"Rookie," she said, with a half laugh that was really a caress, "darlingest Rookie! Charlotte never got that supper together in the world. You did it yourself, not to disturb her. I never saw so much food at one time, in all my life."

It was a monstrous feast, bread, b.u.t.ter, cheese, ham: very neatly a.s.sembled, but for a giant's appet.i.te.

"We'll all have some," sad Raven. "Draw up, old son. Nan'll b.u.t.ter for us."

For the first minutes it seemed to d.i.c.k he could not eat, the lump in his throat had risen so. But Nan b.u.t.tered and they did eat and felt better. Raven avoided looking at them, wondering what they were quarreling about now. It must, he thought, be the way of this new generation starting out avowedly "on its own."

XXIX

The blessed diversion of eating ended, a blank moment stared them in the face. What to say next? Were Nan and d.i.c.k, Raven wondered, to go on fighting? Was it the inevitable course of up-to-date courtship? Perhaps the new generation, from its outlook on elemental things, was taking to marriage by capture, clubbing the damsel and striding off, her limpness flung over a brawny arm. It seemed to him a singularly bare, unshaded way to the rose-leaf bowers his poets had been used to sing; but undoubtedly the roads were many, and this was one. Possibly the poets wouldn't say the same now. d.i.c.k ought to know. But at least there must be no warfare here in this warm patch of shelter s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the cold and dark. His hand was on Old Crow's journal, d.i.c.k's inheritance, he thought, as well as his, and now a fortunate pretext to stave off an awkward moment.

"Run over this," he said. "Nan and I've been doing it. I don't believe we're in any hurry for bed."

d.i.c.k took it, with no show of interest. How should he have been interested, forced to switch his mind from the pulsating dreams of youth to worn mottled covers?

"What is it?" he asked indifferently.

Raven was rather curious now. What impression would Old Crow make, slipping in like this, unheralded?

"Never mind," he said. "Run over it and get on to it, if you can. I'd like to know what you think."

d.i.c.k, without much heart, began to read, and Raven lighted a pipe.

First, a tribute to Nan's abstinence, he pa.s.sed her the cigarettes, and when she shook her head, smiled back at her, as if he reminded her of secrets they had together. Presently she got up, and d.i.c.k, closing the book, threw it on the table.

"Bed?" Raven asked, also getting up, and Nan said good night and was gone.

The two men sat down, each with the certainty that here they were to stick until something determining had been said, Raven irritated by the prospect and d.i.c.k angrily ready.

"Well," said Raven, indicating the book, "what do you think?"

"That?" said d.i.c.k absently. "Oh, I don't know. Somebody trying to write without knowing how?"

Raven gave it up. Either he had not read far, or he had not hungered or battled enough to be moved by it.

"Now, look here," said d.i.c.k, "I may not be interested in that, but there's something I am interested in. And we've got to talk it out, on the spot."

"Well!" said Raven. He mended the fire which didn't need it, and then sat down and filled his pipe. He wasn't smoking so very much but, he thought, with a bored abandonment to the situation, gratefully taking advantage of a pipe's p.r.o.neness to go out. While he attended to it he could escape the too evidently condemnatory gaze from those young eyes that never wavered, chiefly because they could not be deflected by a doubt of perfectly apprehending everything they saw.

"Now," said d.i.c.k, plunging, "what do you want to do this kind of thing for?"

"What kind of thing?" asked Raven, lighting up. "Smoke?"

d.i.c.k looked at him accusingly, sure of his own rightness and the clarity of the issue.

"You know," he said. "This business. Compromising Nan."

Raven felt that slight quickening of the blood, the nervous thrill along the spine a dog must feel when his hair rises in canine emergency. He smoked silently while he was getting himself in hand, and, in the s.p.a.ce of it, he had time for a good deal of rapid thinking. The outrage and folly of it struck him first and then the irony. Here was d.i.c.k, who flaunted his right to leave nothing unsaid where realistic verse demanded it, and he was consigning Nan to the decorum Aunt Anne herself demanded. Was the young animal of the present day really unchanged from the first man who protected his own by a fettering seclusion, simply because it was his own? Was d.i.c.k's general revolt only the yeasty turmoil sure to take one form or another, being simply the swiftness of young blood? Was his general bravado only skin deep? Raven hardly knew how to take him. He wouldn't be angry, outwardly at least. The things d.i.c.k had said, the things he was prepared to say, he would be expected to resent, but he must deny himself. It was bad for the boy, and more, a subtle slur on Nan. They mustn't squabble over her, as if her sweet inviolateness could be in any way touched by either of them. Presently he took his pipe out, looked at it curiously as if it did not altogether please him and remarked:

"d.i.c.k, you're a fool."

"Oh, yes," said d.i.c.k, with a bitterness that curled his lip a little, "I'm a young fool, too, I suppose. Well, thank G.o.d for that. I am young, and I know it, and just what I'm getting out of it and what I've a right to get. You can't play that game with me, Uncle Jack. You simply can't do it. The old game's played out."

"And what," said Raven mildly, "is the old game? And what's the new one going to be? You'll have to tell me. I don't know."

"The old game," said d.i.c.k, "was precisely what it was in politics. The old men made the rules and the young were expected to conform. The old men made wars and the young fought 'em. The old men lied and skulked and the young had to pull them out of the holes they got into. I suppose you'd say the War was won at Chequers Court. Well, I shouldn't. I should say it was won by the young men who had their brains blown out, and lost their eyes and their legs."

"No," said Raven quietly, "I shouldn't say the War was won at Chequers Court. We needn't fight over that. The thing that gets me is why we need to fight at all. There's been a general armistice and Eastern Europe doesn't seem to have heard of it. They go on sc.r.a.pping. You don't seem to have heard of it either. You come home here and find me peaceably retired to Charlotte and Jerry and my Sabine Farm, and you proceed to declare war on me. What the devil possesses you?"

"Yes," said d.i.c.k, the muscle twitching in his lip, "I do find you here.

And Nan with you."

"d.i.c.k," said Raven sharply, "we'll leave Nan out of this."

d.i.c.k, though the tone was one that had called him to attention years ago, told himself he wasn't afraid of it now. Those old bugaboos wouldn't work.

"I am going," he said, "to marry Nan."

"Good for you," responded Raven. "No man could do better."

"Do you mean to tell me," countered d.i.c.k, "you're not bluffing? Or do you actually want to let her marry me and you--you'd continue this under my nose?"

Raven stared at him a full minute, and d.i.c.k angrily met him. "Stare away," d.i.c.k was thinking. "I'm in the right. I can look you down."

"d.i.c.k," said Raven finally, "I called you a fool. It isn't such a bad thing to be a fool. We're most of us fools, of one sort or another. But don't let me think you're a dirty-minded little cad. Now I don't want to bring Nan into this, but I rather think I've got to. What are you driving at? Come, out with it!"

To his wonderment, his pain amounting to a shock of perplexity and grief, he saw d.i.c.k's face redden and the tears spring to his eyes. How horribly the boy cared, perhaps up to the measure of Nan's deserts, and yet with what a childish lack of values! For he had no faith either in Nan or in old Jack. The ties of blood, of friendship, were not holding.

He was as jealous as Oth.e.l.lo, and no sane certainties were standing him in stead. d.i.c.k, feeling the painful tears, felt also the shame of them.

He wanted to answer on the instant, now Raven had given him his chance; but so unused was he to the menace of betraying emotion that he was not even sure of not blubbering like a boy. He swallowed and came out with it:

"You've got some sort of hold on her n.o.body else has. You've hynotized her. She eats out of your hand."

Raven, in despair, sat looking at him. He ought, he felt, to be able to laugh it all away, but he was too bewildered and too sorry.

"d.i.c.k," said he finally, "I shall have to say it again. You're an awful fool. Nan and I were always the best of friends. I rather think I have known her in a way none of the rest of you have. But--hypnotized her!

Look at me, d.i.c.k. Remember me plodding along while you grew up; think what sort of a chap I am. You won't find anything spectacular about me.

Never has been, never will be. And Nan, of all people! little Nan!"

d.i.c.k forgot the imminence of a breaking voice and humid eyes. Raven, he felt, wasn't playing the game. He was skulking out of it.

"Do you deny," he said, in a voice so loud and hoa.r.s.e that it startled him as it did Raven, "that you're in love with her?"

"Good G.o.d!" said Raven. He rose, laid his pipe on the mantel and stood, trembling, even in his clenched hands. "What is there to answer," he got out at length, "to a question like that? You've just reminded me I'm past my youth. Why don't you remember it yourself when it'll do you some good? I'm an old chap, and you----"

"You're as fit as ever you were in your life," said d.i.c.k, as if he grudged it to him. "And more fascinating, I suppose, to a girl like her.