XI

Thyatira--this was her name, and she was called Tira--passed her husband

apparently without a glance. Nevertheless she had, in approaching,

become adequately aware of his disordered look, and the fact of it

calmed her to a perfect self-possession. She could always, even from one

of these fleeting glimpses, guess at the stage his madman's progress had

reached, and the present drop in temperature restored her everyday sense

of safety. With it came a sudden ebbing of energy and endurance. The

"spell" was over for the time, but her escape from the shadow of it left

her nerveless and almost indifferent to its returning; apathetic, too,

to her tormentor. Going in, she closed the door behind her, apparently

not noticing that he followed her, and when he opened it and came in,

she was sitting in his great chair by the fire, taking off the baby's

coat, and, with the capable, anxious mother motion, feeling the little

hands. Tenney came up to her and the child, turning at his step, looking

up at him solemnly. Tira's heart seemed to contract within her. This was

the very glance, "lookin' up kinder droll," that had brought on the

storm. But for Tenney it evidently meant something now that fitted his

mood of passionate anxiety to get back into the warm security of

domestic peace.

"You lemme take him," he said, "whilst you git off your things. You'll

ketch your death o' cold, carryin' on so."

The last he had to add. She was, his defensive inner mind told him, all

wrong in flying out of the house "like a crazed creatur'" when she might

have stayed and told him, just told him, whether she was the kind of

woman he, at these unheralded mad moments, thought she was. That was the

undercurrent always in his mind: if she wouldn't be so still and

hateful, if she would only tell him. She might have some pity on a man,

that defensive inner mind advised him, when she saw him all worked up.

But the minute he warned her the devil of doubt was again tempting him,

she began to freeze up and wouldn't speak to him at all. No wonder, with

that devil inside whispering to him and hounding him on--no wonder he

said things and--he trembled here and dared not follow out that

thought--and was afraid he might do things. But she shook her head, at

his offer of taking the child.

"You might go an' cut a slice o' ham," she said wearily. "It's 'most

dinner time. We might's well have that as anything."

But the baby reached out and closed his little fingers about Tenney's

thumb. Tenney stood there, his heart swelling within him at the contrast

between the child's forgivingness and her cruelty. Now she had the

child's outer things off, and she rose with them in one hand, carrying

the child on the other arm, and it was her movement that dragged the

little fingers away and broke that significant clasp on Tenney's thumb.

How hateful she could be, he thought, his heart swelling more and more.

He stood where she left him, and she went to the low couch and set the

baby down there, and put into his hand a formless doll she wanted him to

love. He never really noticed it, but she felt he would sometime love

the doll. Then she glanced, with the air of being recalled to a

wearisome routine, at the table in the middle of the floor; it meant ham

and eggs. It seemed also to occur to her that she had not taken off her

cloak, and she hung it on its nail behind the door. Soon, as Tenney,

still motionless there by the stove, seemed mutely accusing her, mutely

imploring her not to be cruel, she did turn and look at him. The thought

of Raven was uppermost in her mind. It had been there every minute since

she had gone into his house in the woods, but now it roused

compellingly, stronger than even her present apprehension. Most of all,

she was penetrated by a wonder almost greater than any emotion she had

ever felt, at having laid before him at once and without persuasion, the

story of her life. Why should she have told him? She would have said no

decent woman could betray her husband to another man. It was entirely

mysterious, and she gave it up. But there was, behind the wonder, a

dazzling sense that he was different. As he had told her that strange

thing she hardly dared think of now, because it seemed as if she must

have misunderstood him--the thing about her looking so good and

wonderful when he came upon her--so he, in his kindness and compassion,

his implication of assuming a mysterious responsibility for her, seemed

unbelievably good, not a citizen of this bleak neighborhood--or even the

world (her mind, though stumblingly, ran as far as that) and, more

astounding still, the real miracle was that he had been sent for this:

to save her. And at that moment of dazed reflection, it all meant the

passionate necessity of obeying him. He had bade her show her husband

how she loved him. Seeing the man was jealous, he had pitied him.

Perhaps she had not thought, since these last apprehensive days with

Tenney, whether she loved him or not. He had simply, at the times of

recurrent tragedy, been the terror within the house, and she had lived a

life of breathless consecration to the one task of saving the child. Did

she love him? Raven had assumed she did, and in her devotion to him she

must, in some form, obey. Almost it seemed to her there would be shame

in not loving her husband, if Raven expected it of her. None of these

things were formulated in her mind. They were only shadowy impulses,

like the forces of nature, persuading, impelling her. She had no words;

she had scarcely, as to the abstractions she dimly felt and never saw,

any reasoned thought. But she did have an unrecognized life of the

emotions, and this was surging in her now.

She stood for a second looking at Tenney, the distended beauty of her

eyes like a question, a challenge. She seemed, though this neither of

them could know, to be beseeching him to tell her what treatment he

deserved of her, or what would make their case whole. They were simple

people, these two, but she had leaped, without knowing it herself, to a

new plane of life. She was still with Raven in the hut, trying to speak

his language, follow out his thought for her. She gave a little quick

rush across the room and, to Tenney's overwhelming surprise, her hands

were on his shoulders, her face so close to his that her sweet breath

fanned him. He had never seen her so. She had to be pursued, coaxed,

tired out with persuasion before she would even accept the warmth he too

often had for her.

"Isr'el," she said, "Isr'el Tenney! if you ever ag'in, so long as you

live, think wrong o' that baby there, you'll be the wickedest man on

God's earth."

His arms closed about her and she stood passive. Yet she wanted to free

herself. Did she love him? The question Raven had seemed to illuminate

kept beating on in her tired head. Did she love him? And as Tenney's

arms clung closer and his lips were on hers, she threw back her head and

cried violently:

"No, I don't."

"Don't what?" he asked, releasing her slightly, and she drew away from

him and, still obeying Raven, made one disordered effort at assurance.

"If you think"--here she stopped. She could not go on. It had always

seemed to her a wrong to the baby to put the vile suspicion into words.

"If you think," she tried again, "what you said this mornin'--O Isr'el,

I've been as true to you as you are to your God."

He was religious, she often told herself, chiefly in her puzzled musings

after a "spell" was over, and this was the strongest vow she could

imagine. But it disconcerted him.

"There! there!" he said. "Don't say such things."

Evidently the name of God was for Sundays. But he was uneasily

reassured. He was, at least, in a way of sense, delighted. He put his

face to hers and thickly bade her kiss him. He was not for the moment

horrible to her unconsenting will. Rather she found herself rejoicing.

When she could escape from him (and she felt no fear, her wild belief in

herself was so great) she thought she could dance and sing. For now she

knew she did not love him, and it made her feel so free. Always there

had been some uneasy bond, first with the man who cajoled her to her

heart-break and the miserable certainty that, whatever magic was in a

good name, it was hers no more, and then with Tenney, whom she had

followed humbly, gratefully, because he had been so kind and told her

nothing mattered if she would marry him. But now she felt a sudden

snapping of the bond and she knew that, in her mind, at least, in her

moments of solitude with the baby, she could dance upon the hills of

life. It was an entirely new sense of ecstasy, a thrilling of her blood.

She laughed out, a low, excited laugh, and put him from her and called

gaily:

"You slice the ham, an' I'll git out some eggs."

Tenney stared at her a minute, perplexed and wondering. Then his face

relaxed slightly. It might have been said he smiled. There was

apparently a good feeling in the house, such as he had never been able

to create. She had always been kind, conformable, but she had never

laughed like this, nor in his sight taken up the baby and tossed him

until he, too, laughed gurglingly. She cooked the dinner and Tenney, not

able to take himself out of her bewildering presence, hung about and

watched her and, when the baby began to fret for food, took him up and

walked with him until Tira was free. And while they ate dinner the baby

slept again on the lounge: for the cradle, grim witness Tenney could not

bring himself to look at now, had been moved into the bedroom.

"D'you see that feller jest goin' when you come into the yard?" Tenney

asked her, when his first hunger was over and he leaned back in his

chair to look at her where she sat, only picking at her food, he thought

anxiously. She seemed queer to him to-day, with the rapt, exalted look

of one who had seen strange things and been tired by them, the tremulous

eloquence of her lips. She was, he owned to himself, yet not with any

satisfaction, because any smallest allurement in her lessened his chance

of keeping her faith inviolate, a likely looking woman.

"I wish," he said irritably, out of his uneasiness over her, "you'd eat

suthin.' You're all beat out."

She smiled at him. She felt kindly toward him as to a part of the world

that had at least begun to show its softer side to her.

"No," she said, "I ain't beat out."

"D'you see him?" he pursued, his thoughts recurring to Raven.

"Yes," she responded, in a low tone, "I see him."

"'Twas Raven. You knew he was comin' up to stay a spell. Don't ye

remember I see Jerry an' he told me? He wants me to go down in his river

pastur', choppin'. All of a whew to git at it. Jest like them city

folks. If a thing comes into their head, they'll shake the footstool but

they'll git it."

"Yes," said Tira. "I think 's likely."

She got up to bring the pie, warming in the oven, and when her back was

toward him she allowed herself a smile, happy, unrestrained, at Raven's

thought for her. She knew why Tenney was to be drawn off down to the

river pasture. This was a part of Raven's understanding and his

beneficence.

"You goin'?" she asked, returning to her chair.

"Yes," said Tenney. "Might 's well."

When he had eaten he went out to his chores and she cleared the table

and walked about the house with a light step. She had been working

heavily of late, with a dull mind, but now there seemed to be a reason

for doing every task as perfectly as it could be done. There was not a

suspicion in her mind that Raven had a charm for her or that she could

possibly have a charm for him. He had simply opened a window for the

light to come in; he had shown her the door of escape. This was the

first simple kindness she had ever had. When she was little, the family

life had been a disorderly struggle for bare existence, and as she grew

into an ignorant girlhood she began to be angrily conscious that she

herself, she who did not recognize the power of her own beauty and with

it the strange force that lay beneath it, like a philter, for man's

undoing, was an object of pursuit by men made mad through passions she

hated. She had the simplest tastes, the most inconsiderable desires. She

would go off by herself then and spend a day wandering about the woods,

cooling her feet in brooks, sleeping under a tree. No man could make her

happiness completer, hanging about her steps, staring her down with

bold, impudent eyes. She even thought, in a formless way (for she had no

orderly inner life of wonder and conclusion) whether she should have

taken refuge with the light-haired man who was now driving Tenney to

madness, if he had not had that drollery of looking at you, like a boy

really, who cared only for a boy's fitful fun. But he was not kind. The

kindness had been only to lure her into trusting him, just as Tenney's

had turned into a rage of abusive jealousy. Raven's kindness was

different. It was not in any degree personal to her. She knew he would

have been as merciful to a squirrel caught in a trap. And the scars of

his own mental sufferings and restraints had done something to him,

something inexplicable that made him wonderful in her eyes. He seemed,

too, all-powerful. He was that miraculous combination of the human guide

and heavenly helper, with the wisdom to understand earthly trouble and

the power to administer what remedy there might be.

Tenney did not come in until supper time. He had been over to Raven's,

he told her, and seen Jerry about the chopping. They were going in the

morning early. She made no reply. She was still at peace in the thought

of Raven's kindness, but the turmoil of the day had told on her, and she

was so tired that she could scarcely drag herself about; her eyes kept

closing as she moved. Tenney was still expectantly eager for an

awakening of her leniency. At eight o'clock he brought out the Bible and

stiffened himself into the rigidity that was the mail for his spiritual

combats. He was always referring to himself, at these times of religious

observance, as a servant of the Cross, and Tira used wearily to wonder

whether he felt obliged to arrange himself for combats that, so far as

she knew, never seemed to come off. There was a mysterious adversary he

was always describing with an apprehension that made her wonder if

Israel could really be afraid, and if that was why he announced so

belligerently that he was ready for him. Neither of them thought of the

combat as being simply the grim fight the will of men is doomed to on

the dark plain of man's mysterious sojourn. It seemed to them outside

somewhere, dramatic, imminent, and yet, if you prayed loudly enough and

read your chapter, not certain to happen at all. At least this seemed to

be what Tenney thought, and Tira, when she dwelt upon it, sleepily

followed him. To-night he was reading in Revelation, and when he had

finished that, he would begin, in due course, at Genesis, and go on with

an iron persistency of accomplishment as methodical as ploughing a

field. Tira, sitting at her side of the hearth, heard, through drowsy

ears, the incomprehensible vision of the tree of life with its twelve

manner of fruits, and when Israel shut the Bible with an air of virtuous

finality, she came awake and sat guiltily upright.

"You've been asleep," he accused her frowningly. "Anybody'd think you

could keep yourself awake over the Word o' God."

Tira leaned back in her chair and yawned with the simplicity of the

natural animal. Tenney caught his breath, the redness of her mouth and

the gleam of her teeth were so bewitching to him. He got up and carried

away the Bible. When he came back from the best room she was moving

about, setting away chairs and then brushing up the few chips on the

hearth.

"I'm beat out," she acknowledged, with a wistful look at him, half

deprecating humility. "I guess I'll poke off to bed."

"Yes," said Tenney, "le's go."

At that minute there was a little waking call from the bedroom off the

sitting-room. Tenney gave her a startled glance.

"Why," he said, "you got him in there?"

They had been used to keeping the baby covered on the kitchen or the

sitting-room couch until their own bedtime and Tenney, preoccupied with

his last chore of reading the Scriptures, had not noticed that his wife

had carried him into the bedroom instead.

"Yes," she said, with a significant quiet. "I thought 'twas full warmer

in the bed. I'm goin' to stay with him."

"In there?" Tenney repeated. "All night?"

She nodded at him. The afternoon brightness was again on her face, and

for an instant he felt afraid of her, she looked so strange. Then he

laughed a little. He thought he understood, and, advancing, put a hand

on her shoulder and spoke in an awkward tenderness.

"Here," said he, "you ain't afraid o' me, be you? Why, I wouldn't no

more lay hands on him----"

He had meant to add that she had reassured him by her disclaimer of the

morning. But he could not quite manage that. Words were not his

servants. They were his enemies, especially at such times as he was mad

with rage. Then they came too fast and got the better of him, and he

could hardly ever remember afterward what they were. Tira slipped from

under his hand and continued her ordered tasks about the room. But she

smiled at him in the friendliest way.

"Oh, no," she said, "I ain't the leastest mite afraid." She laughed a

little, in a manner mystifying to him, for it suddenly seemed to her she

should never be afraid of anything again.

Tenney stood there, his eyes following her as she moved about the room,

and again the thought of her cruelty possessed him. Last of all her

orderly deeds, she lighted a little lamp and set it on the table near

him.

"Don't you forgit to blow it out," she warned him. "I'm terrible afraid

o' fire, these winter nights. I won't put out the big lamp yet. I can

see to undress by it, an' then baby won't wake up."

He took his lamp and set it down again and went to the bedroom door, her

eyes following him.

"I dunno," he said, in a strangled voice, "as there's any need o' that

in there, for folks to tumble over."

He stepped inside, took up the cradle with the telltale gash in the

hood, carried it through the kitchen and set it outside the door, in the

shed.

"I'll carry it up into the shed chamber to-morrer," he said, in the same

tortured voice.

Then he took his lamp and turned to go. He was as much surprised at

himself as she could have guessed. For some reason--and he did not know

the reason--he could not bear to leave her there in the dark with the

silent witness standing by to cry out against him. Yet this he did not

think. He only knew he must get the cradle out of the room and do it

quickly. When he had reached the door to the enclosed staircase, her

voice halted him so abruptly that the light quivered in his hand.

"Isr'el," it called, "you're real good. Don't you be cold. There's a

blanket on the foot."

But though he hesitated another minute, the voice had nothing more for

him, and he went slowly up to bed. As he undressed, his thoughts down

there with her, he wondered how her voice could have sounded so gay.

In the middle of the night, Tira woke suddenly, with the sense of

something near. There was the moon flooding the little room, and in the

doorway stood a figure.

"That you, Isr'el?" she called clearly.

"Yes," he said, and then hesitated, "you all right?"

"Yes," she answered, in the same clear voice, with something commanding

in it now. "We're all right. You go back to bed, so's to git your sleep.

I'll call you if I'm up first."

Tenney turned away, and she heard his hesitating step through the

kitchen and on the stairs. Then, as if this had been as commonplace an

interlude in her night as the baby's waking and drowsing off again, she

felt herself surging happily away to sleep.