"'Night, Rookie," Nan broke off her housewifely deeds to call, and he called back:
"Good night."
Then he went out and home again, and fulfilled his destiny for the day by another somnolent hour with Milly before the fire.
XIX
Nan and Charlotte, each in a front chamber, were soon cozily in warmed sheets. But when Nan judged Charlotte must be asleep, she got up, put more wood on the dying fire, slipped on her fur coat over a wrapper, did up her knees in a blanket and sat down by the window she had not yet opened, in anticipation of this hour of the silent night. Really she had lived for it, ever since she entered the hut and found the strange woman. The night at Raven's house had been as still as this, but there were invisible disturbances in the air; they riddled her chamber through and pierced her brain: what Amelia thought, what Dick thought. Here there was only the calm island of Charlotte's beneficence, and even that lay stiller than ever under the blanket of a tranquil sleep. She felt alone in a world that wasn't troubling itself about her, because it never troubled itself about anything.
The moon was just up above the fringe of trees at the east and shadows were black across the snow. She sat looking out with intentness as if she were there at the window for the sole purpose of watching the silent world, but really to get her mind in order for the next day and all the coming days. She felt about the heart the strange dropping we know as grief. No wonder the mortal creature, looking on at the commotions within the frail refuge of his body, should have evolved the age-old phrase that the heart bleeds. Nan's heart had been bleeding a long time. There used to be drops on each shock of her meeting Raven after absence and finding herself put away from the old childish state of delighted possession. At first, she had believed this was one of the mysterious cruelties of Aunt Anne's inexorable delicacy of behavior; but when she grew older she had one day a great happy light of understanding, one of those floods that sweep over youth after washing at the barriers of its innocence. Rookie himself had put her away. It was one of the scrupulous things he had done for her, because she had been too ignorant to do them for herself. He had seen she was grown-up. It was true, Nan had to own, that this was one of the lines, drawn across her life, that pleased Aunt Anne most, because it removed her (or seemed to remove her) from Rookie. Aunt Anne was jealous to her fingertips, the ends of those beautiful, delicately prisoning hands. Nan had tried never to acknowledge that. It always seemed such a barbarity to find in Aunt Anne the things that would have shocked her in herself.
To-night she looked it in the face. Aunt Anne was jealous. That was the first count. All her own life, too, Nan had been vaguely irritated by Raven's not marrying Aunt Anne. He was her property, wasn't he, in a queer way, never questioned, never, on his part, rebelled against? Yet it was a bondage. And if the real reason was that Aunt Anne wouldn't have him, why didn't he play the man and batter down her scruples, even that barrier of the years between them? But after that sudden look into Raven's eyes, the night she told him about the will, she had never been able to think of him as loving Aunt Anne at all. It was that horrible compassion of his, she believed, that obedience of the male to the weaker (and yet the stronger) principle of the demanding opposite. He had always been in bondage through his affections, first to his mother, then Aunt Anne, and then suddenly, terrifyingly, but most gloriously because this was the only wildly spontaneous thing of all, to the strange woman in the hut. He was innocent there, he was unthinking, he didn't know what tale his eyes told of him. It wasn't earthly passion they told. She had seen many things in her tumultuous life of the last few years, this woman he called a child. The eyes told how his soul was going down in a wreckage of worship of the charm that blooms in a few women only, translated to him through the pity of this woman's wretched state. Should she interpret him to himself? She could, without offending. Rookie was sensitive to see, and she found her hand steady to hold the torch. But there she saw herself slipping into Aunt Anne's mandatory attitude, choking, dominating, sapping him, heart and brain. It mustn't be done. It shouldn't. Rookie had had enough of spiritual government. Above all, she wanted him to have his life: not the sterile monotony of a man who renounced and served and deferred to managing females.
Had the woman any soul in her? If Rookie kidnaped her (and the child, it would have to be, the doubtful child) would she pay in love for love, or only an uncomprehending worship? One thing Nan had determined on, the minute she opened her door to him this night and saw the quick concern in his face and heard his tone in greeting: Rookie should feel there was somebody in this disordered world who plainly adored him. If he could believe that the better for her putting her cheek on his and loving him to death, he should have it. Rookie should feel warm. As for her, she was cold. She shivered there by the window and knew it was the inner tremor of her nerves, for the fire still leaped and the room was pulsing. "The amount of it is," said Nan to herself, "my heart's broken. Oh, hang Aunt Anne!" Then she remembered Aunt Anne was dead. But she would not have recalled the little missile hurled at the impalpable ghost through the shade of removedness that enveloped her. Nan was inexorable in standing for what she saw.
In the morning she found the fires burning below stairs and her tray set out, with cup and plate. Charlotte had gone. Nan felt the mounting of spirit due a healthy body, with the new day, and made her toast and her coffee with a great sense of the pleasure of it all. There was one drawback. It was distinctly "no fair" to let Charlotte come over to companion her at night when there was so much to do with the exigent Amelia on board. But that must settle itself. If she could get Tira (whom she also called "the woman" in her thoughts) to run away with her to town, it could hardly be done too quickly. So immediately after her breakfast she put on coat and hat and went "over to Tenney's," as the country folk would put it. This was a day brightly blue, with mounting warmth, the road a smoothness of packed snow. When she reached the house, Tenney was just driving up to the side door in the sleigh, and she rejoiced. It made her errand easier. He was going to town, and she could see the woman alone. But immediately Tira, carrying the baby, a little white lump in coat and hood, came out and stepped into the sleigh. She, too, was going. Tenney waited while she settled herself and tucked the robe about her. He was not solicitous, Nan saw, but the typical country husband, soberly according her time to get herself and the child "well fixed." Nan, waiting, her eyes on them, still halted until they drove out, and nodded her good morning. Tenney drew up. His sharp eyes signaled her.