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?"