Old Crow Part 33

"Tira," said he, "I believe you're not quite bright."

"No," said she simply, with no apparent feeling, "I guess I ain't. 'Most everybody's told me so, first or last."

It sobered him.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn't mean that. I'm off my head a little. I'm so worried, you see. I want to know you're safe. You're not safe. It isn't easy to accept that--to lie down under it."

Usually he had spoken to her in the homespun phrasing he instinctively used with his country neighbors, but the last words were subtly different to her, they were more distant, and she accepted them with a grave humility.

"Yes, sir," she said, and Raven awoke to the irritating knowledge that she was calling him "sir." He smiled at her and she realized that, as mysteriously as she had been pushed away, now she was taken back.

"So," he said, "you won't go down to Nan's and spend the night?"

She shook her head, watching him. Little as she meant to do what he told her, she wanted less to offend him.

"Then," said Raven, "you'll stay here. I'll bring in some more blankets, and you lie on the couch. You'll have to keep an eye on the fire. Don't let it go down entirely. It can get pretty cold."

He got up, lighted a candle and went into the bedroom for the blankets.

Tira followed him and silently took the pair he gave her, came back to the couch and spread them carefully, not to waken the child. He followed with more and, while she finished arranging her couch, piled wood on the fire. For a moment he had an idea of announcing that he would stay and keep the fire up while she slept. But even if she submitted to that, she would be uneasy. And she was a hardy woman. It would not hurt her to come awake, as he knew she could, with the house-guarding instinct of the woman trained to serve.

"There," he said, beating the wood-dust from his hands, "now lock me out. Remember, you're not to go back there to-night. You owe that to me.

You've given me bother enough."

But his eyes, when hers sought them timidly, were smiling at her. She laughed a little, happily. It was all right, then.

"You ain't mad," she said, half in shy a.s.sertion, following him to the door.

"No," he said gravely. "I'm not mad. I couldn't be, with you. I never shall be. Good night."

He opened the door, went out and waited an instant to hear the key click behind him and ran plunging down the snowy road. Once on the way he looked up at the mysterious stars visible in the line of sky above the track he followed. Deeper and deeper it was, the mystery. He had given her a G.o.d to adore and keep her protecting company. He who did not believe had wrought her faith out of his unbelief. When he turned into the road, he thought he saw someone under the porch of his house and hurried, his mind alive to the chance of meeting Tenney, searching for her. The figure did not move and as he went up to the house a voice called to him. It was Amelia's.

"O John, is that you? I can't see how you can leave the house alone to go wandering off in the woods and never saying a word."

There she was in her fur coat, not so much frightened, he thought, as hurt. She was querulous with agitation.

"All right, Milly," he said, and put an arm through hers, "here I am.

And the house isn't alone. Don't get so nervous. Next thing you know, you'll have to see a specialist."

"And Charlotte's gone," she lamented sharply, allowing him to march her in and turning, in the warm hall, to confront him. "Here I've been all alone."

"Where's Jerry?"

Raven had thrown off his hat and coat and frankly owned himself tired.

"In the kitchen. But he won't tell where Charlotte is. He says she's gone up along."

"Well, so she has, to a neighbor's. Come into the library and get 'het'

through before you go to bed."

"And," she lamented, letting him give her a kindly push toward the door, "I've got to pack, myself, if Charlotte doesn't come."

"Pack?" He stared at her. "You're not leaving?"

"Yes, John." She said it portentously, as bidding him remember he might be sorry when she was no more. "I'm going. d.i.c.k has telegraphed."

"Anything the matter?"

"That's it. I don't know. If I did, I could decide. He orders me, simply orders me, to take the early train. What do you make of it?"

Raven considered. Actually, he thought, d.i.c.k was carrying out his benevolent plan of getting her back, by hook or crook.

"I don't believe I'd worry, Milly," he said, gravely, "but I think you'd better go."

"Yes," she said, "that's it. I don't dare not to. Something may be the matter. I've tried to telephone, but he doesn't answer. I must go."

XXII

Raven always remembered that as the night of his life, up to this present moment, the mountain peak standing above the waters of his discontent. The top of the mountain, that was what lifted itself in an island inexpressibly green and fair above those sullen depths, and on this, the island of deliverance, he was to stand. After he had reasoned Amelia into her room and persuaded her to leave her packing till the morning, he went up to his own chamber, mentally spent and yet keyed to an exhausting pitch. He was excited yet tired, tied up into nervous knots without the will to loose them. What sense in going to bed, when he could not sleep? What need of reviewing the last chapter of his knowledge of the woman who was so compelling in her helplessness and her childlike faith? He would read: something silly, if he had it at hand.

The large matters of the mind and soul were not for this unwilling vigil; and at this intruding thought of the soul he smiled, remembering how glibly he had bartered the integrity of his own to add his fragment to the rising temple of Tira's faith. He had strengthened her at the expense of his own bitter certainties. It was done deliberately and it was not to be regretted, but it did open a window upon his private rect.i.tude. Was his state of mind to be taken so very seriously, even by himself? Not after that! Lounging before his book-shelves in search of a soporific, suddenly he remembered the mottled book. It flashed into his mind as if a hand had hurled it there. He would read Old Crow's journal.

Settled in bed, the light beside him and the mottled book in his hand, he paused a thoughtful minute before opening it. Poor old devil! Was this the jangled record of an unsound mind, or was it the apologia for an eccentricity probably not so uncommon, after all? Foolish, he thought, to leave a record of any sort, unless you were a heaven-accredited genius, entrusted with the leaves of life. Better to recognize your own atomic insignificance, and sink willingly into the predestined sea. He opened it and took a comprehensive glance over the first page: an oblong of small neat handwriting. Many English hands were like that. He was accustomed to call it a literary hand. Over the first date he paused, to refer it back to his own years. How big was he when Old Crow had begun the diary? Seven, that was all. He was a boy of seven years, listening with an angry yet fascinated attention to the other boys talking about Old Crow, who was, they said, luny, love-cracked. He never could hear enough about the terrifying figure choosing to live up there in the woods alone, and who yet seemed so gentle and so like other folk when you met him and who gave you checker-berry lozenges. Still he was furious when the boys hooted him and then ran, because, after all, Old Crow was his own family. And with the first words, his mind started to an alert attention. The words were to him.

"I am going to write some things down for the boy," Old Crow began, in the neat-handed script. "He is a good little boy. He looks like me at his age. I had a kind of innocence. He has it, too. If he should grow up anything like me, I want him to have this letter"--the last word was crossed out and a more formal one subst.i.tuted--"statement. If he thinks about things anyways different from what the neighbors do, they will begin to laugh at him, and try to make him believe he is not in his right mind."

Over and over, through the first pages of the book, there were grammatical lapses when Old Crow, apparently from earnestness of feeling, fell into colloquial speech. This was always when he got so absorbed in his subject that he lacked the patience to go back and rewrite according to rules he certainly knew but which had ceased to govern his daily intercourse.

"He must remember he may be in his right mind, for all that. If one man thinks a thing, it might be true if forty thousand men think different.

The first man that thought the earth was round, when everybody else thought it was flat, was one man. The boy will be told I was crazy. He will be told I was love-cracked. I did want Selina James. She was a sweet, pretty girl and high-headed, and the things some folks thought of her were not so. But she was the kind that takes the world as it was made and asks no questions, and when I couldn't take it so and tried to explain to her how I felt about it, she didn't know any way but to laugh. Perhaps she was afraid. And she did get sick of me and turned me off. She married and went away. I was glad she went away, because it is very hard to keep seeing anybody you thought liked you and find they didn't, after all. It keeps reminding you. It was after that time I built me the hut and came up here to live.

"Now the boy will hear it was on account of Selina James that I came up here, but it is not so, though it well might have been. It was about that time I began to understand what a hard time 'most everybody is having--except for a little while when they are young, and sometimes then--and I couldn't stand it. And I thought how it might not be so if everybody would turn to and help everybody else, and that might be the kingdom of heaven, the same as we read about it. And then one day I went out--I was always going round the fields and woods, kind of still, because I liked to come on little animals living their own lives in their own way--and I came to the open spot up above the hut where there are the old apple trees left from the first house the Ravens lived in, on the back road, before the other road went through. And on one of the lower limbs of the apple tree was a robin and she was making that noise a robin makes when she is scared 'most to pieces, and on another limb there was a red squirrel, and he was chattering so I knew he was scared, too. And down under the tree there was a snake pointed right at a little toad, and I stamped my foot and hollered to scare him away; and that same minute he struck and the toad fell over, whether poisoned to death or scared to death I didn't know. And the snake slipped away, because he was afraid of me, just as the toad was afraid of him. And the bird smoothed down her feathers and flew away, and the squirrel run along where he was going. They had got off that time, and I suppose the next minute they forgot all about it. But I never forgot. It was just as if something had painted a picture to show me what the world was. It was full of fear. Everything was made to hunt down and kill everything else, except the innocent things that eat gra.s.s and roots, and innocent as they be--as they are--they are killed, too. And who made it so? G.o.d. So what peace could I have--what peace could anybody ever have--in a world where, from morning till night, it is war and murder and the fear of death? And what good is there in trying to bring the kingdom of heaven down to men? You can't bring it to the animals. What if you could die for men? A good many have done that besides Jesus Christ. But who is going to die for the animals? And the animals in captivity--I saw a bear once, in a cage, walking up and down, up and down, and moaning. I saw a polar bear once trying to cool himself on a cake of ice. I saw an eagle with his wings clipped. An eagle ought to be up in the air. And all that could be done away with, by law, if men would see to it. But even then (and this is the strangest part of it, the part that won't bear thinking about) it is not only that men are unmerciful to the animals, but the animals, when they are hungry, are unmerciful to one another. I shall come back to this.

"Now about Jesus Christ. I hate to write this because, if the boy does not see things as I do, maybe it will be bad for him to read it, and he may think I am blaspheming holy things. I pray him to remember I write in earnestness and love, love for him, for the earth and for the animals. I want to tell him things look very black to me. When I think how I felt over losing Selina James it seems to me as nothing compared with the way I feel about the way the world is made. For it is all uncertainty and 'most all pain. It seems to me it is not possible for anything to be blacker than the earth is to me. I wake in the morning with a cloud over me, and when I go to bed at night the cloud is there.

It settles down on me like--I don't know how to say what it is like--and I call out, up here alone in the woods. I call to G.o.d. I remember how He made the earth and I ask Him why He had to do it so. Over and over I ask Him. He does not answer. He can't. I suppose that is what it is to be G.o.d. You have to make a thing a certain way, and after it is done they have to take it, the men and the animals, and do the best they can with it. And one night when I was calling to G.o.d, there was a scream of an animal--a little animal--just outside, and I knew an owl had got him.

And I covered my ears, for it seemed as if that was G.o.d's answer to me, and I didn't want to hear any more. I even thought--and I tell the boy this so that if he has thoughts that frighten him he will have the comfort of knowing somebody has thought them before--I thought that scream was G.o.d's answer. It was a good many months before I could pray again, even to ask G.o.d why.

"Now about religion. A great many people go to church and find comfort in it, and they come home and eat meat for their dinners, meat killed--they don't know how it is killed. Sometimes it is killed the best you can and sometimes not. They don't seem to think about that.

They have done their duty and gone to church, and they go out to feed the animals they are going to kill when they are fat enough, and sometimes the animals will be killed the best they can and sometimes not. And if they think about their sins, they quiet themselves by thinking Christ has taken them on His own shoulders. And so, unless somebody they love has died, or they are poor or disappointed, they say it is a very pleasant world, and they ask for another slice of beef and plan what they will do Monday, now Sunday is so far along. Now if the boy is that kind of a boy, let him be like those people who do the best they can without questioning. Let him do the best he can and not question. But if he is different, if he has to think--sometimes I am sure he will have to, for I cannot help seeing he looks out of his eyes like me. His eyes are terrible to me, for they are always asking questions, and that is what Grandmother Raven used to say to me. She used to say: 'You are always asking questions with your eyes. Stop staring and ask your questions right out.' But I couldn't. As long ago as that, I knew my questions hadn't any answers.

"Now if the boy begins to ask himself questions about Jesus Christ, whether He is the son of G.o.d, and whether He could take on Himself the sins of the world, I want to tell him that I am sure it is not so. I want the boy to remember that n.o.body can take away his sins: n.o.body but himself. He must accept his punishments. He must even go forward to meet them, for through them alone can he learn how to keep away from sin. And I want him to regard the life of Jesus Christ with love and reverence, and make his own life as much like it as he can. But I want him to remember, too, that G.o.d made him as he is, and made his father and mother and all the rest back to the first man, and that there is no guilt of sinfulness upon man as a race. There is only the burden of ignorance. We live in the dark. We were born into it. As far as our knowledge of right and wrong goes, so far are we guilty. But He has made us as we are, and if there is guilt, it is not ours."

As Raven read this, he found himself breathing heavily in the excitement of knowing what it cost the man to write so nakedly for casual eyes. To that elder generation, trained in the habit of thought that prevailed in a country region, so many years ago, it was little short of blasphemy.

He turned a page, and had a c.u.mulative surprise. For time had leaped.

The date was seven years later. Old Crow was now over sixty, and this was the year before his death. Raven could hardly believe in the likelihood of so wide a leap, but the first line showed him it was actual. The subject matter was different and so was the style. The sentences raced as if they were in a hurry to get themselves said before the pen should drop from a palsied hand.

"I gave up writing with that last line. I thought there was no more to say. I didn't even want to read it over. If I hadn't said it well, still I had said it and I didn't see any better way. I wanted to fortify the boy against the loneliness of feeling there was n.o.body that understood.