"Don't you want to change your mind?" Nan asked. "Mayn't I get the car?

It's seven long miles, Tira."

"Not the way I'm goin'," said Tira. There was a little smile at the corners of her mouth. It was a kind smile, a mother smile. She meant to leave Nan rea.s.sured. "I go 'cross lots, by old Moosewood's steppin'

stones."

Nan withdrew her hands and thought absently how thin Tira's shoulders were under her dress. She was like a ship, built for endurance and speed, but with all her loveliness in the beauty of bare line. Tira put on her hat and took up her daffodils and followed, out at the front door and down the path. Nan looked back.

"You've left the door open," said she. "Don't you want to lock up?"

"No," said Tira, "he'll see to it."

At the gate they parted, with a little smile from Tira, the kind that so strangely changed her into something more childlike than her youth.

"You come," she said, "in the mornin'. I shall be there, an' glad enough to have you."

She turned away and broke at once into her easy stride. Nan stood a minute watching her. Then something came up in her, a surge of human love, the pity of it all--Tira, Raven, the world, and perhaps a little of it Nan--and she ran after her. The tears were splashing down her face and blurring the bright day.

"Tira!" she called, and, as she came up with her, "darling Tira!"

"Why," said Tira, "you're cryin'! Don't you cry, darlin'. I never so much as thought I'd make you cry."

They put their arms about each other and their cheeks were together, wet with Nan's tears, and then--Nan thought afterward it was Tira who did it--they kissed, and loosed each other and were parted. Nan went home shaken, trembling, the tears unquenchably coming, and now she did not turn to look.

XLIV

Nan was very tired. She went to bed soon after dark and slept deeply.

But she woke with the first dawn, roused into a full activity of mind that in itself startled her. There was the robin outside her window--was it still that one robin who had nothing to do but show you how bravely he could sing?--and she had an irritated feeling he had tried to call her. Her room was on the east and the dawn was still gray. She lay looking at it a minute perhaps after her eyes came open: frightened, that was it, frightened. Things seemed to have been battering at her brain in the night, and all the windows of her mind had been closed, the shutters fast, and they could not get in. But now the light was coming and they kept on battering. And whatever they wanted, she was frightened, too frightened to give herself the panic of thinking it over, finding out what she was frightened about; but she got up and hurried through her dressing, left a line on her pillow for the maid and went downstairs, out into a dewy morning. She had taken her coat, her motor cap and gloves. Once in the road she started to run, and then remembered she must not pa.s.s Tenney's running, as if the world were afire, as things were in her mind. But she did walk rapidly, and glancing up when she was opposite the house, saw the front door open as Tira had left it, and a figure in one of the back rooms outlined against the window of the front one where she and Tira had sat. That would be Tenney. He must be accounting to himself for the lonesome house, though indeed Tira would have left some word for him. When she went up the path to Raven's door she was praying to the little imps of luck that Amelia might not be the first to hear her. She tapped softly, once, twice, and then Raven's screen came up and he looked down at her. They spoke a word each.

"Hurry," said Nan.

"Wait," he answered, and put down the screen.

When he came out, Nan met him on the top step where she had been sitting, trying harder still not to be frightened. But he, too, was frightened, she saw, and that this, to him also, meant Tira.

"Get your coat," she said. "She's gone. Over to Mountain Brook."

Raven's face did not alter from its set attention.

"Yes," said Nan, "the car. I'll tell you the rest of it on the way."

He got his coat and cap, and they went down to the garage together.

Shortly, they were slipping out of the yard, and she, with one oblique glance, saw Amelia at a window in her nightie, and forgot to be frightened for the instant while she thought Amelia would be accounting for this as one of her tricks and compressing her lips and honorably saying nothing to d.i.c.k about it. Raven turned down the road and Nan wondered if she had even spoken the name of Mountain Brook.

"Let her out," said she.

Raven did let her out. He settled himself to his driving, and still he had not questioned her. Nan turned her face to him and spoke incisively against the wind of their going:

"The baby died. Tira lay on it in her sleep. That was Monday. It was buried yesterday. At Mountain Brook. Tira went back to Mountain Brook yesterday afternoon, to carry the baby some flowers"--the moment she said this she saw how silly it was and wondered why she had not seen it, why she had been such a fool as not to be frightened sooner. "She said she would spend the night with those Donnyhills." But had Tira thrown in the Donnyhills to keep Nan from being frightened?

Raven gave no sign of having heard. They were speeding. The east behind them was a line of light, and the mists were clearing away. When they turned into the narrow river road, the gray seemed to be there waiting for them, for this was the gorge with the steep cliff on one side and the river on the other, always dark, even at midday, with moss patches on the cliffs and small streams escaping from their fissures and tumbling: always the sound of falling water.

"The Donnyhills?" Raven asked. "Don't I remember them? Sort of gypsy tribe, shif'less."

"Yes, that's it. She must have known them when she lived over there, before she married."

"That's where we go, is it?"

"No," said Nan, and now she wondered if she could keep her voice from getting away from her. "Stop where the cross cut comes out! Old Moosewood's stepping stones. She was going to cross by them, where old Moosewood----" There she stopped, to get a hand on herself, knowing she was going to tell him, who knew it before she was born, the story of Moosewood, the Indian, found there dead.

If the stab of her disclosures drew blood from Raven she could not have told. The road was narrower still, and rougher. Nan had forgotten where the stepping stones came out. He was slackening now. She knew the curve and the point where the cliff broke on the left, for the little path that continued the cross cut on the other side of the road. He got out without a glance at her, stepped to the water side of the roadway, and she followed him. And it was exactly what her fear had wakened her to say. There was no sign of Tira, but, grotesquely, her hat was lying on one of the stepping stones, as if she had reckoned upon its telling them. Raven ran down the path and into the shallow water near the bank, and again Nan followed him, and, at the edge of the water, stopped and waited. When the water was above his waist, he stooped, put down his arms and brought up something that, against the unwilling river, took all his strength. And this was Tira. He came in sh.o.r.e, carrying her, and walking with difficulty, and Nan ran up the bank before him. He laid Tira's body on the ground, and stood for an instant getting his breath, not looking at her, not looking at Nan.

"It's over," he said then quietly. "It's been over for hours." That was the instant of reaction, and he shook himself free of it. "Where do they live?" he asked Nan brusquely. "Yes, I know. We'll take her there. I'll hold her. You drive."

He lifted Tira again, put her into the car as if a touch might hurt her, and sat there holding her, waiting for Nan. And Nan got in and drove on to the Donnyhills'.

All that forenoon was a madness of haste and strangeness. It is as well to look at it through the eyes of Nan, for Raven, though he seemed like himself and was a model of crisp action, had no thoughts at all. To Nan it was a long interval from the moment of stopping before the little gray Donnyhill house (and rousing more squalid Donnyhills than you would have imagined in an underground burrow of wintering animals), through indignities they had to show Tira's body, the hopeless effort of rousing it again to its abjured relations with an unfriendly world. And while they worked on the tenant-less body, the Donnyhill boy, a giant with a gentle face, said he could drive, and was sent with Raven's car to the farmer who had a telephone, and the doctor came and Nan heard herself explaining to him that she woke up worried over Tira, because Tira had spoken of the stepping stones. The doctor shook his head over it all.

The woman had been almost beside herself after the child's death.

Perfectly quiet about it, too. But that was the kind. Nan didn't think she had any intention--any design?--and Nan hastened to say Tira had told why she was going, told it quite simply. She had forgotten to give the child any flowers. Of course, that did show how wrought up she was.

And there were the stepping stones. They were always tricky. Here the doctor brought up old Moosewood, and said there were queer things. When you came to think of it, New England's a queer place. Suicide? No!

Inquest? No! He guessed he knew. Then he went away and promised to send the other man who would be the last to meddle with the body of Tira.

The Donnyhill house was still, for all the children, with consolatory chunks of bread in hand, had been sent off into the s.p.a.cious playing places about them. Mrs. Donnyhill, who looked like a weather-worn gypsy, went about muttering to herself pa.s.sionately sorrowful lamentations: "G.o.d help us! poor creatur'! poor soul!" and she and Nan bathed Tira's body--somehow they were glad to wash off the river water--and put on it a set of clothes Nan suspected of being Mrs. Donnyhill's only decent wear. For the folded garments were all by themselves in the bedroom bureau, and it was true that the women in this region had forethought for a set to be buried in. When this was over and before the coming of the other man who was to have rights over Tira's body, Mrs. Donnyhill remembered Raven and Nan might not have breakfasted, and gave them bread and strong tea--brewed over night, it seemed to have been. They ate and drank, and she moved about tucking children's tyers and sweaters into holes of concealment and making her house fitting for Tira's majesty, all the time muttering her pleas to G.o.d.

About noon, when Tira was lying in the front room, in her solitude, no more to be touched until she was put into her coffin, Raven came in from his steady walk up and down before the house and went to Nan, where she sat by the window in the other front room. The strength had gone out of her. She sat up straight and strong, but her lips were ashen. As they confronted each other, each saw chiefly great weariness. Raven's face, Nan thought, was like a mask. It was grave, it was intent, but it did not really show that he felt anything beyond the general seriousness of the moment.

"Get your things," he said to her. "We'll go back. Tenney's got to be told, and I suppose Charlotte or somebody will have to do something to his house."

They both knew the strange commotion attendant here on funerals.

Sometimes houses were upturned from top to bottom and cleaned, even to the paint. Nan put out a hand and touched his arm.

"Don't do that, Rookie," she said, "don't take her back there. She mustn't go into that house again. She wouldn't want it."

Raven considered a moment. His face did not lose its mask-like calm.

"No," he said then, "she mustn't. She must come to my house--or yours."

"No," said Nan again, still keeping her hand on his arm, and aching so with pity that she was humbly grateful to him for letting her touch his sleeve, "she mustn't do that either. It would be queer, Rookie. It would 'make talk.' She wouldn't like that. Don't you see?"

He did see. He gave a concurring motion of the head and was turning away from her, but Nan rose and, still with her hand on his arm, detained him.

"We'll leave her here," she said. "That woman--she's darling. We can make up to her afterward. But you mustn't appear in it again, except to tell Tenney, if you'd rather. Though I could do that. Now, let's go."

He was ready. But when he had reached the little entry between this room and the one where Tira's body lay, she ran to him.

"Rookie," she said, "Mrs. Donnyhill's out there with the children. Don't you want to go in and see Tira?"