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Updated: June 4, 2025
They were standing by the hearth in the hut, after Raven had swept it and laid a careful fire. He had worked with all possible haste, for he never was there now without wondering whether she might come. He had been resting in the certainty of Tenney's crippled state, but the wounded foot, he knew, was bettering every day, and with it Tira's security lessened.
"I see doctor go by this mornin' in his car," said Charlotte, "carryin' Tira. In a couple of hours they come back. An' then he went by ag'in, goin' down home. I was on the lookout an' stopped him. I was kind of uneasy. An' he says: 'Yes, Mis' Tenney's baby's dead. She overlaid it, he says. 'They feel terribly about it, he says. 'Tenney run away from the services." Nan stood staring.
That, he thought, was another count in his indictment against the way things were made. The Tenney house, when he approached it, was cold in the darkness of the storm. The windows were inhospitably blank, and his heart fell with disappointment. He went up to the side door looking out on the pile of wood that was the monument to Tenney's rages, and knocked sharply. No one came.
That seemed to be what Tenney's tongue was doing now. "No," said he, "I'm not a doctor, but I've seen a good deal of sickness in the War. Get them warm," he added authoritatively, "both of them. Put the child into warm water." "Yes," said Tenney, in an anguished sort of haste.
Raven swerved on his path, and affected to be looking down the road. He could not proceed the way he was going. Tenney's mind must not be drawn toward that living focus by even the most fragmentary hint. Yet if Tira was still there, she and the child must be fed. After his glance down the road he turned back to the house, nodding at Tenney as he neared. But Tenney motioned to him.
He had to ask it. "D'you see anybody up round there after I come down?" Raven shook his head, looking, he hoped, vague. "I came down myself," he said. "I had to talk with Jerry about his thinning out." The eagerness faded from Tenney's face. "I didn't see Jerry up there this mornin'," he volunteered, in an indifferent contribution toward the talk. "No," said Raven.
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.
"I knew I should find her. I had to see her alone, because I wanted to ask her to leave you, go away from here, and be safe." Tenney stared at him. The brusque fact was too much for him. Why should Raven have told it? "You are known," Raven continued steadily, "to abuse your wife." Tenney's lips again curled back. "I ain't laid a finger on her," he snarled. "Anybody but a liar 'd tell you so."
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.
She went in, got her breakfast and ate it, this with more appetite than she had had for many weeks, and smiled at herself, thinking she was not sleepy yet, but when sleep came on her it would come like a cloud and smother her. She moved fast about the kitchen to get her work done before it came, and in perhaps an hour she remembered Tenney's telling her to have an eye to the calf.
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