Tira was hurrying through the snowy track, ankle deep at every step.
Raven, bareheaded, ran after. In a minute he had overtaken her.
"Stop!" he called, breathless, more from his emotion than from haste.
"Stop! I tell you."
She did stop, and he came up with her. Now, at last, there were tears in
her eyes, and he thought angrily that he had been the one to overthrow
her control more absolutely than the danger she apprehended. He had, he
thought, in this unreasoning anger, promised her asylum in the hut and
she found it invaded. But curiously he did not think of Nan, who had
come uninvited and scared the poor fugitive away. Nan, child and woman,
was always negligible, too near him to be dealt with. But he had offered
this woman the safety of a roof and walls, and she had fled out of it.
At sight of his face, its contrite kindliness, her own set again into
its determined composure. She seemed to see that she could not count on
aid outside herself and returned again uncomplainingly to her old
equilibrium of endurance.
"Come back," he said. "She's going down to the house with me. Besides,
if she did stay, you'd like her. You'd love her. That's only Nan."
He said "Nan" of set purpose. It was the custom of this country folk,
when they talked among themselves, to call all alike by their Christian
names, even when they scrupulously used the surname in direct address.
He meant to reassure her. It was a way of bringing Nan into a friendly
nearness.
"You've heard of her," he said, "Miss Hamilton's niece. She owns the
next house to mine, the Hamilton house. She'll be here this summer.
You'll be neighbors. Come back and speak to her."
"No," said Tira, in a gentle obstinacy. "I guess I'll be gittin' along
toward----"
Here she stopped. She did not know what the direction or the end of her
journey was to be.
"You're not going off the place," said Raven bluffly. "That's flat. The
place is mine and you're safe on it. Do you want to go traipsing round
the woods in this snow"--he fell purposely into the country habit of
speech--"and get wet to your knees and have a cold?"
"I sha'n't have a cold," she said, smiling dimly at him and looking, as
he realized, like a mother who was sorry her son could not have all he
grasped at, but still remained immovable. "I don't hardly remember
havin' one since I was little."
The child had resumed the role of Buddhistic calm temporarily abandoned
last night when he screamed out his distaste for earthly complications,
and Raven, glancing at the solemn blue eyes, saw that the only hope of
moving her lay in him.
"Do you want," he shot at random, "to have the baby get chilled--and
hungry?" There he broke off, though he saw that did move her. He had to
know from what extremity she fled. "Has this been going on all night?"
he asked.
"No," she said, with the same air of gently reassuring him. "I slept
'most all night. So did he, Mr. Tenney, I guess. An' we started out all
right this mornin'. But after he'd read the chapter an' prayed, it all
come over him ag'in, an' I had to go."
"After he'd read his chapter," said Raven. "And prayed! God!"
The invocation sounded as if he also prayed.
"This time," she continued, "he--he seemed to have a realizin' sense."
She paused a perplexed moment. In the little she had said to Raven, he
had noted from the first that she was often blocked by a difficulty in
finding words she thought adequate. "He seemed to know what was comin',"
she said. "He give me warnin'."
"Warning?"
"Yes. He come in an' he says to me, 'You don't want to go traipsin'
round in this snow.'"
Raven noted the word and smiled slightly. He and Tenney were at one in
their care for her.
"'You go up chamber,' he says, 'an' have a fire in the air-tight an'
turn the key. I dunno,' he says, 'what's goin' to happen, this day. I
dunno.'"
"Why didn't you?" asked Raven.
"I didn't hardly dast to," she said, with her clear look at him. "I knew
if he knew I's up there he never could stan' it till he--broke in the
door."
Raven could only look at her.
"Besides," she said, "even if I be safer in the house, I don't feel so,
somehow. I've always lived a good deal out door."
"So you came away," said Raven quietly. "You came here." The words
really were, "You came to me," but he would not say them.
"I did lock the chamber door," she said, "jest as he said. But I locked
it on the outside an' took away the key. I thought he'd think I was
there an' it might keep him out a spell, an' when he did git in, it'd
give him a kind of a shock an' bring him to. It does," she added simply.
"It always gives him a shock, not findin' me. He's asked me over 'n'
over ag'in, when he come to, not to make way with myself, but I never'd
answer. He's got it before him, an' that's about all there is in my
favor, far as I can see."
The gentle monotony of her voice was maddening to Raven; it brought him
such terrible things, like a wind carrying the seeds of some poisonous
plant that, if they were allowed to spring up, would overrun the world
of his hopes for her.
"You wouldn't promise him," he said thickly, "but you'll promise me.
Promise me now. Whatever happens to you, you won't make way with
yourself."
"Why, of course I sha'n't," she said, as if in some surprise that he
should ask it. "How could I? Not while there's baby."
This threw him back to the sanity of their common cause. They were both
to fight, he for her and she for the mother's one absorbing task: the
child. He returned to his old grave way with her.
"Now," he said, "you're going to do exactly what I tell you. If you
won't go back to the hut and see Nan, you're to stay here until I've got
Nan and taken her down to the house. And we sha'n't come up here at all,
unless I come to bring you something to eat."
"I don't want," she hesitated, "to put her out."
"Nan? You don't put her out. She only came because she didn't find me at
the house. If you don't do precisely what I tell you, that'll be putting
everybody out. I shall make an awful row. Do you hear me?"
She smiled, a little flicker of a smile. She might not like to be
pursued by jealousy incarnate, but she was, he saw, rather amused at
being fraternally tyrannized over.
"Now," he said, "I'm going. You're to stand here in your tracks, and
when I've sent Nan down the path I'll come and get you."
He gave her no time to object, but went back to the hut, and in to
solitude and a deadening fire. He threw open the door of the other room,
though Nan would surely not be there, and swore at not finding her.
Womenfolk were giving him a good deal of trouble with their exits and
their entrances. He mended the fire, snatched up his cap and gloves and
went out again, up the path to Tira. She was standing motionless
precisely, he thought, in the tracks where he had left her, and the
Buddhistic child indifferently regarded him.
"Come on," Raven called to her, stopping at a pace from them. "She's on
her way down along, and there's a good fire."
She started obediently after him and Raven, though he saw in her
slowness the hesitating desire to express her distaste for putting any
one out, paid no attention but went on ahead and opened the door.
"Keep up the fire," he bade her. "I'll be back along about one and bring
you something to eat. The little chap, too. We mustn't forget him."
She had stepped inside and he was about closing the door; but she turned
and seemed to recover her attitude of protest.
"No," she said, "don't you bring up anything. I shall be gone long 'fore
then."
"Why, no, you won't," said Raven impatiently. "You're not going back
into that----" he paused, seeking a word that should not offend her. She
had clung to incredible loyalties. Perhaps she even clung to her home.
"Oh," she said earnestly, "it'll be over by then, an' he'll want his
dinner."
Tenney would want his dinner! He had no words for that. He turned away.
But she seemed to feel the finality of his going. Was he giving her up?
She put the child down on the couch and turned to follow. Raven was just
closing the door.
"Don't!" she cried. There was piercing entreaty in her voice. "Don't!"
It was really begging him not to give her up, and though he did not
clearly understand it so, he knew he was forcing on her something to
bear, in addition to all the rest. She must not think that of him. She
must feel safe, in whatever manner it was easiest for her to accept
safety. He smiled back at her in that way Anne Hamilton, when she had
caught him smiling at Nan, thought so maddeningly beautiful. Poor Anne!
She had starved for the sweetness of what seemed to her, in her hunger
of the heart, an almost benedictory tenderness.
"Don't you worry," he said to Tira, in the phrasing he unconsciously
adopted to her. "Everything's going to be exactly as you want it. Only,"
he added whimsically--a tone she had never heard in her life before--"if
I could have my say for a few hours, it would be to find you here when I
come back."
He closed the door and hurried down the path, moved even beyond his pity
by the certainty that she was nearer him. She had accepted that strange
community of interest between them. She had to be saved and he was to
save her. Now it would be easier. He had no thought but to find Nan down
at the house, but two-thirds of the way along the path he saw her,
sitting on a slant of the great boulder and looking grave. She was not
the Nan who had come to the hut, a half hour ago, so gaily certain of
her welcome. The two women had shied at the sight of each other. He had
cleared up the situation for the one, and now he had to do it for Nan.
That was simple. He had never known her to fail in understanding. He
came up to her and she raised her eyes, earnest now, startled, to his.
"Aren't you too cold there?" he asked.
She shook her head and smiled a little.
"No, not with my fur. I'm afraid the gray squirrels will see me. What
would they think of skinning so many of their little brothers?"
"Nan," he said, "you saw her."
She nodded, slid off the rock and stood there, not looking at him. Of
course she saw her, Nan's inner self was answering. Didn't they meet
face to face? But she knew this was but his beginning and she would not
challenge it. He plunged into the turmoil of Tira's affairs, foreign to
him so short a time ago and yet his.
"She's the wife of the man who bought the old Frye place, next to yours.
He's jealous of her, has fits of insane rage against her and she has to
get out. One day I found her hiding up here in the woods. I told her,
whenever she had to make tracks to come here to the hut, and build a
fire and stay. I leave the key under the stone."
"Yes," said Nan. "I see."
"No, you don't," cried Raven, "or you wouldn't look like that. What is
it you don't see? What is it you don't like? Out with it, Nan."
Nan said nothing, and suddenly he saw she was trembling. It was in her
lips, it must be all over her, because he could see it in her hands, the
tight shut ball of them under her long sleeves.
"Now," he said, irritated beyond measure by the unkindness of
circumstance, "what is it I haven't made clear? Don't you like her?
Don't you believe in her? Or don't you take any stock in what I tell
you?"
"Of course I believe you," said Nan quietly. He could see her relax. "As
for liking her--well, she's beautiful. I agree with you perfectly
there."
But he had not said she was beautiful. That he did not remember.
"She is, isn't she?" he agreed. "And so--Nan, she's the strangest
creature you ever saw in your life. I suppose I could count up the words
she's spoken to me. But the queer part of it is, I know they're all
true. I know she's true. I'd stake----" there he paused.
"Yes," said Nan quietly. "I've no doubt she's true. And she's a very
lucky woman."
"Lucky?" repeated Raven, staring. "She's the most unfortunate creature I
ever saw. Lucky! what do you mean by that?"
"Well," said Nan, and now she spoke with an edge in her voice, "what's
she going to do about it? She's in danger of her life, you say." He
nodded absently, his mind going back to that word, lucky. "She's afraid
of her husband, afraid he'll kill her."
"Not so much that as afraid he'll kill the child."
"Well, then, isn't she going to leave him?"
"No. She won't."
"Have you asked her?"
"Oh, yes," said Raven. "I asked her at once. I told her I'd send her
away from here, find her something to do: just what anybody'd say in a
case like that."
"And she wouldn't let you?"
"She wouldn't let me."
"Why not?" asked Nan. "Does she--love the brute?"
She might have flicked a lash across his face and his nerves winced
under it. There was, she saw, in his mind, something disparaging to the
woman in coupling her with a softness misplaced.
"I don't know," he said, with a thoughtful precision. "Sometimes I think
she's all mother: doesn't care about anything but the child. I know
she's square, knew it at once, but that doesn't mean I know any more
about her. She's a locked door to me."
His tone was low, but it told Nan how he wished the door would open and
let him in to persuade her to her own well-being. She looked at him a
moment, as he stood staring down at his feet where a ragged wisp of
yellowed brake came through the snow, looked as if he hurt her beyond
endurance, and yet she had to probe ill circumstance to its depths. Then
she spoke, but in her old voice of childlike gentleness toward him:
"I see. I really believe, Rookie, I do see."
He looked up at her in a palpable relief.
"That's a good girl," he said. Again she was half child to him. "You'll
take a hand, too, won't you?"
That was more than she had bargained for. She would believe in the
mysterious woman and leave him free to carry out any mission, however
sophistical or chivalrous, he would. But she had not expected to enter
the arena with him and defend the martyr thrown to the wild beast of
marital savagery. Raven felt her recoil.
"I can't do anything for her," he pursued, with a discouragement she
read. "Anything real, that is. I can give her the shelter of the hut,
but he'll find that out some day and go crashing in. I can't be there
always. Fact is, I can't be there at all."
"Yes," said Nan. "I see." There was in her voice a sweetness new to him.
"I'll do anything you say, Rookie, to make your mind easy. What do you
want me to do. Take her away from here?"
He considered a moment. Yes, that was really what he did want. She had
put the words into his mouth.
"But," said Nan practically, "what you've got to do now is to go down to
the house and be tried for your life. Your sister'll be there something
after two. And Dick. And the alienist."
Raven shrugged his shoulders as if he shook them free of a burden.
"I don't care anything about the alienist," he said. "Nor Dick. I do
care a lot about Amelia. She's an awful bore. But it can't be helped.
Come on down."
"You know," said Nan tentatively, as they took the road, "we could ask
Charlotte for a luncheon and go off over the mountain. You've got
snowshoes, haven't you?"
Raven shook his head.
"You can't foil Amelia," he said, "by running away from her. She'd camp
for the winter. Or she'd get on our trail and follow us. No, we've got
to see it through."