There's something pathetic about it. It's half pity, too! Nothing so dangerous in the world."

Raven swung round, walked to the window and, hands in his pockets, stood looking out. In love with Nan! well, he did love Nan better than any created thing. All the old tests, the old obediences, would be nothing to him if he could consecrate them to Nan, her happiness, her safety in this dark world. How about his life? Yes, he would give that, a small thing, if Nan needed the red current of it to quicken her own. But "in love" as d.i.c.k understood it! If you were to judge d.i.c.k's comprehension of it from his verse, love was a s.e.x madness, a mortal lure for the earth's continuance, by the earth begot. And who had unconsciously held out that lure to him but the woman of mystery up there on the road in that desolate house with her brutal husband and her deficient child? He had seen the innocent lure, he had longed to put out his hand to the hand unconsciously beckoning. Through the chill wintry night the message came to him now. And only Nan could understand that the message might come and that it was a part of the earth and to be forgotten, like a hot wind or a thrilling song out of the dark--Nan, his darling, a part of him, his understanding mind, as well as the fiber of his heart. Suddenly he turned on d.i.c.k who was watching him, ready, it seemed, to pounce on his first change of look.

"d.i.c.k," he said, "I adore Nan."

"Yes," said d.i.c.k, "I know you do. I told you----"

"But," broke in Raven, "you don't know anything about it."

"Oh," said d.i.c.k, "then I don't adore her, too."

Raven reflected. No, his inner mind told him, there was no community of understanding between them. How should d.i.c.k traverse with him the long road of rebuff and downfall he had traveled? How should youth ever be expected to name the cup it has not tasted? For d.i.c.k, he thought again, what is known as love was a simple, however overwhelming, matter of the mounting blood, the growing year. For him it would be the ashes of forgotten fire, the strange alembic mixed of bitter with the sweet. In that moment he faced an acknowledged regret that he had not lived the normal life of marriage at the start, the quieting of foolish fevers, the witness of children. We are not, he reflected, quite solvent unless we pay tribute before we go. He mused off into the vista of life as it accomplishes itself not in great triumphal sweeps, but fitful music hushed at intervals by the crash of brutal mischance, and only, at the end, a solution of broken chords. Meantime d.i.c.k watched him, and Raven at last, feeling the boy's eyes on him, came awake with a start.

"Yes, d.i.c.k," he answered gently, "of course you love her. And it ought to do you good. It's a big thing to love Nan."

"Very well then," said d.i.c.k, his voice trembling a little in answer to that gentler tone, "you let her alone, can't you? Nan's a different girl when she's with you. It's no use denying it. You do hypnotize her."

"d.i.c.k," said Raven, "that's a beastly thing to say. If you mean it to be as offensive as it sounds, you ought to be booted for it."

"Oh," said d.i.c.k, with a simple certainty in what he knew, "I don't blame you as I should any other fellow that wasn't going through what you are.

That would be a simple matter to deal with: a chap that knew what he was doing. You don't, old man. You may not know it, but you don't."

"For the land's sake!" said Raven, echoing Charlotte, "And what, again for the land's sake, am I going through?"

"You know," said d.i.c.k uneasily because he did hope to avoid putting it into words. "_Cafard._"

Raven had one of his moments of silence, getting hold of himself, taking the matter in, with its forgotten enormity.

"So," he said, "you've adopted your mother's word for it. I hadn't realized that."

"Oh, Mum's no such fool," said d.i.c.k. "She may be an aggravation and a curse--I'll own that--but she's up to date. Why, Jack, anybody that ever knew you'd know you're not yourself."

"No," thought Raven, "few of us are ourselves. We've been through the War, my son. So have you; but you didn't have such a brittle old world inside you to try to put together again after it was smashed. Your inner world was in the making. Whatever you might feel in its collision with the runaway planet of the mad human mind, it could right itself; its atoms might cohere."

"You needn't think," proceeded d.i.c.k generously if a trifle too magnificently, "I can't see. There's a lot of things I see that don't bear talking about. I've pitched into you about Nan, but you needn't suppose I don't know it's all a matter of hidden complexes."

Again recurring to Charlotte in this moment of need, Raven reflected that he didn't know whether he was afoot or a-horseback.

"You don't mind, I hope," he said, with humility before this perfectly equipped intelligence, "explaining a little."

"Why," said d.i.c.k, "there's all your previous life. It's a case of inhibition. There was Miss Anne."

"Stop," said Raven, his curiosity over the boy's mind dying in a crash.

"Stop right there, d.i.c.k; you're making a fool of yourself. Now we'll go to bed."

He got up and waited, and d.i.c.k, sulkily, rose too.

"You needn't think," he began, and Raven broke in:

"You needn't think I shall stand another word of your half-baked psycho-deviltries. You can believe what you like. It'll harm n.o.body but yourself. But you don't talk it here, or out you go. Now!"

The last word meant he was waiting to put out the light and d.i.c.k, without another look at him, strode out of the room, s.n.a.t.c.hed his suit-case and went up the stairs. Raven heard the decisive click of his door and, his own heart beating in a quick response to what he knew must happen, turned on the light again and stood there silent, waiting. It did happen. A soft rustle, like a breeze blowing down the stairs, and Nan came in. She had taken off her child's dress, as if to show him she had left their game behind her. The long braids were pinned up, and she wore her dark walking dress. She was paler, much older, and he was renewedly angry with d.i.c.k for banishing the Nan that was but an hour ago. Perhaps that Nan would never come back.

"Darling Rookie," she said, so softly that the sound of it could not have got half way up the stairs, "what's it all about?"

"About you, Nan," he answered, and denied himself the darling Nan he had for her. "And being in love. And d.i.c.k's wanting you."

"It's more than that," said Nan wistfully. "He's been at you somehow.

He's dug ditches across your dear forehead and down your cheeks. What d'he say, Rookie? What d'you say to him?"

Raven shook his head. He had no idea of inviting her into the psycho-a.n.a.lytic ward of d.i.c.k's mind.

"Nan," he said, "the boy's unhappy. He's in love with you. No doubt about it."

Nan, on her part, had nothing to say to this.

"What made you change your dress?" asked Raven. "You give me a funny feeling, as if you'd put the little Nan to bed and come down here to say you're going, in a minute, and never coming back."

"I am going," said Nan, "only not in a minute. Charlotte says Jerry shall take me to the early train."

"Now, by George!" said Raven, so loudly she put her finger to her lip, "if that's what d.i.c.k's done, he shall go himself, and know the reason, too. Spoil my visit with you, break it all up? Why, I never had a visit from you before."

"It's broken," said Nan. "You couldn't put it together again." The red had come into her cheeks and her eyes showed a surface glitter he did not know. "I'm going to leave you to Tenney--and Tira--and your destiny--and Old Crow."

"Is this a part of your scheme?" asked Raven roughly. He was curiously dashed, almost shamed by her repudiating him. "You're as bad as d.i.c.k.

He's been bringing all his psychopathic patter to bear on me, and you're deserting me. Oh, come! Let's be safe and sane, like the Fourth."

"So we will be," said Nan. She was retreating toward the door. There were simple natural things she wanted at that moment. She wanted to go to him, put her arms about him, mother or child arms, as he might wish, and bid him a good-by that would wrap him about like a cloak while they were absent one from the other. He should have her lips as he had her heart. Nan was an adventurer on the high seas of life. She cared very little whether her boat rode the wave or sank, so it could unload the gold and gems it carried on the sand of the world she loved. Rookie was the home of her heart. The gold was all for him. But if he did not want it--and meantime she was at the door. "Don't get up," she said, "to see me off. If you do, he will, too, and there'll be more fireworks. No, no, Rookie. Don't look like that. I'm not hateful about him, really, only he has spoiled my fun."

"Why you should go," said Raven, advancing; "why you should leave this house just because he's come!"

"No fun!" said Nan. "Do you see us, the three of us, sitting down to meals together? No, Rookie. Can't be done. Good night."

Here she did turn definitely and went up the stairs, and Raven presently followed. In his room he stood for a moment thinking, not of d.i.c.k, who was troublesome, in an irritating way incident to biting young cubs just aware of their teeth, but of the challenge that was Nan. Here she was, all beauty, all wisdom, in the natal gifts of her, telling him, with every breath, she loved him and only him. And yet, his knowledge of life was quick to answer, it was the accretion of long hungers, the sum of all desires since she was little and consigned to Aunt Anne's delicate frigidities for nurture and, as the event proved, for penury. She had no conception of a love as irresistible as hers was now abounding. In a year or two, youth would meet her on the road of youth, and they would kiss and old Rookie would become the dim duty of remembered custom. And as he thought these things, his overwhelming revolt against earth and its cruelty came over him, and he stood there gripping his hands into their palms, again at open war with life. It was a question without an answer, a hunger unfed, a promise broken. Eternal life was the soporific distilled by man, in his pathetic cunning, to dull the anguish of antic.i.p.ated death. Standing there in the silence, he felt the waves of loneliness going over him, and thought of Nan in her chamber across the hall, angelic in her compa.s.sion, her arms ready for him as a mother is ready for her child. The moonlight made arabesques on the walls, and he walked to the window with an instinctive craving for the open. He stood gripping the casing with both hands and looking up over the hillside where also the light lay revealingly. Up there was the hut where Tira might be now if Tenney had not wounded himself, fleeing in her turn from earthly cruelty. Up there Old Crow had lived in his own revolt against earth cruelty. And, with the thought, Old Crow seemed to be, not on the hillside, but beside him, reading to him the testimony of the mottled book, but more insistently, in a clearer voice. If it could be so, if G.o.d had intention, not only toward his own colossal inventiveness, but as touching the well-being of man--yes, and of the other creatures, too, the pathetically oppressing and oppressed--if He had given man the problem with no solution indicated, to work it out as he had worked out pottery and fabrics, and light and talking over s.p.a.ce--always in conformity to law--it was stupendous. No matter how many million men went to the building of the safeguarding reefs, no matter through what blood and tears the garden of the earth was watered if the flower of faith could grow at last.

"That is my legacy to the boy," he seemed to hear Old Crow repeating.

"He must not be afraid."

And as he was sinking off to sleep he had an idea he was praying, perhaps to G.o.d; or was it to Old Crow? At any rate, he was saying:

"For G.o.d's sake look out for Nan. You don't need to make it so devilish hard for Nan."

He was downstairs early. At the foot of the stairs stood Charlotte, waiting. She looked--what? compa.s.sionate?

"She's gone," said Charlotte. "Jerry was up 'fore light."

"Gone?" echoed Raven. "At this time of day? What for? She'll have an hour to wait."

"She would have it so," said Charlotte. "She was terrible anxious to git off."