Tenney, not finding the key of the hut, and increasingly alive to the
anguish flaring in his foot, went home by the back way. Tira was waiting
at the door. She saw him coming, and, for that first moment, he could
ignore the pain in a savage recognition of her plight. She had, he
thought, having missed the key, not even tried the door. But this brief
summary of her guilty folly angered him for the moment only. He was
suddenly tired, and his foot did ache outrageously. He gave way to the
pain of it, and limped heavily. As he neared the house, however, his
face did relax into a mirthless smile. There were tracks under the
kitchen window. She had hoped to get in that way and had found the
window fastened. And all the time there was the door, ready for a
confident hand. But the ill chance of it amused him for not much more
than the instant of its occurrence. His mind recoiled upon his own
miserable state. He had gone out in search of justice, and he had come
home in terror of what he had himself unjustly done. If he had been
imaginative enough to predict the righteous satisfaction he expected
from his vengeance on Raven, he might have foreseen himself coming back
to bring Tira the evil news, and smiling, out of his general rectitude,
at her grief and terror. Perhaps he would have been wrong in those
unformulated assumptions. Perhaps he would not have been calm enough for
satisfaction in the completed deed, since the mind does, after a red
act, become at once fugitive before the furies of inherited beliefs and
fears. Perhaps it would have shrunk cowering back from the old, old
penalty against the letting of blood, as it did now when he was faced
with the tragic irony of the deed as it was. He had shed blood and, by
one of the savage mischances of life, the blood of a man innocent of
offense against him. After the first glance at Tira, he did not look at
her again, but passed her, threw open the door, and went in. His
thoughts, becoming every instant more confused, as the appalling moments
in the woods beat themselves out noisily, seemed to favor closing the
door behind him. It was she who had brought him to this pass. It was she
who had locked his door upon herself and, in her wantonness, as good as
thrown away the key. Let her stay outside. But he was not equal to even
that sharpness of decision and Tira, after she found the door swinging
free, went in.
Tenney had seated himself in his arm-chair by the window. He had not
taken off his hat, and he sat there, hands clasped upon the stick Raven
had tossed him, his head bent over them. He looked like a man far gone
in age and misery, and Tira, returning from the bedroom, the child in
her arms, felt a mounting of compassion and was no longer afraid. She
laid the child in its cradle and, with a cheerful clatter, put wood in
the stove. The child cried fretfully and, still stepping about the room,
she began to sing, as if to distract it, though she knew she was making
the sounds of life about Tenney to draw him forth from the dark cavern
where his spirit had taken refuge. But he did not look up, and presently
she spoke to him:
"Ain't you goin' to unharness? I'm 'most afraid Charlie'll be cold."
The form of her speech was a deliberate challenge, a fashion of rousing
him to an old contention. For it was one of her loving habits with
animals to name them, and Tenney, finding that "all foolishness," would
never accept the pretty intimacies. To him, the two horses were the bay
and the colt, and now Tira, with an anxious intent of stirring him even
to contradiction, longed to hear him repeat, "Charlie?" adding, "D'you
mean the bay?" But he neither spoke nor moved, and she suddenly realized
that if she screamed at him he would not hear. She went on stepping
about the room, and presently, when the dusk had fallen so that she
could see the horse in the yard only as an indeterminate bulk, she
slipped out, unharnessed him, and led him into his stall. She began to
fodder the cattle, pausing now and then to listen for Tenney's step. But
he did not come. She returned to the house for her pails, lighted a
lantern, and went back to milk. Still he did not come, and when she
carried in her milk, there he sat in the dark kitchen, his head bent
upon his hands. Tira shut up the barn, came back to the kitchen, and put
out her lantern; then she was suddenly spent, and sat down a moment by
the stove, her hands in her lap. And so they sat together, the man and
woman, and the child was as still as they. He had whimpered himself off
to sleep.
Tira, recognizing herself, with a dull indifference, as too tired to
move, was not at first conscious of thinking either about what she had
gone through or what was before her. But as her muscles relaxed, her
mind, as it was always doing now for its rest and comfort, left this
present scene where, for the first active moments, Tenney had filled her
thoughts, and settled upon Raven. He had told her to come to him. He had
ordered it, as if she belonged to him, and there was heavenly sweetness
in that. Tira loved this new aspect of him. She rested in it, as a power
alive to her, protecting her, awake to her well-being. Yet, after that
first glance at Tenney, sitting there with head bent over the stick, she
had not a moment's belief in her right to go. It was sweet to be
commanded, to her own safety, but here before her were the dark
necessities she must share. And suddenly, as she sat there, and the
sense of Raven's protectingness enfolded her and she grew more rested, a
feeling of calmness fell upon her, of something friendly nearer her than
Raven even (though it had seemed to her lately as if nothing could be
more near), and she almost spoke aloud, voicing her surprised delight:
"Why, the Lord Jesus Christ!" But she did not speak the words aloud. She
refrained in time, for fear of disturbing Tenney in some way not wise
for him; but her lips formed them and they comforted her. Then, suddenly
tranquillized and feeling strong, she rose and fed the child and made
some bustling ado, talking about milk and bread, hoping to rouse Tenney
to the thought of food. But he sat there darkly, and by and by she put
the kettle on and, in the most ordinary manner, made tea and spread
their table.
"Come," she said to him. "Supper's ready. We might's well draw up."
He did glance at her then, as if she had surprised him, and she smiled,
to give him confidence. At that time Tira felt all her strength, her
wholesome rude endurance, to the full, and stood tall and steady there
in the room with the two who were her charge and who now, it seemed to
her, needed her equally. Tenney rose with difficulty and stood a moment
to get control of his foot. He walked to the table and was about to sit
down. But suddenly his eyes seemed to be drawn by his hand resting on
the back of the chair. He raised it, turned it palm up and scrutinized
it, and then he looked at the other hand with the same questioning gaze,
and, after a moment, when Tira, reading his mind, felt her heart beating
wildly, he went to the sink and pumped water into the basin. He began to
wash his hands. There was nothing on them, no stain such as his fearful
mind projected, but he washed them furiously and without looking.
"You stop a minute," said Tira quietly. "I'll give you a mite o' hot
water, if you'll wait."
She filled a dipper from the tea kettle, and, tipping the water from his
basin into the sink, mixed hot and cold, trying it solicitously, and
left him to use it.
"There!" she said, standing by the table waiting for him, "you come as
quick's you can. Your tea'll be cold."
So they drank their tea together, and Tira forced herself to eat, and,
from the store of woman's experience within her, knew she ought to urge
him also to hearten himself with meat and bread. But she did not dare.
She could feel the misery of his sick mind. She had always felt it. But
there were reactions, of obstinacy, of rage almost, in the obscurity of
its workings, and these she could not challenge. But she poured him
strong tea, and when he would take no more, got up and cleared the
table. And he kept his place, staring down at his hand. He was studying
it with a look curiously detached, precisely as he had regarded it at
the moment when he seemed to become aware of its invisible stain. Tira,
as she went back and forth about the room, found herself also, by force
of his attitude, glancing at the hand. Almost she expected to find it
red. When her work was done, she sat down by the stove and undressed the
baby, who was fretful still and crying in a way she was thankful to
hear. It made a small commotion in the room. If it irritated Tenney into
waking from his daze, so much the better.
Ten o'clock came, and Tenney had not stirred. When eleven struck she
roused from her doze and saw his head had sunken forward; he was at the
nodding point of sleep. She had been keeping up the fire, and presently
she rose to put in wood, knocking down a stick she had left on the end
of the stove to be reached for noiselessly. He started awake and rose,
pushing back his chair.
"Is that them?" he asked her, with a disordered wildness of mien. "Have
they come?"
By this she knew he expected arrest for what he had done.
"No," she said, in her quietest voice. "Nobody's comin' here to-night. I
dropped a stick o' wood, that's all. Don't you think you better poke off
to bed?"
He did not answer her, but went to the window, put his hands to his face
and peered out. Then he turned, stood a moment looking about the room as
if for some suggestion of refuge, went to the couch, and lay down. Tira
stood for a moment considering. Almost at once, he was asleep. She threw
a shawl over him and went into the bedroom and stretched herself as she
was on the bed.