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Updated: June 11, 2025
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.
Tira reflected a moment and then, for the first time since she came in from the cold, the blood rushed to her haggard cheeks. She remembered a moment, the day before the burning of the crutch, when he had found her doing her hair before the bedroom glass and had caught her to him wildly.
It seemed to him as if the whole tragic background against which Tira had been moving had been wiped away by some wide sweeping sponge of oblivion, as if he had dreamed the story or at least its importance in his own life, as if Nan had always been living alone in her house, and Amelia, tied up in Charlotte's aprons, her lips compressed in implacable resolution, always going through trunks in the attic, searching for a mottled book.
The next day Raven saw Tenney driving by, probably to the street where all the neighbors went for supplies. Up to this time Jerry had offered, whenever he was going, to do Tira's "arrants," and Tenney had even allowed him to bring home grain. Raven at once summoned Nan. It was their chance. Tira must be taken by storm. Let her leave the house as it was and run away.
"It pains him a good deal," she said, with that softness he had noted in her voice while they dressed the hurt. "He has to set with it in a chair. It worries him to death not to git round." "Good Lord!" said Raven. "You must think I'm a nice chap. Who's doing the barn work?" "Oh," said Tira, "that's all right. I can see to that. I always do when he's gone for day's works."
"But Tira," he felt himself saying to her weakly, "I feel alone." Did he actually say it, he wondered. No, for he lifted his face from his shielding hand and turned miserable eyes upon her, and her eyes met him clearly. Yet they were deeper, softer, moved by a sad compassion.
Prouty confided to the ear of a trusty friend and crony. "Now do you mind what I say, Miss Baker," said she, shaking her snuffy forefinger in Mrs. Baker's face; "Doctor Bugbee'll marry Tira Blake yet. Now do you just stick a pin there."
The knife was gone. Tira stood a long time looking, not at the empty place, but down at her feet. It was not alarming to miss the knife. It was reassuring. It was not to be believed, yet she must believe it. Tenney was taking precautions. He was afraid. Nan, halfway home, met Raven. He had been walking up and down, to meet her. Defeat, he saw, with a glance at her face.
Tira leaned back in her chair and yawned with the simplicity of the natural animal. Tenney caught his breath, the redness of her mouth and the gleam of her teeth were so bewitching to him. He got up and carried away the Bible. When he came back from the best room she was moving about, setting away chairs and then brushing up the few chips on the hearth.
Then he remembered that, so wide-reaching did Charlotte always seem to him in her knowledge of the life about her, he had not explained why Tira must be got out of the way, and that also was before him. But in her amazing habit of knowing, she knew. "No," she said, "she ain't b'en near. She won't leave Tenney. She's one o' them that sticks by."
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