You may bet he’s only a messenger in advance. There’ll be three more shortly, and you’ll have your four,” said I, comforting.
“Do you know,” she said, “it is very funny, but whenever I’ve particularly noticed one crow, I’ve had some sorrow or other.”
“And when you notice four?” I asked.
“You should have heard old Mrs Wagstaffe,” was her reply. “She declares an old crow croaked in their apple tree every day for a week before Jerry got drowned.”
“Great sorrow for her,” I remarked.
“Oh, but she wept abundantly. I felt like weeping too, but somehow I laughed. She hoped he had gone to heaven — but I’m sick of that word ‘but’— it is always tangling one’s thoughts.”
“But, Jerry!” I insisted.
“Oh, she lifted up her forehead, and the tears dripped off her nose. He must have been an old nuisance, Syb. I can’t understand why women marry such men. I felt downright glad to think of the drunken old wretch toppling into the canal out of the way.”
She pulled the thick curtain across the window, and nestled down in it, resting her cheek against the edge, protecting herself from the cold window-pane. The wet, grey wind shook the half-naked trees, whose leaves dripped and shone sullenly. Even the trunks were blackened, trickling with the rain which drove persistently.
Whirled down the sky like black maple leaves caught up aloft, came two more crows. They swept down and clung hold of the trees in front of the house, staying near the old forerunner. Lettie watched them, half amused, half melancholy. One bird was carried past. He swerved round and began to battle up the wind, rising higher, and rowing laboriously against the driving wet current.
“Here comes your fourth,” said I.
She did not answer, but continued to watch. The bird wrestled heroically, but the wind pushed him aside, tilted him, caught under his broad wings and bore him down. He swept in level flight down the stream, outspread and still, as if fixed in despair. I grieved for him. Sadly two of his fellows rose and were carried away after him, like souls hunting for a body to inhabit, and despairing. Only the first ghoul was left on the withered, silver-grey skeleton of the holly.
“He won’t even say ‘Nevermore’,” I remarked.
“He has more sense,” replied Lettie. She looked a trifle lugubrious. Then she continued: “Better say ‘Nevermore’ than ‘Evermore’.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Fancy this ‘Evermore’.”
She had been sure in her own soul that Leslie would come — now she began to doubt:— things were very perplexing.
The bell in the kitchen jangled, she jumped up. I went and opened the door. He came in. She gave him one bright look of satisfaction. He saw it, and understood.
“Helen has got some people over — I have been awfully rude to leave them now,” he said quietly.
“What a dreadful day!” said Mother.
“Oh, fearful! Your face is red, Lettie! What have you been doing?”
“Looking into the fire.”
“What did you see?”
“The pictures wouldn’t come plain — nothing.”
He laughed. We were silent for some time.
“You were expecting me?” he murmured.
“Yes — I knew you’d come.”
They were left alone. He came up to her and put his arms round her, as she stood with her elbow on the mantelpiece.
“You do want me,” he pleaded softly.
“Yes,” she murmured.
He held her in his arms and kissed her repeatedly, again and again, till she was out of breath, and put up her hand, and gently pushed her face away.
“You are a cold little lover — you are a shy bird,” he said, laughing into her eyes. He saw her tears rise, swimming on her lids, but not falling.
“Why, my love, my darling — why!”— he put his face to her’s and took the tear on his cheek:
“I know you love me,” he said, gently, all tenderness.
“Do you know,” he murmured. “I can positively feel the tears rising up from my heart and throat. They are quite painful gathering, my love. There — you can do anything with me.”
They were silent for some time. After a while, a rather long while, she came upstairs and found Mother — and at the end of some minutes I heard my mother go to him.
I sat by my window and watched the low clouds reel and stagger past. It seemed as if everything were being swept along — I myself seemed to have lost my substance, to have become detached from concrete things and the firm trodden pavement of everyday life. Onward, always onward, not knowing where, nor why, the wind, the clouds, the rain and the birds and the leaves, everything whirling along — why?
All this time the old crow sat motionless, though the clouds tumbled, and were rent and piled, though the trees bent, and the window-pane shivered with running water. Then I found it had ceased to rain; that there was a sickly yellow sunlight, brightening on some great elm leaves near at hand till they looked like ripe lemons hanging. The crow looked at me — I was certain he looked at me.
“What do you think of it all?” I asked him.
He eyed me with contempt: great featherless, half-winged bird as I was, incomprehensible, contemptible, but awful. I believe he hated me.
“But,” said I, “if a raven could answer, why won’t you?” He looked wearily away. Nevertheless my gaze disquieted him. He turned uneasily; he rose, waved his wings as if for flight, poised, then settled defiantly down again.
“You are no good,” said I, “you won’t help even with a word.”
He sat stolidly unconcerned. Then I heard the lapwings in the meadow crying, crying. They seemed to seek the storm, yet to rail at it. They wheeled in the wind, yet never ceased to complain of it. They enjoyed the struggle, and lamented it in wild lament, through which came a sound of exultation. All the lapwings cried, cried the same tale, “Bitter, bitter, the struggle — for nothing, nothing, nothing”— and all the time they swung about on their broad wings, revelling.
“There,” said I to the crow, “they try it, and find it bitter, but they wouldn’t like to miss it, to sit still like you, you old corpse.”
He could not endure this. He rose in defiance, flapped his wings, and launched off, uttering one “Caw” of sinister foreboding. He was soon whirled away.
I discovered that I was very cold, so I went downstairs.
Twisting a curl round his finger, one of those loose curls that always dance free from the captured hair, Leslie said:
