Old Crow Part 68

Raven stood for a minute, considering. Then he crossed the entry and Nan, finding he could not, for some reason, put his hand on the latch, opened the door for him, and he went in. But only a step. He stood there, his eyes on the poor bed where Tira lay, and then, as if he were leaving a presence, he stepped back into the entry, and Nan understood that he was not even carrying with him the memory of her great majesty of beauty. She thought she understood. Even Tira's face was to be left covered. She was to be inviolate from the eyes of men. In a few minutes he had brought round the car, Nan had arranged things with Mrs.

Donnyhill, and they drove out into the day--blazing now, like midsummer--and so home. And all the way they did not speak, until, pa.s.sing Tenney's, the door open and the house with a strange look of being asleep in the sun, Nan said:

"Leave me here. I'll see him and then go on."

Raven did not answer. He drove past, to her own gate, and Nan, understanding she was not to move further in any direction, got out.

Raven, perhaps feeling his silence had been unmerciful to her, spoke quietly:

"Run and get a bath and a sleep. I'll see him. I'll come for you if you're needed."

He turned the car and drove back, and Nan went in to her waiting house.

Raven stopped before Tenney's and, since the front door was open, halted there and knocked. No answer. Then he went round to the side door and knocked again, and called out several times, and the sound of his voice brought back to him, like a sickness, the memory of Tenney's catamount yell when he had heard it that day in the woods. No answer. The house was asleep and a calf blared from the barn. He went back to the car, drove home, and found Jerry waiting in the yard and Charlotte at the door. d.i.c.k was in his chair down under the trees, his mother beside him, reading. It was so unusual to see Amelia there that Raven wondered idly--not that it mattered--he could meet a regiment of Amelias with this callousness upon him--if d.i.c.k had beguiled her away so that she might not pounce on him when he returned. He got out of the car stiffly.

He was, he felt at that instant, an old man. But if physical inept.i.tude meant age, Jerry and Charlotte were also old, for Jerry was bewildered beyond the possibility of speech and Charlotte shaken out of her calm.

"You come into the kitchen," she said, and Raven followed her, and sank into a chair, set his elbows on the table, and leaned his head in his hands. He was very tired, but Mrs. Donnyhill's boiled tea was inexorably keeping him up. Charlotte, standing above him, put her hand on his shoulder.

"Johnnie," she said, "Isr'el Tenney's been here. He wants you to give him back his gun."

"Oh," said Raven, taking his head out of his hands and sitting up. "His gun?"

"He says," Charlotte continued, her voice shaking, "Tira's run away. I told him the last I see o' Tira was yesterday afternoon standin' in her own door, an' he asked if she had her things on an' I didn't know what to say. An' he said somebody down the road said you went by 'fore light, drivin' like blazes. An' you had a woman in the car. An' Tira'd run away."

Raven was looking up at her, a little smile on his lips, but in his eyes such strange things that Charlotte caught his head to her and held it against her breast.

"Yes," he said, "yes, Charlotte, Tira has run away. She went yesterday, over to Mountain Brook. She tried to cross the stepping stones. She's over at the Donnyhills' now. She's going to stay there till she's buried. I'll go and tell him. Where do you think he is?"

Charlotte still held his head against her warm heart.

"You don't s'pose," she whispered, "you don't believe she done _that_?"

"What?" he answered, and then her meaning came to him as his first hint of what Tira might have done. He drew himself away from the kind hand and sat up straight. "No," he said sharply. "It was an accident. She never meant"--it had come upon him that this was what she had meant and what she had done. But it must not be told of her, even to Nan. "Where's Tenney?" he said. "Where do you think he is?"

Charlotte hesitated.

"He's up there," she said, after a moment while Raven waited, "up to the hut. He said he's goin' to git his gun out o' there if he had to break an' enter. He said he see it through the winder not two days ago. An'

Jerry hollered after him if he laid hand to your property he'd have the law on him. Jerry was follerin' on after him, but you went by in the car an' I called on him to stop. O Johnnie, don't you go up there, or you let Jerry an' me go with you. If ever a man was crazed, that man's Isr'el Tenney, an' if you go up there an' stir him up!"

"Nonsense!" said Raven, in his old kind tone toward her, and Charlotte gave a little sob of relief at hearing it again. "I've got to see him and tell him what I've told you. You and Jerry stay where you are.

Tenney's not dangerous. Except to her," he added bitterly to himself, as he left the house. "And a child in its cradle. My G.o.d! he was dangerous to her!" And Charlotte, watching from the window, saw him go striding across the road and up the hill.

Raven, halfway up, began to hear an unexpected sound: blows, loud and regular, wood on wood. When he had pa.s.sed the turning by the three firs he knew, really before his eyes confirmed it. Tenney was there at the hut, and he had a short but moderately large tree trunk--almost heavier than he could manage--and was using it as a battering ram. He was breaking down the door. Raven, striding on, shouted, but he was close at hand before Tenney was aware of him and turned, breathless, letting the log fall. He had actually not heard, and Raven's presence seemed to take him aback. Yet he was in no sense balked of his purpose. He faced about, breathless from his lifting and ramming, and Raven saw how intense was the pa.s.sion in him: witnessed by the whiteness of his face, the burning of his eyes.

"I come up here," said Tenney, "after my gun. You can git it for me an'

save your door."

Raven paid no attention to this.

"You'd better come along down," he said. "We'll stop at my house and talk things over."

This he offered in that futile effort the herald of bad news inevitably makes, to approach it slowly.

"Then," said Tenney, "you hand me out my gun. I don't leave here till I have my gun."

"Tenney," said Raven, "I've got bad news for you."

"Yes," said Tenney blankly. "She's run away. You carried her off this mornin'. You don't need to tell me that."

"I didn't carry her off," said Raven, speaking slowly and clearly, for he had a feeling that Tenney was somehow deaf to him. "Tira went over to Mountain Brook yesterday. Nan knew she was going, and this morning she was worried, because she got thinking of Tira's crossing the stepping stones. She asked me to take her over there. We found her. She was drowned."

Tenney's eyes had s.h.i.+fted from Raven's face. The light had gone out of them, and they clung blankly to the tree s.p.a.ces and the distance.

"Have it your own way," said Tenney, in as blank a tone. "Settle it amongst ye."

"We shall go over to-morrow," said Raven. "Will you go with us?"

"No," said Tenney.

"Drownded herself," he said, at length. "Well, that's where it led to.

It's all led to that."

"She slipped," said Raven roughly. "Don't you understand? Anybody could, off those wet stones."

"You open that door," said Tenney, "an' gimme my gun."

But Raven went on talking to him, telling him quietly and reasonably what they had judged it best to do, he and Nan. If Tira had wanted the baby buried over there by her mother, wouldn't she want to be buried there herself?

"Very well, then. We'll arrange things. The day after"--he could not bring himself to put the bare ceremonial that would see her out of the world into the words familiar to the country ear--"that will be the day.

We shall go over. We'll take you with us."

"No," said Tenney, "you needn't trouble yourselves. I sha'n't go over there. Nor I sha'n't keep n.o.body else from goin'."

By this Raven judged he meant that he would not interfere with their seeing Tira out of the world in their own way. The man had repudiated her. It was a relief. It seemed to leave her, in her great freedom, the more free.

"Come down now," said Raven, "to my house. We'll have something to eat."

That was all he could think of, to keep the stricken creature within sound of human voices.

"I ain't hungry," said Tenney. "An' if I was"--here he stopped an instant and a spasm shot across his face--"she left me cooked up."

"All right," said Raven. "Then you go home now, and later in the day I'll come over and see if you've thought of anything else."

He believed the man should not, in his despairing frame of mind, be left alone. Tenney turned, without a look at him, and went off down the slope. Raven watched him round the curve. Then he took out the key from under the stone, remembering it need never be put there again, went in and locked the door. Suddenly he felt deadly sick. He went to the couch, lay down and closed his eyes on the blackness before them. If he had a wish, in this infinitude of desolation, it was that he might never open them again on the dark defiles of this world. It was dusk when he did open them, and for a minute he had difficulty in remembering why he was there and the blow that had struck him down to such a quivering apprehension of what was coming next. Then, before he quite found out, he learned what had waked him. There was a voice outside--Tenney's voice, only not Tenney's as he had known it--whimpering, begging in a wild humility:

"You there? You let me in. You there? For G.o.d's sake let me in."

Raven was at once clearly awake. His mind was, after its interlude of darkness, ready. He got up, and opened the door.

"Come in," he said. "Yes, leave the door open. I've been asleep. It's close in here."