, even from one +of these fleeting glimpses, guess at the stage his madman's progress had +reached, and the present drop in temperature restored her everyday sense +of safety. With it came a sudden ebbing of energy and endurance. The +"spell" was over for the time, but her escape from the shadow of it left +her nerveless and almost indifferent to its returning; apathetic, too, +to her tormentor. Going in, she closed the door behind her, apparently +not noticing that he followed her, and when he opened it and came in, +she was sitting in his great chair by the fire, taking off the baby's +coat, and, with the capable, anxious mother motion, feeling the little +hands. Tenney came up to her and the child, turning at his step, looking +up at him solemnly. Tira's heart seemed to contract within her. This was +the very glance, "lookin' up kinder droll," that had brought on the +storm. But for Tenney it evidently meant something now that fitted his +mood of passionate anxiety to get back into the warm security of +domestic peace. + +"You lemme take him," he said, "whilst you git off your things. You'll +ketch your death o' cold, carryin' on so." + +The last he had to add. She was, his defensive inner mind told him, all +wrong in flying out of the house "like a crazed creatur'" when she might +have stayed and told him, just told him, whether she was the kind of +woman he, at these unheralded mad moments, thought she was. That was the +undercurrent always in his mind: if she wouldn't be so still and +hateful, if she would only tell him. She might have some pity on a man, +that defensive inner mind advised him, when she saw him all worked up. +But the minute he warned her the devil of doubt was again tempting him, +she began to freeze up and wouldn't speak to him at all. No wonder, with +that devil inside whispering to him and hounding him on--no wonder he +said things and--he trembled here and dared not follow out that +thought--and was afraid he might do things. But she shook her head, at +his offer of taking the child. + +"You might go an' cut a slice o' ham," she said wearily. "It's 'most +dinner time. We might's well have that as anything." + +But the baby reached out and closed his little fingers about Tenney's +thumb. Tenney stood there, his heart swelling within him at the contrast +between the child's forgivingness and her cruelty. Now she had the +child's outer things off, and she rose with them in one hand, carrying +the child on the other arm, and it was her movement that dragged the +little fingers away and broke that significant clasp on Tenney's thumb. +How hateful she could be, he thought, his heart swelling more and more. +He stood where she left him, and she went to the low couch and set the +baby down there, and put into his hand a formless doll she wanted him to +love. He never really noticed it, but she felt he would sometime love +the doll. Then she glanced, with the air of being recalled to a +wearisome routine, at the table in the middle of the floor; it meant ham +and eggs. It seemed also to occur to her that she had not taken off her +cloak, and she hung it on its nail behind the door. Soon, as Tenney, +still motionless there by the stove, seemed mutely accusing her, mutely +imploring her not to be cruel, she did turn and look at him. The thought +of Raven was uppermost in her mind. It had been there every minute since +she had gone into his house in the woods, but now it roused +compellingly, stronger than even her present apprehension. Most of all, +she was penetrated by a wonder almost greater than any emotion she had +ever felt, at having laid before him at once and without persuasion, the +story of her life. Why should she have told him? She would have said no +decent woman could betray her husband to another man. It was entirely +mysterious, and she gave it up. But there was, behind the wonder, a +dazzling sense that he was different. As he had told her that strange +thing she hardly dared think of now, because it seemed as if she must +have misunderstood him--the thing about her looking so good and +wonderful when he came upon her--so he, in his kindness and compassion, +his implication of assuming a mysterious responsibility for her, seemed +unbelievably good, not a citizen of this bleak neighborhood--or even the +world (her mind, though stumblingly, ran as far as that) and, more +astounding still, the real miracle was that he had been sent for this: +to save her. And at that moment of dazed reflection, it all meant the +passionate necessity of obeying him. He had bade her show her husband +how she loved him. Seeing the man was jealous, he had pitied him. +Perhaps she had not thought, since these last apprehensive days with +Tenney, whether she loved him or not. He had simply, at the times of +recurrent tragedy, been the terror within the house, and she had lived a +life of breathless consecration to the one task of saving the child. Did +she love him? Raven had assumed she did, and in her devotion to him she +must, in some form, obey. Almost it seemed to her there would be shame +in not loving her husband, if Raven expected it of her. None of these +things were formulated in her mind. They were only shadowy impulses, +like the forces of nature, persuading, impelling her. She had no words; +she had scarcely, as to the abstractions she dimly felt and never saw, +any reasoned thought. But she did have an unrecognized life of the +emotions, and this was surging in her now. + +She stood for a second looking at Tenney, the distended beauty of her +eyes like a question, a challenge. She seemed, though this neither of +them could know, to be beseeching him to tell her what treatment he +deserved of her, or what would make their case whole. They were simple +people, these two, but she had leaped, without knowing it herself, to a +new plane of life. She was still with Raven in the hut, trying to speak +his language, follow out his thought for her. She gave a little quick +rush across the room and, to Tenney's overwhelming surprise, her hands +were on his shoulders, her face so close to his that her sweet breath +fanned him. He had never seen her so. She had to be pursued, coaxed, +tired out with persuasion before she would even accept the warmth he too +often had for her. + +"Isr'el," she said, "Isr'el Tenney! if you ever ag'in, so long as you +live, think wrong o' that baby there, you'll be the wickedest man on +God's earth." + +His arms closed about her and she stood passive. Yet she wanted to free +herself. Did she love him? The question Raven had seemed to illuminate +kept beating on in her tired head. Did she love him? And as Tenney's +arms clung closer and his lips were on hers, she threw back her head and +cried violently: + +"No, I don't." + +"Don't what?" he asked, releasing her slightly, and she drew away from +him and, still obeying Raven, made one disordered effort at assurance. + +"If you think"--here she stopped. She could not go on. It had always +seemed to her a wrong to the baby to put the vile suspicion into words. +"If you think," she tried again, "what you said this mornin'--O Isr'el, +I've been as true to you as you are to your God." + +He was religious, she often told herself, chiefly in her puzzled musings +after a "spell" was over, and this was the strongest vow she could +imagine. But it disconcerted him. + +"There! there!" he said. "Don't say such things." + +Evidently the name of God was for Sundays. But he was uneasily +reassured. He was, at least, in a way of sense, delighted. He put his +face to hers and thickly bade her kiss him. He was not for the moment +horrible to her unconsenting will. Rather she found herself rejoicing. +When she could escape from him (and she felt no fear, her wild belief in +herself was so great) she thought she could dance and sing. For now she +knew she did not love him, and it made her feel so free. Always there +had been some uneasy bond, first with the man who cajoled her to her +heart-break and the miserable certainty that, whatever magic was in a +good name, it was hers no more, and then with Tenney, whom she had +followed humbly, gratefully, because he had been so kind and told her +nothing mattered if she would marry him. But now she felt a sudden +snapping of the bond and she knew that, in her mind, at least, in her +moments of solitude with the baby, she could dance upon the hills of +life. It was an entirely new sense of ecstasy, a thrilling of her blood. +She laughed out, a low, excited laugh, and put him from her and called +gaily: + +"You slice the ham, an' I'll git out some eggs." + +Tenney stared at her a minute, perplexed and wondering. Then his face +relaxed slightly. It might have been said he smiled. There was +apparently a good feeling in the house, such as he had never been able +to create. She had always been kind, conformable, but she had never +laughed like this, nor in his sight taken up the baby and tossed him +until he, too, laughed gurglingly. She cooked the dinner and Tenney, not +able to take himself out of her bewildering presence, hung about and +watched her and, when the baby began to fret for food, took him up and +walked with him until Tira was free. And while they ate dinner the baby +slept again on the lounge: for the cradle, grim witness Tenney could not +bring himself to look at now, had been moved into the bedroom. + +"D'you see that feller jest goin' when you come into the yard?" Tenney +asked her, when his first hunger was over and he leaned back in his +chair to look at her where she sat, only picking at her food, he thought +anxiously. She seemed queer to him to-day, with the rapt, exalted look +of one who had seen strange things and been tired by them, the tremulous +eloquence of her lips. She was, he owned to himself, yet not with any +satisfaction, because any smallest allurement in her lessened his chance +of keeping her faith inviolate, a likely looking woman. + +"I wish," he said irritably, out of his uneasiness over her, "you'd eat +suthin.' You're all beat out." + +She smiled at him. She felt kindly toward him as to a part of the world +that had at least begun to show its softer side to her. + +"No," she said, "I ain't beat out." + +"D'you see him?" he pursued, his thoughts recurring to Raven. + +"Yes," she responded, in a low tone, "I see him." + +"'Twas Raven. You knew he was comin' up to stay a spell. Don't ye +remember I see Jerry an' he told me? He wants me to go down in his river +pastur', choppin'. All of a whew to git at it. Jest like them city +folks. If a thing comes into their head, they'll shake the footstool but +they'll git it." + +"Yes," said Tira. "I think 's likely." + +She got up to bring the pie, warming in the oven, and when her back was +toward him she allowed herself a smile, happy, unrestrained, at Raven's +thought for her. She knew why Tenney was to be drawn off down to the +river pasture. This was a part of Raven's understanding and his +beneficence. + +"You goin'?" she asked, returning to her chair. + +"Yes," said Tenney. "Might 's well." + +When he had eaten he went out to his chores and she cleared the table +and walked about the house with a light step. She had been working +heavily of late, with a dull mind, but now there seemed to be a reason +for doing every task as perfectly as it could be done. There was not a +suspicion in her mind that Raven had a charm for her or that she could +possibly have a charm for him. He had simply opened a window for the +light to come in; he had shown her the door of escape. This was the +first simple kindness she had ever had. When she was little, the family +life had been a disorderly struggle for bare existence, and as she grew +into an ignorant girlhood she began to be angrily conscious that she +herself, she who did not recognize the power of her own beauty and with +it the strange force that lay beneath it, like a philter, for man's +undoing, was an object of pursuit by men made mad through passions she +hated. She had the simplest tastes, the most inconsiderable desires. She +would go off by herself then and spend a day wandering about the woods, +cooling her feet in brooks, sleeping under a tree. No man could make her +happiness completer, hanging about her steps, staring her down with +bold, impudent eyes. She even thought, in a formless way (for she had no +orderly inner life of wonder and conclusion) whether she should have +taken refuge with the light-haired man who was now driving Tenney to +madness, if he had not had that drollery of looking at you, like a boy +really, who cared only for a boy's fitful fun. But he was not kind. The +kindness had been only to lure her into trusting him, just as Tenney's +had turned into a rage of abusive jealousy. Raven's kindness was +different. It was not in any degree personal to her. She knew he would +have been as merciful to a squirrel caught in a trap. And the scars of +his own mental sufferings and restraints had done something to him, +something inexplicable that made him wonderful in her eyes. He seemed, +too, all-powerful. He was that miraculous combination of the human guide +and heavenly helper, with the wisdom to understand earthly trouble and +the power to administer what remedy there might be. + +Tenney did not come in until supper time. He had been over to Raven's, +he told her, and seen Jerry about the chopping. They were going in the +morning early. She made no reply. She was still at peace in the thought +of Raven's kindness, but the turmoil of the day had told on her, and she +was so tired that she could scarcely drag herself about; her eyes kept +closing as she moved. Tenney was still expectantly eager for an +awakening of her leniency. At eight o'clock he brought out the Bible and +stiffened himself into the rigidity that was the mail for his spiritual +combats. He was always referring to himself, at these times of religious +observance, as a servant of the Cross, and Tira used wearily to wonder +whether he felt obliged to arrange himself for combats that, so far as +she knew, never seemed to come off. There was a mysterious adversary he +was always describing with an apprehension that made her wonder if +Israel could really be afraid, and if that was why he announced so +belligerently that he was ready for him. Neither of them thought of the +combat as being simply the grim fight the will of men is doomed to on +the dark plain of man's mysterious sojourn. It seemed to them outside +somewhere, dramatic, imminent, and yet, if you prayed loudly enough and +read your chapter, not certain to happen at all. At least this seemed to +be what Tenney thought, and Tira, when she dwelt upon it, sleepily +followed him. To-night he was reading in Revelation, and when he had +finished that, he would begin, in due course, at Genesis, and go on with +an iron persistency of accomplishment as methodical as ploughing a +field. Tira, sitting at her side of the hearth, heard, through drowsy +ears, the incomprehensible vision of the tree of life with its twelve +manner of fruits, and when Israel shut the Bible with an air of virtuous +finality, she came awake and sat guiltily upright. + +"You've been asleep," he accused her frowningly. "Anybody'd think you +could keep yourself awake over the Word o' God." + +Tira leaned back in her chair and yawned with the simplicity of the +natural animal. Tenney caught his breath, the redness of her mouth and +the gleam of her teeth were so bewitching to him. He got up and carried +away the Bible. When he came back from the best room she was moving +about, setting away chairs and then brushing up the few chips on the +hearth. + +"I'm beat out," she acknowledged, with a wistful look at him, half +deprecating humility. "I guess I'll poke off to bed." + +"Yes," said Tenney, "le's go." + +At that minute there was a little waking call from the bedroom off the +sitting-room. Tenney gave her a startled glance. + +"Why," he said, "you got him in there?" + +They had been used to keeping the baby covered on the kitchen or the +sitting-room couch until their own bedtime and Tenney, preoccupied with +his last chore of reading the Scriptures, had not noticed that his wife +had carried him into the bedroom instead. + +"Yes," she said, with a significant quiet. "I thought 'twas full warmer +in the bed. I'm goin' to stay with him." + +"In there?" Tenney repeated. "All night?" + +She nodded at him. The afternoon brightness was again on her face, and +for an instant he felt afraid of her, she looked so strange. Then he +laughed a little. He thought he understood, and, advancing, put a hand +on her shoulder and spoke in an awkward tenderness. + +"Here," said he, "you ain't afraid o' me, be you? Why, I wouldn't no +more lay hands on him----" + +He had meant to add that she had reassured him by her disclaimer of the +morning. But he could not quite manage that. Words were not his +servants. They were his enemies, especially at such times as he was mad +with rage. Then they came too fast and got the better of him, and he +could hardly ever remember afterward what they were. Tira slipped from +under his hand and continued her ordered tasks about the room. But she +smiled at him in the friendliest way. + +"Oh, no," she said, "I ain't the leastest mite afraid." She laughed a +little, in a manner mystifying to him, for it suddenly seemed to her she +should never be afraid of anything again. + +Tenney stood there, his eyes following her as she moved about the room, +and again the thought of her cruelty possessed him. Last of all her +orderly deeds, she lighted a little lamp and set it on the table near +him. + +"Don't you forgit to blow it out," she warned him. "I'm terrible afraid +o' fire, these winter nights. I won't put out the big lamp yet. I can +see to undress by it, an' then baby won't wake up." + +He took his lamp and set it down again and went to the bedroom door, her +eyes following him. + +"I dunno," he said, in a strangled voice, "as there's any need o' that +in there, for folks to tumble over." + +He stepped inside, took up the cradle with the telltale gash in the +hood, carried it through the kitchen and set it outside the door, in the +shed. + +"I'll carry it up into the shed chamber to-morrer," he said, in the same +tortured voice. + +Then he took his lamp and turned to go. He was as much surprised at +himself as she could have guessed. For some reason--and he did not know +the reason--he could not bear to leave her there in the dark with the +silent witness standing by to cry out against him. Yet this he did not +think. He only knew he must get the cradle out of the room and do it +quickly. When he had reached the door to the enclosed staircase, her +voice halted him so abruptly that the light quivered in his hand. + +"Isr'el," it called, "you're real good. Don't you be cold. There's a +blanket on the foot." + +But though he hesitated another minute, the voice had nothing more for +him, and he went slowly up to bed. As he undressed, his thoughts down +there with her, he wondered how her voice could have sounded so gay. + +In the middle of the night, Tira woke suddenly, with the sense of +something near. There was the moon flooding the little room, and in the +doorway stood a figure. + +"That you, Isr'el?" she called clearly. + +"Yes," he said, and then hesitated, "you all right?" + +"Yes," she answered, in the same clear voice, with something commanding +in it now. "We're all right. You go back to bed, so's to git your sleep. +I'll call you if I'm up first." + +Tenney turned away, and she heard his hesitating step through the +kitchen and on the stairs. Then, as if this had been as commonplace an +interlude in her night as the baby's waking and drowsing off again, she +felt herself surging happily away to sleep. + + + + +XII + + +Raven, tired to lethargy by the morning's turmoil, stayed in the house +until after dinner. He sat by the library fire, a book on his knee, +chiefly to convince Charlotte, who would inevitably detect his drop in +responsive liveliness, that he was merely absorbed and not moping. Once +or twice she did appear at the door, plainly to look at him, but, +finding he kept his eyes on the page, she did not speak. The life had +gone out of him. He wondered at himself for being so fagged. Yet it had +been a good deal of a strain, that anguish of a creature he was not +allowed to help; it was exacting a heavy penalty. He found his mind +dwelling on it, look by look, word by word, and finding no relief except +in the thought of Tenney in the river pasture, chopping. If that came to +pass, the woman would be safe for hours she could count upon. + +That afternoon, Jerry reported that Tenney had been over and promised to +appear next morning with his axe. Then Raven went off for a walk along +the road skirting the base of the mountain. Possibly he chose it because +it led to the woman's old home, and the thought of her was uppermost in +his mind. The road itself was still and dark, subdued to a moving +silence, it might almost seem, by the evergreens, watchers on the high +cliff at the left, and the quiet of the river, now under ice, on the +other side below. He kept on to the stepping stones, at the verge of the +scattered settlement of Mountain Brook. They were rough granite at +regular distances apart, only the tops of them visible above the ice, +and they made the concluding stage of the walk across lots from Wake +Hill to Mountain Brook. In spring the water swirled about them madly, +and it was one of the adventures of boyhood for a squad to go over to +the stepping stones and leap from one to another without splashing into +the foam below. This was "playing Moosewood," the Indian who had been +found there drowned, whether by his own act because the local palefaces +had got his hill-top, over beyond, or from prolonged fire-water, no one +knew. But always he was a noble red man and one boy acted his despairing +part, and the others hunted him across the stones. In the game, he +always escaped and "shinnied" up the cliff opposite, by fissures the +boys of every generation knew, and struck a pose among the evergreens +above, whooping down defiance. + +Raven stopped there and gave a thought to the boy he had been, and then +to Anne, who had once taken the walk across lots with him, and who, when +he told her how they used to play Moosewood, insisted on crossing, +though he had tried to dissuade her, noting her foolish shoes, and aware +that she had no adroitness of eye and muscle. But she had a will of +steel in these matters, as well as those of the spirit, and would not be +prevailed on. Three of the daring leaps she made from one stone to +another and at the fourth she slipped and he caught and held her, the +delicate slenderness of her, in his arms. He had felt awkward merely and +sorry for her, she so overprized doing things superlatively well, and +when they reached the bank she was flushed and shaken, and again he was +sorry, it seemed so slight a thing to care about. But as he looked down +there now he was thinking really about her he called "the woman" in his +mind. She would not slip. She was as perfectly adapted in every tempered +muscle to the rough conditions of natural life as the pioneer women who +helped their men clear the wilderness and set hearthstones. It darkened +between the firs and they began to stir a little, as if a wind were +coming up, and he turned back home, again growing uneasy about her, shut +up there with her tormentor and walled about by the dark. + +He had his supper early, and he did not again invite Charlotte and Jerry +to eat with him. Now, he felt, he should need all the solitude he could +get to think out this thing he seemed to have taken upon himself, and +keep a grip on his anxiety. After supper he asked Charlotte for blankets +and a pillow. She did not look at him, but he was clearly aware that she +was worried and would not let him read it in her eyes. + +"It's all right, Charlotte," he assured her. "I just want some things up +there at the hut, for the couch, that's all." + +"You ain't goin' to sleep up there, be you?" she asked quietly. +Charlotte, he knew, had felt his mood. She saw he was on edge. + +"No," he said, "I shall be right back. Only I want to get them up there. +To-morrow I shall be carrying books and things." + +She got the blankets without a word, venturing only, as she gave them to +him: + +"Jerry'll be as mad as fire with me for not sendin' him up to lug 'em." + +Raven smiled at her and went off with his load. He carried also his +electric torch, and traversing the dark between the moving trees, +creaking now and complaining, at the door of the hut he flashed on the +light and lifted the stone. The key was there. That gave him a momentary +relief. She had understood and done her part toward his task of +defending her. He went in, tossed the things over a chair, and lighted +one of the candles on the mantel. The hearth was cold and he piled logs +and kindling. Then he put the pillow in its place on the couch and +spread the blankets. That was to show her she was to make herself +comfortable. The match-box he placed on the mantel, where it seemed +likely her hand would touch it, if she thought to feel there, and beside +it his torch. It might be a momentary defence against the impalpable +terrors of the night. But he was not sure she would feel any terrors, +save of the defined and tangible. That he considered absorbedly as he +went down the path after placing the key under the stone. It was not +that she was insensitive. He felt in her the alert readiness of a +perfectly acting nervous system. It showed itself in her self-control, +her readiness of courage, her persistent calm. She would not thrill with +apprehension over the tapping of those boughs against the walls: only at +a voice or a human tread. + +When he went in at his own door Charlotte appeared, with a quick step, +from the kitchen. She was relieved, he saw. Dear Charlotte! she did not +know how his anxieties were mounting, but she did feel the uneasiness he +had brought with him. He tried to throw her off the track of her silent +interrogations. + +"I'm dog tired," he told her. "I believe I'll go to bed." + +"That's right," said she. "Your fire's been blazed up quite a while." + +"Don't you know," he called back to her from the stairs, "how we always +sleep when we first come? I suppose it's the altitude." + +"Yes," said Charlotte. "So 'tis, anyhow accordin' to Jerry." + +Raven carried the look of her anxious, warm-colored face with him. It +was all motherly. Yet she had no children. Jerry lived under the daily +chrism of that soft well-wishing. And there was the woman up the road, +looking like a spiritual mother of men and strangely, mysteriously, also +like the ancient lure that makes men mad, and she had to fight like a +tigress for the mere life of her child. The contrast leaped into the +kaleidoscopic disorder he saw now as life like a brilliant, bizarre +fragment to make the whole scheme (if the scheme could be even estimated +by mortal minds) more disorderly still. But he was tired and he slept. +It would be good, he had thought for many weeks now, when he felt +himself drifting off, to sleep forever. To-night he did not want that +everlasting sleep. He wanted life, life to its full of power and +probity, to stand between the woman and her terror. Suddenly he woke, +and lay, his heart beating hard at the sound of the pines in the grove. +Charlotte had done her best to put the breadth of the house between him +and their lamenting, but their voices crept round the corner and into +his open windows, and invaded his mind. He lay there, the wind on his +face and that sighing melancholy of theirs calling him to an answering +sadness of his own. And now it was not his inexplicable panic of +disaffection toward the earth as God had made it, but a pageant of +darkness where formless terrors moved, all hostile to the woman. At this +moment, she seemed to him the point of blinding pain about which the +general misery of the world revolved. She was beauty in the flesh. She +led the mind to the desire of holy things. At least, that was where she +had led his mind. + +But the cruelty of creation was not content with setting her loose in +the world of created things with the gift of beauty and holiness in her +hand. It had veiled her also with the mysterious magic that was simple +enough and directly compelling enough to rouse the beast of jealousy, +the beast of mastery, in the hearts of men. She did not seem to him an +Aphrodite, bearing in her hand the cup of love. There was something +childlike about her, something as virginal as in Nan. He could believe +she would be endlessly pleased with simple things, that she could be +made to laugh delightedly over the trivialities of daily life. But the +hand of creation having made her, the brain of creation (that inexorable +force bent only on perpetuation) saw she was too good a thing to be +lost, too innocently persuasive to the passion of men. So it had thrown +over her the veil of mystery and pronounced against her the ancient +curse that she should be desired of many and yet too soft of her heart, +too weak in her defenses, even to foresee the pitfalls that awaited her +wandering feet and would sometime break her bones. + +This was the worst of all the sleepless hours he had had, and in the +morning he was up and out before Charlotte was ready for him. Jerry had +breakfasted, when Raven came on him in the barn. He expected Tenney to +go chopping, and he wanted the chores done, to get off early. Raven went +in then and told Charlotte he would not have his own breakfast until +Jerry had gone. He wanted to say a word to him as to the gray birches. +But actually he could not down his impatience to know whether Tenney was +coming at all. So he hung about and hindered Jerry with unnecessary talk +for a half hour or so, and while they were standing in the yard +together, looking down toward the river pasture, and Raven was +specifying, with more emphasis than he felt, that a fringe of trees +should be kept along the mowing, Tenney came. Jerry at once said he'd go +in and get his dinner pail and Raven waited for Tenney. This was not the +man of yesterday. He carried his axe and dinner pail. He walked alertly, +as if his mind were on his day's work, and the pale face had quite lost +its livid excitement. It was grave and even sad. Raven, seeing that, +wondered if the fellow could feel remorse, and was conscious of a lift +in the cloud of his own anxiety. Tenney, not waiting to be addressed, +walked straight up to him. He spoke, as soon as he was within hearing +distance of a tone of ordinary volume, and what he said surprised Raven +even more than the catamount calls of yesterday: + +"Be you saved?" + +Raven knew the salient country phrases, but, so alien was the question +to his conception of the man, that he answered perplexedly: + +"What do you mean by saved?" + +Tenney set down his dinner pail, as if it hampered him, and began +rhythmically, in the voice of the exhorter: + +"Saved by the blood of the Lamb." + +Raven stepped back a pace. + +"No," he said coldly, "not that I'm aware of." + +Tenney came forward a step and Raven again backed. There was something +peculiarly distasteful in being exhorted by a fellow of unbridled temper +and a bestial mind. + +"You are a sinner," said Tenney. "If you reject the great atonement, you +are lost. Don't you know you be?" + +"No," said Raven. He was on the point of turning away, when he +remembered it was an ill-judged impetuosity he could not afford. It was +more important, in this world of persecution and unstable defense, to +keep your antagonist busy, cutting gray birches. + +"Do you reject Him?" Tenney, too, had his day's work on his mind and he +spoke rapidly, with a patent show of getting his exhortation done in +time to fall into step with Jerry, appearing, at the moment, axe in +hand. He picked up his dinner pail. "Do you reject Him?" he repeated, in +his former singsong. "Do you reject Christ crucified?" + +And in spite of the prudence his inner self had counseled, Raven found +he was, perhaps only from force of habit augmented by his distaste for +the man, answering truthfully: + +"Yes," he said, "as you mean it, I do." + +Jerry, in the road, had halted and was looking back inquiringly. Tenney +started after him. Instead of being rebuffed by Raven's attitude, he +seemed to be exhilarated. Raven concluded, as he saw the light of a +perhaps fanatical zeal playing over his face, that the fellow took it +for a challenge, an incentive to bring one more into the fold. It was +something in the nature of a dare. + +When he went in, Charlotte was about her tasks at the kitchen stove. + +"You're not going to fodder the cattle, you know," he said to her, +passing through. "I'll see to that. Jerry showed me the mow he is using +from." + +"I always do," said Charlotte, "when he's away all day. I admire to git +out there an' smell the creatur's and hear 'em rattlin' round the +stanchils till they see the hay afore 'em." + +"Never mind," said Raven. "I'll do it to-day." Then a thought struck +him. "I wonder," he said, "who Tenney leaves to do his chores." + +"Why," said Charlotte, "I s'pose she does 'em, same's I do when I'm +alone. 'Tain't no great of a job, 'specially if the hay's pitched round +beforehand." + +Raven, sitting down to his breakfast, thought it a good deal of a task +for a woman made for soft, kind ways with children and the small +domestic animals by the hearth. And then he did have the humor to laugh +at himself a little. It showed how she had unconsciously beguiled him, +how she had impressed him with her curious implication of belonging to +things afar from this world of homespun usages. She was strong and +undeniably homespun herself, in every word and look. Let her fodder the +cattle. Perhaps they would add to the lonesome tranquillity of her day, +with their needs and their sweet-breathed satisfactions. + + + + +XIII + + +For a week it was hard, clear weather, with a crystal sky and no wind. +Tenney appeared in the early mornings and he and Jerry went off to their +chopping. Raven's relief grew. By the last of the week he found his +apprehension really lessening. Every hour of her safety gave him new +reassurance, and he could even face the nights, the long hours when +Tenney was at home. Tenney he took pains not to meet. He distinctly +objected to being pressed into a corner by the revivalist cant of a man +he could not wisely offend. Nor did he see her whom he called "the +woman." Sometimes in the early dusk after Tenney had got home, he was +strongly moved to walk past the house and see if their light looked +cheerful, or if he could hear the sound of voices within. Smile at +himself as he might, at the childishness of the fancy, he alternately +thought of her as being pursued out of the house by a madman with an axe +and exhorted to save herself by the blood of the Lamb. And, Tenney being +what he was, the last was almost as disquieting as the actual torment. +Every morning he went up to the hut to find no slightest sign of her +having been there. If he stayed long enough to build a fire, he went +back, after it had time to die, and laid another, so that she might +light it without delay. + +On the Saturday night of that week the wind veered into the east and the +clouds banked up. The air had a grayness that meant snow. He had been up +at the hut all the afternoon. He had pulled out an old chest, the +sea-chest of a long dead Raven who had been marked with sea longing, as +it sometimes happens to those bred in the hills, and had run away and +become mate and captain. Raven had always been vaguely proud of him, and +so, perhaps, had other Ravens, for Old Crow, when he moved up here, had +brought the sea-chest with him, and his own books also were stowed away +in it. Old Captain Raven's were entirely consistent with his +profession--charts, a wonderful flat volume full of the starry heavens +and more enchanting to Raven than any modern astronomy; but Old Crow's, +in their diverse character, seemed to have been gathered together as it +happened, possibly as he came on them, in no sense an index of +individual taste. There were poets (strange company they made for one +another!) Milton, Ossian, Byron, Thompson, Herrick, and the Essays of +Montaigne, the Confessions of Rousseau. Also, the Age of Reason, which, +on the testimony of uncut leaves, had not been read. And there was a +worn, dog-eared Bible. Raven had never wanted to appropriate the books +so far as to set them with his own on the shelves. They seemed to him, +through their isolation, to keep something of the identity of Old Crow. +He believed Old Crow would like this. It was precious little earthly +immortality the old chap had ever got beyond the local derision, and if +Raven could please him by so small a thing, he would. He had them all +out on chairs and sat on the floor beside the chest, looking them over +idly until it began to grow dark and, realizing how early it was, he +glanced up at the windows and saw the veil of a fine falling snow. He +got up, left his books in disorder, and lighted the lamp. The fire had +been dying down and he kicked the sticks apart. It must die wholly so +that a fresh one would run no chance of catching the coals. Yet it was +unlikely she would come to-night. Tenney would be tired with his week's +work. + +And just as he was making himself reasons, in a mechanical way, while he +put the room in order, there was a knock, quick, imperative, the door +was thrown open and there she was. She was about to shut the door, but +he ran before her. He did it and turned the key. Then he passed her and +hurried to the fire and with both hands heaped on cones and kindling +until it flared. While he did this she stood as still as a stone and +when, having his fire, he turned to her, he saw she had nothing on her +head and that the fine snow had drifted into the folds of her clothing +and was melting on her hair. She looked more wildly disordered than when +he had seen her before, for she had wrapped a blanket about her, and the +child was under it, covered so closely that Raven wondered how he could +breathe. He tried to take the blanket from her, but she held it +desperately. It seemed as if, in unreasoning apprehension, she dared not +let the child be seen. But he laid his hand on hers, saying, "Please!" +authoritatively, and she let him unclasp the tense fingers, remove the +blanket, and then take the child. Raven had had no experience with +babies, but this one he took, in the heat of his compassion, with no +doubt that he should know what to do with him. He felt the little feet +and hands and, finding them warm, drew forward an arm-chair for her, +and, when she sank into it, set the child in her lap. + +"Put your feet to the fire," he said. "Your shoes are all snow. Better +take them off." + +She shook her head. She stretched her feet almost into the blaze and the +steam rose from them. Raven went to the cupboard at the side of the +fireplace and took down a bottle of chartreuse. But she shook her head. + +"I dassent," she said. "He'll smell it." + +Raven came near breaking into an oath. Did the beast own her, that he +should be able, after this new outrage, to get her sweet breath? + +"I ain't cold," she assured him, "not now. No, I won't drink any"--for +he was about to pour it for her--"I never took much stock in them +things. I've seen too much of 'em." + +Then Raven remembered that Charlotte had told him all the boys +drank--her brothers--and he seemed to have turned another page in her +piteous life. He set back the bottle and, to give her time to recover +herself, resumed his task of straightening the room. At her voice, he +was at once beside her. + +"Should you just as soon," she asked quietly, as if the question were of +no moment, "I'd stay up here all night?" + +"Of course you're to stay all night." It seemed to him too beautiful a +thing to have happened, to know she was here in safety with the trees +and the snow. "I'll go down and get some milk and things for him"--he +was indicating the baby who, under the ecstasy of warmth, was beginning +to talk strange matters, standing on his mother's knee--"I'll tell +Charlotte I'm staying up here all night." + +But now he saw, in surprise (for he had failed to guess how his words +would strike her) that she was terrified, perhaps more by him than she +had been by Tenney. + +"No," she cried violently. "You can't do that. You mustn't. If you stay, +I've got to go." + +"I can't have you up here in the woods alone," he reasoned. + +She gave a little laugh. The quality of it was ironic. It made him +wonder what her laughter would be if she were allowed to savor the +quaintness of sheer fun. She spoke obliquely, yet accounting for the +laugh. + +"What do you s'pose'd happen to me?" + +"Nothing," he owned, comparing, as she meant him to, the safety of her +state up here, surrounded by the trees and the wind, and her prison with +the madman down below. "But I can't have it. Do you suppose I can go +down there and sleep in my bed?" He paused and began to coax. Charlotte +could have told her how beguiling he was when he coaxed. "I'll stay in +the other room and keep an eye out. I sha'n't sleep. I won't even +disturb you by tending the fire. You can do that. Come, is it a bargain. +It's the only safe thing to do, you know. Suppose he should come up here +in the night?" + +"That's it," she said quietly. "S'pose he should? Do you want I should +be found up here with a man, any man, even you?" + +He was silent, struck by her bitter logic. His heart, in the actual +physical state of it, ached for her. She would not let him save her, he +thought despairingly; indeed, perhaps she could not. For she alone knew +the noisome perils of her way. He relinquished his proposition, without +comment, and he could see at once what relief that gave her. + +"Very well," he said, "I'll go down. But I shall certainly come back and +bring you some milk. Something to heat it in, too. Old Crow used to have +dishes, but they're gone. Lock the door after me. I'll call when I +come." + +But she rose from her seat, put the baby on the couch and took the +blanket from the chair where he had spread it. There were still drops on +it, and she went to the other side of the room, at a safe distance from +the baby, and shook it. She had settled into a composure as determined +as his own. + +"It's no use talkin'," she said. "I've got to go back." + +"Go back?" He stared at her. + +"Yes. What we've just said shows me. Nothin's more likely than his +comin' up here. He might reason it out. He knows I wouldn't go to any o' +the neighbors, an' he'd know I wouldn't let baby ketch his death, a +night like this, the storm an' all. An' if he found me here locked in, +even if there wa'n't nobody here with me, I dunno what he'd do. Burn the +house down, I guess, over my head." + +The last she said absently. She was arranging the blanket about her with +an anxious care, evidently making it so secure that she need not use her +hands in holding. They would be given to the baby. + +"Burn my house down, will he? Let him try it," said Raven, under his +breath. + +She looked at him in a calm-eyed reproach that was all motherly. + +"We mustn't have no trouble," said she. "I dunno what I should do if I +brought that on you." + +"What does the man mean," Raven broke out, chiefly to attract her +attention and keep her there under shelter, "by going dotty half the +time and the other half butting in and asking people if they're saved?" + +"Did he ask you?" she inquired. She nodded, as if it were precisely what +might have been expected. "I s'pose he thinks he has to. He's a very +religious man." + +"Religious!" Raven muttered. "Does he have to do the other thing, too: +go off his nut?" + +She was looking at him gravely. Suddenly it came to him he must be more +sympathetic in his attitude. He must not let her feel rebuffed, thinking +he did not understand. + +"I dunno's I blame him," she said slowly, as if she found it a wearingly +difficult matter and meant to be entirely just. "You see he had +provocation." The red came flooding into her cheeks. "He come home from +work an' what should he see but the man, the one I told you----" + +She stopped, and Raven supplied, in what he hoped was an unmoved manner: + +"The one that looks up kinder droll?" + +For his life he could not have helped repeating the words as she had +given them to him. He had found them too poignant in their picturesque +drama to be paraphrased or forgotten. + +"Yes," she said eagerly. She was relieved to be helped. "He drove up in +his sleigh, about fifteen minutes 'fore Isr'el come home. He come up to +the house. I went to the door. 'What do you want?' I says. Then he begun +to say things, foolish things same's he always did----" + +She stumbled there, as if in shame, and Raven knew what kind of things +they were: things about her eyes, her lips, insulting things to an +honest wife, taunting things, perhaps, touching the past. More and more +she seemed to him like a mother of sorrows, a child unjustly scourged +into the dark mysteries of passion and pain. + +"Never mind," he said reassuringly. "Don't try to tell me. Don't think +of them." + +But she would tell him. It seemed as if she had to justify herself. + +"He told me he wanted to come in. 'You can't,' says I, 'not whilst I +live.' An' he laughed an' stood there an' dug his heel into the snow an' +waited, kinder watchin' the road till Isr'el hove in sight with his +dinner pail. An' then I see it all. He'd drove along that way an' see +Isr'el an' Jerry comin' acrost from their work an' he meant to stan' +there drivin' me out o' my senses till Isr'el see him. An' soon as he +was sure Isr'el did see him, he turned an' run for the sleigh an' got in +an' give the hoss a cut, an' he was off same's he meant to be." + +"And you were left alone with Tenney," said Raven quietly. "There! don't +tell me any more." + +She smiled upon him, giving him an ineffable sense that she had, in +telling him, somehow dropped her burden. Now she said, with as calm a +resolution as that of the martyr marching to the fire he is sure his +Lord has called him to: + +"I'll go down along." + +She went over to the couch, took up the child, and began to tuck about +him the folds of her enveloping blanket. Raven moved to her side. He had +an overwhelming sense of their being at one in the power of their +resolution. If she would yield to his deliberate judgment! if only their +resolutions could coincide! + +"No," he said, "you're not going down there. I won't have it." + +She looked at him and faintly smiled. + +"I've got to," she said. "If I stay away all night an' he don't know +where, there wouldn't be any way o' piecin' on." + +And suddenly he knew, if she was to persist in "piecing on," she was +right. + +"Wait," he said. "Let me think." + +There must be some way, he reflected, some means, by violence or +diplomacy, to help her fulfill the outer rites of her bargain until he +could persuade her to be taken beyond the reach of persecution. He +wanted to fight for her; but if that was not the way, if his fists would +only bruise her as well as Tenney, he was ready to lie. He had his idea. +It might be good, it might not, but it was an emergency idea. + +"I'll go down," he said. "I'll go over to your house and offer to pay +him for his week's work. You follow. Give me time enough to go into my +house on the way and get some money. Then you come while I'm talking to +him and I'll stay a bit, as long as I can. When you come, we can see how +he is. If he's violent to you--if he looks it, even--you've got to come +away." + +"Oh, no," she cried sharply, "I can't do that. You must see I can't." + +"I'll take you to my house," he said. "You know Charlotte. She'll be +nice to you. Why, if Charlotte found out a thing like this was going on +in the neighborhood, she'd go for him tooth and nail." + +"No," said she, in a dull decision. "I can't. It would all come on you." + +He understood. The madman would drag him into that range of jealous fury +and because he was a man. + +"I can look out for myself," he said roughly, "and you, too." + +Again she shook her head. + +"No," she said, "he might kill you. Anyways, he'd burn your barn." + +"He won't kill me," said Raven, "and I don't care a hang about my barn. +Let him burn. Good thing. I'll clap him into jail and you'll know where +he is. Now!" He looked at the clock on the mantel. "I'm going. In just +twenty minutes you start and come along as fast as you want to. I'll be +at your house." + +She had begun to speak, but he paid no attention. He turned up his +collar and stepped out into the storm. + +"Lock the door," he called back to her. "Keep it locked till you go." + +The road down the slope was scarcely clogged at all. The firs, waving +now and interlocking their branches in that vague joy or trouble of the +winter wind, were keeping off the powdery drift. When he got to his +house he saw Jerry on the way to the barn, but he did not hail him. +Possibly Jerry had paid Tenney for his week, and although Raven's own +diplomacy would stick at nothing, he preferred to act in good faith, +possibly so that he might act the better. He smiled a little at that and +wondered, in passing, if he were never to be allowed any arrogance of +perfect behavior, if he had always got to be so sorry for the floating +wisps of humanity that seemed to blow his way as to go darting about, +out of his own straight course, to pluck them back to safety. There were +serious disadvantages, he concluded, as he often had before, in owning a +feminine vein of temperament. He went in at the front door and up the +stairs, took a roll of money from his desk and ran down again. Charlotte +had not seen him. She was singing in the kitchen in a fragmentary way +she had when life went well with her, and the sound filled Raven with an +unreasoning anger. Why should any woman, even so dear and all deserving +as Charlotte, live and thrive in the warmth and light while that other +creature, of as simply human cravings, battled her way along from cliff +to cliff, with the sea of doom below, beating against the land that was +so arid to her and waiting only to engulf her? That, he thought, was +another count in his indictment against the way things were made. + +The Tenney house, when he approached it, was cold in the darkness of the +storm. The windows were inhospitably blank, and his heart fell with +disappointment. He went up to the side door looking out on the pile of +wood that was the monument to Tenney's rages, and knocked sharply. No +one came. He knocked again, and suddenly there was a clatter within, as +if some one had overturned a chair, and steps came stumbling to the +door. A voice came with them, Tenney's voice. + +"That you?" he called. + +He called it three times. Then he flung open the door and leaned out +and, from his backward recoil, Raven knew he had hoped unreasonably to +find his wife, knocking at her own door. Raven kicked his feet against +the step, with an implication of being snow-clogged and cold. + +"How are you?" he said. "Let me come in, won't you? It's going to be an +awful night." + +Tenney stepped back, let him enter, and closed the door behind him. They +stood together in the darkness of the entry. Raven concluded he was not +to be told which way to go. + +"Smells warm in here," he said, taking a step to the doorway at the +left. "This the kitchen?" + +Tenney recovered herself. + +"Walk in," he said. "I'll light up." + +Raven, standing in the spacious kitchen, all a uniform darkness, it was +so black outside, could hear the man breathe in great rasping gulps, as +if he were recovering from past emotion or were still in its grasp. He +had taken a lamp down from the high mantel and set it on the table. Now +he was lighting it, and his hand shook. The lamp burning and bringing +not only light but a multitude of shadows into the kitchen, he turned +upon Raven. + +"Well," he said, harshly. "Say it. Git it over." + +Raven heard in his voice new signs of a tremendous, almost an hysterical +excitement. It had got, he knew, to be quieted before she came. + +"If you'll allow me," he said, "I'll sit down. I'm devilish cold." + +"Don't swear," said Tenney, still in that sharp, exasperated voice, and +Raven guessed he was nervously afraid, at such a crisis, of antagonizing +the Most High. + +The vision of his own grandmother came up before him, she who would not +let him read a child's book in a thunder shower lest God should consider +the act too trivial in the face of elemental threatening and strike him +dead. He took one of the straight-backed chairs by the stove and leaned +forward with an absorbed pretense of warming his chilled hands. But he +was not reassuring Tenney. He was still more exasperating him. + +"Say it, can't you?" the man cried to him piercingly. "Tell it an' git +it over." Then, as Raven merely looked at him in a civil inquiry, +"You've got suthin' to break, ain't ye? Break it an' leave me be." + +Raven understood. The man's mind was on his wife, fled out into the +storm. His inflamed imagination was picturing disaster for her. He was +wild with apprehension. And it was well he should be wild. It was a pity +she was likely to come so soon. Raven would have been glad to see his +emotions run the whole scale from terror to remorse before she came, if +come she would, to allay them. + +"No," he said quietly, "I haven't anything to break. But it's going to +be an awful night. I guess there will be things to break about the folks +that are out in it." + +Tenney came up to him and peered down at him in blank terror. + +"Who's out in it?" he asked. "Who've you seen?" + +Raven laughed jarringly. It did seem to him grimly amusing to be +dallying thus with a man's fears. He was not used to playing games with +the human creature's destiny. He had always looked too seriously on all +such drama, perhaps because he had been so perplexed by drama of his +own. If his life was too puzzling a thing to be endured, was not all +life, perhaps, equally puzzling and therefore too delicate a matter to +be meddled with? But now the game was on, the game of sheer diplomacy. +The straight and obvious path wouldn't do if he was to save a woman who +handicapped him in advance by refusing to let herself be saved. + +"The night?" he repeated. "Who's out in it? Why, I'm out in it myself; +at least, I have been. But now I'm here by this stove, I don't know when +you'll get rid of me. Put in a stick, won't you, Tenney? These big rooms +have a way of cooling off before you know it." + +Tenney did put in a stick and more. He crammed the stove with light +stuff and opened draughts. Raven noted, in the keen way his mind had +taken up, of snatching at each least bit of safety for the woman, that +the tea kettle was boiling. She would be chilled. She would need hot +water. And suddenly he felt the blood in his face. There was a hand at +the latch of the side door. Tenney, too, heard it. He threw back into +the box the stick of wood he had selected and made three strides to the +entry. Again he called, in that voice of sharp anxiety: + +"That you?" + +She opened the door just before he could put out his hand to it, passed +him without a look, and came in. He shut the door and followed her. +Raven got up from his chair and stood, glancing at her with what he +hoped was a casual attention. Tenney came back and, when she had thrown +off the blanket, took it from her hand and dropped it on a chair. He was +all trembling eagerness. That act, the relieving her of the blanket, was +incredible to Raven. The man had wanted to kill her (or, at the least, +to kill his child), and he was humbly inducting her into the comforts of +her home. She had not looked toward Raven. With a decorum finer, he +thought, than his own, she would not play the game of diplomacy. She +knew him and she could not deny him, even to save her life. Suddenly +Tenney, brushing past to draw up a chair for her at the stove, became +aware of him. Raven believed that, up to the moment, he had, to the +man's absorbed gaze, been invisible. Now Tenney seemed to recognize the +decencies toward even an unbidden guest. + +"She's all beat out," he said, in uncouth apology. "It's my woman." + +Raven turned to her, waiting for her cue. Would she take a hand at the +game, as it imposed itself on him? Her silence and aloofness were his +answer. She was sitting forward in her chair, to get the baby's feet +nearer the warmth. But since she would not speak, Raven did. + +"I should think any one would be beat out, a night like this," he said, +as casually as he could manage, "carrying a baby, too, in such a storm. +You'd better be careful of the child, at least," he added curtly, +turning to Tenney, "if you want to keep him. Out in this cold and sleet! +You don't want their deaths on your hands, do you?" + +Tenney stared back at him in a wildness of apprehension. + +"Be you a doctor?" he managed to ask. + +Raven remembered the words: "Their tongue cleaved to the roof of their +mouth." That seemed to be what Tenney's tongue was doing now. + +"No," said he, "I'm not a doctor, but I've seen a good deal of sickness +in the War. Get them warm," he added authoritatively, "both of them. Put +the child into warm water." + +"Yes," said Tenney, in an anguished sort of haste. Then to his wife he +continued, in a humility Raven noted as her best guaranty of at least +temporary safety, "I'll bring you the foot tub, an' whilst you're doin' +it, I'll warm the bed." + +"Yes," she said quietly, but with a composure of mastery in her voice. +"So do." + +Raven got up and made his way to the door. Then he bethought himself +that he had not given any reason for coming and that Tenney might +remember it afterward and wonder. + +"I thought I'd run up," he said, "and pay you for your week's work." + +Tenney was darting about with a small tin tub, filling it from the +kettle and trying the temperature with his hand. + +"No," he answered absorbedly, "I can't bother with that to-night. Let it +be till another time." + +He had drawn a chair to his wife's side and set the tub on it, and now +she also tried the temperature while he watched her anxiously. And at +once the baby who, in his solemnity of silence, had seemed to Raven +hitherto little more than a stage property, broke into a lusty yelling, +and Tenney put out his hands to him, took him to his shoulder and began +to walk the floor, while the woman poured more water into the tub. +Neither of them had a look for Raven, and he went out into the +blustering night with a picture etched so deeply on his brain that he +knew it would always be there while he, in his flesh, survived: the old +picture of the sacred three, behind the defenses of their common +interests, the father, mother and the child. + + + + +XIV + + +All that night Raven, through his light sleep, had a consciousness of +holding on to himself, refusing to think, refusing angrily to fear. The +sleep seemed to him like a thin, slippery coating over gulfs unplumbed; +it was insecure, yet it failed to let him down into blessed depths of +oblivion below. But he would not think to no purpose (he had a dread of +the wild, disordered clacking of the wheels in unproductive thought), +and he would not invite again the strange humiliation, the relief tinged +by aversion, that came over him when he felt, on leaving them, the +inviolability of the three in their legal bond. She had looked to him so +like heaven's own, he had upborne her in his thought almost to the gate +of heaven itself; and yet she was walled in by a bond she would not +repudiate with the brute who persecuted her. In spite of her uncouth +speech, in spite of her ignorance of delicate usage, she seemed to him a +creature infinitely removed from the rougher aspects of this New England +life; yet there she was in one of the most sordid scenes of it, and she +was absorbed by it, she fitted it as a Madonna fits a cave. And what +business had he, he asked angrily, to weave about her the web of a +glorifying sympathy, exalting her only from that pernicious habit of his +of being sorry? Yet, as he thought it, he knew she was different from +the ordinary country woman afraid of her man, and that any fine mantle +he wove for her could not equal the radiance of her pure courage and +undaunted truth. + +Once he rose from his bed and began to dress hastily, with what he +recognized at the same moment as the wild purpose of slipping out of the +house and going up to Tenney's, to see if there was a light or to listen +for the catamount voice. But that, he realized immediately, was folly. +Suppose Tenney saw him. What reason could he plant in the man's inflamed +mind, except one more hostile to her peace? So he went back to bed, +chilled, and was savagely glad of his discomfort. It gave him something, +however trivial, to think about besides the peril of a woman who looked +like motherhood incarnate, and so should have been heir to all the +worship and chivalry of men. With the first light he was up and had +built his fire, and Charlotte, hearing him, got, sooner than was her +wont, out of her warm bed. Charlotte owned to liking to "lay a spell" in +winter, to make up for the early activities of summer mornings when you +must be "up 'fore light" to keep pace with the day. For after nine +o'clock "the day's 'most gone." She looked up at him as he came into the +kitchen where she was brashing her fire for a quick oven, and he found +her eyes clearly worried in their questioning. + +"No toast, Charlotte," he said. He wondered if even his voice was +trembling in his haste. "No biscuits. I'm going up to the hut." + +Charlotte nodded and seemed to settle into understanding. She had a +sympathetic, almost a reverent tolerance for the activities of pen and +ink. To her, Raven was a well-beloved and in no wise a remarkable being +until he stepped into the clouded room of literary activity. There she +would have indulged him in any whim or unaccountable tyranny. Charlotte +had never heard of temperament, but she believed in it. Once only did +she speak to him while he was drinking his coffee: + +"You got any ink up there?" + +He started and looked at her a moment, dazed. Nothing was further from +his mind than ink. Other liquids, tears, waters of lethe, lakes of fire +and brimstone would not have sounded foreign to his thought. But ink! +how incalculably far was the life of the written word from this raw +anguish of reality he was caught in to-day! He recovered himself +instantly. + +"I've got my pen," he told her, "my stylograph." + +And presently he had put on his coat, bidden her a hasty good-by and was +plunging up the slope. Somehow, though the crest of the wave had been +reached the night before and that usually, Tira had assured him, meant a +following calm, he was certain of seeing her to-day. It was not that he +wanted to see her, but an inner conviction, implacably fixed as the laws +of nature that are at no point subject to the desires of man, told him +she would come. The hut must be warm for her. The fire must be relaid. +And, he told himself grimly, the apex had been reached. The end of the +thing was before them. He must not yield to her again. He must command +her, persuade and conquer her. She must let him send her away. + +At the hut he almost expected to see her footprints in the light snow by +the door. But the exquisite softness lay untouched. The day was a heaven +of clearness, the shadows were deep blue and the trees beginning the +slow waving motion of their majestic secrecies. He took out the key from +under the stone, went in and made his fire with a hand too practiced to +lose in efficacy from its haste. Presently it was roaring upward and, +after a glance about to see that the room was not in any disorder too +great for him to remedy quickly, he walked back and forth, and whenever +it died down enough to let him, fed the fire. It began to seem to him as +if he were going to be there days feeding the fire to keep her warm, but +it was only a little before ten when he heard a step and his heart +choked him with its swelling of relief. At once he was also calmer. A +moment ago even, he would have wondered how he could meet her, how keep +the storm of entreaty out of his voice if he was to beg her to let him +save her. But now he knew he should be himself as she had briefly known +him and though he must command, he should in no sense offend. He stood +still by the fire, half turning toward the door, to wait. It was an +unformulated delicacy of his attitude toward her that she should not +find him going forward to meet her as if she were a guest. She should +enter as if the house were her own. But she did not enter. There was a +hand at the door. It knocked. Then he called: + +"Come in." + +The door opened, under what seemed to him, in his first surprise, a +halting hand and a woman stepped in. It was Nan. She came a hesitating +pace into the room and stood looking at him, after the one interested +glance about her, smiling a little, half quizzically, as if aware she +had brought a surprise and yet not in doubt of its being welcome. Raven +stared back at her for one bewildered minute and then, so instant and +great was the revulsion, burst into a shout of laughter. Nan stood there +and laughed with him. + +"What is it, Rookie?" she asked, coming forward to him. "I'm funny, I +suppose, but not so funny as all that. What's the joke?" + +She was a finished sort of creature to come into his wood solitude, and +yet an outdoor creature, too, with her gray fur cap and coat. She looked +younger, less worn than when he saw her last, perhaps because her cheeks +were red from the frosty air and her eyes bright at finding him. + +"Let me have your coat," he said. "Come to the fire." + +She took off her coat and he dropped it on the couch. He pulled a chair +nearer the hearth (it was his own chair, not Tira's), and motioned her +to it. She did not sit. She put out her thickly shod foot to the blaze +and then withdrew it, for she was all aglow from her plunge up the hill, +and turned to him, her brows knitted, her eyes considering. + +"What is it, Rookie?" she asked. "Something's up and you wish I hadn't +come. That it?" + +"I haven't had time to wish you hadn't come," he said. He had to be +straight with her. "I never was more surprised in my life. You were the +last person I expected to see." + +"But why d'you laugh, Rookie?" she persisted, and then, as he hesitated, +evidently considering exactly why he did and what form he could put it +in, she concluded: "I know. You were taken aback. I've done the same +thing myself, often. Well!" She seemed to dismiss it as unimportant and +began where she had evidently meant to begin. "Now I'll tell you what +I'm here for." + +"Sit down, Nan," he bade her. + +Now that his first derangement was over, he was glad to see her. Tira +might not come. If she did, he could do something. He could even, at a +pinch and with Tira's consent, put the knowledge of the tawdry business +into Nan's hands. But she would not sit down. Plainly she had received a +setback. She was refusing to accept his hospitality to any informal +extent. And he saw he had hurt her. He was always reading the inner +minds of people, and that was where his disastrous sympathy was forever +leading him: to that pernicious yielding, that living of other people's +lives and not his own. + +"It was only," he said, trying to pick up the lost thread of her +confidence, "that I didn't expect you. I couldn't have dreamed of your +coming. How did you come so early?" + +"Took the early train," said Nan curtly. + +"Not the beastly old thing that starts before light?" + +She nodded. + +"What for?" + +"To get ahead of them," she answered, still curtly. + +"Them? Who?" + +"Dick and his mother and Doctor Brooke." + +"Dick and Amelia? What's Amelia on here for?" + +He had half expected her and yet, in the new turmoil about him, he had +actually forgotten she might come. + +"Because Dick sent her your letter. They both assume you've broken down, +and she's called in an alienist to come up here and eye you over, and +Dick's pretty sick over the whole business; so he's coming along, too. +He was prepared for mother, I fancy, but not the alienist." + +"But what's it all for?" + +"Why, you know, Rookie. You've broken down." + +Raven stared at her. Then he laughed. + +"Well," he said, "let 'em come. Charlotte'll give 'em some dinner and +they can look at the mountain and go back on the six to-night." + +"That's precisely what they won't do," said Nan, her lips tightening. +"At least your sister. She's going to stay." + +"The deuce she is," said Raven. "What for?" + +Then Nan did break out of the stiffness that seemed to have held her +like an armor since the momentary setback of her coming. Her own laugh +ran over her face and creased it into delighted merriment. + +"Why, don't you see?" she asked him. "To brighten your life." + +Raven's eyes met hers with a rueful terror. He reached, at a leap, the +motive for her coming. + +"And you rushed off up here to tell me," he said. "Dear Nan! Good child! +But you don't mean they're actually coming to-day?" + +"Of course I do," she said impatiently. "Didn't I tell you so? They were +going to take the nine. They're well on the way. They'll get a pung or +something at the station and be driving up to the house presently, and +your sister'll give Charlotte the hamper of provisions she brought and +tell her there'll be four to dinner. There'll be five, though. She +didn't know that. She didn't hear about me. I s'pose you'll ask me to +stay." + +Raven put out his hand and stroked her sleeve. This was the first time +she had seemed to him a woman grown. When she came back from school, +those years ago, she had changed to girlhood. It was the girl always +even when she came home from France with a world of hideous memories +sealed away in her heart and brain. They had not, these memories, seemed +so much as to scar her, she had obliterated them so carefully by the +decorum of her desire to make the world no sadder by her knowledge. But +now, at some call, the call of his personal extremity perhaps, she +looked suddenly forceful and mature, as if her knowledge of life had +escaped her restraining hand and burst out to the aid of a knowledge of +him. + +"I don't exactly know," he said, "what to do with them. I don't mind the +alienist of course; but what do you suppose put it into her +head--Amelia's--to bring him along?" + +"Why," said Nan, "it's precisely the thing she would do. Don't you see? +She does everything by rule, by theory, the most modern, most advanced. +When Dick wrote her, she made up her mind like a shot. She had to put +you in a pigeon hole. Shell shock, _cafard_! So the next thing was to +set a specialist on the job. And there you are." + +Raven grinned. The whole thing was more and more fantastic to him. + +"I wonder how Dick likes the hornet's nest," he reflected, "now he's +stirred it up." + +"I can tell you," said Nan, a little white coming round her lips, as it +did when she was excited, "how he liked me. He told me the whole +business last night and I went for him. I told him he was a fool, a +plain downright fool, and he'd seen his last of me till he got us out of +the mess he'd got us into: you, me, and incidentally himself." + +"It is mighty nice of you to come into it," said Raven. + +"Well, how could I help it?" she asked impetuously, "when you're in? +Why, Rookie, wouldn't you----" + +There she stopped, and Raven answered the implication. + +"You bet I would. What concerns you concerns me. But I'd no business to +assume it's the other way about. That is, when it's Dick. You're bound, +you know," he said, in a tentative way he thought he ought to venture +and yet not quite sure of it, "to stand by Dick." + +Nan turned a little, to look at him fully. She seemed to be angry now, +and well it became her. + +"Why am I?" she demanded. "Why am I bound to stand by Dick? I'm bound to +nothing, with any man, Dick least of all, if he won't devote some of his +surplus energy to growing up. So I've told him. He's got to grow up." +But suddenly she seemed to recall herself to another question, put her +personal anger aside and veered to that. "Rookie," she said, "what about +Aunt Anne's will?" + +"Anne's will?" he repeated, staring at her. "Well, what about it?" + +"You've had notice of it, haven't you?" she asked. "Official notice, +that is?" + +"Oh, yes," he said, "before I left town. Whitney went over the whole +ground." But he said it as if it did not interest him to any degree. And +yet, as she amazedly thought, it had, the last time she saw him, +interested him to the exclusion of everything else. + +"I thought I'd remind you," she said, "that it's been in the papers. You +are Miss Anne Hamilton's residuary legatee. Dick knows it. So does your +sister. She'll ask you things. I thought if you'd made up your mind to +refuse it or, in short, anything about it, you'd want to be prepared for +her. Those questions of hers--you can't evade them. They go to the +bottom of your soul--and then some." + +"Oh," said Raven dazedly, recalling himself to a complexity he had all +but forgotten. "So they do. I dare say she will ask me. But I +don't--Nan, to tell the truth, I haven't thought of it at all." + +The inevitable comment sprung up in Nan's mind, as if his words had +touched a spring, releasing it: + +"What have you been thinking then?" + +And as if in exact comment upon that, came a sound at the door, a knock, +a hand on the latch and Tira stepped in. Nan turned sharply, and Raven +had only to lift his eyes to see the picture his mind had painted for +him. There she was, a little color in her cheeks from the air, her eyes +heavy, as if she had not slept. She carried the child in his little +white coat and cap, showing, Raven concluded, that she had not been +forced to leave the house in desperate haste. For an instant she +confronted Nan; the life in her face seemed to go out and leave her +haggard. Then, before Raven could take more than the one step forward to +meet her, she had turned and shut the door behind her. + +"Wait for me," he threw back over his shoulder at Nan and ran out. + + + + +XV + + +Tira was hurrying through the snowy track, ankle deep at every step. +Raven, bareheaded, ran after. In a minute he had overtaken her. + +"Stop!" he called, breathless, more from his emotion than from haste. +"Stop! I tell you." + +She did stop, and he came up with her. Now, at last, there were tears in +her eyes, and he thought angrily that he had been the one to overthrow +her control more absolutely than the danger she apprehended. He had, he +thought, in this unreasoning anger, promised her asylum in the hut and +she found it invaded. But curiously he did not think of Nan, who had +come uninvited and scared the poor fugitive away. Nan, child and woman, +was always negligible, too near him to be dealt with. But he had offered +this woman the safety of a roof and walls, and she had fled out of it. +At sight of his face, its contrite kindliness, her own set again into +its determined composure. She seemed to see that she could not count on +aid outside herself and returned again uncomplainingly to her old +equilibrium of endurance. + +"Come back," he said. "She's going down to the house with me. Besides, +if she did stay, you'd like her. You'd love her. That's only Nan." + +He said "Nan" of set purpose. It was the custom of this country folk, +when they talked among themselves, to call all alike by their Christian +names, even when they scrupulously used the surname in direct address. +He meant to reassure her. It was a way of bringing Nan into a friendly +nearness. + +"You've heard of her," he said, "Miss Hamilton's niece. She owns the +next house to mine, the Hamilton house. She'll be here this summer. +You'll be neighbors. Come back and speak to her." + +"No," said Tira, in a gentle obstinacy. "I guess I'll be gittin' along +toward----" + +Here she stopped. She did not know what the direction or the end of her +journey was to be. + +"You're not going off the place," said Raven bluffly. "That's flat. The +place is mine and you're safe on it. Do you want to go traipsing round +the woods in this snow"--he fell purposely into the country habit of +speech--"and get wet to your knees and have a cold?" + +"I sha'n't have a cold," she said, smiling dimly at him and looking, as +he realized, like a mother who was sorry her son could not have all he +grasped at, but still remained immovable. "I don't hardly remember +havin' one since I was little." + +The child had resumed the role of Buddhistic calm temporarily abandoned +last night when he screamed out his distaste for earthly complications, +and Raven, glancing at the solemn blue eyes, saw that the only hope of +moving her lay in him. + +"Do you want," he shot at random, "to have the baby get chilled--and +hungry?" There he broke off, though he saw that did move her. He had to +know from what extremity she fled. "Has this been going on all night?" +he asked. + +"No," she said, with the same air of gently reassuring him. "I slept +'most all night. So did he, Mr. Tenney, I guess. An' we started out all +right this mornin'. But after he'd read the chapter an' prayed, it all +come over him ag'in, an' I had to go." + +"After he'd read his chapter," said Raven. "And prayed! God!" + +The invocation sounded as if he also prayed. + +"This time," she continued, "he--he seemed to have a realizin' sense." + +She paused a perplexed moment. In the little she had said to Raven, he +had noted from the first that she was often blocked by a difficulty in +finding words she thought adequate. "He seemed to know what was comin'," +she said. "He give me warnin'." + +"Warning?" + +"Yes. He come in an' he says to me, 'You don't want to go traipsin' +round in this snow.'" + +Raven noted the word and smiled slightly. He and Tenney were at one in +their care for her. + +"'You go up chamber,' he says, 'an' have a fire in the air-tight an' +turn the key. I dunno,' he says, 'what's goin' to happen, this day. I +dunno.'" + +"Why didn't you?" asked Raven. + +"I didn't hardly dast to," she said, with her clear look at him. "I knew +if he knew I's up there he never could stan' it till he--broke in the +door." + +Raven could only look at her. + +"Besides," she said, "even if I be safer in the house, I don't feel so, +somehow. I've always lived a good deal out door." + +"So you came away," said Raven quietly. "You came here." The words +really were, "You came to me," but he would not say them. + +"I did lock the chamber door," she said, "jest as he said. But I locked +it on the outside an' took away the key. I thought he'd think I was +there an' it might keep him out a spell, an' when he did git in, it'd +give him a kind of a shock an' bring him to. It does," she added simply. +"It always gives him a shock, not findin' me. He's asked me over 'n' +over ag'in, when he come to, not to make way with myself, but I never'd +answer. He's got it before him, an' that's about all there is in my +favor, far as I can see." + +The gentle monotony of her voice was maddening to Raven; it brought him +such terrible things, like a wind carrying the seeds of some poisonous +plant that, if they were allowed to spring up, would overrun the world +of his hopes for her. + +"You wouldn't promise him," he said thickly, "but you'll promise me. +Promise me now. Whatever happens to you, you won't make way with +yourself." + +"Why, of course I sha'n't," she said, as if in some surprise that he +should ask it. "How could I? Not while there's baby." + +This threw him back to the sanity of their common cause. They were both +to fight, he for her and she for the mother's one absorbing task: the +child. He returned to his old grave way with her. + +"Now," he said, "you're going to do exactly what I tell you. If you +won't go back to the hut and see Nan, you're to stay here until I've got +Nan and taken her down to the house. And we sha'n't come up here at all, +unless I come to bring you something to eat." + +"I don't want," she hesitated, "to put her out." + +"Nan? You don't put her out. She only came because she didn't find me at +the house. If you don't do precisely what I tell you, that'll be putting +everybody out. I shall make an awful row. Do you hear me?" + +She smiled, a little flicker of a smile. She might not like to be +pursued by jealousy incarnate, but she was, he saw, rather amused at +being fraternally tyrannized over. + +"Now," he said, "I'm going. You're to stand here in your tracks, and +when I've sent Nan down the path I'll come and get you." + +He gave her no time to object, but went back to the hut, and in to +solitude and a deadening fire. He threw open the door of the other room, +though Nan would surely not be there, and swore at not finding her. +Womenfolk were giving him a good deal of trouble with their exits and +their entrances. He mended the fire, snatched up his cap and gloves and +went out again, up the path to Tira. She was standing motionless +precisely, he thought, in the tracks where he had left her, and the +Buddhistic child indifferently regarded him. + +"Come on," Raven called to her, stopping at a pace from them. "She's on +her way down along, and there's a good fire." + +She started obediently after him and Raven, though he saw in her +slowness the hesitating desire to express her distaste for putting any +one out, paid no attention but went on ahead and opened the door. + +"Keep up the fire," he bade her. "I'll be back along about one and bring +you something to eat. The little chap, too. We mustn't forget him." + +She had stepped inside and he was about closing the door; but she turned +and seemed to recover her attitude of protest. + +"No," she said, "don't you bring up anything. I shall be gone long 'fore +then." + +"Why, no, you won't," said Raven impatiently. "You're not going back +into that----" he paused, seeking a word that should not offend her. She +had clung to incredible loyalties. Perhaps she even clung to her home. + +"Oh," she said earnestly, "it'll be over by then, an' he'll want his +dinner." + +Tenney would want his dinner! He had no words for that. He turned away. +But she seemed to feel the finality of his going. Was he giving her up? +She put the child down on the couch and turned to follow. Raven was just +closing the door. + +"Don't!" she cried. There was piercing entreaty in her voice. "Don't!" + +It was really begging him not to give her up, and though he did not +clearly understand it so, he knew he was forcing on her something to +bear, in addition to all the rest. She must not think that of him. She +must feel safe, in whatever manner it was easiest for her to accept +safety. He smiled back at her in that way Anne Hamilton, when she had +caught him smiling at Nan, thought so maddeningly beautiful. Poor Anne! +She had starved for the sweetness of what seemed to her, in her hunger +of the heart, an almost benedictory tenderness. + +"Don't you worry," he said to Tira, in the phrasing he unconsciously +adopted to her. "Everything's going to be exactly as you want it. Only," +he added whimsically--a tone she had never heard in her life before--"if +I could have my say for a few hours, it would be to find you here when I +come back." + +He closed the door and hurried down the path, moved even beyond his pity +by the certainty that she was nearer him. She had accepted that strange +community of interest between them. She had to be saved and he was to +save her. Now it would be easier. He had no thought but to find Nan down +at the house, but two-thirds of the way along the path he saw her, +sitting on a slant of the great boulder and looking grave. She was not +the Nan who had come to the hut, a half hour ago, so gaily certain of +her welcome. The two women had shied at the sight of each other. He had +cleared up the situation for the one, and now he had to do it for Nan. +That was simple. He had never known her to fail in understanding. He +came up to her and she raised her eyes, earnest now, startled, to his. + +"Aren't you too cold there?" he asked. + +She shook her head and smiled a little. + +"No, not with my fur. I'm afraid the gray squirrels will see me. What +would they think of skinning so many of their little brothers?" + +"Nan," he said, "you saw her." + +She nodded, slid off the rock and stood there, not looking at him. Of +course she saw her, Nan's inner self was answering. Didn't they meet +face to face? But she knew this was but his beginning and she would not +challenge it. He plunged into the turmoil of Tira's affairs, foreign to +him so short a time ago and yet his. + +"She's the wife of the man who bought the old Frye place, next to yours. +He's jealous of her, has fits of insane rage against her and she has to +get out. One day I found her hiding up here in the woods. I told her, +whenever she had to make tracks to come here to the hut, and build a +fire and stay. I leave the key under the stone." + +"Yes," said Nan. "I see." + +"No, you don't," cried Raven, "or you wouldn't look like that. What is +it you don't see? What is it you don't like? Out with it, Nan." + +Nan said nothing, and suddenly he saw she was trembling. It was in her +lips, it must be all over her, because he could see it in her hands, the +tight shut ball of them under her long sleeves. + +"Now," he said, irritated beyond measure by the unkindness of +circumstance, "what is it I haven't made clear? Don't you like her? +Don't you believe in her? Or don't you take any stock in what I tell +you?" + +"Of course I believe you," said Nan quietly. He could see her relax. "As +for liking her--well, she's beautiful. I agree with you perfectly +there." + +But he had not said she was beautiful. That he did not remember. + +"She is, isn't she?" he agreed. "And so--Nan, she's the strangest +creature you ever saw in your life. I suppose I could count up the words +she's spoken to me. But the queer part of it is, I know they're all +true. I know she's true. I'd stake----" there he paused. + +"Yes," said Nan quietly. "I've no doubt she's true. And she's a very +lucky woman." + +"Lucky?" repeated Raven, staring. "She's the most unfortunate creature I +ever saw. Lucky! what do you mean by that?" + +"Well," said Nan, and now she spoke with an edge in her voice, "what's +she going to do about it? She's in danger of her life, you say." He +nodded absently, his mind going back to that word, lucky. "She's afraid +of her husband, afraid he'll kill her." + +"Not so much that as afraid he'll kill the child." + +"Well, then, isn't she going to leave him?" + +"No. She won't." + +"Have you asked her?" + +"Oh, yes," said Raven. "I asked her at once. I told her I'd send her +away from here, find her something to do: just what anybody'd say in a +case like that." + +"And she wouldn't let you?" + +"She wouldn't let me." + +"Why not?" asked Nan. "Does she--love the brute?" + +She might have flicked a lash across his face and his nerves winced +under it. There was, she saw, in his mind, something disparaging to the +woman in coupling her with a softness misplaced. + +"I don't know," he said, with a thoughtful precision. "Sometimes I think +she's all mother: doesn't care about anything but the child. I know +she's square, knew it at once, but that doesn't mean I know any more +about her. She's a locked door to me." + +His tone was low, but it told Nan how he wished the door would open and +let him in to persuade her to her own well-being. She looked at him a +moment, as he stood staring down at his feet where a ragged wisp of +yellowed brake came through the snow, looked as if he hurt her beyond +endurance, and yet she had to probe ill circumstance to its depths. Then +she spoke, but in her old voice of childlike gentleness toward him: + +"I see. I really believe, Rookie, I do see." + +He looked up at her in a palpable relief. + +"That's a good girl," he said. Again she was half child to him. "You'll +take a hand, too, won't you?" + +That was more than she had bargained for. She would believe in the +mysterious woman and leave him free to carry out any mission, however +sophistical or chivalrous, he would. But she had not expected to enter +the arena with him and defend the martyr thrown to the wild beast of +marital savagery. Raven felt her recoil. + +"I can't do anything for her," he pursued, with a discouragement she +read. "Anything real, that is. I can give her the shelter of the hut, +but he'll find that out some day and go crashing in. I can't be there +always. Fact is, I can't be there at all." + +"Yes," said Nan. "I see." There was in her voice a sweetness new to him. +"I'll do anything you say, Rookie, to make your mind easy. What do you +want me to do. Take her away from here?" + +He considered a moment. Yes, that was really what he did want. She had +put the words into his mouth. + +"But," said Nan practically, "what you've got to do now is to go down to +the house and be tried for your life. Your sister'll be there something +after two. And Dick. And the alienist." + +Raven shrugged his shoulders as if he shook them free of a burden. + +"I don't care anything about the alienist," he said. "Nor Dick. I do +care a lot about Amelia. She's an awful bore. But it can't be helped. +Come on down." + +"You know," said Nan tentatively, as they took the road, "we could ask +Charlotte for a luncheon and go off over the mountain. You've got +snowshoes, haven't you?" + +Raven shook his head. + +"You can't foil Amelia," he said, "by running away from her. She'd camp +for the winter. Or she'd get on our trail and follow us. No, we've got +to see it through." + + + + +XVI + + +At the house they found Charlotte, in a silent alertness, making ready +for the guests whom Nan, before going up to the hut, had announced to +her. She was systematically refusing to be flurried, but Raven knew that +Amelia, with her rigid conventions and perilous activity, was a +disquieting guest. Remembering that, he took the incident with an +ostentatious lightness, and Nan followed his lead. Presently Charlotte's +kind face relaxed, and when they saw she was continuing her preparations +with a less troubled brow, Raven took Nan upstairs to the great west +room made ready for his sister with a fire roaringly active. There he +installed her, and when she reminded him that the room had been wakened +from its winter drowse to this exhilaration for Amelia, he bade her +"hush up and stay put." Two facts were paramount: she was the first +comer and this was the best room. But, Nan said, she wasn't going to +stay over night. She should get the six o'clock back to Boston. Raven +might here have reflected that, if she had merely the fact of Amelia's +coming to break to him, she could have done it by telephone. Was there +something in the unexpectedness of finding him immersed in the problem +of Tira that had overthrown her preconceived plan? Had she, finding him +absorbed in a new association, lost immediate interest in the drama she +had mischievously meant to share? + +"I take it for granted," she said, "you'll let Jerry carry me to the +station." + +"No," said Raven, impishly determined, "you're going to stay. You'll +borrow nighties and things from Amelia." + +"Seethe the kid in its mother's milk?" inquired Nan, her own impishness +flashing up, irresistible. "Come up here to undermine her and then +borrow her things?" + +"Seethe the kid in its own tooth paste," said Raven. "Yes, you're simply +going to stay. It's foreordained. Actually you came up here to help me +out in more ways than one." + +"Did I?" she asked, and reflected. She had one of her moments of clever +guesswork over him. Rookie was a simple proposition. She could always, +she had once boasted to him, find him out. And reaching about for the +clue, suddenly she had it and proclaimed it in triumph. + +"I've got it. Your farmer's wife! you want me to do something, something +she won't let you do. It's what we said. You want me to take her back +with me." + +"Yes," he said. "Just that." + +They stood looking at each other gravely in the silence of the gaily +flowered room with the great blaze rushing up the chimney. It might have +seemed that they were measuring each other. Yet they were inadequately +matched, for though Raven knew Nan, it was not especially in her +relation to him, and she knew herself and him intimately, in their +common bond. The woman was the more intuitive, but the man was no less +honest. She thought a moment now, her gaze unseeingly following the +pattern of the rug at her feet. + +"Very well," she said. "I'll go over to the house and get some things, +and I'll stay." + +There were, they both knew, bureau drawers full of Aunt Anne's things, +doubtless in the perfect order that was a part of her exquisite mastery +of life. She disliked traveling with a cumbersome outfit, even from the +city to this ancestral foothold. Everything possible was left behind her +in each place. + +"I'll go with you," said Raven. She should not poke into the cold house +alone for the first time since she had inherited it, and encounter the +desolation of change. + +They went downstairs and out into the road, Charlotte looking from the +window after them and wondering if they were bound on some jaunt that +would leave her to encounter Mrs. Powell undefended. Nan's spirits +always came up in the out-of-doors. She was a normal creature, needing +to be quickened only by full air. She began to laugh. + +"Rookie," she said, "I could tell you something funny." + +"Fire away," said Raven. + +"It's about my staying. I didn't bring any real things, because I knew I +could come over here and get some, but my toothbrush is right here in my +coat pocket. Don't you see, Rookie? I was going to stay if you made me, +but not if you didn't, and you weren't to know I so much as thought of +it." + +"Humbug!" said Raven. "I might ha' knowed." + +They came to the house, a great yellow square, well back from the road, +and there being no path through the snow, Nan boasted of her boots and +laughed at him for ordering her to wait until he went back for a shovel. +So he strode ahead and broke a path and she followed, and he was not +really concerned for her because she looked so fit; it seemed unlikely +the natural conditions of nature would hurt her, however hostile. She +opened the door with the key produced from her coat pocket and stepped +into the great hall, darkened from the obscurity of the rooms on each +side where shades had been drawn, and a winter coldness reigned. Nan +gave herself no time to shiver over the chill of her homecoming, but ran +up the stairs as if she expected to find the sun at the end, and Raven +stood in the hall, waiting, and the presence of Anne seemed suddenly +beside him, and something he tried to think of as the winter cold +(though it was far more penetrating and ethereal) struck him with a +chill. Anne, the poignant memory of her, was certainly there with him as +he stood absently following with his eyes the bridge-crossed road of the +old landscape paper and thinking how different it used to look when the +summer sunlight struck it through the open door; and Anne was beating, +with her beautiful hands, at his unwilling heart, crying: + +"Let me in! let me in to crowd Nan and that common woman out!" + +Nan, coming down with a roll under her arm, glanced at him, perturbed. +He had, she judged, been seeing ghosts. They went out and locked the +door behind them (locking in, Nan silently hoped, the ghosts also), and +hurried back along the road. And when they had gone into his house +again, Raven told her to run upstairs and put her things in the west +chamber. + +"Scatter 'em all over the place," said he. "Amelia'll fight for that +room. She'll fight tooth and nail. I sha'n't let her have it, not even +if you give it up. Understand?" + +"But what is she going to have?" Nan asked, from the stairs. + +"She's going to sleep down here, back of the dining-room," said Raven +perversely, "in the room they made over for Old Crow when they were +going to get him to give up the hut and come down here to die. Amelia's +scared out of her boots in the country, unless she hears voices on every +side of her. I know Amelia. Cut along and come down again and help me +set the scene." + +They did set the scene, with an exhilaration that played back and forth +between them like a heady atmosphere. Charlotte was bidden to make the +bed in Old Crow's room and while Raven built the fire, Nan helped +Charlotte. And when the pung drove up from the station at the moment Nan +had foreseen, she and Raven were sitting before the dining-room fire, +apparently deep in talk. Whether Charlotte took her cue from them they +did not know, but she was too busy in the back of the house to appear at +once, and Mrs. Powell and Dick came in unheralded, turning first to the +dining-room. There sat the two, absorbed. The visitors began, on an +according note. + +"John!" cried Amelia, and "Nan!" Dick cried, in an identical voice. +Raven and Nan had the same effect of unison. They laughed, it was so +exactly what they had known it would be, and Raven came forward, put his +hands on his sister's shoulders, and gave her a little shake. + +"Now, Milly," he said, "what the dickens are you up here for?" + +Nan, having alienists on her mind, and finding none, was plumping her +question at Dick: + +"Where's Doctor Brooke?" + +Dick evaded it by the self-evident statement that he hadn't come, and +ended in a morass of frowning confusion. + +Mrs. Powell turned to her with a surprised interrogation, a doubtful +warmth. It tried subtly to convey an entire acceptance of her as an +individual, combined with disapproval of finding her in the spot she had +no excuse for seeking. And while they were exchanging civil commonplaces +veiling unspoken implications, Raven was looking at his sister and +thinking, in a whimsical terror, what a very large grain of sand she was +likely to prove in the machinery of his daily life, and how little she +had changed during his absence from America. Here she was, so +indomitable in every particular that you could almost believe she was +going to be as lasting as the processes that went to her equipment. She +had, you learned to know, tackled life as a servant to be governed, an +enemy to be downed. If it had antidotes, she would lose no moment in +equipping herself with them. If circumstance proved unfriendly, she +would ignore it and forge ahead. She was, Raven had always recognized, +the feminine replica of his father's special type. As to her looks, she +was a thin, whip-like woman, who gave an impression of wiry endurance +and serviceable resiliency. You would expect her to be hard to the +touch, mental or moral, and yet she could double, evade, rebound. Put +her in a hole, and she soon proved to you that its obscurity was the +last place where she proposed to stay. She looked the latest thing +evolved by the art of man. Her clothes were the prevailing fantastic +creation, and yet, on her, they were not illogical. They were the +plumage of an eccentric bird hatched to look that way. Her face, in its +sandy monotone of color, fitted the art of her wonderful and yet not too +noticeable hat, and her gloves and veil were the last word of style. +Amelia had begun making herself, Raven used to think, long before God +stopped making her. As a girl, she had gone after strange gods of +culture and aestheticism, forsaking them, when they toppled, for newer +gods still; but always she was undaunted, always persisting in her +determined pose of governing the situation and her own attitude toward +it. And Amelia, he knew, could hang on like grim death. + +"But Nan!" she was exclaiming, "who'd have expected to find you here?" + +"Well," said Nan, in the shock of realizing she hadn't quite remembered +what Amelia was like, and ranging herself to fight on Rookie's side, +"who'd have expected you, Mrs. Powell?" + +Dick stood frowning at them impartially and twisting his hat in his +hands like a sulky boy. + +"Have you opened your house?" Amelia persisted. "You're not staying----" + +"She's staying here," said Raven. "Nan's taken pity on me and come up +for a visit. Oh, Charlotte! here you are. Show Mrs. Powell to her room, +will you?" + +Charlotte appearing, white-aproned, in the doorway, looking like the +beneficent goddess of home, Mrs. Powell greeted her urbanely and asked +appropriate questions. Was she well, as well as she looked? And how was +her husband? Always well, she remembered. Yes, she would go to her room, +please. But she'd go up by herself. She knew the way. She should think +so, indeed! And her reminiscent laugh endowed them with the picture of +the little girl she had been, born and brought up in this very house. + +"Oh, but it isn't up," said Raven cheerfully. "It's the west bedroom." + +"Not----" she began, and he nodded, taking her coat from the chair. + +"Yes, Old Crow's room. What was going to be his if he hadn't given 'em +the slip. I put Nan into the west chamber. You'll be awfully comfortable +in that room, Milly. I'll take in your bag." + +Amelia, immediately circumspect when she did not see her way, did follow +him, but she was in as great a state of suppressed dudgeon as a +civilized lady, living by the latest rules, allows herself to be. Dick +and Nan, left alone in the dining-room, turned upon each other like two +young furies. + +"You came up here," said Dick, in a tone of ill-suppressed ire, "to tell +him we were coming. I call it a mean trick." + +"What about you?" inquired Nan. "You'd better not talk about tricks. Can +you think of a meaner one than giving him away to the entire middle +west?'" + +"The middle west!" echoed Dick bitterly. "I told my mother." + +"Yes, you told your mother. And she comes up here with her alienists." + +"You'll notice," said Dick icily, "the alienist didn't come." + +"I assume," said Nan, "he's expected on the next train. Or he's going to +pounce some time when Rookie isn't prepared." + +"You little beast!" said Dick. "You don't deserve it, but I'll inform +you he isn't coming at all. I choked him off. I told him mother's the +one that's dotty or she wouldn't have called him in, and Uncle Jack +wasn't a patient and never'd consent if he knew. And he was an awfully +decent fellow and said nothing would induce him to come." + +"You did, did you?" said Nan ungratefully. "Well, you'd better. You've +made enough mischief for one not very inventive young person, don't you +think? And wouldn't it seem to you you'd better use your influence with +your mother to-morrow morning and get out of here?" + +"Out of here?" repeated Dick. "Out of my uncle's house. You +act----" here he paused. + +"Yes," said Nan, "I do act precisely that way. I act as if I had more +right here than you. And I have. For I adore Rookie. And that gives me a +right to stay with him and fight for him, and die for him, if I want to. +And you don't care a sixpence, or you wouldn't have brought this on +him." + +Dick, the man, cooled sooner than she. He paled, and stood looking at +her. Then he spoke in a voice dulled by wonder: + +"I believe you do adore him." + +"Of course I do," cried Nan, all her anger of impatience thrilling in +her voice. "I love him more than anything in this world or the next and +I always did and I always shall." + +This Raven, coming back through the hall, heard. + +"Good Lord!" he said to himself. "Good Lord!" + +So these two, with all the forces of probability and beckoning fortune +pushing them together, could not approach even within hailing distance. +It was the hideous irony of a world bent on disorder. He walked in on +them with a consciously grave aspect of recalling them to their more +reasonable selves. + +"What are you two scrapping for?" he inquired, and Nan looked at him +humbly. She hated to have him bothered by inconsiderable persons like +herself and Dick. "Don't you know you've got the universe in your fists +for the last time you'll ever have it? You're young----" + +There he stopped awkwardly in the enumeration of their presumable +blessedness. It was Nan's face that stopped him. It had paled out into a +gravity surprising to him: a weariness he had often expected to see on +it after her work abroad, but had not yet found there. + +"Yes," she said, in a tone that matched her tired face, "we're young +enough, if that's all." + +The talk displeased her. Nan never liked people to be dull and smudgy +with disorderly moods. She kept a firm hand on her own emotions and +perhaps she could not remember a time when they had got away from her +under other eyes. Aunt Anne was partly responsible for that, and partly +the proud shyness of her type. + +"No, Rookie," she said, "we won't fight. Not here, anyway. Not in your +house." + +She held out a careless hand to Dick, who looked at it an instant and +then turned sulkily away. "Young cub!" Raven thought. He should have +kissed it, even gone on his knees to do it, and placated her with a +laughing extravagance. He recalled the words he had caught from her lips +when he was coming in and flushed to his forehead over the ringing +warmth of them. He bent to the fine hand about relaxing to withdrawal, +after Dick's flouting, drew it to his own lips and kissed it: not as he +would have had Dick do it but yet with all his heart. As he lifted his +head he smiled into her eyes, and their look smote him. It was as if he +had somehow hurt her. + +"O Rookie!" she said, under her breath. + +And at the instant, while they stood awkwardly in the rebound from +emotions not recognized, Amelia came out from her bedroom, perfected as +to hair and raiment, but obviously on edge and cheerfully determined on +not showing it. Evidently she liked Old Crow's room no more than she +might have guessed. + +"O Lord!" said Raven ruefully to his inner self, "we're going to have a +cheerful house-party, now ain't we?" + + + + +XVII + + +The afternoon went off moderately well. Nan forgot the late +unpleasantness between her and Dick and assumed they were on their usual +terms, a fashion of making up more exasperating to him than the quarrel +itself. He was too often, he suspected, out of the picture of her +immediate mind. But it was most unproductive to sulk. When she forgot +and he reproached her for it, she forgot that also; and now when she +suggested a walk he got his cap with a degree of cheerfulness and they +went out, leaving Raven and his sister together by the fire, for what +proved to be one of the rich afternoons of Raven's life. Amelia sat down +at the hearth and put her perfectly shod feet to the blaze. + +"Now, John," she said crisply, while he was fidgeting about, wondering +whether he dared offer her a book and take himself out of doors, "sit +down and tell me all about it." + +Raven went to the fire, but stood commanding it and her. He might, he +thought, as well meet the issue at once. + +"What?" he asked. "What do you want to know?" + +"You mustn't think I can't sympathize," she informed him, in the clear +tone he recognized as the appropriate one for an advanced woman who sees +a task before her--"damned meddlers," he was accustomed to call them in +his sessions of silent thought--"you mustn't think I'm not prepared. +I've heard lectures on it, and since Dick sent me your letter I've read +more or less." + +"My letter!" groaned Raven. "If ever a chap was punished for a minute's +drunkenness----" + +"Drunkenness?" interrupted Amelia incisively. + +"Oh, drunkenness of feeling--irresponsibility--don't you know? Didn't +you ever hear of a chap's killing himself in a minute of acute +discontent because he couldn't stand the blooming show an instant +longer? Well, I didn't kill myself. I did something worse. I wrote a +letter, and, by an evil chance, it was mailed, and Dick, like a fool, +sent it on to you." + +"Dick did absolutely right," said Dick's mother conclusively. "We won't +discuss that. We'll go into the thing itself." + +"What the deuce is the thing?" Raven inquired. "The letter, or my +bursting into tears, like a high-strung maiden lady, and calling Dick in +to be cried over?" + +"Don't evade it," she charged him, with unabated gravity. "We mustn't, +either of us. You know what I mean--_cafard_." + +"_Cafard!_" Then he remembered Dick also had caught up the word, like a +missile, and pelted him with it. He gulped. Ordinary speech wasn't going +to be adequate. She belonged to this infernal age that lived by phrases. +If he told her he was still of the opinion that the world was a +disordered place of torment you could only exist in by ignoring its real +complexion, she would merely consign him to a cell more scientifically +padded, and stand gazing at him through the bars, in solemn sympathy. +"So I've gone _cafard_," he said slowly, looking down at the fire and +wondering how to answer a fool according to her folly. Or was she +incredibly right? Had he some creeping sickness of the brain, the very +nature of which implied his own insensitiveness to it? "Or do you say +'got' _cafard_? And what's your personal impression of _cafard_, +anyway?" + +She had her answer ready. From the little bag in her lap she took out a +small sheaf of folded papers, memorandum slips, they seemed to be, and +whirled them over in capable fingers. + +"It ought to be here," she said absorbedly. "Yes, here it is. No, it +isn't either. It must be among my club notes. What Galsworthy says about +it, you know. He makes it so clear. Just what they mean by it, the +French, how you simply go to pieces. You know, John. Of course you +know." + +"Yes," said Raven drily, "I heard of it remotely among the boys." + +"No wonder it happened to you. Really, you know, John, you ought not to +have gone over there at all, not at your age. It was fine of you. I'm +not denying that. But there were lots of things you could have done at +home: dollar a year men and all that. However, we must take it as we +find it. You've got _cafard_, and we must make sure you have the best +thing done for you. Do you see?" + +"And what," inquired Raven, curiously, "is the best thing?" + +"My idea," she said, pelting on in her habitual manner of manipulation +without much regard to the material she was working on, "would be for +you to see an alienist." + +"I thought," he was beginning mildly, and paused, with a sense of +danger. He must, he saw, forego the fun of chaffing her from his +awareness that the professional gentleman was to have been sprung on him +to-day, and that he knew equally the infliction could only be deferred. +But how, she would have questioned, did he get his news? Not, he would +have to convince her, through Nan. He amended his attack. "Why didn't +you scare one up and bring him along?" + +She frowned. Amelia was always restive under raillery. + +"We needn't," she said, "go into that. I did hope to arrange it, but +Dick upset things frightfully. He has behaved badly, very badly indeed. +I hope now to persuade you to call in Doctor Brooke yourself. I should +suppose he'd recommend your going into a sanitarium. However, we can't +judge till we see what he says. Only, John"--and here she looked at him +with some appearance of anxiety, as not knowing how he would take +it--"you must give yourself into our hands." + +"Whose hands?" asked Raven. "Yours? Dick's?" + +"Oh, dear, no, not Dick's." Again she mentally champed her bit. +Evidently Dick had exhausted her forbearance on the way up. "He's +behaved like a----" Invention failed her. "I do wish," she ended +plaintively, "the modern young man and woman had a vestige of respect +left--only a vestige--for their elders. They're queerness itself. Now +Nan! there's Nan. What's she posting off up here for and settling +herself in your house"--in the west chamber, Raven's inner mind +ironically supplied--"and acting as if you couldn't pry her out?" + +"You can't," said Raven. "Nan's here and I'm going to keep her, all +winter, if she doesn't get bored." + +Amelia gave a little staccato shriek. + +"All winter? I can't stay here all winter." + +"Dear old Milly, no," said Raven, with the utmost gentleness. "I +wouldn't have you for the world. It's Nan that's going to stay." + +"Why," said Amelia, "it isn't decent. You're not an old man, John. +Sometimes you don't even look middle-aged." + +"You said I was," he reminded her. "You said I was so old I went and got +_cafard_." + +"Besides," said Amelia, clutching at her vanishing argument, "age has +nothing to do with it. The older you are the more ridiculous they get +over you, these romantic girls. And you'd cut in and take her away from +Dick, right under his nose." + +Raven suddenly tired of it. + +"Amelia," he said, "don't be a fool. And don't say that sort of odious +thing about Nan. I won't have it. Nan's a child." + +"Oh, no," said Amelia, shaking her waved head with an air of doom. +"Nan's no child. Don't make any mistake about that. She's no child." + +At this, Raven found he was so unreasonably tired of her that he had to +call himself to order and wonder if he really could be disgusted with +Amelia, old Milly who was such a sophisticated fool and yet meant so +well by everybody that you had to keep reproving yourself when you were +tempted to consign her--elsewhere. + +"Milly," he said, in the tone he always had toward her at her worst, a +tone of recalling her, bidding her remember she was a nice ordinary +woman, not an arbiter of social destinies, "Milly, sometimes you're an +awful idiot. Don't you know you are? Don't you see it won't do to keep +hitting me on the raw? I sha'n't stand it, you know. I shall have to +take Nan under my arm and get out and leave you the house to yourself. +It's all very well for you to call down alienists on me, and get me to +put myself under restraint, but Nan's rather sacred to me. You can't +meddle with Nan, and if you weren't so wrapped up in your own conceit, +you'd see you couldn't." + +Amelia seemed to be reflecting on something which resulted in shocking +her into a further uneasiness. + +"And the thing she said! I heard it with my own ears. She adored you! +That's what she said, adored you. To Dick, too, of all people, Dick +she's virtually engaged to." + +Raven remembered a scene in a play where a drunken man lifts a chair and +then, aware of his own possibilities, gently sets it down again. He +wanted to lift a chair. Only he wanted to complete the act and smash it. + +"Milly," he said gently, "I tell you Nan is a child. Doesn't that show +she's a child--the pretty extravagance of it! Why, I'm 'old Rookie' to +Nan. What else do you think I could possibly be?" + +"Heaven knows," said Amelia, tightening her lips. "I can't imagine what +her Aunt Anne would have said. John, wasn't it wonderful her leaving you +practically all her money? And just what might have been expected. She +was bound up in you." + +"O Lord!" said Raven. + +But Amelia, once started, knew no bounds. + +"And that's what I say, John. If you take hold of yourself now and get +into shape again, you've a great many years before you, and Anne's money +with yours--well, I don't see why you shouldn't look forward to a great +deal." + +Raven went over to the window and sat down there staring at the black +bare branches and the clear sky. It seemed to him unspeakably desolate +and even, in its indifference to his own mood, cruel. So was Amelia, he +thought. In spite of her platitudes about enjoying a great deal, she had +him dead and buried. He became absurdly conscious that he was afraid, +but of one thing only: to hear her voice again. Upon that, thinking how +it would actually sound, he turned about and ignominiously left the +room. And since there was no spot in the house where she might not +follow him he took his hat and jacket from the kitchen and went out +through the shed. Charlotte was washing dishes at the sink, but she did +not, according to her custom, look up to pass the time of day. A cloud +rested even on her brown hair and splendid shoulders. Amelia had brought +the cloud. She'd have to get out, even if he had to tell her so. + +With no intention, but an involuntary desire to be where Amelia would +not find him (and also, it was possible, where that other quietest of +women could be found) he went down the road to the maples, and then +plunged into the woods and up the hill. He had first gone along the road +to mislead Amelia, if she chanced to be looking out. He couldn't have +her following, and she was equal to it, pumps and all. Halfway up the +hill, making his way through undergrowth where the snow packed heavily, +he turned off at his left and so got into the wood road. And then, his +breath coming quick from haste and the vexation of the clogged way, he +did not slacken to cool off in the relief of easier going, but, +breathless as he was, began to run, and got more breathless still. Tira +was up there in the hut. He was sure of it. And for those first hurried +minutes he forgot her presence there meant only added misery, but dwelt +upon his own need of such a spirit as hers; the strength, the poise, the +ready coolness. + +At the door he felt rebuffed, it looked so inhospitable, so tight +against him. He tapped and waited. No one came. Then he tried it and +found it locked and the revulsion was bitter. He was about turning away +when it came to him that at least he might go in. The key would be under +the stone. He put his hand into the hollow and found it there, and only +when he was setting it in the lock realized that this meant a deeper +loneliness. It would be easier to think she was there, the key turned +against him, but still in his house, than to find the house itself void +of her presence. He shook himself, in anger at the incomprehensible way +the whole thing was moving him. Why should it move him? Then, finding it +cold, the deserted room, he made himself busy and laid the fire and set +the two chairs hospitably by the hearth. He did not light the fire. It +must be ready for her if she came. After it was in order (her house, it +seemed to him now, with a fatalism of belief he accepted and did not +dwell upon) he sat down by the cold hearth and tried to think. But never +of himself. He thought of her: beautiful, lustrous, caged bird with the +door of her prison open, and who yet would not go. His mind went back to +Milly, waiting there at home to apply scientific remedies to his +diseased spirit, and he laughed a little, Milly seemed of such small +consequence. But the thought of the misery of mind that had brought him +here gave him a new sense of the cruelty of the world. For it had been +the sad state of the whole world he had fled away from and here, as if +all misery had converged to a point, he had taken a straight path to the +direst tragedy of all: a mother trying against hope to save her child, +the most beautiful of women pursued by sex cruelty, the gentlest +threatened by brute force. How could he save her? He could not, for she +would not be saved. He sat there until the dark in the corners crept +toward him like fates, their mantles held up in shadowy hands, to +smother him, and then suddenly remembering Nan and hospitable duties +down below, he got up, chilled, went out, and locked the hut behind him. +The house he found was a blaze of windows. Charlotte had lighted lamps +and candles all over it. He was half amused by that, it gave such an air +of fictitious gayety. He did not know Nan had whispered her to make it +bright because he would see it, coming up the road. + +The three were in the library by the fire. Amelia had dressed for supper +in chiffon absurdly thin and curtailed, neck and hem, so that Dick had, +without being told, brought her fur coat and put it about her shoulders. +That was just like her, Raven thought, as he went in upon them, to go by +the clock and, because winter evenings necessitated evening dress, +ignore the creeping cold of a country house. Nan wore her gown of the +morning, and her stout shoes. Indeed she had to, Raven reminded himself, +when he was about to commend her for good taste. She had brought only +her little bag. Nan was now sweet reasonableness itself. No sleepiest +kitten, claws in drawn, could have been softer. Amelia was baiting her, +asking her, with a reproving implication that she ought not to have been +in a position to know, about the life over seas, and Nan was answering +by the card, compliantly, sincerely. + +She had determined, Raven could see, that there should be no more +ructions in his house. When he came in, they looked up at him, frankly +pleased, and Amelia as patently relieved. + +"I'm so glad you've come back," she said, getting up so that Dick could +set another chair, and Raven join them in the conventional family +circle. "I've been trying to send Dick out after you, but he wouldn't +go. John, you mustn't get into the habit of wandering off alone like +that. You really mustn't." + +Raven grimaced as he took the properly adjusted chair, and wondered +whether he'd got again to invite Milly to shut up. But Dick did it, in +an honest despair that seemed entirely adequate. + +"Ain't mother the limit?" he remarked, to no one but perhaps his own +wondering mind. + +Raven gave a little bark of laughter, and Amelia betrayed no sign of +having heard. But Raven caught the grateful tribute of Nan's tone. + +"My hanky," she said, "Dickie, dear." + +He saw it dropped, saw Dick dart for it, and Nan, accepting it, give his +fingers a little squeeze. Evidently Dick, who flushed red, was being +paid for having briefly illuminated mother. Supper was got through +successfully, Raven and Dick doing active service. Raven talked about +thinning out the lower woods and Dick played up beautifully, taking it +with the greatest attention and answering at length. Mother was to be +shunted imperceptibly from _cafard_. And when they had finished and +returned again to the library fire, Nan, after perhaps half an hour of +desultory talk, yawned rudely and asked if she might go to her bed. +Raven suspected her. He noted how she half closed the library door +behind her; so he took the chair she had lately left, commanding the +crack of it. In about the time he expected, he heard her in the hall. +She had come down the back stairs, he judged, and was now putting on her +hat and coat, with scarcely a rustle, the sly one! + +"Draught from this door?" he suggested, got up and closed it. + +At least Dick shouldn't know she was going. If anybody stole behind her +in the friendly "outdoors" it should be he, to guard her from her own +foolhardiness. These roads were paths of peace, but Nan was equal to +adventure more extended. She might have snatched snowshoes, in her +stealthy preparation, to go off wood wandering. She might brave the +darkness where, to country minds, lurked the recurring legend of the +"lucivee." There was no actual danger, but Pan might be wandering. + +"These old windows are draughty, too," said Raven. He paused at one of +them, fumbling with the catch. Really he was watching the path. There +she was, at the left, going toward her own house. He pulled down the +shade and lounged back to his seat by the fire. + +"You probably feel the cold," said Milly drowsily. The fur coat and +blazing logs were beginning to do their blessed work. "Your vitality is +low." + +"Yes," said Raven piously. He would have sworn to anything. "Just so." +He went on talking to Dick, and Dick caught the ball neatly, so that +presently they could glance at each other in a community of +understanding. "She's off!" said Raven's face, and Dick's returned, +"Right you are!" while he droned on about "popple," the local word for +poplar, and the right month for peeling and whether it really paid to +cut it if you had to hire. Raven loved Dick at times like these, when he +was neither sulky over Nan's aloofness nor didactic about democracy and +free verse. Amelia choked and came awake. + +"Did I," she ventured, fearing a too frank reply, "did I--make a noise?" + +"No, dear," said Raven mellifluously. + +If Milly had been cleverer she would have remembered that when he was +deceiving her he spoke, "as if butter wouldn't melt," as if his vocal +arrangements dropped oil and balm. + +"Dick and I are talking out this lumber question. Don't you bother. You +don't know anything about popple." + +Milly, reassured, dropped her cheek, with a little breath, and closed +her eyes. "Gone?" Dick telegraphed Raven, who nodded "Gone!" took a step +to the door, opened it, and was himself away. He snatched, haphazard, at +a hat and coat on the great chest in the hall. Dick had a way of +throwing things down and leaving them where they fell. Yes, they were +Dick's, and Raven hastily shoved himself into them, judging it was +better, if Dick decided to go roaming, to keep him looking for them. +Then he went out and down the path and along the road where Nan had +gone. He came to her house and stopped, interrogating it. There was no +light. Still she might be in the back part, hunting about for something +she perversely couldn't wait for over night. He went up the path and +tried the front door. It was fastened and he called to her. But there +was no Nan, and he went back to the road and walked up and down, +waiting. If she wanted a run alone in the dark, she must have it. After +he had been pacing for what seemed to him a long time, he heard voices +and the crunch of snow. One voice was hers, and he went on to meet it. +The other, a man's, short-syllabled, replied at intervals. Nan seemed to +be holding forth. They were coming on briskly, Nan and a tall figure at +the other side of the road. She had seen Raven and called, clearly, +though not with any implication of relief: + +"That you, Rookie?" + +He came up to them and saw, with a surprise out of all proportion to the +event, in this neighborhood where anybody might join anybody else in +familiar intercourse, that it was Tenney. They stopped, Tenney a step +behind her. It looked as if he understood he had fulfilled his civility +to her and could be dismissed. + +"I've been calling on Mrs. Tenney," said Nan, "and I asked Mr. Tenney to +walk home with me. Thank you, Mr. Tenney. Good night. Think it over, +won't you?" + +Tenney turned, without a word, and went back along the road, with his +habitual look, Raven had time to note, in the one glance he cast after +him, of being blown by a hurrying wind. Raven faced about with Nan and +asked at once, in the excess of his curiosity: + +"Now what are you up to, calling on the Tenneys?" + +Nan answered seriously. There was trouble in her voice. + +"Well, I got thinking about them so I knew I shouldn't go to sleep, and +I just went up by, without any real plan, you know. The woman had such +an effect on me. I couldn't keep away from her." + +Raven was struck with the inevitableness of this. Yes, she had that +effect. You couldn't keep away from her. + +"I'd no idea of going in," said Nan. "And I did want a run. Isn't the +air heady? But just as I got to the house, she opened the door. She was +coming out, I suppose. She had the baby. The baby was all wrapped up. +She wasn't, though. She had just an apron on her head. And when the door +opened, I could hear him yelling inside. I don't know whether he was +driving her out or whether she'd started to run for it." + +"Well?" prompted Raven harshly. Why should she be so slow about it? +"What then?" + +"I went up the path," said Nan, in a half absent way, as if what she was +telling seemed far less important than the perplexing issues it had bred +in her. "I said good evening to her. I went by her: I think I did. I +must have got into the kitchen first. And there he was. He's a striking +fellow, isn't he, Rookie? Like a prophet out on the loose, foaming at +the mouth and foretelling to beat the band. He'd got something in his +hands. It was little and white; it might have been the baby's cap. He +was tearing it to rags. You ought to have seen him at it." + +"You shouldn't have gone in," said Raven angrily. "The fellow's dotty. +Don't you know he is? Did he speak to you?" + +Nan gave a little laugh. Suddenly the incongruity of it came over her. + +"No," she said, "I spoke to him. Suddenly I seemed to see how Charlotte +would have spoken--that mother way, you know, men can't stand up +against. I said--I _think_ I said--'Mr. Tenney, what under the sun are +you carrying on like this for? I should think you were in liquor.'" + +Raven, wondering if he should cry at the relief of having her safe out +of the ogre's den, had to laugh with her. + +"It caught him," said Nan, beginning to enjoy it, "as grandsir used to +say, between wind and water. He looked down at the thing in his +hands--the rags, you know--and dropped them into the wood-box. You see +that was the real wiliness of the serpent, my telling him he was in +drink. He's full of spiritual pride, all eat up with it. Then I played +Charlotte some more. I told Mrs. Tenney to come in, and remarked that +she'd get her death o' cold; and she did come in and her eyes--what eyes +they are, Rookie!--they were big as bread and butter plates. I suspected +she regarded me as specially sent. And I lit on him and told him, in +good set terms, that if I knew of his driving his wife out of the house +in one of his sprees, I'd have him hauled up and testify myself. Then I +ordered him to get his hat and walk home with me." + +"And he did!" cried Raven, in amazement at her. "Oh, yes, of course he +did. Go on." + +"Yes, he came to heel with a promptness that would have surprised you. +And I didn't let up a minute. I discoursed all the way, on the whole +duty of man." + +"Did he answer?" + +"Yes. That is, he spoke twice, the only times I'd let him. Once he broke +in: 'I ain't a drinkin' man.' That rankled, you see." + +"What did you say?" + +"I said: 'Yes, you are, too. No decent man would act as you've been +acting, unless he was drunk. And probably,' I said, 'you've been brewing +it in the cellar, and selling it to the neighbors.'" + +"That was a bliffer." + +"It was. I had an idea he might drop dead in his tracks." + +"That all he said?" + +"Yes. Oh, no, there was one other thing. He asked me if I were saved." + +"What did you say?" + +"Told him not to be a fool." + +Raven lifted up his voice and laughed. + +They were opposite his own house, and Dick, who had just opened the +front door, heard him. + +"Oh," said Dick icily, when they came up to him. "So that's where you +were. Uncle Jack"--for now he saw he had just cause for anger--"I'll +thank you to let my hat alone." + +"Yes, Dick," said Raven meekly. "But I saw it and it's such a dandy +hat." + +"Don't be rude to your only uncle," said Nan. + +She was slipping off her coat and Raven judged, seeing her so calm, that +her evening pleased her. + +"Mother in there?" Raven inquired of Dick. + +He had hung up the pilfered coat and hat, with great nicety of care, in +the hall closet. + +"No," said Dick. "She's gone to bed." + +The implication was that she shouldn't have been allowed to get bored +enough to go to bed. + +"I'm going, too," said Nan. She gave her hand to Raven. "'Night, +Rookie." Then she apparently remembered Dick, and shook her head at him. +"Silly!" she commented. "Nobody'll love you if you behave like that." + +Dick did not answer. He turned about and went into the library, and +Raven following, after he had seen Nan at the top of the stairs, found +him reading a day-old paper with a studied absorption it was evident he +was far from feeling. + + + + +XVIII + + +Dick tossed the paper aside and turned upon Raven who, taking his chair +at the hearth, had bent to throw on a handful of light wood: the sticks +that wake and change a room so completely that they might almost lighten +the mood of the man their burning plays upon. + +"Look here," said Dick, "you put the devil into Nan. What do you do it +for?" + +Raven looked up at him in a complete surprise. + +"No, I don't. The devil? Nan's got less to do with the devil than +anybody you and I ever saw. She's kept herself unspotted. She's a +child." + +This last he said of sudden intent for, having noted its effect on +Milly, he wondered how it would strike Dick. + +"Oh, no, she isn't," said Dick, with bitterness. "Unspotted--yes, of +course she is. But Nan knows her way about. She can play fast and loose +with the rest of 'em." + +He stopped, conscious of talking too much, and ashamed of it. Raven +remembered that quick interchange of ownership and repudiation between +the two as they flashed back at each other in his library, those weeks +ago, but he could not tell the boy Nan had kissed him out of her +impetuous bounty only because the terrors of the time had lifted her +beyond habit and because Dick's need was so great. She had put the +draught of life to his lips, that was all. He remembered Monna Vanna +going to the sacrificial tent, and his heart melted at the thought of +woman's wholesale giving even when the act is bound to recoil upon +herself alone. + +"You'd better not remind her of anything she said to you over there," he +allowed himself to advise. "Things were pretty strenuous then, Dick, +don't you remember? We've come back to a"--his voice failed him as he +thought how base a time they had returned to--"a different sort of thing +altogether. I'm an old fellow, according to you, but there's one thing I +know. You won't get a girl by 'flying off the handle,' as Charlotte +would say. Honest, old boy, when you have these fits of yours, you don't +seem, according to the prophet of your generation, as impressive as +usual." + +"Who is the prophet of my generation?" put in Dick sourly, as if that +were the issue between them. + +"G. B. S., I've understood," said Raven mildly. "Don't I recall your +telling me he was the greatest ever, at least since Aristophanes?" + +"Oh, cut it," said Dick, whose gods were subject to change. + +"Cut it by all means. But there is a thing or two I'd like your vote on. +Your mother now: what's your impression of her plans about staying along +here? Think she's game to tough it out as long as I do?" + +"She'll stay as long as Nan does." Dick was frowning into the fire, and +Raven doubted whether one of his admonitory words had sunk in. "I had an +idea I could go back to town to-morrow morning and wire her I'd broken +my leg or something. But Nan's got to go with me." + +"Nan will do as she pleases," said Raven. He rose from his chair +disgusted with young love so unpicturesque and cub-like. "Turn off the +lights, will you, when you go?" And he went off to bed. + +But in the morning, when he came down, Dick met him at the foot of the +stairs. It was a changed Dick. His lip was trembling. Raven concerned, +yet unable to deny himself a flippant inward comment, thought the boy +looked as if he'd been saying his prayers. + +"She's gone, Jack," said Dick. + +In stress of intimacy, he often dropped the prefatory title. + +"Gone?" Raven's mind flew to Tira. "Where?" + +"Back to Boston. Walked to the station. Took the milk train. Charlotte +says she simply walked out and said she wasn't coming back." + +"Your mother or--you don't mean Nan?" + +"Nan, yes. Do you see mother walking five miles to a train?" But if Dick +was unsettled, this was not his surly mood of the night before. "If I +drove her away"--he began, and then ended with an appealingness to be +remembered of the Dick who had not been nettled by life, "Jack, I wish +she wouldn't." + +"I'll ask Charlotte," said Raven. "Your mother out yet? No? Well, don't +bring her into it." + +He went off to the kitchen where Charlotte was just setting little +silver pots on a damask-covered tray. She glanced up at him, not +absently, because Charlotte always seemed so charged with energy that +she could turn from one task and give full attention to another. + +"For Mrs. Powell," she explained, setting her hands to the tray, as if +she expected him to make whatever remark he would without delaying her. +"She's havin' her breakfast in bed." + +"Dick tells me----" he began, and she nodded. + +"Yes, she's gone. Nan, you was inquirin' about, wa'n't you? It's all +right. I shouldn't ask any questions, if I was you: not yet anyways. +I've got a kind of an idea Dick'll be takin' the noon back to Boston. +Maybe his mother, too. But there!" + +This last was as if it were too much to hope for, and she lifted the +tray and hurried away with it to Old Crow's room. Raven went +thoughtfully back to the hall where Dick stood waiting, gnawing at his +lip, and looking curiously like the Dick who had been a boy and come to +Uncle Jack to have his fortunes mended as they affected kite or ball. + +"Yes," said Raven, "she's gone. Don't take it that way, old man. Nan +knows what's best for her." + +"Walked to the station," said Dick bitterly. "Just plain cut stick and +ran. Probably carried a bag. All because I made it so sickening for her +she couldn't stay." + +Raven thought of the things Nan had carried in the work of the last +years--supplies, babies born on retreats. She had seen the fortunes of +war. But there was no need of bracing Dick by telling him he could +testify she hadn't any bag. If the boy could be melted into a passion of +ruth over Nan, instead of a passion of resentment, so much the better +for him. + +"Come and have breakfast," he said. "Charlotte's bringing it in." + +They went together, and when Dick had bolted his coffee and egg he said: + +"Of course I've got to take the 11.03." + +"Of course," said Raven. He knew if he were a young lover who had +offended Nan and driven her away, that was what he should do: follow and +humble himself before her. "Jerry'll drive you down." + +So it happened that when Amelia, carefully dressed, came out of her room +at noon, Dick had left without a word to her and her dignified +resentment was only diverted by hearing Nan, too, had gone. + +"John," said she, disposing herself by the fire, "I should like to know +how you account for that girl?" + +"For Nan?" said Raven absently. He was wishing Nan had found it easy to +tell him she was going. "I don't account for Nan. I don't have to." + +"So unexpected," said Amelia. "So absolutely impervious to everything +we've brought them up to reverence. It's all of a piece. Depend upon it, +no young girl could go over there and do the things she did and not feel +the effects of it: for life, absolutely for life. You yourself feel the +effects in one way, the young ones in another." + +Raven was very considerate of her, left stranded there with him. But +after the noon dinner, when they settled again by the fire, he began to +realize the magnitude of his task. He was simply saddled with Amelia. +She hadn't been able to get her alienist up here, but she had +constituted herself a psychic detective on her own account. At first he +didn't mind, she was so "simple honest" in her expedients. It was +amusing, to a moderate degree, to evade them. How did he sleep? Did he +dream? Did he know anything about the psychology of dreams? There was +Freud. + +"Yes," Raven interpolated. "Nasty fellow. Peeps and botanizes on his +mother's grave." + +Did the world still seem to him as hopeless as it did at the time of his +writing the letter? That gave him an idea. + +"Where is that letter?" he asked, cutting across the track of her +calculated approaches. "What became of it?" + +She did not evade him. She was too surprised. + +"I gave it," she owned, "to one of our doctors at home. For a medical +congress." + +"The devil you did!" Raven permitted himself. "Milly, sometimes I think +you advanced women--O Lord!" + +"What else could I do?" Milly inquired, with her deliberate +fair-mindedness, which was, he miserably knew, a part of her culture. +"Surely, you wouldn't suppress evidence. And it won't be traced to you. +You're simply Mr. X." + +Raven was silent. He was thinking what a fool he had been to unpack his +heart with words, and that if he told Milly so he should simply be +unpacking it some more. He looked at the clear winter day occupying +itself out there without him, and wondered why the deuce he couldn't put +on snowshoes and tramp off his discontent leaving her to fight her +boredom by the fire. She'd brought it on herself, hadn't she? Nobody +wanted her to come. Was there some hidden force in women, their apparent +vulnerability to the harsh world conditions that were bound to crush out +even them in the end? They seemed so weak you had, in mercy, to +reenforce them and then they proved so horribly strong, and used their +strength against you, depleted as you were by fighting for them. Anyway, +if he could get Milly's blood to moving and pump some of this hill air +into her she, too, might be a more wholesome citizen of even an +unfeeling earth. + +"Want to go to walk, Milly?" he suggested seductively, and she looked at +him pleasantly, grateful for the tone, at least. + +"No," she said, "we're so cozy here." + +Cozy! it might be cozy, if that meant being choked. But he thought he +could stand a little more of it, and then he would at least drop asleep +and snore. The indiscretions of the body were terrible to Amelia. And he +did fall into a hopeless lethargy, and only about five o'clock, when the +early dark had come, threw it off and got to his feet. + +"'Bye," he said. "I'll be back for supper." + +Before she could answer, he was gone. Now he was afraid she might say, +with an ill-timed acquiescence, that after all she would have a little +walk, and he knew he simply couldn't stand it. By the fire, making an +inexorable assault on his senses, the calm, steady beat of her futile +talk could be borne. You bore it by listening through a dream. But out +of doors, when the crisp air had waked you, you'd simply have to swear +or run. He did run, snatching his hat as he went, up the road toward +Tenney's. It was not a reasoned flight, but he did want to calm himself +by the light burning through their windows, perhaps a glimpse of Tira +moving about. The night was going to be clear and not too cold for +pleasant lingering. Over beyond the rising slope opposite Nan's house he +heard an owl hooting and, nearer, the barking of a fox. He turned that +way and stood facing the dark slope. He knew what those trees were in +spring, pink and light brown in the marshes at the foot of the rise, +running up into a mist of sunshine with islands of evergreen. Then, +turning to go on, he cast a glance at the house and stopped with a word +of surprise. There was a light. Somebody had broken in (an incredible +happening here) and was beguiled by loneliness and silence into an +absurd security. He turned into the path and went softly up to the front +door, lifted the latch and was stepping in when some one came. It was +Nan. She was in the hall, a pile of blankets in her arms. Seeing him, +she did not start, only laughed a little, all the mischief of her face +running into it and waking it like the sun on moving water. + +"Nan," said Raven, "Nan, my darling, why are you here?" + +Nan did the incredible thing. She laid her pile of blankets in a chair, +came back to him and deliberately put arms over his shoulders and about +his neck. Her face, beautifully sweet in its new flush, was close to +his. It might well be flushed, for he had called her darling, and Nan, +feeling lorn and bewildered in losing the Rookie she used to think she +knew, felt for the instant that she had got home again. She had lost +him, she felt, when she saw the shaken look he gave the strange +beautiful woman up in the hut. Now here he was again, quite the same, +only it was true that she had not seemed to be, for years, what he +called her now. + +"Rookie, my darling," said Nan, seeing no reason why she shouldn't give +him the precious thing back again, "I'm terrible glad you've come. +Charlotte tell you?" She put her cheek against his for a minute, took +her arms away and turned into the west sitting-room where a fire was +leaping and making soft, living shadows on the ceiling. In the middle of +the room she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Look at the shadows," +she said, in a low voice, as if they might hear and flee away. "It's +exactly as if they lived here all the time and waited for us to come +back to them. Look at the ones behind those candlesticks. They've always +been just like this, little old scholarly gentlemen in queer hats +walking along a London street. I used to think they were going to old +second-hand shops to buy old second-hand books. I wouldn't have those +candlesticks moved by half an inch for fear the shadows would get mad +and go with them. Sit down, Rookie, there where you used to read to me. +I'll light up, so we can see each other." + +He did sit down without waiting for her, on the little squat, +old-fashioned sofa, and Nan went about the room with her match and +dotted it with candles. Raven looked after her in her housewifely +progress; he was still concerned, still grave over her leaving his house +for this. She had on her walking suit, whatever frills she might have +discovered upstairs, and she looked ready for outdoor enterprise. What a +hardy child she was, slender and supple, but taut for action in the +homespun service of the day! She threw her match into the fire and came +to him, sat down beside him and, like the Nan of a hundred years ago, +her childhood and his youth, put her head down on his shoulder. + +"Nan," said he, abandoning what he sometimes considered the heavy father +attitude and jamming the silky head down into its hollow, "what did you +do it for? Didn't you like my house?" + +"Yes, Rookie darling," she said, in a tone of drowsy happiness. "I meant +to stay--truly I did--and cut in when Mrs. Powell tried to get you to +give yourself away so she could tell her alienists how crazy you are. +But if I had, Dick would have stayed, too. He never'd have gone, never +in the world. And he's so quarrelsome." + +"How do you know he's gone?" Raven asked. + +"Why, of course he has. He would, the minute he thought I had. Hasn't +he?" + +"Yes," said Raven, "he has. Nan, why the dickens do you treat him so? +You mean to take him in the end." + +"Do I?" asked Nan, still most contentedly. "Rookie, what a lot you know. +Wake me if you hear a step." + +"A step? Who's coming?" + +"Charlotte. I told her I was no more afraid than up in your west +chamber. Not so much: Dick and his mother can't pounce on me here. I +didn't say that though. Charlotte thinks I just came over for a freak; +but she's coming to stay with me." + +"You don't know what Charlotte thinks," said Raven succinctly. "She's +got a pretty accurate idea of all of us. You're not going to stay here. +That's flat. We'll blow out the candles in a minute or two and poke off +home." + +"This is home," said Nan and rubbed her cheek on his coat. "Darling +Rookie!" + +"You're running away from Milly," said Raven. "That's all right. I wish +I could myself. But what are you going to say when she finds the house +is open and you're here? I found it out and so can she. I was going by +and saw the light." + +"She won't go by and see the light," said Nan, from the same far +distance. "Consider those pumps. She won't go out. If she does, you must +just take her the other way. Head her off, Rookie, that's what you do, +head her off." + +"Do you know, Nan," said Raven, with a sudden resolution, "what Dick +feels about you: I mean, what makes him so sore and ugly? He told me." +(There was a slight disturbance on his shoulder. Nan seemed to be +shaking her head.) "He apparently can't get at you. There's something in +you that baffles him, puts him off. It makes him mad as thunder. You +won't let him in, Nan. You don't let him see you as you are." + +"Why, Rookie!" said Nan. She sat up straight and looked him in the face. +Her eyes were beautifully calm. If her clinging to him was against the +rules of this present life, nothing in her expression showed it. She was +really like a child used to being loved and innocently demanding it. +"Why, Rookie, Dick's not more than half grown up." + +"He writes," said Raven obstinately, aware of having really no argument. + +"What kinds of books? Conventional rot. Verse. Anybody could do it by +the yard. No, you needn't look like that. 'Course I couldn't! But +anybody that could write at all. You could, Rookie, only you wouldn't +have the face. You'd feel such a fool." + +"Of course it's conventional," said Raven, "his poetry is. But that's +natural enough. He belongs to the new school. You don't find him +conventional himself, do you? Too conventional?" + +"He's precisely like his mother," said Nan. She had the air of wanting +to account for him, once for all, and sweep him out of the way. "Only +she's conventional about waving her hair and uplift and belonging to +societies, and he's conventional about brotherhood and a new world and +being too broad-minded to be healthy. Don't you know there are crude +things in a man that have got to stay there, if he is a man? War, now! +if some beast goes out on a prowl (like Germany) the normal man doesn't +call it a herd madness and quote the New Testament. He gets his gun. So +did Dick get his gun, but now he thinks it's all over, he's too +broad-minded to live. Oh, you can laugh, Rookie, but there is such a +thing as being too superior to be decent, and that's Dick. The only time +I come anywhere near liking him is when he forgets to call the world a +fraternal sewing circle and comes out with a healthy damn. That's the +streak of you in him. Don't you know the nicest thing about him is the +streak of you?" + +Raven was not aware of knowing that, but he had to own, though silently, +that there was an exasperating three-quarters of Dick he himself could +not, of late years, get along with. Was it youth? he wondered. Yet Nan +was young. Who so sweetly sympathetic as Nan? + +"Let's not talk about him," said she. "Yes, a minute more, though. I've +sent off a letter to him. Charlotte was to give it to Jerry to mail on +the train. It told him I shouldn't tell where I was, and I certainly +shouldn't come back till he got his mother away from here. He'd simply +got to do it. I told him plainly." + +"And then you're going back? You promised him?" + +"I didn't promise him anything. Because, how could I? I don't know how +things are coming out. There's the woman." + +"What woman?" + +He asked this in a perfect good faith. + +"Mrs. Tenney." She withdrew from him slightly. If Tira made his heart +race, she wouldn't hear it. He should not be spied upon. "Don't you +know," said she clearly, "I've got to see this thing through?" + +"See it through?" he repeated. "You can't. She won't let you. She won't +let me." + +"Of course she won't let you. If the man's mad with jealousy, he won't +stand another man's supporting his wife." + +"I should very much doubt if she let you. She's got a loyalty--well, +it's the sort you read about when a brute breaks a woman and she says +she fell and hurt herself. It's been the surprise of my life that she +said a word to me." + +"That's easy," said Nan. "You're so awfully sorry for everybody. They +feel it in you. She thought you were an archangel." + +"An archangel!" groaned Raven. "Good Lord! Well, what do you propose +doing?" + +"Go over there to-morrow. Ask her to come here and help me get the house +in order." + +"Then what? Talk to her? You'll frighten her." + +But he knew Nan would frighten no one, not the least of the maimed and +spent. + +"No, but I thought maybe if things kept happening, I could take her back +with me to town, to work." + +"There's the child," suggested Raven. + +"Yes, that's a drawback," she owned seriously. "On the other hand, it's +an advantage. The child might be made the reason: to have somebody look +at him, you know. I suppose you saw he isn't quite right." + +"Not right? what do you mean? Deficient?" + +"I don't know," said Nan. "That or something. Deaf, maybe. But not +right. I hear something. It's Charlotte. Kiss me, Rookie. On my +forehead"--he did it--"on my forehead, on my right cheek, on my left +cheek, on my chin. No, that's all. That's good-night, Rookie--darling +Rookie! It is Charlotte. I'll let her in." + +She went to the door and opened it and Charlotte appeared, done up in an +old-fashioned shawl and--Raven noted in an amused incredulity--a +nondescript knitted thing, old-fashioned when he was a child. + +"A cloud," he said to himself. "That's what they called the thing." + +He felt absurdly thankful at seeing it again. It seemed to assure him +that although the surface of life might heave and sink with revolution +and the fate of dynasties, Charlotte and her equipment of bed-rock +integrity and clouds existed still. She paused in the doorway to take a +basket from Jerry, and closed the door on him, after a casual +good-night. Raven went into the hall. The basket was generous, in its +oval capacity, the contents covered with a napkin. + +"Want this carried upstairs?" he asked, but Charlotte shook her head. + +"No," she said. "It's for her breakfast. I shall be gone 'fore light." +She lifted her sincere gaze to Raven. "I thought I'd come over," she +added. "I shouldn't feel easy to have her here all alone. Jerry said he +wanted I should." + +Raven nodded at her and carried the basket off into the kitchen, and +when he came back both women were upstairs and he heard the interchange +of voices and their quick tread. + +"'Night, Rookie," Nan broke off her housewifely deeds to call, and he +called back: + +"Good night." + +Then he went out and home again, and fulfilled his destiny for the day +by another somnolent hour with Milly before the fire. + + + + +XIX + + +Nan and Charlotte, each in a front chamber, were soon cozily in warmed +sheets. But when Nan judged Charlotte must be asleep, she got up, put +more wood on the dying fire, slipped on her fur coat over a wrapper, did +up her knees in a blanket and sat down by the window she had not yet +opened, in anticipation of this hour of the silent night. Really she had +lived for it, ever since she entered the hut and found the strange +woman. The night at Raven's house had been as still as this, but there +were invisible disturbances in the air; they riddled her chamber through +and pierced her brain: what Amelia thought, what Dick thought. Here +there was only the calm island of Charlotte's beneficence, and even that +lay stiller than ever under the blanket of a tranquil sleep. She felt +alone in a world that wasn't troubling itself about her, because it +never troubled itself about anything. + +The moon was just up above the fringe of trees at the east and shadows +were black across the snow. She sat looking out with intentness as if +she were there at the window for the sole purpose of watching the silent +world, but really to get her mind in order for the next day and all the +coming days. She felt about the heart the strange dropping we know as +grief. No wonder the mortal creature, looking on at the commotions +within the frail refuge of his body, should have evolved the age-old +phrase that the heart bleeds. Nan's heart had been bleeding a long time. +There used to be drops on each shock of her meeting Raven after absence +and finding herself put away from the old childish state of delighted +possession. At first, she had believed this was one of the mysterious +cruelties of Aunt Anne's inexorable delicacy of behavior; but when she +grew older she had one day a great happy light of understanding, one of +those floods that sweep over youth after washing at the barriers of its +innocence. Rookie himself had put her away. It was one of the scrupulous +things he had done for her, because she had been too ignorant to do them +for herself. He had seen she was grown-up. It was true, Nan had to own, +that this was one of the lines, drawn across her life, that pleased Aunt +Anne most, because it removed her (or seemed to remove her) from Rookie. +Aunt Anne was jealous to her fingertips, the ends of those beautiful, +delicately prisoning hands. Nan had tried never to acknowledge that. It +always seemed such a barbarity to find in Aunt Anne the things that +would have shocked her in herself. + +To-night she looked it in the face. Aunt Anne was jealous. That was the +first count. All her own life, too, Nan had been vaguely irritated by +Raven's not marrying Aunt Anne. He was her property, wasn't he, in a +queer way, never questioned, never, on his part, rebelled against? Yet +it was a bondage. And if the real reason was that Aunt Anne wouldn't +have him, why didn't he play the man and batter down her scruples, even +that barrier of the years between them? But after that sudden look into +Raven's eyes, the night she told him about the will, she had never been +able to think of him as loving Aunt Anne at all. It was that horrible +compassion of his, she believed, that obedience of the male to the +weaker (and yet the stronger) principle of the demanding opposite. He +had always been in bondage through his affections, first to his mother, +then Aunt Anne, and then suddenly, terrifyingly, but most gloriously +because this was the only wildly spontaneous thing of all, to the +strange woman in the hut. He was innocent there, he was unthinking, he +didn't know what tale his eyes told of him. It wasn't earthly passion +they told. She had seen many things in her tumultuous life of the last +few years, this woman he called a child. The eyes told how his soul was +going down in a wreckage of worship of the charm that blooms in a few +women only, translated to him through the pity of this woman's wretched +state. Should she interpret him to himself? She could, without +offending. Rookie was sensitive to see, and she found her hand steady to +hold the torch. But there she saw herself slipping into Aunt Anne's +mandatory attitude, choking, dominating, sapping him, heart and brain. +It mustn't be done. It shouldn't. Rookie had had enough of spiritual +government. Above all, she wanted him to have his life: not the sterile +monotony of a man who renounced and served and deferred to managing +females. + +Had the woman any soul in her? If Rookie kidnaped her (and the child, it +would have to be, the doubtful child) would she pay in love for love, or +only an uncomprehending worship? One thing Nan had determined on, the +minute she opened her door to him this night and saw the quick concern +in his face and heard his tone in greeting: Rookie should feel there was +somebody in this disordered world who plainly adored him. If he could +believe that the better for her putting her cheek on his and loving him +to death, he should have it. Rookie should feel warm. As for her, she +was cold. She shivered there by the window and knew it was the inner +tremor of her nerves, for the fire still leaped and the room was +pulsing. "The amount of it is," said Nan to herself, "my heart's broken. +Oh, hang Aunt Anne!" Then she remembered Aunt Anne was dead. But she +would not have recalled the little missile hurled at the impalpable +ghost through the shade of removedness that enveloped her. Nan was +inexorable in standing for what she saw. + +In the morning she found the fires burning below stairs and her tray set +out, with cup and plate. Charlotte had gone. Nan felt the mounting of +spirit due a healthy body, with the new day, and made her toast and her +coffee with a great sense of the pleasure of it all. There was one +drawback. It was distinctly "no fair" to let Charlotte come over to +companion her at night when there was so much to do with the exigent +Amelia on board. But that must settle itself. If she could get Tira +(whom she also called "the woman" in her thoughts) to run away with her +to town, it could hardly be done too quickly. So immediately after her +breakfast she put on coat and hat and went "over to Tenney's," as the +country folk would put it. This was a day brightly blue, with mounting +warmth, the road a smoothness of packed snow. When she reached the +house, Tenney was just driving up to the side door in the sleigh, and +she rejoiced. It made her errand easier. He was going to town, and she +could see the woman alone. But immediately Tira, carrying the baby, a +little white lump in coat and hood, came out and stepped into the +sleigh. She, too, was going. Tenney waited while she settled herself and +tucked the robe about her. He was not solicitous, Nan saw, but the +typical country husband, soberly according her time to get herself and +the child "well fixed." Nan, waiting, her eyes on them, still halted +until they drove out, and nodded her good morning. Tenney drew up. His +sharp eyes signaled her. + +"I've got it in mind," he announced, "to have a prayer-meetin', come +Wednesday. I'm goin' to put up a notice in the post-office." + +He turned a reminding look on Tira who responded by what seemed to Nan +an unwilling confirmation: + +"You're invited to come." + +"You're all invited," said Tenney harshly, as if Tira had lagged in +urgency. "All on ye." + +"Thank you," said Nan, with a cheerful decisiveness. "I'll come." + +Tenney slapped the reins and they went on, to a jingling of bells thinly +melodious in the clear air, and Nan turned back to her house. How +beautiful she was, the strange woman, she thought, with a renewal of her +wonder over Tira, the calm majesty of her, the way she sat erect in the +old red sleigh as if she were queen of a triumphal progress, the sad +inscrutability of her wonderful eyes, the mouth with its evasive curves; +how would an artist indicate them delicately enough so that you kept +them in your memory as she saw herself doing, and were yet not able to +say whether it was the indented corner or the full bow? She found +herself remembering poetic lines about Grecian Helen, and then recalling +herself to New England and the unlikelihood of such bewitchingness. +There couldn't be a woman so compact of mystery and unconsidered +aloofness, and yet beauty, beauty to the bone. + +When the Tenneys drove by Raven's, each with face set forward, not +looking at the house, Raven was in the kitchen consulting Charlotte +about supplies. Jerry, also, was going to town, for, imperious even in +her unspoken needs, Amelia would have to be delicately fed. Charlotte, +hearing the bells, glanced absently at the window and Raven's eyes +followed. He felt his heart give a little added start, of relief, he +knew. At least Tenney wouldn't stop the horse and brain his wife on the +road. + +"There's the Tenneys," said Charlotte. "That's a queer kind of a woman, +that wife he's got." + +"Why is she?" Raven demanded. + +Whatever Charlotte felt, he must pluck it out of her. It was sure to be +true. + +She spoke thoughtfully, as if reviewing what was not altogether clear in +her own mind. + +"I dunno's I know. But she's so kind o' quiet. Pleasant enough, but you +al'ays feel as if she's a mile off." + +Yes, Raven owned to himself, Charlotte was right. That was the way he +felt, only it was not one mile but many miles off. + +"That baby, too," said Charlotte, her brows knitted, as if the whole +thing troubled her. "The baby ain't right." + +Just what Nan said. What witchery women had! + +"What's the matter with the baby?" he asked, and was nettled at the +roughness of his voice. + +Charlotte shook her head and seemed to shake off perplexed imaginings. + +"I dunno," she said again. "But suthin' is. An' that's the queer part +on't. You never'd know whether Mis' Tenney knows it or whether she +don't. But there!" Then her mind settled to its task. "No, you couldn't +git sweet-breads this time o' year, up here anyways. They don't kill." + +Raven, after the consultation was over and Charlotte had explained the +ease with which she could pack a hamper of hot dishes to carry over to +Nan, "come one o'clock," went to his social task in the library where +Amelia sat at the drowsy rite of warming her toes. He had a more or less +relaxed feeling with Amelia now; she had shot her bolt and sprung her +mine and could hardly have more in hiding. But she had, the completest +shock possible. She sat with her eyes fixed on the doorway, waiting, and +her question was ready: + +"John, what do you know about Uncle John? Great-uncle, of course I +mean." + +Raven advanced into the room and chose a seat by the window. Amelia, +still thinly clad above and ineffectually baking herself, made him +irrationally want to get away from fires. + +"Old Crow?" he asked. + +"Why, yes, if you want to call him that. I suppose that's what the +country people did call him." + +"Why," said Raven slowly, getting his recollections in order, prepared +to give her what was good for her and no more, "I suppose there's no +doubt he was an eccentric. He built the hut up there and moved into it +and finally went over the countryside doctoring, in an unscientific +way--and praying--and finally hauled in Billy Jones, a sort of old rake +they thought of sending to the poor farm, and took care of him till he +died. Billy was a tank. When we were little, there used to be stories we +got hold of about the way Billy's legs swelled. One of the boys 'down +along' told me he'd been up there and looked into the hut and Billy sat +there in a chair with his legs bandaged and the water dripping through +to the floor. We all wished our legs would drip. We thought it was +great. Mother wouldn't let me go up there after old Billy went into +residence. But we boys kept on hearing about him. I've no doubt we got +most of the salient points." + +He was giving her more than was good for her, after all. Amelia wouldn't +like this. She didn't like it. + +"Shocking!" she commented, shaking her head in repudiation. + +"I've thought since," said Raven, partly in musing recollection and +perhaps a little to show her what she got by fishing for old memories, +"Billy had cirrhosis of the liver. As I said, Billy was a tank." + +"We needn't go into the question of Jones," said Amelia, with dignity. +"He doesn't concern us. It was a perfectly unjustifiable thing for Uncle +John to do, this taking him into his own house and nursing him. +Perfectly. But it only shows how unbalanced Uncle John really was." + +"Call him Old Crow, Milly," Raven interrupted her, resolved she should +accept the picture as it was if she were bent on any picture at all. +"Everybody knew him by that: just Old Crow. At first, I suppose it was +the country way of trying to be funny over his name, as soon as he got +funny to them with his queerness. And then, after he'd gone round +nursing the sick and praying with the afflicted, they may have put real +affection into it. You can't tell. You see, Milly, Old Crow was a +practical Christian. From all I've heard, he was about the only one you +and I've ever met." + +"He was certainly not normal," said Amelia ingenuously, and while Raven +sat rolling that over in his delighted mind and getting the full logic +of it, she continued: "Do you know, John, he was a very commanding man, +very handsome really? You look like him." + +"Much obliged, Milly," said Raven. He was smiling broadly at her. His +eyes--the crinkles about them multiplied--withdrew in a way that always +made her uneasy, she was so unlikely, at such times, to guess what he +was thinking about. In another instant he was to inform her. It all came +over him, in a wave. He gasped under the force of it and then he roared +with laughter. "By George, Milly," he cried, "I've got you. As the +Scotch say (or are said to say) I hae it noo. Old Crow was dotty and my +nose is like Old Crow's. So I'm dotty, too." + +"I think," said Amelia, with dignity, "any specialist, if you could only +be persuaded to put your case into his hands, would inquire very closely +into family traits. And you and I, John, ought to help him by tabulating +everything we can." + +"Sure!" said Raven, relapsing into a vulgarism likely to set her teeth +on edge and possibly, in the spasm of it, close them momentarily on +reminiscence. "I'm willing to let you in for all I know about Old Crow. +To tell the truth, I'm rather proud of him myself." + +Charlotte was passing through the hall and Amelia called to her. + +"Charlotte, a minute, please. You know our uncle, Mr. John Raven." + +"Old Crow, Charlotte," Raven reminded her, seeing she needed prompting, +not yet guessing where the question was to lead. Curiously, he thought, +it was Milly's exasperating fate to put everybody on guard. But it was +inevitable. When you had a meddler in the family, you never knew where +you'd have to head her off. + +"What," continued Amelia, "has become of Uncle John's books?" + +"His books?" interrupted Raven, himself off the track now, "what the +deuce do you want with Old Crow's books?" + +"Where are they?" Amelia continued, now turning to him. "There's +something somewhere--a book--I know it perfectly well--and we've got to +have it. It came to me in the night." + +"What was it?" asked Raven. "Old Crow was rather a bookish chap, I +fancy, in a conventional way. I've got some of his stuff up in the hut: +rather academic, the kind daguerreotyped young men with high stocks used +to study by one candle. What do you suspect--a will, or a love-letter +slipped in behind a cover and forgotten? It can't be a will. Old Crow +didn't have anything to leave." + +Amelia's hands trembled a little. A brighter rose had encircled the +permanent red of her cheeks. She was, Raven saw with curiosity, much +excited. + +"There was certainly a book," she said, "a mottled blank book a third +full of writing. It was a sort of journal. I was in the room when mother +brought it from the hut and passed it to father to look at. He'd just +come down from your room. You were ill, you know: diphtheria. Mother +passed it to him without a word, the way people do when there are +children in the room. He looked at it and then at her, and they nodded. +I was little, you know, but I saw it was important, and I listened. And +father said: 'No, it won't do to have it lying around. I'll carry it up +attic and put it in the red chest.' That's what I mean, Charlotte," she +continued, turning to Charlotte, who stood with a frown of concentration +on her smooth forehead. "You know that old red chest, the one where +uncle's book was put." + +"Oh, yes," said Charlotte. "I know the old chest." + +"Well," said Amelia conclusively, having made her point, "then you go up +attic, will you, and open the chest, take out the blank book and bring +it down." + +"Nonsense!" said Raven. "Charlotte's got her hands full. I'll run up by +and by." + +Charlotte gave him a serious, perhaps a warning look, he remembered +afterward, and went out of the room. + +"You recall it, don't you," Amelia continued, "how you had diphtheria +after Uncle John's death, and father had it next week." + +"Yes," said Raven, tasting the unchanged bitterness of an old misery. + +That had been one of the points where his life turned. His father had +taken the infection from him and nearly died, and the child he was then +had never been able to escape a shuddering belief that he might have +been guilty of his father's death. That had made him turn the more +passionately to the task of lightening his mother's burden in the wild +anxiety he had caused her. Poor little boy, he thought, poor little +fool! Making his life a business of compensating somebody for something, +and never, until these later years, even seeing the visible path his own +feet should have taken. He forgot Amelia and showed himself so absent +that she got huffy and fell into silence and only when he left the room +did she remind him: + +"Don't forget the journal. You'd better run up and look for it now." + +He did go upstairs, really with an idea it might be best to run over the +journal before Amelia pounced on it and turned it, in some manner, to +his own undoing. At the head of the stairs stood Charlotte, waiting. One +hand was under her apron. She stepped silently into his room, tacitly +inviting him to follow, and brought out the hand and the mottled book. + +"Here," she said. "Here 'tis. You lay it away safe some'r's. Don't seem +to me I'd let anybody see it, if I's you, till you've been over it +yourself." + +Raven, with a nod of understanding, took the book, put it into his desk +drawer and turned the key, and Charlotte hurried away to her kitchen. +When he went downstairs again, he found Amelia at the open door. She was +all an excitement of anticipation. + +"Law, Milly," said he, in the country phrasing he loved to use to her +when she was most securely on her high horse of the cultured life, "you +look as nervous as a witch." + +"Where is it?" said Amelia, beating a tattoo of impatience, with one +hand, on the door. "You've been up attic, haven't you?" + +"Bless you, no," said Raven. "I can't go up attic now. I've got to do an +errand for Charlotte." This was true. Nan's dinner had to be carried +over. "You run up, there's a good girl. Give you something to do. No! +no!" She was turning toward the kitchen. "Don't you go bothering +Charlotte. I won't have it. Cut along." + +And Amelia did, in a dignified haste, to show him how journals were +found, and later, when the moment came, Raven went with his hot hamper +to Nan's. + +She met him at the door, no such overflowing Nan as last night, but +serenely practical and quite settled into the accustomed comforts of her +house. + +"I'm as hungry as a bear," said she. "Come through to the kitchen. I eat +in there. The only drawback to this, Rookie, is that it takes it out of +Charlotte. Still, it won't last long, and I'll give her a kiss and a +blue charmeuse. That would pay anybody for anything." + +They unpacked the basket together, and Nan, her plate and knife and fork +ready on a napkin, began to eat. Raven sat down at the other end of the +table. + +"I wish you'd stay," he said, watching her in her pretty haste. "I don't +mean here: over with me. Come on, Nan. Amelia's settled down for good. +She won't bother you--much. Anyhow, you can run off up to the hut." + +Then he remembered what other fugitive she might find at the hut, and +saw she, too, remembered. Her words came pat upon it. + +"The Tenneys are going to have a prayer-meeting Wednesday night." + +"A prayer-meeting!" He heard himself echoing it incredulously. + +"Yes, and you're to take me, Rookie. Don't scowl. I've got to see that +man when he worships his idols, and you've got to see him, too. His god +must be an idol: burnt offerings, that sort of thing. Perhaps that's +what he's doing it all for: offering her up, as a kind of sacrifice. His +wife, I mean. What's her name, Rookie?" + +"Thyatira," said Raven, and got up, his mind suddenly dense to the +comfortable picture of Nan and her dinner, and went home. + + + + +XX + + +The next few days went by, all alike cloudless and uneventful within the +house. Nan coaxed Charlotte into bringing her over meat and vegetables, +and, with a plea of liking it, cooked them herself. Raven swung back and +forth between the houses, but Nan found him silent and, she decided, +cross. Every day he went up to the hut to see whether the fire had been +lighted, and every day found the place in its chilly order. It seemed to +him as if the whole tragic background against which Tira had been moving +had been wiped away by some wide sweeping sponge of oblivion, as if he +had dreamed the story or at least its importance in his own life, as if +Nan had always been living alone in her house, and Amelia, tied up in +Charlotte's aprons, her lips compressed in implacable resolution, always +going through trunks in the attic, searching for a mottled book. He had +no compunction over Amelia. Let her search, he thought, when Charlotte +came to him with a worried brow and asked if he didn't think he could +put it somewheres in sight, so's 't she should know 'twas no use. Do her +good. If she didn't like it she could go back to her clubs and her +eugenics and her Freudians. And when the evening of the prayer-meeting +came he looked out at the brilliant weather, judged that the immediate +region might seize upon it as an excuse for sleigh-riding, and was +returning to his book for a brief minute more, when Amelia called from +the window: + +"Three sleighs! Where can they be going?" + +"Oh," said Raven, without raising his eyes from the page, "sleighing, +most likely." + +But the minute she left the window, he put down his book, got his hat +and coat from the hall, and went out through the kitchen where Charlotte +was sponging bread. + +"Going to the meeting?" he asked her. + +"No," said Charlotte, absorbedly dissolving her yeast cake. "I never +take much stock in----" There she paused, lest she might be uncharitably +expansive, and found refuge in Jerry. "He says Isr'el Tenney ain't so +much of a man, when all's said an' done, an' don't seem as if he could +stan' seein' him on his knees. But there!" + +Raven went on through the shed and up the road, to Nan's. She had seen +him from the window and came down the path. + +"Knew I'd come, did you?" he grumbled. + +"Yes," said Nan. "We'd really better go." + +Raven hated it all, out of his element as he was, going to spy on Tenney +and hear him pray. What other reason was there? He and Nan simply wanted +to search out the reactions in Tenney's spiritual insides in order to +defeat him the more neatly. + +The house was brightly lighted downstairs. Six or eight sleighs stood in +the shelter of the long open shed at right angles to the barn. The +horses had been taken in and blanketed. When Raven and Nan arrived, no +one else was outside, and he was about to knock when Nan, who remembered +the ways of neighborhood prayer-meetings, opened the door and stepped +in. Men and women were seated in a couple of rows about the walls of the +two front rooms, and Tenney stood in the square entry beside a table +supplied with a hymn-book, a Bible, and a lamp. He had the unfamiliar +aspect of a man reduced to discomfort of mind by the strictures of a +Sunday suit. His eyes were burning and his mouth compressed. What did +they mean, that passion of the distended pupil, that line of tightened +lip? Was it the excitement of leadership, the responsibility of being +"in charge" of the solemn convention of prayer-meeting? It was the face, +Nan thought, of one who knew the purposes of God from the first word of +creation to the last, and meant to enforce them by every mastery known +to man: persuasion, rage, and cruelty. She gave him a good evening and +he jerked his head slightly in response. The occasion was evidently too +far out of the common to admit of ordinary greetings. A man and woman +just inside the doorway of the front room moved along, and signed Raven +and Nan to take their vacated seats. As soon as they were settled Tenney +began to "lead in prayer," and Raven, his mind straying from the words +as negligible and only likely to increase his aversion to the man, sat +studying the furnishings of the room, a typical one, like all the +parlors of the region from the time of his boyhood to that of his father +and Old Crow. There was the center table with the album and three red +volumes of Keepsakes and Garlands, a green worsted mat, hopefully +designed to imitate moss, and on the depression in its center the astral +lamp. On the wall opposite were pictures of Tenney's father and mother, +painful enlargements from stiff photographs, and on the neighboring wall +a glazed framing of wax flowers and a hair wreath. The furniture was +black walnut upholstered with horsehair. Tenney was of the more +prosperous line of farmers. And yet he had not begun so. All this +represented the pathetic ideal of one who toiled and saved and bought +after the fashion of his type. + +Raven's eyes strayed to the faces about him: these were the younger set, +boys and girls from sixteen to twenty. The first two or three had, by +chance perhaps, dropped into this room and the rest gravitated shyly to +it. There was always a line of cleavage at prayer-meeting, as at teas +and "socials," between old and young. Raven was glad he had chosen the +room at random. He liked the atmosphere of half-awed, half-tittering +youth. They were always on the verge, always ready to find hilarity in +untoward circumstance, and yet trained to a respect for meeting, doing +their conventional best. What hard red cheeks there were, what great +brown hands of boys, awkwardly holding hats, and yet, taken into the +open, how unerringly they gripped the tasks that fell to them. All of +them, boys and girls alike, were staring at him and Nan: at Nan with a +frank admiration, the girls perhaps with envy. At the corner of the room +corresponding to his own, two chairs had been left vacant, and when his +eyes came to them he saw a blue scarf depending from the back of one; it +had been dropped when the occupant of the chair had left it. It was +Tira's chair, and Tira herself appeared from the door opposite, leading +from the kitchen, crossed the room, took the scarf and wrapped it about +her shoulders and sat down. She had been called out, perhaps in response +to a cry from the child who seemed to be the center of commotion in this +house, though so mysteriously inactive. Raven felt the blood mounting to +his face, she was so movingly beautiful in this scene of honest but +unlovely mediocrity. Even her walk across the room, unconscious of +herself, yet with the rhythmic step of high processionals--how strange a +part she was of this New England picture! He could not see her now, +without turning, and tried to summon his mind home from her, to fix it +on Tenney, who, having finished his prayer, was calling on one and +another, with an unction that seemed merely a rejoicing tyranny, for +testimony. It was a scene of tension. Church members were timid before +the ordeal of experience or pleading, and the unconverted were strained +to the verge of hysteria over a prospect of being haled into the open +and prayed for. Neither Raven nor Nan knew how unpopular Tenney had +become, because he could not enter the conventional limits of a +prayer-meeting without turning it into something too tense, too +exciting, the atmosphere of the revival. Yet, though his fellow +Christians blamed him for it, they sought it like a drug. He played on +their unwilling nerves and they ran to be played on. He was their opera, +their jazz. Breath came faster and eyes shone. The likelihood of a +hysterical giggle was imminent, and some couples, safely out of range of +Tenney's gaze, were "holding hands" and mentally shuddering at their own +temerity. + +Now he was telling his own religious experience, with a mounting fervor +ready to froth over into frenzy. Raven, turning slightly, regarded him +with a cold dislike. This was the voice that had echoed through the +woods that day when Tira stood, her baby in her arms, in what chill of +fear Raven believed he knew. Tenney went on lashing himself into the +ecstasy of his emotional debauch. His eyes glittered. He was happy, he +asserted, because he had found salvation. His conversion was akin to +that of Saul. To his immense spiritual egotism, Raven concluded, nothing +short of a story colossally dramatic would serve. He had been a sinner, +perhaps not as to works but faith. He had kept the commandments, all but +one. Had he loved the Lord his God with all his heart, all his soul, all +his might? No: for he had not accepted the sacrifice the Lord God had +prepared for him, of His only Son. That Son of God had been with him +everywhere, in his down-sittings and his uprisings, as He was with every +man and woman on earth. But, like other sinful men and women, he had not +seen Him. He had not felt Him. But He was there. And one day he was +hoeing in the field and a voice at his side asked: "Why persecutest thou +me?" He looked up and saw----Here he paused dramatically, though Raven +concluded it was simply because he found himself at a loss to go on. He +had appropriated the story, but he was superstitiously afraid to +embroider it. For he (Raven gave him that credit) honestly believed in +his self-evolved God. + +"And then," said Tenney, in a broken voice, tears trickling down his +cheeks, "the voice said to me: 'Go ye out and preach the gospel.'" + +The front door opened and a little answering breeze flickered in the +flame of the lamp. A girl near Nan, her nerves on edge, gave a cry. A +man stepped in and closed the door behind him. He was a figure of +fashion evolved from cheap models and flashy materials. Tall, quick in +his movements, as if he found life a perpetual dance and +self-consciously adapted himself to it, with mocking blue eyes, red hair +and a long nose bent slightly to one side, he was, in every line and +act, vulgar, and yet so arrogantly bent on pleasing that you +unconsciously had to acknowledge his intention and refrain from turning +your back on him. He looked at Tenney in a calculated good humor, +nodded, had his great coat off with a quick gesture, and slung it over +his arm. Then he stepped past Tenney, who stood petrified as if he saw +the risen dead, and into the room. This was Eugene Martin. He seemed not +to be in the least subdued to the accepted rules of prayer-meeting, but +nodded and smiled impartially, and, as if he had flashed that look about +for the one niche waiting for him, stepped lightly over to Tira's corner +and took the chair at her side. Raven, from the tragic change in +Tenney's face, knew who he was and bent forward to see what Tira's eyes +would tell. She was, it seemed, frozen into endurance. Martin, in +seating himself, had given her a cordial good evening. She did not +answer, nor did she look at him. Her pale lips did not move. Nor did +she, on the other hand, withdraw from him. The chairs had been pushed +close, and, as she sat upright, scarcely moving a muscle with her +breath, the blue scarf touched his shoulder. Raven withdrew his gaze, +not to make the moment in any sense conspicuous, and, feeling the +silence, turned to Tenney to see if his leadership could surmount this +base assault. The assault was premeditated. The gay insolence of the +man's manner told him that. Tenney stood there silent, flaccid, a hand +on the casing of the door. Every vestige of religious excitement had +left his face. His overthrow was complete, and Raven, judging how Martin +must rejoice, was for the moment almost as sorry for Tenney as for his +wife. The little disturbance had lasted only a moment, but now all eyes +were turning on Tenney, who had ceased to "lead." In another minute the +eyes would be curious, the silence would be felt. As Raven wondered what +would break the evil spell, Nan's voice came out clear, untinged by the +prevailing somberness, warm with the confidence of youth: + +"Can't we sing one of the nice old hymns? Coronation! That's got such a +swing to it." + +She began it, and the young voices broke in pell-mell after her like a +joyous crowd, seeing a vine-clad procession, and losing no time in +joining for fear of losing step. Raven knew perfectly well the great old +hymn was no matter for a passionately remorseful, sin-laden meeting of +this sort. Nan knew it, too. He was sure she had not ventured it for the +protection of Tira. No one had ever told Nan about the man with the +devil in him who "looked up kinder droll." But she could see the tide of +human emotion had better be turned to the glorification of God than to +the abasement of man. Raven, in the swell of it, put his lips to her ear +and whispered: + +"I'm going to ask you to change your seat." + +She gave no sign of having heard, but sang on, in a delightful volume, +to "Crown Him Lord of all." The moment the last note died, Raven came to +his feet. He addressed Tenney: + +"One minute. There's a draught here by the door." + +He went over to Martin, Nan following: + +"Do you mind sitting by the door?" he asked the man. "There's a good +deal of a draught." + +Martin, his surprised look at Nan changing to a ready gallantry, got up +at once. + +"Anything," said he, "to oblige a lady." + +Nan sat down and Raven and Martin took the seats by the door. There, +too, Martin had advantage of a sort. He could stare down Tenney at short +range, and this he did with a broad smile. Tenney, Raven concluded, was +down and out. His comb was cut. Whatever passions might stir in him +later--however, in reviewing the scene, he might rage over the disturber +of his peace--now his spiritual leadership had passed from him and the +prayer-meeting itself was quashed. An air of curiosity hung over it. Two +or three of the older men and women in the other room offered testimony +and one man, the old clock-mender from the other side of the mountain, +who swore with a free tongue about his secular affairs, but always wept +when he went through the observance he called approaching the throne, +knelt and prayed in a high voice through sobs. This lightened the +atmosphere. No one ever regarded this performance seriously. He was the +comic relief. On his Amen, Nan (blessed Nan! thought Raven) proposed: + +"Let's sing again." + +"No!" said Tenney. He had got back his self-assertiveness. Raven could +guess his jealous anger, the tide of fury coming, flooding the stagnant +marshes of his soul. "I want to hear one more testimony. Thyatira +Tenney, get up and tell what God has done for you." + +Tira gave a start so violent that the blue scarf fell from her shoulders +and one end of it lay over Nan's arm. She did get up. She rose slowly +and stood there looking straight before her, eyes wide and dark, her +hands clasped. Her stiff lips moved. She did piteously, Raven saw, try +to speak. But she could not manage it and after the long moment she sank +back into her seat. Nan placed the blue scarf about her shoulders, +carefully, as if the quiet concern of doing it might tell the woman +something--that she was companioned, understood--and, one hand on the +knot of Tira's clasped fingers, began to sing. She sang the Doxology, +and after that, through unbreakable custom, the meeting was over and you +had to go home. Men and women came to their feet, there were greetings +and good nights and about Nan gathered a group of those who remembered +her. But she kept her left hand on Tira's, and after the others had gone +she said something quickly to the woman who stood, looking dead tired, +uttering mechanical good nights. Martin, with a jovial good night to +Tenney, had hurried off at once. + +"See you later," he called back to him at the door, and Tenney looked +after him with the livid concentration of a man who sends his curse +forward to warn where it is not yet time for a blow. A laughing group +followed Martin. There were girls who, horrified at the implications +that hung about his name, were yet swayed by his dashing gallantry, and +young men who sulkily held the girls back, swearing under their breath. +Tira broke loose from Nan and went, fast as running water, through the +room, to the back of the house. Raven made no pretense of saying good +night to Tenney. He forgot it, forgot Tenney, save as an element of +danger to be dealt with later. On the doorstep he stopped with Nan, in +the seclusion of the moment while the others were bringing out horses +and putting them into the sleighs. + +"We can't leave her here with him," he said. + +"What was the matter?" Nan returned as quickly. "What happened? That +man?" + +"Yes. The one he's jealous of. We can't leave her here." + +"No use," said Nan. "She won't go. I asked her, told her I was living +over at the house alone, wanted company. No use. She wouldn't go." + +"She must go." + +"She won't, I tell you. Then I asked if she'd let me stay over here and +she said no. She said----" + +"What?" urged Raven when she stopped. + +"I almost can't tell, it's so pathetic. Just a word--three words: 'You +don't know.' Then she stopped. Just that: 'You don't know.'" + +Raven gave a little sound she could not bear, a breath, a curse--what +was it? Anyway, the breaking impatience of a helpless man. He did not +stir. He meant, she saw, to stay there, doggedly stay, on the step, to +await what happened. She put her hand through his arm. + +"Come," she said authoritatively, "let's walk up the road and drop in +again when they've all gone. It's no use staying now." + +That, he saw, was wise, and they went out into the road, waited a moment +for the sleighs just starting, and then walked away from home. Some of +the people were singing "camp-meeting hymns," and there was one daring +burst of "Good night, ladies," and a chorused laugh. Prayer-meeting at +Tenney's was not, Raven concluded, regarded much more seriously than +Charlotte had foreseen. The bells jingled off into the distance. The +horses were bent on home. As if the sound only had torn up the night +into shreds of commotion, so now the bits of silence drew together into +a web and the web covered them. Nan, in spite of the perplexed question +of Tira, could have settled under the web, there with Raven, as under +wings. But he was hot with impatience. They had gone half a mile +perhaps, when he stopped. + +"Come back," he said. "I've got to know." + +Nan turned with him and they went on in silence but very fast. Once or +twice she was about asking him not to take such long steps, but she set +her teeth and swung forward. In front of Tenney's they stopped. The +rooms were lighted. The house was still. Raven drew a deep breath. What +he had expected he did not know, whether calls for help or Tenney's +voice of the woods shouting, "Hullo!" This, at any rate, was a reprieve. + +"Come on," he said. "I'll take you home and then come back." + +Again Nan stepped out in time. No use, she thought, to beg him to let +her come, too. But she could come back. Women were useful, she knew, +with their implied terrors and fragility, in holding up certain sorts of +horror. Nan was willing to fight, if need were, with all the weapons of +her sex. In the road in front of her own house, was Charlotte, waiting +for them. Nan left Raven, put a hand on Charlotte's arm, and called her +"Ducky." + +"You won't come in?" she said to Raven. "Don't you think you'd better. +Half an hour or so?" + +"Not a minute," said Raven. "Good night." + +He left them and after a few striding steps was aware of Charlotte, +calling him. She came up and spoke his name. + +"I've just met that woman." + +"What woman?" he asked impatiently. + +"Tira Tenney. With the baby. This time o' night." + +"Where?" + +"Front o' the house, just as I come out." + +"Then she was coming there," he burst forth. "Too bad! too bad! Didn't +you know that? Didn't you ask her in?" + +"Yes," said Charlotte, "I asked her in an' she said no, she was goin' +down along. An' I stood an' watched her an' she turned off up the rise +into the woods." + +So it had begun, the terror, the flight. She was going to the hut and, +for some reason, not the back way. + +"There's somethin' 'tain't right," Charlotte was beginning, but he +seized her wrist and held it. To keep her attention, or to feel the +touch of something kindly and warm? + +"Yes," he said, "something's wrong. Don't tell, Charlotte. Not a +word--not to Nan or Jerry or--above all not to Tenney. I'll see to it." + +He left her and hurried loping along the road, almost at a run, and +Charlotte went in to Nan. + + + + +XXI + + +Raven passed his house and turned into the wood road. There he did not +slacken, but took the rise at a great gait. He was at the hut a moment +after Tira: she had had time for neither light nor fire. + +"It's Raven," he called. She did not come, and he added: "I'm alone. Let +me in." + +Waiting there at the door, he had time to note the stillness of the +woods, the creak of a branch now and then, and the half-drawn sigh from +the breeze you hardly felt. At the instant of his beginning to wonder +whether she might have fallen there from a hurt or whether she was even +terrified of him, he heard the sound of the key and the door opened. He +stepped in and her hand was at once on the key. She turned it and melted +noiselessly into the dark of the room, and he followed her. + +"No fire!" he reproached her, or perhaps himself, for it seemed, in the +poignancy of his tenderness, as if he should have had it burning night +and day. He set a match to the kindling and the flame answered it. She +had taken one of the chairs at the hearth and he saw, in the leaping +light, that she had put the child on the couch and covered him. She was +shuddering all over, shaking horribly, even her lips, and he went into +the bedroom, came back with a blanket and wrapped it about her. She held +it close, in that humble way she had of trying to spare him trouble, +indeed to make no confusion in the world she found so deranged already. +He remembered the chartreuse she had once refused and took it down from +the high cupboard, poured a little and set the glass in her shaking +hand, and, when the muscles did not answer, put it to her lips. + +"It won't hurt you," he said. "Down it." + +She drank, and the kindly fire of it warmed her. She looked up at him, +and what she said was more unexpected than anything he could have +imagined: + +"Do you believe it?" + +"Believe what?" + +He could only guess she meant something connected with Tenney's madness +of suspicion and the devil of a man. + +"What he said." She was looking at him with intensity, as if life and +death lay in his answer. "He said He was there to-night, there in the +room. Do you believe that?" + +"Who was there?" Raven prompted her, and the immediate reply staggered +him. + +"Jesus Christ." + +He temporized. + +"I've no doubt he believed it," he said, unwilling to speak Tenney's +name. It was doubly hateful to him at the moment of her being so +patently undone. He could only think she was trying to reconcile the +ugly contrast between her husband's expressed faith and his insane +action. "I'm sure he thought so." + +"That ain't what I mean," she hesitated, and he began to see how her +mind was striving in an anguish of interrogation. "What he +thinks--that's neither here nor there. What I want to know is whether +it's _so_. If there's Somebody"--she clasped her hands on her knees and +looked up at him, mutely imploring him who was so wise in books and life +to help her striving mind--"if there's Somebody that cares--that died +over it, He cared so much--if He's round here everywhere--if He sees it +all--an' feels terrible, same as we do ourselves--why, then it's +different." + +"What's different?" Raven asked, out of his fog. + +She was demanding something of him and he felt, in a sickness of +despair, that it was something he couldn't give her because he hadn't it +himself. Tenney could read her the alphabet of comfort, though he was +piling on her those horrors of persecution that made her hungry for it. + +"Why," she said, and the light and a bloom of something ineffable swept +over her face, changing its tragic mystery from the somberness of the +Fates to the imagined youthful glory of the angels, "if He's here all +the time, if He's in the room when things happen to us, an' wishes He +could stop it an' can't because"--again her mind labored and she saw she +had come up against the mysterious negatives of destiny--"anyways, He +would if He could--an' He knows how we feel inside when we feel the +worst, an' cares, cares same as----" here she was inarticulate. But she +turned for an instant toward the couch where the child lay, and her face +was the mother face. She meant, he knew, as she cared for her child. +"Why, then," she continued, "there wouldn't be anything to fret about, +ever. You never'd be afraid, not if you was killed, you wouldn't. You'd +know there was Somebody in the room." + +This was the most deeply considered speech of her whole life. The last +words, ingenuous as a child's unconscious betrayal, tore at him as, he +suddenly thought, it would be if he saw a child tortured and in fear: as +if he saw Nan. They told him how desperately lonesome and undefended she +had felt. + +"An' don't you see," she concluded, with the brightness of happy +discovery, "even if you was killed, what harm would it do you? He'd be +waitin'. You'd go with Him. Wherever it is He lives, you'd go." + +Raven turned abruptly, walked to a window and stood there looking into +the dark. The challenge of her face was impossible to bear. Suppose she +asked him again if he believed it? Did he believe in a God made man? By +no means. He believed in one God, benevolent, he had once assumed, but +in these latter years too well hidden behind His cloud for man to say. +Did the old story of a miraculous birth and an atonement move him even +to a desire to believe? It repelled him rather? What, to his honest +apprehension, was the God made man? An exemplar, a light upon the path +of duty, as others also had been. Had the world gone wrong, escaped from +its mysterious Maker, and did it need to be redeemed by any such +dramatic remedy? No, his God, the God who made, could not botch a job +and be disconcerted at the continuing bad results of His handiwork. The +only doubt about his God was whether He was in any degree benevolent. +When he reflected that He had made a world full to the brim of its cup +of bitterness, he sometimes, nowadays, thought not. All this swept +through his mind in a race of thoughts that had run on that course +before, and again he heard her and knew she was pulling him back to the +actual issue as it touched herself. + +"You tell me," she was calling him. Her voice insisted. He did not turn, +but he knew her face insisted even more commandingly. "You know. There's +nothin' you don't know. Is it true?" + +Nothing he didn't know! The irony of that was so innocently piercing +that he almost broke into a laugh. Nan was right then. Tira did regard +him, if not as an archangel, as something scarcely less authoritative. +He turned and went back to the fire, threw on an armful of sticks, and +stood looking into the blaze. + +"What makes you say that?" he asked her. "What makes you think I know?" + +"Why," said she, in a patent surprise, "'course you know. I've always +heard about you, writin' books an' all. An' that's the kind you be, too. +You're"--she paused to marshal her few words and ended in an awed +tone--"you're that way, too. When folks are in trouble, you're so sorry +it 'most kills you." + +This was a blow staggering enough to hit his actual heart and stop it +for a beat. What if he should say to her: "Yes, I do care. I care when +you are hurt. I don't know about the God made man, but isn't my caring +enough for you?" + +Then bitter certainties cut in and told him it wouldn't do. She had +learned her world lesson too terribly well. It would be only another +case of man's pursuing, promising--what had they promised in the past? +And after all, he thought recklessly, what did the private honor of his +testifying yes or no amount to anyway? What moral conceit! To save his +own impeccable soul by denying a woman the one consolation that would +save her reason. + +"Yes, Tira," he said quietly, and did not know he had used her name, +"it's all true." + +She gave a little sound, half sob, half ecstatic breath, and he saw she +had not been sure he would yield her the bright jewel she had begged of +him. + +"True!" she said, in the low tone of an almost somnolently brooding +calm. "All of it! Everywhere!" + +"Yes," said Raven steadily, "everywhere." + +"Over there where He was born, here!" That seemed to amaze her to a +glory of belief. "Why, if He's everywhere, He's here, too." + +"Yes," said Raven. He loved his task now. He was putting her sorrows to +sleep. "He's here, too." + +At that moment, incredibly, it seemed to him that a difference pervaded +the place, or at least that his eyes had been opened to a something +unsuspected, dwelling in all things. Did he, his unchanged mind asked +him, actually believe what he had not believed before? No, the inner +core of him signaled back to his mind. His belief had not changed. Yet +indubitably something had happened and happened blessedly, for it +brought her peace. Tira gave a little laugh, a child's laugh of +surprised content. He glanced at her. She was looking into the fire and +the haggardness of her face had softened. It was even, under the warmth +of the flames and her own inner delight, absorbed and dreamy. And Raven +knew he must wake her, and, he hoped, without flawing the dream, to +present action. + +"Now," he said, "I want you to come with me down to Nan's"--still he +dared not put her off a step from the intimacy of neighborly relations +by presenting Nan more formally--"and spend the night there. In the +morning, you'll go back to Boston with her. I shall enter a complaint +against your husband." + +It wasn't so hard to give Tenney the intimacy of that name, now she +looked so sweetly calm. She started from her dream, glanced up at him +and, to his renewed discomfort, broke into a little laugh. It was sheer +amusement, loving raillery too, of him who could give her the priceless +gift of a God made man and then ask her to forsake the arena where the +beasts were harmless now because she no longer feared them. + +"Why, bless your heart," she said, in a homespun fashion of address that +might have been Charlotte's, "I wouldn't no more run away! An' if you +should have him before the judge, I'd no more say a word ag'inst him! I +wouldn't git you into any trouble either," she explained, in an anxious +loyalty. "I'd say you was mistaken, that's all." + +Something seemed to break in him. + +"What do you mean?" he asked roughly. "What do you think you mean? I +suppose you're in love with him?" + +Tira looked at him patiently. She yielded to a little sigh. + +"Why," she said, "that's where I belong. I don't," she continued +hesitatingly, in her child's manner of explaining herself from her +inadequate vocabulary, "I guess I don't think about them things much, +not same as men-folks think. But there's one or two things I've got to +look out for." Here she gave that quick significant glance at the little +mound on the couch. "An' there ain't no way to do it less'n I stay right +there in my tracks." + +Raven, his hand gripping the mantel, rested his forehead on it and dark +thoughts came upon him. They quickened his breath and brought the blood +to his face and his aching eyes. It was all trouble, it seemed to him, +trouble from the first minute of his finding her in the woods. She might +draw some temporary comfort from his silent championship, in the +momentary safety of this refuge he had given her. But he could by no +means cut her knot of difficulty. She was as far from him as she had +been the moment before he saw her. She was speaking. + +"It ain't," she said, in a low voice, "it ain't that I don't keep in +mind what you've done for me, what you're doin' all the time. But I +guess you don't see what you've done this night's the most of all. Now +you've told me you know it's true"--here she was shy before the talk of +god-head--"why, I know it's so, too. An' I sha'n't ever be afraid any +more. I sha'n't ever feel alone." + +"But Tira," he felt himself saying to her weakly, "I feel alone." + +Did he actually say it, he wondered. No, for he lifted his face from his +shielding hand and turned miserable eyes upon her, and her eyes met him +clearly. Yet they were deeper, softer, moved by a sad compassion. There +was something patiently maternal in them, as if she had found herself +again before the old sad question of man's uncomprehended desires. She +spoke, strangely he thought then, and afterward he wondered if she +actually had said the thing at all. + +"There's nothin' in the world I wouldn't do for you, not if 'twas +anyways right. But----" and again she gave that fleeting glance of +allegiance to the child. + +He tried impatiently to pull himself together. She must see there was +something hideous in his inability to make her safe, something stupid, +also. + +"Tira," he said, "you don't understand. Sometimes I think you don't +realize what might happen to you. And it's silly to let it happen, +foolish, ignorant. If some one told you there was a man outside your +door and he wanted to kill you, you'd lock the door. Now there's a man +inside your house, inside your room, that wants to kill you. Yes, he +does," he insisted, answering the denial in her face, "when he's got one +of his brain storms. Is there anything to pride yourself on in staying +to be killed?" + +She answered first with a smile, the sweet reassurance of a confident +look. + +"He won't," she said, "he won't try to kill me, or kill him"--she made a +movement of the hand toward the couch--"no, not ever. You know why? I'm +goin' to remind him Who's in the room." + +"Why didn't you remind him this time?" Raven queried, pushed to the +cynical logic of it. "You could have turned his own words against him. +It wasn't an hour since he'd said it himself." + +"Because," she answered, in a perfect good faith, "then I didn't know +'twas so." + +"Didn't know 'twas so? Why didn't you?" + +Her eyes were large with wonder. + +"Because," she said, "then you hadn't told me." + +Raven stared at her a full minute, realizing to the full the exact +measure of his lie coming back to him. + +"Tira," said he, "I believe you're not quite bright." + +"No," said she simply, with no apparent feeling, "I guess I ain't. 'Most +everybody's told me so, first or last." + +It sobered him. + +"I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn't mean that. I'm off my head a +little. I'm so worried, you see. I want to know you're safe. You're not +safe. It isn't easy to accept that--to lie down under it." + +Usually he had spoken to her in the homespun phrasing he instinctively +used with his country neighbors, but the last words were subtly +different to her, they were more distant, and she accepted them with a +grave humility. + +"Yes, sir," she said, and Raven awoke to the irritating knowledge that +she was calling him "sir." He smiled at her and she realized that, as +mysteriously as she had been pushed away, now she was taken back. + +"So," he said, "you won't go down to Nan's and spend the night?" + +She shook her head, watching him. Little as she meant to do what he told +her, she wanted less to offend him. + +"Then," said Raven, "you'll stay here. I'll bring in some more blankets, +and you lie on the couch. You'll have to keep an eye on the fire. Don't +let it go down entirely. It can get pretty cold." + +He got up, lighted a candle and went into the bedroom for the blankets. +Tira followed him and silently took the pair he gave her, came back to +the couch and spread them carefully, not to waken the child. He followed +with more and, while she finished arranging her couch, piled wood on the +fire. For a moment he had an idea of announcing that he would stay and +keep the fire up while she slept. But even if she submitted to that, she +would be uneasy. And she was a hardy woman. It would not hurt her to +come awake, as he knew she could, with the house-guarding instinct of +the woman trained to serve. + +"There," he said, beating the wood-dust from his hands, "now lock me +out. Remember, you're not to go back there to-night. You owe that to me. +You've given me bother enough." + +But his eyes, when hers sought them timidly, were smiling at her. She +laughed a little, happily. It was all right, then. + +"You ain't mad," she said, half in shy assertion, following him to the +door. + +"No," he said gravely. "I'm not mad. I couldn't be, with you. I never +shall be. Good night." + +He opened the door, went out and waited an instant to hear the key click +behind him and ran plunging down the snowy road. Once on the way he +looked up at the mysterious stars visible in the line of sky above the +track he followed. Deeper and deeper it was, the mystery. He had given +her a God to adore and keep her protecting company. He who did not +believe had wrought her faith out of his unbelief. When he turned into +the road, he thought he saw someone under the porch of his house and +hurried, his mind alive to the chance of meeting Tenney, searching for +her. The figure did not move and as he went up to the house a voice +called to him. It was Amelia's. + +"O John, is that you? I can't see how you can leave the house alone to +go wandering off in the woods and never saying a word." + +There she was in her fur coat, not so much frightened, he thought, as +hurt. She was querulous with agitation. + +"All right, Milly," he said, and put an arm through hers, "here I am. +And the house isn't alone. Don't get so nervous. Next thing you know, +you'll have to see a specialist." + +"And Charlotte's gone," she lamented sharply, allowing him to march her +in and turning, in the warm hall, to confront him. "Here I've been all +alone." + +"Where's Jerry?" + +Raven had thrown off his hat and coat and frankly owned himself tired. + +"In the kitchen. But he won't tell where Charlotte is. He says she's +gone up along." + +"Well, so she has, to a neighbor's. Come into the library and get 'het' +through before you go to bed." + +"And," she lamented, letting him give her a kindly push toward the door, +"I've got to pack, myself, if Charlotte doesn't come." + +"Pack?" He stared at her. "You're not leaving?" + +"Yes, John." She said it portentously, as bidding him remember he might +be sorry when she was no more. "I'm going. Dick has telegraphed." + +"Anything the matter?" + +"That's it. I don't know. If I did, I could decide. He orders me, simply +orders me, to take the early train. What do you make of it?" + +Raven considered. Actually, he thought, Dick was carrying out his +benevolent plan of getting her back, by hook or crook. + +"I don't believe I'd worry, Milly," he said, gravely, "but I think you'd +better go." + +"Yes," she said, "that's it. I don't dare not to. Something may be the +matter. I've tried to telephone, but he doesn't answer. I must go." + + + + +XXII + + +Raven always remembered that as the night of his life, up to this +present moment, the mountain peak standing above the waters of his +discontent. The top of the mountain, that was what lifted itself in an +island inexpressibly green and fair above those sullen depths, and on +this, the island of deliverance, he was to stand. After he had reasoned +Amelia into her room and persuaded her to leave her packing till the +morning, he went up to his own chamber, mentally spent and yet keyed to +an exhausting pitch. He was excited yet tired, tied up into nervous +knots without the will to loose them. What sense in going to bed, when +he could not sleep? What need of reviewing the last chapter of his +knowledge of the woman who was so compelling in her helplessness and her +childlike faith? He would read: something silly, if he had it at hand. +The large matters of the mind and soul were not for this unwilling +vigil; and at this intruding thought of the soul he smiled, remembering +how glibly he had bartered the integrity of his own to add his fragment +to the rising temple of Tira's faith. He had strengthened her at the +expense of his own bitter certainties. It was done deliberately and it +was not to be regretted, but it did open a window upon his private +rectitude. Was his state of mind to be taken so very seriously, even by +himself? Not after that! Lounging before his book-shelves in search of a +soporific, suddenly he remembered the mottled book. It flashed into his +mind as if a hand had hurled it there. He would read Old Crow's journal. + +Settled in bed, the light beside him and the mottled book in his hand, +he paused a thoughtful minute before opening it. Poor old devil! Was +this the jangled record of an unsound mind, or was it the apologia for +an eccentricity probably not so uncommon, after all? Foolish, he +thought, to leave a record of any sort, unless you were a +heaven-accredited genius, entrusted with the leaves of life. Better to +recognize your own atomic insignificance, and sink willingly into the +predestined sea. He opened it and took a comprehensive glance over the +first page: an oblong of small neat handwriting. Many English hands were +like that. He was accustomed to call it a literary hand. Over the first +date he paused, to refer it back to his own years. How big was he when +Old Crow had begun the diary? Seven, that was all. He was a boy of seven +years, listening with an angry yet fascinated attention to the other +boys talking about Old Crow, who was, they said, luny, love-cracked. He +never could hear enough about the terrifying figure choosing to live up +there in the woods alone, and who yet seemed so gentle and so like other +folk when you met him and who gave you checker-berry lozenges. Still he +was furious when the boys hooted him and then ran, because, after all, +Old Crow was his own family. And with the first words, his mind started +to an alert attention. The words were to him. + +"I am going to write some things down for the boy," Old Crow began, in +the neat-handed script. "He is a good little boy. He looks like me at +his age. I had a kind of innocence. He has it, too. If he should grow up +anything like me, I want him to have this letter"--the last word was +crossed out and a more formal one substituted--"statement. If he thinks +about things anyways different from what the neighbors do, they will +begin to laugh at him, and try to make him believe he is not in his +right mind." + +Over and over, through the first pages of the book, there were +grammatical lapses when Old Crow, apparently from earnestness of +feeling, fell into colloquial speech. This was always when he got so +absorbed in his subject that he lacked the patience to go back and +rewrite according to rules he certainly knew but which had ceased to +govern his daily intercourse. + +"He must remember he may be in his right mind, for all that. If one man +thinks a thing, it might be true if forty thousand men think different. +The first man that thought the earth was round, when everybody else +thought it was flat, was one man. The boy will be told I was crazy. He +will be told I was love-cracked. I did want Selina James. She was a +sweet, pretty girl and high-headed, and the things some folks thought of +her were not so. But she was the kind that takes the world as it was +made and asks no questions, and when I couldn't take it so and tried to +explain to her how I felt about it, she didn't know any way but to +laugh. Perhaps she was afraid. And she did get sick of me and turned me +off. She married and went away. I was glad she went away, because it is +very hard to keep seeing anybody you thought liked you and find they +didn't, after all. It keeps reminding you. It was after that time I +built me the hut and came up here to live. + +"Now the boy will hear it was on account of Selina James that I came up +here, but it is not so, though it well might have been. It was about +that time I began to understand what a hard time 'most everybody is +having--except for a little while when they are young, and sometimes +then--and I couldn't stand it. And I thought how it might not be so if +everybody would turn to and help everybody else, and that might be the +kingdom of heaven, the same as we read about it. And then one day I went +out--I was always going round the fields and woods, kind of still, +because I liked to come on little animals living their own lives in +their own way--and I came to the open spot up above the hut where there +are the old apple trees left from the first house the Ravens lived in, +on the back road, before the other road went through. And on one of the +lower limbs of the apple tree was a robin and she was making that noise +a robin makes when she is scared 'most to pieces, and on another limb +there was a red squirrel, and he was chattering so I knew he was scared, +too. And down under the tree there was a snake pointed right at a little +toad, and I stamped my foot and hollered to scare him away; and that +same minute he struck and the toad fell over, whether poisoned to death +or scared to death I didn't know. And the snake slipped away, because he +was afraid of me, just as the toad was afraid of him. And the bird +smoothed down her feathers and flew away, and the squirrel run along +where he was going. They had got off that time, and I suppose the next +minute they forgot all about it. But I never forgot. It was just as if +something had painted a picture to show me what the world was. It was +full of fear. Everything was made to hunt down and kill everything else, +except the innocent things that eat grass and roots, and innocent as +they be--as they are--they are killed, too. And who made it so? God. So +what peace could I have--what peace could anybody ever have--in a world +where, from morning till night, it is war and murder and the fear of +death? And what good is there in trying to bring the kingdom of heaven +down to men? You can't bring it to the animals. What if you could die +for men? A good many have done that besides Jesus Christ. But who is +going to die for the animals? And the animals in captivity--I saw a bear +once, in a cage, walking up and down, up and down, and moaning. I saw a +polar bear once trying to cool himself on a cake of ice. I saw an eagle +with his wings clipped. An eagle ought to be up in the air. And all that +could be done away with, by law, if men would see to it. But even then +(and this is the strangest part of it, the part that won't bear thinking +about) it is not only that men are unmerciful to the animals, but the +animals, when they are hungry, are unmerciful to one another. I shall +come back to this. + +"Now about Jesus Christ. I hate to write this because, if the boy does +not see things as I do, maybe it will be bad for him to read it, and he +may think I am blaspheming holy things. I pray him to remember I write +in earnestness and love, love for him, for the earth and for the +animals. I want to tell him things look very black to me. When I think +how I felt over losing Selina James it seems to me as nothing compared +with the way I feel about the way the world is made. For it is all +uncertainty and 'most all pain. It seems to me it is not possible for +anything to be blacker than the earth is to me. I wake in the morning +with a cloud over me, and when I go to bed at night the cloud is there. +It settles down on me like--I don't know how to say what it is like--and +I call out, up here alone in the woods. I call to God. I remember how He +made the earth and I ask Him why He had to do it so. Over and over I ask +Him. He does not answer. He can't. I suppose that is what it is to be +God. You have to make a thing a certain way, and after it is done they +have to take it, the men and the animals, and do the best they can with +it. And one night when I was calling to God, there was a scream of an +animal--a little animal--just outside, and I knew an owl had got him. +And I covered my ears, for it seemed as if that was God's answer to me, +and I didn't want to hear any more. I even thought--and I tell the boy +this so that if he has thoughts that frighten him he will have the +comfort of knowing somebody has thought them before--I thought that +scream was God's answer. It was a good many months before I could pray +again, even to ask God why. + +"Now about religion. A great many people go to church and find comfort +in it, and they come home and eat meat for their dinners, meat +killed--they don't know how it is killed. Sometimes it is killed the +best you can and sometimes not. They don't seem to think about that. +They have done their duty and gone to church, and they go out to feed +the animals they are going to kill when they are fat enough, and +sometimes the animals will be killed the best they can and sometimes +not. And if they think about their sins, they quiet themselves by +thinking Christ has taken them on His own shoulders. And so, unless +somebody they love has died, or they are poor or disappointed, they say +it is a very pleasant world, and they ask for another slice of beef and +plan what they will do Monday, now Sunday is so far along. Now if the +boy is that kind of a boy, let him be like those people who do the best +they can without questioning. Let him do the best he can and not +question. But if he is different, if he has to think--sometimes I am +sure he will have to, for I cannot help seeing he looks out of his eyes +like me. His eyes are terrible to me, for they are always asking +questions, and that is what Grandmother Raven used to say to me. She +used to say: 'You are always asking questions with your eyes. Stop +staring and ask your questions right out.' But I couldn't. As long ago +as that, I knew my questions hadn't any answers. + +"Now if the boy begins to ask himself questions about Jesus Christ, +whether He is the son of God, and whether He could take on Himself the +sins of the world, I want to tell him that I am sure it is not so. I +want the boy to remember that nobody can take away his sins: nobody but +himself. He must accept his punishments. He must even go forward to meet +them, for through them alone can he learn how to keep away from sin. And +I want him to regard the life of Jesus Christ with love and reverence, +and make his own life as much like it as he can. But I want him to +remember, too, that God made him as he is, and made his father and +mother and all the rest back to the first man, and that there is no +guilt of sinfulness upon man as a race. There is only the burden of +ignorance. We live in the dark. We were born into it. As far as our +knowledge of right and wrong goes, so far are we guilty. But He has made +us as we are, and if there is guilt, it is not ours." + +As Raven read this, he found himself breathing heavily in the excitement +of knowing what it cost the man to write so nakedly for casual eyes. To +that elder generation, trained in the habit of thought that prevailed in +a country region, so many years ago, it was little short of blasphemy. +He turned a page, and had a cumulative surprise. For time had leaped. +The date was seven years later. Old Crow was now over sixty, and this +was the year before his death. Raven could hardly believe in the +likelihood of so wide a leap, but the first line showed him it was +actual. The subject matter was different and so was the style. The +sentences raced as if they were in a hurry to get themselves said before +the pen should drop from a palsied hand. + +"I gave up writing with that last line. I thought there was no more to +say. I didn't even want to read it over. If I hadn't said it well, still +I had said it and I didn't see any better way. I wanted to fortify the +boy against the loneliness of feeling there was nobody that understood. +I wanted to tell him I understood. That was all I could do for him at +that time. But a great deal more has happened. The last of it happened +over two years ago, but I was too busy to write it down. Besides, I +didn't know there would be such things to write. The boy knows me a +little now. He comes up oftener. His mother brings him. She is very +sweet and gentle, but she will not leave him alone with me because I am +queer and she is afraid I may teach him to be queer. She does not +understand. She wouldn't if I told her. She takes things as they are. +There are no questions in her mind. There will be in the boy's. They +have begun to come. I can see them more than ever by the look in his +eyes. Several years ago, about when I finished writing in this book, I +saw I should have to give up questioning myself and calling on God. +There were no answers. If there were, He didn't mean to let me have +them. I mustn't keep on. It was dangerous. I got no good out of it and I +should come to harm. And if I had got to live, I must be as near like +other folks as I could. So I must be as busy as I could. And it came to +me that over beyond the mountain there were folks poorer than I am, and +that knew less, a good deal less. I didn't know anything about God, but +I did know I must keep clean and eat the right food. So I begun to take +long tramps round the countryside, and wherever I went I'd try to find +out the sick and, if the family was poor, work for them a while and sit +up with the sick one, and, if he was discouraged, try to help him +through. + +"So it happened I was away from the hut a good deal of the time, and I +got an idea the Ravens liked that. It must have touched their pride to +have Old Crow living up here alone, queer as Dick's hat-band. Whichever +way I fixed it, I was a kind of a curse: for when I went off on my +wanderings I was a tramp and the news of it came back home, and I often +think the boy's mother was sorry and wished I wouldn't, though even that +was better than my being around, toleing off the boy. I liked my +wanderings, in summer best of all. But in winter the folks needed me +more, shut up so in tight houses, catching colds in bad air, and it got +so when they were sick they'd send for me and I was proper pleased to +go. And they came to have a kind of a trust in me, and I was nearer +being contented than I'd been in my whole life. Because the questions +didn't come hardly at all, now. I was too busy by day and too tired at +night. So it went on till one day I came to old Billy Jones's little +house, where he lived all alone in the dirt and filth. It was just at +the foot of the mountain and no neighbors under half a mile. I say he +lived there, but he wasn't there more than a third of the time. The boy +will remember how he used to go along the road, full as a tick, and the +school children making fun of him and then running before he could get +at them. I don't know as he would, though. There never was any harm in +him, only he did neglect himself so he was an awful sight. And the only +time he was in his little house was when he'd been hired out haying or +something, and got his money and spent it and come back with crackers +and cheese in his old carpet bag, to sober up. + +"This day I was speaking about (it was October and no wind) I was going +by his house and I saw a smoke coming out of the chimney, and I thought +old Billy had come home to sober up. But I hadn't hardly got to the +house before I heard him calling me, and I looked and there he was in +the front door leaning on a cane. + +"'You come in here,' says he, and I went in. + +"It was a terrible hog's nest, his front room was, but I paid no +attention, for that's the way he lived. He sat down in a chair and made +a motion with his hand for me to come near, and I did, and he took my +hand and put it on his knee. + +"'Feel that,' he says. And when I didn't know what he meant, nor care +hardly, for I thought he might be in drink, he called out, in a queer +voice--sharp it was, and pitiful--and says he: 'My legs are swelling. +Hard as a rock.' + +"Then I saw he was in a trouble of fear, and I asked him questions and +he told me how long it had been coming on and how he went to the doctor +down to the street, and the doctor told him he was a sick man, and how +he would grow worse instead of better and could never take care of +himself in the world, and the doctor would get him sent to the Poor +Farm. That was his trouble. He did not want to go to the Farm, and when +I told him it was the right way, he broke down and shook and cried and +said he was afraid to go. Then he told me why. The boy must not read +this until he is grown up, but when he is, he will hear there was a man +killed over across the mountain: Cyrus Graves, a poor, good-for-nothing +creature as it was said. (But God made him.) He was found by the side of +the road, and it was thought he had words with a peddler that went along +that day and never was found afterward. But some thought the authorities +never tried so hard as they might to find the peddler, because Cyrus was +such a poor good-for-nothing that he was well rid of, and if the peddler +was found and not convicted he might come back and burn their barns. And +when old Billy Jones was shaking there before me, I kept asking him what +he was afraid of, and he said: + +"'Will you promise not to tell?' + +"I said I would. And he said: + +"'It was me that killed Cyrus Graves. We were coming home together, and +we had both had a drop too much, and we had words about something, I +forget what. And which of us struck first I don't know, but I know I +struck him and he fell pitch-polling down the side of the road into the +gully and I went home and crawled into bed. And the next day they found +him, and I said I came home across lots, and there was a man that met me +and he said it was so and I was so far gone in liquor I never could have +raised my head again that night, once I'd laid down and begun to sleep +it off. But he never knew I did raise my head for I was not so well +started as common and I went out again about ten to fill up. And it was +then I met Cyrus Graves.' + +"I told him there was but one thing for him to do. He must send for the +sheriff and give himself up. But he cried out at that and said: + +"'Look at my poor legs. Do you think a man with such legs as mine has +got strength enough to be hung?' + +"I told him he would not be hung. He was a very sick man, and there was +no court of law in the world so unmerciful as not to take that into +account. But he would not do it. He had not meant to kill Cyrus Graves, +he said, and he would not die a murderer and known for one. And that was +why he would not go to the Poor Farm. As he got sicker, he might be +delirious or talk in his sleep. Rave, that was the word he used. He +might rave. After he stopped speaking, I sat thinking it over, and he +watched my face. He spoke first, and he spoke as if he could hardly wait +to hear the answer and yet was obliged to hear it. + +"'Ain't you goin' to say you'll come here an' take care of me?' he said. +'My time won't be long.' + +"Then I could see my going round taking care of the sick had made him +turn to me. That was the way with all of them round here. They turned to +me. It was the only comfort I had. I told him I could not take care of +him there. It was no fit place. I thought a spell longer, and he watched +me. His eyes were full of fear. The little animals look like that when +they are trapped. Then I told him I would have him brought over to the +hut if he would come, and he jumped at it. I scarcely ever saw a man so +wild with thankfulness. And the next day I hired a team and went over +after him, and I took care of him to the end." + +Here was a heavy dash. Raven could imagine Old Crow's drawing the line +with one impatient stroke because he had got so far in a story he could +ill stop to write, but that had to be written. Raven had forgotten Tira +up there in the lonesome woods, forgotten a day was very near when she +would have to make one more of her desperate decisions. He was thinking +of Old Crow. + + + + +XXIII + + +He went on reading: + +"There is no need of going into old Billy's sickness. It made a great +change in my life. As soon as it got about that I had taken him to live +with me, folks began to say I was queer, the same as they did before, +and the children would hoot and run. He was known to be so bad (they had +always called him bad; they never once thought God made him) they +thought I liked to keep company with him because I must be bad, too. And +I could not go about any more doing for people because I was doing for +him and there was no time. But people kept sending for me, and when they +saw old Billy Jones sitting there with his bandaged legs, they would +feel hard toward me. They said I would rather do for him than for them, +and he ought, by rights, to be on the town. That meant his going to the +Farm. Sometimes I thought they felt so about it there might be action +taken to get him there--to the Poor Farm. He never thought of this, I am +sure. He had a peaceful time, as much so as a man could have that has +killed his body and begins to be afraid he has killed his soul. That was +the hardest time I had with him: about his soul. He was afraid to die. I +told him God made him and would see to him in the end, and that He well +knew he did not mean to kill Cyrus Graves. He said that was true, but if +he had been tried here in a court of law the jury would have pronounced +him guilty and it was very likely God would. And there was hell. These +things I could not answer because I did not know, and if I had any +convictions they were as dark as his, though of another sort. But I did +try to put heart into him, and I hoped the end would come before he +suffered any more. + +"I want the boy to know that all this time his mother was a very great +comfort to me. Of course she could not let the boy come up to the hut, +because old Billy Jones was too dreadful a sight for a child to see. But +she cooked a great many delicate things and brought them up or sent +them, and, one day I shall never forget, when I had a blind headache and +had to lie down in the dark, she sat with Billy a long time, to keep him +from being lonesome, and afterward I found she had bandaged his legs. + +"As time went on and he grew worse and worse, there was but one thing he +wanted. It was to be forgiven. I tried again to persuade him to tell +publicly the straight story of the killing and so die with a clean mind. +This he would not do. He had asked me to get him a headstone, with his +name on it all complete, and he was much set against being remembered as +a murderer. All his life he had lived outside the law, so to speak, and +he wanted to die respectable. I told him it might happen to him that, +after his death, somebody would be accused of the death of Cyrus Graves +and in that case I should break my promise to him and tell. To this he +consented, though unwillingly, and I am now telling, not only for the +sake of the boy, but for the sake of all to whom the boy may have to +pass on the strange things that came to Billy Jones. His sickness went +on in a very painful way, and when it got to be near the end he was +still more distressed in mind. He could not die, he said, unless he was +forgiven. And yet he had to die. For a while he seemed almost to hate me +because I could not show him the way. + +"'If I was a Roman Catholic,' he said, 'and you was a priest, you could +forgive me yourself. You would forgive me, I'll warrant ye.' + +"I did not deny it, though I felt very hopeless of anything I might do. +In those last days I could have denied him nothing. He seemed to me like +all the trouble in the world beating out there in the hut. God had made +him, and made him so that he did not rightly see good from evil, and he +had ruined his body, and now he was taking the consequences. And the +night before he died, he cried out a terrible voice: + +"'You don't say a word about Jesus Christ.' + +"I stood by his bed in anguish of mind perhaps as great as his. Yet not +as great, for he had no strength of body to bear the anguish with. + +"'You never have said anything,' he went on. + +"I felt as if he was accusing me of not giving him water when he was +fevered, or bread if he was hungry. Then he said he remembered something +he used to hear when he was little and he had hardly ever heard of it +since. But he had heard other things. And I guessed he was remembering +he had lived with the people who used the name of Jesus Christ only to +swear by. He had heard, he told me, that Jesus Christ was the son of +God, and God sent Him here to save sinners, and, if sinners called on +Him to save them, they would be saved. And then he looked at me for a +minute with that same look, as if he hated me, and he said: + +"'You don't believe it. You wouldn't let me suffer like this, if you +did.' + +"And all my spirit broke up in me, and my legs were weak under me, and +the tears ran down on my face, and I said to him: + +"'I do believe it.' + +"'Will you swear it?' he asked me. He was very wild then. 'Will you +swear by Jesus Christ it is so?' + +"'Yes,' I said, 'I will swear.' + +"And I fell on my knees by the bed and said: 'Let us pray.' And I +prayed, in what words I don't know, but my hand was on his, and when I +said Amen, he said Amen, too, and when I looked at him all the trouble +was smoothed out of his face and he said, 'Jesus Christ!' as he never +could have said it in his life before. It was as if you were speaking to +your mother or your friend (yet not just a friend, but a heavenly +friend) and shortly he died. And I had told him a lie. But I was not +sorry. I was glad. What was my keeping my poor soul clean to old Billy +Jones's dying in peace? It was the last thing I could give him, and he +was welcome to it. + +"It was in the early morning he died, and I did what I knew about making +him right for his coffin, and then went down to get one of the neighbors +that knew more, and all that day I was busy. The next day he would be +taken away and lie in the Methodist church at the Ridge, and the third +day he would be buried. And nobody had ever taken any interest in him +except to call him a poor good-for-nothing creature--nobody except your +mother (she is a good woman) but it looked as if he would have a +well-attended funeral. I was glad of that, for I knew he would be +pleased. He was laid out in the bedroom of the hut and the window was +open and the cold air blowing on him, and I lay down on the couch in the +large room. I didn't take my clothes off, for at such times it is +respectful to have watchers about the dead. It may not be necessary, but +it is the custom, and I wanted old Billy to have everything that was +fitting and right. I did not mean to go to sleep, but lie there a spell +and then get up and put on more wood and go into his cold room and let +him feel as if he was being taken care of to the last. And I lay there +thinking how I had heard there was diphtheria over beyond the mountain +and I would take a day or two to rest me and then I'd go over there and +help. I laughed a little to myself, and I see now it wasn't a very +pleasant kind of laugh, for I thought the people would begin to like me +again because I was free to do for them. + +"And I did go to sleep, being, as I said, very tired, and how long I +slept I don't know. But suddenly I waked up, just as wide awake as I am +this minute, and I knew as well as I ever knew anything, that Billy +Jones was in the room. I didn't see him. I didn't hear him. I didn't +hear anything, outside or in. It was a very still night, and there +wasn't even the creaking of the branches against each other. But Billy +Jones was in the room. I wasn't afraid, but I felt queer. I had a kind +of prickly feeling all over me. The hair on my head moved somehow, +according to the feeling it gave me. Perhaps that was being afraid, only +I don't take it so. The reason I think differently is that I didn't want +it to stop. If Billy Jones was there, I didn't want him to go away. If +he had anything to say, I wanted to hear it. And I was as sure as ever I +was of anything in my life that there was something to say. If this was +the beginning of something that was going to happen, it was only the +beginning. There was more to come. And I wanted to know what. I lay +there as still almost as Billy's body in the next room. I was afraid of +missing something. If there was something for me to hear I'd got to keep +still to hear it. But I said that before. I have to keep saying it, it +took such hold of me. The fire hadn't wholly died down. I could tell by +that I hadn't been asleep long. But I didn't dare to get up and put on +another stick. I was afraid if I moved I might jar something and it +would break. And I couldn't have it break till the end--the end of my +knowing what it was. + +"And now the boy must remember that what follows, if I live to write it, +is faithful and true. That is what the Bible says about things like +that: they are faithful and true. And mine are just as true. It seemed +to me as if the ceiling of the room raised up and the walls opened out +and the room was as if it was not. Whether I looked through it or +whether it was gone, I do not know. But I looked into a great space. And +it was dark and at one side of it there was a great light. And the light +was not angry, as a sunset looks when it flames and flares. It was +steady, and I knew it was to light the world. And there came into my +head some words: 'And the darkness comprehended it not.' When I waked +up, I found the words in the Bible, but that night it seemed to me they +were said for the first time. The boy must remember Billy Jones was in +all this. He was the chief part of it. As to the words, it was as if +Billy Jones said them. I was in the darkness, and I was to be made to +comprehend. And when I looked lower through the darkness--and I cannot +tell how, but I seemed to be in it and yet at the same time I was above +it, so that I looked down and saw what was going on--I saw multitudes of +men and women, trying to get through it. Sometimes they walked slowly, +as if it was hard to walk, and sometimes they jostled each other and +sometimes stopped to push one another about, and sometimes when some +were down the others stamped on them. But they were all going somewhere, +and it was toward the light. And as I say, I was in the darkness though +I could see through it, and I wondered if I was going, too. + +"And then I understood. I couldn't tell the boy how I understood, not if +he was here to ask me; but it was as if a voice spoke and told me in two +or three words, and few as they were, I took them in and I knew. Perhaps +there was a voice. Perhaps it was the voice of Billy Jones. There is no +reason why not. The minute after he got out of his body, he might have +known everything: I don't mean everything, I mean the one thing that +would explain it all. And he had a kindness for me, and if he learned +anything that smoothed out his trouble and turned it into joy, he would +want me to know, too. And this is it, though now I have got to the place +for telling it, I don't know how. It is like a dream. You have to tell +it the minute you wake, or it is gone. I saw that creation had been a +long time going on. I saw that although we have minds to think with, we +haven't really, in comparison with the things to be thought out. I saw +that we are so near the dust that we can no more account for the ways of +Almighty God than the owl hooting out there in the woods can read the +words I am writing here. I saw that nothing is to be told us. We are to +find out everything for ourselves, just as we have found electricity and +the laws of physics. And poisons--we have found out those, some of them, +even if we had to die to do it. And God lets us die trying to find out. +He doesn't care anything about our dying. And if He doesn't care +anything about our dying, He doesn't care anything about the rabbit +broken by the owl, or the toad struck by the snake. + +"Now, why doesn't He care? For the first time, I knew there was a reason +that was not a cruel reason. I knew His reasons were all good. And I saw +that though He could not break the rules of His plan by telling us +things, He could give us a kind of a something inside us that should +make us work it out ourselves. We had hungers. We had one hunger for +eternal life. We had to believe in it, to help us bear this present +life. We believed it so hard that men rose up and said it was so, and we +said God had put the words into their mouths. And out of our sufferings, +pity was born, and now and then a man would be raised up so full of pity +that other men believed in him and followed everything he said and even +called him a god. And this was well, because if they had not thought he +was a god, they might not have followed him. And I seemed to be told +that a great many men were born who were sent from God, but I have not +read many books and how can I prove whether it is true? + +"But Jesus Christ came, and His story is the story of the will of God. +For men believed His father was God. That is to keep in our minds always +the fatherhood of God. And his mother was believed to be a virgin. I do +not know how to say this, but I was given to believe that that was no +more true than I had thought, but still that it was the truest of all. +It is one of the things we are to believe. We are to learn from it--how +can I say?--that there is a heavenly birth out of purity and light. It +is a symbol. That is the word: a symbol. And His death for mankind is +the everlasting symbol of man's duty: to die for one another. And He +went into the grave, and ascended into heaven, and so shall we all die +and live again. But every observance of every church is a +symbol--nothing more. And the man that was a god is a symbol and nothing +more. But nothing could be more. For to find a symbol that has lasted, +in one form or another, since the beginning of the world is to learn +that it is something the world itself is built on. It is the picture +book we are given before we can read print. And it means that something +is working out--and is not yet--and the eye of man hath not seen or the +ear of man heard. And about fear--that is the most wonderful of all and +the hardest to tell. It is our friend. At first everything fed upon +everything else; and so it does now, for how shall I say the animal has +fear and the growing plant has not? And our fear tells us what to turn +away from, and it fits us for the fight of the mortal life. But in the +end will our fear be only the fear of evil? Fear is our counselor. It is +our friend. + +"Now perhaps I have done wrong in trying to write this out. Perhaps I +have not helped the boy or anybody he tells. Perhaps I have offended +them. I know the sound of what I must have heard and the sight of what I +saw was clearer to me before I tried to tell about them. At first I kept +them back somewhere in my mind and didn't try to see them or hear them +too close. And when I did that, the great light was always there and I +was running toward it. But now I have tried to tell, I see it is no more +than words. They darken counsel. And I have put it back into my mind, +not so much to be thought about as to have at hand. And all my trouble +has gone. It has been a long trouble. I am over sixty now. But I am not +afraid of anything and I am not in doubt. When I see men suffering, I +know they are suffering for a reason. When I find the bird with a broken +wing or the rabbit bit by the trap I know God knows about them, and if I +cannot know, it proves it is not necessary I should. For there is the +great light. (But it is not likely the boy will see this account of it +at all, because I shall try to write it over--to write it better--and if +I make it clearer this will be destroyed.) + +"Another thing: about the worship of God. He does not want us to worship +Him as we understand it, to crawl before Him as if He were an idol we +had set up to get us victories over our enemies and to fill us with +food. He wants us--what shall I say?--to open our hearts and our minds +and our ears and eyes to what He wants us to know. He is not an idol. He +is God. And all the way to Him, the horrible way through burnt +offerings, the blood of lambs and goats--blood, blood, all the way--is +the way that climbs up to the real sacrifice, the last of all: the man's +own heart. + +"One thing more: the greatest thing that ever happened to me was old +Billy Jones. Was it because I was sorry for him? Was it because I could +do something for him? I don't know. But I tell the boy that the man or +the woman that makes him shed his blood in pity for them, that is the +man or woman that will open his eyes to what we call Eternal Life. What +is Eternal Life? Is it living forever? I do not know. But the +words--those two words--stand for the great light ahead of us, the light +I truly saw. And what the light is, still I do not know. But this I +know: God is. He lives. And He is sorry. The boy may tell me this is no +more than the words about His caring for the sparrow that falleth. But I +tell him it is more to me, for this I have found out for myself. And I +have found it out through great tribulation. But the tribulation is not +now. It has stopped. It stopped with the sound of old Billy Jones's +voice I heard--somehow I heard it--when his body lay in there dead. And +I am not afraid. I am not afraid of fear--even for the little +animals--and that is more than for myself. And that is my legacy to the +boy. He must not be afraid." + +There it ended, and Raven sat for a long time looking at the fine +painstaking script and seeing, for the moment, at least, the vision of +Old Crow. He felt a great welling of love toward him, a longing to get +hold of him somehow and tell him the journal had done its work. He +understood. And it meant to him, in its halting simplicity, more than +all the books he had ever read on the destiny of man. Meager as it was, +it seemed to him something altogether new, because it had come out of +the mind of an ignorant man, if a man can be called ignorant who has +used his mind to its full capacity of thought and unconsciously fitted +it, so far as he might, to the majestic simplicities of the Bible. Old +Crow had never read anything about legend or the origins of belief. +There were no such books then at Wake Hill. He read no language but his +own. Whatever he had evolved, out of the roots of longing, had been done +in the loneliness of the remote shepherd who charts the stars. And in +the man himself Raven had found a curious companionship. Their lives +seemed to have run a parallel course. Old Crow, like himself, was a +victim of world sickness. And his wound had been cleansed; he had been +healed. + +Raven did give a little smile to the thought that, at least, the man had +been saved one thing: he had no authoritative Amelia on his track to +betray him to organized benevolence. And for himself something, he could +not adequately tell what, was as clear to him as a road of light to +unapprehended certainties. It was a symbol. It was the little language +men had to talk in because they could not use the language of the stars: +their picture language. But it was the rude token of ineffable reality. +As the savage's drawing of a man stands for the man, so the symbols +wrought out by the hungry world stand for what is somewhere, yet not +visibly here. For the man exists or the savage could not have drawn him. +Not all the mystics, he thought, smiling over his foolish inner +conviction that could not be reached through the mind but only through +the heart, not all the divines, could have set up within him the altar +of faith he seemed suddenly to see before him: it had to be Old Crow. +And he slept, and in the morning it did not need the mottled book at his +bedside to remind him. Still it was Old Crow. + +He put it all away in his mind to think over later, just as Old Crow had +turned aside from his vision for the more convincing clearness of an +oblique angle upon it, and dressed hastily. He got out of the house +without meeting even Charlotte, and was about crossing the road on the +way to the hut when he saw Tenney coming, axe and dinner pail in hand. +Raven swerved on his path, and affected to be looking down the road. He +could not proceed the way he was going. Tenney's mind must not be drawn +toward that living focus by even the most fragmentary hint. Yet if Tira +was still there, she and the child must be fed. After his glance down +the road he turned back to the house, nodding at Tenney as he neared. +But Tenney motioned to him. + +"Here," he called stridently. "You wait." + +Raven halted and as Tenney was approaching, at a quick stride, noted how +queerly he was hung. It was like a skeleton walking, the dry joints +acting spasmodically. When the man came up with him, he saw how ravaged +his face was, and yet lighted by what a curious eagerness. Ready, he +hoped, at all points for any possible attack involving Tira, Raven still +waited, and the question Tenney shot at him could not have been more +surprising: + +"Did you find salvation?" + +Raven stood looking at him for an instant, and suddenly he remembered +Old Crow, who had accomplished the salvation of a sick heart and +bequeathed the treasure to him. + +"Yes," he said, more tolerantly than he had ever spoken to Tenney. "I +think I did." + +Was it his imagination that Tenney looked disappointed? + +"Last night?" the man insisted. "Did you find it last night? Through +me?" + +"No," said Raven. "I didn't find it through you." + +Tenney was ingenuously taken aback. + +"There is one way," he said, "into the sheepfold--only one." + +He turned about, muttering, and Raven, looking after him, thought he was +an ugly customer. For a woman to be shut up alone with him, her young, +too, to defend! It was like being jailed with an irrational beast. But +Tenney paid no further attention to him. He walked away, swinging his +dinner pail, down across the meadow to the lower woods, and Raven, after +the fringe of birches had closed upon him, hurried off to the hut. He +did not expect to find her. The pail in Tenney's hand was sufficient +evidence, even if the man's going to his work were not. Tenney would +never have abandoned his search or his waiting for her, and if he had, +he would not have delayed to pack a dinner pail. The hut was empty of +human life, but the bricks were warm. She could not have left until the +early morning. Mechanically he piled kindling near the hearth. But +curiously, though the hut was warm not only with the fire but the +suggestion of her breathing presence, it was not she who seemed to be +with him but Old Crow. + +He went back to the house and found Amelia in traveling dress, her face +tuned to the note of concentration when something was to be done. She +was ready. She had the appearance of the traveler needing only to slip +on an outer garment to go, not merely from New Hampshire down to Boston, +but to uncharted fastnesses. It meant, he found, this droll look of +being prepared for anything, not the inconsiderable journey before her +but a new enterprise for him. And he would have to be persuaded to it. +Well, she knew that. She met him in the hall. + +"John," she said, with the firmness of her tone in active benevolences, +"I have asked Jerry to take me to the train. I want you to go with me." + +"Me?" said Raven, unaffectedly surprised. "What for?" + +"For several things. If Dick is in any sort of trouble----" + +"He's not," said Raven. "Take my word for that." + +"And," she concluded, "I want you to see somebody." + +"Somebody?" Raven repeated. He put his hand on her shoulder, smiling +down at her. Milly was a good sort. It was too bad she had to be, like +so many women benevolence mad, so disordered in her meddling. "I suppose +you mean an alienist." + +She nodded, her lips compressed. She would stick at nothing. + +"Now Milly," said Raven, "do I seem to you in the least dotty?" + +Tears came into her eyes. + +"I wish you wouldn't use such words," she said tremulously. It meant +much for Milly to tremble. "It's like calling that dreadful influenza +the flu." + +Raven was reminded of the old man down the road who forbade secular talk +in the household during a thunder shower. It "madded" the Almighty. You +might be struck. + +"I won't," he said, the more merciful of her because she was on the +point of going. "And I won't go back with you." + +"Will you come later?" she persisted, still tremulous. + +"No," said Raven, "probably not. If I do, I'll let you know. And you +mustn't come up here without notifying me well in advance." + +"That shows----" she began impulsively. "John, that isn't a normal thing +to say: to expect your own sister to notify you." + +"All right," said Raven cheerfully. "Then I'm not normal. The funny part +of it is, I don't care whether I'm normal or not. I've got too many +other things to think of. Here's Charlotte with your brekky. Come on." + +In the two hours before she went, he was, she told Dick afterward, +absolutely scintillating. She never knew John could be so brilliant. He +talked about things she never knew he had the slightest interest in: +theosophy and feminism and Americanization. She couldn't help wondering +whether he was trying to convince her of his mental soundness. But he +certainly was amazing. Dick received this in silence. He understood. + +It was true. Raven did fill the time from a racing impetuosity, only +slackened when Jerry appeared with the pung. Then he hurried her into +her coat, kissed her warmly--and she had to comment inwardly that she +had never found John so affectionate--and, standing bareheaded to watch +her away, saluted her when she turned at the bend in the road. Then, +when the scene was empty of her, he plunged in, past Charlotte, standing +with hands rolled in her apron, snatched his cap, and hurried up the +road to Nan. + + + + +XXIV + + +Raven, relieved of his hindering Amelia, felt extraordinarily gay. He +went fast along the road, warm in the deepening sun, and saw Nan coming +toward him. He waved his cap and called to her: + +"She's gone." + +"Who?" Nan was coming on with her springing stride, and when she reached +him she looked keenly at him, adding: "What's happened to you, Rookie?" + +Nothing had happened to her, he could see. She was always like a piece +cut out of the morning and fitted into any part of the day she happened +to be found in: always of a gallant spirit, always wholesome as apples, +always ready. This was not altogether youth. It was, besides, something +notable and particular which was Nan. He laughed out, she caught his +mood so deftly. + +"Something has happened," he said. "First place, Milly's gone. Second, +I've found Old Crow." + +"You've found Old Crow? What do you mean by that?" + +"Can't tell you now. Wait till we sit down together." + +"And she's truly gone?" + +They stood there in the road as if Nan's house were not at hand; but the +air and the sun were pleasant to them. + +"Gone, bag and baggage. Dick wired and ordered her in some way she +didn't dare ignore. I suspect he did it to save me. He's a good boy." + +"He is a good boy," said Nan. There was a reminiscent look in her eyes. +"But he's a very little one. Were we ever so young, Rookie, you and I?" + +"You!" + +"Yes. I'm a sphinx compared with Dick. I didn't tell you last night, +there was so much else to say, but I had a letter from him, returned to +Boston from New York. He assumed, you know, if I wasn't in Boston I'd +gone to the Seaburys'. So he wrote there." + +"What's he want?" + +Nan hesitated a moment. Then she said: + +"It's a pretty serious letter, Rookie. I suppose it's a love-letter." + +"Don't you know?" + +"Yes, I suppose I know. But it's so childish. He's furious, then he's +almost on his knees begging, and then he goes back to being mad again. +Rookie, he's so young." + +"When it comes to that," said Raven, "you're young, too. I've told you +that before." + +"Young! Oh! but not that way. I couldn't beg for anything. I couldn't +cry if I didn't get it. I don't know what girls used to do, but we're +different, Rookie, we that have been over there." + +"Yes," said Raven, "but you mustn't let it do too much to you. You +mustn't let it take away your youth." + +Nan shook her head. + +"Youth isn't so very valuable," she said, "not that part of it. There's +lots of misery in it, Rookie. Don't you know there is?" + +"Yes," said Raven, "I know." Suddenly he remembered Anne and the bonds +she had laid on him. Had he not suffered them, in a dumb way, finding no +force within himself to strike them off? Had he been a coward, a dull +fellow tied to women's restraining wills? And he had by no means escaped +yet. Wasn't Anne inexorably by his side now, when he turned for an +instant from the problem of Tira, saying noiselessly, this invisible +force that was Anne: "What are you going to do about my last wish, my +last command? You are thinking about Nan, about that strange woman, +about yourself. Think about me." But he deliberately summoned his mind +from the accusing vision of her, and turned it to Nan. "Then," he said, +"there doesn't seem to be much hope for Dick, poor chap!" + +"Doesn't there?" she inquired, a certain indignant passion in her voice. +"Anyway, there's no hope for me. I'd like to marry Dick. I'd like to +feel perfectly crazy to marry him. He won't write his poetry always. +That's to the good, anyhow. If I don't marry him I shall be a miserable +old thing, more and more positive, more and more like all the women of +the family, the ones that didn't marry"--and they both knew Aunt Anne +was in her mind--"drying rose leaves and hunting up genealogical trash." + +"But, my own child," said Raven in a surge of pity for her, as if some +clearest lens had suddenly brought her nearer him, "you don't have to +marry Dick to get away from that. You'll simply marry somebody else." + +"No," said Nan, "you know I sha'n't." + +"Then," said Raven, "there is somebody else." + +She shook her head. + +"I'm an odd number, Rookie," she said, with a bitterness he found +foreign to her. "All those old stories of kindred souls may be true, but +they're not true for me." + +"You have probably," said Raven, a sharp light now on her, bringing out +the curves and angles of her positive mind, "you have done some perverse +thing to send him off, and you won't move a finger to bring him back." + +Nan laughed. She was no longer bitter. This was the child he knew. + +"Rookie," she said, "you are nearer an absolute fool than any human +being I ever saw. If I wanted a man back, it's likely I could get him. +Most of us can. But do you think I would?" + +"Then you're proud, sillykins." + +"I'm not proud," said Nan--and yet proudly. "If I loved anybody, I'd let +him walk over me. That's what Charlotte would say. Can't you hear her? +It isn't for my sake. It's for his. Do you think I'd bamboozle him and +half beckon and half persuade, the way women do, and trap him into the +great enchantment? It is an enchantment. You know it is. But I'd rather +he'd keep his grip on things--on himself--and walk away from me, if +that's where it took him. I'd rather he'd walk straight off to somebody +else, and break his heart, if it came that way." + +"Good Lord, Nan," said Raven, "where do you get such thoughts?" + +"Get them?" she repeated. "I got them from you first. You've been a +slave all your life. Don't you know you have? Don't you know you had +cobwebs spun round you, round and round, till she had you tight, hand +and foot, not hers but so you couldn't walk off to anybody else? And +even now, after her death----" + +"Stop," said Raven. "That's enough, Nan." + +Again Anne Hamilton was beside them on the wintry road, and they were +hurting her inexpressibly. + +"That's it," said Nan. "You're afraid she'll hear." + +"If I am," said Raven, "it's not----" There he stopped. + +"No," said Nan. She had relented. Her eyes were soft. "You're not afraid +of her. But you are afraid of hurting her. And even that's weak, +Rookie--in a man. Don't be so pitiful. Leave it to the women." + +Raven laughed a little now. Again she seemed a child, crying after the +swashbuckling hero modern man has put into the discard, where apparently +he has to stay, except now and then when he ventures out and struts a +little. But it avails him nothing. Somebody laughs, and back he has to +go. + +"I am pretty stupid," he said. "But never mind about an old stager like +me. Don't be afraid of showing him--the man, I mean--all your charm. +Don't be afraid of going to his head. You've got enough to justify every +possible hope you could hold out to him. You're the loveliest--Nan, +you're the loveliest thing I ever saw." + +"The loveliest?" said Nan, again recklessly. "Lovelier than Tira?" + +For an instant she struck him dumb. Was Tira so lovely? To him certainly +she had a beauty almost inexpressible. But was it really inherent in +her? Or was it something in the veil he found about her, that haze of +hopeless suffering? + +"Do you think she's beautiful?" + +His voice was keen; curiosity had thinned it to an edge. Nan answered it +with exactness. + +"I think she's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. She doesn't know it. +If she did, she'd probably wave her hair and put on strange chiffons, +what Charlotte calls dewdads. She'd have to be the cleverest woman on +earth to resist them. And because she's probably never been an inch out +of this country neighborhood, she'd rig herself up--Charlotte again!--in +the things the girls like round here. But she either doesn't know her +power or she doesn't care." + +"I'm inclined to think," said Raven slowly, "she never has looked at +herself in that way. It has brought her things she doesn't want, things +that made her suffer. And she's worked so hard trying to manage the +whole business--life and her sufferings--she hasn't had time to lay much +stress on her looks." + +"It's all so strange," said Nan, as if the barriers were down and she +wanted to indicate something hardly clear to herself. "You see, she +isn't merely beautiful. Most of us look like what we are. We're rather +nice looking, like me, or we're plain. But she 'takes back,' as +Charlotte would say. She reminds you of things, pictures, and music, and +dead queens--isn't there a verse about 'queens that died young and +fair'?--and--O heavens, Rookie! I can't say it--but all the old hungers +and happinesses, the whole business." + +"I wonder," said Raven impetuously, "if you think she's got any mind at +all. Or whether it's nothing but line and color?" + +Nan shook her head. + +"She's got something better than a mind. She has a faithful heart. And +if a man--a man I cared about--got bewitched by her, I'd tell him to +snatch her up and run off with her, and even if he found she was hollow +inside, he'd have had a minute worth living for, and he could take his +punishment and say 'twas none too much." + +"You'd tell him!" Raven suggested, smiling at her heat and yet moved by +it. "You weren't going to fetter your man by telling him anything." + +"No," said Nan, returned to her composure, which was of a careless sort, +"I shouldn't, really. I'd hope though. I'd allow myself to hope he'd +snatch her away from that queer devil's darning needle she's married to, +and buy her a divorce and marry her." + +"You would, indeed! Then you don't know love, my Nan, for you don't know +jealousy. And with a mystery woman like that, wouldn't the man be +forever wondering what's behind that smile of hers? Tenney wonders. It +isn't that flashy fellow at the prayer-meeting that makes him wonder. +It's the woman herself. Yet she's simplicity itself--she's truth--but +no, Nan, you don't know jealousy." + +"Don't I?" said Nan, unperturbed. "You're mighty clever, aren't you, +Rookie? But I tell you again I'd rather leave my man to live his life as +he wants it than live it with him. Now"--she threw off the moment as if +she had permanently done with it--"now, I went to see her this morning." + +"You did? What for?" + +"It was so horrible last night," said Nan. "Hideous! There was that +creature sitting there beside her, that perfumery man." + +"Perfumery?" + +"Yes. He smelled like the soap the boys used to buy, the ones that lived +'down the road a piece.' He frightened her, just his sitting down beside +her. And it put some kind of a devil into that awful Tenney. I thought +about her all night, and this morning I went over and asked her to go +back with me now, while Tenney's away chopping. I told her I'd help her +pack, and Jerry'd take us to the train." + +"What did she say?" + +"Nothing. Oh, yes, she did." Nan laughed, in the irritation of it. "She +said I was real good. Said Israel was going to kill soon." + +"Kill?" + +"Hogs. There were two. They'd weigh three hundred apiece. It was quite a +busy season, trying out and all, and no time for her to be away." + +It was irresistible. They both laughed. They had been dowering her with +the grace of Helen, and now she stood before them inexorably bent on +trying out. + +"I gather," said Nan, rather drily, "you're going over to see her +yourself." + +"Yes," said Raven. "But not till I've seen you. You ran away from Milly. +Now Milly's gone, and you're coming back." + +Her eyes roved from him to the steadfast green of the slope across the +road. She was moved. Her mouth twitched at the tight corners, her eyes +kindled. + +"It would be fun," said she. + +"Besides, think how silly to keep Charlotte provisioning you and tugging +over to spend nights, poor Charlotte!" + +"I really stayed," said Nan, temporizing, "for this Tira of yours--and +Tenney's." + +This form of statement sounded malicious to her own ears, but not to +his. Sometimes Nan wished he were not quite so "simple honest." It was, +she suspected, the woman's part--her own--to be unsuspecting and +obstinately good. + +"But if," she continued, "she won't have anything to do with you, I +might as well go back to town." + +"Not yet," said Raven. "I've got something to tell you." + +"What's it about?" + +"Old Crow." + +Nan thought a minute. + +"All right," she said. She looked at once unreasonably happy, like, he +extravagantly thought, a beautiful statue with the fountain of life +playing over it. "I'll come--for Old Crow." + +"Pick up your duds," said he, "and I'll go along and see if I can make +anything out of her. You be ready when I come back." + +Nan looked after him and thought how fast he walked and how Tira, as +well as Tira's troubles, drew him. If Tira knew the power of her own +beauty, how terribly decisive a moment this would be in the great dark +kitchen Nan had just left! And yet if Tira, having looked in her mirror +and the mirror of life, were cruelly sophisticated enough to play that +part, the man would be given odds to resist her. He was no ingenuous +youth. + + + + +XXV + + +Raven walked up to the side door of the house and knocked. She came at +once, her face blank of any expectation, though at seeing him she did +stand a little tenser and her lips parted with a quicker breath. + +"Good morning," said he. "Aren't you going to ask me in?" + +"Oh!" breathed Tira. It seemed she did actually consider keeping him +out. "I don't know," she blundered. "I'm alone, but I never feel +certain----" + +She never felt certain, he concluded, whether her peril might not be +upon her. But he had a sense of present security. He had seen Tenney +disappearing inside the fringe of woods. + +"Let me come in," he said quietly. "I want to talk to you. It's cold for +you out here." + +She moved aside and he followed her to the kitchen. The room was +steaming with warmth, the smell of apple sauce and a boiling ham. Her +moulding board, dusted with flour, was on the table, and her yellow +mixing bowl beside it. Raven did not think what household duties he +might be delaying, but the scene was sweet to him: a haven of homely +comfort where she ought to find herself secure. There was, in the one +casual glance he took, no sign of the child, and he was glad. That +strange, silent witness, since Nan and Charlotte had both, by a phrase, +banished the little creature into an alien room of its own, had begun to +embarrass him. He wanted to talk to Tira alone. + +"Baby's in the bedroom," said Tira, answering his thought. "When he's in +here, I wake him up steppin' round." + +Raven stood waiting for her to sit, and she drew forward a chair, +placing it to give her an oblique view from the window. Having seated +herself, she asked him, with a shy hospitality: + +"Won't you set?" + +He drew a chair nearer her and his eyes sought her in the light of what +Nan had said. Yes, she was beautiful. Her blue calico, faded to a +softness suited to old pictures, answered the blue of her eyes. The +wistful look of her face had deepened. It was all over a gentle +interrogation of sweet patience and unrest. + +"So Nan came over," he began. It seemed the only way to pierce her +reserve, at once, by a straight shaft. "You wouldn't do what she wanted +you to." + +She shook her head. + +"Why wouldn't you?" he urged, and then she did answer, not ungraciously, +but with a shy courtesy: + +"I didn't feel to." + +"It would be"--he hesitated for a word and found an ineffectual +one--"nice, if you could talk to her. She wouldn't tell." + +"I don't," said Tira, still with the same gentle obstinacy, "hold much +with talkin'." + +Raven, because he had her to himself and the time was short, determined +not to spare her for lack of a searching word. + +"Tira," he said, and she smiled a little, mysteriously to him but really +because she loved to hear him use her name, "things aren't getting any +better here. They're getting worse." + +"Oh, no," she hastened to say. "They're better." + +"Only last night you had to run away from him." + +"Things are ever so much better," said Tira, smiling at him, with a +radiance of conviction that lighted her face to a new sort of beauty. +"They're all right. I've found the Lord." + +What could he say? Old Crow had besought him, too, to abandon fear in +the certainty of a safe universe speaking through the symbols man could +understand. He tried to summon something that would reach and move her. + +"What if I were drowning," he said. "Suppose I knew I should"--he sought +for the accepted phrase--"go to heaven, if I drowned. Do you think I +should be right in not trying to save myself?" + +Tira knit her brows. It was only for an instant, though. + +"No," she said. "Certain you'd have to save yourself. You'd have to try +every way you knew. That's what I've done. I'm tryin' every way I know." + +"I'm telling you another way," said Raven sharply. "I'm telling you you +can't live with a crazy man----" + +"Oh, no," she interrupted earnestly. "He ain't that. He has spells, +that's all." + +"I'm not even asking you to go away with me. I'm asking you to go with +that good woman over there." Somehow he felt this was more appealing +than the name of Nan. "I trust her as I do myself, more than myself. +It's to save your life, Tira, your life and the baby's life." + +She was looking at him out of eyes warm with the whole force of her +worshiping love and gratitude. + +"No," she said softly. "I can't go. I ain't got a word to say ag'inst +her," she added eagerly. "She's terrible good. Anybody could see that. +But I can't talk to folks. I can't let 'em know. Not anybody," she added +softly, as if to herself, "but you." + +Raven forbade himself to be moved by this. + +"Then," he said, "you'll have to talk to other folks you may not like so +well. I shall complain of him. I shall be a witness to what I've seen +and what you've told me. I've threatened you with that before, but now +it's got to be done." + +"No," said Tira, trying, he could see, through every fiber of will in +her to influence him. But never by her beauty: she was game there. "You +wouldn't tell what I've said to you. You couldn't. 'Twas said to you an' +nobody else. It couldn't ha' been said to anybody else on this livin' +earth." + +Here was a spark of passion, as if she struck it out unknowingly. But he +must not be moved, and by every means he would move her. + +"What is there," he said, in the roughness of an emotion she saw +plainly, "what is there I wouldn't do to save your life? To save you +from being knocked about, touched"--he was about to add "violated," the +purity of her seemed so virginal, but he stopped and she went on: + +"It's just as I told you before. If they asked me questions, I should +say 'twa'n't so. I should say you thought 'twas so, but 'twa'n't. I +should say you wrote books an' you got up things, I guessed. It made you +wrong in your head." + +Old Crow! The innocent observers of his life and Old Crow's were in a +mysterious conspiracy to prove them both unsound. He laughed out +suddenly and she looked at him, surprised. + +"Do you know why I would?" she continued earnestly. "Because he never'd +overlook it in this world. If they hauled him up before a judge, an' you +testified, the minute they let him go he'd take it out o' you. You'd be +in more danger'n I be now. Besides, I ain't in any danger. I tried it +this mornin' an' I found out." He sat with knitted brows and dry lips +waiting for her to go on. "Last night," she said, "after you went down +from the shack, I couldn't sleep. I never closed my eyes. But I wa'n't +lonesome nor afraid. I was thinkin' o' what you said. He was there. +Jesus Christ was there. An' I knew 'twas so because you said so. +Besides, I felt it. An' 'long about three I got up an' covered the coals +an' took baby an' come down along home. For, I says, if He was there +with me in the shack, He'll go with me when I go, an' my place is to +home. An' there was a light in the kitchen, an' I looked in through the +winder an' Isr'el was there. He was kneelin' before a chair, an' his +head was on his hands an' through the winder I heard him groan. An' I +stepped in an' he got up off his knees an' stood lookin' at me kinder +wild, an' he says: 'Where you been?' An' I says: 'No matter where I +been. Wherever I been He's come home with me.' An' he says, 'He? Who is +it now?' An' I felt as if I could laugh, it was so pleasant to me, an' +seemed to smooth everything out. An' I says, 'Jesus Christ. He's come +home with me.' An' he looked at me kinder scairt, an' says: 'I should +think you was out o' your head.' An' I went round the room an' kinder +got it in order an' brashed up the fire an' he set an' looked at me. An' +I begun to sing. I sung Coronation--it stayed in my mind from the +meetin'--I dunno when I've sung before--an' he set an' watched me. An' I +got us an early breakfast an' we eat, but he kep' watchin' me. I'd ketch +him doin' it while he stirred his tea. 'Twas as if he was afraid. I +wouldn't have him feel that way. You don't s'pose he is afraid o' me, do +you?" + +This she poured out in a haste unlike her usual halting utterance. But +there was a steadiness in it, a calm. He shook his head. + +"No," he said. "I wish he were afraid of you." He wanted to leave her +the comfort of belief and at the same time waken her to the actual +perils of her life. "Tira," he said, looking into her eyes and trying to +impress her with the force of his will, "he isn't right, you know, not +right in his head, or he never would behave to you as he does. Any man +in his senses would know you were true to him. He doesn't, and that's +why he's so dangerous." + +A convulsive movement passed over her face, slight as a twitching of +muscles could well be. The sweat broke out on her chin. + +"No," she said, "any man wouldn't know. Because it's true. That man that +come into this house last night an' set down side o' me--an' glad enough +he was there happened to be that chair left, same as if I'd left it for +him--he's bad all through, an' every man in this township knows it, an' +they know how I know it, an' how I found it out." The drops on her +forehead had wet the curling rings of her hair and she put up her hand +and swept them impatiently away. Her eyes, large in their agonized +entreaty, were on Raven's, and he suffered for her as it was when he had +seen her at the moments of her flight into the woods. And now he seemed +to see, not her alone, but Nan, not a shred of human pathos that had +been tossed from hand to hot hand, but something childlike and +inviolate. And that was how he let himself speak. + +"But, dear child," he said, "Tenney knows how faithful you are. He knows +if you hadn't loved him you wouldn't have married him. And he knows if +you love anybody, you're true through everything." + +"That's it," she said loudly, in a tone that echoed strangely in the +great kitchen. "That's it." + +He knew what she meant. If she loved the man, she could convince him, +mad as he was. But she did not love him. She was merely clinging to him +with all the strength of her work-toughened hands. + +"But talk to him," he insisted. "Show him how well you mean toward him." + +"I can't," she said. "I never've talked to anybody, long as I lived. I +git"--she paused for a word and ended in a dash: "I git all froze up." + +She sat staring at him, as if her mind were tied into knots, as if she +could neither untie them, nor conceive of anybody's doing it. But he +could not know just what sort of turmoil was in her nor how it was so +strange to her that she felt no mental strength to meet it. In the +instinct to talk to him, that new impulse born out of the first human +companionship she had ever had, she felt strange troubles within her +mind, an anguish of desire, formless and untrained. She was like a child +who stretches out arms to something it dearly longs for and finds its +fingers will not close on it. She had never, before knowing him, felt +the least hunger to express anything that did not lie within the small +circle of her little vocabulary. But her mind was waking, stretching +itself toward another mind, and suffering from its own impotence. + +"O God!" she said, in a low tone, and then clapped her hand over her +mouth, because she had not meant to speak that name. + +There came a knock at the door. Instantly the look of life ebbed from +her face. It assumed at once its mask of stolid calm. She got up and +went to the door and Raven, waiting for her to come back, remembered +absently he had heard the clang of bells. Visualizing her face as she +had talked to him, trying to understand her at every point, the more as +she could not explain herself, he was suddenly and sharply recalled. He +heard her voice. + +"No," she cried, so distinctly that the sound came through the crack of +the door she had left ajar. "No, no, I tell you. You never've stepped +foot into this house by my will, an', so long as I'm in it, you never +shall." + +Raven rose and went to the door. He had not stopped to think what he +should find, but at least it was, from her tone, a menace of some sort. +There stood Eugene Martin, in his fur coat, his florid extravagance of +scarf and pin, on his face the ironic smile adapted to his preconceived +comedy with Tira. Martin, hearing the step behind her, started, +unprepared. He had passed Tenney, slowly making his way homeward, and +counted on a few minutes' speech with her and a quick exit, for his +butt, the fool of a husband, to see. But as Raven appeared, the fellow's +face broke up in a flouting amusement. Here was another, the satiric +lips were ready to swear. Deepest distrust of Tira shone forth in the +half smile; a low community of mean understanding was in his following +glance at Raven. He burst into a loud laugh, took off his hat and made +Tira an exaggerated bow. + +"Don't mention it," he said. "Didn't know you had company. Wouldn't +think o' comin' in." + +He turned away, his shoulders shaking with ostentatious mirth. It was +all in a minute, and Raven's following act, quite unreasoned, also +occupied a minute. He put Tira aside, stepped out after Martin and +walked behind him down the path. When Martin reached the sleigh, Raven +was at his side. Martin had ceased shaking his shoulders in that +fictitious mirth. Now in that last moment, it seemed, he took cognizance +of Raven, and turned, apprehension, in spite of him, leaping to his +face. Raven, still with no set purpose, grasped him by the collar with +one hand and with the other reached for the whip in the sleigh. It was +over quickly. Raven remembered afterward that the horse, startled by the +swish of the blows, jumped aside and that he called out to him. He did +not propose depriving Martin of the means of exit. The fellow did not +meet judgment lying down. He did a wild feat of struggling, but he was +soft in every muscle, a mean antagonist. The act over, Raven released +him, with an impetus that sent him staggering, set the whip in the +socket and turned back to the house. At that moment he saw Tenney coming +along the road, not with his usual hurried stride, but slowly, his head +lifted, his eyes upon the figures at his gate. Raven recoiled from the +possibility of a three-cornered wrangle when Tenney also should reach +the scene. It was an impossible predicament. Not for himself: he was +never troubled by any hampering sense of personal dignity, but for Tira, +who stood in silence watching them. She had advanced a few steps into +the snowy path and waited, immovable, the light breeze lifting her rings +of hair. To Raven, in the one glance he gave her, she was like a Fate, +choosing neither good nor ill, but watching the even course of time. If +Martin saw Tenney, he was not going to linger for any problematic issue. +He stepped into the sleigh and, without drawing the fur robe over his +knees, took up the reins. His face, turned upon Raven, was distorted +with rage. + +"That's assault," he called to him, "assault an' battery. I'll have the +law on you an' she's my witness." + +"Stop!" called Tira. She came down the path with long strides, her +garments blowing back. At three paces from the sleigh she halted and +called to him in a voice so clear and unrestrained that Raven thought +Tenney, coming on with his jerky action, might also have heard it. + +"You stir a step to git the law on him an' I'll tell what I know. What +did I find out about you? The money stole out o' the box after they had +the raffle for the War, the deed under old lady Blaisdell's feather bed, +because it wa'n't recorded an' it left you with the right an' title to +that forty feet o' land. Five counts!" She held up her left hand and +told off one finger after the other. "I've got 'em all down in my mind, +an' there they've been ever since I left you. What d' I leave you for? +Not because you treated me like a dog, whenever the fit was on ye, but +because you was meaner'n dirt." + +He sat there, the reins gathered in his hand, staring at her, his face +stiffened in a reflex of the cold passion of hers. Upon her last word, +he called to the horse with an oath as if it had been the beast that +offended him, turned the sleigh and drove off. Tenney, breathless, was +now on the scene. His thin lips curled and drew back, the snarl of the +angry feline. + +"Two on ye," he said to Raven. "Come to blows over her, have ye? An' +you're on top." + +Raven turned to Tira. + +"Go into the house," he said. + +Tenney laughed. It was not the laugh of the man who had just left them. +There was no light mockery in it, but a low intensity of misery, the +cynical recognition of a man whose house has been destroyed and who asks +his inner self how he could have expected anything different. But when +he spoke it was jeeringly, to Tira. + +"Go into the house," he mocked. "Didn't ye hear him? He tells ye to go +into the house, into my house, so's he can fight it out ag'in same's he +done with t'other one. You better go. He won't git no odds from me." + +He set his dinner pail down beside him, and his hand moved a few inches +along the helve of his axe. And Raven, like Tira, was sorry for him. + +"No," said Tira, "I sha'n't go into the house. An' this to-do ain't so +much about me as about you, Isr'el Tenney, because you're makin' a fool +o' yourself. You'll be town talk, an' you deserve to be. You've brought +it on yourself." + +Raven, his eyes on the man's face, saw it change slightly: something +tremulous had come into it, though it might have been only surprise. The +hand on the axe helve shook perceptibly. Now it looked to Raven as if it +might be his turn. + +"I came up here this morning," he said, "to see her." Curiously, at the +moment of saying "your wife," he balked at it. He would not, even by the +sanction of the word, seem to give her over to him. + +"Yes," said Tenney. The lividness of anger tautened his face. "You see +me off to my work. You knew you'd find her here." + +"Yes," said Raven. "I knew I should find her. I had to see her alone, +because I wanted to ask her to leave you, go away from here, and be +safe." + +Tenney stared at him. The brusque fact was too much for him. Why should +Raven have told it? + +"You are known," Raven continued steadily, "to abuse your wife." + +Tenney's lips again curled back. + +"I ain't laid a finger on her," he snarled. "Anybody but a liar 'd tell +you so." + +"She has told me so," continued Raven. "I came to warn her I should +complain of you and have you bound over to keep the peace. She said if I +did that she would refuse to testify against you. She said she would +rather"--here a slight bitterness came into his voice and, for an +instant, he had a foolish satisfaction in reminding Tira of her +unfriendliness in blocking him--"she would rather have me considered out +of my mind than let you get your just deserts." + +"Ah!" snarled Tenney. "I wa'n't born yesterday." + +This interchange had had on Tira all the effect Raven could have wished. +She started forward a step, with a murmured sound. But Tenney was +unmoved. + +"Now you know," said Raven, "you're not going to tell me I'm a liar. I +draw the line at that. You'll have to drop your axe--that's a cowardly +streak in you, Tenney, a mighty mean streak, that axe business--and I'll +give you your punishment without waiting for judge or jury." + +Tenney looked down at the axe frowningly, and the hand holding it sank +to his side. + +"Besides saying she wouldn't testify against you," Raven continued, "she +refused to leave you. She is a foolish woman, but she's like most of +them. They hang on to the beast that abuses 'em, God knows why. But the +rest of us won't let you off so easy. Don't think it, for a minute. The +next time she's seen wandering round the woods with her baby and you +after her, yelling like a catamount, you're going to be hauled up and, +even if she won't testify, there's enough against you to make it go hard +with you." + +Tenney ceased staring at the axe and looked up at Raven. Was it hatred +in the eyes? The gleam in them flickered, in a curious way, cross +currents of strange light. He tried to speak, gulped, and moistened his +dry lips. Then he managed it: + +"What business is it o' yourn?" + +"It's every man's business," said Raven. "When you began running over +the woods, yelling like a catamount"--he returned to this of set +purpose, because it evidently bit--"I thought it was queer, that's all. +Thought you were out of your head. But it got to be too much of a good +thing. And it's one thing to make yourself a laughing-stock. It's +another to be indicted for murder." + +"I don't," said Tenney, "stan' any man's interferin' with me. I give ye +fair warnin' not to meddle nor make." + +"Then," said Raven, "we've both got our warning. I've had yours and +you've had mine. You're a mighty mean man, Tenney. A mean cuss, that's +what you are." + +Tenney, in the surprise and mortification of this, barked out at him: + +"Don't ye call me a cuss. I'm a professin' Christian." + +"Stuff!" said Raven. "That's all talk. I wonder a man of your sense +shouldn't see how ridiculous it is. You're not a Christian. When you +stand up in meeting and testify, you're simply a hypocrite. No, I don't +call you a Christian. I call you a scamp, on the way to being locked +up." + +Tenney's mind leaped back a space. + +"You're tryin' to throw me off the track," he announced. "Ye can't do +it. When I come up the road you an' Eugene Martin was out there an' you +knocked him down. I see ye. You horsewhipped him. Now if it's anybody's +business to horsewhip Eugene Martin, it's mine. What business is it o' +yourn horsewhippin' a man that's hangin' round another man's wife +unless----" + +"Hold on there," said Raven. "I gave him his medicine because he was too +fresh." Here he allowed himself a salutary instant of swagger. Tenney +might as well think him a devil of a fellow, quick to act and hard to +hold. "It happens to be my way. I don't propose taking back talk from +anybody of his sort--or yours. He's a mean cuss, too, Tenney, ready to +think every man's as bad as he is--a foul-mouthed fool. And"--he +hesitated here and spoke with an emphasis that did strike upon Tenney's +hostile attention--"he is the kind of cheap fellow that would like +nothing better than to insult a woman. That was what he sat down by your +wife for, last night. That was why I made an excuse to get him away from +her. I wouldn't allow him within ten feet of a woman of my own family. +You ought to be mighty glad I looked out for yours." + +Tenney was in a coil of doubt. Suddenly he glanced round at Tira, +standing there in the path, her eyes upon one and the other as they +spoke. Raven would not willingly have looked at her. He felt her +presence in his inmost heart; he knew how cold she must be in the wintry +air with nothing about her shoulders and the breeze strong enough to +stir those rings of hair about her forehead. But she must suffer it +while he raked Tenney by the only language Tenney knew. + +"But here be you," cried Tenney, as if his mind, unsatisfied, went back +to one flaw after another in Raven's argument. "You see me go by to my +work, an' you come up here to talk over my folks behind my back an' tole +'em off to run away with you." + +"I have explained all that once," said Raven. "You'll have to take it or +leave it." + +At that instant Tira stepped forward. She gave a little cry. + +"You've hurt your foot!" + +Raven's glance followed hers to the ground and he saw a red stain +creeping from Tenney's boot into the snow. Tenney also glanced at it +indifferently. It was true that, although the cold was growing anguish +to a numbing wound, he was hardly aware of it as a pain that could be +remedied. This was only one misery the more. + +"Course I've hurt my foot," he said savagely. "What d'ye s'pose I come +home for, this time o' day?" + +"Why," said Tira, in an innocent good faith, "I s'posed you come back to +spy on me." + +That did take hold of him. He looked at her in an almost childish +reproach. Now he put the foot to the ground--he had been, though +unconsciously, easing it--but at the first step winced and his face +whitened. + +"God A'mighty!" Raven heard him mutter, and was glad. He seemed more of +a man invoking God in his pain than in waving deity like a portent +before unbelievers. + +Tira had gone to him. + +"You put your hand on my shoulder," she said, something so sweetly +thrilling in her voice that Raven wondered how Tenney could hear it and +not feel his heart dissolve into water. For himself, he was relieved at +the warming tone, but it mysteriously hurt him, it seemed so horrible +that all the tenderness of which it was witness had to be dammed in her +with no outlet save over the child who was "not right." Tenney paid no +attention to her, and Raven took him by the arm. The snow was reddening +thinly and Raven could see the cut in the boot. + +"Open the door," he said to Tira. "I'll help him in." + +Curiously, though Tenney had forgotten the hurt except as a part of his +mental pain, now that his mind was directed toward it he winced, and +made much of getting to the door. Yet it seemed to be in no sense to +challenge sympathy. He was simply sorry for himself, bewildered at his +misfortune, and so intently was his mind set on it now that he did not +seem annoyed by Raven's supporting him. Tira hurried on in advance, and +when they entered she was putting wood into the stove and opening +drafts, to start up the neglected fire. Raven led him to the chair by +the hearth, knelt, without paying any attention to his muttered +remonstrance, and, with much difficulty of frequent easements, got off +the boot and the soaked stocking. It was an ugly cut. Tenney, glancing +down at it, groaned and looked away, and Tira brought a pillow and +tucked it behind his head. Raven, glancing up at him, saw he was white +and sick and Tira said: + +"He never can stan' the sight o' blood." + +Evidently the irony of it did not strike her at all, but Raven wrinkled +his brows over it. He sent her here and there, for water to wash the +wound and for clean cloth. He rolled a bandage and put it on deftly +while Tenney stared. + +"Now," said he, coming to his feet, "you'd better telephone the doctor. +This is all I know." + +Tira went to the telephone in the next room and Raven cleared away the +confusion he had made and again Tenney watched him. At intervals he +looked down at his bandaged foot as if he pitied it. Tira, having given +her message, came back and reported that the doctor would be there +shortly. + +"Then," said Raven, "I'll be off. Telephone if you need anything. +Perhaps I'd better come over anyway. He'll have to be got to bed. I'll +call you up." + +He felt a sudden easement of the strain between himself and Tira. Tenney +himself, through his hurt, had cleared the way. Their intercourse, void +of secrecy, was suddenly commonplace; at the moment there was nothing in +it to light a flash of feeling. Tenney did not look at him. Then Raven, +in a sudden mounting of desire to show Tira how sorry he was for her, +said to her impetuously: + +"I hate to leave you alone." + +And again she surprised him as she had the night before in implicit +acceptance of her new faith, something as tangible as divine. She spoke +in a perfect simplicity. + +"I ain't alone," she said. + +Tenney had turned his head, to listen. + +"We ain't alone, Isr'el, be we?" she challenged breathlessly. + +"I dunno what you're talkin' about," said Tenney uneasily, and she +laughed. + +It was, Raven wonderingly thought, a light-hearted laugh, as if she had +no longer anything to bear. + +"Why," said she, "same as I told you. We ain't alone a minute o' the +time, if we don't feel to be. He's with us, the Lord Jesus Christ." + +The telephone bell rang and she went off to answer it. Tenney, as if +with a hopeful conviction that another man would understand, turned his +eyes upon Raven. + +"What's anybody want to talk like that for?" he questioned +irrepressibly. + +"It's the way you talk yourself," said Raven. "That's precisely what you +said last night." + +"It's no kind of a way----" Tenney began, and then pulled himself up. +Raven believed that he meant it was one thing to invoke the Founder of +his religion in a sacerdotal sense, but not for the comforting certainty +of a real Presence. "Seems if anybody's crazed. Seems if----" Here he +broke off again, and Raven took satisfaction in the concluding phrase: +"It's no way to talk when a man's lamed himself so's't he can't git +round the room 'thout bleedin' to death." + +By this Raven understood the man was, in an hysterical way, afraid of +Tira and her surprising invocation. He judged things were looking rather +better for her, and went off almost cheerfully, without waiting for her +return. + + + + +XXVI + + +When Raven came to Nan's, he went in without knocking and found the +house still. He called her name, and she answered from an upper +distance. Presently she appeared, traveling bag in hand, and came down +to him. + +"You really want me, Rookie?" she asked him, pausing at the closet door +where she had hung her hat and coat. "You want an unattached female, +unchaperoned, very much at large?" + +"I want her," said Raven, "more than anything else I'm likely to get in +this frowsy world. As to chaperons, Charlotte will do very well, without +legging it over here every night to keep you in countenance." + +Nan put on her hat and coat, and he picked up the bag. + +"Back door locked?" he asked. + +She laughed. + +"Yes," said she. "That shows I meant to come. Go ahead, Rookie. I'll +lock this door." Mid-way down the path, she glanced at him and then +ventured: "You look very much set up. What is it, Rookie? what +happened?" + +"The thing that's happened," said Raven, with a little reminiscent +laugh, "is that Tenney's afraid of his wife. And he's cut his foot and +can't get away from her. I call it the most ironical of time's revenges +I've ever had the pleasure of seeing." + +He went on and told her the story of Tenney's disabled foot. Nan, +listening, did not take it in. + +"But I don't see," she offered, "why it makes him afraid of her." + +"It doesn't. Though it makes it more difficult for him to get at her. +The thing that's bowled him over is that she's taken him at his word. +He's told her the Founder of his religion is everywhere present, and now +she's accepted it and assumes the Presence is there in the kitchen, it +scares him. He assumes she's dotty. Hence he's afraid of her. You see, +Nan, the Presence he's in the habit of invoking is something he +conceives of as belonging to strictly sacerdotal occasions. Really, it's +a form of words. But she believes it and that, as I told you, scares +him. It's like raising a ghost. He's raised it and somebody's seen it +and he's scared." + +"Can't the queerest things happen," Nan asked him, in a discursiveness +he found nevertheless relevant, "here in New England? There isn't a +human trait or a morbid outcrop but we've got it. See! Charlotte's at +the window. S'pose she'll want me?" + +"She'll love it," said Raven. He lifted up his voice and called and +Charlotte left the window to appear at the door. "I've got her, +Charlotte," said Raven. "She's going to make us a visit. Give us almond +pudding for dinner, can't you?" + +It was too late for that, Charlotte told him indulgently, but she +guessed there'd be suthin'. She lingered in the hall while Nan took off +her coat, and volunteered information about the fire being lighted in +the west chamber. + +"I 'most thought you'd come," she said, in a way softly confidential. +"You can settle right down now, you two, an' visit." + +She put a hand for an instant on Nan's shoulder and Nan felt the glow of +her beneficence. Did Charlotte know what it was to her to have even one +evening alone with Rookie? Charlotte knew most things. Probably she knew +that. + +Nan and Raven had their noon dinner and went for a walk, up the road. +That led them past Tenney's and when they reached the house Raven said: + +"You wait a jiff and I'll ask how he is." + +Tira came, in answer to his knock. She was gravely calm, not even +disturbed in her secret mind, Raven concluded, not keyed up by inner +apprehension, and keeping herself firm. Where, he wondered absently, at +the same instant, did she get those clothes, blue, always worn to the +exact point of soft loveliness, the very moral of her eyes? She glanced +down the path at Nan, and Nan waved to her. Tira gave a serious little +bow and turned her glance to Raven, who inquired: + +"How's his foot?" + +"It pains him a good deal," she said, with that softness he had noted in +her voice while they dressed the hurt. "He has to set with it in a +chair. It worries him to death not to git round." + +"Good Lord!" said Raven. "You must think I'm a nice chap. Who's doing +the barn work?" + +"Oh," said Tira, "that's all right. I can see to that. I always do when +he's gone for day's works." + +"You can't water the stock." + +"Oh, yes, I can." Now she smiled at him, beautifully, bewilderingly, for +his kindness in asking. "I done it before dinner. That's nothin'. +Besides, I like it: takes me out door." + +"Don't do any more," said Raven. "We'll be over, 'long about four +o'clock, Jerry or I." Then, for he had forgotten Tenney, in his +awareness of her, he remembered to ask: "The doctor came, did he?" + +She nodded gravely. + +"Say anything?" + +She shook her head, and then offered, it seemed unwillingly: + +"He thought he might be laid up quite a spell." + +To Raven, that seemed so desirable, that he wondered at the +commiseration in her voice; evidently she could be sorry for Tenney +without an admixture of relief at having him safely fettered for a +while. + +"Well," he said, "I'll be over. And if there's anything----" he stopped +and looked her in the eyes, gravely authoritative. It was the first time +their two inner selves had met in such unrestrained interchange. If +there was anything he could do for her, the glance said, she was to know +he would do it, to the very limit of allegiance. What did her own glance +say? Was there acceptance in it? Not so much that as a grave +understanding and gratitude. He was her refuge, her strength. She might +still go winging brokenly about the obscurity that made her life, but he +was the shelter where she might take cover if she would. Their gaze +broke (it was locked there an instant only) and however she felt in +turning from him, Raven had the sensation of dragging his eyes away. + +"I'll be over," he said, "in time to fodder and milk." + +He was leaving, but she called after him: + +"No, don't you come. You send Jerry." + +"I can do it as well as Jerry," he answered impatiently, and again she +called: + +"No, don't you come. I don't think best." + +Immediately Raven knew, if she put it in that tone (the mother tone it +was) he himself didn't "think best." He joined Nan and they walked on, +not speaking. Suddenly he stopped for an instant, without warning, and +she too stopped and looked at him. He took off his hat and was glad of +the cold air on his forehead. + +"Mystery of mysteries!" he said. There was bitterness in his tone, +exasperation, revolt. Evidently he saw himself in a situation he neither +invited nor understood. "Who'd think of finding a woman like that on a +New England doorstep talking about foddering the cows?" + +Nan considered the wisely circumspect thing to say and managed tamely: + +"She's a good woman." + +They went on. + +"Yes," said Raven, after a while, "she's a good woman. But does she want +to be? Or isn't there anything inside her to make her want to be +anything else?" + +"I have an idea," said Nan, going carefully, "most of the men she's +known have wanted her to be something else." + +"Now what do you mean by that?" said Raven irritably. "And what do you +know about it anyway? You're nothing but a little girl." + +"You keep saying that," said Nan, with composure, "because it gives you +less responsibility." + +He stared at her, forgetting Tira. + +"Responsibility?" he repeated. "What responsibility is there I don't +want to take--about you?" + +"You don't want me to be a woman," said Nan. "You want me to be a little +girl, always adoring you, just enough, not too much. You've been adored +enough by women, Rookie." + +They both knew she was talking in a hidden language. It was not women +she meant; it was Aunt Anne. + +"But," said she, persisting, "I'm quite grown up. I've been in the War, +just as deep as you have, as deep as Dick. I've taken it all at a +gulp--the whole business, I mean, life, things as they are. I couldn't +any more go back to the Victorian striped candy state of mind I was +taught to pattern by than you could yourself." + +"You let the Victorians alone," growled Raven. "Much you know about +'em." + +"They were darlings," said Nan. "They had more brains, any ten of 'em, +than a million of us put together. But it does happen to be true they +didn't see what human nature is, under the skin. We do. We've scratched +it and we know. It's a horrible sight, Rookie." + +"What is it?" said Raven. "What is under the skin?" + +Nan considered. + +"Well," she said finally, "there's something savage. Not strong, +splendid savage, you know, but pretending to be big Injun and not +fetching it. Wearing red blankets, and whooping, and tearing raw meat. O +Rookie, how do folks talk? I can't, even to you. But the world +isn't--well, it isn't as nice as I thought it: not so clean. You ought +to know. You don't like it either." + +"So," said Raven, meditatively, "you don't like it." + +"It's no matter whether I like it or not," said Nan, in a chilly way he +interpreted as pride. "I'm in it. And I'm going to play the game." + +They went on for a while without speaking, and then Raven looked round +at her, a whimsical look. + +"So you give notice," he said, "you're grown up." + +"I give notice," said Nan tersely. "I'm a very old lady really, older +than you are, Rookie." Then she judged the moment had come for setting +him right on a point that might be debatable. "If you think I was a +little girl when I sat there and loved you the other night, you might as +well know I wasn't. And I wasn't a woman either: not then. I was just a +person, a creatur', Charlotte would say, that wanted you to get under +your tough lonesome old hide there's somebody that loves you to death +and believes in you and knows everything you feel." + +"Am I lonesome, Nan?" he asked quickly, picking out the word that struck +him deepest. "I don't know." + +"I do," said Nan. "You haven't had any of the things men ought to have +to keep them from growing into those queer he-birds stuck all over with +ridiculous little habits like pin feathers that make you want to +laugh--and cry, too. Old bachelors. Lord!" + +"Look out," said Raven. "You'll get me interested in myself. I've gone +too far that way already. The end of that road is Milly and +psycho-analysis and my breaking everybody's head because they won't let +me alone." + +"Break 'em then," said Nan concisely. "And run away. Take this Tira with +you and run off to the Malay Peninsula or somewhere. That sounds further +away than most places. Or an island: there must be an island left +somewhere, for a homesick old dear like you." + +"Now, in God's name," said Raven, "what do you say that for?" + +"Tira?" Nan inquired recklessly. "What do I tell you to take her for? +Because I want to see you mad, Rookie, humanly mad. And she's got the +look that makes us mad, men and women, too." + +"What is it?" Raven asked thickly. "What is the look?" + +"Mystery. It's beauty first, and then mystery spread over that. She's +like--why, Rookie, she's like life itself--mystery." + +"No," said Raven, surprising her, "you're not a little girl any more: +that's true enough. I don't know you." + +"Likely not," said Nan, undisturbed. "You can't have your cake and eat +it. You can't have a little Nan begging for stories and a Nan that's on +her job of seeing you get something out of life, if she can manage it, +before it's too late." + +There she stopped, on the verge, she suddenly realized, of blundering. +He was not to guess she had too controlling an interest in that +comprehensive mystery which was his life. How horrible beyond measure if +she took over Aunt Anne's frantic task of beneficent guidance! Rookie +should be free. He began to laugh, and, without waiting for the reason, +she joined him. + +"Maybe I will," he said, "the Malay prescription, half of it. But I +should want you with me. You may not be little, but you're a great Nan +to play with. We won't drag Tira's name into it," he added gravely. +"Poor Tira's name! We'll take good care of it." + +"Oh, I'll go," said Nan recklessly. "But we'll take Tira. And we'll +build her a temple in a jungle and put her up on a pedestal and feed her +with tropical fruits and sit cross-legged before her so many hours a day +and meditate on her mystery." + +"What would she say?" Raven wondered, and then laughed out in a quick +conviction. "No, she wouldn't say anything. She'd accept it, as she does +foddering the cows." + +"Certainly," said Nan. "That's Tira." + +"You've forgotten the baby." + +"Yes," said Nan, soberly. "Poor little boy!" + +They were serious and could play no more, and presently turned into the +back road and so home. At supper they had a beautiful time, the lights +soft, the fire purring, and the shades up so that the cold austerities +of night could look in without getting them. Nan had done a foolish +thing, one of those for which women can give no reason, for usually they +do not know which one it is out of the braided strands of all the +reasons that make emotion. She had unearthed a short pink crepe frock +she used to wear in her childish days, and let her heavy hair hang in +two braids tied with pink ribbons. Did she want to lull Rookie's +new-born suspicion of her as a too mature female thing, by stressing the +little girl note, or did she slip into the masquerading gown because it +was restful to go back the long road that lay between the present and +the days when there was no war? Actually she did not know. She did know +she had flown wildly "up attic," the minute Rookie announced the daring +plan of the visit, and flung open chest after chest, packed by Aunt +Anne's exact hands, with this and that period of her clothes. Why had +Aunt Anne kept them, she straightened herself to wonder, at one point, +throwing them out in a disorderly pile, ginghams, muslins, a favorite +China silk. Could it be Aunt Anne had loved her, not so much as she +loved Rookie, but in the same hidden, inflexible way, and wanted to +preserve the image of her as she grew to girlhood, in the clothes she +had worn? It was not likely, she concluded, and was relieved to dismiss +even the possibility. It would have made too much to live up to, a +present loyalty of obedience which, if Aunt Anne in the heavenly courts +had anything like her earthly disposition, would be the only thing to +satisfy her. Nan didn't mean to do anything definitely displeasing, +especially to Aunt Anne. She simply meant to enjoy to the full the +ecstasy of living, just as if it were going on for a lifetime, under the +same roof with Rookie and having him all to herself. Then she came on +the pink crepe, with its black bows, and gave a tiny nod of satisfaction +there in the attic dusk, and was all in a glow, though it was so cold. + +When she came down to supper that night, Raven was reading his paper by +the fire. He glanced up as if she came in so every night, Nan thought. +She liked that. But she was a little awkward, conscious of her +masquerade and so really adding to the illusion of girlhood, ill used to +its own charm. Raven threw down his paper and got up. + +"Lord!" said he. "Come here, you witch. Let me look at you." + +Nan was actually shy now. + +"Why, my darling," said Raven, in a tone so moved she was almost sorry +she had brought it all about. It made too many responsibilities. Which +Nan was she going to be? ("But no kissing!" she reminded herself.) +"You've come back to me." + +"I haven't been away," said Nan, recovering herself and treating him to +a cool little nod, "not actually. Like it, Charlotte?" For Charlotte had +come in with a platter, and Nan turned about, peacocking before her +unsurprised gaze. "I found it up attic." + +"It's real pretty," said Charlotte. "Them scant things they're wearin' +now, they ain't to be thought of in the same day." + +Then, having given the room a last glance (almost a caressing touch +Charlotte had, a little anxious, too, because all comforts were so +important) she went out, and Nan was sitting opposite Raven at the +table, demure, self-contained, yet playing her wildest. It was a game +she knew she was to have entirely alone. The game was that she and +Rookie were living here in this house in some such potency of possessive +bliss that nothing could separate them. She was careless over the terms +of it. She was a child, she was a woman, she was everything Rookie +wanted her to be. Here they were together, and the universe, finding the +combination, Nan and Rookie, too strong to fight against, had given up +the losing battle, turned sulkily and left them alone. + +They were hungry and in high spirits, and they ate and talked a great +deal. Nan meant to remember what they talked about. Even the words were +so dear to her she would have liked to set them down in a book to keep +for her old age that was to be as desolate as Aunt Anne's. But it +shouldn't be as conventional. There should be waves on that sea. Then +Charlotte had come in to clear the table and afterward, by Raven's +invitation, sat ten minutes or so by the fire and talked of neighborhood +things, and they were left alone again, and he was suddenly grave. Was +the game over, Nan wondered, and then went on into a more unbridled +speculation whether he was finding himself reminded of the old scruples, +the old withholdings when Aunt Anne, unable to keep up with their +galloping horses of fun, restrained them delicately but with what a hand +of steel! And suddenly she realized he was not thinking of her. Was the +grim house over the rise of the road calling to his anxious heart? + +"Nan," he said, as if he had suddenly made up his mind, "I've got +something to show you." + +He left the room and she heard him running upstairs. Presently he was +back, carrying the mottled book. Instantly it had a vivid interest for +her, he held it so reverently and, it seemed, so tenderly. She was at +the fire and he told her to get up and take the other chair. It would +bring the light at her back. With the book still in his hand, he sat +down before the fire and began to tell her the story of Old Crow. Nan +had known it, in its outer eccentricities; but had Old Crow been +unhappy? That was new to her. She had heard of him as queer, the country +oddity who, being frenzied over God or love, had madly incarcerated +himself in the loneliness of his own eccentricity. + +"At odds with life as he found it," Raven concluded, "not actually able +to bear it. That's how it looked to the rest of us. Now, this is how it +looked to him." + +"Is it a journal?" Nan asked. + +She had forgotten her game. She was no child now, but a serious woman +with an intensely frowning glance. + +"Yes. This is his journal. Want to read it, or me read it to you?" + +"Oh, you," said Nan. + +"I'd better, I guess. His punctuation's queer, and so's his spelling +sometimes. But I wish I could write as good a fist." + +So he began. Nan sat perfectly still while the reading lasted. Once +getting up to tend the fire, she went back to a higher chair and sat +tense, her hands clasped about her knees. Old Crow seemed to have +entered the room, a singularly vital figure with extraordinary things to +say. Whether you believed the things or not, you had to listen, Old Crow +believed them so tremendously. He was like a shock, an assault from the +atmosphere itself. He affected Nan profoundly. Her perched attitude in +the chair was, in an unreasoned way, her own tribute of strained +attention. She was not combating him, but she had to tune herself up +high not to be overwhelmed. When Raven had finished, he turned and laid +the book on the table behind him, but lingeringly as if, Nan thought, he +had an affection for it. + +"Well," he asked, "what do you think?" + + + + +XXVII + + +"What do I think?" Nan repeated. "About Old Crow, or his religion? It is +that, isn't it, Rookie? It is a religion." + +"It's a religion, all right," said Raven. "And curiously, Nan, it's +given me a tremendous boost." + +"Because you think----" + +"Not because I think anything. I've an idea that with religions you'd +better not think. You'd better believe." + +"If you can," said she. + +"But don't you believe?" he asked her, out of an impetuosity like her +own. "I never thought to wonder what you believed. I remember though, +one time." + +"Yes," said Nan. A deeper red ran into her cheeks, and her brows came +down a little over her eyes. Raven could see she was visualizing +something. "You're going back to the time when I wouldn't be confirmed." + +"I remember. Mighty disagreeable, that was." + +"Yes. I was in disgrace. She looked at me as if she'd been frozen. And +you brought me a peach. Do you remember that peach?" + +He shook his head. But he did remember, though he said nothing, his mind +on the poor little girl chilled by Aunt Anne's frozen look. + +"It was the most beautiful peach," said Nan, looking into the fire, and +continuing to hug her knees. "It wasn't that I didn't have peaches. +There were plenty to be eaten like a lady with a silver knife, or even +stolen off the sideboard and gobbled in the garden with the juice +squshing over your white frock. But this one--you slipped it into my +hand and I knew it was because you were sorry for me. And I took it out +of the room and went into the garden with it. And what do you s'pose I +did then, Rookie?" + +"Ate it, I hope," said Raven. He felt his eyes hot with angry sorrow +over her. "That's the only thing I know of to do with a peach." + +"I went round behind the lilacs, where the lily bed is, and stood there +and cried like--like a water spout, I guess, and I kissed the peach. I +kissed it and kissed it. It was like a rough check. And then I buried it +among the lilies because the dirt there looked so soft." + +"Did it come up?" + +He wanted, though so late, to turn it into childish comedy. Nan laughed +out. + +"No," she said ruefully, "not the way you'd expect. It did come up. I +saw her troweling there the next morning. She'd called me to bring her +other gardening gloves. She'd found a hole in one she had on. You know +how exquisitely she kept her hands. And just as I came, she turned up +the peach, and looked at it as if it had done something disgraceful to +get there, and tossed it into her basket." + +"Now," said Raven, "you can't make me think anybody"--he couldn't allow +himself to say Aunt Anne--"went hunting out your poor little peach." + +"No," said Nan, bending on him a limpid gaze. "Of course not, +consciously. Only there was something----" But even she, with all her +recklessness, could not follow this out. To her own consciousness was +the certainty that deep in Aunt Anne, deep as the principle of life +itself, was an intuition which led her will to the evidence it needed +for its own victories. "And the queer thing about it was," she ended, "I +didn't refuse to be confirmed because I doubted things. I refused +because I believed. I believed in God; I believed so hard I was afraid." + +"What of?" + +"Afraid of standing in with what I didn't like. Afraid I couldn't carry +it through, and if I didn't, there'd be ginger for me somewhere. So +queer, Rookie, like all the things that keep happening to us. Little +ironies, you know, that sort of thing. For she thought I was behaving +shockingly toward God. And really, Rookie, it was because I was so +afraid of Him. I believed in Him so much I couldn't say I believed in a +way I didn't." + +"Like Old Crow," said Raven. "Only you didn't go far enough. You didn't +say it's only a symbol." + +"I tried not to think much about it, anyway," she owned. "I couldn't +believe what she did. But I couldn't go into it. I can't now. Don't you +know, Rookie, there are things you can't talk about? It's bad manners." + +"I wish the learned divines thought so," said Raven. "Dear Nan!" he +added, his mind returning to her. "I didn't know you so very well, after +all. I must have seen you were having a beast of a time, or I mightn't +have butted in with the peach, but I didn't know how deep it went." + +"Oh, it always goes deep with children," said Nan, carelessly, as if the +child he was pitying being snowed under by the years, it made no great +difference about her, anyway. "You get gashed to the bone and the scars +are like welts. But so far as I see, it has to be, coming into a world +you don't even know the rules of till they're banged into you." + +"You wouldn't be willing," said Raven, spurred on by a mounting +curiosity over her, the inner mind of her he seemed never to have +touched before, "you wouldn't be willing to tell me what it was in the +church you didn't like?" + +"Yes," said Nan decisively, "I should mind. Oh, I'd tell you, Rookie, if +I could anybody. But I can't. Maybe I could if I hadn't seen it working: +over there, you know--seen boys clinging to it so at the +end--confession--the crucifix. (The vestments, do you remember? over +that faded horizon blue!) I couldn't do it, Rookie, what they did, not +if I died this minute. Only," she added, struck by a thought, "I might +want it to remind me. I might touch the crucifix, you know, or look at +something or feel the holy water on my forehead. I might be too far gone +to think up to God but--yes, it might remind me." + +"Symbols," said Raven, profoundly moved by the vision of the bright +spirit in her mortal beauty flickering out. "Old Crow." + +"And when I said," she hesitated, anxious to give him everything he +asked of her, "the things I didn't like, I meant the things they tell +us, Rookie. You know: facts, details. And then you think of God and--no +use, Rookie, no use!" + +"Yes," said Raven, "that's where Old Crow was up against it. But picture +writing, because it's the only kind of writing we can read--picture +writing, Nan, because we're savages--he could take that and not wince." + +"Anyway," said Nan, "I'm happiest not thinking of it. I say my prayers: +God bless Rookie. God bless me. That's all." + +"I don't believe it." + +"Don't believe what? That I say 'God bless Rookie'? Course I do. Why +not?" + +"Well, I'm blessed!" said Raven, at a loss. Then, recovering himself, +"Nan, I never've known you in the least. How am I getting at you now?" + +"Because we're shut up here with the quiet and the snow," said Nan. + +She looked at the fire, not at him. He thought, with a startled delight +in her, he had never seen a more contented figure and, the beauty of it +was, entirely oblivious of him. It made no demands. + +"It's a fact," he reflected, "I've really never seen you since you grew +up. First you were a child, then you went over there. You had to take +life whole, as Old Crow took his religion." + +"Yes," said Nan, "I guess we're all queer, we young ones, that have been +in service. You see we've had to take things as they are. You can't veil +them from us. We've seen 'em. We know." She laughed out. "Rookie, it's +queer, but I'm a good deal more like the old-fashioned girl we read +about than the rest of the crowd I run with." + +"Why?" Raven ventured. + +If Nan was in a mood to unveil her dear mind, he wanted her voice to +rush on and on in that sweet staccato. And her answer was in itself +surprising: + +"Aunt Anne." + +Raven sat looking at her, a slow smile dawning. There she was, "prim as +a dish," Charlotte would say, her two braids down her back, her hands +clasped about her knees. He had never, the undercurrent in his mind +still reminded him, been so alone with her since the days when they had, +with an unspoken sense of lawlessness, slipped away together for a day's +fishing or a breathless orchid hunt in the woods. The adventures had +been less and less frequent as time ran on and it had begun to dawn on +Raven that they were entirely contrary to Aunt Anne's sense of New +England decencies. After each occasion Nan would be mysteriously absent +for a half day, at least, and when she reappeared she was a little shyer +of him, more silent toward Aunt Anne. Had she been put to bed, or shut +up with tasks, to pay the tax on her stolen pleasures? He never knew. He +did know, however, that when he proposed taking her off to wild delights +that made her eyes glow with anticipation she always refused, unless he +acceded to her plea to slip away: always to slip away, not to tell. +Could it be she had known by a child's hard road to knowledge--of +observation, silence, unaided conclusion--that Aunt Anne would never +allow them to run away to play? Curious, pathetic, abnormal even, to +have been jealous of a child! Then he pulled himself up with the shocked +sense, now become recurrent, that he had never allowed himself to attack +Anne's fair dignity with the weapon of unsuppressed guesswork about her +inner motives. He had assumed, he had felt obliged to assume, they were +as fine as her white hands. All the more reason for not assailing them +now when she was withdrawn into her strange distance. Yet one source of +wonder might be allowed him to explore unhindered: the presence of Nan +here at his hearth, inviting him to know her to the last corner of her +honest mind. She was even eager in this loving hospitality. He would +hardly have seen how to define the closeness of their relation. She had +turned her eyes from the fire to meet his. + +"Well?" she said. "What?" + +"I was thinking how queer it is," said Raven, "we never've been alone +together very much--'all told' as Charlotte would say--and here we sit +as if we were going to be here forever and talk out all the things." + +"What things?" asked Nan. + +She was not looking at him now, but back into the fire and she had a +defensive air, as if she expected to find herself on her guard. + +"Lots of 'em," said Raven. "The money." His voice sounded to her as if +he cursed it, and again he pulled himself up. "What are we going to do +with it?" + +"Aunt Anne's," she said, not as a question but a confirmation. + +"Yes. I can't refuse it. That means throwing it back on you. If I won't +decide, I'm simply making you do it for me. I don't see anything for it +but our talking the thing out and making up our minds together." + +"No," said Nan. "I sha'n't help you." + +"You won't?" + +"I suppose it amounts to that." + +"Now why the dickens not?" + +Nan kept up her stare at the fire. She seemed to be debating deeply, +even painfully. + +"Rookie," she said, at last, in a tumultuous rush, "I never meant to say +this. I don't know what'll come of saying it. But you've had a terrible +sort of life. It's almost worse than any life I know. You've been +smothered--by women." This last she said with difficulty, and Raven +reddened, in a reflecting shame. "You've done what they expected you to. +And it's all been because you're too kind. And too humble. You think it +doesn't matter very much what happens to you." + +"You've hit it there," said Raven, with a sudden distaste for himself. +"It doesn't." + +"And if I could clear your way of every sort of bugbear just by deciding +things for you, I wouldn't do it." + +"Don't try to change my destiny," said Raven, plucking up spirit to +laugh at her and lead her away from this unexpected clarity of analysis +that could only mean pain for both of them. "I'm old, dear. I'm not very +malleable, very plastic. We're not, at forty-odd." + +"And if," said Nan deliberately, "I loved you better, yes, even better +than I do (if I could!) I wouldn't tell you. It would be putting bonds +on you. It would be setting up the old slavery. The more I loved you, +the more I should be taking over the old tyranny: direct succession, +Rookie, don't you see?" + +Here she laughed, though with some slight bitterness, and he did see. +Aunt Anne had ruled his life, to the drying up of normal springs in it. +Nan didn't mean to accept the inheritance. He was profoundly touched, by +her giving so much grave thought to it, at least. + +"But, dearest child," he said, "what does it matter now? I'm rather a +meager person. You couldn't dress me up with attributes, out of your +dear mind. I shouldn't know how to wear 'em. I'm no end grateful to you +for wanting to. But if you gave me the earth for a football now I'm too +stiff to kick it. It's a curve, life is. Don't you know that? You're on +the up-grade, you and Dick. I may not have got very far, but I'm on the +down." + +"And yet," said Nan, turning and laying a finger on the book at her +side, "you can read a thing like that, a man's life turned inside out +for you to see, and understand what he meant by it, and then say the +game's up. You make me tired." + +If he made her tired, she made him unaffectedly surprised. + +"But, Nan," he said, "I didn't know you caught on so tremendously to the +old chap. I didn't know it meant so very much to you." + +"Of course it means things to me," she said. "Anyway because it does to +you. You came up here sick, sick at heart, sick in your mind, because +you've been through the War and you've seen what's underneath our +proprieties and our hypocrisies. You see we're still in the jungle. And +it's nearly killed you out, Rookie, the dear you inside you that's not +at home in the jungle. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what kind +of a Rookie you are. Things hurt you like blazes. And then here comes +Old Crow, just as if he rose out of his grave and pointed a finger at +you. And he says, 'Don't be afraid, even of the jungle.' And suddenly +you weren't afraid. And now you're afraid again, and talk about downward +curves, and all that. Why, Rookie, I'm older than you are, years and +years." + +Raven's mouth and eyes were wide open in amazement at her. + +"I'm damned!" said he conversationally. "The way you young things go on. +You put us in our places. Dick does, too. You've heard him. But, as I +remember, then you had a tendency to choke him off." + +"We won't discuss Dick," said she, again prim as a dish. "And I'm not +putting you in your place because I belong to my own generation. It's +only because you fill up the foreground. I have to look at you. I can't +see anything else. I never could. And as a matter of fact, I don't +belong to this generation. I haven't got their conceit and their +swagger. Sometimes I wish I had. I can't even talk their slang. I can't +smoke a cigarette." + +Then Raven remembered, as if she had invited a beam of light to throw up +what would appeal to him as her perfections, that she did seem to him an +alien among her youthful kind, and a shy alien at that, as if she hoped +they might not discover how different she was and put her through some +of those subtle tortures the young have in wait for a strange creature +in the herd. + +"No," he said, "you're not like the rest of them. I should have said it +was because you're more beautiful. But it's something beyond that. What +is it?" + +"Don't you know?" said Nan, turning to him, incredulous and even a +little accusatory, as if he should long ago have settled it for her +doubting mind whether it was a gain for her or irreparable loss. "No, I +see you don't. Well, it's Aunt Anne." + +"Aunt Anne?" + +"Yes. I never had the college life girls have now. When she sent me to +the seminary, it was the privatest one she could find. If she could have +exiled me to mid-Victorianism she would. I don't say I should have liked +college life. Maybe I shouldn't. Except the athletics. Anyhow, I can +hold my own there. I was enough of a tomboy to get into training and +keep fit. And Rookie--now don't tell--I never do--I see lots of girls, +perfectly nice girls, too, doing things Aunt Anne would have died before +she'd let me do. And what do you think? I don't envy them because +they're emancipated. I look at them, and I feel precisely what Aunt Anne +would feel, though I don't seem to get excited about it. The same word +comes into my mind, that word all the girls have run away from: +unladylike! Isn't that a joke, Rookie? Charlotte would say it's the +crowner." + +"You're a sweet thing, Nan," said Raven, musing. He did wonder whether +she was really in revolt against Aunt Anne's immovable finger. + +"Smoking!" said Nan, her eyebrows raised in humorous recollection. "I +used to be half dead over there, dog tired, keyed up to the last notch. +You know! I'd have given a year of life for a cigarette, when I saw what +the others got out of it. I was perfectly willing to smoke. I was eager +to. But I'd think of Aunt Anne, and I simply couldn't do it." + +Then it seemed to him that, since Aunt Anne's steel finger had resulted +in such a superfine product of youth, they'd better not blame her too +radically. It was her tyranny, but it was a tyranny lineally sprung from +a stately past. + +"I don't believe it was Aunt Anne alone," he said. "It was your +remembering a rather fine inheritance. Your crowd think they're very +much emancipated, but they've lost the sense of form, beauty, tradition. +You couldn't go all the way with them. You couldn't be rough-haired." + +"At any rate," said Nan, "I can't be young: in the sense they're young. +I'm a 'strayed reveler,' that's all. But I don't know why I'm painting a +Sargent portrait of me. Yes, I do. I want to squeeze everything I can +out of this darling minute together, so when we don't have any more +minutes I can go back to this. And you can remember, in case you ever +need me, just what sort of an old Nan I am." + +"And you suggest," said Raven, "my kidnaping a nice New England woman +and her baby and carting them off to the Malay Peninsula." + +Nan turned upon him delightedly. He could not know what he did for her +by juggling the Tira myth into raillery. + +"But think, Rookie," she said, "a woman so beautiful she's more than +that. She's mystery. Now, isn't she beautiful?" + +"Beautiful," Raven agreed, and the picture of her, madonna-like, in the +woods, suddenly smote the eyes of his mind and blinded them to all but +Tira. + +She saw him wince, and went on more falteringly, but still determined to +go all the way. + +"Into a new world, Rookie, all ferns and palms." + +"And snakes!" + +"Perfectly honest, perfectly free, and no jungle except the kind that +grows up in a night." + +"And you," said Raven, "with your New England traditions and your +inherited panic over a cigarette!" + +They looked at each other across the length of the hearth, and it all +seemed delightfully funny to them--their solitude, their oneness of +mind--and they began to laugh. And at the combined shout of their +merriment (almost competitive it was, in the eagerness of each to +justify the particular preciousness of the moment) the door opened and +Dick came in, halted, stared, in a surprise that elicited one last hoot +at the unexpectedness of things, and indulged himself in a satirical +comment of greeting, far from what he had intended. Poor Dick! he was +always making sage resolutions on the chance of finding Raven and Nan +together, but the actuality as inevitably overthrew him. + +"Oh," said he, "that's it, is it? So I thought." + +If he thought it, he was none the less unwise in saying so. He knew +that, knew the effect he had produced, and yet was powerless to modify +it. Nan was plainly taken aback, and she knew why. He was destroying her +happy moment, snatching it out of any possible sequence of hours here +with Rookie. Dick had come and he would stay. Raven read the boy's face +and was bored. He had seen that look too much of late. But he rose and +went forward with the appropriate air of welcome. + +"Well, old boy," said he, his hand on Dick's shoulder, "why didn't you +'phone up? There'd have been something ready for you. No matter. We'll +make a raid on the pantry." + +"I don't want anything," said Dick morosely. + +His eyes never left Nan. They traveled from her braids to her feet. Why, +his angry gaze demanded, was she sitting here in a beguiling +masquerade--silly, too! The masquerade was silly. But it made her into +something so unapproachable in the citadel of a childhood she had no +lien on any longer that his heart ached within him. Except for that one +kiss in France--a kiss so cruelly repudiated after (most cruelly because +she had made it seem as if it were only a part of her largess to the +War) he had found little pleasure in Nan. Yet there could be such +pleasure with her. The generous beauties of her mind and heart looked to +him a domain large enough for a life's exploring. But even the woman who +had given him the kiss in France had vanished, withdrawn into the little +girl Raven seemed to be forever wakening in her. He got out of his +driving coat and stepped into the hall to drop it. When he came back, +Nan had made room at the fire and Raven had drawn up another chair. + +"Now," said Raven, "I'll forage for some grub." + +At that, he left them, and Nan thought bitterly it was the cowardice of +man. Dick was in the sulks and she was to suffer them alone. + + + + +XXVIII + + +Dick, looking down upon Nan, had that congealed aspect she alone had the +present power of freezing him into. She knew all the possibilities of +that face. There was the angry look: that had reigned of late when she +flouted or denied him. There was the sulky frown, index of his jealousy +of Rookie, and there had been, what seemed a long time ago, before they +went through this disintegrating turmoil of war, the look of a boy's +devotion. Nan had prized him very much then, when he was not flaunting +angry rights over her. Now she sat perversely staring into the fire, +realizing that everything about her angered him: the childish vanity of +her dress, assumed, he would be sure, to charm the Rookie of old days +into renewed remembrance. But he had to be faced finally, since Rookie +was gone so long, stirring up Charlotte to the task of a cold bite, and +with a little shrug she lifted her eyes to face exactly the Dick she had +expected to see: dignified reproach in every line. Nice boy! she had the +honest impartiality to give him that grace only to wish he would let her +enjoy him as she easily could. What a team he and she and Rookie would +be if they could only eliminate this idea of marriage. How they could +make the room ring, here by the fire, with all the quips of their old +memories. Yet wouldn't Dick have been an interruption, even then? Wasn't +the lovely glow of this one evening the amazing reality of her sitting +by the fire with Rookie alone for the first time in many years, and, if +he fell into the enchantment of Malaysia and the mysteries of an +empty-headed Tira, the last? And now here she was dreaming off on Rookie +when she must, at this very instant, to seize any advantage at all, be +facing Dick. She began by laughing at him. + +"Dick," she said, "how funny you are. I don't know much about Byron, but +I kind of think you're trying to do the old melancholia act: Manfred or +what d'you call 'em? You just stand there like old style opera, +glowering; if you had a cloak you'd throw an end over your shoulder." + +"Nan!" said he, and she was the more out of heart because the voice +trembled with an honest supplication. + +"There!" she hastened to put in, "that's it. You're 'choked with +emotion.' Why do you want to sound as if you're speaking into a barrel? +In another minute you'll be talking 'bitterly.'" + +Dick was not particular about countering her gibes. That was +unproductive. He had too much of his own to say. + +"What do you suppose I'm here for?" he asked, as if, whatever it might +be, it was in itself accusatory. + +"Search me," said Nan, with the flippancy he hated. + +She knew, by instinct as by long acquaintance, that one charm for him +lay in her old-fashioned reticences and chiefly her ordered speech. +Almost he would have liked her to be the girl Aunt Anne had tried to +make her. That, she paused to note, in passing, was part of the general +injustice of things. He could write free verse you couldn't read aloud +without squirming (even in the company of the all-knowing young), but +she was to lace herself into Victorian stays. + +"I suppose," said she, "you came to see whether I mightn't be having the +time of my life sitting here with Rookie by the fire." + +"I did," he frankly owned. "Mother said you'd gone to New York. So she +went on." + +"Now what the dickens for? Haven't I a perfect right to go to New York +without notice?" + +"Why," said Dick, "you'd disappeared. You'd gone away from here, and you +were lost, virtually lost. You weren't anywhere." + +"If she thought I was in New York, why didn't that settle it? What did +she have to go trailing on after me for?" + +"Because," said Dick, "we didn't know. She wanted to telephone. I +wouldn't let her. I couldn't have the Seaburys started up. I couldn't +have you get into the papers." + +"Into the papers!" said Nan. "Heavens! I suppose if I'm not in at curfew +I'm to be arrested." + +"I let her go," repeated Dick. "But I knew as well as I wanted to you'd +doubled back here and you were with him." + +"Then, for God's sake," said Nan, in a conversational tone, knowing the +adjuration would be bitter to him, "if I wanted to be with him, as you +put it--I'm glad I ain't a poet--why didn't you let me?" + +"Because," said Dick promptly, "it's indecent." + +She had no difficulty in facing him now. It was a cheap means of +subjugating, but, being an advantage, she would not forego it. And, +indeed, she was too angry. + +"Dick," she said, "you're a sickening little whelp. More than that, +you're a hypocrite. You write yards and yards of your free verse to tell +us how bold and brave you are and how generally go-as-you-please we've +got to be if we're going to play big Injun, and then you tell me it's +indecent to sit here with Rookie, of all people in the world. My God! +Rookie!" + +Again she had invoked her Maker because Dick would shiver at the +impropriety. "No violence," she thought satirically, remembering he was +himself the instigator of violence in verse. But Dick was sorry. He had +not chosen his word. It had lain in his angry mind and leaped to be +used. It could not be taken back. + +"You can't deny," said he, "you are perfectly happy here with him. Or +you were a minute ago before I came." + +"No," said Nan, "I don't deny it. Is that indecent?" + +Now she had the whip hand, for he was not merely angry: he was plainly +suffering. The boyish look had subtly taken possession of his face. This +was the Dick she had loved always, next to Rookie. But his following +words, honest as they were, lost him his advantage of the softened look. +He was hanging to his point. + +"Yes," he said. "He's old. You're young. So am I. We belong together. We +can be awfully fond of him. We are. But it's got to be in the right way. +He could live with us. We'd simply devote ourselves to him. But Nan, the +world belongs to us. We're young." + +At that instant Raven came in and set down his tray. Nan glanced up at +him fearfully, but it was apparent he had not heard. She was no longer +angry. The occasion was too big. Dick seemed to her to be speaking out +of his ignorance and not from any wilful cruelty. She got up and went to +Raven, as he stood there, put her hand through his arm and smiled up at +him. + +"Rookie," she said, with a half laugh that was really a caress, +"darlingest Rookie! Charlotte never got that supper together in the +world. You did it yourself, not to disturb her. I never saw so much food +at one time, in all my life." + +It was a monstrous feast, bread, butter, cheese, ham: very neatly +assembled, but for a giant's appetite. + +"We'll all have some," sad Raven. "Draw up, old son. Nan'll butter for +us." + +For the first minutes it seemed to Dick he could not eat, the lump in +his throat had risen so. But Nan buttered and they did eat and felt +better. Raven avoided looking at them, wondering what they were +quarreling about now. It must, he thought, be the way of this new +generation starting out avowedly "on its own." + + + + +XXIX + + +The blessed diversion of eating ended, a blank moment stared them in the +face. What to say next? Were Nan and Dick, Raven wondered, to go on +fighting? Was it the inevitable course of up-to-date courtship? Perhaps +the new generation, from its outlook on elemental things, was taking to +marriage by capture, clubbing the damsel and striding off, her limpness +flung over a brawny arm. It seemed to him a singularly bare, unshaded +way to the rose-leaf bowers his poets had been used to sing; but +undoubtedly the roads were many, and this was one. Possibly the poets +wouldn't say the same now. Dick ought to know. But at least there must +be no warfare here in this warm patch of shelter snatched out of the +cold and dark. His hand was on Old Crow's journal, Dick's inheritance, +he thought, as well as his, and now a fortunate pretext to stave off an +awkward moment. + +"Run over this," he said. "Nan and I've been doing it. I don't believe +we're in any hurry for bed." + +Dick took it, with no show of interest. How should he have been +interested, forced to switch his mind from the pulsating dreams of youth +to worn mottled covers? + +"What is it?" he asked indifferently. + +Raven was rather curious now. What impression would Old Crow make, +slipping in like this, unheralded? + +"Never mind," he said. "Run over it and get on to it, if you can. I'd +like to know what you think." + +Dick, without much heart, began to read, and Raven lighted a pipe. +First, a tribute to Nan's abstinence, he passed her the cigarettes, and +when she shook her head, smiled back at her, as if he reminded her of +secrets they had together. Presently she got up, and Dick, closing the +book, threw it on the table. + +"Bed?" Raven asked, also getting up, and Nan said good night and was +gone. + +The two men sat down, each with the certainty that here they were to +stick until something determining had been said, Raven irritated by the +prospect and Dick angrily ready. + +"Well," said Raven, indicating the book, "what do you think?" + +"That?" said Dick absently. "Oh, I don't know. Somebody trying to write +without knowing how?" + +Raven gave it up. Either he had not read far, or he had not hungered or +battled enough to be moved by it. + +"Now, look here," said Dick, "I may not be interested in that, but +there's something I am interested in. And we've got to talk it out, on +the spot." + +"Well!" said Raven. He mended the fire which didn't need it, and then +sat down and filled his pipe. He wasn't smoking so very much but, he +thought, with a bored abandonment to the situation, gratefully taking +advantage of a pipe's proneness to go out. While he attended to it he +could escape the too evidently condemnatory gaze from those young eyes +that never wavered, chiefly because they could not be deflected by a +doubt of perfectly apprehending everything they saw. + +"Now," said Dick, plunging, "what do you want to do this kind of thing +for?" + +"What kind of thing?" asked Raven, lighting up. "Smoke?" + +Dick looked at him accusingly, sure of his own rightness and the clarity +of the issue. + +"You know," he said. "This business. Compromising Nan." + +Raven felt that slight quickening of the blood, the nervous thrill along +the spine a dog must feel when his hair rises in canine emergency. He +smoked silently while he was getting himself in hand, and, in the space +of it, he had time for a good deal of rapid thinking. The outrage and +folly of it struck him first and then the irony. Here was Dick, who +flaunted his right to leave nothing unsaid where realistic verse +demanded it, and he was consigning Nan to the decorum Aunt Anne herself +demanded. Was the young animal of the present day really unchanged from +the first man who protected his own by a fettering seclusion, simply +because it was his own? Was Dick's general revolt only the yeasty +turmoil sure to take one form or another, being simply the swiftness of +young blood? Was his general bravado only skin deep? Raven hardly knew +how to take him. He wouldn't be angry, outwardly at least. The things +Dick had said, the things he was prepared to say, he would be expected +to resent, but he must deny himself. It was bad for the boy, and more, a +subtle slur on Nan. They mustn't squabble over her, as if her sweet +inviolateness could be in any way touched by either of them. Presently +he took his pipe out, looked at it curiously as if it did not altogether +please him and remarked: + +"Dick, you're a fool." + +"Oh, yes," said Dick, with a bitterness that curled his lip a little, +"I'm a young fool, too, I suppose. Well, thank God for that. I am young, +and I know it, and just what I'm getting out of it and what I've a right +to get. You can't play that game with me, Uncle Jack. You simply can't +do it. The old game's played out." + +"And what," said Raven mildly, "is the old game? And what's the new one +going to be? You'll have to tell me. I don't know." + +"The old game," said Dick, "was precisely what it was in politics. The +old men made the rules and the young were expected to conform. The old +men made wars and the young fought 'em. The old men lied and skulked and +the young had to pull them out of the holes they got into. I suppose +you'd say the War was won at Chequers Court. Well, I shouldn't. I should +say it was won by the young men who had their brains blown out, and lost +their eyes and their legs." + +"No," said Raven quietly, "I shouldn't say the War was won at Chequers +Court. We needn't fight over that. The thing that gets me is why we need +to fight at all. There's been a general armistice and Eastern Europe +doesn't seem to have heard of it. They go on scrapping. You don't seem +to have heard of it either. You come home here and find me peaceably +retired to Charlotte and Jerry and my Sabine Farm, and you proceed to +declare war on me. What the devil possesses you?" + +"Yes," said Dick, the muscle twitching in his lip, "I do find you here. +And Nan with you." + +"Dick," said Raven sharply, "we'll leave Nan out of this." + +Dick, though the tone was one that had called him to attention years +ago, told himself he wasn't afraid of it now. Those old bugaboos +wouldn't work. + +"I am going," he said, "to marry Nan." + +"Good for you," responded Raven. "No man could do better." + +"Do you mean to tell me," countered Dick, "you're not bluffing? Or do +you actually want to let her marry me and you--you'd continue this under +my nose?" + +Raven stared at him a full minute, and Dick angrily met him. "Stare +away," Dick was thinking. "I'm in the right. I can look you down." + +"Dick," said Raven finally, "I called you a fool. It isn't such a bad +thing to be a fool. We're most of us fools, of one sort or another. But +don't let me think you're a dirty-minded little cad. Now I don't want to +bring Nan into this, but I rather think I've got to. What are you +driving at? Come, out with it!" + +To his wonderment, his pain amounting to a shock of perplexity and +grief, he saw Dick's face redden and the tears spring to his eyes. How +horribly the boy cared, perhaps up to the measure of Nan's deserts, and +yet with what a childish lack of values! For he had no faith either in +Nan or in old Jack. The ties of blood, of friendship, were not holding. +He was as jealous as Othello, and no sane certainties were standing him +in stead. Dick, feeling the painful tears, felt also the shame of them. +He wanted to answer on the instant, now Raven had given him his chance; +but so unused was he to the menace of betraying emotion that he was not +even sure of not blubbering like a boy. He swallowed and came out with +it: + +"You've got some sort of hold on her nobody else has. You've hynotized +her. She eats out of your hand." + +Raven, in despair, sat looking at him. He ought, he felt, to be able to +laugh it all away, but he was too bewildered and too sorry. + +"Dick," said he finally, "I shall have to say it again. You're an awful +fool. Nan and I were always the best of friends. I rather think I have +known her in a way none of the rest of you have. But--hypnotized her! +Look at me, Dick. Remember me plodding along while you grew up; think +what sort of a chap I am. You won't find anything spectacular about me. +Never has been, never will be. And Nan, of all people! little Nan!" + +Dick forgot the imminence of a breaking voice and humid eyes. Raven, he +felt, wasn't playing the game. He was skulking out of it. + +"Do you deny," he said, in a voice so loud and hoarse that it startled +him as it did Raven, "that you're in love with her?" + +"Good God!" said Raven. He rose, laid his pipe on the mantel and stood, +trembling, even in his clenched hands. "What is there to answer," he got +out at length, "to a question like that? You've just reminded me I'm +past my youth. Why don't you remember it yourself when it'll do you some +good? I'm an old chap, and you----" + +"You're as fit as ever you were in your life," said Dick, as if he +grudged it to him. "And more fascinating, I suppose, to a girl like her. +There's something pathetic about it. It's half pity, too! Nothing so +dangerous in the world." + +Raven swung round, walked to the window and, hands in his pockets, stood +looking out. In love with Nan! well, he did love Nan better than any +created thing. All the old tests, the old obediences, would be nothing +to him if he could consecrate them to Nan, her happiness, her safety in +this dark world. How about his life? Yes, he would give that, a small +thing, if Nan needed the red current of it to quicken her own. But "in +love" as Dick understood it! If you were to judge Dick's comprehension +of it from his verse, love was a sex madness, a mortal lure for the +earth's continuance, by the earth begot. And who had unconsciously held +out that lure to him but the woman of mystery up there on the road in +that desolate house with her brutal husband and her deficient child? He +had seen the innocent lure, he had longed to put out his hand to the +hand unconsciously beckoning. Through the chill wintry night the message +came to him now. And only Nan could understand that the message might +come and that it was a part of the earth and to be forgotten, like a hot +wind or a thrilling song out of the dark--Nan, his darling, a part of +him, his understanding mind, as well as the fiber of his heart. Suddenly +he turned on Dick who was watching him, ready, it seemed, to pounce on +his first change of look. + +"Dick," he said, "I adore Nan." + +"Yes," said Dick, "I know you do. I told you----" + +"But," broke in Raven, "you don't know anything about it." + +"Oh," said Dick, "then I don't adore her, too." + +Raven reflected. No, his inner mind told him, there was no community of +understanding between them. How should Dick traverse with him the long +road of rebuff and downfall he had traveled? How should youth ever be +expected to name the cup it has not tasted? For Dick, he thought again, +what is known as love was a simple, however overwhelming, matter of the +mounting blood, the growing year. For him it would be the ashes of +forgotten fire, the strange alembic mixed of bitter with the sweet. In +that moment he faced an acknowledged regret that he had not lived the +normal life of marriage at the start, the quieting of foolish fevers, +the witness of children. We are not, he reflected, quite solvent unless +we pay tribute before we go. He mused off into the vista of life as it +accomplishes itself not in great triumphal sweeps, but fitful music +hushed at intervals by the crash of brutal mischance, and only, at the +end, a solution of broken chords. Meantime Dick watched him, and Raven +at last, feeling the boy's eyes on him, came awake with a start. + +"Yes, Dick," he answered gently, "of course you love her. And it ought +to do you good. It's a big thing to love Nan." + +"Very well then," said Dick, his voice trembling a little in answer to +that gentler tone, "you let her alone, can't you? Nan's a different girl +when she's with you. It's no use denying it. You do hypnotize her." + +"Dick," said Raven, "that's a beastly thing to say. If you mean it to be +as offensive as it sounds, you ought to be booted for it." + +"Oh," said Dick, with a simple certainty in what he knew, "I don't blame +you as I should any other fellow that wasn't going through what you are. +That would be a simple matter to deal with: a chap that knew what he was +doing. You don't, old man. You may not know it, but you don't." + +"For the land's sake!" said Raven, echoing Charlotte, "And what, again +for the land's sake, am I going through?" + +"You know," said Dick uneasily because he did hope to avoid putting it +into words. "_Cafard._" + +Raven had one of his moments of silence, getting hold of himself, taking +the matter in, with its forgotten enormity. + +"So," he said, "you've adopted your mother's word for it. I hadn't +realized that." + +"Oh, Mum's no such fool," said Dick. "She may be an aggravation and a +curse--I'll own that--but she's up to date. Why, Jack, anybody that ever +knew you'd know you're not yourself." + +"No," thought Raven, "few of us are ourselves. We've been through the +War, my son. So have you; but you didn't have such a brittle old world +inside you to try to put together again after it was smashed. Your inner +world was in the making. Whatever you might feel in its collision with +the runaway planet of the mad human mind, it could right itself; its +atoms might cohere." + +"You needn't think," proceeded Dick generously if a trifle too +magnificently, "I can't see. There's a lot of things I see that don't +bear talking about. I've pitched into you about Nan, but you needn't +suppose I don't know it's all a matter of hidden complexes." + +Again recurring to Charlotte in this moment of need, Raven reflected +that he didn't know whether he was afoot or a-horseback. + +"You don't mind, I hope," he said, with humility before this perfectly +equipped intelligence, "explaining a little." + +"Why," said Dick, "there's all your previous life. It's a case of +inhibition. There was Miss Anne." + +"Stop," said Raven, his curiosity over the boy's mind dying in a crash. +"Stop right there, Dick; you're making a fool of yourself. Now we'll go +to bed." + +He got up and waited, and Dick, sulkily, rose too. + +"You needn't think," he began, and Raven broke in: + +"You needn't think I shall stand another word of your half-baked +psycho-deviltries. You can believe what you like. It'll harm nobody but +yourself. But you don't talk it here, or out you go. Now!" + +The last word meant he was waiting to put out the light and Dick, +without another look at him, strode out of the room, snatched his +suit-case and went up the stairs. Raven heard the decisive click of his +door and, his own heart beating in a quick response to what he knew must +happen, turned on the light again and stood there silent, waiting. It +did happen. A soft rustle, like a breeze blowing down the stairs, and +Nan came in. She had taken off her child's dress, as if to show him she +had left their game behind her. The long braids were pinned up, and she +wore her dark walking dress. She was paler, much older, and he was +renewedly angry with Dick for banishing the Nan that was but an hour +ago. Perhaps that Nan would never come back. + +"Darling Rookie," she said, so softly that the sound of it could not +have got half way up the stairs, "what's it all about?" + +"About you, Nan," he answered, and denied himself the darling Nan he had +for her. "And being in love. And Dick's wanting you." + +"It's more than that," said Nan wistfully. "He's been at you somehow. +He's dug ditches across your dear forehead and down your cheeks. What +d'he say, Rookie? What d'you say to him?" + +Raven shook his head. He had no idea of inviting her into the +psycho-analytic ward of Dick's mind. + +"Nan," he said, "the boy's unhappy. He's in love with you. No doubt +about it." + +Nan, on her part, had nothing to say to this. + +"What made you change your dress?" asked Raven. "You give me a funny +feeling, as if you'd put the little Nan to bed and come down here to say +you're going, in a minute, and never coming back." + +"I am going," said Nan, "only not in a minute. Charlotte says Jerry +shall take me to the early train." + +"Now, by George!" said Raven, so loudly she put her finger to her lip, +"if that's what Dick's done, he shall go himself, and know the reason, +too. Spoil my visit with you, break it all up? Why, I never had a visit +from you before." + +"It's broken," said Nan. "You couldn't put it together again." The red +had come into her cheeks and her eyes showed a surface glitter he did +not know. "I'm going to leave you to Tenney--and Tira--and your +destiny--and Old Crow." + +"Is this a part of your scheme?" asked Raven roughly. He was curiously +dashed, almost shamed by her repudiating him. "You're as bad as Dick. +He's been bringing all his psychopathic patter to bear on me, and you're +deserting me. Oh, come! Let's be safe and sane, like the Fourth." + +"So we will be," said Nan. She was retreating toward the door. There +were simple natural things she wanted at that moment. She wanted to go +to him, put her arms about him, mother or child arms, as he might wish, +and bid him a good-by that would wrap him about like a cloak while they +were absent one from the other. He should have her lips as he had her +heart. Nan was an adventurer on the high seas of life. She cared very +little whether her boat rode the wave or sank, so it could unload the +gold and gems it carried on the sand of the world she loved. Rookie was +the home of her heart. The gold was all for him. But if he did not want +it--and meantime she was at the door. "Don't get up," she said, "to see +me off. If you do, he will, too, and there'll be more fireworks. No, no, +Rookie. Don't look like that. I'm not hateful about him, really, only he +has spoiled my fun." + +"Why you should go," said Raven, advancing; "why you should leave this +house just because he's come!" + +"No fun!" said Nan. "Do you see us, the three of us, sitting down to +meals together? No, Rookie. Can't be done. Good night." + +Here she did turn definitely and went up the stairs, and Raven presently +followed. In his room he stood for a moment thinking, not of Dick, who +was troublesome, in an irritating way incident to biting young cubs just +aware of their teeth, but of the challenge that was Nan. Here she was, +all beauty, all wisdom, in the natal gifts of her, telling him, with +every breath, she loved him and only him. And yet, his knowledge of life +was quick to answer, it was the accretion of long hungers, the sum of +all desires since she was little and consigned to Aunt Anne's delicate +frigidities for nurture and, as the event proved, for penury. She had no +conception of a love as irresistible as hers was now abounding. In a +year or two, youth would meet her on the road of youth, and they would +kiss and old Rookie would become the dim duty of remembered custom. And +as he thought these things, his overwhelming revolt against earth and +its cruelty came over him, and he stood there gripping his hands into +their palms, again at open war with life. It was a question without an +answer, a hunger unfed, a promise broken. Eternal life was the soporific +distilled by man, in his pathetic cunning, to dull the anguish of +anticipated death. Standing there in the silence, he felt the waves of +loneliness going over him, and thought of Nan in her chamber across the +hall, angelic in her compassion, her arms ready for him as a mother is +ready for her child. The moonlight made arabesques on the walls, and he +walked to the window with an instinctive craving for the open. He stood +gripping the casing with both hands and looking up over the hillside +where also the light lay revealingly. Up there was the hut where Tira +might be now if Tenney had not wounded himself, fleeing in her turn from +earthly cruelty. Up there Old Crow had lived in his own revolt against +earth cruelty. And, with the thought, Old Crow seemed to be, not on the +hillside, but beside him, reading to him the testimony of the mottled +book, but more insistently, in a clearer voice. If it could be so, if +God had intention, not only toward his own colossal inventiveness, but +as touching the well-being of man--yes, and of the other creatures, too, +the pathetically oppressing and oppressed--if He had given man the +problem with no solution indicated, to work it out as he had worked out +pottery and fabrics, and light and talking over space--always in +conformity to law--it was stupendous. No matter how many million men +went to the building of the safeguarding reefs, no matter through what +blood and tears the garden of the earth was watered if the flower of +faith could grow at last. + +"That is my legacy to the boy," he seemed to hear Old Crow repeating. +"He must not be afraid." + +And as he was sinking off to sleep he had an idea he was praying, +perhaps to God; or was it to Old Crow? At any rate, he was saying: + +"For God's sake look out for Nan. You don't need to make it so devilish +hard for Nan." + +He was downstairs early. At the foot of the stairs stood Charlotte, +waiting. She looked--what? compassionate? + +"She's gone," said Charlotte. "Jerry was up 'fore light." + +"Gone?" echoed Raven. "At this time of day? What for? She'll have an +hour to wait." + +"She would have it so," said Charlotte. "She was terrible anxious to git +off." + +So, Raven thought, she didn't want to see either of them. She was tired +of them, of him with his stiff withdrawals and Dick's young puppyhood. +He ran upstairs, snatched some old riding breeches out of a closet, put +them on and, without a word to Charlotte, went to the barn. But her eye +was on him and she called out of the shed door: + +"You took your saddle with you. Don't you know you did? There's nothin' +but your father's hangin' there, old as the hills." + +Raven did not answer, or even turn his head. He went into the harness +room, found the old saddle hanging in its place, led out Nellie, +surprised at being expected to leave her oats, saddled her and rode +away. He was angry, with Nan, with all the childish trouble of the +business, and--as two neighbors agreed, seeing him gallop past--rode +like the devil, yet not coming upon Nan and Jerry until they were at the +station platform. Nan saw him first. She was gloriously glad, waving her +hand and laughing out. Jerry stood with mouth open, silent but +incurious, and Raven dismounted and threw him the reins. + +"Hitch her behind," he said. "I'll go back with you. Got something extra +to blanket her?" + +He came up to Nan, and they took hands and went into the waiting room +together. It was steaming hot from the monster stove and they retreated +again to the platform. + +"Come out and walk," said Raven, "up to Pine Grove. You've got an hour, +you little simpleton. What did you run away for?" + +The station is in a cluster of houses, awake early every morning when +the milk goes away. But the road across the track leads up a little rise +into Pine Grove, where church and sociables have picnics, the merrier +for the neighborliness of the few trains. Raven and Nan climbed the rise +almost at a run, and when they reached the shadowing pines, looked in at +the pure spaces, remembering, for the first time, the snow would bar +them out. They must keep to the road. + +"Forty-eight minutes," said Raven. "We'll walk twenty and then cut back. +Come on." + +They walked a little, raced a little, talked--not much--and laughed a +great deal. Raven was in the highest spirits, sure he was sending her +off happy, since she would go. Never afterward could they remember what +they talked about: only it seemed a fortunate moment stolen from the +penury of years. Again he took out his watch. + +"Time's up!" he said, and they went back. + +The station was alive with its small activities. Jerry was walking +Nellie up and down. The train came in and when Nan left him Raven +remembered they had not said good-by. There was a kind of permanence in +it; the moment had cemented something into bonds. When she had gone he +and Jerry got into the pung and drove away leading Nellie, and then +Raven remembered he had not breakfasted. They talked horse all the way +home, and when Dick, appearing on the porch, called to them: + +"What you got Nellie for?" + +Raven answered cheerfully: + +"I took a notion." + +Then he and Dick went in to breakfast, and Nan's name was not mentioned. +Charlotte, Raven concluded, had told the boy she was gone. He seemed to +detect in Dick some watchful kindness toward himself, the responsible +care attendants manifest toward the incapable. Dick was, he concluded, +bent on therapeutic measures. + + + + +XXX + + +Tira, from the forenoon of Tenney's accident, entered on uneventful +days. He lowered over his helplessness; he was angry with it. But the +anger was not against her, and she could bear it. For the first time she +saw his activities fettered, and the mother in her answered. She +ventured no outspoken sympathy, but he was dependent on her and in that, +much as it chafed him, she found solace. He was chained to his chair, +his wounded foot on a rest, and he had no diversions. Tira sometimes +wondered what he was thinking when he sat looking out at the road, +smooth with the grinding of sleds and slipping of sleighs. Once she +brought the Bible and laid it before him on a stand. If its exposition +was so precious to him at evening meeting, there would be comfort in it +now. But he glanced at her in what looked like a quick suspicion--did it +mean he thought she meant to taunt him with the unreality of his +faith?--and, after it had lain there a forenoon untouched, he said to +her uneasily: + +"You put that away." + +She took it back to its place on the parlor stand under Grandsir +Tenney's hatchet-faced photograph, wondering in her heart why it was not +what she had heard them read of God: "A very present help in time of +trouble." If you knew it was so, Tira reasoned, you never had to fret +yourself any more. And if that place was waiting for you--the good place +they talked about--even a long lifetime was not too much to face before +you got to it. After she had laid the book down and turned away from it +to cross the ordered stillness of the room, she stopped, with a sudden +hungry impulse, and opened it at random. "Let not your heart be +troubled," she read, and closed it again, quickly lest the next words +qualify so rich a message. It might say further on that you were not to +be troubled if you fulfilled the law and gospel, and that, she knew, was +only fair. But in her dearth she wanted no sacerdotal bargaining. She +needed the heavens to rain down plenty while she held out her hands to +take. When she entered the kitchen again Tenney, glancing round at her, +saw the change in her look. She was flushed, her mouth was tremulous, +and her eyes humid. He wondered, out of his ready suspicion, whether she +had seen anyone going by. + +"What's the matter?" he asked sharply. + +"Nothin's the matter," she answered. But her hands were trembling. She +was like Mary when she had seen her Lord. + +"Who's gone by?" he persisted. "I didn't hear no bells." + +"No," said Tira. "I don't believe anybody's gone by, except the +choppers. It's a proper nice day for them." + +The child woke and cried from the bedroom and she brought him out in the +pink sweetness of his sleep, got the little tub and began to give him +his bath by the fire. As she bent over him and dried his smooth soft +flesh, the passion of motherhood rose in her and she forgot he was "not +right," and sang a low, formless song. When he was bathed she stood him +naked on her knee, and it was then she found Tenney including them both +in the livid look she knew. And she saw what he saw. The child's hair +was more like shining copper every day, his small nose had the tiniest +curve. By whatever trick of nature, which is implacable, he was not like +her, he was not like Tenney. He was a message from her bitter, ignorant +past. Her strong shoulders began to shake and her hands that steadied +the child shook, too, so that he gave a little whimper at finding +himself insecure. + +"Isr'el," she broke out, "before God!" + +"Well," said he, in the snarl she had heard from him at those times when +his devil quite got the better of him, "what? What you got to tell?" + +"It ain't so," she said, her voice broken by her chattering lips. +"Before God, it ain't so." + +"So ye know what I mean," he jeered, and even at the moment she had +compassion for him, reading his unhappy mind and knowing he hurt himself +unspeakably. "Ye know, or ye wouldn't say 'tain't so." + +Words of his own sprang up in her memory like witnesses against him, +half phrases embodying his suspicion of her, wild accusations when, like +a drunken man, he had let himself go. But this he did not remember. She +knew that. Shut up in his cell of impeccable righteousness, he believed +he had dealt justly with her and no more. She would not taunt him with +his words. She had a compassion for him that reached into his future of +possible remorse. Tira saw, and had seen for a long time, a catastrophe, +a "wind-up" before them both. Sometimes it looked like a wall that +brought them up short, sometimes a height they were both destined to +fall from and a gulf ready to receive them, and she meant, if she could, +to save him from the recognition of the wall as something he had built +or the gulf as something he had dug. As she sat looking at him now, +wide-eyed, imploring, and the child trod her knee impatiently, a man +went past the window to the barn. It was Jerry, gone to fodder the +cattle, and Jerry brought Raven to her mind who, if he was obeying her +by absence, was none the less protecting her. The trouble of her face +vanished and she drew a quick breath Tenney was quick to note. + +"Who's that?" he asked her sharply, turning in his chair to command the +other window. + +"Jerry," she said. Her heart stilled, and she began to dress the child, +with her mother's deftness. "He comes a little early to fodder, 'fore he +does his own." + +"I dunno," said Tenney, irritably because he had to wear out his spleen, +"why you can't fodder the cows when anybody's laid up. There's women +that do it all the time if their folks are called away." + +"Why, I could," said Tira, with a clear glance at him, "only he won't +let me." + +"What's he got to do with it," said Tenney, in surprise. "Won't let ye? +Jerry Slate won't let ye? Jerry ain't one to meddle nor make. I guess if +you told him 'twas your place to do it an' you'd ruther stan' up to it, +he'd have no more to say." + +The blood came again to her face. She had almost, she felt, spoken +Raven's name, and a swift intuition told her she must bury even the +thought of it. + +"There ain't," she said, "two nicer folks in this township than +Charlotte an' Jerry, nor two that's readier to turn a hand." + +Tenney was silent, and Jerry did the chores and went home. Sometimes he +came to the house to ask how Tenney was getting on, but to-day he had to +get back to his own work. + +This was perhaps a week after Tenney's accident, when he was getting +impatient over inaction, and next day the doctor came and pronounced the +wound healing well. If Tenney had a crutch, he might try it carefully, +and Tenney remembered Grandsir had used a crutch when he broke his hip +at eighty-two, and healed miraculously though tradition pronounced him +done for. It had come to the house among a load of outlawed relics, too +identified with the meager family life to be thrown away, and Tira found +it "up attic" and brought it down to him. She waited, in a sympathetic +interest, to see him try it, and when he did and swung across the +kitchen with an angry capability, she caught her breath, in a new fear +of him. The crutch looked less a prop to his insufficiency than like a +weapon. He could reach her with it. He could reach the child. And then +she began to see how his helplessness had built up in her a false +security. He was on the way to strength again, and the security was +gone. + +The first use he made of the crutch was to swing to the door and tell +Jerry he need not come again. Tira was glad to hear him add: + +"Much obleeged. I'll do the same for you." + +Afterward she went to the barn with him and fed and watered while he +supplemented her and winced when he hurt himself, making strange sounds +under his breath that might have been oaths from a less religious man. +And Tira was the more patient because the doctor had told her the foot +would always trouble him. + +It was two days after he had begun to use his crutches, that Tira, after +doing the noon chores in the barn and house, sat by the front window in +her afternoon dress, a tidy housewife. The baby was having his nap and +Tenney, at the other window, his crutch against the chair beside him, +was opening the weekly paper that morning come. Tira looked up from her +mending to glance about her sitting-room, and, for an instant, she felt +to the full the pride of a clean hearth, a shining floor, the sun lying +in pale wintry kindliness across the yellow paint and braided rugs. If +she had led a gypsy life, it was not because her starved heart yearned +the less tumultuously for order and the seemliness of walls. For the +moment, she felt safe. The child was not in evidence, innocently calling +the eye to his mysterious golden beauty. Tenney had been less irascible +all the forenoon because he had acquired a fortunate control over his +foot, and (she thought it shyly, yet believingly) the Lord Jesus Christ +was with them. Disregarded or not, in these moments of wild disordered +living, He was there. + +She heard sleigh-bells, and looked out. Tenney glanced up over his +glasses, an unwonted look, curiously like benevolence. She liked that +look. It always gave her a thrill of faith that sometime, by a miracle, +it might linger for more than the one instant of a changed visual focus. +She caught it now, with that responsive hope of its continuance, and +knew, for the first time, what it recalled to her: the old minister +beyond Mountain Brook looked over his glasses in precisely that way, +kindly, gentle, and forgiving. But mingled with the remembrance, came +the nearing of the bells and the shock to her heart in the man they +heralded: Eugene Martin, driving fast, and staring at the house. The +horse was moving with a fine jaunty action when Martin pulled him up, +held him a quieting minute, and got out. He paused an instant, his hand +on the robe, as if uncertain how long he should stay, seemed to decide +against covering the horse and ran up the path. He must have seen Tira +and Tenney, each at a window, but his eyes were on the woman only. Half +way along the path, he took off his hat and waved it at her in +exaggerated salute, as if bidding her rejoice that he had come. In the +same instant he seemed, for the first time, to see Tenney. His eyes +rested on him with a surprise excellently feigned. He replaced his hat, +turned about like a man blankly disconcerted and went back down the +path, with the decisive tread of one who cannot take himself off too +soon. He stepped into the sleigh and, drawing the robe about him, drove +off, the horse answering buoyantly. Tira sat, the stillest thing out of +a wood where stalking danger lurks, her eyes on her sewing. Tenney was +staring at her; she knew it, and could not raise her lids. Often she +failed to meet his glance because she so shrank, not from his conviction +of her guilt, but the fear of seeing what she must remember in blank +night watches, to shudder over. For things were different at night, +things you could bear quite well by day. Now he spoke, with a restrained +certainty she trembled at. He had drawn his conclusions; nothing she +could possibly say would alter them. + +"Comin' in, wa'n't he?" the assured voice asked her. "See me, didn't he, +an' give it up?" + +Tira forced herself to look at him, and the anguished depths of her eyes +were moving to him only because they seemed to mourn over his having +found her out. + +"No, Isr'el," she said quietly. "He wa'n't comin' in. He drew up because +he see you, an' he knew 'twould be wormwood to both of us to have him do +just what he done." + +Tenney laughed, a little bitter note. Tira could not remember ever +having heard him laugh with an unstinted mirth. At first, when he came +courting her, he was too worn with the years of work that had brought +him to her, and after that too wild with the misery of revolt. She was +sorry for that, with an increasing sorrow. Tira could bear no +unhappiness but her own. + +"Wormwood!" he repeated, as if the word struck him curiously. "D'he +think 'twas goin' to be wormwood for a woman to find a man comin' all +fixed up like courtin' time, to steal a minute's talk? You make me +laugh." + +He did laugh, and the laugh, though it might have frightened her, made +her the more sorry. She had the sense of keeping her hand on him, of +holding him back from some rushing course that would be his own +destruction. + +"Yes," she answered steadily. "'Twould be nothin' but wormwood for me, +an' well he knows it. He don't--love me, Isr'el." + +She hesitated before the word, and with it the thought of Raven came to +her, as she saw him, unvaryingly kind and standing for quiet, steadfast +things. "He hates me." + +"Hates ye," he repeated curiously. "What's he hate ye for?" + +"Because," said Tira, bound to keep quietly on in this new way of reason +with him, "I left him. An' I left him 'fore he got tired o' me. He +never'd overlook that." + +"You left him, did ye?" he repeated. "Then that proves you was with him, +or ye couldn't ha' left him." + +"Why, Isr'el," said she, her clear gaze on his turbid answering one, "I +told you. I told you long 'fore you married me. First time you ever +mentioned it, I told you, so's to have things fair an' square. I told +you, Isr'el." + +He said nothing, but she knew the answer at the back of his mind, and it +seemed to her wise now to provoke it, to dare the accusation and meet +it, not as she always had, by silence, but a passionate testimony. + +"You said," she continued, "it shouldn't make no difference, what I'd +done 'fore you married me. You said we couldn't help the past, but we +could what's comin' to us. An' I thought you was an angel, Isr'el, with +your religion an' all. Not many men would ha' said that. I didn't know +one. An' we were married an' you--changed." + +"Yes," he said. His hands were shaking as they did at the beginning of +his rages, but Tira, embarked on a course she had long been coming to, +was the more calm. "Yes, I changed, didn't I? An' when d' I change? When +that"--he paused and seemed to choke down the word he would have given +the child--"when that creatur' in there turned into the livin' pictur' +of the man that drew up here this day. Can you deny he's the image of +him?" + +"No," said Tira, looking at him squarely. "He is the image of him." + +"What do folks think about it?" he asked her. "What do you s'pose the +neighbors think? What'll it be when it grows worse an' worse? What'll +the school children say when he's old enough to go to school? They'll +see it, too, the little devils. The livin' image, they'll say, o' 'Gene +Martin." + +Tira laid her work on the table in front of her. The moment of +restraining him had failed her, but another moment had come. This she +had seen approaching for many months and had pushed away from her. + +"Isr'el," she said, "I guess you won't have that to worry over. There's +no danger of his goin' to school. He--ain't right." + +He stared at her a long moment, puzzling instances accumulating in his +mind, evidences that the child was not like other children he had seen. +Then he began to laugh, a laugh full of wildness and despair. + +"O my Lord!" he cried. "My Lord God! if I wanted any evidence I hadn't +got, You've give it to me now. You've laid Your hand on her. You've laid +Your hand on both of 'em. He can't ride by here an' see a red-headed +bastard playin' round the yard an' laugh to himself when he says, +'That's mine.' You've laid Your hand on 'em." + +Tira rose from her chair and went to him. She slipped to the floor, put +her head on his unwelcoming shoulder and her arms about his neck. + +"Isr'el," said she, "you hear to me. If you can't for the sake o' me, +you hear to me for the sake o' him,--sleepin' there, the pitifullest +little creatur' God ever made. How's he goin' to meet things, as he is? +'Twould be hard enough with a father 'n' mother that set by him as they +did their lives, but you half-crazed about him--what'll he do, Isr'el? +What'll the poor little creatur' do?" + +Tenney sat rigid under her touch, and she went on, pouring out the +mother sorrow that was the more overwhelming because it had been locked +in her so long. + +"Isr'el, I could tell you every minute o' my life sence you married me. +If 'twas wrote down, you could read it, an' 'twould be Bible truth. An' +if God has laid His hand on that poor baby--Isr'el, you take that back. +It's like cursin' your own flesh an' blood." + +"I do curse him," he muttered. "I curse him for that--not bein' my flesh +an' blood." With the renewed accusation, his anger against her seemed to +mount like a wave and sweep him with it, and he shook himself free of +her. "Jezebel!" he cried. "Let go o' me." + +Tira rose and went back to her chair. But she did not sit down. She +stood there, looking out of the window and wondering. What to do next? +With a man beside himself, what did a woman do? He was talking now, +drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair and looking at her. + +"Sometimes," he said, "when it all comes over me, I think I'll shet you +up. I'll leave him asleep in there an' lock you in, up chamber, an' you +can hear him cry but you can't git to him. An' mebbe you can work it out +that way. He'll be the scapegoat goin' into the wilderness, cryin' in +there alone, an' you'll be workin' out your punishment, hearin' him +cry." + +Tira stood listening and thinking. This was a new danger. If he shut her +away from the child (and he might do it easily, when his foot would +serve him again) nobody would hear. They were too far away. He was +frightening her. She would frighten him. She walked up to him and stood +looking down on him. + +"Isr'el," said she quietly, "don't you git it into your head you could +shet me up." + +"Yes," said he, and his tone was as ominous as her own, "I guess I could +shet you up all right." + +"Yes," said Tira, "mebbe you could. But if you do, I'll break out. An' +when I've broke out"--she towered over him--"I'll break your neck." + +Tenney, looking up and seeing in her eyes the mother rage that sweeps +creation from man to brute, was afraid, and Tira knew it. She looked him +down. Then her gaze broke, not as if she could not have held his +forever, but haughtily, in scorn of what was weaker than herself. + +"I've been a true wife to you, Isr'el," she said. "You remember it now, +'fore it's too late. For as God's my witness, if you turn your hand +ag'inst a little child--whether it's your own or whether it ain't--an' +that baby in there is yourn an' no man but you has got part nor lot in +him--if you turn ag'inst him, I turn ag'inst you. An' when I've done +that, you'll find me as crazy as you be, an' I can't say no worse." + +She went into the bedroom and he heard her crooning there, defiantly he +thought, even through the low sweetness of her voice. But her passion +had shaken him briefly. For the moment, the inner self in him could not +help believing her. He went back to his newspaper, trying, though the +print was dim before him, to recover his hold on the commonplace of the +day. He, too, would be unmoved; she should see he was not afraid of her +tantrums. But he had not read half a column before an evil chance drew +his eyes to a paragraph in the gossip from the various towns about. This +was under the caption of his own town: + +"A certain gentleman appeared last week with a black eye, gained, it is +said, in a scrap with a non-resident interested in keeping the peace in +country towns. It is said both combatants bore themselves gallantly, but +that suit for assault and battery is to be brought by the party +attacked." + +Tenney sat staring at the words, and his mind told him what a fool he +was. That meant the encounter at his gate. He had ignored that. He had +been deflected from it simply because he had cut his foot and let +himself be drawn off the track of plain testimony by his own pain and +helplessness. Was Raven in it, too? Was there a shameless assault of all +the men about on Tira's honesty? While he was the dupe of Martin, was +Martin Raven's dupe? Did such a woman bring perpetual ruin in her path? +This he did not ask himself in such words or indeed through any +connected interrogation. It was passion within him, disordered, dim, but +horrible to bear. He got up presently, took her scissors, cut out the +paragraph and laid it on her basket where her eyes must fall upon it. +When he had gone back to his chair, she appeared from the bedroom and +went up to him. He did not look at her, but her voice was sweeter, +gentler than the song had been, with no defiance in it, and, in spite of +him, it moved his sick heart, not to belief in her, or even a momentary +rest on her good intent toward him, but to a misery he could hardly +face. Every nerve in him cried out in revolt against his lot, his aching +love for her, his passion forever unsatisfied because she was not +entirely his, the anguish of the atom tossed about in the welter of +elemental life. + +"Isr'el," said she, "there's one thing we forgot when we spoke so to +each other as we did a minute ago." + +She waited, and he looked up at her, and the hunger of his eyes was as +moving to her as if, like the child they had fought over, he was himself +a child and "not right." + +"We forgot," she said, in a soft shyness at having to remind him who was +a professing Christian of what he knew far better than she, "Who was +with us all the time: the Lord Jesus Christ." + +She turned away from him, in a continued timidity at seeming to preach +to him, and seated herself again by the other window. The newspaper +clipping arrested her eye. She took it up, read it over slowly, read it +again and Tenney watched her. Then she crumpled it in her hand and +tossed it on the table. She glanced across at Tenney and spoke gravely, +threading her needle with fingers that did not tremble. + +"That's jest like him," she said. "Anybody 't knew him 'd know 'twas +what he'd do. He's hand in glove with Edson that carries on that paper. +They go to horse-trots together. He's willin' to call attention to +himself, black eye an' all, if he can call attention to somebody else, +same time. That's wormwood, too, Isr'el. We're the ones it's meant for, +you an' me." + + + + +XXXI + + +In a day or two Raven had convinced himself that Dick, firm-lipped, +self-controlled, as if he had set himself a task, did not mean to leave +him. Raven, half amused, half touched, accommodated his behavior to +their closer relation and waited for Dick to disclose himself. He would +have been light-heartedly glad of the boy's company if he had found no +strangeness in it, no purpose he could not, from point to point, divine. +Dick sent for more clothes, and a case came by post. He wrote in his +chamber, for an hour or two every morning, and after that, Raven became +conscious that the boy was keeping a watchful eye on him. If Raven went +up to the hut, Dick was sure to appear there, in ten minutes at the +most. Once, after a heavy snow, Raven had the wood road broken out, and +Dick looked on in a darkling conjecture. And when Raven, now even to +Jerry's wonder, proceeded to break from the hut to the back road, Dick +found it not only impossible to restrain himself but wise to speak. They +were standing by the hearth in the hut, after Raven had swept it and +laid a careful fire. He had worked with all possible haste, for he never +was there now without wondering whether she might come. He had been +resting in the certainty of Tenney's crippled state, but the wounded +foot, he knew, was bettering every day, and with it Tira's security +lessened. Jerry's dismissal from the chores had troubled him so much +that he had gone up, immediately after, to reason with Tenney. But +Tenney was entering the barn door at the moment of his turning into the +yard, and Tira, following, stopped an instant and made Raven a little +gesture that seemed to him one of hasty dismissal, and he went back home +again. + +"Jack," said Dick, this morning in the hut--it was as if he had to +speak--"what are you getting this place ready for, and breaking out the +back road? You don't need to come up here, in weather like this. If you +do, you've got your snowshoes. What the deuce are you breaking out for?" + +Raven stood a moment looking down at Tira's fire. It seemed a sacred +pile, consecrated to holy use. What would Dick say if he told him the +paths had been broken for a woman's flying feet, the fire was laid to +warm her when she came here hunted by man's cruelty? Dick was said to +have written some very strong verse, but how if he found himself up +against life itself? + +"It's a jolly old place," Raven said, rousing himself out of his musing. +"As for breaking out, that's what oxen are for." + +Dick was looking at him in a manifest concern. It was true affection. +The boy might find it difficult to hail him across the interval of years +between them, but he did love old Jack, though with the precise measure +of patronage due the old. + +"You know," said Dick, "it worries me like the deuce to see you coming +up here like----" + +He paused as if the matter were too complex to be gone into lightly. + +"Like what?" Raven asked him. + +"Well, we've been over that. You know who built this. You know what he +did in it. He brought an old rip up here to live with him, and--oh, +confound it, Jack! don't pretend you don't even remember old Crow." + +"Yes," said Raven gravely, "I remember Old Crow." + +"Well, anyhow," said Dick, "he was a family disgrace, and the less said +about him the better." + +"I showed you, the night you came," said Raven, "the story of Old Crow's +life. You didn't quite catch on. Want another try at it?" + +Dick had to search his memory. The only thing he had kept in mind about +that night was his anger against Nan. There was a book, he recalled +vaguely: some sort of stuff in a crabbed hand. + +"Old Crow?" he said. "Old Crow never wrote anything." + +"You think," said Raven, "he brought his bum up here and they sat and +guzzled. Well, you're wrong, my son. Come, let's go down, and though I +don't know whether it'll mean anything to you, you shall have another +hack at Old Crow." + +He was not easy until he had turned the key on the safety of the hut and +started down the hill. When they had rounded the curve made by the three +jutting firs, he stopped. + +"Go on," he said. "I'll overtake you." + +He ran back and slipped the key under the stone. It was a part of her +security to keep the secret from Dick also. + +No more was said of Old Crow that day, but, in the early evening, when +they were before the fire, Raven brought down the book, always in the +drawer of the little table by his bed. It was, in an undefined way, +kindliness and company, always reminding him that, whatever his +undesirable status now, he had been "the boy," and this was his own +personal message from Old Crow. + +"There you are," he said. He laid it on the table. "Don't read it unless +you'd really rather. It's meant a good deal to me. Maybe it won't to +you. I don't know much about the processes of your mind. You may feel at +home in this particular world. I never do. Old Crow didn't either. But +you'll see." + +Dick began to read and, since Nan was not by to be loved and hated, with +an intent mind. Once or twice he turned back, Raven saw, to ponder some +passage again. It was slow reading. He had not the passionate haste of +one who has thirsted for some such community of assurance, and flies +over the ground, plucking a leaf here and there, meaning to return. When +he had finished he closed the book, laid it on the table, and pushed it +aside as if he had definitely done with it. + +"Jackie," said he, "I'm mighty glad you showed me this." + +"Good!" said Raven. "Got inside it, have you?" + +"Why, yes," said Dick, with assurance. "That's easy enough. It isn't +new, you know. And it isn't so much my getting inside that as getting +inside Old Crow." + +"Oh!" said Raven mildly, "so you got inside Old Crow. Now what did you +find there?" + +"I don't know," said Dick, "whether you'd better be told. From a +psychopathic point of view, that is. But I rather guess you ought." + +"Dick," said Raven, "in the name of all the gods you worship, what +shouldn't I be told? And exactly how do you see us two living along +here, mild as milk? What's our relation? Sometimes, when I find you +plodding after me, I feel as if you were my trainer. Sometimes I have a +suspicion I really am off my nut and you're my keeper. Out with it, boy? +How do you see it? Come!" + +Dick, from a patent embarrassment, was staring down at the hearth, and +now he looked quickly up in a frankness truly engaging. + +"Jack," he said, "you needn't think you're going to be left here alone, +to work things out by yourself. There's no danger of mother. I told her +to keep off. She only irritates you. But she hasn't gone back home. +She's right there in Boston, waiting to come." + +Raven got up and walked back and forth through the room. Then he +returned to his chair. + +"Dick," he said conversationally, "if you were as young in years as you +are in your mind, I'd mellow you." + +Dick generously ignored this. He had the impeccable good nature of the +sane set in authority over the sick. + +"What I think, is," he said, with a soothing intonation Raven +despairingly recognized as the note of strength pitting itself against +weakness, "we can work it out together, you and I. We can do it better +than anybody else. I suppose if I went back you'd send for Nan. But that +won't do, Jack. You'll see it for yourself, when you're all right again. +Now what I mean about Old Crow is, that his complexes are like yours--or +rather yours are like his. Don't you see what an influence he's had on +you? More than Miss Anne even." + +"Hold up," said Raven. "I'm being mighty patient with you, but certain +things, you know, you don't say." + +"You used to go up there and see him," said Dick, willingly +relinquishing Miss Anne. There were times when, as he remembered from +boyhood, old Jack was dangerous. "Some of the things about him shocked +you. Some appealed to you. Pity, too: you must have pitied him +tremendously. You probably knew about his craze over this girl he +mentions here. You may have heard things about her, just as he did. +Jack, I can see--the whole thing has come to me in the last ten +minutes--Old Crow has been the big influence in your life. Everything +else has come from that. And then the war knocked you out and you got +_cafard_ and the whole blasted business blew up and came to the surface +and--there you are." + +"Yes," said Raven, "here we are." + +He leaned back in his chair and laughed until he could have cried. Never +had he found anything funnier than the boy's honest face and his honest +voice pouring forth undigested scraps from haphazard gleanings. + +"Dick," he said, "you're a dear fellow. But you're an awful ass. The +trouble is with you, old man, you've no imagination. It was left out. +You're too much like your mother and it'll be the death of you as it is +of her if you don't stop being intelligent. That sort of popular science +stuff, you know. Be a little sloppy, boy. Come off your high horse." + +Dick was still unassailably good-natured. Raven was his job, and he +could hold himself down with a steady hand. + +"Now," said Raven, "for heaven's sake scrap your complexes, even if you +scrap Old Crow with 'em, and let's see if we can't be moderately +peaceable. That is, if we've got to be marooned here together." + +And by dint of giving his mind to it, he was himself peaceable and even +amusing, but as the dark came on he found he had much ado to keep up the +game; he was too sensitively awake to Tira. With no new reason for it, +he was plainly worried, and, leaving Dick reading by the fire, went up +to his own room. He sat down by a front window, facing the dark wall of +the hill, but when, after another hour, he heard Dick come up and shut +himself in, he slipped down the stairs, took his cap and went off to the +hut. The sky was dark, but clear, and the stars burned in galaxies of +wonder. But the beauty of the night only excited and oppressed him until +he could assure himself she was not out in it on one of her dreadful +flights. If he found her in the hut, he could go home to bed. He reached +the door, stopped, and put his hand under the stone. The key was there, +and he laughed out in his thankfulness. The laugh was at his fears, and +he wondered whether he would rather think of her there in her prison or +here, still under sentence, due at her prison again. Then he heard a +step: a man's crashing on regardless of underbrush. Was it Tenney? +Should he hear that voice as he had before in its wild "Hullo"? + +"Where are you?" came the voice. "Where are you, old man?" + +Dick had followed him and was, in his affectionate solicitude, warning +him against surprise. Raven ran down to meet him, and by the turn of the +fir trees they faced each other. + +"Dick," said Raven, "what are you up here for?" + +"Can't help it, old man," said Dick. The eagerness of his voice made it +very moving. "Really, you know, I can't have you trotting round, this +time of night, all by your lonesome. If you want to hang round here, you +let me come, too. We'll light the fire and smoke a pipe and finish the +night, if you say so. Come, old man. Come on." + +"No," said Raven quietly, "we won't light fires and smoke pipes. We'll +go down now, to bed. Dick, you're a fool. I've had to tell you so more +than once. But you're a dear fool, and sometime I may be able to +remember that and nothing else. Just now I can't seem to want to do +anything but pitch you, neck and crop, into the snow." + +They went down together, Dick still doggedly conscious of doing the only +thing possible, and when they were near the foot of the hill, Raven +yelled at him, the old Moosewood whoop, and sprang. It was the signal +between them when one or the other had a mind to "wrastle," and they +stood there in the road and assailed each other scientifically and with +vigor, to the great benefit of each. It was a beneficent outburst, and +Charlotte, roused by the cry, ran to a chamber window and stood there in +her nightgown, watching. + +"How they do carry on!" she commented to Jerry, when they had separated +and come in, chaffing volubly. "For all the world like two toms." + +Things were easier between them, now they had mauled each other, and +they ran upstairs together, "best friends" as they used to be when Dick +learned the game. He was wonderfully encouraged. This was the Uncle Jack +he used to tag about the place. He went to bed with a hopeful +presentiment that, if things kept on like this, he might take Raven back +to town presently, reasonable enough to place himself voluntarily in the +right hands. + +To Tira, the week dragged on with a malicious implication of never +meaning to end until it ended her. Strange things could be done in a +week, it reminded her, conclusive, sinister things. The old fears were +on in full force, and though it had not looked as if they could be much +augmented, now they piled up mountain high. And she presently found out +they were not the old fears at all. There was a fresh menace, +ingeniously new. She had studied the weather of Tenney's mind and knew +the signs of it. She could even anticipate them. But this new menace she +could never have foreseen. It was simply his crutch. An evil magic +seemed to have fallen upon it, and it was no longer a crutch but a +weapon. Tenney would not abandon it. His foot was improving fast, and +the doctor had suggested his dropping the crutch for a cane; but he kept +on with it, kept on obstinately without a spoken pretext. To Tira, there +was something sinister in that. She saw him not relying on it to any +extent, but sedulously keeping it by him. Sometimes he gesticulated with +it. He had, with great difficulty, brought in the cradle again, as if to +emphasize his callousness to the gash in it, and once he tapped it with +the crutch, while the baby lay there asleep, and set it rocking. Tira, +cooking at the table, felt her heart stand still. An actual weapon she +could flee from, but was this a weapon? The uncertainty was in itself +terrifying. + +It was the day he set the cradle rocking that she awoke in the night, +her fear full upon her. He was at her side, sleeping heavily. The baby +was on her other arm. Yet it seemed to her that the menace from Tenney +had pierced her to reach the child and, on its passage, stabbed through +her racing heart. Then her temptation came upon her, so simple a thing +she seemed stupid never to have thought of it before. She rose to a +sitting posture, put her feet out of bed, took the child, and carried +him with her into the sitting-room. She laid him on the couch and +covered him, and then stole back into the bedroom. The crutch was there, +in its habitual place at night, leaning against the foot of the bed. She +could put her hand on it in the dark. Tenney, too, she had begun to +reflect, could put his hand on it. What deeds might he not do with it in +those hours when the sanities of life also sleep? She took it gently and +went out again through the sitting-room and kitchen into the shed. Her +purpose had been to hide it behind the wood. But if he came on it there, +it would not be a crutch he found. It would be a weapon. She put her +hand on an upright beam, as she stood painfully thinking it out, and +touched the handle of a saw, hanging there on a nail; immediately she +knew. She went back into the kitchen, lighted the lantern and carried it +into the shed. There stood the crutch leaning against the beam below the +saw, a weapon beyond doubt. She set down her lantern, laid the crutch on +the block Tenney used to split kindlings, set her foot upon it and +methodically sawed it into stove wood lengths. When it was done she +gathered up the pieces, carried them into the sitting-room, to the stove +where Tenney always, in winter weather, left a log to smoulder, dropped +them in and opened the draught. Then she went back to the shed, swept up +her scattering of sawdust, hung the saw in its place, gave a glance +about her to see that everything was in its usual order, and returned +into the kitchen. She put out the lantern, hung it on its nail, went +into the sitting-room and partially shut the draft on the noisy blaze. +She did not dare quite shut it, lest a bit of the weapon should be left +to cry out from the ashes and tell. When she was back in bed again, the +child on her arm, Tenney, disturbed by her coming, woke and turned. He +lifted his head from the pillow, to listen, and she wondered if he could +hear the beating of her heart. + +"You there?" he asked. "What's that stove started out roarin' for? The +chimbly ain't afire?" + +"No," said Tira. "Mebbe somethin's ketched." She got out of bed, ran +into the sitting-room, noiselessly shut the crack of draught, and came +back. "Them knots are kinder gummy," she said calmly, and was heartened +by the evenness of her voice. "I guess 'twon't roar long." + +They listened together until the sound diminished, and Tira knew when he +relaxed and dropped off again. It did not seem to her that she dropped +off at all, she was so relieved to think of her enemy smouldering and +done for. + +This was the night Raven had had his premonition of her and gone up to +the hut to find her, and the next night he was aware of her again, as if +she had put a hand out through the darkness and given him an imploring +touch. He and Dick had had an almost jovial day. Their wrestling bout +had proved sound medicine. It had, Raven thought, cleared the air of the +fool things they had been thinking about each other. This evening they +had talked, straight talk, as between men, chiefly of Dick's future and +his fitness for literature. There was no hint of Nan, though each +believed she was the pivot on which Dick's fortunes turned. About ten +they went up to bed, and again Raven found himself too uneasy to sleep, +and again he sat down by the window in the dark. Incredibly, yet as he +found he knew it would happen, he saw a figure running up the path. It +came almost to the front door, halted a moment, as if in doubt, stooped +and threw up a clutch of snow against a window. The snow was full of icy +pellets; they rattled against the pane. But it was not his window, which +was dark; the hand had cast its signaling pellets to the room where a +light was burning and where the outline of a man's figure had just been +visible. And the man was Dick. But Raven knew. He opened his door and +shut it as softly, stole down the stairs, opened the outer door, and +drew her in. Then, in the instant of snapping on the light, he saw Tira +recoil; for there, at the foot of the stairs, was Dick. She would have +slipped out again, but Raven's hand was on her. He still held hers, as +he had taken it, and now he turned her to the library door. It was all +done quickly, and meantime he said to Dick, "Go back to bed," and Dick +perhaps not responding exactly, commented under his breath, "Good God!" +Raven followed Tira into the library, turned the key in the lock, +switched on the light in his reading lamp, and drew a chair to the +smouldering fire. + +"Sit down," he said. "You must get warm." + +He threw on cones and roused a leaping blaze. Then he made himself look +at her. He forgot Dick and Dick's shocked bewilderment. He was calm as +men are calm in an accomplished certainty. She had come. She did not +seem cold or in any sense excited, though she put her hands to the blaze +and bent toward it absently, as if in courtesy because he had given it +to her. As she sat, drawing long breaths that meant the ebbing of +emotion, he let his eyes feed on her face. She was paler than he had +seen her. There were shadows under her eyes, and the lashes on her cheek +looked incredibly long: a curved inky splash. Her hood had fallen back, +but she kept the blue cloak about her to her chin, as if it made a +seclusion, a protection even against him. But it was only an instant +before she withdrew her hands from the blaze and turned to him, with a +little smile. She began to speak at once, as if she had scant time, +either for indulging her own weakness or troubling him. + +"You'll think it's queer," she said. "I've come here routin' you out o' +bed when you've give me that nice place up there to run away to." + +Raven found himself ready to break out into asseverations that it was +the only natural thing for her to do. Where should she go, if not to +him? + +"No," he said, the more gravely because he was counseling himself while +he answered her. "You did right. But," he added, "where's----?" + +She understood. Where was the baby who always made the reason for her +flight? + +"He's up there," she answered, with a motion of her hand toward the +road. + +"In the hut?" he exclaimed. "You left him there?" + +It seemed impossible. + +"Yes," she said quietly, "all soul alone. I run out with him, same as I +always have. I run up there. I found the road all broke out. I wa'n't +surprised. I knew you'd do it. That is, I'd ha' known it if I'd thought +anything about it. An' I found the key an' started the fire. An' then I +knew I'd got to see you this night, an' I put him on the lounge an' set +chairs so's he wouldn't fall out, an' packed him round with pillers, an' +locked him in an' left him." + +She paused and Raven nodded at her as if he wanted to find it as simple +as it seemed to her. + +"You see, I couldn't bring him down here," she said. "He might cry. An' +there's Charlotte. An' Jerry. An' the young man. I'm sorry the young man +see me. That's too bad." + +"It's all right," said Raven briefly, though he was aware it was, from +Dick's present point of view, all wrong. "I'll attend to that." + +"He's safe enough," said Tira, her eyes darkening as she recurred to the +baby. "If he cries, 'twon't do no hurt up there. Well!" She seemed to +remind herself that there was much to say. "I must be gittin' along with +my story." She looked at him in a most moving wistfulness, and added: "I +got scared." + + + + +XXXII + + +Raven gave his answering nod. That seemed to be about all he could +respond with, in his danger of saying the rash thing. + +"Yes," he said, "scared. Same way?" + +"No," she said. "Worse. I guess I never've been so scared. An' I've got +myself to thank. You see, last night----" + +"Yes," said Raven. "I got wind of it last night." + +This, though it puzzled her, she could not stay to follow out, with the +baby up in the hut defended only by pillows and Tenney perhaps turning +to ask: "You there?" + +"You see," she said, "it's his crutch." + +"You mean," supplied Raven, brute anger rising up in him against brute +man, "he's struck you with it?" + +"No, no," she hastened to assure him. "He ain't even threatened me. Only +somehow it was like his havin' somethin' always by him, somethin' he +could strike with, an'--I dunno what come over me--I burnt it up." + +At once Raven faced the picture of it, the mad impulse, the resulting +danger. But he would not add his apprehensiveness to hers. + +"I dunno," she said, "as you'll hardly see what I mean: but it begun to +look kinder queer to me, that crutch did. All I could think of was how +much better 'twould be for everybody concerned if 'twas burnt up." + +"Yes," said Raven. "I see. We all feel so sometimes, when we're tired +out." The moderation of these words but ill expressed his tumultuous +mind. That was it, his passionate understanding told him. The natural +world throws its distorted shadows, and our eyes have to be at their +strongest not to recoil in panic, while we turn back to strike. "And," +he said, because she seemed to be mired here in the bog of her own +wonderment, "in the morning of course he found it out." + +The strangest look came into her face: she was horrified, and more than +that, indubitably more, she was perplexed. + +"Yes," she said, "he found it out. 'Course he found it out first thing, +'fore he dressed him even. I got up early an' made the fires. I've been +makin' 'em sence he's laid up. So I don't know no more'n the dead how he +looked when it first come over him the crutch wa'n't there. But he come +out int' the kitchen--I'd been t' the barn then an' give the cows some +fodder--an' he carried a cane, his gran'ther's it was, same's the +crutch. It's got a crook handle, an' I've kep' it in the chimney corner +to pull down boxes an' things from the upper cupboard. An' he went out +to the barn an' come in an' eat his breakfast, an' eat his dinner an' +his supper, when they come round, an' we done the barn work together, +an' he ain't mentioned the crutch from first to last." + +"Well," said Raven, in a futile reassurance, "perhaps he thinks he's +left it somewhere, and if he doesn't particularly need it--Jerry told me +only this morning the doctor said he might as well be getting used to a +cane." + +"No," said Tira conclusively, "he don't think he's left it anywheres. +He's keepin' still, that's all." + +Immediately Raven saw the menacing significance of Tenney's keeping +still. His mind ran with a quick foot over the imprisonment of the two +there together. Was there a moment, he wondered, when the suffering +brute was not threatening to her, when her heart could rest itself for +the next hurried flight? He ventured his question. + +"Has he been"--he hesitated for a word and found what sounded to him a +mawkish one--"good to you at all, these last weeks?" + +Tira reflected a moment and then, for the first time since she came in +from the cold, the blood rushed to her haggard cheeks. She remembered a +moment, the day before the burning of the crutch, when he had found her +doing her hair before the bedroom glass and had caught her to him +wildly. She had put him away from her, though gently, because his +violence, whether it took the form of starved passion or raging hate, +always seemed to her the unbecoming riot of a forward child, and he had +left her in a shamefaced anger, a grumbling attempt to recover his lost +dignity. Tira hid even from herself the miserable secrets of marital +savagery. No sacrifice was too great to hide from Tenney her knowledge +of his abasement. Most of all must she hide it from another man, and +that man Raven. Her answer was not ready, but she had it for him, and he +understood, in his unfailing knowledge of her, that it was the first +crooked one she had ever given him, and for the first time he felt anger +toward her. She was defending her enemy, and against him. + +"He does the best he can," she said. "He takes things terrible hard. I +dunno's I ever see anybody that took 'em so hard." + +Then, as he did not speak, she looked at him and meeting the cold +unresponsiveness in his face her composure broke and she stretched out +her hands to him in a wildness of entreaty. + +"Oh, don't you look like that," she cried. "If you turn from me 'twill +be my death." + +He was not cold now. He bent to her and took her hands in his. + +"Tira," he said, "come away with me. You can't bear this any longer. +Take the child and come. You'd be safe. You'd be happy, if you weren't +afraid. Don't go back there for another minute. Stay here over night, +and to-morrow I'll take you away." + +He was looking at her, his eyes holding hers as his hands held her +hands. And, whatever he had meant, the strangest, swiftest retribution +of his life came to him through the change in her face. How could flesh +and muscle bring about such an alteration in human line and texture, the +Mother of Sorrows transformed to a Medusa head? Her lips parted, +trembling over words they could not bring themselves to say. Her eyes +widened into darkness. Her brows drew together in a pitiful questioning. +And her voice, when she did speak, was a vibrating protest against what +her eyes knew and her mind. + +"You don't mean," she said, "_that_?" + +Raven dropped her hands as if they had struck him. The question was a +rushing commentary on his life and hers. Was he, she meant, only another +actor in this drama of man's hunger and savagery? Was he a trader in the +desire of beauty, that tragic dower nature had thrown over her like a +veil, so that whoever saw it with a covetous eye, longed to possess and +rend it? Probably Tira never did what would be called thinking. But her +heart had a vital life of its own, her instinct was the genius of +intuition. He had been kind to her, compassionate. She had built up a +temple out of her trust in him, and now he had smoked the altar with the +incense that was rank in her nostrils. He had brought, not flowers and +fruits, but the sacrifice of blood. And he, on his part, what did he +think? Only that he must save her. + +"No, Tira," he said, "I don't mean that. I mean--what you want me to +mean. You can't understand what it is to a man to know you're afraid, to +know you're in danger and he can't help you. I didn't ask you as I +ought. I asked you to come away with me. I ask you again. Come away with +me and I'll take you to the best place I know. I'll take you to Nan." + +He had not guessed he was going to say this. Only, as he spoke, he knew +in his inner mind the best place was Nan. Suddenly she seemed to be in +the room with them. What was it but her cool fragrant presence? And she +understood. Tira might not. She might feel these turbid waves of his +response to he knew not what: the beauty and mystery of the world, the +urge of tyrant life, all bound up in the presence of this one woman. She +was woman, hunted and oppressed. He was man, created, according to the +mandate of his will, to save or to undo her. But the world and the +demands of it, clean or unclean, could not be taken at a gulp. He must +get hold of himself and put his hand on Tira's will. For she could only +be saved against her own desire. Whatever he had seemed to ask her, or +whatever his naked mind and rebellious lips had really asked, he could +not beg her to forgive him. He must not own to a fault in their +relation, lest he seem, as he had at that moment, an enemy the more. + +"That's exactly what you must do," he said. "You must let me take you to +Nan." + +A soft revulsion seemed to melt her to an acquiescence infinitely +grateful to her. + +"That," she said, "was what I had in mind. If she'd take him--the +baby--an' put him somewhere. She said there were places. She said so +herself. I dunno's you knew it, but she talked to me about him. She said +there was ways folks know now about doin' things for 'em when they ain't +right, an' makin' the most you can of 'em. She told me if I said the +word, she'd come here an' carry him back with her." + +"But," said Raven, "what about you? I'm ready to stand by the child, +just as Nan is. But I'm doing it for your sake. What about you?" + +"Oh," said Tira, with a movement of her eloquent hands, as if she tossed +away something that hindered her, "tain't no matter about me. I've got +to stay here. Mr. Raven"--her voice appealed to him sweetly. He +remembered she had not so used his name before--"I told you that. I +can't leave him." + +The last word she accented slightly, and Raven could not tell whether +the stress on it was the tenderness of affection, or something as +moving, yet austere. And now he had to know. + +"You want to stay with him"----he began, and Tira interrupted him +softly, looking at him meantime, as if she besought him to understand: + +"I promised to." + +Raven sat there and looked into the fire, thinking desperately. At that +moment, he wanted nothing in the world so much as to snatch her away +from Tenney and set her feet in a safe place. But did he want it solely +for her or partly for himself? What did it matter? Casuistry was far +outside the tumult of desire. He would kick over anything, law or +gospel, to keep her from going back there this night. Yet he spoke +quietly: + +"We'll go up and get the baby, and I'll call Charlotte, and you'll stay +here to-night. To-morrow we'll go." + +"No," said Tira, gently but immovably, "I couldn't have Charlotte an' +Jerry brought into it. Not anyways in the world." + +"Why not?" asked Raven. + +"I couldn't," she said. "They're neighbors. They're terrible nice folks, +but folks have to talk--they can't help it--an', 'fore you knew it, it'd +be all over the neighborhood. An' he's a professin' Christian. 'Twould +be terrible for him." + +Sometimes he only knew from the tone of her voice, in this general +vagueness of expecting him to understand her, whether she meant Tenney +or the child. + +"What I thought was," she went on timidly, "if she'd come an' git +him"--and here "him" evidently meant the child--"'twould be reasonable +she was takin' him back where he could be brought up right. She'd just +as soon do it," she assured him earnestly, as if he had no part in Nan. +"Some folks are like that. They're so good." + +He was insatiate in his desire to understand her. + +"And you mean," he said, with a directness he was willing to tincture +with a cruelty sharp enough to serve, "to send the child off somewhere +where he will be safe, and then live here with this brute, have more +children by him----" + +"No! no!" she cried sharply. "Not that! don't you say that to me. I +can't bear it. Not from you! My God help me! not from you." + +He understood her. She loved him. He was set apart by her overwhelming +belief in him, but she was in all ways, the ways of the flesh as well as +the spirit, consecrated to him. Her body might become the prey of man's +natural cruelty, and yet, while she wept her tears of blood in this +unreasoning slavery, she held one worship. There he would be alone. The +insight of the awakened mind told him another thing: that, in spite of +her despairing loyalty, he could conquer her scruples. He could, by the +sheer weight of a loving will, force her to follow him. A warm entreaty, +one word of his own need, and she would answer. And while he thought, +the jungle feeling came upon him, hot, hateful to his conscious mind, +the feeling of the complexity of it all, strange beasts of emotion out +for prey, the reason drugged with nature's sophistries. The jungle! That +was what Nan had called it, this welter of human misery. Who else had +been talking to him about it? Why, Old Crow! He had not called it the +jungle, but he had been lost in its tortuous ways. This prescience to +Old Crow brought a queer feeling, as if a cool air blew on him. The +jungle feeling passed. Almost he had the vision of an eternal city, +built up by the broken but never wholly failing strength of man, and Old +Crow there beckoning him into it and telling him he'd kept a place for +him. And the cool breeze which was Old Crow told him that although Tira +must be rescued, if it could be brought about, it must not be through +any of the jungle ways. She must not be drugged by jungle odors and +carried off unwillingly, even to the Holy City itself, by that road. He +and Tira--yes, he and Tira and Nan--would march along together with +their eyes open. He hastened to speak, to commit himself to what he must +deliberately wish: + +"Then we'll telephone Nan." + +She looked at him, all gratitude. Her friend had gone away into strange +dark corners of life where only her instinct followed him, and here he +was back again. + +"No," she said, "don't you telephone. Somebody'd listen in. You write. I +guess mebbe nothin'll happen right off, even if I did burn the crutch. I +guess I got kinder beside myself to-night. I ain't likely to be so +ag'in." + +"I'll walk up to the hut with you," said Raven, rising as she did, "and +see you safe inside." + +"No," said she, "I couldn't let you no ways. It's bad enough as 'tis." + +By this she meant the paragraph in the paper which had laid an insulting +finger on him; but he had not seen it and did not understand. Only it +was plain to him that she would not let him go. She drew her hood up, +and made it secure under her chin. Then she looked at him and smiled a +little. She had to smile, her woman's instinct told her, to reassure +him. She opened the door, and though he followed her quickly, had +slipped through the outer door as softly and was gone. He stood there on +the sill watching her hurrying to the road. When she had turned to the +right, she began to run, and he went down the path after her to look up +the road, lest she had seen something pursuing her. But the night was +still. There was no sound of footsteps on the snow, and the far-off +barking of a fox made the silence more complete. She was only hurrying, +because her mother heart had wakened suddenly to the loneliness of the +child up there among the pillows, torturing herself with wonders that +she could leave him. He went out into the road and continued on her +track, until he saw her turn into the woods. Then, waiting until she +should be far enough in advance not to catch the sound of his pursuit, +he suddenly heard footsteps on the road and turned. A man was coming +rapidly. It was Dick. + + + + +XXXIII + + +In his relief--for, in spite of the man's lameness, he had made sure it +was Tenney--Raven laughed out. At once he sobered, for why was Dick here +but to spy on him? + +"Well," he inquired brusquely, "what is it?" + +They turned together, and Dick did not speak. When they had gone in and +Raven closed the hall door and glanced at him, he was suddenly aware +that the boy had not spoken because he could not trust himself. His +brows were knit, his face dark with reproachful anger. + +"Think the old man shouldn't have gone out in the cold without his hat +and muffler?" asked Raven satirically. + +"Yes," said Dick, in a quick outburst. "I think just that. It's a risk +you've no business to take. In your condition, too. Oh, yes, I know you +do look fit enough, but you can't depend on that. Besides--Jack, who's +that woman? What's she going up into the woods for? She's not going to +the hut? Is that why----?" + +Raven stood looking at him, studying not so much his face as the +situation. He turned to the library door. + +"Come in, Dick," he said. "We'll talk it out. We can't either of us +sleep." + +Dick followed him in and they took their accustomed chairs. Raven +reached for his pipe, but he did not fill it: only sat holding it, +passing his thumb back and forth over the bowl. He was determining to be +temperate, to be fair. Dick could not forget he was old, but he must +force himself not to gibe at Dick for being young. + +"Do you feel able," he said, "to hear a queer story and keep mum over +it? Or do you feel that a chap like me, who ought to be in the +Psychopathic, hasn't any right to a square deal? When you see me going +off my nut, as you expect, shall you feel obliged to give in your +evidence, same as families do to the doctor and the clergyman if a man's +all in?" + +Dick was straight. + +"I'll do my best," he said. "But a woman--like that--and you meeting her +as you did! It's not like you, Jack. You never'd have done such a thing +in all your born days if you weren't so rattled." + +There were arguments at the back of his mind he could not, in decency, +use. He remembered Raven's look when he drew her in, and the tragic one +that mirrored it: passionate entreaty on the woman's face, on the man's +passionate welcome. As usual, it was the real witnesses of life standing +dumb in the background that alone had the power to convict. But they +could not be brought into court. Custom forbade it, the code between man +and man. Yet there they were, all the same. + +"Well!" said Raven. He had responded with only a little whimsical lift +of the eyebrows to this last. "If you won't trust me, I must you. That's +all there is about it. The woman is our neighbor. Israel Tenney's wife, +and she's in danger of her life from her husband, and she won't leave +him." + +Dick stared as at the last thing he had expected. He shook his head. + +"Too thin," he said. "I've seen Tenney and I've heard him spoken of. +He's a psalm-singing Methody, or something of that sort. Why, I met him +one day, Jerry and I, and he stared at me as if he wanted to know me +again. And Jerry said afterward he was probably going to ask me if I'd +found the Lord; but he changed his mind or something. No, Jack, don't +you be taken in. That woman's pulling your leg." + +"Dick," said Raven, "I've been told you have a very vivid sense of drama +in your narrative verse. You couldn't, by any possibility, apply it to +real life?" + +"Oh, I know," said Dick, "New England's chock full of tragedy. But I +tell you I've seen Tenney. He's only a kind of a Praise-God Barebones. +Put him back a few hundred years, and you'd see him sailing for +Plymouth, for freedom to worship God. (Obstinate, too, like the rest of +'em. He wouldn't worship anybody else's God, only the one he'd set up +for himself.) If his wife didn't mind him, he might pray with her or +growl over the dinner table, but he wouldn't bash her head in. +Understand, Jack, I've seen Tenney." + +"Yes," said Raven drily, "I've seen Tenney, too. And seen him in action. +Now, Dickie, you put away your man-of-the-world attitude toward battle, +murder, and sudden death, and you let me tell you a few things about +Tenney." + +He began with the day when he had found Tira in the woods. He touched on +the facts briefly, omitting to confess what the woman looked to his +dazzled eyes. It was a drawing austerely black and white. Could he tell +anyone--anyone but Nan--how she had seemed to him there, the old, old +picture of motherhood, divine yet human? It was too much to risk. If he +did lay his mind bare about that moment which was his alone, and Dick +met it with his unimaginative astuteness, he could not trust himself to +be patient with the boy. He said little more than that he had given her +the freedom of the hut, and that he meant always to have it ready for +her. Then he came to this last night of all, when she had run away from +Tenney, not because he had been violent, but because he had "kept +still." That did take hold on Dick's imagination, the imagination he +seemed able to divorce from the realities of life and kept for the +printed page. + +"By thunder!" he said. "Burned the crutch, did she? That's a story in +itself, a real story: Mary Wilkins, Robert Frost. That's great!" + +"Sounds pretty big to me," said Raven quietly. "But it's not for print. +See you don't feel tempted to use it. Now, here we are with Tira up +against it. She's got to make a quick decision. And she's made it." + +"Do you call her by her first name?" asked Dick, leaping the main issue +to frown over the one possibly significant of Raven's state of mind. + +"Yes," said Raven steadily, "I rather think I call her by her first +name. I don't know whether I ever have 'to her head,' as Charlotte would +say, but I don't seem to feel like calling her by Tenney's name. Well, +Tira's decided. She's going to give her baby to Nan." + +Dick's eyes enlarged to such an extent, his mouth opened so vacuously, +that Raven laughed out. Evidently Dick wasn't regarding the matter from +Tira's standpoint, or even Raven's now, but his own. + +"Nan!" he echoed, when he could get his lips into action. "Where does +Nan come in?" + +"Oh," said Raven, with a most matter-of-fact coolness, "Nan came in long +ago. I told her about it, and it seems she went to see Tira off her own +bat, and offered to take the baby." + +"She sha'n't do it," proclaimed Dick. "I simply won't have it, that's +all." + +"I fancy," said Raven, "Nan'll tell you you've got nothing whatever to +do with it. And really, Dick, you never'll get Nan by bullying her. +Don't you know you won't?" + +Dick, having a perfectly good chance, turned the tables on him neatly. + +"That'll do," said he, remembering how Raven had shut him up when he +dragged in Anne Hamilton. "We won't discuss Nan." + +Now it was Raven's turn to gape, but on the heels of it, seeing the +neatness of the thrust, he smiled. + +"Right, boy," he said. "Good for you. We won't discuss Nan, and we won't +discuss Tira. But you'll hold your tongue about this business, and if +you find me opening the door of my house at midnight, you'll remember +it's my business, and keep your mouth shut. Now I'm going up the hill to +see she's safe, and if you follow me, in your general policy of keeping +on my trail, I don't quite know what will happen. But something will--to +one of us." + +He got up, went into the hall and found his cap and leather jacket. Dick +meantime stood in the library door regarding him from so troubled a mind +that Raven halted and put a hand on his shoulder. + +"Cut it out, boy," he said, "all this guardian angel business. You let +me alone and I'll let you alone. We're both decent chaps, but when you +begin with your psychotherapy and that other word I don't know how to +pronounce----" + +Dick, having, at this period of his life only an inactive sense of +humor, mechanically supplied it: "Psychiatry." + +"What a beast of a word! Yes, that's it. Well, they're red rags to me, +all these gadgets out of the half-baked mess they've stirred up by +spying on our insides. I can't be half decent to you. But I want to be. +I want us to be decent to each other. It's damnable if we can't. Go to +bed, and I'll run up and see if poor Tira's safe." + +He did not wait for an answer, but went out at the front door, and Dick +heard him whistling down the path. The whistle seemed like an +intentional confirmation of his being in a cheerfully normal frame of +mind, not likely to be led too far afield by premonitions of New England +tragedy. Perhaps that was why he did whistle, for when he reached the +road he stopped and completed the first half of the ascent in silence. +Then, as the whistle might mean something reassuring to Tira, he began +again with a bright loudness, bold as the oriole's song. He reached the +hut, whistling up to the very door, and then his breath failed him on a +note, the place looked so forbiddingly black in the shadow, the woods +were so still. It did not seem possible that a woman's warm heart was +beating inside there, Tira's heart, home of loves unquenchable. He put +his hand down under the stone. The key was there, and rising, he felt +his mind heavy with reproaches of her. She had gone back to Tenney. The +night's work was undone. What was the use of drawing her a step along +the path of safety if she turned back the instant he trusted her alone? +He went down the hill again in a dull distaste for himself. It seemed to +him another man might have managed it better, swept her off her feet and +bound her in an allegiance where she would obey. When he reached his own +house, he was too discontented even to glance at Dick's window and +wonder whether the boy was watching for him. The place was silent, and +he put out the lights and went to bed. + +Next morning he had got hold of himself and, with that obstinate +patience which is living, went to the library after breakfast and called +up Nan. It was wonderful to hear her fresh voice. It broke in upon his +discouragements and made them fly, like birds feeding on evil food. +Would she listen carefully, he asked. Would she translate him, because +he couldn't speak in any detail. And when he had got thus far, he +remembered another medium, and began the story of last night in French. +Nan listened with hardly a commenting word, and when he had finished her +bald answer was ridiculously reassuring. + +"Sure!" said Nan. "I'll be there to-night. Send Jerry for me. Eight +o'clock." + +"God bless you!" said Raven. "You needn't bring any luggage. It'll +probably be wiser to go right back." + +Nan said "Sure!" again, no doubt, Raven thought, as indicating her view +of her errand as a homespun one there was no doubt of her carrying out +with the utmost simplicity. Then he went to tell Jerry he was to meet +the evening train, and on the way he told Dick: + +"Nan's coming to-night." + +"Nan!" said Dick. "Not----" + +"Yes," said Raven. "I telephoned her. Buck up, old man. Here's another +chance for you, don't you see? We're in a nasty hole, Tira and +incidentally Nan and I. Play the game, old son, and help us out." + +"What," inquired Dick, "do you expect me to do?" + +"Chiefly," said Raven, "keep out. It's my game and Nan's and Tira's. But +you play yours. Don't sulk. Show her what a noble Red Man you can be." + +Dick turned away, guiltily, Raven thought, as if he had plans of his +own. What the deuce did he mean to do? But their day passed amicably +enough, though they were not long together. Raven went up to the hut and +stayed most of the afternoon. It was not so much that he expected Tira +to come as that he felt the nearness of her there in the room she had +disarranged with barricading chairs and pillows and then put in order +again before she left. He could see her stepping softly about, with her +deft, ordered movements, making it comely for him to find. She had left +pictures of herself on the air, sad pictures, most of them, telling the +tale of her terror and foreboding, but others of them quite different. +There were moments he remembered when, in pauses of her talk with him, +she glanced at the child, and still others when she sat immobile, her +hands clasped on her knee, her gaze on the fire. Henceforth the hut +would be full of her presence, hers and Old Crow's. And, unlike as they +were, they seemed to harmonize. Both were pitiful and yet austere in +their sincerity; and for both life had been a coil of tangled meanings. +He stayed there until nearly dark, and his musings waxed arid and dull +with the growing chill of the room. For he would not light the fire. It +had to be left in readiness. + +When he went down he found Dick uneasily tramping the veranda. + +"Charlotte wants us to have a cup of tea," said Dick. "She said supper's +put off till they come." + +"They?" inquired Raven. "Who's they?" + +"It's no use, Jack," Dick broke forth. "I might as well tell you. I +s'pose if I didn't you'd kick up some kind of a row later. I telephoned +Mum." + +"You don't mean," said Raven, in a voice of what used to be called +"ominous calm," before we shook off the old catch-words and got +indirections of our own, "you don't mean you've sent for her!" + +"It's no use," said Dick again, though with a changed implication, "you +might as well take things as they are. Nan can't come up here slumming +without an older woman. It isn't the thing. It simply isn't done." + +Raven, through the window, saw Charlotte hovering in the library with +the tea tray. He watched her absently, as if his mind were entirely with +her. Yet really it was on the queerness of things as they are in the +uniform jacket of propriety and the same things when circumstance +thrusts the human creature out of his enveloping customs and sends him +into battle. He thought of Dick's philosophy of the printed word. He +thought of Nan's desperate life of daily emergency in France. Yet they +were all, he whimsically concluded, being squared to Aunt Anne's +rigidity of line. But why hers? Why not Old Crow's? Old Crow would have +had him rescue Tira, even through difficult ways. He opened the door. + +"Come on in," he said. "Charlotte's buttered the toast." + +Dick followed him, and they sat down to their abundant tea, Charlotte +pausing a moment to regard them with her all-enveloping lavishment of +kindliness. Were they satisfied? Could she bring something more? + +"The trouble with you, Dick," said Raven, after his third slice of +toast, buttered, he approvingly noted, to the last degree of drippiness, +"is poverty of invention. You repeat your climax. Now, this sending for +Milly: it's precisely what you did before. That's a mistake the actors +make: repeated farewells." + +Dick made no answer. He, too, ate toast prodigiously. + +"Now," said Raven, when they had finished, "do I understand you mean to +put your mother wise about what I told you last night? Yes or no?" + +"I shall do----" said Dick, and at his pause Raven interrupted him. + +"No, you won't," said he. "You won't do what you think best. Take it +from me, you won't. What I told you wasn't my secret. It's poor Tira's. +If you give her away to your mother--good God! think of it, Milly, with +her expensive modern theories and her psychiatry--got it right, that +time!--muddling up things for a woman like her! Where was I? Well, +simply, if you play a dirty trick like that on me, I'll pack you off, +you and your mother both. I don't like to remind you but, after all, old +man, the place is mine." + +The blood came into Dick's face. He felt misjudged in his affection and +abused. + +"You can't see," he said. "I don't believe it's because you can't. You +won't. It isn't Nan alone. It's you. You're not fit. You're no more fit +than you were when Mum was here before. And you can pack me off, but, by +thunder! I won't go." + +"Very well," said Raven, with a happy inspiration. "You needn't. I'll go +myself. And I'll take Nan with me." A picture of Nan and her own vision +of happy isles came up before him, and he concluded: "Yes, by George! +I'll take Nan. And we'll sail for the Malay Peninsula, or an +undiscovered island, and wear Mother Hubbards and live on breadfruit, +and you and your precious conventions can go to pot." + +So, having soothed himself by his own intemperance, he got up, found his +pipe and a foolish novel he made a point of reading once a year--it +would hardly do to tell what it was, lest the reader of this true story +fail to sympathize with his literary views and so with all his +views--and sat down to await his guests in a serviceable state of good +humor. He had brought Dick to what Charlotte would call "a realizing +sense." He could afford a bit of tolerance. Dick got up and flung out of +the room, finding Raven, he told himself, in one of his extravagant +moods. Nine times out of ten the moods meant nothing. On the other hand, +in this present erratic state of a changed Raven, they might mean +anything. For himself, he was impatient, with the headlong rush of young +love. Nan was coming. She was on the way. Would she be the same, distant +with her cool kindliness, her old lovely self to Raven only, or might +she be changed into the Nan who kissed him that one moment of his need? +He snatched his hat and tore out of the house, and Raven, glancing up +from his novel, saw him striding down the path and thought approvingly +he was a wise young dog to walk off some of his headiness before Nan +came. As for him, he would doze a little over his foolish book, as +became a man along in years. That was what Charlotte would say, "along +in years." Was it so? What a devil of an expression, like all the rest +of them that were so much worse than the thing itself: "elderly," +"middle-aged," what a grotesque vocabulary! And he surprised himself by +throwing his foolish book, with an accurate aim, at a space in the +shelves, where it lodged and hung miserably, and getting up and tearing +down the walk at a pace emulating Dick's, but in the opposite direction: +the result of these athletic measures being that when Amelia and Nan +drove up with Jerry, the station master's pung following with two small +trunks that seemed to wink at Raven, with an implication of their +competitive resolve to stay, two correctly clad gentlemen were waiting +on the veranda in a state of high decorum. As to the decorum, it didn't +last, so far as Raven was concerned. Messages of a mutual understanding +passed between his eyes and Nan's. He burst into sudden laughter, but +Nan, more sagely alive to the dangers of the occasion, kept her gravity. + +"Well," said Amelia, as Raven, still laughing, solicitously lifted her +out, "you seem to be in a very happy frame of mind. I'm glad you _can_ +laugh." + + + + +XXXIV + + +Thereafter they all behaved as if they had separated yesterday and +nothing was more natural than to find themselves together again. Amelia, +with bitterness in her heart, accepted the room she again longed to +repudiate, and Nan, with a lifted eyebrow at Raven, as if wondering +whether she'd really better be as daring as he indicated, followed +Charlotte up the stairs. At supper they talked decorously of the state +of the nation, which Raven frankly conceived of as going to the dogs, +and Amelia upheld, from an optimism which assumed Raven to be amenable +to only the most hopeful of atmospheres. After supper, when they +hesitated before the library door, Nan said quite openly, as one who has +decided that only the straight course will do: + +"Rookie, could I see you a minute? In the dining-room?" She took in +Amelia with her frank smile. "Please, Mrs. Powell! It's business." + +"Certainly," Amelia said, rather stiffly. "Come, Dick. We'll keep up the +fire." + +They had evidently, she and Dick, resolved, though independently of each +other, to behave their best, and Dick, in excess of social virtue, shut +the library door, so that no wisp of talk would float that way and +settle on them. Nan confronted Raven with gayest eyes. + +"Did you ever!" she said, recurring to the Charlottian form of comment. +"At the last minute, if you please, when I was taking the train. There +she was behind me. We talked all the way, 'stiddy stream' (Charlotte!) +and not a thing you could put your finger on. Did he send for her?" + +"I rather think so," said Raven, giving Dick every possible advantage. +Then, rallied by her smiling eyes, "Well, yes, of course he did. Don't +look at me like that. I have to turn myself inside out, you she-tyrant!" + +"Does Dick know?" she hastened to ask. "About Tira?" + +"Yes." + +"Know what I'm here for?" + +"Yes." + +"Given his word not to blab? Hope to die?" That was their childish form +of vow, hers and Dick's. + +"I hope so," said Raven doubtfully. "I represented it to him as being +necessary." + +"I'll represent it, too," said Nan. "Now, Rookie, I'm going over there, +first thing to-morrow morning. I'm going to see Tenney." + +"The deuce you are! I'm afraid that won't do." + +"Nothing else will," said Nan. "Tenney's got to give his consent. We +can't do any kidnaping business. That's no good." + +She said it with the peremptory implication of extinguishing middle-aged +scruples, and Raven also felt it to be "no good." + +"Very well," said he. "You know best. I'll go with you." + +"Oh, no, you won't. There are too many men-folks in it now. I'm going +alone. Now, come back and talk to the family. Oh, I hope and pray +Dick'll be good! Doesn't he look dear to-night, all red, as if he'd been +logging? Has he? Have you? You look just the same. Oh, I do love Dick! I +wish he'd let me, the way I want to." + +Meantime Charlotte had come in, and Nan went to her and put her hands on +her shoulders and rubbed cheeks, as she used to do with Raven. + +"Come on," she said to him. "Time!" + +So they went into the library and conversed, with every conventional +flourish, until Amelia set the pace of retirement by a ladylike yawn. +But she had a word to say before parting, reserved perhaps to the last +because she found herself doubtful of Raven's response. If she had to be +snubbed she could simply keep on her way out of the room. + +"John," said she, at the door, with the effect of a sudden thought, "how +about Anne's estate? Are they getting it settled?" + +Raven hesitated a perceptible instant. He somehow had an idea the estate +was an affair of his, not to say Nan's. + +"I suppose so," he answered, frowning. "Whitney's likely to do the right +thing." + +Amelia was never especially astute in the manner of danger signals. + +"I suppose," she said, "you've made up your mind what to invest in. Or +are the things in pretty good shape? Can you leave them as they are?" + +Dick was standing by the hearth, wishing hard for a word with Nan. She +had smiled at him once or twice, so peaceably! The next step might be to +a truce and then everlasting bliss. Now, suddenly aware of his mother, +he ungratefully kicked the fire that was making him such pretty dreams, +went to her, took her by the arm and proceeded with her across the hall. + +"You talk too much," said Dick, when he had her inside her room. "Don't +you know better than to drag in Miss Anne? He's touchy as the devil." + +"Then he must get over it," said Amelia, in her best manner of the +intelligent mentor. "Of course, she was a great loss to him." + +"Don't you believe it," said Dick conclusively. "She had her paw on him. +What the deuce is it in him that makes all the women want to dry-nurse +him and build him up and make him over?" + +Then he wondered what Nan was saying to Raven at the moment, remembered +also Raven's injunction to play a square game with her and, though his +feet were twitching to carry him back to the library, sat doggedly down +at his mother's hearth and encouraged her to talk interminably. Amelia +was delighted. She didn't know Dick had so earnest an interest in the +Federation of Clubs and her popular course in economics. She was +probably never more sustainedly intelligent than in that half hour, +until Dick heard Nan going up to bed, sighed heavily, and lost interest +in the woman citizen. + +Nan and Raven, standing by the fire, in their unexpected minute of +solitude, looked at each other and smiled in recognizing that they were +alone and that when that happened things grew simple and straight. To +Raven there was also the sense of another presence. Anne had somehow +been invoked. Amelia, with her unfailing dexterity in putting her foot +in, had done it: but still there Anne was, with the unspoken question on +her silent lips. What was he going to do? He knew her wish. Presently he +would have her money. He caught the interrogation in Nan's eyes. What +was he going to do? + +"I don't know, Nan," he said. "I don't know." + +"Never mind," said Nan. "You'll know when the time comes." + +And he was aware that she was still in her mood of forcing him on to +make his own decisions. But, easily as he read her mind, there were many +things he did not see there. It was a turmoil of questions, and of these +the question of Aunt Anne was least. Did he love Tira? This headed the +list. Did he want to tear down his carefully built edifice of culture +and the habit of conventional life, and run away with Tira to elemental +simplicities and sweet deliriums? And if he did love Tira, if he did +want to tear down his house of life and live in the open, she would help +him. But all she said was: + +"Good night, Rookie. I'm sleepy, too." + +To leap a dull interval of breakfast banalities is to find Nan, on a +crisp day, blue above and white below, at the Tenneys' door. Tira, +frankly apprehensive, came to let her in. Tira had had a bad night. The +burning of the crutch fanned a fire of torment in her uneasy mind. She +had hardly slept, and though she heard Tenney's regular breathing at her +side, she began to have a suspicion it was not a natural breathing. She +was persuaded he meant now to keep track of her, by night as well as +day. It began to seem to her a colossal misfortune that the crutch was +not there leaning against the foot of the bed, and now its absence was +not so much her fault as a part of its own malice. Nan, noting the worn +pallor of her face and the dread in her eyes, gathered that Tenney was +at home. She put out her hand, and Tira, after an instant's hesitation, +gave hers. Nan wondered if she were in a terror wild enough to paralyze +her power of action. Still, she had given her hand, and when Nan stepped +up on the sill, with a cheerful implication of intending, against any +argument, to come in, she stood aside and followed her. But at the +instant of her stepping aside, Nan was aware that she threw both hands +up slightly. It was the merest movement, an unstudied gesture of +despair. Tenney was sitting by the kitchen stove, and Nan went to him +with outstretched hand. + +"I thought I should find you if I came early enough," she said. "How's +your foot?" + +She had a direct address country folk liked. She was never "stand-off," +"stuck-up." It was as easy talking with her as with John Raven. + +"Some better, I guess," said Tenney. He eyed her curiously. Had Raven +sent her, for some hidden reason, to spy out the land? + +"You get round, don't you?" pursued Nan. + +She took the chair Tira brought her and regarded him across the shining +stove. Tira withdrew to a distance, and stood immovable by the scullery +door, as if, Nan thought, she meant to keep open her line of retreat. + +"No," said Tenney grimly, "I don't git about much. Three times a day I +git from the house to the barn. I expect to do better, as time goes on. +I've got my eye on a cord wood stick, an' I'm plannin' how I can whittle +me out a crutch." + +Nan, glancing at Tira, caught the tremor that went over her and +understood this was, in a veiled way, a threat. She came, at a leap, to +the purpose of her call. + +"Mr. Tenney," she said, "I'm an awfully interfering person. I've come to +ask you and your wife to let me do something." + +Tenney was staring at her with lacklustre eyes. In these latter days, +the old mad spark in them had gone. + +"Your baby," said Nan, feeling her heart beat hard, "isn't right. I know +places where such poor little children are made--right--if they can be. +They're studied and looked after. I want you to let me take him away +with me and see if something can be done. His mother could go, too, if +she likes. You could go. Only, I'll be responsible. I'll arrange it +all." + +Tenney still stared at her, and she found the dull gaze disconcerting. + +"So," he said at length, not even glancing at Tira, "so she's put that +into your head." + +"So far as that goes," said Nan boldly, "I've put it into hers. I saw he +wasn't right. I told her I'd do everything in my power, in anybody's +power, to have him"--she hesitated here for a homely word he might take +in--"seen to. And now (you're his father) I've come to you." + +Tenney sat a long time, motionless, his eyes on the window at the end of +the room where a woodbine spray was tapping, and again Nan became +conscious of the increased tremor in Tira's frame. For now it seemed to +have run over her and strangely to keep time to the woodbine spray +outside. One would have said the woodbine, looking in, had, in a mad, +irritating way, made itself the reflex of these human emotions within +the room. Tenney spoke, drily yet without emphasis: + +"Then he put ye up to this?" + +"Who?" asked Nan. + +For some obscure reason he would not mention Raven's name. But he spoke +with a mildness of courtesy surprising to her and evidently the more +alarming to Tira, for she shook the more and the vine appallingly knew +and kept her company. + +"I'm obleeged to ye," said Tenney. "But I don't want nothin' done for me +nor mine. He's mine, ye see. He's in there asleep"--he pointed to the +open bedroom door--"an' asleep or awake, he's mine, same's any man's +property is his. An' if he ain't right, he ain't, an' I know why, an' +it's the will o' the Lord, an' the Lord's will is goin' to be fulfilled +now an' forever after, amen!" + +The tang of scripture phrasing led him further to the channel his mind +was always fumbling for. + +"Do you," he asked Nan, not with any great show of fervor, but as if +this were his appointed task, "do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ +yet? Be ye saved?" + +"Mr. Tenney," said Nan, "I don't care a scrap whether I'm saved or not, +if I can make this world swing a little easier on its hinges." That +seemed to her a figure not markedly vivid, and she continued. "It needs +a sight of oiling. Don't you see it does? O, Mr. Tenney, think of the +poor little boy that's got to live along"--the one phrase still seemed +to her the best--"not right, and grow to be a man, and you may die and +leave him, and his mother may die. What's he going to do then?" + +"No," said Tenney quietly, with the slightest glance at Tira in her +tremor there by the door, "I ain't goin' to die, not this v'y'ge. If +anybody's goin' to, it ain't me." + +"O Isr'el!" said Tira. Her voice rose scarcely above a whisper and she +bent toward him in a beseeching way as if she might, in another instant, +run to him. "You let him go. You an' me'll stay here together, long as +we live. There sha'n't nothin' come betwixt us, Isr'el." In this Nan +heard a hidden anguish of avowal. "But you let him go." + +Tenney did not regard her. He spoke, pointedly to Nan: + +"I'm obleeged to ye." He rose from his chair. He was dismissing her. His +action approached a dignity not to be ignored, and Nan also rose. + +"I sha'n't give it up," she said. "I shall come again." + +She tried to smile at him with composure, including Tira in the +friendliness of it, but Tira, oblivious of her, was staring at Tenney, +and Nan found herself outside, trouble in her mind. Tira had not gone to +the door with her. She had staid still staring, in that fixed +interrogation, at Tenney. He looked at her now, met her eyes, and gave a +little grimace. He had done well, the movement said. He had seen through +it all. He was pleased with himself. Now he spoke to her, so affably +that she frowned with perplexity at finding him kind. + +"'Tain't so terrible hard," said Tenney, "to see through folks, once ye +set your mind on it. He started her out on that, he an' you together, +mebbe. ''F I git rid o' the young one,' you says, 'I shall have more +freedom to range round, outdoor.' Mebbe you said it to him. Mebbe he +said it to you. Mebbe 'twas t'other one--Martin--that said it an' you +took it up. No, 'tain't so hard to see through folks, once ye git a +start." + +He turned and took, with a difficulty half assumed, the few steps to the +wood-box, selected a couple of sticks and, with a quiet deftness that +seemed to indicate a mind bent only on the act itself, put them in the +stove. Tira watched him, fascinated by him, the strength in abeyance, +the wayward will. When he set on the stove cover, it seemed to break the +spell of her rigidity and she turned, hurried into the scullery and came +back. She had, he saw, a knife. That was not alarming. It was a small +kitchen knife, but he recognized it as the one she made a great fuss +about, asking him to sharpen it often and keeping it for special use. +But she gripped it strangely. Besides, there was the strangeness of her +face. + +"Here! here!" he said. "What you doin' o' that knife?" + +Tira was not thinking of him. She had gone, with her quick, lithe step, +to the window where the vine was tapping, and thrown it up. + +"Here!" he called again, his uneasiness shifting; whatever a woman was +doing, with a face like that, she must be stopped. "What you openin' +winders for, a day like this, coldin' off the room?" + +Tira reached out and seized the woodbine spray, cut it savagely and then +shut the window. She came back with the spray in her hand, took off the +stove cover and thrust it in, twining and writhing as if it had life and +rebelled against the flame. + +"There!" she said. "I ain't goin' to have no vines knockin' at winders +an' scarin' anybody to death." + +Then she went into the scullery and put the knife in its place, blade up +in a little frame over the sink, and came back into the bedroom where +the child was whimpering. She stayed there a long time, and Tenney stood +where she left him, listening for her crooning song. When it began, as +it did presently, he gave a nod of relief and started moving about the +room. Once he went into the scullery, and Tira heard him pumping. But +when she had got the child dressed, and had gone out there herself, to +prepare the vegetables for dinner, she put her hand mechanically, +without looking, on the rack above the sink. The hand knew what it +should find, but it did not find it. The knife was gone. Tira stood a +long time looking, not at the empty place, but down at her feet. It was +not alarming to miss the knife. It was reassuring. It was not to be +believed, yet she must believe it. Tenney was taking precautions. He was +afraid. + +Nan, halfway home, met Raven. He had been walking up and down, to meet +her. Defeat, he saw, with a glance at her face. + +"Yes," said Nan, coming up with him. "No go, Rookie. He was civil. But +he was dreadful. I don't know whether I should have known it, but it's +the way she looked at him. Rookie, she was scared blue." + +Raven said nothing. He felt a poor stick indeed, to have brought Nan +into it and given her over to defeat. + +"Can't we walk a spell?" said she. "Couldn't we take the back road to +the hut? I do so want to talk to you." + +They turned back and passed the Tenneys' at a smart pace. Raven gave the +house a swift glance. He was always expecting to hear Tira cry out, she +who never did and who, he knew, would endure torture like an Indian. +They turned into the back road where the track was soft with the latest +snow, and came into the woods again opposite the hut. When they reached +it and Raven put down his hand for the key, Nan asked: + +"Does she come here often?" + +"Not lately," he said, fitting the key in the lock. "She had rather a +quiet time of it while he was lame." + +They went in and Nan kept on her coat while he lighted the fire and +piled on brush. + +"Rookie," she said, when he had it leaping, "it's an awful state of +things. The man's insane." + +"No," said Raven, "I don't feel altogether sure of that. We're too ready +to call a man insane, now there's the fashion of keeping tabs. Look at +me. I do something outside the ordinary--I kick over the traces--and +Milly says I'm to go to the Psychopathic. Dick more than half thinks so, +too. Perhaps I ought. Perhaps most of us ought. We deflect just enough +from what the majority are thinking and doing to warrant them in +shutting us up. No, I don't believe you could call him insane." + +They talked it out from all quarters of argument. Nan proposed emergency +activities and Raven supplied the counter reason, always, he owned, +going back to Tira's obstinacy. Nan was game to kidnap the child, even +from Tira's arms. Couldn't be done, Raven told her. Not longer ago than +yesterday, Tira would have consented, but now, he reminded her, Tenney's +crazy mind was on him. Yes, it was a crazy mind, he owned, but Tenney +was not on that account to be pronounced insane. He couldn't be shut up, +at least without Tira's concurrence. And she never would concur. She +had, if you could put it so, an insane determination equal in measure to +Tenney's insane distrust, to keep the letter of her word. Then, Nan +argued, Tira and the child together must go back with her. To Tenney, +used only to the remote reaches of his home, the labyrinth of city life +was impenetrable. He couldn't possibly find them. He wouldn't be +reasonable enough, intelligent enough, to take even the first step. And +Raven could stay here and fight out the battle. Tenney wouldn't do +anything dramatically silly. Tira was "'way off" in fearing that. He +would only fix Raven with those unpleasant eyes and ask if he were +saved. Very well, Raven agreed. It was worth trying. They must catch the +first chance of seeing Tira alone. + +Then, though his mind was on Tira, it reverted to Anne. Again she seemed +to be inexorably beside him, reminding him, with that delicate touch of +her invisible finger, that he was not thinking of her, not even putting +his attention uninterruptedly on what she had bidden him do: her last +request, he seemed to hear her remonstrating, half sighing it to +herself, as if it were only one more of the denials life had made her. +Even if he did not agree with her, in his way of taking things (throwing +away his strength, persuading young men to throw away theirs, that the +limited barbarism called love of country might be served) could he not +act for her, in fulfilling her rarer virtue of universal love? + +"I tell you what, Nan," he said, with a leap from Tira to the woman more +potent now in her unseen might than she had ever been when her subtle +ways of mastery had been in action before him, "it's an impossible +situation." + +How did she know he was talking, not of Tira but of Anne? Yet she did +know. There had been a moment's pause and perhaps her mind leaped with +his. + +It was, she agreed, impossible. Yet, after all, so many things weren't, +that looked so at the start. Think of surgery: the way they'd both seen +men made over. Well! He didn't remind her that they had also seen a +mountain of men, if fate had piled their bodies as high as it was piling +the fame of their endeavor, who couldn't be made over. + +"If we refuse her," he said--and though Nan was determined he should +make his decision alone, she loved him for the coupling of their +intent--"we seem to repudiate her. And that's perfectly devilish, with +her where she is." + +It was devilish, Nan agreed. Her part here seemed to be acquiescence in +his attitude of mind, going step by step with him as he broke his path. + +"And," said Raven, lapsing into a confidence he had not meant to +make--for would Anne in her jealous possessiveness, allow him to share +one intimate thought about her, especially with Nan?--"the strange part +of it is, I do seem to feel she's somewhere. I seem to feel she's here. +Reminding me, you know, just as a person can by looking at you, though +he doesn't say a word. Have you felt that? Do you now?" + +"No," said Nan, with her uncalculated decisiveness that made you sure +she was not merely speaking the truth as she saw it, but that she did +see it clearly. "I have felt it, though, about other people. About two +or three of the boys over there, you know. They were the ones I knew +rather well. And Old Crow! up here, Rookie, alone with you, I have that +sense of Old Crow's being alive, very much alive. Is it the thoughts +he's left behind him, written on the air, or is it really Old Crow?" + +"The air's been changed a good many times since he was here," said Raven +lightly. It was not good for little girls to be wrestling forever with +things formless and dark. + +"Oh," said she, "but there's something left. Our minds make pictures. +They don't get rubbed out. Why, I can see old Billy Jones sitting here +and Old Crow bandaging his legs, and your mother and little Jack coming +up to bring things in a basket. You can say that's because Old Crow told +it so vividly I can't get it out of my mind. But that isn't all. Things +don't get rubbed out." + + + + +XXXV + + +The next day Raven saw Tenney driving by, probably to the street where +all the neighbors went for supplies. Up to this time Jerry had offered, +whenever he was going, to do Tira's "arrants," and Tenney had even +allowed him to bring home grain. Raven at once summoned Nan. It was +their chance. Tira must be taken by storm. Let her leave the house as it +was and run away. Nan hurried on her things, and they went up the road. + +"There she is," said Nan, "at the window." + +Raven, too, saw her white face for the moment before it disappeared. She +was coming, he thought, making haste to let them in. He knocked and +waited. No one came. He knocked again, sharply, with his stick, and +then, in the after silence, held his breath to listen. It seemed to him +he had never heard a house so still. That was the way his mind absurdly +put it: actively, ominously still. + +"She was at the window," said Nan, in a tone that sounded to him as +apprehensive as the beating of his own heart. "I saw her." + +He knocked again and, after another interval, the window opened above +their heads and Tira leaned over the sill. + +"You go away," she said quietly, yet with a thrilling apprehension. "I +can't let you in." + +They stepped back from the door and looked up at her. She seemed even +thinner than when Nan had seen her last, and to Raven all the sorrows of +woman were darkling in the anguish of her eyes. He spoke quietly, making +his voice reassuring to her. + +"Why can't you? Have you been told not to?" + +"No," said Tira, quick, he thought, to shield her persecutor, "nobody's +said a word. But they've gone off, an' you can't be certain when they'll +be back." + +"Hasn't he gone to the street?" Raven asked her, and now her voice, in +its imploring hurry, could not urge him earnestly enough. + +"He said he was goin'. You can't tell. He may turn round an' come back. +An' I wouldn't have you here--either o' you--for anything in this +world." + +But though she said "either of you," her eyes were on Raven, beseeching +him to go. He did not answer that. In a few words he set forth their +plan. She was to take the child and come. It was to be now. But she +would hardly listen. + +"No," she called, in any pause between his words. "No! no! no!" + +"Don't you want to save the child?" Raven asked her sternly. "Have you +forgotten what may happen to him?" + +She had her answer ready. + +"It's his," she said. "He spoke the truth, though it wa'n't as he mean +it. But the baby's his, an' baby as he is, an' _as_ he is, he's got to +fight it out along o' me. You go now, an' don't you come a-nigh me +ag'in. An' if you stay here knockin' at my door, I'll scream so's I +sha'n't hear you." + +She withdrew her head from the window, but instantly looked out again. + +"God Almighty bless you!" she said. "But you go! you go!" + +"Tira!" called Raven sharply, "don't you know you're in danger? Don't +you know if anything happens to you it'll----" He paused, and Nan +wondered if he meant to say, "It will break my heart!" and scarcely felt +the pain of it, she was so tense with misery for them both. + +Tira leaned out again and seemed to bend even protectingly toward them. +She smiled at them, and the softening of her face was exquisite. + +"I ain't in danger," she said. "I've said things to him. He's afraid." + +"Threatened him?" Raven asked. + +"I've kep' tellin' him," said Tira, in that same tone of tender +reasonableness such as mothers use when they persuade children to the +necessities of things, "he must remember we ain't alone. An' somehow it +seems to scare him. He don't see Him as I do: the Lord Jesus Christ." + +She shut the window quietly, and Raven and Nan went away. They walked +soberly home without a word, but when Nan was taking off her hat she +heard bells and went to the library window. Raven was standing by the +table, trying to find some occupation to steady his anxious mind. + +"Look!" said Nan. + +It was Tenney, and he was "whipping up." + +"She knew, didn't she?" commented Nan, and he answered: + +"Yes, she knew." + +Here his trouble of mind broke forth. He had to be enlightened. A woman +must guess what a woman thought. + +"I can't understand her," he said. "I believe I have understood her, up +to now. But to say the child's got to bear it with her! Why, a woman's +feeling about her child! It's as old as the world. A woman will +sacrifice herself, but she won't sacrifice her child." + +He looked at her with such trouble in his face that Nan had to turn +away. He understood her too well. Could he read in her eyes what her +mind had resolved not to tell him? Yet she would tell him. He shouldn't +grope about in the dark among these mysteries. She wanted, as much as +Old Crow wanted it, to be a light to his feet. + +"She would," she told him quietly, "sacrifice herself in a minute. Only +she can't do it the way we've offered her, because now you've come into +it." + +"I've been in it from the first," frowned Raven. "Ever since the day I +found her up there in the woods." + +"Yes, but then that poor crazy idiot was jealous only of him, the +creature that sat down by her at prayer-meeting; and now he's jealous of +you. And she's saving you, Rookie. At any risk. Even her own child." + +Nan thought she could add what had been in her mind, keeping time to +every step of the way home: "For now she loves you better than the +child." But it proved impossible to say that, and she went out of the +room, not looking at him, and only waiting to put away her hat and coat +in the hall. She went upstairs with the same unhurried step and shut the +door of her room behind her. She stood there near the door, as if she +were guarding it against even the thoughts of any human creature. They +must not get at her, those compassionate thoughts, not Charlotte's, +certainly not Raven's. For at that moment Nan found herself a little +absurd, as many a woman has who knows herself to be starving for a man's +love. She began to tremble, and remembered Tira shaking there by the +door that morning that seemed now years away. The tremor got hold of her +savagely and shook her. It might have been shaking her in its teeth. + +"Nervous chill!" said Nan to herself, insisting on saying it aloud to +see if her teeth would actually chatter and finding they did. She had +seen plenty of such nervous whirlwinds among her boys and helped to +quiet them. "I'm an interesting specimen," chattered Nan. "Talk about +_cafard_!" + +All that forenoon, Dick fretted about the house, waiting for her, hoping +she would go to walk, let him read to her--Dick had a persistent habit +of reading verse to you when he found you weren't likely to get into the +modern movement by yourself--but no Nan. At dinner, there she was, +rather talkative, in a way that took Amelia into the circle of intimacy, +and seemed to link up everybody with everybody else in a nice manner. +Nan had the deftest social sense, when she troubled herself to use it. +Aunt Anne would have been proud of her. + + + + +XXXVI + + +Then everything, so far as Raven and Nan were concerned, quieted to an +unbroken commonplace, and the four--for Amelia and Dick held to their +purpose of "standing by"--again settled down to country life, full of +the amenities and personal abnegations of a house party likely to be +continued. Charlotte was delighted, in her brooding way, and ascribed +the emotion to Jerry who, she said, "liked somethin' goin' on." Nan and +Dick had vaulted back to their past: the old terms of a boy and girl +intimacy in robust pursuits admitting much laughter and homespun talk. +They went snowshoeing over the hills, Raven, though Nan begged him to +come, electing to stay at home with Amelia, who would stand at the door +to see them off, half persuaded she was up to going herself and, indeed, +almost feeling she had gone, after considering it so exhaustively, and +then retreating to the library where she was cramming for next year's +economics. Raven was very good to her. He would sit down by the blazing +hearth, listening with an outward interest to her acquired formulae of +life, and then, after perfunctory assent or lax denial, retire to his +own seclusion over a book. But he seldom read nowadays. He merely, in +this semblance of studious absorption, found refuge from Amelia. He was +mortally anxious for Tira, still face to face with brute +irresponsibility, and when the mental picture of it flamed too lividly +and could not be endured, he threw down his book and hurried up to the +hut, to find her. She never came. The fire, faithfully laid for her, was +unlighted. The room breathed the loneliness of a place that has known a +beloved presence and knows it no more. Nearly every day he and Nan had a +word about her, and often he saw Nan going "up along" and knew she was, +in the uneasiness of no news, bent on walking past the house, if only +for a glance at the windows and the sight of Tira's face. Three times +within a few weeks Tenney had driven past, and each time Nan, refusing +Dick's company, hurried up the road. But she came back puzzled and +dispirited, and called to Raven, who, in a fever of impatience, had gone +out to meet her: + +"No. The door is locked." + +She would put a hand on his arm and they would walk together while she +told him her unvarying tale. When she had knocked persistently, Tira +would appear at the chamber window, and shake her head, and her lips +seemed to be saying, "No! no! no!" And each time Tenney returned +shortly, and they were sure his going was a blind. He never went to the +street, and even Charlotte remarked the strangeness of his short +absences. + +"What under the sun makes Isr'el Tenney start out an' turn round an' +come back ag'in?" she inquired of Jerry. "He ain't gone twenty minutes +'fore he's home." + +Jerry didn't know. He "'sposed Isr'el forgot suthin'." + +How was Tira? Raven asked after Nan had seen her at the window, and she +did not spare him. Pale, she said, paler than ever, a shadow of herself. +But Nan had faith that her courage would hold. It was like the winter +and the spring. Tenney stood for the forces of darkness, but the spring +had to come in the end. Also she owned that her great reason for +believing in Tira's endurance was that Tira was not alone. She had, like +Old Crow, her sustaining symbol. She had, whatever the terrifying +circumstance of her daily life, divine companionship. She had her Lord, +Jesus Christ. + +"I believe," said Raven abruptly, one day when they were tramping the +snowy road and she was answering the panic of his apprehensive mind, +"you swear by Old Crow's book." + +"I do," said Nan simply, "seem to be hanging on to Old Crow. I've read +it over and over. And it does somehow get me. Picture writing! And human +beings drawing the lines and half the time not getting them straight! +But if there's something to draw, I don't care how bad the drawing is. +If there's actually something there! There is, Rookie. Tira's got hold +of it because she's pure in heart. It's something real, and it'll see +her through." + +Raven was not content with its seeing her through until he could be told +what the appointed end was likely to be. If Tira was to fight this +desperate battle all her mortal life, he wasn't to be placated by the +rewarding certainty of a heavenly refuge at the end. + +"I can never," he said, "get over the monstrous queerness of it all. +Here's a woman that's got to be saved, and she's so infernally obstinate +we can't save her. When I think of it at night, I swear I'm a fool not +to complain of the fellow in spite of her, and then in the morning I +know it can't be done. She'd block me, and I should only have got her in +for something worse than she's in for now." + +"Yes," said Nan, "she'd block you. Wait, Rookie. Something will happen. +Something always does." + +Yes, Raven thought, something always does, and sometimes, in country +tragedies, so brutal a thing that the remorseful mind shudders at itself +for not preventing it. But Nan, equably as she might counsel him, was +herself apprehensive. She expected something. She had a sense of waiting +for it. Dick must be prepared. He must be found on their side. Whatever +the outcome, Raven must not suffer the distrust and censure of his own +house. + +Dick had been reading to her by the fire while Raven was taking Amelia +for a sober walk. Nan wished Dick wouldn't read his verse to her. It +made her sorry for him. What was he doing, a fellow who had seen such +things, met life and death at their crimson flood, pottering about in +these bizarre commonplaces of a literary jog-trot? They sounded right +enough, if you stood for that kind of thing, but they betrayed him, his +defective imagination, his straining mind. He didn't see the earth as it +was. He was so enamored of metaphorical indirection that he tried to see +everything in the terms of something else. But to-day she had her own +thoughts. She sat staring into the fire, her cheeks burned by the +leaping heat, and Dick, looking up at her, stopped on an uncompleted +line. + +"You haven't," he said, "heard a word." + +"Not much of it," said Nan. She looked at him disarmingly. When her eyes +were like that, Dick's heart was as water. "I was thinking about Tira." + +He had to place this. Who was Tira? + +"Oh," said he, "the Tenney woman. Jack needn't have dragged you into +that. It's a dirty country story." + +"Not dirty," said Nan. "You'd love it if you'd thought of it yourself. +You'd write a play about it." + +Dick frowned. + +"Well, I didn't think of it," said he, "and if I had, I shouldn't be +eating and sleeping it as you and Jack are. Whatever's happening up +there, it isn't our hunt. It's hers, the woman's. Or the authorities'. +The man ought to be shut up." + +Nan began telling him how it all was, how they wanted definitely to do +the right thing and how Tira herself blocked them. Dick listened, +commended the drama of it, and yet found it drama only. + +"But it's a beastly shame," he commented, "to have this come on Jack +just now when he isn't fit." + +Nan had her sudden hot angers. + +"Do you mean to tell me," she countered, "you believe that now, now +you've lived with him and seen he's exactly what he used to be, only +more darling--you believe he's broken, dotty? Heavens! I don't know what +you'd call it." + +Dick did not answer. He scarcely heard. One word only hit him like a +shot and drew blood. + +"Stop that!" he ordered. + +They faced each other with eyes either angry or full of a tumultuous +passion an onlooker would have been puzzled to name. + +"Stop what?" + +"Calling him darling. I won't have it." + +Nan found this truly funny, and broke into a laugh. + +"Do you know," she said, "how every talk of ours ends? Rookie! It always +comes round to him. I call him darling and you won't have it. But you'll +have to." + +"No," said Dick, "I won't have it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. +You little devil! I believe you do it to work me up. That's all right if +it stopped there. But it won't. Some day he'll hear you and then----!" + +She was flaming again. + +"Hear me? Hear me call him darling? Why, he's heard it so often it's no +more to him than your calling him Jack. But if he asked me what I meant +by it! do you know what would happen then?" + +"What would?" + +"Then," said Nan enigmatically, "I should tell him, that's all." + +She would say no more, though he hurled questions at her, and hardly +remembered afterward what they were. He was of an impression that he +begged her to love him, to marry him, though Dick, prodigal as he was of +great words in his verse, scarcely believed he used them in the direct +address of love-making. But certainly he did beg her, and Nan was gentle +with him, though always, like Tira, as she remembered afterward, +repeating, "No! no!" At the end, his passion softened into something +appealing, as if they were together considering the sad case he found +himself in and he depended on her to help him through. + +"Nan," he said, in the boyish way she loved, "don't you see it's got to +be in the end? We've always been together. We're always going to be. +Don't you see, old Nan?" + +Nan smiled at him, brilliantly, cruelly, he thought. But she was sorry +for him, and it was only a show of cruelty. It came out of her kindness, +really. Dick mustn't suffer so for want of her. Bully him, abuse him, +anything to anger him and keep him from sheer weak, unavailing regret. +Nan had a great idea of what men should be: "tough as a knot," she +thought, seasoned all through. If they whimpered, she was aghast. + +"No," she said again, with the brilliant smile, "no! no! I can't. I +won't. Not unless"--and this, too, was calculated cruelty--"unless +Rookie tells me to." + +They sat staring at each other as if each wondered what the outcome was +to be. Nan was excitedly ready for it. Or had the last word been +actually said? But Dick altogether surprised her. He got up and stood +looking down at her in a dignity she found new to him. + +"When you come to me," he said, "you'll come because I ask you. It won't +be because any other man tells you to." + +He walked past her, out of the room. Did he, Nan wondered, in her +ingenuous surprise, look a very little like Rookie? When he was twenty +years older, was he going to look as Rookie did now? His expression, +that is. For, after all, there was Dick's nose. + +And in these days what of Tira? She, too, was on an edge of nervous +apprehension. Tenney was about the house a great deal. He still made +much of his lameness, though never in words. Every step he took seemed +an implication that a cane was far from sufficient. He needed his +crutch. And as the period of his silence lengthened, Tira was driven by +her fear to another greater fear: that she might mention it herself. +What if she should tell him how the crutch, leaning there at the foot of +the bed, had seemed to her a weapon, not a crutch? What if she appealed +to his pity and even played a part with him, dwelling on her woman's +weakness of nature, her tremors, deprived of the protection that should +be hers? Artifice was foreign to her. Yet what was there, short of +implicating Raven, she would not do for the child? But a glance at +Tenney's face, the tightness of reserve, the fanatical eyes, closed her +lips, and they moved about together dumbly at their common tasks. As she +grew paler and the outline of her cheek the purer over the bones +beneath, he watched her the more intently, but still furtively. One +forenoon when the sky was gray and a soft snow fell in great flakes that +melted as they came, he went haltingly up to the shed chamber and came +down with his gun. He was not a huntsman, and when they moved into the +house it had been left there with a disorder of things not likely to be +needed. He drew a chair to the table and then addressed her almost +urbanely. He wanted, she guessed, to call her attention in some explicit +way. + +"You git me some kind of a rag," he bade her. "I'm goin' to clean up +this old musket. You might's well hand me that oiler, too, off'n the +sink shelf. I can't git about any too well." + +She brought him the cloth and the oiler and went away to the sink again, +determined not to be drawn into any uneasiness of questioning. But it +fascinated her, the sight of him bending to his task, and her will +weakened. In spite of herself, she went over to the table and stood +looking down at him. Presently he glanced up at her and smiled a little +in a way she did not like. It seemed to imply some recognition of a +common knowledge between them. He had, the look said, more than the +apparent reason for what he was doing. The oiling of the gun was not +all. Something at the back of his mind was more significant than this +act of his hands, and this something, the look said, she also knew. All +through the moment of her gazing down at him Tira was telling herself +she must not speak. Yet she spoke: + +"You goin' gunnin'?" + +"I dunno but I be," he returned, his eyes again on his work. "I've had +it in mind quite a spell, an' I dunno's there's any reason for puttin' +on't off." + +"What you goin' after, Isr'el?" she asked, against her will, and he was +silent for what seemed so long, that she pursued: "You goin' rabbitin'?" + +"No," said Tenney. "I dunno's I be. What's the use o' shootin' down +four-footed creatur's? T'other ones'll do well enough for me." + +Again he glanced up at her and her look of frozen horror evidently +warned him against terrifying her unduly. She must be shaken enough to +obey him, not to fight. + +"You look kinder peaked," he said, with what she found a false air of +interest. "You don't git out enough. Mebbe you'd ought to git out +nights. I've been noticin' how peaked you look, an' I thought mebbe I'd +git the old musket loaded up an' go out an' shoot ye a pa'tridge. Tempt +your appetite, mebbe, a mite o' the breast." + +"I dunno," said Tira, speaking with difficulty through her rigid misery, +"as you'd ought to, so near nestin' time. I dunno's as it's the season +to kill." + +"All seasons are the same to me," said Tenney. "When it's time to kill, +then kill, I say. Kill!" + +He spoke the word as if he loved it, and Tira walked away from him into +the bedroom, and stretched herself on the bed, her hand on the sleeping +child. When it was time to get dinner she came out again and found him +reading his paper by the stove. He had set the gun away in a corner. But +directly after dinner he shaved at the little glass by the kitchen +window and told her, again with the air of abundant explanation she +found foreign to him, that he was going to the street, to get the colt +shod. The colt did need to be shod. She knew that. Perhaps this time he +was actually going. + +"You want to take along the eggs?" she said, and he assented. + +He asked her, too, for a list of groceries she needed. He would have to +wait his turn at the blacksmith's. He might be a long time. She need not +expect him before dark. She might as well go out, he told her, and +again: + +"You're lookin' peaked. You need the air." + +She heard him drive briskly out of the yard, but she would not, for some +reason she did not herself know, go to the window to look after him. It +was all a plan, she told herself. She was not to be taken in by it. She +would force herself to sit down to her sewing. She would not leave the +house while he was gone. If he wanted to tempt her out, to trap her, let +him have his will. It was better, she thought, with a moment's satirical +comment, for him to be driving off on a fictitious mission than roaming +the neighborhood with a gun in his hand. She glanced involuntarily at +the corner where the gun had stood not many minutes before he left the +house. It was gone. Then she knew. She threw down her work, went to the +telephone, and called Raven. He was there, and she felt her heart answer +wildly when, at her first word, he broke in: + +"Is it you?" Not her name, only the intimacy of the significant word. +"The hut?" he added. + +"Up there," said Tira, breathless. "Both of you. I've got to see you +both. Come quick." + +She got her cloak and threw it down again, remembering it was what she +was used to wearing and that Tenney would most certainly recognize her +outline in it, even though a long way off. Grandmother Tenney's black +blanket shawl was in the parlor chest of drawers, that and her hood, +disfiguring ancientry of dress. She ran into the parlor, snatched them +out, tied on the black knitted hood and, not unfolding the shawl, +wrapped it about her shoulders. The baby was in his cradle, and she gave +him one glance. If he waked, he would cry. Let him cry. But she did lock +the door behind her, and put the key on the sill, a place Tenney would +know. Half way down the path, she went back, took the key again and +dropped it into her apron pocket. Tenney might come, but he should not +go into the house and find the child alone. Lest he should come the way +he went, she took the back road, and there, when she was about to turn +into the wood road, she heard sleigh-bells behind her, the horse going, +as her ear told her, "step and step." But she was actually on the wood +road when the driver whipped up and the bells came clashingly. She did +not turn to look. It was not Tenney. She would have known his bells. The +horse drew up, the driver called to him a peremptory and jovial word, +and she knew the voice. It was Eugene Martin's, and instinct told her to +stop and face him. He stepped out of the sleigh and threw the robe, with +a quick motion, over the horse. Then he came on to her, smiling, +effusively cordial, and Tira waited. A pace away he took off his hat and +made her an exaggerated bow. He was carefully dressed, but then he was +always that, according to his lights. Only Tira, who knew him so well, +all his vain schemes of personal fitness, judged this to be a day of +especial preparation. For what? He took the step between them and put +out both hands. + +"If this ain't luck!" he beamed. "How are you, girl? I made up my mind +I'd see you, but I hadn't an idea you'd be on the road." + +Tira rolled her hands in her apron, as if they were cold. His extended +hands she did not seem to see. + +"I ain't waitin' for you," she said quietly, her eyes on his. "You +better go right straight along about your business an' leave me to +mine." + +"I ain't done right, Tira," said Martin, with the specious warmth she +knew. "I did try to git you in bad with Tenney, but don't you know what +that sprung from? I'm jealous as the devil. Don't you know I be?" + +"You've no call to be jealous nor anything else," said Tira steadily. +"You an' me are as fur apart"--she hesitated for a word, and her eyes +rested for a moment on one of the tall evergreens moving slightly in the +breeze. "We couldn't any more come together than I could climb up to the +pick o' that pine tree." + +He still regarded her solicitously. He was determined not to abandon his +part. + +"Ain't somebody come betwixt us?" he demanded, with that vibration of +the voice once so moving to her. "You can't deny it. Can you now?" + +"Nobody's come betwixt us," said Tira. "If you was the only man on this +earth to-day, I'd run from you as I would a snake. I hate you. No, I +don't. I look on you as if you was the dirt under my feet." + +But as she said it she glanced down, wistfully troubled, as if she +begged forgiveness of the good earth. The quick anger she knew in him +flared like a licking flame. He threw his arms about her and held her to +him as tightly, it seemed to her, as if he were hostile to the very +breath within her body. And she was still, not only because he gripped +her so but because she had called upon that terrible endurance women +recognize within themselves. He kissed her, angry, insulting kisses she +could bear more patiently than the kisses of unwelcome love. But as his +lips defiled her face, he was suddenly aware that it was wet. Great +tears were rolling down her cheeks. He laughed. + +"Cryin'?" he jeered. "Poor little cry-baby! wipe her eyes." + +While he held her with one arm, the other hand plunged into her apron +pocket and brought out her handkerchief. It also touched the key. His +instincts, she knew, had a scope of devilish cunning, and at once he +knew what key it was. He laughed. Looking off through the trees, he had +seen what gave him another clue. + +"Smoke!" he called, as if he shouted it to an unseen listener who might +not have been clever enough to guess. "Smoke from that shack Raven lazes +round in same as Old Crow did afore him. That's where you were goin'. +The wood road all broke out for you. I might ha' known it when I see +that. Go along, my lady. He'll be there waitin' for you. Go along. But +jest for the fun o' the thing, you leave the key with me." + +She answered with a desperate wrench; but though one of her hands +reached the pocket where the key lay, she could only twitch the fingers, +and while he laughed softly he pulled the tie of her apron and, +releasing her with a little push, snatched the apron from her, rolled it +and thrust it into his pocket. She sprang at him, but he gave her +another push that sent her staggering and ran laughing to the sleigh. + +"So long!" he called back at her. + +She recovered herself and started after him. But the horse plunged +forward and Martin was shouting at her jovially, in what words she did +not hear. She only knew, through the bewilderment of her despair, that +the tone was merciless. + +She stood there a moment, looking after him, and realizing that he had +forced her into a corner from which there was no possible way out. But +then another fear beat in her numbed brain. She had not accomplished the +task for which she came here. Martin and his trick must wait. That other +need was more important. There was the hut and its welcoming smoke and +there Raven must be looking for her. She started running along the snowy +path, reached the door, found it unlocked and went in. + + + + +XXXVII + + +Raven, as soon as he had Tira's message, went to find Nan. She was not +in her room, but Charlotte, when he finally brought up at the kitchen, +told him Nan and Dick had gone to walk. Down the road, she said. They +had called to him, but he was in the barn. + +"Then," said Raven, getting into his jacket, "see her the minute she +comes back and send her up to the hut." + +Yes, Charlotte meant to be in the kitchen all the afternoon. She would +see Nan. Raven left the house and hurried up the hill. He found the hut +in order, the fire laid as he had left it. That was, foolishly, always a +surprise. Her presence hung so inevitably about the place that he was +taken aback to find no visible sign of it. Now when she appeared it was +breathlessly, not, as he thought, from haste, but from her encounter +with Martin. And she came stripped of her reserves, the decorum of +respectful observance she always kept toward him. At first glance he was +shocked by the change in her appearance and could not account for it, +not knowing he missed the familiar folds of the blue cloak about her, +not seeing that her black shawl and the knitted hood accentuated the +tragic paleness of her face. She came straight to him and he took her +hands and, finding them so cold, held them in one of his and chafed +them. This she did not notice. She neither knew that they were cold nor +that he was holding them. + +"You must go away," she said, surprising him because he thought she had +come to say she herself was ready to go. "Where is she?" Tira asked, +with a quick glance about the room, as if the least deviation in her +plan fretted her desperately. "I depended on seein' her." + +"Nan?" asked Raven. "I couldn't find her. What is it, Tira?" + +"She'd ha' helped me out," said Tira despairingly. "She'd ha' seen +you've got to go away from here an' go quick. Couldn't you pack up an' +git off by the nine o'clock?" + +"Don't be foolish," said Raven. He released her hands and drew a chair +nearer the fire. "Sit down. I haven't the least idea of going anywhere. +Do you suppose I should go and leave you in danger?" + +But she did not even seem to see the chair he had indicated or the fire. +She stood wringing her hands, in a regardless way, under her shawl, and +looking at him imploringly. + +"I ain't in any danger," she said, "not compared to what you be. He's +stopped dwellin' on that man an' his mind is on you." + +The shame of this did not move her now. Her fear had burned every +reticence to ashes and her heart looked out nakedly. + +"He's got out the old gun," she went on. "I dunno's he's fired a gun +sence we've been here unless it might be at a hawk sailin' over. He says +he's goin' to shoot me a pa'tridge--for me! a pa'tridge for me to +eat!--an' he looked at me when he said it, an' the look was enough. You +go. You go to-night an' put the railroad betwixt you an' me." + +"Don't be foolish, Tira," said Raven again. "I've been in more dangerous +places than this, and run bigger risks than Tenney's old musket. That's +all talk, what he says to you, all bluff. I begin to think he isn't +equal to anything but scaring a woman to death. But"--now he saw his +argument--"I will go. Nan and I will go to-night, but only if you go +with us. Now is your chance, Tira. Run back to the house and get the +boy. Bring him here, if you like, to stay till train time and then +come." + +He stretched out his hand to her and waited, his eyes on hers. Would she +put her hand into his in obedience, in fealty? She began to cry, +silently yet rendingly. He saw the great breaths rising in her, and was +sick at heart to see her hand--the hand she should have laid in +his--clutching her throat to still its agony. + +"I dunno," she said brokenly. "Yes, I s'pose I do know. I've got to do +it. It's been pushin' me an' pushin' me, an' now I've got to give up +beat. You won't save yourself, an' somehow or another you've got to be +saved." + +Raven felt the incredible joy of his triumph. He had yielded to her +obstinacy, he had actually given up hope, and now, scourged by her +devotion to him, she was walking straight into the security he had urged +upon her. Yet he dared not betray his triumph, lest outspoken emotion of +any sort should awaken her to a fear of--what? Of him? Of man's nature +she had learned to abhor? + +"That's right, Tira," he said quietly. "Now you've given up +responsibility. You've put yourself and the boy in my hands, mine and +Nan's. You've promised, remember. There's no going back." + +Still he held out his hand, and though she ignored it, her dumbly +agonized look was aware of it. It was waiting for her, the +authoritative, kind hand, and she took hers from her throat and laid it +in his grasp. Tira seemed to herself to be giving up something she had +been fighting to keep. What was she giving up? Nothing it was right to +keep, she would have said. For at that minute, as it had been in all the +minutes that led to it, she believed in him as she did in her Lord, +Jesus Christ. Yet she was aware, with that emotional certainty which is +more piercing than the keenness of the most brilliant mind, that she had +surrendered, the inner heart of her, and whatever he asked her to do +would now be humbly done. + +In the instant of their standing there, hand clasped in hand, the +current of life between them rushed to mingle--humble adoration in her, +a triumphant certainty in him. But scarcely had the impetuous forces met +before they were dissolved and lost. The sharp crack of a gun broke the +stillness outside, and Tira tore her hand from his and screamed +piercingly. She threw herself upon Raven, holding him with both hands. + +"Hear that!" she whispered. "It's right outside here. He's shot to make +you come out an' see what 'tis. In the name o' God, don't you open the +door." + +Raven shook himself free from her, and then, because she was sobbing +wildly, took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the chair by the +hearth. + +"Stop that," he said sternly. "Stay there till I come back." + +He took the key from the lock, opened the door and stepped out. There +lay Dick on his face, his head close by the door-stone, and Tenney, gun +in hand, stood stupidly staring at him. + +"I shot at a pa'tridge," Tenney babbled, "I shot----" + +But Raven was kneeling by Dick in the reddening snow. + + + + +XXXVIII + + +Eugene Martin had driven at a quick pace through the back road and down +again to the point where it met the highway. He had stuffed Tira's apron +into his pocket, and through his passion he was aware of it as something +he could use, how he did not yet know. But the key: that was a weapon in +itself. She could not get into her house without it. Tenney could not +get in. So far as Tira was concerned, it was lost, and Tenney would have +to be told. And as he turned into the other road, there was Tenney +himself driving toward home, and Martin knew what he was to do. + +"Hi!" he called, but Tenney did not stop. He drew out slightly to the +side of the road, the implication that Martin might pass. Martin drove +up alongside and, the way growing narrower, seemed bent on crowding him. +The horses were abreast and presently the road narrowed to a point +where, if they continued, one would be in the ditch. + +"I've got something o' yourn," called Martin. He was good humor itself. +The chances of the road had played patly into his hand. "Anyways, I +s'pose 'tis. I come across your woman on the back road. She turned into +the loggin' road, to Raven's shack. She dropped her apron an' I picked +it up. There's a key in the pocket. Looks like a key to somebody's outer +door. Yourn, ain't it? Here 'tis, rolled up in the apron. Ketch!" + +He had taken out the apron, rolled it tighter and then, as Tenney made +no movement, tossed it into the sleigh. He shook the reins and passed, +narrowly escaping an over-turn, but, at the same moment, he was aware +that Tenney had stooped slightly and lifted something. It was a familiar +motion. What had he lifted? It could not be a gun, he told himself. Yet +he knew it could be nothing else. Was this the next move in the mad +game? For the first time he began to wonder whether Tenney's religion +would really keep him cool and questioned whether, having neatly +balanced his own account, he might close it now before he found himself +in danger. Driving fast, he was aware that Tenney, behind him, was also +coming on. But he would not look until he had passed Tenney's house, and +then he did give one backward glance. Tenney had turned into the yard, +and Martin relaxed, satisfied with the day's job. Perhaps it was really +finished, and he and Tira were square. + +Tenney, having driven into the yard, blanketed the horse and thrust the +apron under the seat of the sleigh. He stood for a moment, thinking. +Should he unlock the door, go into the house, and lock it against the +woman who had run away to Raven's shack? He could not think clearly, but +it did seem to him best to open the door and look about. How had she +left things behind her? Was her absence deliberately planned? Inside, he +proceeded mechanically with the acts he would ordinarily have done after +an absence. The familiar surroundings seemed to suggest them to him. He +fitted the key into the lock again, took off his great-coat and hung it +up, chiefly because the nail reminded him, and then, the house suddenly +attacking him with all the force of lonely silence, he turned and went +out again and shut the door behind him. There was the horse. Why had he +covered him? He would naturally have unharnessed. But then he saw the +gun in the sleigh, and that, like the silent house, seemed to push him +on to something he had lost the power to will, and he took the gun and +walked fast out of the yard. Now at once he felt clear in the head. He +was going to find Raven. That was the next step. Wherever Raven was, he +must find him. But when he turned out of the yard to go up the back +road, he was aware of a strange dislike to coming upon him at the hut. +Tira was there, he knew, but if Raven also was, then there would be +something to do. It was something in the back of his mind, very dark and +formless as yet, but it was, he told himself again, something that had +to be done. Perhaps after all, even though it was to be done sometime, +it need not be to-day. Even though Tira was up there, the job was a +terrifying one to tackle when he felt so weak in his disabled foot, so +cold after Martin's jeering voice when he tossed over the key. He turned +again and went down the road to Raven's. His foot ached badly, but he +did not mind it so much now, the confusion and pain of his mind had +grown so great. It seemed, like this doubt that surrounded Tira, a curse +that was to be always with him. At Raven's, he went to the kitchen door +and knocked, and Charlotte came. + +"He to home?" he asked, not looking at her, but standing there a +drooping, miserable figure. + +"Jerry?" she asked. "Yes. He's in the barn, gone to feed an' water." + +"No," said Tenney. "John Raven. Is he to home?" + +"Why, no," said Charlotte. "Not round the house. He said he's goin' up +to the hut." + +At that he stared at her desperately, as if begging her to take back her +words; they might have been a command to him, a verdict against him. She +stepped out a pace. + +"Why, Mr. Tenney," she said, "what you round with a gun for, this time +o' night? You can't see nothin'. It'll be dusk in a minute." + +"Pa'tridges," he called back to her, adding darkly, "I guess I can see +well enough, come to that." + +Charlotte stood there watching him out of the yard and noted that he +turned toward home. When Nan and Dick came up the road the other way, +she had gone in, and they had been in the house five minutes or more +before she knew of it. Then Dick wandered into the kitchen, on one of +the vague quests always bringing the family there in search of her, and +she called to him from the pantry: + +"D'you see anything of Isr'el Tenney on the road?" + +No, Dick had seen nobody. He stood leaning against the casing, watching +her floury hands at their deft work. + +"He come here, not ten minutes ago," said Charlotte, "after your Uncle +John. He had a gun. I never see Isr'el Tenney with a gun. 'Pa'tridge +shootin,' he said. Pa'tridges, when you can't see your hand afore you in +the woods! I told him Uncle John'd gone up to the hut. When Uncle John +went off, he said he wanted Nan should come up there, quick as ever she +could. You tell her, won't you? I forgot." + +Then Dick knew. Tira was up there. And Tenney was out with a gun: New +England tragedy. It was impossible, the sanctimonious Tenney. Yet there +was New England tragedy, a streak of it, darkly visible, through all New +England life. It would be ridiculous: old Tenney with his +prayer-meetings and his wild appeals. And yet, he reflected, all tragedy +was ridiculous to the sane, and saw before his mind's eye a satiric poem +wherein he should arraign the great sad stories of the world and prove +their ironic futility. But all this was the hurried commentary of the +mind really bent on something actual, and from that actuality he spoke: + +"Don't tell Nan, Charlotte. I'll see what he wants." + +He went off and Charlotte thought he was right, the afternoon waning as +it was. She would tell Nan later, a good deal later, when Raven and Dick +had had time to come down again. And this was how Dick climbed the slope +and was approaching the door of the hut when Tenney stole behind him +through the dusk and fired. + +Raven, in the instant of seeing Dick there on the ground, locked the +door of the hut, dropped the key in his pocket, knelt by him and, with a +hand on his pulse, snapped out his orders to Tenney, standing there +staring vacuously: + +"Go down to the house. Get Jerry and the sled. Come back with him. Get a +move on. Run!" + +Tenney continued looking emptily at him, still babbling about +pa'tridges, and Raven got up and wrenched the gun from his hand, calling +loudly, though they were close together: + +"Don't you hear me? Get Jerry and the sled. Run, man, run." + +Tenney started away in a dazed indecisiveness and Raven remembered his +hurt and that he probably could not run. At the same instant Tenney's +mind cleared. He was plunging down the slope and, whatever anguish it +caused him, insensible to it. + +Raven unlocked the door, stepped in and found Tira facing him. + +"Go home," he said. "Get the boy and go down to my house. You're to stay +there now." + +At the instant of saying this, he set the gun inside the door, snatched +some blankets from the bedroom and came out again. Tira stepped aside to +let him pass. It looked as if he would have walked over her. He covered +Dick warmly, picked up the boy's glasses from the snow and dropped them +into his pocket. With that involuntary act, the emotional assault of the +whole thing nearly had him. He remembered Dick's eyes as he had +sometimes seen them without their glasses, wistful and vaguely soft. +Always his eyes, denuded of the lenses behind which they lived, had a +child's look of helpless innocence, and here he was floored by life's +regardless cruelty. Though, if he was not only floored but actually done +for, he was not yet the one to suffer. He was away in that sanctuary of +the assaulted body known as unconsciousness, and Raven did not dwell for +more than an instant on "the pity of it" all. + +Tira had come out of the hut and, at sight of Dick under his mound of +covering, she gave a little cry and stooped to him with outstretched +hand, perhaps with an idea of somehow easing him. But Raven caught her +wrist before she touched him. + +"Don't," said he. "I've sent down for the sled." + +"Is he----?" she whispered, stepping back as he released her. + +"I don't know," said he. "You can't do anything. Don't stay here." + +But she stood still, staring down at the mound of blankets and Raven +again on his knees beside it, his fingers on Dick's wrist. + +"Didn't you hear me?" said he curtly. "You're to get the child and come +to my house for the night." + +"Will he"--and now he saw her mind was with Tenney--"will he be +arrested?" + +"I hope," Raven allowed himself the bitterness of saying, "I hope he'll +get imprisonment for life." + +And there was such sternness in the kind voice that Tira turned and +went, half running, up the path to the back road and home. + +That night at eleven, when the house had quieted, and Raven was alone in +the library, he permitted himself a glimpse at the denied emotional +aspect of the day. Jerry had got quickly to the top of the hill and Dick +had been moved down without disaster, Tenney, white-faced and +bewildered, lending his strength as he was told. Raven called upon him +for this and that, and kept him by them on the way down to the house, so +that Tira might have time to snatch the child and hurry away. At the +moment of nearing the house he remembered her, and that if Tenney went +directly back by the high road, he might meet her. + +"Here!" This to Tenney, who was sagging on behind the sled, and who at +once hurried along to his side. "Go back to the hut and see if I've left +the key in the door. If it's there, you can lock up and bring it down to +me. If it isn't, don't come back." + +Then, he assumed, Tenney would go home by the back road, the shortest +route. For he would not find the key, which was still in Raven's pocket. +Tenney looked at him, seemed to have something to say, and finally +managed it. As Raven remembered, it was something about pa'tridges and +his gun. Whether he was shaken by fright, one could not have told, but +he was, as Charlotte remarked upon it afterward, "all to pieces." Raven +ignored the mumble, whatever it was, and Tenney, finally understanding +that he might as well be as far off the earth as Dick, for all the +attention anybody was going to pay him, turned, limping, and then Raven, +with that mechanical sensitiveness to physical need always awake in him +now, caught up a stick lying in the dooryard and tossed it to him. + +"Here!" said he. "That'll do for a cane." + +Tenney could not catch; he was too stupid from bewilderment of mind. But +he picked it up, and went limping off across the road and up the hill. +Then the women had to be told, and when Jerry brought the horses to a +standstill at the door, Raven ran in, pushing Charlotte aside--dear +Charlotte! she was too used to life and death to need palliatives of +indirection in breaking even such news as this--and believed now, as he +thought it over, that he met Milly and Nan, who had seen their approach, +running to meet him, and that he said something about accident and, as +if it were an echo of Tenney, a fool shooting partridges. Milly, shocked +out of her neat composure, gave a cry, but Nan turned on her, bade her +be quiet, and called Charlotte to the bedroom to get it ready. It was +Milly's room, but the most accessible place. Raven telephoned for the +doctor at the street and called a long-distance for a Boston surgeon of +repute, asking him to bring two nurses; and he and Nan rapidly dressed +the wound, with Dick still mercifully off in the refuge called +unconsciousness. Raven remembered that Milly, as she got in his way, +kept telling him she ought to have taken a course in first aid, and that +Dick was her son and if a mother didn't know, who did? But he fancied he +did not answer at all, and that he and Nan worked together, with quick +interrogative looks at each other here and there, a lifted eyebrow, a +confirming nod. And now the local doctor had arrived, had professed +himself glad his distinguished colleague had been summoned and approved +Raven's work. He was gone in answer to another urgent call, and the +surgeon had not come, could not come for hours. But Dick was conscious, +though either too weak or too wisely cautious to lift an eyelid, and Nan +was with him. That Raven had ordered, and told Milly she was to come to +the library after Jerry moved her things upstairs and she was settled +for the night. + +Milly was badly shaken. She looked, her strained eyes and mouth +compressed, as if not only was she robbed of the desire of sleep, but +had sworn never, in her distrust of what life could do to her, to sleep +again. But she had not appeared, and as Raven sat there waiting for her, +Charlotte came down the stairs and glanced in, a comprehensive look at +the light, the fire, and at him, as if to assure him, whatever the need +in the sick room, she kept him also in mind. Raven signed to her and she +nodded. He had a question to ask. It had alternated in his mind with +queer little heart-beats of alarm about Dick: hemorrhage, shock, +hemorrhage--recurrent beats of prophetic disaster. + +"Have you seen Tira?" he asked. "I told her to come here and stay till +we could get her off somewhere." + +Then he remembered that, so wide-reaching did Charlotte always seem to +him in her knowledge of the life about her, he had not explained why +Tira must be got out of the way, and that also was before him. But in +her amazing habit of knowing, she knew. + +"No," she said, "she ain't b'en near. She won't leave Tenney. She's one +o' them that sticks by." + +Immediately he was curious to hear what she had imagined, how she knew. +Was the neighborhood awake to even the most obscure local drama? While +Tira thought she was, at the expense of her own safety, covering +Tenney's wildness of jealousy, were they all walking in the sun? + +"Who told you?" he asked her. + +"Why, nobody," said Charlotte. "It didn't take no tellin'. Jerry heard +him hollerin' after her that day you was up in the woods, an' when you +kep' the loggin' road broke, I knew you was givin' her some kind of a +hole to creep into." + +So they had known, she and Jerry. But they had not told. They would +never tell. + +"One thing," said Charlotte, smoothing her apron and looking at him in +an anxious interrogation, "what be we goin' to say? That was the first +thing doctor asked: 'Who done it?' (You know I let him in.) ''Twas a +poor crazed creatur,' says I, 'after pa'tridges.' I was goin' to say +Dick had a gun an' tripped up over a root; but that never'd do in the +world, shot in the back so." + +"The partridges'll do for the present," said Raven grimly. "He's +certainly crazy enough. He said he was shooting partridges. We'll take +it at that." + +Charlotte went on, and he sat thinking. So Tira had chosen not to come. +So fixed was his mind on the stern exigency of the situation, as it now +stood, that her disobedience in itself irritated him. The right of +decision, as he reasoned, had passed out of her hands into his. He was, +in a sense, holding the converging lines of all this sudden confusion; +he was her commanding officer. At that moment, when he was recognizing +his anger against her and far from palliating, cherishing it as one of +the tools in his hand, to keep him safely away from enfeebling doubt, +Milly came noiselessly down the stairs. She would, he realized, in her +unflinching determination to do the efficient thing, be as silent as a +shadow. She appeared in the doorway, and her face, her bearing, were no +longer Milly's. This was a paper semblance of a woman, drawn on her +lines, but made to express grief and terror. Quiet as she was, the shock +had thrown her out of her studied calm. She was elemental woman, +despising the rigidities of training, scourged into revolt. Even her +dress, though fitted to the technical needs of the hour, was unstudied. +Her hair, ordinarily waved, even in the country, by the intelligence of +her capable fingers, was twisted in a knot on the back of her head. +Raven, so effective had been the success of her ameliorating devices, +thought Milly's hair conspicuously pretty. But now there was a little +button of it only, as if she had prepared for exacting service where one +displaced lock might undo her. A blue silk negligee was wrapped about +her, with a furled effect of tightening to the blast, and her face was +set in a mask of grief that was not grief alone, but terror. She came in +and sat down in one of the chairs by the hearth, not relaxing in the +act, but as if she could no longer stand. + +"John!" she said, in a broken interrogation. "John!" + +He got up and elaborately tended the fire, laying the sticks together +with an extreme care, and thinking, as he did it, by one of those idle +divagations of the mind, like a grace note on the full chord of action, +that a failing fire had helped a man out of more than one hole in this +disturbing life. It gave your strung nerves and rasped endurance a +minute's salutary pause. He put down the tongs and returned to his +chair. + +"Buck up, Milly," said he. "Everything's being done. Now it'll be up to +Dick." + +But he realized, as if it were another trial setting upon him at the +moment when he had borne enough, that his eyes were suddenly hot. This +was not for Milly, not for himself. Again, for some obscure reason, he +saw Dick's eyes, softened, childlike, as he had recalled them without +their glasses. Through these past weeks of strain, he had been irritated +with the boy, he had jeered at him for the extravagances of his gusty +youth. Why, the boy was only a boy, after all! But Milly, leaning +forward to the fire, her trembling hands over the blaze, was talking +with amazing intensity, but still quietly, not to disturb the stillness +of the expectant house. For the house, suddenly changed, seemed itself +to be waiting, as houses do in time of trouble. Was it for Dick to die +or to take on life again? Houses are seldom kind at such times, even in +their outward tranquillity. They are sinister. + +And when Milly began to speak, Raven found he had to deal with a woman +surprisingly different from the one who had striven to heal him through +her borrowed aphorisms. + +"To think," she began, "to think he should escape, after being over +there--over there, John, in blood and dirt and death--and come home to +be shot in the back by a tramp with a gun! Where is the man? You +detained him, didn't you? Don't tell me you let him go." + +"I know where to find him," Raven temporized. "He'd no idea of going." + +She insisted. + +"You think it was an accident? He couldn't have had a grudge. Dick +hadn't an enemy." + +"You can make your mind easy about that," said Raven, taking refuge in a +detached sincerity. "It wasn't meant for Dick. He was as far from the +fellow's thoughts as the moon." + +He remembered the fringe of somber woods and the curve of the new moon. + +"It isn't so much the misfortunes of life," Milly kept on. She was +beating her knee now with one closed hand and her voice kept time. "It's +the chances, the horrible way things come and knock you down because +you're in their path. If he doesn't"--here she stopped and Raven knew +she added, in her own mind, "if he doesn't live--I shall never believe +in anything again. Never, John, never!" + +Raven was silent, not only because it seemed well for her to free her +mind, but because he had a sudden curiosity to hear more. This was Milly +outside her armor at last. When she had caught him out of his armor, she +had proposed sending him to the Psychopathic, and here she was herself, +raving against heaven and earth as unrestrainedly as a savage woman +might beat her head against a cliff. + +"Chance!" she repeated. "That's what it is, chance! He got in the way +and he was struck. I lived through the War. I gave my son. What more +could I do? But now, to have him come home to our old house and be shot +in the back! How can you sit there and not move a muscle or say a word? +What are you thinking about?" + +"Well," said Raven quietly, "if you'll believe me, I'm thinking about +you. I'm mighty sorry for you, Milly. And I'm keeping one ear cocked for +Nan." + +"There's no change," she interrupted him. "Charlotte would tell us. I +left Nan on purpose. I want him, every time he opens his eyes, to see +her there. She's the one he wants. Mothers don't count." Here again the +elemental woman flashed out and Raven welcomed the reality of it. "She +couldn't help being kind, with him as he is." + +No, he inwardly concurred, Nan, who had kissed the boy to hearten him in +his need, would be ready with her medicinal love again. She'd pour +herself out: trust her for that. + +"Besides," he said, "besides you and Dick and Nan, I was thinking of Old +Crow." + +"Old Crow?" This threw her out for an instant and she went back to her +conception of Raven as a victim of complexes of which Old Crow was +chief. "It's no time for dwelling on things that are past and gone. You +think far too much about Old Crow. It weakens you." + +"Old Crow," said Raven quietly, "is the chap you and I need here +to-night. I'd like mighty well to sit down and talk it over with him. So +would you, if you knew him better. Old Crow went through what you and I +are going through now. He found the world a deuced puzzling place and he +didn't see the conventional God as any sort of a solution. And then--I +don't suppose you're going to bed right off. You won't feel like sleep?" + +"Bed!" she flung out. "Sleep!" + +"Then look here, Milly," said Raven, "you do what I tell you." He opened +a drawer in his desk and took out the mottled book. "Here's Old Crow's +journal. You sit here by the fire and read it while I take Nan's place +and send her off to bed. And if it doesn't give you an idea Old Crow's +got his mind on us to-night, wherever he is, I'm mistaken." + +He brought her the book. She took it, with no interest, leaving it +unopened on her knee. + +"Wherever he is," she repeated, not precisely curious, but as if she +might be on the verge of it when she again had time. "I didn't know you +believed in immortality." + +"I didn't, either," said Raven. "But," he added, "I believe in Old +Crow." + +She was holding the book mechanically and he left her sitting with it +still unopened and went in to Dick. He found him restless, not in any +movement of his body but in the glance of his dilated eyes. Nan looked +up, grave, steady, gone back, as Raven saw, to her trained habit of +action, emotionless, concentrated on the moment. + +"You'd better go up to bed," said Raven. "I'll stay now. He can have you +to-morrow." + +"He can have me all the time," said Nan clearly, and Dick's eyes turned +upon her with an indifferent sort of query. How much did she mean by +that? It sounded as if she meant everything, and yet Raven, his heart +constricting, knew it might not be more than impetuous sacrifice, the +antidote given in haste. But now Dick spoke and Raven bent to him, for +either he was too weak to speak clearly or he was saving himself. + +"Don't arrest him. No end of talk." + +"No," said Raven. "It wasn't you he was out for." + +The restless eyes turned on Nan. + +"Go to bed," said Dick. + +Her hand had been on his and she took it gently away, and got up. + +"I'm not sleepy," she said. "I'll camp in the library a while." + +When she had gone Raven, sitting there by Dick, who did not speak again, +listened for the murmur of voices from the library. Would they keep +companionable vigil, the two women, heartening each other by a word, or +would they sit aloof, each wrapped in her own grief? There was not a +sound. They were falling in with that determination of the house to +maintain its sinister stillness, its air of knowing more than it would +tell. + + + + +XXXIX + + +Tenney, not finding the key of the hut, and increasingly alive to the +anguish flaring in his foot, went home by the back way. Tira was waiting +at the door. She saw him coming, and, for that first moment, he could +ignore the pain in a savage recognition of her plight. She had, he +thought, having missed the key, not even tried the door. But this brief +summary of her guilty folly angered him for the moment only. He was +suddenly tired, and his foot did ache outrageously. He gave way to the +pain of it, and limped heavily. As he neared the house, however, his +face did relax into a mirthless smile. There were tracks under the +kitchen window. She had hoped to get in that way and had found the +window fastened. And all the time there was the door, ready for a +confident hand. But the ill chance of it amused him for not much more +than the instant of its occurrence. His mind recoiled upon his own +miserable state. He had gone out in search of justice, and he had come +home in terror of what he had himself unjustly done. If he had been +imaginative enough to predict the righteous satisfaction he expected +from his vengeance on Raven, he might have foreseen himself coming back +to bring Tira the evil news, and smiling, out of his general rectitude, +at her grief and terror. Perhaps he would have been wrong in those +unformulated assumptions. Perhaps he would not have been calm enough for +satisfaction in the completed deed, since the mind does, after a red +act, become at once fugitive before the furies of inherited beliefs and +fears. Perhaps it would have shrunk cowering back from the old, old +penalty against the letting of blood, as it did now when he was faced +with the tragic irony of the deed as it was. He had shed blood and, by +one of the savage mischances of life, the blood of a man innocent of +offense against him. After the first glance at Tira, he did not look at +her again, but passed her, threw open the door, and went in. His +thoughts, becoming every instant more confused, as the appalling moments +in the woods beat themselves out noisily, seemed to favor closing the +door behind him. It was she who had brought him to this pass. It was she +who had locked his door upon herself and, in her wantonness, as good as +thrown away the key. Let her stay outside. But he was not equal to even +that sharpness of decision and Tira, after she found the door swinging +free, went in. + +Tenney had seated himself in his arm-chair by the window. He had not +taken off his hat, and he sat there, hands clasped upon the stick Raven +had tossed him, his head bent over them. He looked like a man far gone +in age and misery, and Tira, returning from the bedroom, the child in +her arms, felt a mounting of compassion and was no longer afraid. She +laid the child in its cradle and, with a cheerful clatter, put wood in +the stove. The child cried fretfully and, still stepping about the room, +she began to sing, as if to distract it, though she knew she was making +the sounds of life about Tenney to draw him forth from the dark cavern +where his spirit had taken refuge. But he did not look up, and presently +she spoke to him: + +"Ain't you goin' to unharness? I'm 'most afraid Charlie'll be cold." + +The form of her speech was a deliberate challenge, a fashion of rousing +him to an old contention. For it was one of her loving habits with +animals to name them, and Tenney, finding that "all foolishness," would +never accept the pretty intimacies. To him, the two horses were the bay +and the colt, and now Tira, with an anxious intent of stirring him even +to contradiction, longed to hear him repeat, "Charlie?" adding, "D'you +mean the bay?" But he neither spoke nor moved, and she suddenly realized +that if she screamed at him he would not hear. She went on stepping +about the room, and presently, when the dusk had fallen so that she +could see the horse in the yard only as an indeterminate bulk, she +slipped out, unharnessed him, and led him into his stall. She began to +fodder the cattle, pausing now and then to listen for Tenney's step. But +he did not come. She returned to the house for her pails, lighted a +lantern, and went back to milk. Still he did not come, and when she +carried in her milk, there he sat in the dark kitchen, his head bent +upon his hands. Tira shut up the barn, came back to the kitchen, and put +out her lantern; then she was suddenly spent, and sat down a moment by +the stove, her hands in her lap. And so they sat together, the man and +woman, and the child was as still as they. He had whimpered himself off +to sleep. + +Tira, recognizing herself, with a dull indifference, as too tired to +move, was not at first conscious of thinking either about what she had +gone through or what was before her. But as her muscles relaxed, her +mind, as it was always doing now for its rest and comfort, left this +present scene where, for the first active moments, Tenney had filled her +thoughts, and settled upon Raven. He had told her to come to him. He had +ordered it, as if she belonged to him, and there was heavenly sweetness +in that. Tira loved this new aspect of him. She rested in it, as a power +alive to her, protecting her, awake to her well-being. Yet, after that +first glance at Tenney, sitting there with head bent over the stick, she +had not a moment's belief in her right to go. It was sweet to be +commanded, to her own safety, but here before her were the dark +necessities she must share. And suddenly, as she sat there, and the +sense of Raven's protectingness enfolded her and she grew more rested, a +feeling of calmness fell upon her, of something friendly nearer her than +Raven even (though it had seemed to her lately as if nothing could be +more near), and she almost spoke aloud, voicing her surprised delight: +"Why, the Lord Jesus Christ!" But she did not speak the words aloud. She +refrained in time, for fear of disturbing Tenney in some way not wise +for him; but her lips formed them and they comforted her. Then, suddenly +tranquillized and feeling strong, she rose and fed the child and made +some bustling ado, talking about milk and bread, hoping to rouse Tenney +to the thought of food. But he sat there darkly, and by and by she put +the kettle on and, in the most ordinary manner, made tea and spread +their table. + +"Come," she said to him. "Supper's ready. We might's well draw up." + +He did glance at her then, as if she had surprised him, and she smiled, +to give him confidence. At that time Tira felt all her strength, her +wholesome rude endurance, to the full, and stood tall and steady there +in the room with the two who were her charge and who now, it seemed to +her, needed her equally. Tenney rose with difficulty and stood a moment +to get control of his foot. He walked to the table and was about to sit +down. But suddenly his eyes seemed to be drawn by his hand resting on +the back of the chair. He raised it, turned it palm up and scrutinized +it, and then he looked at the other hand with the same questioning gaze, +and, after a moment, when Tira, reading his mind, felt her heart beating +wildly, he went to the sink and pumped water into the basin. He began to +wash his hands. There was nothing on them, no stain such as his fearful +mind projected, but he washed them furiously and without looking. + +"You stop a minute," said Tira quietly. "I'll give you a mite o' hot +water, if you'll wait." + +She filled a dipper from the tea kettle, and, tipping the water from his +basin into the sink, mixed hot and cold, trying it solicitously, and +left him to use it. + +"There!" she said, standing by the table waiting for him, "you come as +quick's you can. Your tea'll be cold." + +So they drank their tea together, and Tira forced herself to eat, and, +from the store of woman's experience within her, knew she ought to urge +him also to hearten himself with meat and bread. But she did not dare. +She could feel the misery of his sick mind. She had always felt it. But +there were reactions, of obstinacy, of rage almost, in the obscurity of +its workings, and these she could not challenge. But she poured him +strong tea, and when he would take no more, got up and cleared the +table. And he kept his place, staring down at his hand. He was studying +it with a look curiously detached, precisely as he had regarded it at +the moment when he seemed to become aware of its invisible stain. Tira, +as she went back and forth about the room, found herself also, by force +of his attitude, glancing at the hand. Almost she expected to find it +red. When her work was done, she sat down by the stove and undressed the +baby, who was fretful still and crying in a way she was thankful to +hear. It made a small commotion in the room. If it irritated Tenney into +waking from his daze, so much the better. + +Ten o'clock came, and Tenney had not stirred. When eleven struck she +roused from her doze and saw his head had sunken forward; he was at the +nodding point of sleep. She had been keeping up the fire, and presently +she rose to put in wood, knocking down a stick she had left on the end +of the stove to be reached for noiselessly. He started awake and rose, +pushing back his chair. + +"Is that them?" he asked her, with a disordered wildness of mien. "Have +they come?" + +By this she knew he expected arrest for what he had done. + +"No," she said, in her quietest voice. "Nobody's comin' here to-night. I +dropped a stick o' wood, that's all. Don't you think you better poke off +to bed?" + +He did not answer her, but went to the window, put his hands to his face +and peered out. Then he turned, stood a moment looking about the room as +if for some suggestion of refuge, went to the couch, and lay down. Tira +stood for a moment considering. Almost at once, he was asleep. She threw +a shawl over him and went into the bedroom and stretched herself as she +was on the bed. + + + + +XL + + +Raven, to his sorry amusement, discovered something. It was Milly, and +she had changed. Indubitably Milly regarded him with a mixture of wonder +and of awe. He had taken command of the situation in the house and +developed it rationally. The house itself had become a converging point +for all medical science could do for a man hit in a vital spot and +having little chance of recovery. But what Raven knew to be the common +sense of the measures he brought to pass, Milly, in her wildness of +anxiety, looked upon as the miracles of genius. She even conciliated +him, as the poor human conciliates his god. She brought him the burnt +offering of her expressed belief, her humility of admiration. And +whenever one of the family was allowed to supplement the nurses, by day +or night, she effaced herself in favor of Raven or Nan. Raven was the +magician who knew where healing lay. Nan was warmth and coolness, air +and light. Dick's eyes followed Nan and she answered them, comforting, +sustaining him, Raven and Milly fully believed, in his hold on earth. +But as to Milly, Raven had to keep on wondering over her as she wondered +at him. So implicit had been his belief in her acquired equipment for +applying accepted remedies to the mischances of life, that he was amazed +at seeing her devastated, overthrown. She was even less calm than the +women he remembered here in this country neighborhood. When sickness +entered their homes, they were, for the most part, models of efficient +calm. They had reserves of energy. He wondered if Milly had crumbled so +because she had not only to act but to decide how to seem to act. She +had to keep up the wearisome routine of fitting her feelings to her +behavior, her behavior to her feelings. There were not only things to be +done; there were also the social standards of what ought, in crises, to +be felt. She had to satisfy her gods. And she simply wasn't strong +enough. Her hold was broken. She knew it, clutched at him and hung on +him, a dead weight, while he buoyed her up. Were they all, he wondered, +victims of the War? Milly, as she said that night when she came to him +in her stark sincerity while Dick lay unconscious, had given him up +once. She had given him to the War, and done the act with the high +decorum suited to it. And the country had returned him to her. But now, +grotesque, bizarre beyond words, she had to surrender him to a fool +"shooting pa'tridges." For facing a travesty like that, she had no +decorum left. + +Dick, too, was the victim of abnormal conditions. He had been summoned +to the great act of sacrifice to save the world, and the call had +challenged him to after judgments he was not ripe enough to meet. It had +beguiled him into a natural sophistry. For had not the world, in its +need, called mightily on the sheer strength and endurance of youth to +slay the dragon of brute strength in her enemies? Youth had done it. +Therefore there was no dragon, whether of the mind or soul, it could not +also slay. His fellows told him so, and because they were his fellows +and spoke the tongue he understood, he believed it with a simple honesty +that was Dick. + +As to Nan, she seemed to Raven the one sane thing in a bewildered world; +and for himself: "I'm blest if I believe I'm so dotty, after all," he +mused. "What do you think about it?" And this last he addressed, not to +himself, but to the ever-present intelligence of Old Crow. He kept +testing things by what Old Crow would think. He spoke of him often, as +of a mind active in the universe, but only to Nan. And one night, late +enough in the spring for the sound of running water and a bitterness of +buds in the air, he said it to her when she came down the path to him +where he stood listening to the stillness broken by the ticking of the +season's clock--steady, familiar sounds, that told him winter had broken +and the heart of things was beating on to leaf and bloom. He had, if he +was not actually waiting for her, hoped she would come out, and now he +saw her coming, saw her step back into the hall for a scarf and appear +again, holding it about her shoulders. At last, firm as she was in +spirit, she had changed. She was thinner, with more than the graceful +meagerness of youth, and her eyes looked pathetically large from her +pale face. She had seen Dick go slipping down the slope, and now that +beneficent reactions were drawing him slowly back again, she was feeling +the waste of her own bodily fortitude. + +"Where shall we go?" she asked him. "Been to the hut lately?" + +No, Raven told her, he hadn't been there for days. They crossed the road +and began the ascent into the woods. + +"So you don't know whether she's been there?" Nan asked. She stopped to +breathe in the wood fragrances, coming now like a surprise. She had +almost forgotten "outdoors." + +"Yes," said Raven. "I know. Sometimes I fancy she won't need to go there +again. Tenney's a wreck. He sits there in the kitchen and doesn't speak. +He isn't thinking about her. He's thinking of himself." + +"How do you know? You haven't been over?" + +"Yes, I went over the morning after the shooting. I intended to tell +Tira to get her things on and come down to the house. But when I saw +him--saw them--I couldn't." + +"You were sorry for him?" Nan prompted. + +They had reached the hut, and Raven took out the key from under the +stone. Close by, there was a velvet fern frond ready to unfurl. He +unlocked the door and they went in. Her last question he did not answer +until he had thrown up windows and brought out chairs to the veranda at +the west. When they were seated, he went on probing for his past +impression and speaking thoughtfully. + +"No, I don't know that I was particularly sorry for him. But somehow the +two of them there together, with that poor little devil between +them--well, it seemed to me I couldn't separate them. That's marriage, I +suppose. Anyhow it looked to me like it: something you couldn't undo +because they wouldn't have it undone." + +Nan turned on him her old impetuous look. + +"You simpleton!" she had it on her tongue to say. "She doesn't want it +undone because anybody that lifts a finger will get you--not her--deeper +into the mire." But she did say: "I don't believe you can even guess +what she wants, chiefly because she doesn't want anything for herself. +But if you didn't ask her to leave him, what did you do?" + +"I told him to hold himself ready for arrest." + +"You're a funny child," commented Nan. "You warn the criminal and give +him a chance to skip." + +"Yes," said Raven unsmilingly. "I hoped he would. I thought I was giving +her one more chance. If he did skip, so much the better for her." + +"How did she look?" asked Nan, and then added, tormenting herself, +"Beautiful?" + +"Yes, beautiful. Not like an angel, as we've seen her. Like a saint: +haggard, with hungry eyes. I suppose the saints hunger, don't you? And +thirst." He was looking off through the tree boles and Nan, also +looking, found the distance dim and felt the sorrow of youth and spring. +"Everything," said Raven, "seems to be in waves. It has its climax and +goes down. Tenney's reached the climax of his jealousy. Now he's got +himself to think about, and the other thing will go down. Rather a big +price for Dick to pay, to make Tira safe, but he has paid and I fancy +she's safe." He turned to her suddenly. "Milly's very nice to you," he +asserted, half interrogatively. + +He saw the corner of her mouth deepen a little as she smiled. Milly had +not, they knew, been always nice. + +"Yes," she agreed, "very nice. She gives me all the credit she doesn't +give you about doctors and nurses and radiographs and Dick's hanging on +by his eyelids. She says I've saved him." + +"So you have," said Raven. "You've kept his heart up. And now you're +tired, my dear, and I want you to go away." + +"To go away?" said Nan. "Where?" + +"Anywhere, away from us. We drain you like the deuce." + +"No," said Nan, turning from him and speaking half absently, "I can't go +away." + +"Why can't you?" + +"He'd miss me." + +"He'd know why you went." + +Her old habit of audacious truth-telling constrained her. + +"I should have to write to him," she said. "And I couldn't. I couldn't +keep it up. I can baby him all kinds of ways when he's looking at me +with those big eyes. But I couldn't write him as he'd want me to. I +couldn't, Rookie. It would be a promise." + +"Milly thinks you have promised." This he ventured, though against his +judgment. + +"No," said Nan. "No, I haven't promised. Do you want me to?" + +"I don't know," Raven answered, without a pause, as if he had been +thinking about it interminably. "If it had some red blood in it, if you +were--well, if you loved him, Nan, I should be mighty glad. I'd like to +see you living, up to the top notch, having something you knew was the +only thing on earth you wanted. But these half and half things, these +falterings and doing things because somebody wants us to! God above us! +I've faltered too much myself. I'd rather have made all the mistakes a +man can compass, done it without second thought, than have ridden up to +the wall and refused to take it." + +"Do you think of her all the time?" she ventured, in her turn, and +perversely wondered if he would think she meant Tira and not Aunt Anne. + +But he knew. "No," he said, "I give you my word she's farther away from +me than she ever was in her life. For a while she was here, at my elbow, +asking me what I was going to do about her Palace of Peace. But +suddenly--I don't know whether it's because my mind has been on +Dick--suddenly I realized she was gone. It's the first time." Here he +stopped, and Nan knew he meant it was the first time since his boyhood +that he had felt definitely free from that delicate tyranny. And being +jealous for him and his dominance over his life, she wondered if another +woman had crowded out the memory of Aunt Anne. Had Tira done it? + +"And you haven't decided about the money." + +"I've decided," he surprised her by saying at once, "to talk it out with +Anne." + +She could only look at him. + +"One night," he continued, "when Dick was at his worst, I was there +alone with him, an hour or so, and I was pretty well keyed up. I seemed +to see things in a stark, clear way. Nothing mattered: not even Dick, +though I knew I never loved the boy so much as I did at that minute. I +seemed to see how we're all mixed up together. And the things we do to +help the game along, the futility of them. And suddenly I thought I +wouldn't stand for any futility I could help, and I believe I asked Old +Crow if I wasn't right. 'Would you?' I said. I knew I spoke out loud, +for Dick stirred. I felt a letter in my pocket--it was about the estate, +those bonds, you remember--and I knew I'd got to make up my mind about +Anne's Palace of Peace." + +Nan's heart was beating hard. Was he going to follow Aunt Anne's +command, the poor, pitiful letter that seemed so generous to mankind and +was yet so futile in its emotional tyranny? + +"And I made up my mind," he said, with the same simplicity of hanging to +the fact and finding no necessity for explaining it, "to get hold of +Anne, put it to her, let her see I meant to be square about it, but it +had got to be as I saw it and not as she did. Really because I'm here +and she isn't." + +Her eyes filled with tears, and as she made no effort to restrain them, +they ran over and spilled in her lap. She had thought hard for him, but +never so simply, so sternly as this. + +"How do you mean, Rookie," she asked humbly, in some doubt as to her +understanding. "How can you get hold of Aunt Anne?" + +"I don't know," said he. "But I've got to. I may not be able to get at +her, but she must be able to get at me. She's got to. She's got to +listen and understand I'm doing my best for her and what she wants. Old +Crow understands me. And when Anne does--why, then I shall feel free." + +And while he implied it was freedom from the tyranny of the bequest, she +knew it implied, too, a continued freedom from Aunt Anne. Would he ever +have set his face so fixedly toward that if he had not found Tira? And +what was Tira's silent call to him? Was it of the blood only, because +she was one of those women nature has manacled with the heaviness of the +earth's demands? Strangely, she knew, nature acts, sometimes sending a +woman child into the world with the seeds of life shut in her baby hand, +a wafer for men to taste, a perfume to draw them across mountain and +plain. The woman may be dutiful and sound, and then she suffers +bewildered anguish from its potency; or she may league herself with the +powers of darkness, and then she is a harlot of Babylon or old Rome. And +Tira was good. Whether or not Raven heard the call of her +womanhood--here Nan drew back as from mysteries not hers to touch--he +did feel to the full the extremity of her peril, the pathos of her +helplessness, the spell of her beauty. She was as strong as the earth +because it was the maternal that spoke in her, and all the forces of +nature must guard the maternal, that its purpose may be fulfilled. Tira +could not speak the English language with purity, but this was +immaterial. She was Tira, and as Tira she had innocently laid on Raven +the old, dark magic. Nan was under no illusion as to his present +abandonment of Tira's cause. That he seemed to have accepted the ebbing +of her peril, that he should speak of it with something approaching +indifference, did not mean that he had relaxed his vigilance over her. +He was not thinking of her with any disordered warmth of sympathy. But +he was thinking. Suddenly she spoke, not knowing what she was going to +say, but out of the unconscious part of her: + +"Rookie, you don't want anything really, do you, except to stand by and +give us all a boost when we're down?" + +Raven considered a moment. + +"I don't know," he said, "precisely what I do want. If you told me Old +Crow didn't want anything but giving folks a boost, I'm with you there. +He actually didn't. You can tell from his book." + +"I can't seem to bear it," said Nan. She was looking at the darkening +woods and her wet eyes blurred them more than the falling dusk. "It +isn't healthy. It isn't right. I want you to want things like fury, and +I don't know whether I should care so very much if you banged yourself +up pretty well not getting them. And if you actually got them! O Rookie! +I'd be so glad." + +"You're a dear child," said Raven, "a darling child." + +"That's it," said Nan. "If you didn't think I was a child, perhaps you'd +want me. O Rookie! I wish you wanted me!" + +Into Raven's mind flashed the picture of Anne on her knees beside him +saying, in that sharp gasp of her sorrow, "You don't love me." This was +no such thing, yet, in some phase, was life going to repeat itself over +and over in the endless earth journeys he might have to make, futilities +of mismated minds, the outcry of defrauded souls? But at least this +wasn't his cowardly silence on the heel of Anne's gasping cry. He could +be honest here, for this was Nan. + +"My darling," he said, "you're nearer to me than anything in this +world--or out of it. Don't you make any mistake about that. And if I +don't want things 'like fury,' as you say, it's a matter of the +calendar, that's all. Dick wants them like fury. So do you. I'm an old +chap, dear. You can't set back the clock." + +But he had pushed her away, as his aloofness had pushed Anne. He had +thrown Anne back upon her humiliated self. He had tossed Nan forward +into Dick's generation and hers. But here was the difference. She wasn't +going to cry out, "You don't love me." Instead, she turned to him, +shivering a little and drawing her scarf about her shoulders. + +"We'd better go down," she said. "It's getting cold. Dick'll be +wondering." + +They got up and Raven set the chairs inside the hut and took his glance +about to see if all was in order: for he did not abandon the unwilling +hope that Tira might sometime come. As they went down the hill the talk +turned to the hylas and the spring, but when they reached the house Nan +did not go in to Dick. She went to her own room and lay down on her bed +and thought passionately of leaving Rookie free. How was it possible? +Could he be free while she was bound? Sometimes of late she had been so +tired that she could conceive of no refuge but wild and reckless outcry. +And what could he think she meant when she said: "I wished you wanted +me"? + + + + +XLI + + +Spring came on fast and Nan, partly to assure Milly she wasn't to be +under foot forever, talked of opening her house and beginning to live +there, for the first time without Aunt Anne. But she predicted it, even +to Milly, with no great interest, and Raven, though he had urged her to +run away from the cloudy weather Milly and Dick made for her, protested +against her living alone. Dick was now strong enough to walk from his +room to the porch, and Raven, watching him, saw in him a greater change +than the languor of low vitality. He had the bright-eyed pallor of the +man knocked down into the abyss and now crawling up a few paces (only a +few, tremulous, hesitating) to get his foothold on the ground again. He +was largely silent, not, it sometimes seemed, from weakness, but the +torpor of a tired mind. He was responsive to their care for him, ready +with the fitting word and look and yet, underneath the good manners of +it all, patently acquiescent. + +Then Nan found herself rested, suddenly, in the way of youth. One +morning she got up quite herself again, and wrote her housekeeper to +assemble servants and bring them up, and told Raven he couldn't block +her any longer. She had done it for herself, and she quoted the +over-worked commonplace of the psychological moment. He, also believing +in the moment, refrained from argument and went over to open doors and +windows. He was curiously glad of a word with her house, not so much to +keep up old acquaintance as to ask its unresponsiveness whether it was +going to mean Nan alone for him hence-forth or whether, at a time like +this when he stood interrogating it, Anne Hamilton also stood there, in +her turn interrogating him. Was she there to-day? Everything spoke +mutely of her, the wall-paper she had prized for its ancient quaintness, +the furniture in the lines of grace she loved. At that desk she had sat, +slender figure of the gentlewoman of a time older than her own. Was her +presence so etched in impalpable tracery on the air that he ought to +feel it? Was she aching with defeated hopes because she might almost be +expecting him, not only to remember but even to hear and see? No death +could be more complete than the death of her presence here. He could +not, even by the most remorseful determination, conjure up the living +thought of her. Somehow it had seemed that here at least he might +explain himself to her, feel that he had made himself clear. He did +actually speak to her: + +"I can't do it, Anne. Don't you see I can't?" + +This was what he had meant when he told Nan he must get hold of her. +What place could be so fortunate as this, full of the broken threads of +her personality? They only needed knitting up by his passionate +challenge, to be Anne. He called upon her, he caught the fluttering +fringes of her presence in his trembling hands. But he could not knit +them up. They broke, they floated away. It seemed, from the dead +unresponsiveness of her house, as if there had never been any Anne. So +he gave it up, and, in extreme dullness of mind, went about opening +windows, and as the breeze idled in and stirred the waiting air and the +sunlight rushed to it, he seemed to be sweeping the last earthly +vestiges of her from the place that had known her best. And at once it +appeared to him that he had done an inexorable, perhaps even a cruel +thing, and he hurried out, leaving the air and sun to be more merciful +than he. + +When he went into his own yard he saw Dick sitting under the western +pines, where Raven had set a couple of chairs and had a hammock swung. +Dick had ignored the hammock. He scarcely sat at ease, and Raven had an +idea he was meeting discomfort halfway, with the idea of making himself +fit. He did say a word of thanks for the chairs. + +"Only," he added, "don't let it look too sociable. That'll be as bad as +the porch." He laughed a little, and concluded: "I don't mean you, Jack. +You know that, don't you?" + +Raven guessed he was allowing himself the indulgence of avoiding his +mother. For now Milly, as he recovered, had struggled hard for her lost +poise and regained it, in a slightly altered form, it is true; but still +she had it pretty well in hand, she was unweariedly attentive to him and +inexorably self-sacrificing in leaving Nan the right of way. Her life +had again become a severely ritualistic social enterprise, but now she +was just far enough lacking in spontaneity to fail in playing her game +as prettily as she used. It was tiring to watch, chiefly because you +could see how it tired her to play. + +Raven went down the little foot-path to Dick, and he thought anew how +illness had ravaged him. He had the tired eyes, the hollow cheek of +ineffective youth. + +"Hoping you'd come," said Dick. "Now, where's Tenney?" + +"Tenney," said Raven, "is at home, so far as I know. I saw him last +night." + +"Go up there?" + +"Yes." + +"What for?" + +Raven smiled a little, as if he found himself foolish or at best +incomprehensible. + +"Well," he said, "I gave him every chance to skip. I hoped he would. +That would be the simplest way out. But when I found he wasn't going to, +I began to go there every night to let him see I was keeping an eye on +him. I don't go in. I just call him out and we stare over each other's +heads and I inform him you're better or not so well (the probation +dodge, you know) and he never hears me, apparently, and then I go away. +I've got used to doing it. Maybe he's got used to having it done. Maybe +it's a relief to him. I don't know." + +"Does he still look like a lunatic at large?" + +"More or less. His eyes are less like infuriated shoe buttons, but on +the whole he seems to have quieted a lot." + +"You don't suppose," said Dick, "you've put the fear of God into him?" + +"Not much. If anybody has, it was you when he saw you topple over and +knew he'd got the wrong man." + +"He was laying for you, then," said Dick. + +"Why, yes," said Raven. "Tira was there, telling me he'd set up a gun, +and she'd got to the point of letting Nan take her away, when he fired. +What the dickens were you up there for, anyhow?" he ended, not quite +able to deny himself reassurance. + +"I'd heard he was out with a gun," said Dick briefly. "Charlotte told +me. And I gathered from your leaving word for Nan that the Tenney woman +was there--at the hut, you know." + +"Don't say 'the Tenney woman,'" Raven suggested. "I can't say I feel +much like calling her by his name myself, but 'the Tenney woman' isn't +quite----" + +"No," said Dick temperately. "All right, old man, I won't." + +"Awfully sorry you got it instead of me," said Raven, apparently without +feeling. He had wanted to say this for a long time. "Wish it had been +the other way round." + +"I don't, then," said Dick, gruffly in his turn. "It's been an +eye-opener, the whole business." + +"What has?" + +"This." He evidently meant his own hurt and the general viewpoint +induced by it. "I'm not going to stay round here, you know," he +continued, presenting this as a proposition he had got to state abruptly +or not at all. + +"Why not?" + +"I don't believe I could say," Dick temporized, in a way that suggested +he didn't mean to try. "There's Mum, you know. She's going to be at me +again to go in for my degree. Oh, yes, she will, soon as she thinks I +won't come unglued. Well, I don't want it. I simply don't. And I don't +want what she calls a profession: any old thing, you know, so long as +it's a profession. I couldn't go in for that either, Jack. If I do +anything, it's got to be on my own, absolutely on my own. Fact is, I'd +like to go back to France." + +"Reconstruction?" Raven suggested, after a minute. + +"Maybe. Not that I'm specially valuable. Only it would be something to +get my teeth into." + +Was this, too, Raven wondered, an aftermath of the War? Had it shaken +the atoms of his young purpose too far astray for them ever to cohere +again? Dick had had one purpose. Even that didn't seem to be surviving, +in any operative form. + +"Writing?" he suggested. "Oxford--and poetry?" + +Dick shook his head. + +"Well," said Raven, "if it's France then, maybe I'll go with you." + +Dick smiled slightly. Did his lip tremble? + +"No," he said, at once, as if he'd been waiting for it, "you stay here +and look after Nan." + +This gave Raven the slightest opening. + +"That's the devil of it," he said, "your leaving Nan." + +"Yes," said Dick quietly, his eyes on an orchard tree where an unseen +robin sang, "I'm leaving her." + +"She's been devoted to you," Raven ventured. + +"Quite so. I've been lying there and seeing----" + +He paused and Raven prompted: + +"Seeing what?" + +Dick finished, with a deeper quiet: + +"Seeing her look at you." + +Raven, too, stared at the tree where the robin kept up the bright beauty +of his lay. He was conscious, not of any need to combat this finality of +Dick's, but of a sense, more poignant than he could support without +calling on his practiced endurance, of the pity of it, the "tears of +things." Here was youth, its first bitter draught in hand, not recoiling +from it, but taking it with the calmness of the older man who has fewer +years to taste it in. He could not ask the boy to consider, to make no +hasty judgment. Whatever lay behind the words, it was something of a +grave consequence. And Dick himself led the way out of the slough where +they were both caught. + +"Curious things come to you," he said, "when you're laid by the heels +and can't do anything but think: I mean, as soon as you get the nerve to +think." + +"Such as?" + +"Well, poetry, for one thing. When I began to think--and I didn't want +it to be about Nan any more than I could help--I used to have a +temperature, you know--puzzled them, doctor, nurse, all of you. Nan, +that was! I knew it, though the rest of you hadn't the sense. Well, I +made my mind run away from it. I said I'd think about poetry, my long +poem. I'd lie there and say it over to myself, and see if the rest of it +wouldn't come." He laughed a little, though not bitterly. He was frankly +amused. "What do you think? I couldn't even remember the confounded +thing. But I could other things: the verse I despised. Wasn't that the +limit? Omar Khayyam! I lay there and remembered it by the yard." + +"That's easy," said Raven. "Nothing like the first impressions. They +stick." + +"Evidently," said Dick. "They did stick. And my stuff didn't." + +"Is this," Raven ventured, not seeing whether the boy was quivering +under his calm, "a case against the moderns?" + +Dick answered promptly, though Raven could only wonder, after all, just +what he meant: + +"It's a case against me." He went on, his eyes still on the melodious +orchard converts. It must have been a vagabond robin swaggering there, +really deriding nests, he found so much leisure to sing about them. "I +wanted to say I didn't get you that time when you told me you'd pretty +much done with the world. I though Mum was right: _cafard_, you +remember. But I've swung round into the same rut. It's a rotten system. +I'm done with it." + +Raven looked at him in a sudden sharp misery of apprehension. First, Old +Crow, then he, then Dick, one generation following another. + +"Don't you go that path, old man," he said. "You'll only lose your way +and have to come back." + +"Come back?" + +"Yes. Old Crow did. Remember the book. He challenged the whole business, +and then he swung round to adoring it all, the world and Whoever made +it. He didn't understand it a whit better, but he believed, he accepted, +he adored." + +"What would you say?" Dick asked curiously, after a moment. "Just what +happened to him?" + +"Why, I suppose," said Raven, "in the common phrase, he found God." + +They were silent for a time and both of them tried desperately to think +of the vagabond robin. Raven, his mind released by this fascination of +dwelling on Dick apart from any responsibility of talking to him, found +it running here, there, back and forth, over these weeks of their stay +together. It halted, it ran on, it stopped again to consider, but always +it was of Dick and incidentally of himself who didn't matter so much, +but who had to be in it all. Were they at one in this epidemic of world +sickness? As the great explosive forces of destruction and decay seemed +to have released actual germs to attack the physical well-being of +races, had the terrible crashes of spiritual destinies unsettled the +very air of life, poisoned it, drugged it with madness and despair? Was +there a universal disease of the mind, following this wholesale +slaughter, which the human animal hadn't been able really to bear though +it had come to a lull in it, so that now it was, in sheer shrieking +panic, clutching at its various antidotes to keep on living? One +antidote was forgetfulness. They were forgetting the War, some thousands +of decent folk who clearly had meant to remember. A horrible antidote +that, but perhaps they had to take it to save themselves. Too big a +price to pay for living (and such thread-paper lives!) but still there +did seem to be a prejudice in favor of the mere drawing of breath. Maybe +you couldn't blame them, spinning in the sunshine like insects of a day. +Some of the others had to save themselves by the wildness of a new +intoxication. They danced, their spirits danced: a carmagnole it was, a +dance of death, the death of the spirit as he saw it. But maybe, with +this preposterous love of life in them they, too, had to do it. Maybe +you couldn't blame them. He and Dick--they had been like two children, +scared out of their wits, crying out, hitting at each other in the dark. +Youth and age, that was what they had fought about. It had been an +unseemly scrap, a "you're another." Dick had been brought up against +life as it looks when you see it naked, the world--and what a world! No +wonder he swore it was a world such as neither he nor his fellows, like +him aghast, would have made. He would simply have to live some quarter +century to find out what sort of a world he and his fellows did actually +make. + +And Raven: Lord! Lord! what was the use of having traveled his own +quarter century along the everlasting road if it didn't make him at +least silent in sheer pity of it: youth singing along to the Dark Tower, +jingling spurs and caracoling nag, something it didn't quite know the +feeling of shut in its nervous hand? What was it shut there? The key, +that was it: the key to the Dark Tower. Youth made no doubt it was the +key, easy to hold, quick to turn, and the gate would fly open and, if +youth judged best, even the walls would fall. And yet, and yet, hasn't +all youth held the key for that borrowed interval and do the walls ever +really fall? But if age doesn't know enough to include youth in its +understanding, as youth (except the poets) couldn't possibly include +age, why then! + +"I am," thought Raven, returning to the Charlottian vernacular, "very +small potatoes and few in a hill." + +And what was the Dick, the permanent Dick who would remain after a few +more years had stripped him of the merely imitative coloring he caught +from his fellows? Dick talked about "herd madness," and here was he, at +one with his own herd. He piped in verse because a few could sing, +he--but what was the use hammering along on the old dissonance: youth, +age, age, youth. And yet they needn't be dissonant. They weren't always. +There was Nan! But as to Dick, he was simply Dick, a good substratum of +his father, Anthony Powell, in him, a man who had had long views on +trade and commerce and could manage men. And a streak of Raven, not too +much but enough to imagine the great things the Powell streak would show +him how to put his hand to. + +Dick had been staring at him, finding him a long way off, and now he +spoke, shyly if still curiously: + +"Would you say you'd found God?" + +Raven came back; he considered. + +"No," he said, at last, "I couldn't say anything of the sort: it sounds +like such awful swank. But I rather stand in with Old Crow. The fact is, +Dick"--it was almost impossible to get this clarified in his own mind to +the point of passing it on--"Old Crow's made me feel somehow--warm. As +if there's a continuity, you know. As if they keep a hand on us, the +generations that have passed. If that's so, we needn't be so infernally +lonesome, now need we?" + +"Well," said Dick, "we are pretty much alone." + +"But we needn't be," said Raven, painfully sticking to his text, +"because there are the generations. The being loyal to what the +generations tried to build up, what they demand of us. And behind the +whole caboodle of 'em, there's something else, something bigger, +something warmer still. Really, you know, if only as a matter of +convenience, we might call it--God." + +A silence came here and he rather forgot Dick in fantastically thinking +how you might have to climb to the shoulders of a man (Old Crow's, for +instance) to make your leap to God. You couldn't do it from the ground. +Dick had taken off his glasses to wipe them and Raven, recalling himself +and glancing up, found his eyes suffused and soft. + +"Jackie," said Dick, "you're a great old sport." + + + + +XLII + + +The spring had two voices for Tira, the voice of a fainting hope and the +voice of fear. The days grew so capriciously lovely that her heart tried +a few notes in answer, and she would stand at her door and look off over +the mountain, fancying herself back there on the other side with the +spirit of girlhood in her, drawing her, in spite of dreary +circumstances, to run, to throw herself on the ground by cool violet +banks to dream and wake, all flushed and trembling, and know she must +not tell that dream. But when the dusk came down and the hylas peeped +and the moist air touched her cheek, she would lose courage and her +heart beat miserably in tune with the melancholy of spring. Still, on +the whole, she was coming alive, and no one knew better than she that +life, to be life, must be also a matter of pain. Tenney was leaving her +to a great extent free. He was off now, doing his fencing, and he would +even, returning at noon or night, forget to fall into the exaggerated +limp he kept in reserve to remind her of his grievance. She had not seen +Raven for a long time now, except as he and Nan went by, always looking +at the house, once or twice halting a moment in the road, as if debating +whether they should call. And Tira, when she saw them, from her hiding +behind the curtain, would step to the door and fasten it against them. +She would not answer, she told herself, if they knocked. But they never +did knock. They went on and left her to her chosen loneliness. For an +instant she would be unreasonably hurt, and then smile at herself, +knowing it was she who had denied them. + +It was an April morning when the spring so got into her blood that she +began to wish for things. They were simple things she wished for: +chiefly to feel herself active in the air and sun. She wanted to go +away, to tire herself out with motion, and she made up her mind that, if +Tenney went to the long pasture fencing, she would shut the house and +run off with the baby into the woods. The baby was heavy now, but +to-day, in her fullness of strength, his weight was nothing to her. They +might even go over to Mountain Brook by the path "'cross lots" where the +high stepping stones led to the track round the mountain. She loved the +look of the stepping stones in spring when the river swirled about them +and they dared you to cross and then jeered at you because the water +foamed and threatened. She sang a little, finishing her morning tasks, +and Tenney, coming from the barn with his axe, to start on his day's +fencing, heard her sing. Tira, when she saw him, was in such haste to be +off herself that she called to him from the window: + +"Here! don't you forget your luncheon. I've got it 'most put up." + +He glanced back over his shoulder, and spoke curtly: + +"I don't want it. I'm goin' over on the knoll." + +Her heart fell. The day was done. She would have to stay and get his +dinner. Even an hour's vagabondage would be impossible, for the knoll +was across the road overlooking the house and he would see her go. All +these weeks she had held herself to a strict routine, so that every +minute could be accounted for. This day only she had meant to break her +habit and run. It was over then. She was bitterly disappointed, as if +this, she thought, smiling a little to herself, was the only day there +was. She might as well wash blankets. She went to the bedroom to slip +off her dress and put on a thick short-sleeved apron: for Tira was not +of those delicate-handed housewives who can wash without splashing. She +dripped, in the process, as if, Tenney used to tell her in the first +days of their marriage, she got in all over. In her bedroom, with the +sweet air on her bare arms and the robins calling and the general tumult +and busy ecstasy outside, she stopped to wonder. Could she take the baby +and slip out by the side door, and come back in time to fry Tenney's ham +for dinner? No, it wouldn't do. He would be in for a drink, or the cow +shut up in the barn with her calf would "loo" and he would wonder if +anything was happening to them. A dozen things might come up to call him +back. She would wash blankets. Then she saw the baby, through the +doorway, sitting where she had put him, on the kitchen rug, and a quick +anger for him possessed her. + +"In that hot kitchen," she said aloud, "when there's all outdoors!" + +She dragged one of the blankets from the bed, ran out as she was, +bare-armed, bare-necked, and spread it on the grass in front of the +house. + +"It's goin' to be washed anyways," she placated the housewifely instinct +within her, and she ran in for the baby and set him on the blanket. One +heart-breaking thing about this baby who was "not right" was that there +were no answers in him. She had tried all the wiles of motherhood to +show him how she loved him, and coax him to respond, not so much in +actual sentience to her as a baby's rejoinder to the world he could see +and touch. He had no answers. But this morning when the sun fell warmly +on him and the breeze stirred his coppery hair, he did, it seemed, hear +for an instant the voice of earth. He put out his fat hands and gurgled +into a laugh. Tira went mad. She was immediately possessed by an +overwhelming desire to hear him laugh again. She called to him, in +little cooing shouts, she stretched out her arms to him, and then, when +he would not be persuaded even to turn his head to her, she began to +dance. Perhaps after the first step she really forgot about him. Perhaps +the mother ecstasy ran into the ecstasy of spring. Perhaps, since she +could not answer the lure of the woods by running to them that morning, +the woods ran to her, the green magic of them, and threw their spell on +her. She hardly saw what was about her, even the child. The cherry tree +in bloom was a great whiteness at her right, the sun was a splendor, the +breeze stirred her hair, and the child's head was a coppery ball she +fixed her eyes upon. And while she waved her arms and danced, Martin, +who had seen her from the road, and left his horse there, was coming +toward her across the grass. Why could she not have seen him stop? Why +was he nothing more than a tree trunk in the woods, standing there while +she flung up her white arms and danced? The earth spirits may know. Pan +might know. They had got Tira that day, released from her winter's +chill. She did not, and still less Martin, his own blood rising with +every pulse. + +"Hooray!" he yelled. "That's the talk." + +He made a stride and Tira darted back. But it was not she he ran toward. +It was the child. He bent to the baby, caught him up and tossed him +knowingly and the baby, again incredibly, laughed. Tira, taken aback at +the sight of Martin, like a sudden cloud on her day, was arrested, in +her first rush toward him, by the pretty laugh. Her baby in Martin's +hands: that was calamity unspeakable. But the child had laughed. She +would hardly have known what price she would refuse even to the most +desperate of evil spirits that could conjure up that laugh. She stood +there breathless waiting on the moment, afraid of the event yet not +daring to interrupt it, and Martin tossed the baby and the baby laughed +again, as if it were "right." For Martin himself, except as the +instrument of the miracle, she had hardly a thought. It might have been +a hand out of heaven that had caught up the child, a hand from hell. But +the child laughed. Martin, for the interval, was neither malevolent nor +calculating. This was not one of his impish pleasantries. It might have +been in the beginning, but he was enormously flattered at having touched +the spring of that gurgling delight. For this was, he knew, a solemn +baby. He had glanced at it, when he came Tira's way, but only carelessly +and with no idea it was not like all babies. He supposed they began to +take notice sometime, when they got good and ready. Queer little devils! +But he was as vain and eager in his enjoyment of the response to his own +charm as he was prodigal in using it. The spring day had got into his +blood, too, and when he saw Tira dancing, the baby a part of the bright +picture, he had taken the little devil up, with no purpose but somehow +because it seemed natural, and when the child laughed he knew he had +made a hit and kept on, singing now, not a cradle song but a man's song, +something he had not himself thought of since he heard his old +grandmother drone it between smokes, while she sat by the fire and +dreamed of times past. It was something about Malbrook--"gone to the +army"--"hope he never'll come back." And there was Tira now, within the +circle of his fascination, bending a little toward him, her eyes darker +than he had seen them for many a day, her white arms wide, as if she +invited him. He wondered how a woman with her black hair could have a +skin so white; but he never guessed the lovely arms were stretched +toward the child and not to him, and that they would have snatched the +baby but for that amazing laugh. He stopped, breathless more from his +thoughts than his gay exertion, and gave a shout. + +"Here!" he cried, to Tira, in a joviality of finding her at one with him +and the day (this first prime day of spring, a day that ought to make a +person shake a leg), "you take him. Fine little chap! Set him on the +ground ag'in an' you an' me'll have a tell." + +Tira took the step toward him and lifted her arms for the child. She was +glad the wild game had ended. Martin put the baby into her arms, but +instantly she felt his hands on her elbows, holding her. + +"Guess that's the way to git you, ain't it?" he inquired, in jovial good +humor. "You can't scratch with the youngster between us. You can't cut +an' run. By thunder, Tira! you're as handsome as you were that day I see +you first an' followed you home? Remember? You're like"--his quick mind +saw it at a leap--"you're like this cherry tree, all a-bloom." + +He bent his head to her arm, almost as white as the cherry bloom and +kissed it. A shadow dropped upon them. It was only a little sailing +cloud but it startled Tira more than the kiss; the look of the day had +changed so suddenly and as if it were changing for them alone. For there +outside was the bright affluence of spring just as it had been but over +them the warning cloud. She glanced about, in the one instant of +darkening, and on the knoll across the road saw what the kind little +cloud might have been sent to tell her. Tenney stood there, a stark +figure, watching them. Her numbness to the presence of Martin who stood +holding her broke in a throb of fear. The instant before, his lips on +her arm had been no more than the touch of a leaf that might have blown +there. She did not even remember it. She lifted her face to his and, +seeing the fear in it, he involuntarily released her and she stepped +away from him. + +"You go," she said. "Go quick. He's over there on the knoll. My God! +don't look. Don't you know no better'n to look? He's fencin'. He's got +his axe." + +But Martin had looked. He gave a little disconcerted laugh and turned +away. + +"So long!" he called back over his shoulder. "Glad the little chap took +to me. Have him out here an' whenever I'm goin' by----" + +She did not hear. She had run, as if from nearing danger, into the house +and closed the door behind her. It was warmer even in the few minutes +since she had come out, but she had lost her delight in the open. She +was afraid, and as Martin stepped into his wagon, he wondered why. Tira +was a good, strong, husky girl, a streak of the gypsy in her. Sometimes +in the old days he'd been half afraid of her himself when things didn't +suit, mostly after he got carrying on with some other girl. The way her +eyes opened on a chap! Why didn't she open 'em that way on Tenney? Queer +proposition, a woman was, anyways. + +Tira carried the baby into the front room and sat down by the window, +still holding him. She pushed her chair back until the curtain hid her +and, through the narrow strip between curtain and casing, kept her eyes +on Tenney. For several minutes after Martin had driven away, he stood +there, still as a tree. Then the tree came alive. Tenney moved back to +the left, where the fence ran between field and pasture, and she lost +him. But she could not hear his axe. In her anxiety she strained the +child against her until he struggled and gave a fitful cry. She did not +heed the cry. This, her instinct told her, was the only safe place for +him on earth: his mother's arms. + +All through the morning she sat there, looking now and then from the +window, and still holding the child. When the clock struck eleven, the +sound awoke her. If she was to get dinner, she must be about it. Was she +to get dinner? Or was she to assume that this day marked the settlement +of the long account? The house itself, still in its morning disorder, +told her the moment had come. The house itself, it seemed to whisper, +could not possibly go on listening to the things it had listened to +through the winter or holding itself against the horror of the more +horrible silence. Who would think of eating on the verge of this last +inevitable settlement? And what would the settlement be? What was +there--she thought over the enemies she had feared. The crutch: that was +gone. She had made sure of that. The gun: but if it were here she +doubted whether Tenney would dare even look at it again, remembering +that night when he washed at the invisible stain on his hands. A quarter +of an hour had gone in these imaginings, and then she did get up, went +into the kitchen, built her fire, and set the table. But as she moved +about the room, she carried the baby with her, working awkwardly against +his weight and putting him down for a minute only at a time and +snatching him up again at an unexpected sound. Once a robin called just +outside the window, a bold bright note; it might have been the vagabond +robin from Raven's orchard who sang about nests but seemed never to +break off singing long enough to find a straw for one. She caught up the +child from the couch and stood breathless, listening. It seemed as if +the robin knew, and somehow, like Martin, felt like laughing at her. + +Tenney was there, at a few minutes after twelve, but dinner was not on +time. He came in, washed his hands at the sink and glanced about him. +The table was set, and Tira, at the stove, the child on her hip, was +trying the potatoes. She did not look at him. If he looked strange, it +seemed to her she might not be able to go on. + +"I ain't dished up," she said. "I'm kinder late." + +Tenney spoke immediately and his voice sounded merely quiet, not, she +reasoned anxiously, as if he tried to make it so, but just--quiet. + +"You ain't washed the breakfast dishes neither. Ain't you feelin' well?" + +"Yes," said Tira, "well as common. I left 'em, that's all." + +"Oh," said Tenney. "Wanted to git at suthin' else." + +She turned and looked at him. Yes, he was different, not paler, nor, as +she had seen him, aflame in a livid way, but different. + +"Isr'el," she said, "I never knew 'Gene Martin was goin' to stop here. I +knew no more'n the dead." + +"Was that him?" asked Tenney indifferently. "I see somebody stopped. I +thought mebbe 'twas the butcher. Then I remembered he comes of a +Wednesday." + +That settled it in her mind. The weekly call of the butcher was as fixed +as church on Sunday. Tenney was playing for something, and she +understood. The moment had come. The house and she both knew it. She was +not sorry, and perhaps, though she had been good to it and kept it in +faithful order, the house was not sorry either. Perhaps it would rather +rest and fall into disorder the way Tenney would let it, if he were here +alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with +the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence +that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law. +He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did +not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind. +Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning--three together in May +sunshine--had confirmed his ugly doubts, he was relieved to wash his +hands of them both. The phrase came into her mind, and that in itself +startled her more than any fear of him. Wash his hands! How pitiful he +had been that night he washed his hands! + +They sat down to dinner together, and though Tira could not eat, she +made pretense of being too busy, getting up from the table for this and +that, and brewing herself a cup of tea. Tenney had coffee left over from +breakfast, and when her tea was done she drank it hastily, standing at +the sink where she could spill a part of it unnoticed. And when dinner +was over he went peaceably away to the knoll again, and she hastily set +the house in order while the baby slept. + +When Tenney came home he was quite the same, silent but unmoved, and +after milking he took off his boots by the stove and seemed to doze, +while Tira strained the milk and washed her dishes. She was still sure +that she and the child were to go. When would it be? Would the warning +come quickly? She wanted to leave the waiting house in order, the house +that seemed to know so much more about it all than she did. The fire had +gone down in the stove, but though the night was warm, Tenney still sat +by the hearth, huddled now in his chair, as if he wanted the comforting +of that special spot: the idea of the hearthstone, the beneficence of +man's cooking place. Tira's mind was on the night, the warmth of it, the +moist cool breath bringing the hylas' peeping. It made her melancholy as +spring nights always had, even when she was most happy. She thought of +the willows feathering out on the road to her old home, and how the +sight of them against the sky, that and the distant frogs, made her +throat thick with the clamor of a rising fear. The river road was the +one she would take when she was turned out, even if the willows did look +at her as she went by and lay that moist, cool hand of foreboding on her +heart. She had a plan, sprung together like the pieces of a puzzle since +she had known he was to send her away. There was a sawmill over the +other side of the mountain and the men's boarding house. She could get +work there. It would be strange if a woman so strong and capable could +not get work. + +Tenney stirred in his chair, roused himself from his huddled posture and +got up. Was he going to tell her now? + +"I guess mebbe I'll poke off to bed," he said, in his commonplace manner +of that noon. "I've got to be up bright an' early." + +"Ain't you finished on the knoll?" she ventured. + +"Yes, or next to it. But I've got quite a number o' jobs to do round +home." + +He went up the stairs without a light, carrying his shoes in his hand, +and Tira shivered once, thinking how horrible it was to go so softly in +stockinged feet. She was not afraid of him. Only she did wish his feet +would sound. She did not sleep that night. She brought in the cradle, +put the baby in it, and drew it to the window and there she sat beside +it, the night through, her hand on the broken hood. She had chosen a +high, straight chair, so that she might be too uncomfortable to sleep, +but she had no temptation to drop off. All her nerves were taut, her +senses broad awake. She was ready, she knew, for anything. The night was +peaceful, thrilled by little sounds of stirring life, and the house, +whatever it guessed, had forgotten all about her. Toward three o'clock +she suddenly lost her sense of vitality. She was cold, and so sleepy now +that the thought of bed was an ache of longing. She got up, found +herself stiff and heavy-footed, lifted the child from his cradle and +went into the bedroom with him. There she put him inside the sheets, and +lay down beside him on the outside of the bed. She slept at once, but +almost at once she was recalled. Tenney was standing in the bedroom +door, looking at her. + +"Wake up," he was saying, not unkindly. "Wake up." + +She came drowsily awake, but before she was fully herself her feet were +on the floor and she was rubbing her heavy eyes. The sun was streaming +in. + +"I've blazed the fire an' het me up some coffee," he said, still in that +impersonal way which was so disturbing only because it was not his way. +"I've harnessed up. I'm goin' to the street. You remember where that +Brahma stole her nest? I've got to have two eggs for even dozens." + +"Up in the high mow," said Tira. "Right under the beam." + +She heard him go out through the shed, and she followed, to the kitchen, +slowly, with the squalid feeling that comes of sleeping in one's day +clothes, and there she found the fire low and his cup and plate on the +bare table. She could see him through the window. There was the horse, +hitched to the staple in the corner of the barn, there was the basket of +eggs on the ground waiting for its even dozens. + +"D'you find any?" she called. + +He did not answer, and she ran out to the barn and called up to the mow: + +"You there? You find any?" + +But the barn, in its soft darkness, with a beam of dusty light here and +there, knew nothing about him. He had not climbed to the mow, for the +ladder was on the other side of the barn floor. She lifted it, brought +it over, set it against the hay and climbed. She was broad awake now, +and her taut muscles obeyed and liked it. She stepped on the hay, found +the dark hole old Brahma chose for her secret hoarding place, and put in +her hand, once, twice. Three eggs! Brahma must have thought she was +pretty smart to lay three without having them stolen away from her. Tira +put the eggs carefully in her apron pocket and hurried down the ladder, +and out to the basket waiting on the ground. How many eggs did he want +to make even dozens? Did he tell her? She could not remember. Probably +he had forgotten himself, by now. She sat down on the step and took the +eggs out in her lap, and then began to count and put them back again. +The sun lay on them and they looked pretty to her in their brown +fairness. She liked them, she thought, as she counted, liked all the +farm things, the touch of them, the smell. Even old Charlie, standing +there, smelled of the barn, and that was good, too. Five dozen, that was +it, and one over. She put the extra egg in her pocket, got up and +carried the basket to the wagon, placing it in front where it could sit +safely between Tenney's feet. And at that minute Tenney himself came +round the corner from the front of the house, and the day was so kind +and the sun so warm on her face that it seemed a long time ago she had +thought he meant to send her away, and she called to him: + +"You might git a quarter o' tea, the kind they call English breakfast. +An' a half a dozen lemons. It's terrible hard to think up any kind of a +pie these days, 'twixt hay an' grass." + +"Tea," said Tenney, as if he were putting it down in his mind. "An' +lemons. You might go out, in a half an hour or so, an' look at that +calf." + +He stepped into the wagon, took up the reins and drove away. Tira +watched him out of the yard, and at last she had no suspicion of his +coming back, as he had done so often, to surprise her. He was +somehow--different. He was really gone. She went in, got her breakfast +and ate it, this with more appetite than she had had for many weeks, and +smiled at herself, thinking she was not sleepy yet, but when sleep came +on her it would come like a cloud and smother her. She moved fast about +the kitchen to get her work done before it came, and in perhaps an hour +she remembered Tenney's telling her to have an eye to the calf. She +smiled a little, grateful for even the tiniest impulse to smile, and +told herself she wouldn't go out to look after any calf until she had +looked at somebody else who ought to be awake. She went into the +bedroom, and stopped a choked instant at the strangeness of the bed. The +little coppery head was what she should have seen, but there was only +the straight expanse of quilt, and a pillow, disarranged, lying +crookedly near the top. She snatched up the pillow. There was the little +coppery head. The baby was lying on his back, and over his face, +carefully folded into a square, was her apron, the one Eugene Martin had +torn away from her. The baby was dead. + + + + +XLIII + + +Tenney did not come home until two o'clock. When he drove into the yard +he found Tira there, standing on the step. This was a day of clear +sunlight, like that of yesterday, and the breeze moved her light rings +of hair. Tenney glanced at her once, but, saying nothing, got out and +began to unharness. Tira stood waiting. He led the horse into the barn, +and when he came out and walked toward the house she was still waiting, +a woman without breath even, one might have thought. When he was perhaps +three feet from her she spoke, but in a quiet voice: + +"Stop! You stan' right there an' I'll tell you. The doctor's been. I +'phoned him. I told him I overlaid the baby." + +"Overlaid?" muttered Tenney, in a puzzled way. + +Now a little feeling did manifest itself in her voice, as if he must be +a fool not to have known these tragedies that come to mothers. + +"Overlaid," she repeated, with the slightest tinge of scorn. "That's +what women do sometimes, big heavy women! Roll over on the little +creatur's an' lay on 'em so 't they can't breathe. I s'pose they can't +help it, though. They're tired. I told him I done that. He was sorry for +me. I asked him if the crowner'd come, an' I'd have to swear to't, an' +he said no. I was glad o' that, though mebbe it's no worse to swear to +anything than 'tis to say it. He was terrible good to me. I told him +baby'd got to lay over to Mountain Brook, side o' mother, an' he said he +was goin' there an' he'd git one of 'em to dig the little grave. I told +him you're all run down, your foot behavin' so, an' you wouldn't be able +to do nothin', an' I was 'most afraid o' your givin' out, when I told +you. So he's goin' to send the man with the little coffin." + +There was no faintest tremor of bitterness or gibing in this. It was the +simplest statement of facts. Tenney had stood perfectly still, but now +he lifted one hand and looked at it casually, as he had that other time. +He made an uncertain step, as if to pass her and enter the house, but +Tira stretched out her arms. They barred the way. + +"No," she said, "you ain't comin' in." + +"Ain't comin' in?" repeated Tenney. + +He looked up at her, but his glance fell at once to the trembling hand. + +"No," said Tira, "you ain't comin' into this house ag'in till he's +carried out of it. I've made you up a bed in the lower barn an' I've set +you out suthin' to eat there. Day after to-morrer mornin' the doctor's +comin' over after me an' baby--or send somebody, if he can't come--an' +he's goin' to see to the minister an' all. He was terrible sorry for me. +An' that night, day after to-morrer night, you can come back into the +house; but you can't come before." + +She went in and shut the door behind her, and Tenney heard the key turn +sharply in the lock. He stood there several minutes, moistening his dry +lips and looking down at his hands, and then he, too, turned about and +went down to the lower barn, where he found a bed made up and a cold +lunch on a little table. But while he ate he wondered, in an absent +muse, about the bed. It was the old four-poster he had packed away in +the shed chamber. How had she carried the heavy hardwood pieces down, +fitted them together and corded them? He was curious enough to lift the +tick to find out what she had used for cord. Her new clothes-line; and +there was the bed wrench in the corner by the chopping block. It looked +as if, having done with it, she had thrown it there in a wild haste to +get on with these things that must be done before he came. Even then, +with his mind on his hands--not hands, it seemed to him, he could quite +bear to touch food with--he wondered if some man had helped her. Had +Martin been here again, or was it Raven? But, after all, nothing seemed +to matter: only the queer state of his hands. That was the trouble now. + +All through the next day he hung about the place, doing the barn work, +milking, taking the milk to the house, but stopping there, for Tira met +him at the door, took the pails from him, and carried them in without a +word. He wondered vaguely whether, having denied him entrance to his own +house, she meant to refuse him food also, but presently she appeared +with a tray: meat and vegetables carefully arranged and the coffee he +depended on. Then she pointed out a wooden box, a little chest that had +lived up in the shed chamber, lifted the lid and bade him note the +folded garments within: he must change to-morrow, and these were his +clean clothes. Occasionally he glanced at her, but he could not see that +she looked very different. She was always pale. Early in the morning of +the third day she appeared with hot water and a basket filled with what +seemed to him at first a queer assortment of odds and ends. + +"Here," she said, "here's your shavin' things. I'll set the little +lookin' glass up ag'inst the beam. Here's your razor. I'll fill the mug. +Now, you shave you. If anybody should happen to see you, they'd say +'twa'n't fittin' for a man to have his baird all over his face, day of +his baby's funeral." + +The glass, with its picture of a red and blue house and a cedar tree, +she set against a beam, but it escaped her fingers and fell forward and +cracked straight across the little house. She picked it up, balanced it +against the beam and held it, with a frowning care, until it was secure. + +"Sign of a death!" she said, as if to herself, but indifferently. +"There! you shave you now, an' then I'll bring you out your breakfast +an' carry in the things." + +Tenney shaved before the little mirror with its crack across the house, +and, as if she had been watching him, she appeared at the minute of his +finishing. Now she was carrying a breakfast tray, poising it absorbedly, +with the intentness of a mind on one thing only. It was a good +breakfast, eggs and coffee and bacon, and the thick corn-cake he liked; +also, there was his tin lunch box. She pulled out the little table, set +the tray on it and brought his chair. + +"There!" said she. "Now soon as ever you've finished eatin' you take +your luncheon an' your axe an' go over to the long pastur' an' don't you +show your head back here till it's time to fetch the cows. You can bring +'em along with you, an' I'll have the pails out on the step so 't you +can start right off milkin'. An' when you've got through, you fetch the +milk into the house, same as usual." + +As she was leaving the barn she turned and the breeze lifted those +little rings of her hair and Tenney, looking full at her now, groaned. +It was not, he felt, any of the other things that had happened to them: +only there was always breeze enough, even on the stillest day, to stir +her hair. Now it seemed to be the only thing in the world with life in +it. + +"I shall tell 'em," she said clearly, as if she wanted him to understand +and remember--and she did not look at him, but across the road and up +the slope where the hut stood waiting for her--"the doctor an' all the +rest I've got to see, you was so sick over it, you couldn't come." + +Then she stepped out of the picture she had made against the smiling +day, the dark interior of the barn framing her, and walked, with her +free-swinging step, to the house. And Tenney ate his breakfast, took his +luncheon box and axe, and started for the woods. But he had not got out +of the yard when she called to him. He stopped and she came running; she +was no longer pale, and her eyes were rimmed with red. She came up with +him. + +"Isr'el," she said, "you think o' this. You think of it all day long. +'I'm goin' through it alone,' you says to yourself mebbe, after you've +got off there into the woods. 'But I ain't alone. He'll be with me, the +Lord Jesus Christ.' An' you remember there's that to think on. An' +there's forgiveness. Isr'el, you lay down your axe. You let me take holt +o' your hand." + +He could only stare at her, and she took the axe from his hand and laid +it at their feet. She took his hand and put it to her cheek. Then she +took his other hand and laid that also on her cheek, and murmured a +little formlessly, but in a way he sharply remembered as a means of +stilling the baby. She lifted her head then, smiling a little, and still +holding the hands. But before releasing them she stroked them softly and +said, "There! there! Poor souls," she added, "poor souls!" Did she mean +the unhappy hands, or all souls of men caught in the network of +mysterious life? She picked up his axe and gave it to him as a mother +might dismiss a child who was going to a distasteful task. "There!" she +said again. "Now, you remember." She turned from him, and Tenney went, +head down, to his work. + +That afternoon, about three o'clock, Nan was in her garden, busy with +the peony bed. She was dressed in cotton crepe the color of the soil, +and her cheeks were red, like wild roses, and her ungloved hands also +the color of mould. She was delightfully happy getting into the earth +and the earth into her, and she looked it. Charlotte, coming on her +across the grass, thought her face was like a bloom the rest of her had +somehow made, as the earth was going to make red peonies. That is, I +think Charlotte thought something of this sort, though she would not +have put it in that way. Only she did have a great sense of Nan's entire +harmony with the garden bed and the garden bed with her. Charlotte had +other things on her mind, and she spoke without preamble: + +"D'you know what's happened over to Tenney's?" + +Nan got up from her knees, and her face was no longer the April-May face +she had bent above the peonies. + +"No," she said. "What is it?" + +"I see doctor go by this mornin' in his car," said Charlotte, "carryin' +Tira. In a couple of hours they come back. An' then he went by ag'in, +goin' down home. I was on the lookout an' stopped him. I was kind of +uneasy. An' he says: 'Yes, Mis' Tenney's baby's dead. She overlaid it,' +he says. 'They feel terribly about it,' he says. 'Tenney run away from +the services.'" + +Nan stood staring. She was thinking not only about the baby and the +Tenneys' feeling terribly--this Charlotte saw--but something farther +behind, thinking back, and thinking keenly. + +"I didn't say nothin' to nobody," Charlotte continued, "but the more I +thought on't the more stirred up I got. The baby gone, an' she there all +alone! So I run over. I knocked an' knocked, an' not a sound. Then, as I +was turnin' away, I got a glimpse inside the kitchen winder, an' if +you'll believe me there she set, hat an' all on, an' her hands full o' +daffies. You know them big double daffies always come up in their grass. +Well!" + +Nan threw down her trowel. + +"I'll go over," she said. "We'll both go." + +"What I come for," Charlotte hesitated, as they crossed the grass, "was +whether I better say anything to anybody." + +Nan knew she meant Raven. + +"No," she said, "Oh, I don't know! We can't tell till we see." + +Nan remembered she had not washed the earth off her hands, and yet, +though they were passing her door, she could not stop. When they came in +sight of the house, there was Tira in the doorway. She had taken off her +hat now, and there was no daffies in her hands. She looked so +commonplace, if her height and nobility could ever be less august, that +Nan felt a sudden drop in her own anxiety. Tira called to them. + +"Couldn't you come in a minute? I'd be pleased to have you." + +They went up the path, and when they stood at the foot of the steps, +confronting her, Nan saw how she had changed. And yet not tragically: +she was merely, one would have said, entirely calm, the stillest thing +in that pageant of the moving day. + +"I'd be pleased," she said, "if you'd walk in." + +She looked at Nan, and Charlotte at once turned away, saying, as she +went: + +"If there's anything--well, I'll be over." + +Nan and Tira went in, Nan holding Tira's hand in her earthy one. + +"Let's sit here," said Nan, crossing the room to the sofa between the +side windows. She was not sure of anything about this talk except that +she must keep her hand on Tira. She noticed that the double daffies, a +great bunch of them, were lying on the table. Tira was smiling faintly. +She drew a deep breath. It sounded as if she had been holding herself up +to something and had suddenly let go. + +"Seems good to set," she said. "I ain't hardly set down to-day +except----" She had it in mind to say except when she was in the car, +carrying the baby over to Mountain Brook, but it seemed too hard a thing +to say. + +"If you'd just lie down," said Nan, "I'd sit here." + +"No," said Tira, "I can't do that. I'm goin' over to Mountain Brook." + +"Not again? Not to-day?" + +"Yes, right off. I'm goin' to carry them daffies. He didn't have no +flowers, the baby didn't. I never thought on't--then. But he never had +none. He played with a daffy, 'most the last thing. I've got to git 'em +over there." + +"Not to-day, Tira," urged Nan. "You wouldn't get back till after dark." + +"I shouldn't come back to-night," said Tira. "The Donnyhills were real +good to me. They come to the grave. They'd admire to have me pass the +night." + +"Then," said Nan, "you wait till I go home and wash my hands, and I'll +ask Mr. Raven for his car and you and I'll go over. Just we two." + +"No," said Tira. "'Twouldn't do me no good to ride. When I've got +anything on my mind I can't do better'n walk it off. You let me be!" + +The last was a sharp, sudden cry, like the recoil from an unlooked-for +hurt. + +"I see," said Nan. "Yes, you must walk. I should want to, myself. But in +the morning, Tira--mayn't I come over after you?" + +Tira considered, her eyes on Nan's hand and her own clasped, lying on +Nan's knee. + +"Yes," she said, "you better. You come to the Donnyhills'. Yes, you +come." + +Then she considered again, and began one of her slow, difficult +meanderings, where the quickness of her heart and brain ran ahead of her +tongue's art to interpret them. + +"Seems if you knew," she said, "'most everything that's gone on." + +"Yes," said Nan, at a venture, and yet truthfully. "I think I've known." + +"An' now it's come to an end," said Tira. "Or if it ain't, it's on the +way to it. An' seems if you ought to know the whole. You're tough enough +to stan' up to 't." + +"Yes," said Nan simply, "I'm very tough. Nothing's going to hurt me." + +"I bring," said Tira, still with difficulty, "bad luck. Some folks do. +Folks set by me a spell. Then they stop. They think I'm goin' to be +suthin' they'd do 'most anything for, an' then they seem to feel as if I +wa'n't. An' there's no"--she sought for a word here and came out +blunderingly--"no peace nor rest. Nor for me, neither. I ain't had peace +nor rest. Except"--here she paused again and ended gravely, and not this +time inadequately--"in him." + +Nan understood. She was grave in her answer. + +"Mr. Raven," she said. "I know." + +The color flowed into Tira's face and she looked at Nan, with her +jewel-like eyes. + +"I'm goin' to tell you," she said, "the whole story. He's like--my God. +Anything I could do for him--'twould be nothin'. Anything he asked of +me----" + +Here the light faded out from her face and the flesh of it had that +curious look of curdling, as if with muscular horror. + +"But," she said, "here 'tis. S'pose it come on him, that--that"--she +threw back her head in despair over her poverty of words--"s'pose it +made him like----Oh, I tell you there's suthin' queer about me, there's +suthin' wrong. It ain't that I look different from other folks. I ain't +ever meant to act different. I swear to my God I've acted like a decent +woman--an' a decent girl--an' when I was little I never even had a +thought! You tell me. You'd know." + +Nan felt the hand on hers tighten. She put her other hand over it, and +thought. What could she tell her? These matters were too deep in the +causes of things for man to have caught a glimpse of them, except now +and then darkly through some poet's mind. There was one word that, to a +poet's mind only, might have illumined the darkness if only for an +instant: beauty, that was the word. Mankind could not look on beauty +such as this and not desire, for a moment at least, to possess it +utterly. But these things belonged to the dark places where brute nature +wrought her spells. And there were other beauties, other enchantments, +and of these, what could Tira, her mind moulded by the brutal influences +of her life, see, except as dreams of her own, not as having wholesome +correspondences in the mind of man? Could she guess what the appeal of +her loveliness would meet in Raven? Fastidious standards, pride of +honor, pride of race. The jungle, in itself, was as hateful to him as it +could be to her, who had been dragged through its fetid undergrowth with +a violence that had cut indelible marks into her. But for him, Raven--as +Nan believed she knew him and as Tira, her striving mind obscured by the +veil of her remembered past, could never know--hadn't the jungle +something for him beyond choking savors and fierce destructive poisons? +Didn't he know that even that miasma nourished wholesome virtues, +strength, abstinence, infinite compassion, if you crossed the horrible +expanse to the clear air beyond? Tira, fair as her mind was in its +untouched integrity, hated the jungle, but it was a part of the wrong +life had done her that she could not, highly as she worshiped Raven, +keep herself from seeing his kinship to the natural earth as Martin's +kinship with it, Tenney's--all the beasts who had desired her. How to +tell her that? How to tell her that although it was most loving of her +to save Raven from the curse she believed to be upon all men, he would +save himself? + +"They think," Tira continued, in a voice rough enough to hurt the ear, +"there's suthin' about me--different. An' they feel as if, if they owned +me body an' soul they'd be--I dunno what they'd be." + +"They think they'd be gods," Nan's mind supplied. "You are beauty, Tira. +You are the cup. They think if they could drink of you they would never +thirst again." + +"An' now," said Tira, "s'pose a man like--like him--s'pose it looked to +him some minute he never'd so much as expected--s'pose it looked to him +as if he'd be made if he owned me body an' soul. Well! That's easy, you +say. If I love him, what's my body an' what's my soul? Offer 'em to him, +quick. An' wouldn't I, if that was all? Wouldn't I?" + +She called it sharply, in an angry challenge. + +"Yes," said Nan quietly, "I know you would." + +"Well," said Tira, "what then? It wouldn't be any more"--her eyes, +glancing here and there in troubled search for help in her impossible +task of speech--"like them daffies over there. 'Twould be--mud." + +This, though it did not satisfy her, carried an ineffable loathing, the +loathing that had its seed in the pathway of her difficult life. + +"Now," she said, "you set by him, don't you?" + +"Yes," said Nan. + +"If 'twas your body an' soul, they'd be nothin' to you if he needed +'em." + +"Nothing." + +"An' you're goin' to stan' by him, an' if you marry away from him----" + +"Never mind that," said Nan. "What do you want me to do?" + +"I want you," said Tira, "to see what I mean. An' I want you to tell it +or not to tell it, as it seems best. An' if ever the time comes, when +it'll do him good to know I run away from him because he was my life an' +my soul an' my God, you tell him. An' if it ain't best for him to know, +you let it rest betwixt you an' me." + +"But, Tira," said Nan, "you're coming back?" + +Tira considered. + +"You see," she answered finally, "I've got my walkin' papers, as you +might say. The baby's gone. 'Twas the baby that made trouble betwixt his +father an' me. An' now there won't be no reason for my hidin' in the +shack up there or even passin' the time o' day with you, either of you. +An' that's a kind of a runnin' away, ain't it? Shouldn't you call it +runnin' away?" + +She smiled dimly, and Nan said: + +"Yes. But I shall come over to the Donnyhills' to-morrow." + +"Yes," said Tira, "so do. Now I'd better go." + +They got up and Nan put her hands on Tira's shoulders--and one hand was +numb from that iron clasp--and stood looking at her. Nan was not a +kissing woman, but she considered whether she should kiss her, to show +she loved her. She thought not. Tira's body had so revolted against +life, the life of the earth that had grown up into a jungle, that it +would be kinder to leave it inviolate even by a touch. + +"Don't you want to change your mind?" Nan asked. "Mayn't I get the car? +It's seven long miles, Tira." + +"Not the way I'm goin'," said Tira. There was a little smile at the +corners of her mouth. It was a kind smile, a mother smile. She meant to +leave Nan reassured. "I go 'cross lots, by old Moosewood's steppin' +stones." + +Nan withdrew her hands and thought absently how thin Tira's shoulders +were under her dress. She was like a ship, built for endurance and +speed, but with all her loveliness in the beauty of bare line. Tira put +on her hat and took up her daffodils and followed, out at the front door +and down the path. Nan looked back. + +"You've left the door open," said she. "Don't you want to lock up?" + +"No," said Tira, "he'll see to it." + +At the gate they parted, with a little smile from Tira, the kind that so +strangely changed her into something more childlike than her youth. + +"You come," she said, "in the mornin'. I shall be there, an' glad enough +to have you." + +She turned away and broke at once into her easy stride. Nan stood a +minute watching her. Then something came up in her, a surge of human +love, the pity of it all--Tira, Raven, the world, and perhaps a little +of it Nan--and she ran after her. The tears were splashing down her face +and blurring the bright day. + +"Tira!" she called, and, as she came up with her, "darling Tira!" + +"Why," said Tira, "you're cryin'! Don't you cry, darlin'. I never so +much as thought I'd make you cry." + +They put their arms about each other and their cheeks were together, wet +with Nan's tears, and then--Nan thought afterward it was Tira who did +it--they kissed, and loosed each other and were parted. Nan went home +shaken, trembling, the tears unquenchably coming, and now she did not +turn to look. + + + + +XLIV + + +Nan was very tired. She went to bed soon after dark and slept deeply. +But she woke with the first dawn, roused into a full activity of mind +that in itself startled her. There was the robin outside her window--was +it still that one robin who had nothing to do but show you how bravely +he could sing?--and she had an irritated feeling he had tried to call +her. Her room was on the east and the dawn was still gray. She lay +looking at it a minute perhaps after her eyes came open: frightened, +that was it, frightened. Things seemed to have been battering at her +brain in the night, and all the windows of her mind had been closed, the +shutters fast, and they could not get in. But now the light was coming +and they kept on battering. And whatever they wanted, she was +frightened, too frightened to give herself the panic of thinking it +over, finding out what she was frightened about; but she got up and +hurried through her dressing, left a line on her pillow for the maid and +went downstairs, out into a dewy morning. She had taken her coat, her +motor cap and gloves. Once in the road she started to run, and then +remembered she must not pass Tenney's running, as if the world were +afire, as things were in her mind. But she did walk rapidly, and +glancing up when she was opposite the house, saw the front door open as +Tira had left it, and a figure in one of the back rooms outlined against +the window of the front one where she and Tira had sat. That would be +Tenney. He must be accounting to himself for the lonesome house, though +indeed Tira would have left some word for him. When she went up the path +to Raven's door she was praying to the little imps of luck that Amelia +might not be the first to hear her. She tapped softly, once, twice, and +then Raven's screen came up and he looked down at her. They spoke a word +each. + +"Hurry," said Nan. + +"Wait," he answered, and put down the screen. + +When he came out, Nan met him on the top step where she had been +sitting, trying harder still not to be frightened. But he, too, was +frightened, she saw, and that this, to him also, meant Tira. + +"Get your coat," she said. "She's gone. Over to Mountain Brook." + +Raven's face did not alter from its set attention. + +"Yes," said Nan, "the car. I'll tell you the rest of it on the way." + +He got his coat and cap, and they went down to the garage together. +Shortly, they were slipping out of the yard, and she, with one oblique +glance, saw Amelia at a window in her nightie, and forgot to be +frightened for the instant while she thought Amelia would be accounting +for this as one of her tricks and compressing her lips and honorably +saying nothing to Dick about it. Raven turned down the road and Nan +wondered if she had even spoken the name of Mountain Brook. + +"Let her out," said she. + +Raven did let her out. He settled himself to his driving, and still he +had not questioned her. Nan turned her face to him and spoke incisively +against the wind of their going: + +"The baby died. Tira lay on it in her sleep. That was Monday. It was +buried yesterday. At Mountain Brook. Tira went back to Mountain Brook +yesterday afternoon, to carry the baby some flowers"--the moment she +said this she saw how silly it was and wondered why she had not seen it, +why she had been such a fool as not to be frightened sooner. "She said +she would spend the night with those Donnyhills." But had Tira thrown in +the Donnyhills to keep Nan from being frightened? + +Raven gave no sign of having heard. They were speeding. The east behind +them was a line of light, and the mists were clearing away. When they +turned into the narrow river road, the gray seemed to be there waiting +for them, for this was the gorge with the steep cliff on one side and +the river on the other, always dark, even at midday, with moss patches +on the cliffs and small streams escaping from their fissures and +tumbling: always the sound of falling water. + +"The Donnyhills?" Raven asked. "Don't I remember them? Sort of gypsy +tribe, shif'less." + +"Yes, that's it. She must have known them when she lived over there, +before she married." + +"That's where we go, is it?" + +"No," said Nan, and now she wondered if she could keep her voice from +getting away from her. "Stop where the cross cut comes out! Old +Moosewood's stepping stones. She was going to cross by them, where old +Moosewood----" There she stopped, to get a hand on herself, knowing she +was going to tell him, who knew it before she was born, the story of +Moosewood, the Indian, found there dead. + +If the stab of her disclosures drew blood from Raven she could not have +told. The road was narrower still, and rougher. Nan had forgotten where +the stepping stones came out. He was slackening now. She knew the curve +and the point where the cliff broke on the left, for the little path +that continued the cross cut on the other side of the road. He got out +without a glance at her, stepped to the water side of the roadway, and +she followed him. And it was exactly what her fear had wakened her to +say. There was no sign of Tira, but, grotesquely, her hat was lying on +one of the stepping stones, as if she had reckoned upon its telling +them. Raven ran down the path and into the shallow water near the bank, +and again Nan followed him, and, at the edge of the water, stopped and +waited. When the water was above his waist, he stooped, put down his +arms and brought up something that, against the unwilling river, took +all his strength. And this was Tira. He came in shore, carrying her, and +walking with difficulty, and Nan ran up the bank before him. He laid +Tira's body on the ground, and stood for an instant getting his breath, +not looking at her, not looking at Nan. + +"It's over," he said then quietly. "It's been over for hours." That was +the instant of reaction, and he shook himself free of it. "Where do they +live?" he asked Nan brusquely. "Yes, I know. We'll take her there. I'll +hold her. You drive." + +He lifted Tira again, put her into the car as if a touch might hurt her, +and sat there holding her, waiting for Nan. And Nan got in and drove on +to the Donnyhills'. + +All that forenoon was a madness of haste and strangeness. It is as well +to look at it through the eyes of Nan, for Raven, though he seemed like +himself and was a model of crisp action, had no thoughts at all. To Nan +it was a long interval from the moment of stopping before the little +gray Donnyhill house (and rousing more squalid Donnyhills than you would +have imagined in an underground burrow of wintering animals), through +indignities they had to show Tira's body, the hopeless effort of rousing +it again to its abjured relations with an unfriendly world. And while +they worked on the tenant-less body, the Donnyhill boy, a giant with a +gentle face, said he could drive, and was sent with Raven's car to the +farmer who had a telephone, and the doctor came and Nan heard herself +explaining to him that she woke up worried over Tira, because Tira had +spoken of the stepping stones. The doctor shook his head over it all. +The woman had been almost beside herself after the child's death. +Perfectly quiet about it, too. But that was the kind. Nan didn't think +she had any intention--any design?--and Nan hastened to say Tira had +told why she was going, told it quite simply. She had forgotten to give +the child any flowers. Of course, that did show how wrought up she was. +And there were the stepping stones. They were always tricky. Here the +doctor brought up old Moosewood, and said there were queer things. When +you came to think of it, New England's a queer place. Suicide? No! +Inquest? No! He guessed he knew. Then he went away and promised to send +the other man who would be the last to meddle with the body of Tira. + +The Donnyhill house was still, for all the children, with consolatory +chunks of bread in hand, had been sent off into the spacious playing +places about them. Mrs. Donnyhill, who looked like a weather-worn gypsy, +went about muttering to herself passionately sorrowful lamentations: +"God help us! poor creatur'! poor soul!" and she and Nan bathed Tira's +body--somehow they were glad to wash off the river water--and put on it +a set of clothes Nan suspected of being Mrs. Donnyhill's only decent +wear. For the folded garments were all by themselves in the bedroom +bureau, and it was true that the women in this region had forethought +for a set to be buried in. When this was over and before the coming of +the other man who was to have rights over Tira's body, Mrs. Donnyhill +remembered Raven and Nan might not have breakfasted, and gave them bread +and strong tea--brewed over night, it seemed to have been. They ate and +drank, and she moved about tucking children's tyers and sweaters into +holes of concealment and making her house fitting for Tira's majesty, +all the time muttering her pleas to God. + +About noon, when Tira was lying in the front room, in her solitude, no +more to be touched until she was put into her coffin, Raven came in from +his steady walk up and down before the house and went to Nan, where she +sat by the window in the other front room. The strength had gone out of +her. She sat up straight and strong, but her lips were ashen. As they +confronted each other, each saw chiefly great weariness. Raven's face, +Nan thought, was like a mask. It was grave, it was intent, but it did +not really show that he felt anything beyond the general seriousness of +the moment. + +"Get your things," he said to her. "We'll go back. Tenney's got to be +told, and I suppose Charlotte or somebody will have to do something to +his house." + +They both knew the strange commotion attendant here on funerals. +Sometimes houses were upturned from top to bottom and cleaned, even to +the paint. Nan put out a hand and touched his arm. + +"Don't do that, Rookie," she said, "don't take her back there. She +mustn't go into that house again. She wouldn't want it." + +Raven considered a moment. His face did not lose its mask-like calm. + +"No," he said then, "she mustn't. She must come to my house--or yours." + +"No," said Nan again, still keeping her hand on his arm, and aching so +with pity that she was humbly grateful to him for letting her touch his +sleeve, "she mustn't do that either. It would be queer, Rookie. It would +'make talk.' She wouldn't like that. Don't you see?" + +He did see. He gave a concurring motion of the head and was turning away +from her, but Nan rose and, still with her hand on his arm, detained +him. + +"We'll leave her here," she said. "That woman--she's darling. We can +make up to her afterward. But you mustn't appear in it again, except to +tell Tenney, if you'd rather. Though I could do that. Now, let's go." + +He was ready. But when he had reached the little entry between this room +and the one where Tira's body lay, she ran to him. + +"Rookie," she said, "Mrs. Donnyhill's out there with the children. Don't +you want to go in and see Tira?" + +Raven stood for a minute, considering. Then he crossed the entry and +Nan, finding he could not, for some reason, put his hand on the latch, +opened the door for him, and he went in. But only a step. He stood +there, his eyes on the poor bed where Tira lay, and then, as if he were +leaving a presence, he stepped back into the entry, and Nan understood +that he was not even carrying with him the memory of her great majesty +of beauty. She thought she understood. Even Tira's face was to be left +covered. She was to be inviolate from the eyes of men. In a few minutes +he had brought round the car, Nan had arranged things with Mrs. +Donnyhill, and they drove out into the day--blazing now, like +midsummer--and so home. And all the way they did not speak, until, +passing Tenney's, the door open and the house with a strange look of +being asleep in the sun, Nan said: + +"Leave me here. I'll see him and then go on." + +Raven did not answer. He drove past, to her own gate, and Nan, +understanding she was not to move further in any direction, got out. +Raven, perhaps feeling his silence had been unmerciful to her, spoke +quietly: + +"Run and get a bath and a sleep. I'll see him. I'll come for you if +you're needed." + +He turned the car and drove back, and Nan went in to her waiting house. +Raven stopped before Tenney's and, since the front door was open, halted +there and knocked. No answer. Then he went round to the side door and +knocked again, and called out several times, and the sound of his voice +brought back to him, like a sickness, the memory of Tenney's catamount +yell when he had heard it that day in the woods. No answer. The house +was asleep and a calf blared from the barn. He went back to the car, +drove home, and found Jerry waiting in the yard and Charlotte at the +door. Dick was in his chair down under the trees, his mother beside him, +reading. It was so unusual to see Amelia there that Raven wondered +idly--not that it mattered--he could meet a regiment of Amelias with +this callousness upon him--if Dick had beguiled her away so that she +might not pounce on him when he returned. He got out of the car stiffly. +He was, he felt at that instant, an old man. But if physical ineptitude +meant age, Jerry and Charlotte were also old, for Jerry was bewildered +beyond the possibility of speech and Charlotte shaken out of her calm. + +"You come into the kitchen," she said, and Raven followed her, and sank +into a chair, set his elbows on the table, and leaned his head in his +hands. He was very tired, but Mrs. Donnyhill's boiled tea was inexorably +keeping him up. Charlotte, standing above him, put her hand on his +shoulder. + +"Johnnie," she said, "Isr'el Tenney's been here. He wants you to give +him back his gun." + +"Oh," said Raven, taking his head out of his hands and sitting up. "His +gun?" + +"He says," Charlotte continued, her voice shaking, "Tira's run away. I +told him the last I see o' Tira was yesterday afternoon standin' in her +own door, an' he asked if she had her things on an' I didn't know what +to say. An' he said somebody down the road said you went by 'fore light, +drivin' like blazes. An' you had a woman in the car. An' Tira'd run +away." + +Raven was looking up at her, a little smile on his lips, but in his eyes +such strange things that Charlotte caught his head to her and held it +against her breast. + +"Yes," he said, "yes, Charlotte, Tira has run away. She went yesterday, +over to Mountain Brook. She tried to cross the stepping stones. She's +over at the Donnyhills' now. She's going to stay there till she's +buried. I'll go and tell him. Where do you think he is?" + +Charlotte still held his head against her warm heart. + +"You don't s'pose," she whispered, "you don't believe she done _that_?" + +"What?" he answered, and then her meaning came to him as his first hint +of what Tira might have done. He drew himself away from the kind hand +and sat up straight. "No," he said sharply. "It was an accident. She +never meant"--it had come upon him that this was what she had meant and +what she had done. But it must not be told of her, even to Nan. "Where's +Tenney?" he said. "Where do you think he is?" + +Charlotte hesitated. + +"He's up there," she said, after a moment while Raven waited, "up to the +hut. He said he's goin' to git his gun out o' there if he had to break +an' enter. He said he see it through the winder not two days ago. An' +Jerry hollered after him if he laid hand to your property he'd have the +law on him. Jerry was follerin' on after him, but you went by in the car +an' I called on him to stop. O Johnnie, don't you go up there, or you +let Jerry an' me go with you. If ever a man was crazed, that man's +Isr'el Tenney, an' if you go up there an' stir him up!" + +"Nonsense!" said Raven, in his old kind tone toward her, and Charlotte +gave a little sob of relief at hearing it again. "I've got to see him +and tell him what I've told you. You and Jerry stay where you are. +Tenney's not dangerous. Except to her," he added bitterly to himself, as +he left the house. "And a child in its cradle. My God! he was dangerous +to her!" And Charlotte, watching from the window, saw him go striding +across the road and up the hill. + +Raven, halfway up, began to hear an unexpected sound: blows, loud and +regular, wood on wood. When he had passed the turning by the three firs +he knew, really before his eyes confirmed it. Tenney was there at the +hut, and he had a short but moderately large tree trunk--almost heavier +than he could manage--and was using it as a battering ram. He was +breaking down the door. Raven, striding on, shouted, but he was close at +hand before Tenney was aware of him and turned, breathless, letting the +log fall. He had actually not heard, and Raven's presence seemed to take +him aback. Yet he was in no sense balked of his purpose. He faced about, +breathless from his lifting and ramming, and Raven saw how intense was +the passion in him: witnessed by the whiteness of his face, the burning +of his eyes. + +"I come up here," said Tenney, "after my gun. You can git it for me an' +save your door." + +Raven paid no attention to this. + +"You'd better come along down," he said. "We'll stop at my house and +talk things over." + +This he offered in that futile effort the herald of bad news inevitably +makes, to approach it slowly. + +"Then," said Tenney, "you hand me out my gun. I don't leave here till I +have my gun." + +"Tenney," said Raven, "I've got bad news for you." + +"Yes," said Tenney blankly. "She's run away. You carried her off this +mornin'. You don't need to tell me that." + +"I didn't carry her off," said Raven, speaking slowly and clearly, for +he had a feeling that Tenney was somehow deaf to him. "Tira went over to +Mountain Brook yesterday. Nan knew she was going, and this morning she +was worried, because she got thinking of Tira's crossing the stepping +stones. She asked me to take her over there. We found her. She was +drowned." + +Tenney's eyes had shifted from Raven's face. The light had gone out of +them, and they clung blankly to the tree spaces and the distance. + +"Have it your own way," said Tenney, in as blank a tone. "Settle it +amongst ye." + +"We shall go over to-morrow," said Raven. "Will you go with us?" + +"No," said Tenney. + +"Drownded herself," he said, at length. "Well, that's where it led to. +It's all led to that." + +"She slipped," said Raven roughly. "Don't you understand? Anybody could, +off those wet stones." + +"You open that door," said Tenney, "an' gimme my gun." + +But Raven went on talking to him, telling him quietly and reasonably +what they had judged it best to do, he and Nan. If Tira had wanted the +baby buried over there by her mother, wouldn't she want to be buried +there herself? + +"Very well, then. We'll arrange things. The day after"--he could not +bring himself to put the bare ceremonial that would see her out of the +world into the words familiar to the country ear--"that will be the day. +We shall go over. We'll take you with us." + +"No," said Tenney, "you needn't trouble yourselves. I sha'n't go over +there. Nor I sha'n't keep nobody else from goin'." + +By this Raven judged he meant that he would not interfere with their +seeing Tira out of the world in their own way. The man had repudiated +her. It was a relief. It seemed to leave her, in her great freedom, the +more free. + +"Come down now," said Raven, "to my house. We'll have something to eat." + +That was all he could think of, to keep the stricken creature within +sound of human voices. + +"I ain't hungry," said Tenney. "An' if I was"--here he stopped an +instant and a spasm shot across his face--"she left me cooked up." + +"All right," said Raven. "Then you go home now, and later in the day +I'll come over and see if you've thought of anything else." + +He believed the man should not, in his despairing frame of mind, be left +alone. Tenney turned, without a look at him, and went off down the +slope. Raven watched him round the curve. Then he took out the key from +under the stone, remembering it need never be put there again, went in +and locked the door. Suddenly he felt deadly sick. He went to the couch, +lay down and closed his eyes on the blackness before them. If he had a +wish, in this infinitude of desolation, it was that he might never open +them again on the dark defiles of this world. It was dusk when he did +open them, and for a minute he had difficulty in remembering why he was +there and the blow that had struck him down to such a quivering +apprehension of what was coming next. Then, before he quite found out, +he learned what had waked him. There was a voice outside--Tenney's +voice, only not Tenney's as he had known it--whimpering, begging in a +wild humility: + +"You there? You let me in. You there? For God's sake let me in." + +Raven was at once clearly awake. His mind was, after its interlude of +darkness, ready. He got up, and opened the door. + +"Come in," he said. "Yes, leave the door open. I've been asleep. It's +close in here." + +Tenney came in, not so much limping as stumbling. He seemed to be +shorter in stature. His head was bent, his body had sagged together as +if not a muscle of it had strength to do its part. Raven pulled forward +a chair, and he sank into it. + +"What do you s'pose," he began--and the voice was so nearly a whimper +that Raven was not surprised to see tears on his cheeks--"what do you +s'pose I wanted my gun for? To use on you? Or him? No. On me. But I +don't know now as I've got the strength to use it. I'm done." + +This was his remorse for the past as he had made it, and Raven had no +triumph in it, only a sickness of distaste for the man's suffering and a +frank hatred of having to meet it with him. + +"You know," said Tenney, looking up at him, sharply now, as if to +ascertain how much he knew, "she didn't do it. The baby wa'n't overlaid. +God! did anybody believe she could do a thing like that? She slep' like +a cat for fear suthin' would happen to him." + +"What," asked Raven, in horror of what he felt was coming, and yet +obliged to hear, "what did happen to him?" + +Tenney stretched out his hands. He was looking at them, not at Raven. + +"I can't git it out o' my head," he continued, in a broken whisper, +"there's suthin' on 'em. You don't see nothin', do you? They look to +me----" + +There he stopped, and Raven was glad he did not venture the word. What +had Raven to say to him? There seemed not to be anything in the language +of man, to say. But Tenney came alive. He was shaking with a great +eagerness. + +"I tell you," he said, "a man don't know what to do. There was +that--that--what I done it to--he wa'n't mine." + +He looked at Raven in a hunger of supplication. He was almost dying to +be denied. + +"Yes," said Raven steadily. "He was yours." + +"How do you know?" shrieked Tenney, as if he had caught him. "She talk +things over?" + +Raven considered. What could he say to him? + +"Tenney," he said at last, "you haven't understood. You haven't seen her +as she was, the best woman, the most beautiful----" + +Here he stopped, and Tenney threw in angrily, as if it were a part of +his quarrel with her: + +"She was likely enough. But what made her," he continued violently, +"what made her let a man feel as if her mind was somewheres else? Where +was her mind?" + +That was it, Raven told himself. Beauty! it promised ineffable things, +even to these eyes of jealous greed, and it could not fulfil the promise +because everything it whispered of lay in the upper heavens, not on +earth. But Tenney would not have heard the answer even if Raven could +have made it. He was broken. He bent his head into his hands and sobbed +aloud. + +"Good? 'Course she was good. Don't I know it? An' she's gone. An' +me--what be I goin' to do?" + +Somehow Raven understood that he was not thinking of his desolate house +and lonesome mind, but of himself in relation to the law he had broken +and the woman's heart, broken, too. Grotesquely almost, came to his mind +Tira's grave reminder: "He's a very religious man." And Tenney seemed to +have come, by some path of his own, round to the same thing. + +"If there was a God----" + +"Oh, yes," Raven threw in, moved by some power outside himself, "there +is a God." + +"If there was," said Tenney, "he couldn't forgive me no more'n He could +Cain. There's _that_ on my hands. When there's that----" + +He stopped before the vision of the man God had scourged into exile for +the shedding of blood. To Raven there was suddenly a presence beside +them: not a Holy Presence, such as they might well have invoked, but Old +Crow. And he remembered how Old Crow had eased the mind of Billy Jones. + +"Tenney," he said, "don't you remember what Tira believed in? She +believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. She believed He could forgive sins." + +"Do you believe it?" Tenney hurled at him. "Can He forgive--that?" + +Again he stretched out his hands. + +"Yes," said Raven. "He can forgive that." + +"An' I be," Tenney continued, in his scriptural phrasing, "whiter than +snow?" + +Raven found himself halting. There were, behind this vision of the +symbol by which God made Himself manifest to man, reserves of strict +integrities. + +"Tenney," he said, "you've killed a child. Your child. You're a +criminal. The only thing you can do to get back among men is to give +yourself up. To the law. And take your medicine." + +"O my God!" cried Tenney. "Tell it? Tell that? Bring it up afore judge +an' jury how I thought----" + +"Don't tell me what you thought," said Raven sharply. "You've said it +once. You were crazy, and you killed your child." + +"An' what if----" he began, and Raven finished for him: + +"What if they hang you? We can't go into that. There's your first step. +Give yourself up." + +The next instant he was sorry for the brutality of this. But Tenney did +not find it brutal. Strangely it seemed to him a way out, the only way. +He was brooding. Suddenly he looked up. + +"You told me," he said, apparently in wonder, "you didn't believe." + +What to say? "I believe in God Who is letting me--tenderly, oh, with +such pity for my human foolishness--seize whatever crutch I can to help +you over this dark mortal way?" Could he say that? No, it was true, but +somehow it couldn't be said. + +"Yes," he answered gravely, "I believe." + +"Then," said Tenney eagerly, "you pray with me." + +Raven, thinking on this afterward, knew he did pray, in what words he +never could recall, and that the substance of it was Forgiveness: +Forgive our sins. And that when he had finished Tenney completed his +faltering close with "For Christ's sake. Amen!" And that because Tenney +looked at him for confirmation, he, Raven, repeated it after him, humbly +and with sincerity. And when, shaken both of them beyond the possibility +of speech, they rose from their knees, they heard a voice outside, Nan's +voice: + +"Rookie, let me in." + +Raven opened the door, and found her there, and Dick was with her. + +"You shouldn't have come up here," he said to Dick. "You're not supposed +to climb hills." + +"He had to," said Nan. "I came up and listened and I heard voices. So I +went back again and asked Charlotte for sandwiches. And Dick would come. +But I carried the basket." She had gone past him into the room and was +unpacking food. "No, Mr. Tenney, you stay. They're for you, too. We're +all tired out, you know. Let's keep together all we can. We're so +lonesome. Tira! but she's the only one that isn't lonesome. _She's_ gone +to heaven. Look! hot coffee, too. Now you eat, both of you. There's +nothing like grub." + +In the midst of this, Dick had gone round the table and put out his hand +to Tenney and said: + +"H' are you, Tenney?" and Tenney, dazed, had given his. + +Raven found he was hungry and began to eat, and Nan somehow saw to it +that Tenney also ate. And Raven, at least, felt in the breath of the +spring night, something ebbing there in the hut. What was it: waves of +wild human turmoil finding a channel where they could flow equably? Nan +and Dick went out on the veranda while the two finished, and Raven noted +the murmur of their voices and wondered a little, idly, whether they +were better friends--lovers or only better friends. Presently Nan was +back again. She brushed up their crumbs and packed the dishes into the +basket. + +"Now, Mr. Tenney," she said, "this is what we've done. When I found you +were both up here, I had Jerry go over and get your cows. He milked and +I strained the milk. I locked up the house, too. Here's your key. What +makes you go back to-night? It'll be easier by daylight. Rookie, +couldn't he sleep up here?" + +"Yes," said Raven, "of course he can. We'll be down to breakfast, tell +Charlotte." + +Tenney offered no preference or opinion. He sat there, his key--the key +Tira had lost, he did remember vaguely--on the table before him. Nan, +with the air of there being no more to do, wafted Dick away with her. +And Raven and Tenney spent the night together in the hut. Raven did not +sleep. He had an impression that Tenney did not, either. It seemed to +him a watch with the dead. + + + + +XLV + + +In that darkest minute when it seems as if dawn will never come or, if +it does, to bring with it a deeper chill, Raven, for the first time in +weeks, found his old enemies upon him: the fear of life, the terrible +distaste for continuance in a world where there is no escape, even in +going on. Was this grief for Tira? Her needs had pulled him out from his +own sickness of mind, and now that she would never need anything again, +must he return to the dark dwelling of his mental discontent and crouch +there whimpering as Tenney had whimpered when he came to him here a few +hours ago? And slowly, achingly, his mind renewedly accepted the iron +necessity which is living. There was no giving up. There was no escape. +He had to live because the other choice--was it the fool's choice or the +coward's?--was not only unthinkable, but it did no good. There was no +escape. And side by side with the sickness of distaste for life as he +found it, was another distaste, as strong: for this malady of nostalgia +itself. He could not abide it another instant. It was squalid, it was +unclean, and he found his mind crying out: "Help me! for God's sake help +me!" But it was not to God he cried. It was to Old Crow. And Old Crow +heard. Indubitably he heard. For there was an answer. "Yes! yes!" the +answer kept beating in his mind. He would help. + +And what of Tira? Was she resolved into the earth that made her? Or +would she also help? He wondered why she had died. Was it because she +had been unable to face the idea of the little boy who was not right +taking his maimed innocence into some other state alone? No. Tira had +her starkly simple faith. She had her Lord Jesus Christ. She would, as +simply as she believed, have trusted the child to Him. Did she so fear +to face her life with Tenney--the hurtling, blind, elemental creature +with blood on his hands--that she took herself away? No. Tira was no +such person. There was a wild, high courage in her that, the more +terrible the challenge, responded the more valiantly. Why did she take +herself away? And what was she in these walls that had been dedicated to +her safety? Was she existent, like Old Crow? Was she here with Raven +when his mind clamored for peace? Did she, too, answer "Yes, yes!" She +had, he concluded, gone. It seemed as if she had withdrawn herself, by +her own will, for some inexorable reason. He remembered threnodies that +saw the beloved dead absorbed into the course of nature: the dawn, the +sunset, the season's round, the flowers that spring ever renewed to deck +the laureate hearse. And as his mind sought her in the night breeze that +came in to fan him and Tenney alike, in the sky where the stars, through +arboreal spaces, never looked so piercingly bright, he did seem to be +aware of an actual intelligence. But it was assuredly not Tira and it +was not Old Crow. It was Anne. + +Whether his mind had been so occupied by these other more immediate +things that she could not get the connection between her will and his, +whether she now found him, bereft of Tira, free to do her unchanged +bidding, he could not see. But Anne was there. At least, the knowledge +of her was in his mind, insisting on being heard, and insisting as it +never had in this present life. For whereas then her attack had been +subtly organized, Anne herself, the directing general, behind almost +invisible potencies of suggestion and finesse, now here she was in the +open, plainly commanding him, as if this might be the only fight she +should be able to manage, and it must be to the finish. And what she +wanted was plain obedience touching the disposal of her trust. It was +not his love she was asking for now. That, he concluded, though without +bitterness, might not look desirable to her any more. Or perhaps she had +learned how futile it was to ask it. Or, indeed, was all love futile +beyond the grave? No, for he loved Tira withdrawn into her impenetrable +seclusion--but that he must not think of. The fight was on, the +conclusive fight with Anne. And he seemed to be battling for the +integrity of his own soul, the freedom of his will. He sat up on his +couch, and heard himself say aloud: + +"No. I won't do it. You can't make me." + +Was this the way to speak to Anne, to whom all the reticences and +delicacies of life were native air? But she was not Anne now so much as +the enemy of sane conduct here in this world and of his struggling will. + +"D'you speak?" called Tenney from the next room. + +"All right," said Raven, and realized he must not speak again. + +Thereafter the fight with Anne went on within the arena of his mind. He +poured himself forth to her. For the first time in his life, he admitted +her to his inner beliefs and sympathies. He would not, he told her, +devote her money to the debasing of the world. Wherever she was, she had +not learned a page more than she had known when she wrote that letter to +him about the things that help the world and the things that hinder. He +didn't believe, he told her, she really wanted to learn. She wanted only +to be obeyed, to put her money where she had ordered it to go merely +because she had ordered it. + +"You can't have it, Anne," he repeated, whenever his mind halted in +argument, and she kept pressing him back, back into his old hopeless +subserviency. "I'll tell you where it's going. It's going to France. +There won't be any palace, Anne. It's going into the land. It's going to +help little French boys and French girls to grow up with time enough and +strength enough to put their beautiful intelligence into saving the +earth. It's going to be that sort of a bulwark between them and the +enemies of the earth. And that's the only road to peace. Don't you see +it is, Anne? Don't you see it? You won't get peace by talking about it. +You wasted your money when you did it, all through war-time. You harmed +and hindered. Don't you know you did? If you don't, what's the use of +dying? Don't they know any more there than we do here? Anyway, I know +more than you did when you made your will, and that's what I'm going to +do. Train up beautiful intelligences, Anne, the ones that are likeliest +to work it all out practically: how to live, that's what they're going +to work out, how to live, how to help the world to live. Don't you see, +Anne? For God's sake, don't you see?" + +She didn't see, or, if she did, she was too angry to give him the +comfort of knowing she did. But suddenly, in the midst of her anger, +there was a break, a stillness, though it had been still before. Perhaps +it was most like a stillness of mind, and he felt himself as suddenly +awake to a certainty that Anne had done with him. Once before she had +seemed to leave him, but this time it was for good. She had gone, +wherever the road was open to her. He had armed his will and sent it out +to fight her will. She was routed, and she would never challenge him +again. Perhaps, in her scorn, she had repudiated him. Perhaps the world, +if it were called on to pronounce judgment, would repudiate him for +betraying a dead woman's trust. Well, let it. The impeccability of his +own soul wasn't so very valuable, after all, weighed against what he saw +as the indisputable values of mortal life. He lay back on his bed, +exhausted by the fight, foolishly exhausted because, he told himself, +there hadn't been any real Anne. Only her mind, as he had known it, and +his own mind had been grappling, like two sides of an argument. But +while he tried to dull himself with this denial of the possibilities +beyond our sense, he knew underneath that there had been Anne. And she +had gone. She would not come again. + +Then he must have slept, for there was a gulf of forgetfulness, and when +his eyes came open, it was on Tenney standing there in the doorway. +Raven felt squalid after the night in his clothes, and Tenney looked to +him in much the same case. Also Tenney was shrunken, even since he had +come to the hut the day before, and then he had seemed not +three-quarters of his height. He asked now, not as if he cared, but as +if he wondered idly: + +"D' I leave my ammunition up here?" + +He had the gun in his hand. + +"Let the gun alone," said Raven. He got up and took it away from him, +and Tenney dumbly suffered it. "We'll go down now and have some +breakfast, and Jerry'll do your chores." + +"I can do my own chores," said Tenney. "I can go into the barn, I +guess." + +By this Raven understood that he did not mean to go into the house. +Perhaps he was afraid of it. Men are afraid of houses that have grown +sinister because of knowing too much. + +That day was a curious medley of watchfulness over Tenney: for Raven +felt the necessity of following him about to see he did himself no harm. +He called him in to breakfast, but Tenney did not even seem to hear, and +stood brooding in the yard, looking curiously down at his lame foot and +lifting it as if to judge how far it would serve him. Then Charlotte, +who had been watching from the window, went out and told him she had a +bite for him in the shed, and he went in with her at once and drank +coffee and ate the bread she buttered. He didn't, so he told her, want +to touch things any more. So she broke the bread and he carried the +pieces to his mouth with an air of hating them and fearing. When he went +over to his house, Raven went with him, and, finding Jerry had milked +and driven the cows to pasture, they stood outside, miserably loitering, +because Tenney had evidently made that resolve not to go in. + +"I suppose," said Raven, after a little, to recall him, "the milk is in +there." + +"Yes," said Tenney. "I s'pose 'tis." + +"It isn't strained, you know. What do you mean to do about it?" + +"Do?" said Tenney. "Let it set." + +Again they loitered, back and forth, sometimes on one side of the +woodpile, sometimes the other, each with a pretense of finding the +woodpile itself a point of interest. Suddenly Tenney ceased his foolish +walk up and down. + +"Look here," said he, "should you jest as lieves go in?" + +"Yes," said Raven. "Only you'd better come with me. Get it over. You've +got to go into your own house." + +"What I want," said Tenney, "is a blue apron, blue with white specks. I +don't believe it's there, but if 'tis I want it." + +To Raven, this was not strange. It was Tira's apron he wanted, something +that belonged to her, to touch, perhaps to carry about with him as a +reminder of the warmth and kindliness that lay in everything she owned. +Blue! that was her Madonna color. No wonder Tenney remembered it, if it +was blue. + +"It ain't hangin' up," said Tenney, with a particularity that seemed to +cause him an intense pain of concentration. "She never'd hang it up with +t'others. It's folded. Mebbe in her work-basket, mebbe--my God in +heaven! she wouldn't ha' kep' it. She's burnt it up. You take off the +cover o' the kitchen stove. You look there an' see if you can't find the +leastest scrid. Blue, you remember, all folded up." + +Raven went into the kitchen where the pails of milk were on the table, +waiting. He took off the stove cover and looked in, still an idle +compliance, to quiet the man's mind. It was like an outcome to a dream. +For there it was, a soft disorder easily indicating burned cloth, and +one shred of blue, a piece perhaps an inch and a half square, hemmed on +three sides: the end of an apron string. He took this carefully out, and +stood there looking at it a tense moment, as if it could summon Tira +back to tell him what it meant; look out his pocketbook, laid it in, and +put the pocketbook away. Then he went back to Tenney. + +"You were right," he said. "She burned it up." + +Tenney stared at him for what seemed a long time. + +"Oh," he said, as if it had been Raven who suggested it, "so she burnt +it up. Wa'n't there any left--not a scrid?" + +"Yes," said Raven, "there was. What do you want of it?" + +"Nothin'," said Tenney. "No, I don't want it. If 'twas the whole on't I +shouldn't want it, come to think. A man couldn't hang himself by an +apron. Even that one you couldn't. I guess"--he turned upon Raven so +sick a gaze that Raven advanced to him and put a hand on his arm--"I +guess," said Tenney, "I'm done. I've got to git some sleep. Should you +jest as soon I'd go up to that shack o' yourn an' lay down a spell?" + +Again they went up to the hut, and Tenney, throwing himself on the +couch, was at once asleep. All that day Raven watched by him, and that +night also they were there together: a strange day and night, Raven +remembered afterward, with Charlotte coming and Nan and finally Dick, +all with food or wistful companionship, and Nan's assuring him, in her +way of finding nothing out of the common, that everything had been done +for Tira, and she would go over to the service. Charlotte would go with +her. It would be better--her eyes questioned him, and he nodded, not +answering. It would be better he should not go. On the third day she +appeared again, in the middle of the afternoon, and said she had just +come from Mountain Brook and everything was----That she did not finish, +Tenney's somber eyes waited upon her with such a dumb expectancy. What +was going to be done, she wondered. Tenney couldn't stay in the hut, +keeping Raven there with him, as Billy Jones had kept Old Crow. Yet she +wasn't sure Raven wouldn't stay. But while she thought it, Tenney was +answering her, though he didn't seem to be speaking to either of them. +He might have been appealing to something invisible in the room. + +"I'll shave me," he said, "an' then I'll see." Something passed over him +like a great moving wind. "Why, God A'mighty!" he cried. "I can't stop +to shave me. It's now or never, don't you know 'tis?" + +He snatched his hat from the chair where he had thrown it, and went out +of the hut, limping down the hill. And Raven was with him. He was with +him as he hurried along the road so fast that it seemed as if the next +step meant breaking into a run. He was with him when, halfway to the +street, Eugene Martin passed them, in his buggy, stopped further on and +called to them: "Ride?" He was not laughing now, he was not jibing. He +seemed to be constrained to ask them to ride, they were hurrying so. +Raven threw a curse at him, but Tenney broke into a limping run and +jumped into the tail of the wagon and sat there, his legs dangling. And +he called so piercingly to Martin to drive along, to "Hurry, for God's +sake, hurry!" that Martin did whip up, and the wagon whirled away, and +Raven hurried on alone. + +That night, at eight o'clock, Nan went over to ask if Raven had come +home, and finding he had not, loitered back to her own gate and waited. +She could not go in. If she kept her mind on him, he might come. And +presently he came. She walked to meet him and put her hand through his +arm. He was walking firmly, but he looked "all in." + +"Come," she said. "Supper's waiting." + +"No," said Raven, "not yet. I got a fellow to bring me back from the +street. Dick said you'd been over." + +"Yes," said Nan. "I was horribly worried. Where's Tenney?" + +"Gone." + +"Where?" + +"To jail. He had Martin take him to a man he knew about at the street. +Sworn in special constable in the War. Had him telephone the sheriff. +Then I got there. Had to inquire round, to find out where he'd gone. +When I went in, Tenney was sitting there telling the sheriff he'd killed +his child. Sheriff asked what for. Said he had to do it. Then I came in +and he began to ask me questions about the Lord Jesus Christ." + +"But, Rookie," said Nan, "he didn't. He couldn't. Tira told me she----" + +"Yes," said Raven heavily. "You may be called to testify." + +"But when he asked that," said Nan, "about----" she hesitated. + +"About the Lord Jesus Christ? It was whether his sins were whiter than +snow." + +"What did you tell him?" + +"Oh," said Raven, "I told him yes. If he was sorry, they were. Of course +I told him yes. What could I tell him? But I don't believe I'd have told +Martin yes, if he'd asked me about his sins. He's scared blue. He was +there at the gate when I went in. Shook like a palsy, kept saying he +didn't know--didn't think--nobody need ask him----" + +"What did you say, Rookie?" + +"Nothing. I went in to Tenney. Now I'll go back." + +"You won't come in and have a bite? Nice supper, Rookie. Saved for you." + +"No. Not to-night." He turned away from her as if she were as actually +the outside shell of herself as he was of himself. They were mechanical +agents in a too terrible world. But he called back to her: "Nan, I've +told her." + +She was at his side, hoping for more, perhaps a touch of his hand. + +"Anne. I got word to her somehow. She understood." + +"Was she----" Nan paused. + +"Yes," said Raven. "But it's over--done." + +He turned away from her and went fast along the road home. He had, she +saw, escaped Aunt Anne. He had got himself back. Did his quick steps +along the road say he meant to escape her, too? That was easy. Darling +Rookie! he should if he wanted to. + + + + +XLVI + + +The story ends, as it began, with a letter. It was written by Raven, in +Boston, to Dick, in France, about a year after Tenney gave himself up. +The first half of it had to do with accounts, money paid over by Raven +to Dick, requisitions sent in by Dick to Raven, concise statements of +what Raven judged it best to do in certain contingencies Dick had asked +instructions upon. Then it continued on a new page, an intimate letter +from Raven to the nephew who was administering the Anne Hamilton Fund. +The previous pages would be submitted to the two Frenchmen, who, with +Dick, formed the acting board. These last pages were for Dick alone. + +"No, Tenney wasn't even indicted. There was the whirlwind of talk you +can imagine. Reminiscent, too! 'Don't you remember?' from house to +house, and whenever two men met in the road or hung over the fence to +spit and yarn. It was amazing, the number of folks who had set him down +as 'queer,' 'odd,' all the country verdicts on the chap that's got to be +accounted for. Even his religion was brought up against him. The chief +argument there was that he always behaved as if the things he believed +were actually so. He believed in hell and told you you were bound for +it. But I can't go into that. They couldn't, the ones that tried to. +They got all balled up, just as their intellectual betters do when they +tackle theology. All this, of course, began before you went away, and it +continued in mounting volume. If you want New England psychology, you +have it there, to the last word. That curious mixture of condemnation +and acceptance! They believed him capable of doing things unspeakable, +and yet there wasn't a public voice to demand an inquiry as to whether +he really had done them. They cheerfully accepted the worst and believed +the best. And it's true he had behaved more or less queer for a long +time, wouldn't speak to people when he met them, didn't seem to know +them, and then suddenly breaking out, in the blacksmith's shop or buying +his grain at the store, and asking if they were saved. The women were +the queerest. They said he set his life by the child. Why, he couldn't +even bear to go to the funeral of his wife or the child either, and +hadn't they seen him and Tira drivin' by, time and again, the baby in +Tira's lap, in his little white coat and hood? I don't know how many +times I heard the evidence of that little white hood. Even Charlotte +caught it and plumped it at me. + +"You remember yourself how disgusted the authorities were when he +trotted about like a homeless dog and insisted on being arrested for a +crime they knew he didn't commit. Poor old Tenney! they said, any man +might be crazed, losing his wife and child in one week. They were very +gentle with him. They told him if he hung round talking much longer he'd +be late for his planting. Of course the doctor did set the pace. He'd +told, everywhere he went, how Tira had sent for him at once, and how she +had said she had, in that hideous country phrase, 'overlaid' the child. +One interesting psychological part of it has persisted to this day: the +effect Tira had on the doctor, his entire belief in her simple statement +which she was never asked to swear to. (You remember there was no +inquest.) He never, he said, was so sorry for a woman in his life. He +seems to have been so determined to prove her a tragic figure that he +wouldn't for a moment have the disaster lightened by denying her that +last misfortune of having done it herself. Lots of these things I +haven't told you, they're so grim and, to me now, so wearing. They've +got on all our nerves like the devil, and I fancy even the Wake Hill +natives are pretty well fed up with 'em. At first they couldn't get +enough. When Tenney couldn't get the law to believe in him so far as to +indict him, the embattled farmers took it on themselves to cross-examine +him, not because they thought for a minute he was guilty, but because +they itched to hear him say so: drama, don't you see? And he never +wavered in asserting he did it: only when they asked him how, he just +stared, and once told a particularly smart Alec, he guessed it was a +man's own business how he killed his own child. And he stayed up in the +hut, just as he was doing when you went away, and night after night I +had to stay with him. Stuck to me like a burr and wore me threadbare +asking if he was forgiven, and if that didn't mean he was whiter than +snow. I tell you, Dick, it was all so involved that I believe, although +he used the set phrases about the Lord Jesus Christ, he really believed +it was I that had forgiven him. He used to ask me to tell God to do it +for my sake; and I remembered Old Crow and how he played up to Billy +Jones, and, if you'll believe it, I _did_ ask God (though not for my +sake!), and horrible as it is, grotesque as it is (no, by George, it +isn't grotesque to speak to a man in the only language he can +understand! he wanted God and he couldn't any more reach Him! he had to +climb up on another man's shoulders), well, I told him it was all right. +He was forgiven. Then he scared me blue by saying he was going round +preaching the gospel--his farm is sold, you know, stock gone, everything +wiped out--and I told him he'd proved too dangerous to be let loose on +the world again. But he had me there. He asked if he was forgiven, why +wasn't he whiter than snow? And he hung to me like my shadow, and asked +if he couldn't keep on living in the hut, till he felt strong enough to +preach. I told him he could, and blest if I didn't see him and me there +together, world without end, like Old Crow and Billy Jones, for nothing +was ever going to persuade him to let go of me again. You'd better +laugh, Dick. Nan and I had to. We almost cried. It is funny. I bet Old +Crow laughed. But Tenney saved me. He took it into his own hands. And +what do you think did it? We went down to the house one morning for +breakfast, and Charlotte came out to meet us, tying on a clean apron. It +was blue with white spots (I forgot you don't see any significance in +that, but Tenney did) and he stopped short and said: 'God A'mighty! I +was in hopes I never should set eyes on a woman's apron again.' + +"I went up to have a bath (my staying at the hut was a kind of emergency +business, you see) and he disappeared, and Charlotte and Jerry didn't +get on to it that he was really gone, and later on he was seen wading +into the water over at Mountain Brook, there by the stepping stones. The +Donnyhills saw him, and at first they thought he knew what he was about, +but kept on watching him. He stooped and dipped himself, and they had an +idea it was some kind of a self-conducted baptism. I believe it was. Nan +often has to remind me that 'he's a very religious man.' But they +watched, and presently he went under, and they knew then he was making +way with himself, and the Donnyhill boy, that calm young giant, fished +him out, Tenney fighting him furiously. And it began to look to me as if +he ought to be under a mild supervision (it wasn't for nothing you and +your mother let fly at me with your psychiatry! I escaped myself, but I +learned the formula). And now Tenney, agreeing to it like a lamb, is at +that little sanitarium Miss Anne Hamilton started 'up state,' and very +well contented. Nan goes to see him, and so do I. He is as mild--you +can't think! Reads his Bible every minute of the day when he isn't doing +the work they give him or converting the staff. + +"You'll say he's insane. I don't know whether he is or not. I don't know +whether they'll say so, the psychopathic experts they've let loose on +him. I simply think he found the difficulties of his way too much for +him and he revolted. He tried to right the balance of some of the most +mysteriously devilish inequalities a poorly equipped chap ever found +himself up against (strange forces that struck at him in the dark) and +being ignorant and at the same time moved by more volts of energy than +even the experts will be able to compute, he took the only path he saw, +slam-bang into the thick of the fight. As to his spouting his Bible like +a geyser--well, if he believes in it as the actual word of God, a word +addressed to him, why shouldn't he spout it? And if it tells him that, +after certain formulae of repentance, his sins shall be whiter than +snow, why shouldn't he believe that and say so with the simplicity he +does? All the same, I don't think he's exactly the person to wander at +large, and I've no idea what will happen when his good conduct and +general mildness come it over the psychiatrists. I grin over it +sometimes, all by myself, for I remember Old Crow and Billy Jones and I +wonder if the logic of inherited events is going to herd Tenney and me +together into the hut to live out our destiny together. But I don't +think so, chiefly because I want to keep my finger in this pie of the +French Fund and because it would distress Nan. Distress you, too, I +guess! And me! + +"Now, as to Nan. You gave it to me straight from the shoulder, and I've +got to give you one back. I agree with you. There's no hope for you. +She's enormously fond of you, but it's not _that kind_. And Nan's +old-fashioned enough to insist on that or nothing. I was so meddlesome +as to bring it up with her before you went away. She put me in my place, +told me practically it was nobody's business but hers--and yours--and +that she'd already talked it out with you and that you're a 'dear' and +you 'saw.' So, old man, as you say, that's that. _Finis._ But when, +after I've butted in, you butt in and accuse me of not 'seeing,' so far +as I myself am concerned, of holding her off, of being unfair to her, +all the rest of it (very intemperate letter, you must own) I've got to +give you your quietus as Nan gave me mine. First place, you say, with a +cheek that makes my backbone crawl, that Nan 'loves' me. (Do you really +want to be as Victorian as that, you slang-slinging young modern? But I +know! You think I mightn't catch on to your shibboleths and you borrow +what you judge to be mine, give me the choice of weapons, as it were.) +And you're a trump, Dick! Don't think I don't know that, and if I poke +fun at you it's to keep from slopping all over you with the Victorian +lavishness you'd expect. What did we ever fight for about your youth and +my age? Or wasn't it about that, after all? Was it really about--Nan? + +"Well, when it comes to 'love', I do love Nan. There you have it, good +old-fashioned direct address. She is as immediate to me as my own skin +and veins. She always has been. She began to grow into me when she was +little, and she kept on growing. There are fibers and rootlets of Nan +all through me, and the funny part of it is I love to feel them there. I +can't remember being dominated by anybody without resenting it, wanting +to get away--escape! escape!--but I never for an instant have felt that +about Nan. She's the better part of me. Good Lord! she's the only part +of me I take any particular pleasure in or that I can conceive of as +existing after I join Old Crow. (Not that I'm allowed to take much +pleasure in her now. She sees me when I call, answers when I consult her +about the Fund--and she's been tremendously sympathetic and valuable +there--but she seems to feel and, I've no doubt, for very good reasons, +that we're better apart. She has, I believe, a theory about it; but we +needn't go into that. And I don't quarrel with it.) + +"The queer part of it is that I feel Nan herself couldn't break the bond +between us, couldn't if she tried. It's as deep as nature, as actual as +Old Crow. I can give you a curious proof of it. I might be almost +swamped by somebody--yes, I mean Tira. I might as well say so as hear +you saying it over this letter--somebody that is beauty and mystery and +a thousand potencies that take hold on nature itself. But that doesn't +push Nan away by an inch. If I'm swamped, Nan's swamped with me. If I +mourn the beauty and the piteousness withdrawn, Nan mourns, too. It's +Nan and I against the world. But it isn't Nan and I with the world. The +world is against us. Do you see? For I'm a year older than when I saw +you last. And though many of the things you felt about the years weren't +true, a lot of 'em were, and they're a little truer now. And one of them +is that I've got to give Nan a fighting chance to mate with youth +and--oh, exactly what you've got. I wish you had her--no, I'm damned if +I do. I may not be young enough for jealousy, but I am unregenerate +enough. I probably mean I wish I wished it. For in spite of my revolt +against the earth, I'd like to give Nan the cup, not of earth sorceries +but earth loveliness, and let her swig it to the bottom. And then, if +Old Crow's right and this is only a symbol and we've got to live by +symbols till we get the real thing, why, then I'm sentimental +enough--Victorian! yes, say it, and be hanged!--to want to believe Nan +and I shall some time--some time----Anyhow, I'm not going to ask her to +spend her middle years--just think! 'figure to yourself!'--when Nan's +forty, what will your revered uncle be? + +"Now I've told you. This is the whole story, the outline of it. And why +do I tell you instead of merely inviting you to shut up as Nan did me? +Because if you retain in your dear meddlesome head any idea that Nan, as +you say, 'loves' me, you're to remember also that Nan is not in any +sense an Ariadne on a French clock, her arm over her head, deserted and +forlorn. You are to remember I adore her and, if I thought we could both +in a dozen years or so perish by shipwreck or Tenney's axe (poor +Tenney!) I should get down on my knees to her and beg her (can't you +hear our Nan laugh?) to let me marry her. (Probably she wouldn't, old +man--marry me, I mean. We're seldom as clever as we think, even you. So +there's that.) But, in spite of my erratic leanings toward Old Crow-ism +and sundry alarming dissatisfactions with the universe, I still retain +the common sense to see Nan, at forty, worrying over my advancing +arteriosclerosis and the general damned breaking up of my corporeal +frame. Not on your life. Now--shut up! + +"Yes, your mother continues to be dissatisfied over your being there. +She thinks it's all too desultory, but is consoled at your being +mentioned in the same breath with 'two such distinguished Frenchmen.' I +tell her you can't stop for a degree, and maybe if you follow out your +destiny you'll get one anyway, and that, if you still want to write +books, this will give you something to write about. But she doesn't mind +so much since she's gone into politics, hammer and tongs." + +Now this letter reached Richard Powell in the dingy office in Paris, +where he happened to be in consultation with his two advisers who were, +with an untiring genius of patience and foresight, interpreting to him +daily the soul of France. He went over the first part of the letter with +them, article by article, point by point, very proud, under his +composure, of their uniform agreement with the admirable Monsieur Raven. +And after their business session was concluded and the two Frenchmen had +gone, Dick addressed himself to the last part of the letter, given in +these pages. He bent himself to it with the concentration that turns a +young face, even though but for the moment, into a prophetic hint of its +far-off middle age. If he had kept enough of his shy self-consciousness +to glance at himself in the glass, he would have been able to smile at +the old fear of what the years might do to him. No heaviness there, such +as he remembered in his father's face: only trouble, pain, and their +mysteriously refining tracery. But the heaviness was in his heart. He +had to understand the letter absolutely, not only what it said but all +it implied. If it actually meant what he believed it to mean at first +reading, it drew a heavy line across his own life. Nan had drawn the +line before, but this broadened it, reenforced it with a band of black +absolutely impossible to cross. And it did mean it, and, having seen +that, without a possibility of doubt, he enclosed the letter in an +envelope, addressed it to Nan, and leaned back in his chair, never, he +believed, to think it over again, never so long as he and Nan lived. +There was no residuum of sentiment in his mind as there was in Raven's +that, after Nan had finished with this life, according to her own ideas, +there might be hope of another Nan bloomed out of this one somewhere +else and another Dick, risen out of his ashes, to try his luck again. +No, the line across the page was the line across their lives, and, said +Dick: "That's that." But he caught his breath, as he said it, and was +glad there was no one by to hear. Anybody who heard would have said it +was a sob. He was, he concluded, rather fagged with the day. These +confounded Frenchmen, with their wits you couldn't keep up with, they +took it out of you. + +This was why Raven, in Wake Hill, on the morning the letter came to Nan +in Boston, got a telegram from her, saying: "Come back." He had gone +there to stay over a night, after a few hours' visit with Tenney, who +was eagerly glad to see him, and again begging to be confirmed in his +condition of spiritual whiteness. Raven had just got to his house when +the message was telephoned up from the station, and its urgency made him +horribly anxious. He had been especially aware of Nan all day. Little +threads of feeling between them had been thrilling to messages he +couldn't quite get, as if they were whispers purposely mysterious, to +scare a man. He was on edge with them. They quickened the apprehension +the message brought upon him overwhelmingly. She never would have +summoned him like that if she hadn't needed him, not a word by +telephone, but his actual presence. He had Jerry take him back again to +the station, and in the late afternoon he walked in on Nan waiting for +him in one of the rooms Anne Hamilton had kept faithful to the +traditions of bygone Hamiltons, but that now knew her no more. It was +Nan the room knew, Nan in her dull blue dress against the background of +pink roses she made for herself and the room, Nan white with the pallor +of extreme emotion, bright anxiety in her eyes and a tremor about her +mouth. She went to him at once, not as the schoolgirl had run, the last +time she offered her child lips to him, but as if the moment were a +strange moment, a dazzling peak of a moment to be approached--how should +she know the way to her heart's desire? + +"What is it, dear?" asked Raven, not putting her off, as he had the +schoolgirl, but only unspeakably thankful for the bare fact of having +found her safe. "What's happened?" + +"I had to tell you straight off," said Nan, "or I couldn't do it at all. +He sent me your letter--Dick. The one about me." + +Raven was conscious of thinking clearly of two things at once. He was, +in the first place, aware of the live atoms which were the letter, +arranging themselves in his mind, telling him what they had told Nan. He +was also absently aware that Nan's face was so near his eyes it was +nothing but a blur of white, and that when he bent to it, the white ran, +in a rush, into a blur of pink. + +"So Dick sent it to you," he said. "Well, God bless him for it. Kiss me, +my Nan." + + * * * * * + +By Alice Brown + + The Prisoner + My Love and I + One Act Plays + The Black Drop + Vanishing Points + Robin Hood's Barn + Children of Earth + Homespun and Gold + The Flying Teuton + The Road To Castaly + Louise Imogen Guiney + Bromley Neighborhood + The Secret of the Clan + The Wind Between the Worlds +P/ + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Crow, by Alice Brown + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CROW *** + +***** This file should be named 31372.txt or 31372.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/3/7/31372/ + +Produced by David Clarke, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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