x.x.xVII

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 d.i.c.k 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' G.o.d, 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k in the reddening snow.

x.x.xVIII

Eugene Martin had driven at a quick pace through the back road and down again to the point where it met the highway. He had stuffed Tira's ap.r.o.n into his pocket, and through his pa.s.sion he was aware of it as something he could use, how he did not yet know. But the key: that was a weapon in itself. She could not get into her house without it. Tenney could not get in. So far as Tira was concerned, it was lost, and Tenney would have to be told. And as he turned into the other road, there was Tenney himself driving toward home, and Martin knew what he was to do.

"Hi!" he called, but Tenney did not stop. He drew out slightly to the side of the road, the implication that Martin might pa.s.s. Martin drove up alongside and, the way growing narrower, seemed bent on crowding him.

The horses were abreast and presently the road narrowed to a point where, if they continued, one would be in the ditch.

"I've got something o' yourn," called Martin. He was good humor itself.

The chances of the road had played patly into his hand. "Anyways, I s'pose 'tis. I come across your woman on the back road. She turned into the loggin' road, to Raven's shack. She dropped her ap.r.o.n an' I picked it up. There's a key in the pocket. Looks like a key to somebody's outer door. Yourn, ain't it? Here 'tis, rolled up in the ap.r.o.n. Ketch!"

He had taken out the ap.r.o.n, rolled it tighter and then, as Tenney made no movement, tossed it into the sleigh. He shook the reins and pa.s.sed, narrowly escaping an over-turn, but, at the same moment, he was aware that Tenney had stooped slightly and lifted something. It was a familiar motion. What had he lifted? It could not be a gun, he told himself. Yet he knew it could be nothing else. Was this the next move in the mad game? For the first time he began to wonder whether Tenney's religion would really keep him cool and questioned whether, having neatly balanced his own account, he might close it now before he found himself in danger. Driving fast, he was aware that Tenney, behind him, was also coming on. But he would not look until he had pa.s.sed Tenney's house, and then he did give one backward glance. Tenney had turned into the yard, and Martin relaxed, satisfied with the day's job. Perhaps it was really finished, and he and Tira were square.

Tenney, having driven into the yard, blanketed the horse and thrust the ap.r.o.n under the seat of the sleigh. He stood for a moment, thinking.

Should he unlock the door, go into the house, and lock it against the woman who had run away to Raven's shack? He could not think clearly, but it did seem to him best to open the door and look about. How had she left things behind her? Was her absence deliberately planned? Inside, he proceeded mechanically with the acts he would ordinarily have done after an absence. The familiar surroundings seemed to suggest them to him. He fitted the key into the lock again, took off his great-coat and hung it up, chiefly because the nail reminded him, and then, the house suddenly attacking him with all the force of lonely silence, he turned and went out again and shut the door behind him. There was the horse. Why had he covered him? He would naturally have unharnessed. But then he saw the gun in the sleigh, and that, like the silent house, seemed to push him on to something he had lost the power to will, and he took the gun and walked fast out of the yard. Now at once he felt clear in the head. He was going to find Raven. That was the next step. Wherever Raven was, he must find him. But when he turned out of the yard to go up the back road, he was aware of a strange dislike to coming upon him at the hut.

Tira was there, he knew, but if Raven also was, then there would be something to do. It was something in the back of his mind, very dark and formless as yet, but it was, he told himself again, something that had to be done. Perhaps after all, even though it was to be done sometime, it need not be to-day. Even though Tira was up there, the job was a terrifying one to tackle when he felt so weak in his disabled foot, so cold after Martin's jeering voice when he tossed over the key. He turned again and went down the road to Raven's. His foot ached badly, but he did not mind it so much now, the confusion and pain of his mind had grown so great. It seemed, like this doubt that surrounded Tira, a curse that was to be always with him. At Raven's, he went to the kitchen door and knocked, and Charlotte came.

"He to home?" he asked, not looking at her, but standing there a drooping, miserable figure.

"Jerry?" she asked. "Yes. He's in the barn, gone to feed an' water."

"No," said Tenney. "John Raven. Is he to home?"

"Why, no," said Charlotte. "Not round the house. He said he's goin' up to the hut."

At that he stared at her desperately, as if begging her to take back her words; they might have been a command to him, a verdict against him. She stepped out a pace.

"Why, Mr. Tenney," she said, "what you round with a gun for, this time o' night? You can't see nothin'. It'll be dusk in a minute."

"Pa'tridges," he called back to her, adding darkly, "I guess I can see well enough, come to that."

Charlotte stood there watching him out of the yard and noted that he turned toward home. When Nan and d.i.c.k came up the road the other way, she had gone in, and they had been in the house five minutes or more before she knew of it. Then d.i.c.k wandered into the kitchen, on one of the vague quests always bringing the family there in search of her, and she called to him from the pantry:

"D'you see anything of Isr'el Tenney on the road?"

No, d.i.c.k had seen n.o.body. He stood leaning against the casing, watching her floury hands at their deft work.

"He come here, not ten minutes ago," said Charlotte, "after your Uncle John. He had a gun. I never see Isr'el Tenney with a gun. 'Pa'tridge shootin,' he said. Pa'tridges, when you can't see your hand afore you in the woods! I told him Uncle John'd gone up to the hut. When Uncle John went off, he said he wanted Nan should come up there, quick as ever she could. You tell her, won't you? I forgot."

Then d.i.c.k knew. Tira was up there. And Tenney was out with a gun: New England tragedy. It was impossible, the sanctimonious Tenney. Yet there was New England tragedy, a streak of it, darkly visible, through all New England life. It would be ridiculous: old Tenney with his prayer-meetings and his wild appeals. And yet, he reflected, all tragedy was ridiculous to the sane, and saw before his mind's eye a satiric poem wherein he should arraign the great sad stories of the world and prove their ironic futility. But all this was the hurried commentary of the mind really bent on something actual, and from that actuality he spoke:

"Don't tell Nan, Charlotte. I'll see what he wants."