The next day Raven saw Tenney driving by, probably to the street where
all the neighbors went for supplies. Up to this time Jerry had offered,
whenever he was going, to do Tira's "arrants," and Tenney had even
allowed him to bring home grain. Raven at once summoned Nan. It was
their chance. Tira must be taken by storm. Let her leave the house as it
was and run away. Nan hurried on her things, and they went up the road.
"There she is," said Nan, "at the window."
Raven, too, saw her white face for the moment before it disappeared. She
was coming, he thought, making haste to let them in. He knocked and
waited. No one came. He knocked again, sharply, with his stick, and
then, in the after silence, held his breath to listen. It seemed to him
he had never heard a house so still. That was the way his mind absurdly
put it: actively, ominously still.
"She was at the window," said Nan, in a tone that sounded to him as
apprehensive as the beating of his own heart. "I saw her."
He knocked again and, after another interval, the window opened above
their heads and Tira leaned over the sill.
"You go away," she said quietly, yet with a thrilling apprehension. "I
can't let you in."
They stepped back from the door and looked up at her. She seemed even
thinner than when Nan had seen her last, and to Raven all the sorrows of
woman were darkling in the anguish of her eyes. He spoke quietly, making
his voice reassuring to her.
"Why can't you? Have you been told not to?"
"No," said Tira, quick, he thought, to shield her persecutor, "nobody's
said a word. But they've gone off, an' you can't be certain when they'll
be back."
"Hasn't he gone to the street?" Raven asked her, and now her voice, in
its imploring hurry, could not urge him earnestly enough.
"He said he was goin'. You can't tell. He may turn round an' come back.
An' I wouldn't have you here--either o' you--for anything in this
world."
But though she said "either of you," her eyes were on Raven, beseeching
him to go. He did not answer that. In a few words he set forth their
plan. She was to take the child and come. It was to be now. But she
would hardly listen.
"No," she called, in any pause between his words. "No! no! no!"
"Don't you want to save the child?" Raven asked her sternly. "Have you
forgotten what may happen to him?"
She had her answer ready.
"It's his," she said. "He spoke the truth, though it wa'n't as he mean
it. But the baby's his, an' baby as he is, an' _as_ he is, he's got to
fight it out along o' me. You go now, an' don't you come a-nigh me
ag'in. An' if you stay here knockin' at my door, I'll scream so's I
sha'n't hear you."
She withdrew her head from the window, but instantly looked out again.
"God Almighty bless you!" she said. "But you go! you go!"
"Tira!" called Raven sharply, "don't you know you're in danger? Don't
you know if anything happens to you it'll----" He paused, and Nan
wondered if he meant to say, "It will break my heart!" and scarcely felt
the pain of it, she was so tense with misery for them both.
Tira leaned out again and seemed to bend even protectingly toward them.
She smiled at them, and the softening of her face was exquisite.
"I ain't in danger," she said. "I've said things to him. He's afraid."
"Threatened him?" Raven asked.
"I've kep' tellin' him," said Tira, in that same tone of tender
reasonableness such as mothers use when they persuade children to the
necessities of things, "he must remember we ain't alone. An' somehow it
seems to scare him. He don't see Him as I do: the Lord Jesus Christ."
She shut the window quietly, and Raven and Nan went away. They walked
soberly home without a word, but when Nan was taking off her hat she
heard bells and went to the library window. Raven was standing by the
table, trying to find some occupation to steady his anxious mind.
"Look!" said Nan.