XXIX
The blessed diversion of eating ended, a blank moment stared them in the face. What to say next? Were Nan and Dick, 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. Dick ought to know. But at least there must be no warfare here in this warm patch of shelter snatched out of the cold and dark. His hand was on Old Crow's journal, Dick'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."
Dick 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."
Dick, without much heart, began to read, and Raven lighted a pipe. First, a tribute to Nan's abstinence, he passed 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 Dick, 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 Dick angrily ready.