Miss Raven

“ If circumstance proved unfriendly, she would ignore it and forge ahead. She was, Raven had always recognized, the feminine replica of his father's special type. As to her looks, she was a thin, whip-like woman, who gave an impression of wiry endurance and serviceable resiliency. You would expect her to be hard to the touch, mental or moral, and yet she could double, evade, rebound. Put her in a hole, and she soon proved to you that its obscurity was the last place where she proposed to stay. She looked the latest thing evolved by the art of man. ”

“ Raven answered, without a pause, as if he had been thinking about it interminably. "If it had some red blood in it, if you were—well, if you loved him, Nan, I should be mighty glad. I'd like to see you living, up to the top notch, having something you knew was the only thing on earth you wanted. But these half and half things, these falterings and doing things because somebody wants us to! God above us! I've faltered too much myself. I'd rather have made all the mistakes a man can compass, done it without second thought, than have ridden up to the wall and refused to take it." ”

“ Consider it as your own, Miss Raven, while you're our guest. One of my men shall see that you've whatever you need in the way of towels, hot water, and the like. If you'll step in and look round, I'll send him to you now. As he's a Chinaman, you'll find him as handy as a French maid. Give him any orders or instructions you like. And then come on deck again, if you please, and you shall have some tea. ”

“ Raven was silent. He was thinking what a fool he had been to unpack his heart with words, and that if he told Milly so he should simply be unpacking it some more. He looked at the clear winter day occupying itself out there without him, and wondered why the deuce he couldn't put on snowshoes and tramp off his discontent leaving her to fight her boredom by the fire. She'd brought it on herself, hadn't she? Nobody wanted her to come. Was there some hidden force in women, their apparent vulnerability to the harsh world conditions that were bound to crush out even them in the end? ”

“ He snatched his hat and tore out of the house, and Raven, glancing up from his novel, saw him striding down the path and thought approvingly he was a wise young dog to walk off some of his headiness before Nan came. As for him, he would doze a little over his foolish book, as became a man along in years. That was what Charlotte would say, "along in years." Was it so? What a devil of an expression, like all the rest of them that were so much worse than the thing itself: "elderly," "middle-aged," what a grotesque vocabulary! ”

“ Then, before Raven could take more than the one step forward to meet her, she had turned and shut the door behind her.
"Wait for me," he threw back over his shoulder at Nan and ran out.
XV
Tira was hurrying through the snowy track, ankle deep at every step. Raven, bareheaded, ran after. In a minute he had overtaken her.
"Stop!" he called, breathless, more from his emotion than from haste. "Stop! I tell you." ”

“ She was singing in the kitchen in a fragmentary way she had when life went well with her, and the sound filled Raven with an unreasoning anger. Why should any woman, even so dear and all deserving as Charlotte, live and thrive in the warmth and light while that other creature, of as simply human cravings, battled her way along from cliff to cliff, with the sea of doom below, beating against the land that was so arid to her and waiting only to engulf her? ”

“ In the game, he always escaped and "shinnied" up the cliff opposite, by fissures the boys of every generation knew, and struck a pose among the evergreens above, whooping down defiance.
Raven stopped there and gave a thought to the boy he had been, and then to Anne, who had once taken the walk across lots with him, and who, when he told her how they used to play Moosewood, insisted on crossing, though he had tried to dissuade her, noting her foolish shoes, and aware that she had no adroitness of eye and muscle. ”

“ I'm tryin' every way I know."
"I'm telling you another way," said Raven sharply. "I'm telling you you can't live with a crazy man——"
"Oh, no," she interrupted earnestly. "He ain't that. He has spells, that's all."
"I'm not even asking you to go away with me. I'm asking you to go with that good woman over there." Somehow he felt this was more appealing than the name of Nan. "I trust her as I do myself, more than myself. It's to save your life, Tira, your life and the baby's life." ”

“ Gabrielle listened in a sort of stupor to this passionate outbreak, which found but too ready an echo in her own heart. Raven was faithfully describing her own experience. She, too, had fought and wrestled with her love; she, too, had sought to fly from a power so strong that no escape was possible. Before the glowing lava-stream of words which burst with one great throe of Nature from the innermost heart of this man, usually so cold and so constrained, all the fairy fabrics vanished which a young girl's fancy had built up, all her childish conceptions of love and life ”

“ How she went up to glory From the sea-foam chill and hoary, From the sea-depth black and riven To the calm that is in Heaven? They went down, all the crew, The silks and spices too, The great ones and the small, One and all, one and all. Was it through stress of weather, Quicksands, rocks, or all together? Only the Raven knows this, And he will not disclose this.-- After a day and a year The bridal bells chime clear; After a year and a day The Bridegroom is brave and gay: Love is sound, faith is rotten; The old Bride is forgotten:-- Two ominous Ravens only Remember, black and lonely. ”

“ Or an island: there must be an island left somewhere, for a homesick old dear like you."
"Now, in God's name," said Raven, "what do you say that for?"
"Tira?" Nan inquired recklessly. "What do I tell you to take her for? Because I want to see you mad, Rookie, humanly mad. And she's got the look that makes us mad, men and women, too."
"What is it?" Raven asked thickly. "What is the look?"
"Mystery. It's beauty first, and then mystery spread over that. She's like—why, Rookie, she's like life itself—mystery." ”

“ The house itself had become a converging point for all medical science could do for a man hit in a vital spot and having little chance of recovery. But what Raven knew to be the common sense of the measures he brought to pass, Milly, in her wildness of anxiety, looked upon as the miracles of genius. She even conciliated him, as the poor human conciliates his god. She brought him the burnt offering of her expressed belief, her humility of admiration. And whenever one of the family was allowed to supplement the nurses, by day or night, she effaced herself in favor of Raven or Nan. ”

“ Had any unseen, unsuspected spectator looked on Raven, listened to his impassioned accents, such an one would have understood that this man, despite his years, despite his sternness and reserve, despite all the darker side of his nature, must surely carry off the palm, must win the day against all others where his intenser feelings were engaged, where his heart was set on victory. ”

“ He took her in his arms, and lifted her into the carriage. Gabrielle offered no resistance. She knew full well that no woman could or should trust herself to the mercies of that wild, riotous mob--nothing but the mortal anxiety she was enduring would have suggested the thought to her. This anxiety was now so legibly stamped on her features that even Raven's firmness wavered. ”

“ Raven now, and she might be offended if she come in and found you readin’ it. Mrs. Raven does all the readin’ for the house. You know Mrs. Raven? [Boy shakes hes head negatively] Well, you will when you see her, ’cause she allus dresses in black. ”

“ I don't know what girls used to do, but we're different, Rookie, we that have been over there."
"Yes," said Raven, "but you mustn't let it do too much to you. You mustn't let it take away your youth."
Nan shook her head.
"Youth isn't so very valuable," she said, "not that part of it. There's lots of misery in it, Rookie. Don't you know there is?"
"Yes," said Raven, "I know." Suddenly he remembered Anne and the bonds she had laid on him. ”

“ It was well within probabilities that Wing, being in Limehouse or Poplar, and in touch with Chinese sailormen, should, with others, have taken service with Baxter and his accomplice, and, at that very moment, there, in that sheltered cove on the Northumbrian coast, be within a few yards of Miss Raven and myself, separated from us by a certain amount of deck-planking and a few bulkheads. But why? If he was there, on that yawl, in what capacity—real capacity—was he there? ”

“ Raven smiled at her and went off with his load. He carried also his electric torch, and traversing the dark between the moving trees, creaking now and complaining, at the door of the hut he flashed on the light and lifted the stone. The key was there. That gave him a momentary relief. She had understood and done her part toward his task of defending her. He went in, tossed the things over a chair, and lighted one of the candles on the mantel. The hearth was cold and he piled logs and kindling. Then he put the pillow in its place on the couch and spread the blankets. ”

“ She was elemental woman, despising the rigidities of training, scourged into revolt. Even her dress, though fitted to the technical needs of the hour, was unstudied. Her hair, ordinarily waved, even in the country, by the intelligence of her capable fingers, was twisted in a knot on the back of her head. Raven, so effective had been the success of her ameliorating devices, thought Milly's hair conspicuously pretty. ”

“ Raven forbade himself to be moved by this.
"Then," he said, "you'll have to talk to other folks you may not like so well. I shall complain of him. I shall be a witness to what I've seen and what you've told me. I've threatened you with that before, but now it's got to be done."
"No," said Tira, trying, he could see, through every fiber of will in her to influence him. But never by her beauty: she was game there. "You wouldn't tell what I've said to you. You couldn't. 'Twas said to you an' nobody else. It couldn't ha' been said to anybody else on this livin' earth." ”

“ Most of us look like what we are. We're rather nice looking, like me, or we're plain. But she 'takes back,' as Charlotte would say. She reminds you of things, pictures, and music, and dead queens—isn't there a verse about 'queens that died young and fair'?—and—O heavens, Rookie! I can't say it—but all the old hungers and happinesses, the whole business."
"I wonder," said Raven impetuously, "if you think she's got any mind at all. Or whether it's nothing but line and color?"
Nan shook her head.
"She's got something better than a mind. She has a faithful heart. ”

“ She found herself remembering poetic lines about Grecian Helen, and then recalling herself to New England and the unlikelihood of such bewitchingness. There couldn't be a woman so compact of mystery and unconsidered aloofness, and yet beauty, beauty to the bone.
When the Tenneys drove by Raven's, each with face set forward, not looking at the house, Raven was in the kitchen consulting Charlotte about supplies. Jerry, also, was going to town, for, imperious even in her unspoken needs, Amelia would have to be delicately fed. ”

“ Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." ”

“ It is curious how resolutely most persons demand that the heroine of a story shall be extraordinarily handsome. And yet the heroine of many a love affair in our own lives is not handsome; and most of us fall in love, quite earnestly and permanently in love too, with rather plain women. Why then should I strain my conscience by asserting broadly and positively that Miss Ravenel was a first class beauty? But I do affirm without hesitation that, like her father, she was socially charming. ”

“ Constant female society sharpens their wits. A woman has only one explanation for all male eccentricities, and Raven Innes had been married long enough to know that in nine cases out of ten this explanation is the correct one. He therefore pursued the conversation on the lines which he felt sure would have been adopted by Mrs. Raven had she been present.
"We have taken a cottage down the road—'Knocknaha,' it's called—so you must come and look us up. No time like the present, so come along now. By the way, my little sister is staying with us—Elsie. ”

“ Not so much: Dick and his mother can't pounce on me here. I didn't say that though. Charlotte thinks I just came over for a freak; but she's coming to stay with me."
"You don't know what Charlotte thinks," said Raven succinctly. "She's got a pretty accurate idea of all of us. You're not going to stay here. That's flat. We'll blow out the candles in a minute or two and poke off home."
"This is home," said Nan and rubbed her cheek on his coat. "Darling Rookie!"
"You're running away from Milly," said Raven. "That's all right. I wish I could myself. ”

“ He tells ye to go into the house, into my house, so's he can fight it out ag'in same's he done with t'other one. You better go. He won't git no odds from me."
He set his dinner pail down beside him, and his hand moved a few inches along the helve of his axe. And Raven, like Tira, was sorry for him.
"No," said Tira, "I sha'n't go into the house. An' this to-do ain't so much about me as about you, Isr'el Tenney, because you're makin' a fool o' yourself. You'll be town talk, an' you deserve to be. You've brought it on yourself." ”