Old Crow

								

taken aback by the nymph-like grace and beauty of her, the poise of the
small head with its braided crown--the girls at the seminary told her
she might have been a Victorian by the way she wore her hair--and he
instinctively caught her arms, about to enwreath his neck, held her
still and looked at her. She could not know what vision, overwhelming in
its suddenness, she brought before him, of childhood gone and maidenhood
come and the sacredness of this new state. Aunt Anne knew and frowned a
little to herself, from her silent, savage jealousy, realizing, though
she would never, in her proud integrity, allow herself to think it, that
this hushed veneration of Raven's was worse than the old tumultuous
intercourse. What Raven really might have said was:
"Darling, you're a woman and you're a beauty. You don't know it, but you
don't want to hug a jaded old reveler like me."
He was not, by any means, a reveler. His life had been little more than
a series of walks to business. But those were the words that came to
him, catching her adorable freshness of body and mind, and determining
to keep it untouched by dusty old pantaloons such as he saw himself. Nan
stood for a minute paling out under his eyes, and then drew away from
him and left the room, her braid-crowned head high. She had to meet him
at dinner, and he knew she had cried and Aunt Anne knew it and was hard
on her over the little things she could reprove her for, in a silky,
affectionate way, and Raven's heart swelled until he thought they both
must know its congestion, and tried to put round it another bond of
quiet, kind affection. Since that time, Nan had never kissed him; but
now, this two months since the death of Aunt Anne, she had adopted a
greeting of her own. She put her hands on his arm and bent her forehead
for a minute to his shoulder. The first time she did it, he wanted to
kiss the bright hair, but forbade himself, and the second time he said,
he was so curious over it:
"A rite?"
She was ready with her answer. He suspected she must have thought it out
ingeniously beforehand.
"It's because I'm sorry for you."
"Sorry?" he repeated.
"Yes," she said, "about Aunt Anne."
Then he realized she was sorry because Aunt Anne was dead, and he was
more and more conscious of the unbecoming lightness and freedom where he
found himself at the death of Aunt Anne. He had not dared acknowledge it
to himself. He couldn't, for shame. But whereas, in the past years, when
he ventured to formulate his own life a little and see what it had done
to him and how he could go on meeting it, he had had a sense of
harassment and of being driven too hard, after Aunt Anne's death he
began to recognize the stillness of the space she had left behind. Now
to-day, before Nan had accomplished the little rite of the bowed head on
his shoulder, something queer about it seemed to strike Dick, and he
said to her:
"He's your uncle, too, you know."