Chapter 29

"I can never," he said, "get over the monstrous queerness of it all. Here's a woman that's got to be saved, and she's so infernally obstinate we can't save her. When I think of it at night, I swear I'm a fool not to complain of the fellow in spite of her, and then in the morning I know it can't be done. She'd block me, and I should only have got her in for something worse than she's in for now."

"Yes," said Nan, "she'd block you. Wait, Rookie. Something will happen. Something always does."

Yes, Raven thought, something always does, and sometimes, in country tragedies, so brutal a thing that the remorseful mind shudders at itself for not preventing it. But Nan, equably as she might counsel him, was herself apprehensive. She expected something. She had a sense of waiting for it. Dick must be prepared. He must be found on their side. Whatever the outcome, Raven must not suffer the distrust and censure of his own house.

Dick had been reading to her by the fire while Raven was taking Amelia for a sober walk. Nan wished Dick wouldn't read his verse to her. It made her sorry for him. What was he doing, a fellow who had seen such things, met life and death at their crimson flood, pottering about in these bizarre commonplaces of a literary jog-trot? They sounded right enough, if you stood for that kind of thing, but they betrayed him, his defective imagination, his straining mind. He didn't see the earth as it was. He was so enamored of metaphorical indirection that he tried to see everything in the terms of something else. But to-day she had her own thoughts. She sat staring into the fire, her cheeks burned by the leaping heat, and Dick, looking up at her, stopped on an uncompleted line.

"You haven't," he said, "heard a word."

"Not much of it," said Nan. She looked at him disarmingly. When her eyes were like that, Dick's heart was as water. "I was thinking about Tira."

He had to place this. Who was Tira?

"Oh," said he, "the Tenney woman. Jack needn't have dragged you into that. It's a dirty country story."

"Not dirty," said Nan. "You'd love it if you'd thought of it yourself. You'd write a play about it."

Dick frowned.

"Well, I didn't think of it," said he, "and if I had, I shouldn't be eating and sleeping it as you and Jack are. Whatever's happening up there, it isn't our hunt. It's hers, the woman's. Or the authorities'. The man ought to be shut up."

Nan began telling him how it all was, how they wanted definitely to do the right thing and how Tira herself blocked them. Dick listened, commended the drama of it, and yet found it drama only.

"But it's a beastly shame," he commented, "to have this come on Jack just now when he isn't fit."

Nan had her sudden hot angers.

"Do you mean to tell me," she countered, "you believe that now, now you've lived with him and seen he's exactly what he used to be, only more darling--you believe he's broken, dotty? Heavens! I don't know what you'd call it."

Dick did not answer. He scarcely heard. One word only hit him like a shot and drew blood.

"Stop that!" he ordered.

They faced each other with eyes either angry or full of a tumultuous passion an onlooker would have been puzzled to name.

"Stop what?"

"Calling him darling. I won't have it."

Nan found this truly funny, and broke into a laugh.

"Do you know," she said, "how every talk of ours ends? Rookie! It always comes round to him. I call him darling and you won't have it. But you'll have to."

"No," said Dick, "I won't have it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. You little devil! I believe you do it to work me up. That's all right if it stopped there. But it won't. Some day he'll hear you and then----!"

She was flaming again.

"Hear me? Hear me call him darling? Why, he's heard it so often it's no more to him than your calling him Jack. But if he asked me what I meant by it! do you know what would happen then?"

"What would?"

"Then," said Nan enigmatically, "I should tell him, that's all."

She would say no more, though he hurled questions at her, and hardly remembered afterward what they were. He was of an impression that he begged her to love him, to marry him, though Dick, prodigal as he was of great words in his verse, scarcely believed he used them in the direct address of love-making. But certainly he did beg her, and Nan was gentle with him, though always, like Tira, as she remembered afterward, repeating, "No! no!" At the end, his passion softened into something appealing, as if they were together considering the sad case he found himself in and he depended on her to help him through.

"Nan," he said, in the boyish way she loved, "don't you see it's got to be in the end? We've always been together. We're always going to be. Don't you see, old Nan?"

Nan smiled at him, brilliantly, cruelly, he thought. But she was sorry for him, and it was only a show of cruelty. It came out of her kindness, really. Dick mustn't suffer so for want of her. Bully him, abuse him, anything to anger him and keep him from sheer weak, unavailing regret. Nan had a great idea of what men should be: "tough as a knot," she thought, seasoned all through. If they whimpered, she was aghast.

"No," she said again, with the brilliant smile, "no! no! I can't. I won't. Not unless"--and this, too, was calculated cruelty--"unless Rookie tells me to."

They sat staring at each other as if each wondered what the outcome was to be. Nan was excitedly ready for it. Or had the last word been actually said? But Dick altogether surprised her. He got up and stood looking down at her in a dignity she found new to him.

"When you come to me," he said, "you'll come because I ask you. It won't be because any other man tells you to."

He walked past her, out of the room. Did he, Nan wondered, in her ingenuous surprise, look a very little like Rookie? When he was twenty years older, was he going to look as Rookie did now? His expression, that is. For, after all, there was Dick's nose.

And in these days what of Tira? She, too, was on an edge of nervous apprehension. Tenney was about the house a great deal. He still made much of his lameness, though never in words. Every step he took seemed an implication that a cane was far from sufficient. He needed his crutch. And as the period of his silence lengthened, Tira was driven by her fear to another greater fear: that she might mention it herself. What if she should tell him how the crutch, leaning there at the foot of the bed, had seemed to her a weapon, not a crutch? What if she appealed to his pity and even played a part with him, dwelling on her woman's weakness of nature, her tremors, deprived of the protection that should be hers? Artifice was foreign to her. Yet what was there, short of implicating Raven, she would not do for the child? But a glance at Tenney's face, the tightness of reserve, the fanatical eyes, closed her lips, and they moved about together dumbly at their common tasks. As she grew paler and the outline of her cheek the purer over the bones beneath, he watched her the more intently, but still furtively. One forenoon when the sky was gray and a soft snow fell in great flakes that melted as they came, he went haltingly up to the shed chamber and came down with his gun. He was not a huntsman, and when they moved into the house it had been left there with a disorder of things not likely to be needed. He drew a chair to the table and then addressed her almost urbanely. He wanted, she guessed, to call her attention in some explicit way.

"You git me some kind of a rag," he bade her. "I'm goin' to clean up this old musket. You might's well hand me that oiler, too, off'n the sink shelf. I can't git about any too well."

She brought him the cloth and the oiler and went away to the sink again, determined not to be drawn into any uneasiness of questioning. But it fascinated her, the sight of him bending to his task, and her will weakened. In spite of herself, she went over to the table and stood looking down at him. Presently he glanced up at her and smiled a little in a way she did not like. It seemed to imply some recognition of a common knowledge between them. He had, the look said, more than the apparent reason for what he was doing. The oiling of the gun was not all. Something at the back of his mind was more significant than this act of his hands, and this something, the look said, she also knew. All through the moment of her gazing down at him Tira was telling herself she must not speak. Yet she spoke:

"You goin' gunnin'?"

"I dunno but I be," he returned, his eyes again on his work. "I've had it in mind quite a spell, an' I dunno's there's any reason for puttin' on't off."

"What you goin' after, Isr'el?" she asked, against her will, and he was silent for what seemed so long, that she pursued: "You goin' rabbitin'?"

"No," said Tenney. "I dunno's I be. What's the use o' shootin' down four-footed creatur's? T'other ones'll do well enough for me."

Again he glanced up at her and her look of frozen horror evidently warned him against terrifying her unduly. She must be shaken enough to obey him, not to fight.

"You look kinder peaked," he said, with what she found a false air of interest. "You don't git out enough. Mebbe you'd ought to git out nights. I've been noticin' how peaked you look, an' I thought mebbe I'd git the old musket loaded up an' go out an' shoot ye a pa'tridge. Tempt your appetite, mebbe, a mite o' the breast."

"I dunno," said Tira, speaking with difficulty through her rigid misery, "as you'd ought to, so near nestin' time. I dunno's as it's the season to kill."

"All seasons are the same to me," said Tenney. "When it's time to kill, then kill, I say. Kill!"

He spoke the word as if he loved it, and Tira walked away from him into the bedroom, and stretched herself on the bed, her hand on the sleeping child. When it was time to get dinner she came out again and found him reading his paper by the stove. He had set the gun away in a corner. But directly after dinner he shaved at the little glass by the kitchen window and told her, again with the air of abundant explanation she found foreign to him, that he was going to the street, to get the colt shod. The colt did need to be shod. She knew that. Perhaps this time he was actually going.

"You want to take along the eggs?" she said, and he assented.

He asked her, too, for a list of groceries she needed. He would have to wait his turn at the blacksmith's. He might be a long time. She need not expect him before dark. She might as well go out, he told her, and again:

"You're lookin' peaked. You need the air."

She heard him drive briskly out of the yard, but she would not, for some reason she did not herself know, go to the window to look after him. It was all a plan, she told herself. She was not to be taken in by it. She would force herself to sit down to her sewing. She would not leave the house while he was gone. If he wanted to tempt her out, to trap her, let him have his will. It was better, she thought, with a moment's satirical comment, for him to be driving off on a fictitious mission than roaming the neighborhood with a gun in his hand. She glanced involuntarily at the corner where the gun had stood not many minutes before he left the house. It was gone. Then she knew. She threw down her work, went to the telephone, and called Raven. He was there, and she felt her heart answer wildly when, at her first word, he broke in:

"Is it you?" Not her name, only the intimacy of the significant word. "The hut?" he added.

"Up there," said Tira, breathless. "Both of you. I've got to see you both. Come quick."

She got her cloak and threw it down again, remembering it was what she was used to wearing and that Tenney would most certainly recognize her outline in it, even though a long way off. Grandmother Tenney's black blanket shawl was in the parlor chest of drawers, that and her hood, disfiguring ancientry of dress. She ran into the parlor, snatched them out, tied on the black knitted hood and, not unfolding the shawl, wrapped it about her shoulders. The baby was in his cradle, and she gave him one glance. If he waked, he would cry. Let him cry. But she did lock the door behind her, and put the key on the sill, a place Tenney would know. Half way down the path, she went back, took the key again and dropped it into her apron pocket. Tenney might come, but he should not go into the house and find the child alone. Lest he should come the way he went, she took the back road, and there, when she was about to turn into the wood road, she heard sleigh-bells behind her, the horse going, as her ear told her, "step and step." But she was actually on the wood road when the driver whipped up and the bells came clashingly. She did not turn to look. It was not Tenney. She would have known his bells. The horse drew up, the driver called to him a peremptory and jovial word, and she knew the voice. It was Eugene Martin's, and instinct told her to stop and face him. He stepped out of the sleigh and threw the robe, with a quick motion, over the horse. Then he came on to her, smiling, effusively cordial, and Tira waited. A pace away he took off his hat and made her an exaggerated bow. He was carefully dressed, but then he was always that, according to his lights. Only Tira, who knew him so well, all his vain schemes of personal fitness, judged this to be a day of especial preparation. For what? He took the step between them and put out both hands.

"If this ain't luck!" he beamed. "How are you, girl? I made up my mind I'd see you, but I hadn't an idea you'd be on the road."

Tira rolled her hands in her apron, as if they were cold. His extended hands she did not seem to see.

"I ain't waitin' for you," she said quietly, her eyes on his. "You better go right straight along about your business an' leave me to mine."

"I ain't done right, Tira," said Martin, with the specious warmth she knew. "I did try to git you in bad with Tenney, but don't you know what that sprung from? I'm jealous as the devil. Don't you know I be?"

"You've no call to be jealous nor anything else," said Tira steadily. "You an' me are as fur apart"--she hesitated for a word, and her eyes rested for a moment on one of the tall evergreens moving slightly in the breeze. "We couldn't any more come together than I could climb up to the pick o' that pine tree."

He still regarded her solicitously. He was determined not to abandon his part.

"Ain't somebody come betwixt us?" he demanded, with that vibration of the voice once so moving to her. "You can't deny it. Can you now?"

"Nobody's come betwixt us," said Tira. "If you was the only man on this earth to-day, I'd run from you as I would a snake. I hate you. No, I don't. I look on you as if you was the dirt under my feet."

But as she said it she glanced down, wistfully troubled, as if she begged forgiveness of the good earth. The quick anger she knew in him flared like a licking flame. He threw his arms about her and held her to him as tightly, it seemed to her, as if he were hostile to the very breath within her body. And she was still, not only because he gripped her so but because she had called upon that terrible endurance women recognize within themselves. He kissed her, angry, insulting kisses she could bear more patiently than the kisses of unwelcome love. But as his lips defiled her face, he was suddenly aware that it was wet. Great tears were rolling down her cheeks. He laughed.

"Cryin'?" he jeered. "Poor little cry-baby! wipe her eyes."

While he held her with one arm, the other hand plunged into her apron pocket and brought out her handkerchief. It also touched the key. His instincts, she knew, had a scope of devilish cunning, and at once he knew what key it was. He laughed. Looking off through the trees, he had seen what gave him another clue.

"Smoke!" he called, as if he shouted it to an unseen listener who might not have been clever enough to guess. "Smoke from that shack Raven lazes round in same as Old Crow did afore him. That's where you were goin'. The wood road all broke out for you. I might ha' known it when I see that. Go along, my lady. He'll be there waitin' for you. Go along. But jest for the fun o' the thing, you leave the key with me."

She answered with a desperate wrench; but though one of her hands reached the pocket where the key lay, she could only twitch the fingers, and while he laughed softly he pulled the tie of her apron and, releasing her with a little push, snatched the apron from her, rolled it and thrust it into his pocket. She sprang at him, but he gave her another push that sent her staggering and ran laughing to the sleigh.

"So long!" he called back at her.

She recovered herself and started after him. But the horse plunged forward and Martin was shouting at her jovially, in what words she did not hear. She only knew, through the bewilderment of her despair, that the tone was merciless.

She stood there a moment, looking after him, and realizing that he had forced her into a corner from which there was no possible way out. But then another fear beat in her numbed brain. She had not accomplished the task for which she came here. Martin and his trick must wait. That other need was more important. There was the hut and its welcoming smoke and there Raven must be looking for her. She started running along the snowy path, reached the door, found it unlocked and went in.

XXXVII

Raven, as soon as he had Tira's message, went to find Nan. She was not in her room, but Charlotte, when he finally brought up at the kitchen, told him Nan and Dick had gone to walk. Down the road, she said. They had called to him, but he was in the barn.

"Then," said Raven, getting into his jacket, "see her the minute she comes back and send her up to the hut."

Yes, Charlotte meant to be in the kitchen all the afternoon. She would see Nan. Raven left the house and hurried up the hill. He found the hut in order, the fire laid as he had left it. That was, foolishly, always a surprise. Her presence hung so inevitably about the place that he was taken aback to find no visible sign of it. Now when she appeared it was breathlessly, not, as he thought, from haste, but from her encounter with Martin. And she came stripped of her reserves, the decorum of respectful observance she always kept toward him. At first glance he was shocked by the change in her appearance and could not account for it, not knowing he missed the familiar folds of the blue cloak about her, not seeing that her black shawl and the knitted hood accentuated the tragic paleness of her face. She came straight to him and he took her hands and, finding them so cold, held them in one of his and chafed them. This she did not notice. She neither knew that they were cold nor that he was holding them.

"You must go away," she said, surprising him because he thought she had come to say she herself was ready to go. "Where is she?" Tira asked, with a quick glance about the room, as if the least deviation in her plan fretted her desperately. "I depended on seein' her."

"Nan?" asked Raven. "I couldn't find her. What is it, Tira?"

"She'd ha' helped me out," said Tira despairingly. "She'd ha' seen you've got to go away from here an' go quick. Couldn't you pack up an' git off by the nine o'clock?"

"Don't be foolish," said Raven. He released her hands and drew a chair nearer the fire. "Sit down. I haven't the least idea of going anywhere. Do you suppose I should go and leave you in danger?"

But she did not even seem to see the chair he had indicated or the fire. She stood wringing her hands, in a regardless way, under her shawl, and looking at him imploringly.

"I ain't in any danger," she said, "not compared to what you be. He's stopped dwellin' on that man an' his mind is on you."

The shame of this did not move her now. Her fear had burned every reticence to ashes and her heart looked out nakedly.

"He's got out the old gun," she went on. "I dunno's he's fired a gun sence we've been here unless it might be at a hawk sailin' over. He says he's goin' to shoot me a pa'tridge--for me! a pa'tridge for me to eat!--an' he looked at me when he said it, an' the look was enough. You go. You go to-night an' put the railroad betwixt you an' me."

"Don't be foolish, Tira," said Raven again. "I've been in more dangerous places than this, and run bigger risks than Tenney's old musket. That's all talk, what he says to you, all bluff. I begin to think he isn't equal to anything but scaring a woman to death. But"--now he saw his argument--"I will go. Nan and I will go to-night, but only if you go with us. Now is your chance, Tira. Run back to the house and get the boy. Bring him here, if you like, to stay till train time and then come."

He stretched out his hand to her and waited, his eyes on hers. Would she put her hand into his in obedience, in fealty? She began to cry, silently yet rendingly. He saw the great breaths rising in her, and was sick at heart to see her hand--the hand she should have laid in his--clutching her throat to still its agony.

"I dunno," she said brokenly. "Yes, I s'pose I do know. I've got to do it. It's been pushin' me an' pushin' me, an' now I've got to give up beat. You won't save yourself, an' somehow or another you've got to be saved."

Raven felt the incredible joy of his triumph. He had yielded to her obstinacy, he had actually given up hope, and now, scourged by her devotion to him, she was walking straight into the security he had urged upon her. Yet he dared not betray his triumph, lest outspoken emotion of any sort should awaken her to a fear of--what? Of him? Of man's nature she had learned to abhor?

"That's right, Tira," he said quietly. "Now you've given up responsibility. You've put yourself and the boy in my hands, mine and Nan's. You've promised, remember. There's no going back."

Still he held out his hand, and though she ignored it, her dumbly agonized look was aware of it. It was waiting for her, the authoritative, kind hand, and she took hers from her throat and laid it in his grasp. Tira seemed to herself to be giving up something she had been fighting to keep. What was she giving up? Nothing it was right to keep, she would have said. For at that minute, as it had been in all the minutes that led to it, she believed in him as she did in her Lord, Jesus Christ. Yet she was aware, with that emotional certainty which is more piercing than the keenness of the most brilliant mind, that she had surrendered, the inner heart of her, and whatever he asked her to do would now be humbly done.

In the instant of their standing there, hand clasped in hand, the current of life between them rushed to mingle--humble adoration in her, a triumphant certainty in him. But scarcely had the impetuous forces met before they were dissolved and lost. The sharp crack of a gun broke the stillness outside, and Tira tore her hand from his and screamed piercingly. She threw herself upon Raven, holding him with both hands.

"Hear that!" she whispered. "It's right outside here. He's shot to make you come out an' see what 'tis. In the name o' God, don't you open the door."

Raven shook himself free from her, and then, because she was sobbing wildly, took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the chair by the hearth.

"Stop that," he said sternly. "Stay there till I come back."

He took the key from the lock, opened the door and stepped out. There lay Dick on his face, his head close by the door-stone, and Tenney, gun in hand, stood stupidly staring at him.

"I shot at a pa'tridge," Tenney babbled, "I shot----"

But Raven was kneeling by Dick in the reddening snow.

XXXVIII