Old Crow

by Alice Brown

XLII

The spring had two voices for Tira, the voice of a fainting hope and the voice of fear. The days grew so capriciously lovely that her heart tried a few notes in answer, and she would stand at her door and look off over the mountain, fancying herself back there on the other side with the spirit of girlhood in her, drawing her, in spite of dreary circumstances, to run, to throw herself on the ground by cool violet banks to dream and wake, all flushed and trembling, and know she must not tell that dream. But when the dusk came down and the hylas peeped and the moist air touched her cheek, she would lose courage and her heart beat miserably in tune with the melancholy of spring. Still, on the whole, she was coming alive, and no one knew better than she that life, to be life, must be also a matter of pain. Tenney was leaving her to a great extent free. He was off now, doing his fencing, and he would even, returning at noon or night, forget to fall into the exaggerated limp he kept in reserve to remind her of his grievance. She had not seen Raven for a long time now, except as he and Nan went by, always looking at the house, once or twice halting a moment in the road, as if debating whether they should call. And Tira, when she saw them, from her hiding behind the curtain, would step to the door and fasten it against them. She would not answer, she told herself, if they knocked. But they never did knock. They went on and left her to her chosen loneliness. For an instant she would be unreasonably hurt, and then smile at herself, knowing it was she who had denied them.

It was an April morning when the spring so got into her blood that she began to wish for things. They were simple things she wished for: chiefly to feel herself active in the air and sun. She wanted to go away, to tire herself out with motion, and she made up her mind that, if Tenney went to the long pasture fencing, she would shut the house and run off with the baby into the woods. The baby was heavy now, but to-day, in her fullness of strength, his weight was nothing to her. They might even go over to Mountain Brook by the path "'cross lots" where the high stepping stones led to the track round the mountain. She loved the look of the stepping stones in spring when the river swirled about them and they dared you to cross and then jeered at you because the water foamed and threatened. She sang a little, finishing her morning tasks, and Tenney, coming from the barn with his axe, to start on his day's fencing, heard her sing. Tira, when she saw him, was in such haste to be off herself that she called to him from the window:

"Here! don't you forget your luncheon. I've got it 'most put up."

He glanced back over his shoulder, and spoke curtly:

"I don't want it. I'm goin' over on the knoll."

Her heart fell. The day was done. She would have to stay and get his dinner. Even an hour's vagabondage would be impossible, for the knoll was across the road overlooking the house and he would see her go. All these weeks she had held herself to a strict routine, so that every minute could be accounted for. This day only she had meant to break her habit and run. It was over then. She was bitterly disappointed, as if this, she thought, smiling a little to herself, was the only day there was. She might as well wash blankets. She went to the bedroom to slip off her dress and put on a thick short-sleeved apron: for Tira was not of those delicate-handed housewives who can wash without splashing. She dripped, in the process, as if, Tenney used to tell her in the first days of their marriage, she got in all over. In her bedroom, with the sweet air on her bare arms and the robins calling and the general tumult and busy ecstasy outside, she stopped to wonder. Could she take the baby and slip out by the side door, and come back in time to fry Tenney's ham for dinner? No, it wouldn't do. He would be in for a drink, or the cow shut up in the barn with her calf would "loo" and he would wonder if anything was happening to them. A dozen things might come up to call him back. She would wash blankets. Then she saw the baby, through the doorway, sitting where she had put him, on the kitchen rug, and a quick anger for him possessed her.

"In that hot kitchen," she said aloud, "when there's all outdoors!"

She dragged one of the blankets from the bed, ran out as she was, bare-armed, bare-necked, and spread it on the grass in front of the house.

"It's goin' to be washed anyways," she placated the housewifely instinct within her, and she ran in for the baby and set him on the blanket. One heart-breaking thing about this baby who was "not right" was that there were no answers in him. She had tried all the wiles of motherhood to show him how she loved him, and coax him to respond, not so much in actual sentience to her as a baby's rejoinder to the world he could see and touch. He had no answers. But this morning when the sun fell warmly on him and the breeze stirred his coppery hair, he did, it seemed, hear for an instant the voice of earth. He put out his fat hands and gurgled into a laugh. Tira went mad. She was immediately possessed by an overwhelming desire to hear him laugh again. She called to him, in little cooing shouts, she stretched out her arms to him, and then, when he would not be persuaded even to turn his head to her, she began to dance. Perhaps after the first step she really forgot about him. Perhaps the mother ecstasy ran into the ecstasy of spring. Perhaps, since she could not answer the lure of the woods by running to them that morning, the woods ran to her, the green magic of them, and threw their spell on her. She hardly saw what was about her, even the child. The cherry tree in bloom was a great whiteness at her right, the sun was a splendor, the breeze stirred her hair, and the child's head was a coppery ball she fixed her eyes upon. And while she waved her arms and danced, Martin, who had seen her from the road, and left his horse there, was coming toward her across the grass. Why could she not have seen him stop? Why was he nothing more than a tree trunk in the woods, standing there while she flung up her white arms and danced? The earth spirits may know. Pan might know. They had got Tira that day, released from her winter's chill. She did not, and still less Martin, his own blood rising with every pulse.