"You did? What for?"
"It was so horrible last night," said Nan. "Hideous! There was that creature sitting there beside her, that perfumery man."
"Perfumery?"
"Yes. He smelled like the soap the boys used to buy, the ones that lived "down the road a piece." He frightened her, just his sitting down beside her. And it put some kind of a devil into that awful Tenney. I thought about her all night, and this morning I went over and asked her to go back with me now, while Tenney"s away chopping. I told her I"d help her pack, and Jerry"d take us to the train."
"What did she say?"
"Nothing. Oh, yes, she did." Nan laughed, in the irritation of it. "She said I was real good. Said Israel was going to kill soon."
"Kill?"
"Hogs. There were two. They"d weigh three hundred apiece. It was quite a busy season, trying out and all, and no time for her to be away."
It was irresistible. They both laughed. They had been dowering her with the grace of Helen, and now she stood before them inexorably bent on trying out.
"I gather," said Nan, rather drily, "you"re going over to see her yourself."
"Yes," said Raven. "But not till I"ve seen you. You ran away from Milly.
Now Milly"s gone, and you"re coming back."
Her eyes roved from him to the steadfast green of the slope across the road. She was moved. Her mouth twitched at the tight corners, her eyes kindled.
"It would be fun," said she.
"Besides, think how silly to keep Charlotte provisioning you and tugging over to spend nights, poor Charlotte!"
"I really stayed," said Nan, temporizing, "for this Tira of yours--and Tenney"s."
This form of statement sounded malicious to her own ears, but not to his. Sometimes Nan wished he were not quite so "simple honest." It was, she suspected, the woman"s part--her own--to be unsuspecting and obstinately good.
"But if," she continued, "she won"t have anything to do with you, I might as well go back to town."
"Not yet," said Raven. "I"ve got something to tell you."
"What"s it about?"
"Old Crow."
Nan thought a minute.
"All right," she said. She looked at once unreasonably happy, like, he extravagantly thought, a beautiful statue with the fountain of life playing over it. "I"ll come--for Old Crow."
"Pick up your duds," said he, "and I"ll go along and see if I can make anything out of her. You be ready when I come back."
Nan looked after him and thought how fast he walked and how Tira, as well as Tira"s troubles, drew him. If Tira knew the power of her own beauty, how terribly decisive a moment this would be in the great dark kitchen Nan had just left! And yet if Tira, having looked in her mirror and the mirror of life, were cruelly sophisticated enough to play that part, the man would be given odds to resist her. He was no ingenuous youth.
XXV
Raven walked up to the side door of the house and knocked. She came at once, her face blank of any expectation, though at seeing him she did stand a little tenser and her lips parted with a quicker breath.
"Good morning," said he. "Aren"t you going to ask me in?"
"Oh!" breathed Tira. It seemed she did actually consider keeping him out. "I don"t know," she blundered. "I"m alone, but I never feel certain----"
She never felt certain, he concluded, whether her peril might not be upon her. But he had a sense of present security. He had seen Tenney disappearing inside the fringe of woods.
"Let me come in," he said quietly. "I want to talk to you. It"s cold for you out here."
She moved aside and he followed her to the kitchen. The room was steaming with warmth, the smell of apple sauce and a boiling ham. Her moulding board, dusted with flour, was on the table, and her yellow mixing bowl beside it. Raven did not think what household duties he might be delaying, but the scene was sweet to him: a haven of homely comfort where she ought to find herself secure. There was, in the one casual glance he took, no sign of the child, and he was glad. That strange, silent witness, since Nan and Charlotte had both, by a phrase, banished the little creature into an alien room of its own, had begun to embarra.s.s him. He wanted to talk to Tira alone.
"Baby"s in the bedroom," said Tira, answering his thought. "When he"s in here, I wake him up steppin" round."
Raven stood waiting for her to sit, and she drew forward a chair, placing it to give her an oblique view from the window. Having seated herself, she asked him, with a shy hospitality:
"Won"t you set?"
He drew a chair nearer her and his eyes sought her in the light of what Nan had said. Yes, she was beautiful. Her blue calico, faded to a softness suited to old pictures, answered the blue of her eyes. The wistful look of her face had deepened. It was all over a gentle interrogation of sweet patience and unrest.
"So Nan came over," he began. It seemed the only way to pierce her reserve, at once, by a straight shaft. "You wouldn"t do what she wanted you to."
She shook her head.
"Why wouldn"t you?" he urged, and then she did answer, not ungraciously, but with a shy courtesy:
"I didn"t feel to."
"It would be"--he hesitated for a word and found an ineffectual one--"nice, if you could talk to her. She wouldn"t tell."
"I don"t," said Tira, still with the same gentle obstinacy, "hold much with talkin"."
Raven, because he had her to himself and the time was short, determined not to spare her for lack of a searching word.
"Tira," he said, and she smiled a little, mysteriously to him but really because she loved to hear him use her name, "things aren"t getting any better here. They"re getting worse."
"Oh, no," she hastened to say. "They"re better."
"Only last night you had to run away from him."
"Things are ever so much better," said Tira, smiling at him, with a radiance of conviction that lighted her face to a new sort of beauty.
"They"re all right. I"ve found the Lord."
What could he say? Old Crow had besought him, too, to abandon fear in the certainty of a safe universe speaking through the symbols man could understand. He tried to summon something that would reach and move her.