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.