XLV

In that darkest minute when it seems as if dawn will never come or, if

it does, to bring with it a deeper chill, Raven, for the first time in

weeks, found his old enemies upon him: the fear of life, the terrible

distaste for continuance in a world where there is no escape, even in

going on. Was this grief for Tira? Her needs had pulled him out from his

own sickness of mind, and now that she would never need anything again,

must he return to the dark dwelling of his mental discontent and crouch

there whimpering as Tenney had whimpered when he came to him here a few

hours ago? And slowly, achingly, his mind renewedly accepted the iron

necessity which is living. There was no giving up. There was no escape.

He had to live because the other choice--was it the fool's choice or the

coward's?--was not only unthinkable, but it did no good. There was no

escape. And side by side with the sickness of distaste for life as he

found it, was another distaste, as strong: for this malady of nostalgia

itself. He could not abide it another instant. It was squalid, it was

unclean, and he found his mind crying out: "Help me! for God's sake help

me!" But it was not to God he cried. It was to Old Crow. And Old Crow

heard. Indubitably he heard. For there was an answer. "Yes! yes!" the

answer kept beating in his mind. He would help.

And what of Tira? Was she resolved into the earth that made her? Or

would she also help? He wondered why she had died. Was it because she

had been unable to face the idea of the little boy who was not right

taking his maimed innocence into some other state alone? No. Tira had

her starkly simple faith. She had her Lord Jesus Christ. She would, as

simply as she believed, have trusted the child to Him. Did she so fear

to face her life with Tenney--the hurtling, blind, elemental creature

with blood on his hands--that she took herself away? No. Tira was no

such person. There was a wild, high courage in her that, the more

terrible the challenge, responded the more valiantly. Why did she take

herself away? And what was she in these walls that had been dedicated to

her safety? Was she existent, like Old Crow? Was she here with Raven

when his mind clamored for peace? Did she, too, answer "Yes, yes!" She

had, he concluded, gone. It seemed as if she had withdrawn herself, by

her own will, for some inexorable reason. He remembered threnodies that

saw the beloved dead absorbed into the course of nature: the dawn, the

sunset, the season's round, the flowers that spring ever renewed to deck

the laureate hearse. And as his mind sought her in the night breeze that

came in to fan him and Tenney alike, in the sky where the stars, through

arboreal spaces, never looked so piercingly bright, he did seem to be

aware of an actual intelligence. But it was assuredly not Tira and it

was not Old Crow. It was Anne.

Whether his mind had been so occupied by these other more immediate

things that she could not get the connection between her will and his,

whether she now found him, bereft of Tira, free to do her unchanged

bidding, he could not see. But Anne was there. At least, the knowledge

of her was in his mind, insisting on being heard, and insisting as it

never had in this present life. For whereas then her attack had been

subtly organized, Anne herself, the directing general, behind almost

invisible potencies of suggestion and finesse, now here she was in the

open, plainly commanding him, as if this might be the only fight she

should be able to manage, and it must be to the finish. And what she

wanted was plain obedience touching the disposal of her trust. It was

not his love she was asking for now. That, he concluded, though without

bitterness, might not look desirable to her any more. Or perhaps she had

learned how futile it was to ask it. Or, indeed, was all love futile

beyond the grave? No, for he loved Tira withdrawn into her impenetrable

seclusion--but that he must not think of. The fight was on, the

conclusive fight with Anne. And he seemed to be battling for the

integrity of his own soul, the freedom of his will. He sat up on his

couch, and heard himself say aloud:

"No. I won't do it. You can't make me."

Was this the way to speak to Anne, to whom all the reticences and

delicacies of life were native air? But she was not Anne now so much as

the enemy of sane conduct here in this world and of his struggling will.

"D'you speak?" called Tenney from the next room.

"All right," said Raven, and realized he must not speak again.

Thereafter the fight with Anne went on within the arena of his mind. He

poured himself forth to her. For the first time in his life, he admitted

her to his inner beliefs and sympathies. He would not, he told her,

devote her money to the debasing of the world. Wherever she was, she had

not learned a page more than she had known when she wrote that letter to

him about the things that help the world and the things that hinder. He

didn't believe, he told her, she really wanted to learn. She wanted only

to be obeyed, to put her money where she had ordered it to go merely

because she had ordered it.

"You can't have it, Anne," he repeated, whenever his mind halted in

argument, and she kept pressing him back, back into his old hopeless

subserviency. "I'll tell you where it's going. It's going to France.

There won't be any palace, Anne. It's going into the land. It's going to

help little French boys and French girls to grow up with time enough and

strength enough to put their beautiful intelligence into saving the

earth. It's going to be that sort of a bulwark between them and the

enemies of the earth. And that's the only road to peace. Don't you see

it is, Anne? Don't you see it? You won't get peace by talking about it.

You wasted your money when you did it, all through war-time. You harmed

and hindered. Don't you know you did? If you don't, what's the use of

dying? Don't they know any more there than we do here? Anyway, I know

more than you did when you made your will, and that's what I'm going to

do. Train up beautiful intelligences, Anne, the ones that are likeliest

to work it all out practically: how to live, that's what they're going

to work out, how to live, how to help the world to live. Don't you see,

Anne? For God's sake, don't you see?"

She didn't see, or, if she did, she was too angry to give him the

comfort of knowing she did. But suddenly, in the midst of her anger,

there was a break, a stillness, though it had been still before. Perhaps

it was most like a stillness of mind, and he felt himself as suddenly

awake to a certainty that Anne had done with him. Once before she had

seemed to leave him, but this time it was for good. She had gone,

wherever the road was open to her. He had armed his will and sent it out

to fight her will. She was routed, and she would never challenge him

again. Perhaps, in her scorn, she had repudiated him. Perhaps the world,

if it were called on to pronounce judgment, would repudiate him for

betraying a dead woman's trust. Well, let it. The impeccability of his

own soul wasn't so very valuable, after all, weighed against what he saw

as the indisputable values of mortal life. He lay back on his bed,

exhausted by the fight, foolishly exhausted because, he told himself,

there hadn't been any real Anne. Only her mind, as he had known it, and

his own mind had been grappling, like two sides of an argument. But

while he tried to dull himself with this denial of the possibilities

beyond our sense, he knew underneath that there had been Anne. And she

had gone. She would not come again.

Then he must have slept, for there was a gulf of forgetfulness, and when

his eyes came open, it was on Tenney standing there in the doorway.

Raven felt squalid after the night in his clothes, and Tenney looked to

him in much the same case. Also Tenney was shrunken, even since he had

come to the hut the day before, and then he had seemed not

three-quarters of his height. He asked now, not as if he cared, but as

if he wondered idly:

"D' I leave my ammunition up here?"

He had the gun in his hand.

"Let the gun alone," said Raven. He got up and took it away from him,

and Tenney dumbly suffered it. "We'll go down now and have some

breakfast, and Jerry'll do your chores."

"I can do my own chores," said Tenney. "I can go into the barn, I

guess."

By this Raven understood that he did not mean to go into the house.

Perhaps he was afraid of it. Men are afraid of houses that have grown

sinister because of knowing too much.

That day was a curious medley of watchfulness over Tenney: for Raven

felt the necessity of following him about to see he did himself no harm.

He called him in to breakfast, but Tenney did not even seem to hear, and

stood brooding in the yard, looking curiously down at his lame foot and

lifting it as if to judge how far it would serve him. Then Charlotte,

who had been watching from the window, went out and told him she had a

bite for him in the shed, and he went in with her at once and drank

coffee and ate the bread she buttered. He didn't, so he told her, want

to touch things any more. So she broke the bread and he carried the

pieces to his mouth with an air of hating them and fearing. When he went

over to his house, Raven went with him, and, finding Jerry had milked

and driven the cows to pasture, they stood outside, miserably loitering,

because Tenney had evidently made that resolve not to go in.

"I suppose," said Raven, after a little, to recall him, "the milk is in

there."

"Yes," said Tenney. "I s'pose 'tis."

"It isn't strained, you know. What do you mean to do about it?"

"Do?" said Tenney. "Let it set."

Again they loitered, back and forth, sometimes on one side of the

woodpile, sometimes the other, each with a pretense of finding the

woodpile itself a point of interest. Suddenly Tenney ceased his foolish

walk up and down.

"Look here," said he, "should you jest as lieves go in?"

"Yes," said Raven. "Only you'd better come with me. Get it over. You've

got to go into your own house."

"What I want," said Tenney, "is a blue apron, blue with white specks. I

don't believe it's there, but if 'tis I want it."

To Raven, this was not strange. It was Tira's apron he wanted, something

that belonged to her, to touch, perhaps to carry about with him as a

reminder of the warmth and kindliness that lay in everything she owned.

Blue! that was her Madonna color. No wonder Tenney remembered it, if it

was blue.

"It ain't hangin' up," said Tenney, with a particularity that seemed to

cause him an intense pain of concentration. "She never'd hang it up with

t'others. It's folded. Mebbe in her work-basket, mebbe--my God in

heaven! she wouldn't ha' kep' it. She's burnt it up. You take off the

cover o' the kitchen stove. You look there an' see if you can't find the

leastest scrid. Blue, you remember, all folded up."

Raven went into the kitchen where the pails of milk were on the table,

waiting. He took off the stove cover and looked in, still an idle

compliance, to quiet the man's mind. It was like an outcome to a dream.

For there it was, a soft disorder easily indicating burned cloth, and

one shred of blue, a piece perhaps an inch and a half square, hemmed on

three sides: the end of an apron string. He took this carefully out, and

stood there looking at it a tense moment, as if it could summon Tira

back to tell him what it meant; look out his pocketbook, laid it in, and

put the pocketbook away. Then he went back to Tenney.

"You were right," he said. "She burned it up."

Tenney stared at him for what seemed a long time.

"Oh," he said, as if it had been Raven who suggested it, "so she burnt

it up. Wa'n't there any left--not a scrid?"

"Yes," said Raven, "there was. What do you want of it?"

"Nothin'," said Tenney. "No, I don't want it. If 'twas the whole on't I

shouldn't want it, come to think. A man couldn't hang himself by an

apron. Even that one you couldn't. I guess"--he turned upon Raven so

sick a gaze that Raven advanced to him and put a hand on his arm--"I

guess," said Tenney, "I'm done. I've got to git some sleep. Should you

jest as soon I'd go up to that shack o' yourn an' lay down a spell?"

Again they went up to the hut, and Tenney, throwing himself on the

couch, was at once asleep. All that day Raven watched by him, and that

night also they were there together: a strange day and night, Raven

remembered afterward, with Charlotte coming and Nan and finally Dick,

all with food or wistful companionship, and Nan's assuring him, in her

way of finding nothing out of the common, that everything had been done

for Tira, and she would go over to the service. Charlotte would go with

her. It would be better--her eyes questioned him, and he nodded, not

answering. It would be better he should not go. On the third day she

appeared again, in the middle of the afternoon, and said she had just

come from Mountain Brook and everything was----That she did not finish,

Tenney's somber eyes waited upon her with such a dumb expectancy. What

was going to be done, she wondered. Tenney couldn't stay in the hut,

keeping Raven there with him, as Billy Jones had kept Old Crow. Yet she

wasn't sure Raven wouldn't stay. But while she thought it, Tenney was

answering her, though he didn't seem to be speaking to either of them.

He might have been appealing to something invisible in the room.

"I'll shave me," he said, "an' then I'll see." Something passed over him

like a great moving wind. "Why, God A'mighty!" he cried. "I can't stop

to shave me. It's now or never, don't you know 'tis?"

He snatched his hat from the chair where he had thrown it, and went out

of the hut, limping down the hill. And Raven was with him. He was with

him as he hurried along the road so fast that it seemed as if the next

step meant breaking into a run. He was with him when, halfway to the

street, Eugene Martin passed them, in his buggy, stopped further on and

called to them: "Ride?" He was not laughing now, he was not jibing. He

seemed to be constrained to ask them to ride, they were hurrying so.

Raven threw a curse at him, but Tenney broke into a limping run and

jumped into the tail of the wagon and sat there, his legs dangling. And

he called so piercingly to Martin to drive along, to "Hurry, for God's

sake, hurry!" that Martin did whip up, and the wagon whirled away, and

Raven hurried on alone.

That night, at eight o'clock, Nan went over to ask if Raven had come

home, and finding he had not, loitered back to her own gate and waited.

She could not go in. If she kept her mind on him, he might come. And

presently he came. She walked to meet him and put her hand through his

arm. He was walking firmly, but he looked "all in."

"Come," she said. "Supper's waiting."

"No," said Raven, "not yet. I got a fellow to bring me back from the

street. Dick said you'd been over."

"Yes," said Nan. "I was horribly worried. Where's Tenney?"

"Gone."

"Where?"

"To jail. He had Martin take him to a man he knew about at the street.

Sworn in special constable in the War. Had him telephone the sheriff.

Then I got there. Had to inquire round, to find out where he'd gone.

When I went in, Tenney was sitting there telling the sheriff he'd killed

his child. Sheriff asked what for. Said he had to do it. Then I came in

and he began to ask me questions about the Lord Jesus Christ."

"But, Rookie," said Nan, "he didn't. He couldn't. Tira told me she----"

"Yes," said Raven heavily. "You may be called to testify."

"But when he asked that," said Nan, "about----" she hesitated.

"About the Lord Jesus Christ? It was whether his sins were whiter than

snow."

"What did you tell him?"

"Oh," said Raven, "I told him yes. If he was sorry, they were. Of course

I told him yes. What could I tell him? But I don't believe I'd have told

Martin yes, if he'd asked me about his sins. He's scared blue. He was

there at the gate when I went in. Shook like a palsy, kept saying he

didn't know--didn't think--nobody need ask him----"

"What did you say, Rookie?"

"Nothing. I went in to Tenney. Now I'll go back."

"You won't come in and have a bite? Nice supper, Rookie. Saved for you."

"No. Not to-night." He turned away from her as if she were as actually

the outside shell of herself as he was of himself. They were mechanical

agents in a too terrible world. But he called back to her: "Nan, I've

told her."

She was at his side, hoping for more, perhaps a touch of his hand.

"Anne. I got word to her somehow. She understood."

"Was she----" Nan paused.

"Yes," said Raven. "But it's over--done."

He turned away from her and went fast along the road home. He had, she

saw, escaped Aunt Anne. He had got himself back. Did his quick steps

along the road say he meant to escape her, too? That was easy. Darling

Rookie! he should if he wanted to.