Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction; Psychological fiction
"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account