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 Dick, 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 anticipated 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 compassion, 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 God 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 space—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 God; or was it to Old Crow? At any rate, he was saying:
"For God'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? compassionate?
"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."
So, Raven thought, she didn't want to see either of them. She was tired of them, of him with his stiff withdrawals and Dick's young puppyhood. He ran upstairs, snatched some old riding breeches out of a closet, put them on and, without a word to Charlotte, went to the barn. But her eye was on him and she called out of the shed door:
"You took your saddle with you. Don't you know you did? There's nothin' but your father's hangin' there, old as the hills."