Old Crow Part 22

"Nan," he said, "you saw her."

She nodded, slid off the rock and stood there, not looking at him. Of course she saw her, Nan's inner self was answering. Didn't they meet face to face? But she knew this was but his beginning and she would not challenge it. He plunged into the turmoil of Tira's affairs, foreign to him so short a time ago and yet his.

"She's the wife of the man who bought the old Frye place, next to yours.

He's jealous of her, has fits of insane rage against her and she has to get out. One day I found her hiding up here in the woods. I told her, whenever she had to make tracks to come here to the hut, and build a fire and stay. I leave the key under the stone."

"Yes," said Nan. "I see."

"No, you don't," cried Raven, "or you wouldn't look like that. What is it you don't see? What is it you don't like? Out with it, Nan."

Nan said nothing, and suddenly he saw she was trembling. It was in her lips, it must be all over her, because he could see it in her hands, the tight shut ball of them under her long sleeves.

"Now," he said, irritated beyond measure by the unkindness of circ.u.mstance, "what is it I haven't made clear? Don't you like her?

Don't you believe in her? Or don't you take any stock in what I tell you?"

"Of course I believe you," said Nan quietly. He could see her relax. "As for liking her--well, she's beautiful. I agree with you perfectly there."

But he had not said she was beautiful. That he did not remember.

"She is, isn't she?" he agreed. "And so--Nan, she's the strangest creature you ever saw in your life. I suppose I could count up the words she's spoken to me. But the queer part of it is, I know they're all true. I know she's true. I'd stake----" there he paused.

"Yes," said Nan quietly. "I've no doubt she's true. And she's a very lucky woman."

"Lucky?" repeated Raven, staring. "She's the most unfortunate creature I ever saw. Lucky! what do you mean by that?"

"Well," said Nan, and now she spoke with an edge in her voice, "what's she going to do about it? She's in danger of her life, you say." He nodded absently, his mind going back to that word, lucky. "She's afraid of her husband, afraid he'll kill her."

"Not so much that as afraid he'll kill the child."

"Well, then, isn't she going to leave him?"

"No. She won't."

"Have you asked her?"

"Oh, yes," said Raven. "I asked her at once. I told her I'd send her away from here, find her something to do: just what anybody'd say in a case like that."

"And she wouldn't let you?"

"She wouldn't let me."

"Why not?" asked Nan. "Does she--love the brute?"

She might have flicked a lash across his face and his nerves winced under it. There was, she saw, in his mind, something disparaging to the woman in coupling her with a softness misplaced.

"I don't know," he said, with a thoughtful precision. "Sometimes I think she's all mother: doesn't care about anything but the child. I know she's square, knew it at once, but that doesn't mean I know any more about her. She's a locked door to me."

His tone was low, but it told Nan how he wished the door would open and let him in to persuade her to her own well-being. She looked at him a moment, as he stood staring down at his feet where a ragged wisp of yellowed brake came through the snow, looked as if he hurt her beyond endurance, and yet she had to probe ill circ.u.mstance to its depths. Then she spoke, but in her old voice of childlike gentleness toward him:

"I see. I really believe, Rookie, I do see."

He looked up at her in a palpable relief.

"That's a good girl," he said. Again she was half child to him. "You'll take a hand, too, won't you?"

That was more than she had bargained for. She would believe in the mysterious woman and leave him free to carry out any mission, however sophistical or chivalrous, he would. But she had not expected to enter the arena with him and defend the martyr thrown to the wild beast of marital savagery. Raven felt her recoil.

"I can't do anything for her," he pursued, with a discouragement she read. "Anything real, that is. I can give her the shelter of the hut, but he'll find that out some day and go crashing in. I can't be there always. Fact is, I can't be there at all."

"Yes," said Nan. "I see." There was in her voice a sweetness new to him.

"I'll do anything you say, Rookie, to make your mind easy. What do you want me to do. Take her away from here?"

He considered a moment. Yes, that was really what he did want. She had put the words into his mouth.

"But," said Nan practically, "what you've got to do now is to go down to the house and be tried for your life. Your sister'll be there something after two. And d.i.c.k. And the alienist."

Raven shrugged his shoulders as if he shook them free of a burden.

"I don't care anything about the alienist," he said. "Nor d.i.c.k. I do care a lot about Amelia. She's an awful bore. But it can't be helped.

Come on down."

"You know," said Nan tentatively, as they took the road, "we could ask Charlotte for a luncheon and go off over the mountain. You've got snowshoes, haven't you?"

Raven shook his head.

"You can't foil Amelia," he said, "by running away from her. She'd camp for the winter. Or she'd get on our trail and follow us. No, we've got to see it through."

XVI

At the house they found Charlotte, in a silent alertness, making ready for the guests whom Nan, before going up to the hut, had announced to her. She was systematically refusing to be flurried, but Raven knew that Amelia, with her rigid conventions and perilous activity, was a disquieting guest. Remembering that, he took the incident with an ostentatious lightness, and Nan followed his lead. Presently Charlotte's kind face relaxed, and when they saw she was continuing her preparations with a less troubled brow, Raven took Nan upstairs to the great west room made ready for his sister with a fire roaringly active. There he installed her, and when she reminded him that the room had been wakened from its winter drowse to this exhilaration for Amelia, he bade her "hush up and stay put." Two facts were paramount: she was the first comer and this was the best room. But, Nan said, she wasn't going to stay over night. She should get the six o'clock back to Boston. Raven might here have reflected that, if she had merely the fact of Amelia's coming to break to him, she could have done it by telephone. Was there something in the unexpectedness of finding him immersed in the problem of Tira that had overthrown her preconceived plan? Had she, finding him absorbed in a new a.s.sociation, lost immediate interest in the drama she had mischievously meant to share?

"I take it for granted," she said, "you'll let Jerry carry me to the station."

"No," said Raven, impishly determined, "you're going to stay. You'll borrow nighties and things from Amelia."

"Seethe the kid in its mother's milk?" inquired Nan, her own impishness flashing up, irresistible. "Come up here to undermine her and then borrow her things?"

"Seethe the kid in its own tooth paste," said Raven. "Yes, you're simply going to stay. It's foreordained. Actually you came up here to help me out in more ways than one."

"Did I?" she asked, and reflected. She had one of her moments of clever guesswork over him. Rookie was a simple proposition. She could always, she had once boasted to him, find him out. And reaching about for the clue, suddenly she had it and proclaimed it in triumph.

"I've got it. Your farmer's wife! you want me to do something, something she won't let you do. It's what we said. You want me to take her back with me."

"Yes," he said. "Just that."