Old Crow Part 21

"You're not going off the place," said Raven bluffly. "That's flat. The place is mine and you're safe on it. Do you want to go traipsing round the woods in this snow"--he fell purposely into the country habit of speech--"and get wet to your knees and have a cold?"

"I sha'n't have a cold," she said, smiling dimly at him and looking, as he realized, like a mother who was sorry her son could not have all he grasped at, but still remained immovable. "I don't hardly remember havin' one since I was little."

The child had resumed the role of Buddhistic calm temporarily abandoned last night when he screamed out his distaste for earthly complications, and Raven, glancing at the solemn blue eyes, saw that the only hope of moving her lay in him.

"Do you want," he shot at random, "to have the baby get chilled--and hungry?" There he broke off, though he saw that did move her. He had to know from what extremity she fled. "Has this been going on all night?"

he asked.

"No," she said, with the same air of gently rea.s.suring him. "I slept 'most all night. So did he, Mr. Tenney, I guess. An' we started out all right this mornin'. But after he'd read the chapter an' prayed, it all come over him ag'in, an' I had to go."

"After he'd read his chapter," said Raven. "And prayed! G.o.d!"

The invocation sounded as if he also prayed.

"This time," she continued, "he--he seemed to have a realizin' sense."

She paused a perplexed moment. In the little she had said to Raven, he had noted from the first that she was often blocked by a difficulty in finding words she thought adequate. "He seemed to know what was comin',"

she said. "He give me warnin'."

"Warning?"

"Yes. He come in an' he says to me, 'You don't want to go traipsin'

round in this snow.'"

Raven noted the word and smiled slightly. He and Tenney were at one in their care for her.

"'You go up chamber,' he says, 'an' have a fire in the air-tight an'

turn the key. I dunno,' he says, 'what's goin' to happen, this day. I dunno.'"

"Why didn't you?" asked Raven.

"I didn't hardly dast to," she said, with her clear look at him. "I knew if he knew I's up there he never could stan' it till he--broke in the door."

Raven could only look at her.

"Besides," she said, "even if I be safer in the house, I don't feel so, somehow. I've always lived a good deal out door."

"So you came away," said Raven quietly. "You came here." The words really were, "You came to me," but he would not say them.

"I did lock the chamber door," she said, "jest as he said. But I locked it on the outside an' took away the key. I thought he'd think I was there an' it might keep him out a spell, an' when he did git in, it'd give him a kind of a shock an' bring him to. It does," she added simply.

"It always gives him a shock, not findin' me. He's asked me over 'n'

over ag'in, when he come to, not to make way with myself, but I never'd answer. He's got it before him, an' that's about all there is in my favor, far as I can see."

The gentle monotony of her voice was maddening to Raven; it brought him such terrible things, like a wind carrying the seeds of some poisonous plant that, if they were allowed to spring up, would overrun the world of his hopes for her.

"You wouldn't promise him," he said thickly, "but you'll promise me.

Promise me now. Whatever happens to you, you won't make way with yourself."

"Why, of course I sha'n't," she said, as if in some surprise that he should ask it. "How could I? Not while there's baby."

This threw him back to the sanity of their common cause. They were both to fight, he for her and she for the mother's one absorbing task: the child. He returned to his old grave way with her.

"Now," he said, "you're going to do exactly what I tell you. If you won't go back to the hut and see Nan, you're to stay here until I've got Nan and taken her down to the house. And we sha'n't come up here at all, unless I come to bring you something to eat."

"I don't want," she hesitated, "to put her out."

"Nan? You don't put her out. She only came because she didn't find me at the house. If you don't do precisely what I tell you, that'll be putting everybody out. I shall make an awful row. Do you hear me?"

She smiled, a little flicker of a smile. She might not like to be pursued by jealousy incarnate, but she was, he saw, rather amused at being fraternally tyrannized over.

"Now," he said, "I'm going. You're to stand here in your tracks, and when I've sent Nan down the path I'll come and get you."

He gave her no time to object, but went back to the hut, and in to solitude and a deadening fire. He threw open the door of the other room, though Nan would surely not be there, and swore at not finding her.

Womenfolk were giving him a good deal of trouble with their exits and their entrances. He mended the fire, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his cap and gloves and went out again, up the path to Tira. She was standing motionless precisely, he thought, in the tracks where he had left her, and the Buddhistic child indifferently regarded him.

"Come on," Raven called to her, stopping at a pace from them. "She's on her way down along, and there's a good fire."

She started obediently after him and Raven, though he saw in her slowness the hesitating desire to express her distaste for putting any one out, paid no attention but went on ahead and opened the door.

"Keep up the fire," he bade her. "I'll be back along about one and bring you something to eat. The little chap, too. We mustn't forget him."

She had stepped inside and he was about closing the door; but she turned and seemed to recover her att.i.tude of protest.

"No," she said, "don't you bring up anything. I shall be gone long 'fore then."

"Why, no, you won't," said Raven impatiently. "You're not going back into that----" he paused, seeking a word that should not offend her. She had clung to incredible loyalties. Perhaps she even clung to her home.

"Oh," she said earnestly, "it'll be over by then, an' he'll want his dinner."

Tenney would want his dinner! He had no words for that. He turned away.

But she seemed to feel the finality of his going. Was he giving her up?

She put the child down on the couch and turned to follow. Raven was just closing the door.

"Don't!" she cried. There was piercing entreaty in her voice. "Don't!"

It was really begging him not to give her up, and though he did not clearly understand it so, he knew he was forcing on her something to bear, in addition to all the rest. She must not think that of him. She must feel safe, in whatever manner it was easiest for her to accept safety. He smiled back at her in that way Anne Hamilton, when she had caught him smiling at Nan, thought so maddeningly beautiful. Poor Anne!

She had starved for the sweetness of what seemed to her, in her hunger of the heart, an almost benedictory tenderness.

"Don't you worry," he said to Tira, in the phrasing he unconsciously adopted to her. "Everything's going to be exactly as you want it. Only,"

he added whimsically--a tone she had never heard in her life before--"if I could have my say for a few hours, it would be to find you here when I come back."

He closed the door and hurried down the path, moved even beyond his pity by the certainty that she was nearer him. She had accepted that strange community of interest between them. She had to be saved and he was to save her. Now it would be easier. He had no thought but to find Nan down at the house, but two-thirds of the way along the path he saw her, sitting on a slant of the great boulder and looking grave. She was not the Nan who had come to the hut, a half hour ago, so gaily certain of her welcome. The two women had s.h.i.+ed at the sight of each other. He had cleared up the situation for the one, and now he had to do it for Nan.

That was simple. He had never known her to fail in understanding. He came up to her and she raised her eyes, earnest now, startled, to his.

"Aren't you too cold there?" he asked.

She shook her head and smiled a little.

"No, not with my fur. I'm afraid the gray squirrels will see me. What would they think of skinning so many of their little brothers?"