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."