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.