Old Crow Part 54

Nan and Raven, standing by the fire, in their unexpected minute of solitude, looked at each other and smiled in recognizing that they were alone and that when that happened things grew simple and straight. To Raven there was also the sense of another presence. Anne had somehow been invoked. Amelia, with her unfailing dexterity in putting her foot in, had done it: but still there Anne was, with the unspoken question on her silent lips. What was he going to do? He knew her wish. Presently he would have her money. He caught the interrogation in Nan's eyes. What was he going to do?

"I don't know, Nan," he said. "I don't know."

"Never mind," said Nan. "You'll know when the time comes."

And he was aware that she was still in her mood of forcing him on to make his own decisions. But, easily as he read her mind, there were many things he did not see there. It was a turmoil of questions, and of these the question of Aunt Anne was least. Did he love Tira? This headed the list. Did he want to tear down his carefully built edifice of culture and the habit of conventional life, and run away with Tira to elemental simplicities and sweet deliriums? And if he did love Tira, if he did want to tear down his house of life and live in the open, she would help him. But all she said was:

"Good night, Rookie. I'm sleepy, too."

To leap a dull interval of breakfast ba.n.a.lities is to find Nan, on a crisp day, blue above and white below, at the Tenneys' door. Tira, frankly apprehensive, came to let her in. Tira had had a bad night. The burning of the crutch fanned a fire of torment in her uneasy mind. She had hardly slept, and though she heard Tenney's regular breathing at her side, she began to have a suspicion it was not a natural breathing. She was persuaded he meant now to keep track of her, by night as well as day. It began to seem to her a colossal misfortune that the crutch was not there leaning against the foot of the bed, and now its absence was not so much her fault as a part of its own malice. Nan, noting the worn pallor of her face and the dread in her eyes, gathered that Tenney was at home. She put out her hand, and Tira, after an instant's hesitation, gave hers. Nan wondered if she were in a terror wild enough to paralyze her power of action. Still, she had given her hand, and when Nan stepped up on the sill, with a cheerful implication of intending, against any argument, to come in, she stood aside and followed her. But at the instant of her stepping aside, Nan was aware that she threw both hands up slightly. It was the merest movement, an unstudied gesture of despair. Tenney was sitting by the kitchen stove, and Nan went to him with outstretched hand.

"I thought I should find you if I came early enough," she said. "How's your foot?"

She had a direct address country folk liked. She was never "stand-off,"

"stuck-up." It was as easy talking with her as with John Raven.

"Some better, I guess," said Tenney. He eyed her curiously. Had Raven sent her, for some hidden reason, to spy out the land?

"You get round, don't you?" pursued Nan.

She took the chair Tira brought her and regarded him across the s.h.i.+ning stove. Tira withdrew to a distance, and stood immovable by the scullery door, as if, Nan thought, she meant to keep open her line of retreat.

"No," said Tenney grimly, "I don't git about much. Three times a day I git from the house to the barn. I expect to do better, as time goes on.

I've got my eye on a cord wood stick, an' I'm plannin' how I can whittle me out a crutch."

Nan, glancing at Tira, caught the tremor that went over her and understood this was, in a veiled way, a threat. She came, at a leap, to the purpose of her call.

"Mr. Tenney," she said, "I'm an awfully interfering person. I've come to ask you and your wife to let me do something."

Tenney was staring at her with lackl.u.s.tre eyes. In these latter days, the old mad spark in them had gone.

"Your baby," said Nan, feeling her heart beat hard, "isn't right. I know places where such poor little children are made--right--if they can be.

They're studied and looked after. I want you to let me take him away with me and see if something can be done. His mother could go, too, if she likes. You could go. Only, I'll be responsible. I'll arrange it all."

Tenney still stared at her, and she found the dull gaze disconcerting.

"So," he said at length, not even glancing at Tira, "so she's put that into your head."

"So far as that goes," said Nan boldly, "I've put it into hers. I saw he wasn't right. I told her I'd do everything in my power, in anybody's power, to have him"--she hesitated here for a homely word he might take in--"seen to. And now (you're his father) I've come to you."

Tenney sat a long time, motionless, his eyes on the window at the end of the room where a woodbine spray was tapping, and again Nan became conscious of the increased tremor in Tira's frame. For now it seemed to have run over her and strangely to keep time to the woodbine spray outside. One would have said the woodbine, looking in, had, in a mad, irritating way, made itself the reflex of these human emotions within the room. Tenney spoke, drily yet without emphasis:

"Then he put ye up to this?"

"Who?" asked Nan.

For some obscure reason he would not mention Raven's name. But he spoke with a mildness of courtesy surprising to her and evidently the more alarming to Tira, for she shook the more and the vine appallingly knew and kept her company.

"I'm obleeged to ye," said Tenney. "But I don't want nothin' done for me nor mine. He's mine, ye see. He's in there asleep"--he pointed to the open bedroom door--"an' asleep or awake, he's mine, same's any man's property is his. An' if he ain't right, he ain't, an' I know why, an'

it's the will o' the Lord, an' the Lord's will is goin' to be fulfilled now an' forever after, amen!"

The tang of scripture phrasing led him further to the channel his mind was always fumbling for.

"Do you," he asked Nan, not with any great show of fervor, but as if this were his appointed task, "do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ yet? Be ye saved?"

"Mr. Tenney," said Nan, "I don't care a sc.r.a.p whether I'm saved or not, if I can make this world swing a little easier on its hinges." That seemed to her a figure not markedly vivid, and she continued. "It needs a sight of oiling. Don't you see it does? O, Mr. Tenney, think of the poor little boy that's got to live along"--the one phrase still seemed to her the best--"not right, and grow to be a man, and you may die and leave him, and his mother may die. What's he going to do then?"

"No," said Tenney quietly, with the slightest glance at Tira in her tremor there by the door, "I ain't goin' to die, not this v'y'ge. If anybody's goin' to, it ain't me."

"O Isr'el!" said Tira. Her voice rose scarcely above a whisper and she bent toward him in a beseeching way as if she might, in another instant, run to him. "You let him go. You an' me'll stay here together, long as we live. There sha'n't nothin' come betwixt us, Isr'el." In this Nan heard a hidden anguish of avowal. "But you let him go."

Tenney did not regard her. He spoke, pointedly to Nan:

"I'm obleeged to ye." He rose from his chair. He was dismissing her. His action approached a dignity not to be ignored, and Nan also rose.

"I sha'n't give it up," she said. "I shall come again."

She tried to smile at him with composure, including Tira in the friendliness of it, but Tira, oblivious of her, was staring at Tenney, and Nan found herself outside, trouble in her mind. Tira had not gone to the door with her. She had staid still staring, in that fixed interrogation, at Tenney. He looked at her now, met her eyes, and gave a little grimace. He had done well, the movement said. He had seen through it all. He was pleased with himself. Now he spoke to her, so affably that she frowned with perplexity at finding him kind.

"'Tain't so terrible hard," said Tenney, "to see through folks, once ye set your mind on it. He started her out on that, he an' you together, mebbe. ''F I git rid o' the young one,' you says, 'I shall have more freedom to range round, outdoor.' Mebbe you said it to him. Mebbe he said it to you. Mebbe 'twas t'other one--Martin--that said it an' you took it up. No, 'tain't so hard to see through folks, once ye git a start."

He turned and took, with a difficulty half a.s.sumed, the few steps to the wood-box, selected a couple of sticks and, with a quiet deftness that seemed to indicate a mind bent only on the act itself, put them in the stove. Tira watched him, fascinated by him, the strength in abeyance, the wayward will. When he set on the stove cover, it seemed to break the spell of her rigidity and she turned, hurried into the scullery and came back. She had, he saw, a knife. That was not alarming. It was a small kitchen knife, but he recognized it as the one she made a great fuss about, asking him to sharpen it often and keeping it for special use.

But she gripped it strangely. Besides, there was the strangeness of her face.

"Here! here!" he said. "What you doin' o' that knife?"

Tira was not thinking of him. She had gone, with her quick, lithe step, to the window where the vine was tapping, and thrown it up.

"Here!" he called again, his uneasiness s.h.i.+fting; whatever a woman was doing, with a face like that, she must be stopped. "What you openin'

winders for, a day like this, coldin' off the room?"

Tira reached out and seized the woodbine spray, cut it savagely and then shut the window. She came back with the spray in her hand, took off the stove cover and thrust it in, twining and writhing as if it had life and rebelled against the flame.

"There!" she said. "I ain't goin' to have no vines knockin' at winders an' scarin' anybody to death."

Then she went into the scullery and put the knife in its place, blade up in a little frame over the sink, and came back into the bedroom where the child was whimpering. She stayed there a long time, and Tenney stood where she left him, listening for her crooning song. When it began, as it did presently, he gave a nod of relief and started moving about the room. Once he went into the scullery, and Tira heard him pumping. But when she had got the child dressed, and had gone out there herself, to prepare the vegetables for dinner, she put her hand mechanically, without looking, on the rack above the sink. The hand knew what it should find, but it did not find it. The knife was gone. Tira stood a long time looking, not at the empty place, but down at her feet. It was not alarming to miss the knife. It was rea.s.suring. It was not to be believed, yet she must believe it. Tenney was taking precautions. He was afraid.

Nan, halfway home, met Raven. He had been walking up and down, to meet her. Defeat, he saw, with a glance at her face.

"Yes," said Nan, coming up with him. "No go, Rookie. He was civil. But he was dreadful. I don't know whether I should have known it, but it's the way she looked at him. Rookie, she was scared blue."

Raven said nothing. He felt a poor stick indeed, to have brought Nan into it and given her over to defeat.

"Can't we walk a spell?" said she. "Couldn't we take the back road to the hut? I do so want to talk to you."

They turned back and pa.s.sed the Tenneys' at a smart pace. Raven gave the house a swift glance. He was always expecting to hear Tira cry out, she who never did and who, he knew, would endure torture like an Indian.

They turned into the back road where the track was soft with the latest snow, and came into the woods again opposite the hut. When they reached it and Raven put down his hand for the key, Nan asked:

"Does she come here often?"