Old Crow Part 35

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 Hamps.h.i.+re 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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. d.i.c.k 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 ap.r.o.n, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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. d.i.c.k 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!"