Raven, as soon as he had Tira's message, went to find Nan. She was not
in her room, but Charlotte, when he finally brought up at the kitchen,
told him Nan and Dick had gone to walk. Down the road, she said. They
had called to him, but he was in the barn.
"Then," said Raven, getting into his jacket, "see her the minute she
comes back and send her up to the hut."
Yes, Charlotte meant to be in the kitchen all the afternoon. She would
see Nan. Raven left the house and hurried up the hill. He found the hut
in order, the fire laid as he had left it. That was, foolishly, always a
surprise. Her presence hung so inevitably about the place that he was
taken aback to find no visible sign of it. Now when she appeared it was
breathlessly, not, as he thought, from haste, but from her encounter
with Martin. And she came stripped of her reserves, the decorum of
respectful observance she always kept toward him. At first glance he was
shocked by the change in her appearance and could not account for it,
not knowing he missed the familiar folds of the blue cloak about her,
not seeing that her black shawl and the knitted hood accentuated the
tragic paleness of her face. She came straight to him and he took her
hands and, finding them so cold, held them in one of his and chafed
them. This she did not notice. She neither knew that they were cold nor
that he was holding them.
"You must go away," she said, surprising him because he thought she had
come to say she herself was ready to go. "Where is she?" Tira asked,
with a quick glance about the room, as if the least deviation in her
plan fretted her desperately. "I depended on seein' her."
"Nan?" asked Raven. "I couldn't find her. What is it, Tira?"
"She'd ha' helped me out," said Tira despairingly. "She'd ha' seen
you've got to go away from here an' go quick. Couldn't you pack up an'
git off by the nine o'clock?"
"Don't be foolish," said Raven. He released her hands and drew a chair
nearer the fire. "Sit down. I haven't the least idea of going anywhere.
Do you suppose I should go and leave you in danger?"
But she did not even seem to see the chair he had indicated or the fire.
She stood wringing her hands, in a regardless way, under her shawl, and
looking at him imploringly.
"I ain't in any danger," she said, "not compared to what you be. He's
stopped dwellin' on that man an' his mind is on you."
The shame of this did not move her now. Her fear had burned every
reticence to ashes and her heart looked out nakedly.
"He's got out the old gun," she went on. "I dunno's he's fired a gun
sence we've been here unless it might be at a hawk sailin' over. He says
he's goin' to shoot me a pa'tridge--for me! a pa'tridge for me to
eat!--an' he looked at me when he said it, an' the look was enough. You
go. You go to-night an' put the railroad betwixt you an' me."
"Don't be foolish, Tira," said Raven again. "I've been in more dangerous
places than this, and run bigger risks than Tenney's old musket. That's
all talk, what he says to you, all bluff. I begin to think he isn't
equal to anything but scaring a woman to death. But"--now he saw his
argument--"I will go. Nan and I will go to-night, but only if you go
with us. Now is your chance, Tira. Run back to the house and get the
boy. Bring him here, if you like, to stay till train time and then
come."
He stretched out his hand to her and waited, his eyes on hers. Would she
put her hand into his in obedience, in fealty? She began to cry,
silently yet rendingly. He saw the great breaths rising in her, and was
sick at heart to see her hand--the hand she should have laid in
his--clutching her throat to still its agony.
"I dunno," she said brokenly. "Yes, I s'pose I do know. I've got to do
it. It's been pushin' me an' pushin' me, an' now I've got to give up
beat. You won't save yourself, an' somehow or another you've got to be
saved."
Raven felt the incredible joy of his triumph. He had yielded to her
obstinacy, he had actually given up hope, and now, scourged by her
devotion to him, she was walking straight into the security he had urged
upon her. Yet he dared not betray his triumph, lest outspoken emotion of
any sort should awaken her to a fear of--what? Of him? Of man's nature
she had learned to abhor?
"That's right, Tira," he said quietly. "Now you've given up
responsibility. You've put yourself and the boy in my hands, mine and
Nan's. You've promised, remember. There's no going back."
Still he held out his hand, and though she ignored it, her dumbly
agonized look was aware of it. It was waiting for her, the
authoritative, kind hand, and she took hers from her throat and laid it
in his grasp. Tira seemed to herself to be giving up something she had
been fighting to keep. What was she giving up? Nothing it was right to
keep, she would have said. For at that minute, as it had been in all the
minutes that led to it, she believed in him as she did in her Lord,
Jesus Christ. Yet she was aware, with that emotional certainty which is
more piercing than the keenness of the most brilliant mind, that she had
surrendered, the inner heart of her, and whatever he asked her to do
would now be humbly done.
In the instant of their standing there, hand clasped in hand, the
current of life between them rushed to mingle--humble adoration in her,
a triumphant certainty in him. But scarcely had the impetuous forces met
before they were dissolved and lost. The sharp crack of a gun broke the
stillness outside, and Tira tore her hand from his and screamed
piercingly. She threw herself upon Raven, holding him with both hands.
"Hear that!" she whispered. "It's right outside here. He's shot to make
you come out an' see what 'tis. In the name o' God, don't you open the
door."
Raven shook himself free from her, and then, because she was sobbing
wildly, took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the chair by the
hearth.
"Stop that," he said sternly. "Stay there till I come back."
He took the key from the lock, opened the door and stepped out. There
lay Dick on his face, his head close by the door-stone, and Tenney, gun
in hand, stood stupidly staring at him.
"I shot at a pa'tridge," Tenney babbled, "I shot----"
But Raven was kneeling by Dick in the reddening snow.