Raven rose and went to the door. He had not stopped to think what he should find, but at least it was, from her tone, a menace of some sort. There stood Eugene Martin, in his fur coat, his florid extravagance of scarf and pin, on his face the ironic smile adapted to his preconceived comedy with Tira. Martin, hearing the step behind her, started, unprepared. He had passed Tenney, slowly making his way homeward, and counted on a few minutes' speech with her and a quick exit, for his butt, the fool of a husband, to see. But as Raven appeared, the fellow's face broke up in a flouting amusement. Here was another, the satiric lips were ready to swear. Deepest distrust of Tira shone forth in the half smile; a low community of mean understanding was in his following glance at Raven. He burst into a loud laugh, took off his hat and made Tira an exaggerated bow.
"Don't mention it," he said. "Didn't know you had company. Wouldn't think o' comin' in."
He turned away, his shoulders shaking with ostentatious mirth. It was all in a minute, and Raven's following act, quite unreasoned, also occupied a minute. He put Tira aside, stepped out after Martin and walked behind him down the path. When Martin reached the sleigh, Raven was at his side. Martin had ceased shaking his shoulders in that fictitious mirth. Now in that last moment, it seemed, he took cognizance of Raven, and turned, apprehension, in spite of him, leaping to his face. Raven, still with no set purpose, grasped him by the collar with one hand and with the other reached for the whip in the sleigh. It was over quickly. Raven remembered afterward that the horse, startled by the swish of the blows, jumped aside and that he called out to him. He did not propose depriving Martin of the means of exit. The fellow did not meet judgment lying down. He did a wild feat of struggling, but he was soft in every muscle, a mean antagonist. The act over, Raven released him, with an impetus that sent him staggering, set the whip in the socket and turned back to the house. At that moment he saw Tenney coming along the road, not with his usual hurried stride, but slowly, his head lifted, his eyes upon the figures at his gate. Raven recoiled from the possibility of a three-cornered wrangle when Tenney also should reach the scene. It was an impossible predicament. Not for himself: he was never troubled by any hampering sense of personal dignity, but for Tira, who stood in silence watching them. She had advanced a few steps into the snowy path and waited, immovable, the light breeze lifting her rings of hair. To Raven, in the one glance he gave her, she was like a Fate, choosing neither good nor ill, but watching the even course of time. If Martin saw Tenney, he was not going to linger for any problematic issue. He stepped into the sleigh and, without drawing the fur robe over his knees, took up the reins. His face, turned upon Raven, was distorted with rage.
"That's assault," he called to him, "assault an' battery. I'll have the law on you an' she's my witness."
"Stop!" called Tira. She came down the path with long strides, her garments blowing back. At three paces from the sleigh she halted and called to him in a voice so clear and unrestrained that Raven thought Tenney, coming on with his jerky action, might also have heard it.
"You stir a step to git the law on him an' I'll tell what I know. What did I find out about you? The money stole out o' the box after they had the raffle for the War, the deed under old lady Blaisdell's feather bed, because it wa'n't recorded an' it left you with the right an' title to that forty feet o' land. Five counts!" She held up her left hand and told off one finger after the other. "I've got 'em all down in my mind, an' there they've been ever since I left you. What d' I leave you for? Not because you treated me like a dog, whenever the fit was on ye, but because you was meaner'n dirt."
He sat there, the reins gathered in his hand, staring at her, his face stiffened in a reflex of the cold passion of hers. Upon her last word, he called to the horse with an oath as if it had been the beast that offended him, turned the sleigh and drove off. Tenney, breathless, was now on the scene. His thin lips curled and drew back, the snarl of the angry feline.
"Two on ye," he said to Raven. "Come to blows over her, have ye? An' you're on top."
Raven turned to Tira.
"Go into the house," he said.