"Chance!" she repeated. "That's what it is, chance! He got in the way and he was struck. I lived through the War. I gave my son. What more could I do? But now, to have him come home to our old house and be shot in the back! How can you sit there and not move a muscle or say a word?

What are you thinking about?"

"Well," said Raven quietly, "if you'll believe me, I'm thinking about you. I'm mighty sorry for you, Milly. And I'm keeping one ear c.o.c.ked for Nan."

"There's no change," she interrupted him. "Charlotte would tell us. I left Nan on purpose. I want him, every time he opens his eyes, to see her there. She's the one he wants. Mothers don't count." Here again the elemental woman flashed out and Raven welcomed the reality of it. "She couldn't help being kind, with him as he is."

No, he inwardly concurred, Nan, who had kissed the boy to hearten him in his need, would be ready with her medicinal love again. She'd pour herself out: trust her for that.

"Besides," he said, "besides you and d.i.c.k and Nan, I was thinking of Old Crow."

"Old Crow?" This threw her out for an instant and she went back to her conception of Raven as a victim of complexes of which Old Crow was chief. "It's no time for dwelling on things that are past and gone. You think far too much about Old Crow. It weakens you."

"Old Crow," said Raven quietly, "is the chap you and I need here to-night. I'd like mighty well to sit down and talk it over with him. So would you, if you knew him better. Old Crow went through what you and I are going through now. He found the world a deuced puzzling place and he didn't see the conventional G.o.d as any sort of a solution. And then--I don't suppose you're going to bed right off. You won't feel like sleep?"

"Bed!" she flung out. "Sleep!"

"Then look here, Milly," said Raven, "you do what I tell you." He opened a drawer in his desk and took out the mottled book. "Here's Old Crow's journal. You sit here by the fire and read it while I take Nan's place and send her off to bed. And if it doesn't give you an idea Old Crow's got his mind on us to-night, wherever he is, I'm mistaken."

He brought her the book. She took it, with no interest, leaving it unopened on her knee.

"Wherever he is," she repeated, not precisely curious, but as if she might be on the verge of it when she again had time. "I didn't know you believed in immortality."

"I didn't, either," said Raven. "But," he added, "I believe in Old Crow."

She was holding the book mechanically and he left her sitting with it still unopened and went in to d.i.c.k. He found him restless, not in any movement of his body but in the glance of his dilated eyes. Nan looked up, grave, steady, gone back, as Raven saw, to her trained habit of action, emotionless, concentrated on the moment.

"You'd better go up to bed," said Raven. "I'll stay now. He can have you to-morrow."

"He can have me all the time," said Nan clearly, and d.i.c.k's eyes turned upon her with an indifferent sort of query. How much did she mean by that? It sounded as if she meant everything, and yet Raven, his heart constricting, knew it might not be more than impetuous sacrifice, the antidote given in haste. But now d.i.c.k spoke and Raven bent to him, for either he was too weak to speak clearly or he was saving himself.

"Don't arrest him. No end of talk."

"No," said Raven. "It wasn't you he was out for."

The restless eyes turned on Nan.

"Go to bed," said d.i.c.k.

Her hand had been on his and she took it gently away, and got up.

"I'm not sleepy," she said. "I'll camp in the library a while."

When she had gone Raven, sitting there by d.i.c.k, who did not speak again, listened for the murmur of voices from the library. Would they keep companionable vigil, the two women, heartening each other by a word, or would they sit aloof, each wrapped in her own grief? There was not a sound. They were falling in with that determination of the house to maintain its sinister stillness, its air of knowing more than it would tell.

x.x.xIX

Tenney, not finding the key of the hut, and increasingly alive to the anguish flaring in his foot, went home by the back way. Tira was waiting at the door. She saw him coming, and, for that first moment, he could ignore the pain in a savage recognition of her plight. She had, he thought, having missed the key, not even tried the door. But this brief summary of her guilty folly angered him for the moment only. He was suddenly tired, and his foot did ache outrageously. He gave way to the pain of it, and limped heavily. As he neared the house, however, his face did relax into a mirthless smile. There were tracks under the kitchen window. She had hoped to get in that way and had found the window fastened. And all the time there was the door, ready for a confident hand. But the ill chance of it amused him for not much more than the instant of its occurrence. His mind recoiled upon his own miserable state. He had gone out in search of justice, and he had come home in terror of what he had himself unjustly done. If he had been imaginative enough to predict the righteous satisfaction he expected from his vengeance on Raven, he might have foreseen himself coming back to bring Tira the evil news, and smiling, out of his general rect.i.tude, at her grief and terror. Perhaps he would have been wrong in those unformulated a.s.sumptions. Perhaps he would not have been calm enough for satisfaction in the completed deed, since the mind does, after a red act, become at once fugitive before the furies of inherited beliefs and fears. Perhaps it would have shrunk cowering back from the old, old penalty against the letting of blood, as it did now when he was faced with the tragic irony of the deed as it was. He had shed blood and, by one of the savage mischances of life, the blood of a man innocent of offense against him. After the first glance at Tira, he did not look at her again, but pa.s.sed her, threw open the door, and went in. His thoughts, becoming every instant more confused, as the appalling moments in the woods beat themselves out noisily, seemed to favor closing the door behind him. It was she who had brought him to this pa.s.s. It was she who had locked his door upon herself and, in her wantonness, as good as thrown away the key. Let her stay outside. But he was not equal to even that sharpness of decision and Tira, after she found the door swinging free, went in.

Tenney had seated himself in his arm-chair by the window. He had not taken off his hat, and he sat there, hands clasped upon the stick Raven had tossed him, his head bent over them. He looked like a man far gone in age and misery, and Tira, returning from the bedroom, the child in her arms, felt a mounting of compa.s.sion and was no longer afraid. She laid the child in its cradle and, with a cheerful clatter, put wood in the stove. The child cried fretfully and, still stepping about the room, she began to sing, as if to distract it, though she knew she was making the sounds of life about Tenney to draw him forth from the dark cavern where his spirit had taken refuge. But he did not look up, and presently she spoke to him:

"Ain't you goin' to unharness? I'm 'most afraid Charlie'll be cold."

The form of her speech was a deliberate challenge, a fashion of rousing him to an old contention. For it was one of her loving habits with animals to name them, and Tenney, finding that "all foolishness," would never accept the pretty intimacies. To him, the two horses were the bay and the colt, and now Tira, with an anxious intent of stirring him even to contradiction, longed to hear him repeat, "Charlie?" adding, "D'you mean the bay?" But he neither spoke nor moved, and she suddenly realized that if she screamed at him he would not hear. She went on stepping about the room, and presently, when the dusk had fallen so that she could see the horse in the yard only as an indeterminate bulk, she slipped out, unharnessed him, and led him into his stall. She began to fodder the cattle, pausing now and then to listen for Tenney's step. But he did not come. She returned to the house for her pails, lighted a lantern, and went back to milk. Still he did not come, and when she carried in her milk, there he sat in the dark kitchen, his head bent upon his hands. Tira shut up the barn, came back to the kitchen, and put out her lantern; then she was suddenly spent, and sat down a moment by the stove, her hands in her lap. And so they sat together, the man and woman, and the child was as still as they. He had whimpered himself off to sleep.

Tira, recognizing herself, with a dull indifference, as too tired to move, was not at first conscious of thinking either about what she had gone through or what was before her. But as her muscles relaxed, her mind, as it was always doing now for its rest and comfort, left this present scene where, for the first active moments, Tenney had filled her thoughts, and settled upon Raven. He had told her to come to him. He had ordered it, as if she belonged to him, and there was heavenly sweetness in that. Tira loved this new aspect of him. She rested in it, as a power alive to her, protecting her, awake to her well-being. Yet, after that first glance at Tenney, sitting there with head bent over the stick, she had not a moment's belief in her right to go. It was sweet to be commanded, to her own safety, but here before her were the dark necessities she must share. And suddenly, as she sat there, and the sense of Raven's protectingness enfolded her and she grew more rested, a feeling of calmness fell upon her, of something friendly nearer her than Raven even (though it had seemed to her lately as if nothing could be more near), and she almost spoke aloud, voicing her surprised delight: "Why, the Lord Jesus Christ!" But she did not speak the words aloud. She refrained in time, for fear of disturbing Tenney in some way not wise for him; but her lips formed them and they comforted her. Then, suddenly tranquillized and feeling strong, she rose and fed the child and made some bustling ado, talking about milk and bread, hoping to rouse Tenney to the thought of food. But he sat there darkly, and by and by she put the kettle on and, in the most ordinary manner, made tea and spread their table.

"Come," she said to him. "Supper's ready. We might's well draw up."

He did glance at her then, as if she had surprised him, and she smiled, to give him confidence. At that time Tira felt all her strength, her wholesome rude endurance, to the full, and stood tall and steady there in the room with the two who were her charge and who now, it seemed to her, needed her equally. Tenney rose with difficulty and stood a moment to get control of his foot. He walked to the table and was about to sit down. But suddenly his eyes seemed to be drawn by his hand resting on the back of the chair. He raised it, turned it palm up and scrutinized it, and then he looked at the other hand with the same questioning gaze, and, after a moment, when Tira, reading his mind, felt her heart beating wildly, he went to the sink and pumped water into the basin. He began to wash his hands. There was nothing on them, no stain such as his fearful mind projected, but he washed them furiously and without looking.

"You stop a minute," said Tira quietly. "I'll give you a mite o' hot water, if you'll wait."

She filled a dipper from the tea kettle, and, tipping the water from his basin into the sink, mixed hot and cold, trying it solicitously, and left him to use it.

"There!" she said, standing by the table waiting for him, "you come as quick's you can. Your tea'll be cold."

So they drank their tea together, and Tira forced herself to eat, and, from the store of woman's experience within her, knew she ought to urge him also to hearten himself with meat and bread. But she did not dare.

She could feel the misery of his sick mind. She had always felt it. But there were reactions, of obstinacy, of rage almost, in the obscurity of its workings, and these she could not challenge. But she poured him strong tea, and when he would take no more, got up and cleared the table. And he kept his place, staring down at his hand. He was studying it with a look curiously detached, precisely as he had regarded it at the moment when he seemed to become aware of its invisible stain. Tira, as she went back and forth about the room, found herself also, by force of his att.i.tude, glancing at the hand. Almost she expected to find it red. When her work was done, she sat down by the stove and undressed the baby, who was fretful still and crying in a way she was thankful to hear. It made a small commotion in the room. If it irritated Tenney into waking from his daze, so much the better.

Ten o'clock came, and Tenney had not stirred. When eleven struck she roused from her doze and saw his head had sunken forward; he was at the nodding point of sleep. She had been keeping up the fire, and presently she rose to put in wood, knocking down a stick she had left on the end of the stove to be reached for noiselessly. He started awake and rose, pushing back his chair.

"Is that them?" he asked her, with a disordered wildness of mien. "Have they come?"

By this she knew he expected arrest for what he had done.

"No," she said, in her quietest voice. "n.o.body's comin' here to-night. I dropped a stick o' wood, that's all. Don't you think you better poke off to bed?"

He did not answer her, but went to the window, put his hands to his face and peered out. Then he turned, stood a moment looking about the room as if for some suggestion of refuge, went to the couch, and lay down. Tira stood for a moment considering. Almost at once, he was asleep. She threw a shawl over him and went into the bedroom and stretched herself as she was on the bed.

XL

Raven, to his sorry amus.e.m.e.nt, discovered something. It was Milly, and she had changed. Indubitably Milly regarded him with a mixture of wonder and of awe. He had taken command of the situation in the house and developed it rationally. 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 pa.s.s, Milly, in her wildness of anxiety, looked upon as the miracles of genius. She even conciliated him, as the poor human conciliates his G.o.d. 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. Raven was the magician who knew where healing lay. Nan was warmth and coolness, air and light. d.i.c.k's eyes followed Nan and she answered them, comforting, sustaining him, Raven and Milly fully believed, in his hold on earth.

But as to Milly, Raven had to keep on wondering over her as she wondered at him. So implicit had been his belief in her acquired equipment for applying accepted remedies to the mischances of life, that he was amazed at seeing her devastated, overthrown. She was even less calm than the women he remembered here in this country neighborhood. When sickness entered their homes, they were, for the most part, models of efficient calm. They had reserves of energy. He wondered if Milly had crumbled so because she had not only to act but to decide how to seem to act. She had to keep up the wearisome routine of fitting her feelings to her behavior, her behavior to her feelings. There were not only things to be done; there were also the social standards of what ought, in crises, to be felt. She had to satisfy her G.o.ds. And she simply wasn't strong enough. Her hold was broken. She knew it, clutched at him and hung on him, a dead weight, while he buoyed her up. Were they all, he wondered, victims of the War? Milly, as she said that night when she came to him in her stark sincerity while d.i.c.k lay unconscious, had given him up once. She had given him to the War, and done the act with the high decorum suited to it. And the country had returned him to her. But now, grotesque, bizarre beyond words, she had to surrender him to a fool "shooting pa'tridges." For facing a travesty like that, she had no decorum left.

d.i.c.k, too, was the victim of abnormal conditions. He had been summoned to the great act of sacrifice to save the world, and the call had challenged him to after judgments he was not ripe enough to meet. It had beguiled him into a natural sophistry. For had not the world, in its need, called mightily on the sheer strength and endurance of youth to slay the dragon of brute strength in her enemies? Youth had done it.

Therefore there was no dragon, whether of the mind or soul, it could not also slay. His fellows told him so, and because they were his fellows and spoke the tongue he understood, he believed it with a simple honesty that was d.i.c.k.

As to Nan, she seemed to Raven the one sane thing in a bewildered world; and for himself: "I'm blest if I believe I'm so dotty, after all," he mused. "What do you think about it?" And this last he addressed, not to himself, but to the ever-present intelligence of Old Crow. He kept testing things by what Old Crow would think. He spoke of him often, as of a mind active in the universe, but only to Nan. And one night, late enough in the spring for the sound of running water and a bitterness of buds in the air, he said it to her when she came down the path to him where he stood listening to the stillness broken by the ticking of the season's clock--steady, familiar sounds, that told him winter had broken and the heart of things was beating on to leaf and bloom. He had, if he was not actually waiting for her, hoped she would come out, and now he saw her coming, saw her step back into the hall for a scarf and appear again, holding it about her shoulders. At last, firm as she was in spirit, she had changed. She was thinner, with more than the graceful meagerness of youth, and her eyes looked pathetically large from her pale face. She had seen d.i.c.k go slipping down the slope, and now that beneficent reactions were drawing him slowly back again, she was feeling the waste of her own bodily fort.i.tude.

"Where shall we go?" she asked him. "Been to the hut lately?"