Part 4

By that time two or three neighbors had come in, having heard of that which had come to pass. There was genuine sorrow in them, for Mary Evered had been a woman to be loved; but there was also the ugly curiosity native to the human mind; and there was speculation in each eye as they watched Evered and John and Ruth. They would discuss, for days to come, the bearing of each one of the three on that black night.

For Evered, the man was starkly silent, saying no word. He sat by the table, eyes before him, puffing his pipe. Ruth stayed by her sister as though some instinct of protection kept her there. John talked with those who came, told them a little. He did not mention Semler’s part in the tragedy. He said simply that the bull had broken loose; that Mary Evered was by the spring, where she liked to go; that the bull came upon her there.

They asked morbidly whether she was trampled and torn; and they seemed disappointed when he told them that she was not, that even the terrible red bull had seemed appalled at the thing which he had done. And through the evening others came and went, so that he had to say the same things over and over; and always Evered sat silently by the table, giving no heed when any man spoke to him; and Ruth, in the other room, kept guard above the body. The women went in there, some of them; but no men went in.

John had telephoned to Isaac Gorfinkle, whose business it was to prepare poor human clay for its return to earth again; and Gorfinkle came about midnight and put all save Ruth out of the room where the dead woman lay. Gorfinkle was a little, fussy man; a man who knew his doleful trade. Before day he and Ruth had done what needed doing; and Mary Evered lay in the varnished coffin he had brought. Her white hair and the sweet nobility of her countenance, serenely lying there, made those who looked forget the ugly splendor of Gorfinkle’s wares.

It was decided that she should be buried on the second day. On the day after her death many people came to the farm; and some came from curiosity, and some from sympathy, and some with an uncertain purpose in their minds.

These were the selectmen of the town--Lee Motley, chairman; and Enoch Thomas, of North Fraternity; and Old Man Varney. Motley, a sober man and a man of wisdom, was of Evered’s own generation; Enoch Thomas and Varney were years older. Old Varney had a son past thirty, whom to this day he thrashed with an ax stave when the spirit moved him, his big son good-naturedly accepting the outrage.

Thomas and Varney came to demand that Evered kill his red bull; and Motley put the case for them.

“We’ve talked it over,” he said. “Seem’s like the bull’s dangerous; like he ought to be killed. That’s what we’ve--what we’ve voted.”

Evered turned his heavy eyes from man to man; and Old Varney brandished his cane and called the bull a murdering beast, and bade Evered take his rifle and do the thing before their eyes. Evered’s countenance changed no whit; he looked from Varney to Thomas, who was silent, and from Thomas to Lee Motley.

“I’ll not kill the bull,” he said.

Before Motley could speak, Varney burst into abuse and insistent demand; and Evered let him talk. When the old man simmered to silence they waited for Evered to answer, but Evered held his tongue till Lee Motley asked, “Come, Evered, what do you say?”

“What I have said,” Evered told them.

“The town’ll see,” Old Varney shrilled, and shook his fist in Evered’s face. “The town’ll see whether a murdering brute like that is to range abroad. If you’ve not shame enough--your own wife, man--your own----” he wagged his head. “The town’ll see.”

Said Evered: “I’ll not take rifle to the bull; but if any man comes here to kill the beast, I’ll have use for that rifle of mine.”

Which fanned Varney to a fresh outbreak, till Evered flung abruptly toward him, and abruptly said, “Be still.”

So were they still; and Evered looked them in the eye, man by man, till he came to Motley; and then he said, “Motley, I thought there was more wisdom in you.”

“Aye,” cried Varney. “He’s as big a fool as you.”

And Motley said, “I voted against this, Evered. The bull’s yours, if you’re a mind to kill him. I’m not for making you. It’s your own affair, you mind. And--the ways of a bull are the ways of a bull. The brute’s not overmuch to be blamed.”

Evered nodded and turned his back on them; and after a time they went away. But when Evered went into the house he met Ruth, and the girl stopped him and asked him huskily, “You’re not going to kill that red beast?”

Evered hesitated; then he said, with something like apology in his tones, “No, Ruth.”

She began to tremble, and he saw that words were hot on her lips; and he lifted one hand in a placating gesture. She turned into the other room, and the door shut harshly at her back. Evered’s eyes rested on the door for a space, a curious questioning in them, a wistful light that was strange to see.

All that day Ruth was still, saying little. No word passed between her and Evered, and few words between her and John. But that night, when they were alone, John spoke to her in awkward comfort and endearment.

“Please, Ruthie,” he begged. “You’re breaking yourself. You’ll be sick. You must not be so hard.”

He put an arm about her, as though he would have kissed her; but the girl’s hands came up against his chest, and the girl’s eyes met his in a fury of horror and loathing, and she flung him away.

“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried in a voice that was like a scream. “Don’t ever! You--his son!”

John, inexpressibly hurt, yet understanding, left her alone; he told himself she was not to be blamed, with the agony of grief still scourging her.

One of the neighbor women came in that night to sit with Ruth; and Ruth slept a little through the night. John was early abed; he had had no sleep the night before, and he was tired. He sank fathoms deep in slumber; a slumber broken by fitful, unhappy dreams. His own grief for the woman who had been mother to him had been stifled, given no chance for expression, because he had fought to comfort Ruth and to ease his father. The reaction swept over him while he slept; he rested little.

Evered, about nine o’clock, went to the room he and his wife had shared for so many years. He had not, before this, been in the room since she was killed. Some reluctance had held him; he had shunned the spot. But now he was glad to be alone, and when he had shut the door he stood for a moment, looking all about, studying each familiar object, his nerves reacting to faint flicks of pain at the memories that were evoked.

He began to think of what the selectmen had said, of their urgency that he should kill the bull. And he sat down on the edge of the bed and remained there, not moving, for a long time. Once his eye fell on his belt hanging against the wall, with the heavy knife that he used in his butchering in its sheath. He reached out and took down the belt and drew the knife forth and held it in his hands, the same knife that had killed drunken Dave Riggs long ago. A powerful weapon, it would strike a blow like an ax; the handle of bone, the blade heavy and keen and strong. He balanced it between his fingers, and thought of how he had struck it into the neck of Zeke Pitkin’s bull, and how the bull had dropped in midlife and never stirred more. The knife fascinated him; he could not for a long time take his eyes away from it. At the last he reached out and thrust it into its sheath with something like a shudder, strange to see in so strong a man.

Then he undressed and got into bed, the bed he had shared with Mary Evered. He had blown out the lamp; the room was dark. There was a little current of air from the open window. And after a little Evered began to be as lonely as a boy for the first time away from home.

There is in every man, no matter how stern his exterior, a softer side. Sometimes he hides it from all the world; more often his wife gets now and then a glimpse of it. There was a side of Evered which only Mary Evered had known. And she had loved it. When they had come to bed together it always seemed to her that Evered was somehow gentler, kinder. He put away his harshness, as though it were a part he had felt called upon to play before men. The child in him, strong in most men, came to the surface. He was never a man overgiven to caresses, but when they were alone at night together, and he was weary, he would sometimes draw her arm beneath his head as a pillow or take her hand and lift it to rest upon his forehead, while she twined her fingers gently through his hair.

They used to talk together, sometimes far into the night; and though he might have used her bitterly through the day, with caustic tongue and hard, condemning eye, he was never unkind in these moments before they slept. A man the world outside had never seen. It was these nights together which had made life bearable for Mary Evered; and they had been dear to Evered too. How dreadful and appalling, then, was this, his first night alone.

Her shoulder was not there to cradle his sick and weary head; her gentle hand was not there to cool his brow. When he flung an arm across her pillow, where she used to lie, it embraced a gulf of emptiness that seemed immeasurably deep and terrible. After a little, faint perspiration came out upon the man’s forehead. He turned on his right side, in the posture that invited sleep; but at first sleep would not come. His limbs jerked and twitched; his eyelids would not close. He stared sightlessly into the dark. Outside in the night there were faint stirrings and scratchings and movings to and fro; and each one brought him more wide awake than the last. He got up and closed the window to shut them out, and it seemed to him the closed room was filled with her presence. When he lay down again he half fancied he felt her hand upon his hair, and he reached his own hand up to clasp and hold hers, as he had sometimes used to do; but his groping fingers found nothing, and came sickly away again.

How long he lay awake he could not know. When at last he dropped asleep the very act of surrender to sleep seemed to fetch him wide awake again. Waking thus he thought that he held his wife in his arms; he had often wakened in the past to find her there. But as his senses cleared he found that the thing which he held so tenderly against his side was only the pillow on which her head was used to lie.

The man’s nerves jangled and clashed; and he threw the pillow desperately away from him as though he were afraid of it. He sat up in bed; and his pulses pounded and beat till they hurt him like the blows of a hammer. There was no sleep in Evered.

He was still sitting thus, bolt upright, sick and torn and weary, when the gray dawn crept in at last through the window panes.

VIII

The day of Mary Evered’s burial was such a day as comes most often immediately after a storm, when the green of the trees is washed to such a tropical brightness that the very leaves radiate color and the air is filled with glancing rays of light. There were white clouds in the blue sky; clouds not dense and thick, but lightly frayed and torn by the winds of the upper reaches, and scudding this way and that according to the current which had grip of them. Now and then these gliding clouds obscured the sun; and the sudden gloom made men look skyward, half expecting a burst of rain. But for the most part the sun shone steadily enough; and there was an indescribable brilliance in the light with which it bathed the earth. Along the borders of the trees, round the gray hulks of the bowlders, and fringing the white blurs of the houses there seemed to shimmer a halo of colors so faint and fine they could be sensed but not seen by the eye. The trees and the fields were an unearthly gaudy green; the shadows deep amid the branches were trembling, changing pools of color. A day fit to bewitch the eye, with a soft cool wind stirring everywhere.

Evered himself was early about, attending to the morning chores. Ruth MacLure had fallen asleep toward morning, and the woman with her let the girl rest. John woke when he heard his father stirring; and it was he who made breakfast ready, when he had done his work about the barn. He and his father ate together, and Ruth did not join them.

Evered, John saw, was more silent than his usual silent custom; and the young man was not surprised, expecting this. John himself, concerned for Ruth, and wishing he might ease the agony of her grief, had few words to say. When they were done eating he cleared away the dishes and washed them and put them away; and then he swept the floor, not because it needed sweeping, but because he could not bear to sit idle, doing nothing at all. He could hear the women stirring in the other room; and once he heard Ruth’s voice.

John’s grief was more for the living than for the dead; he had loved Mary Evered truly enough, but there was a full measure of philosophy in the young man. She was dead; and according to the simple trust which was a part of him she was happy. But Ruth was unhappy, and his father was unhappy. He wished he might comfort them.

Evered at this time was soberly miserable; his mind was still numb, his emotions were just beginning to assert themselves. He could not think clearly, could scarce think at all. What passed for thought with him was merely a jumble of exclamations, passionate outcries, curses and laments. Mary was dead; and he knew that dimly, without full comprehension of the knowledge. More clearly he remembered Mary and Dane Semler, sitting so intimately side by side; and the memory was compounded of anguish and of satisfaction--anguish because she was false, satisfaction because her frailty in some small measure justified the monstrous thing he had permitted, and in permitting had done. Evered did not seek to deceive himself; he knew that he had killed Mary Evered as truly as he had killed Dave Riggs many a year ago. He did not put the knowledge into words; nevertheless, it was there, in the recesses of his mind, concrete and ever insistent. And when sorrow and remorse began to prick at him with little pins of fire he told himself, over and over, that she had been frail, and so got eased of the worst edge of pain.

A little after breakfast people began to come to the house. Isaac Gorfinkle was first of them all, and he busied himself with his last ugly preparations. Later the minister came--a boy, or little more; fresh from theological school. His name was Mattice, and he was as prim and meticulous as the traditional maiden lady who is so seldom found in life. He tried to speak unctuous comfort to Evered, but the man’s scowl withered him; he turned to John, and John had to listen to him with what patience could be mustered. And more men came, and stood in groups about the farmyard, smoking, spitting, shaving tiny curls of wood from splinters of pine; and their women went indoors and herded in the front room together, and whispered and sobbed in a hissing chorus indescribably horrible. There is no creation of mankind so hideous as a funeral; there is nothing that should be more beautiful. The hushed voices, the damp scent of flowers, the stifling closeness of tight-windowed rooms, the shuffling of feet, the raw snuffles of those who wept--these sounds filled the house and came out through the open doors to the men, whispering in little groups outside.

Ruth MacLure was not weeping; nor Evered; nor John. And the mourning, sobbing women kissed Ruth and called her brave; and they whispered to each other that Evered was hard, and that John was like his father. And the lugubrious debauch of tears went on interminably, as though Gorfinkle--whose duty it would be to give the word when the time should come--thought these preliminaries were requisites to a successful funeral.

But at last it was impossible to wait longer without going home for dinner, and Gorfinkle, who was accustomed to act as organist on such occasions, took his seat, pumped the treadles and began to play. Then everyone crowded into the front room or stood in the hall; and a woman sang, and young Mattice spoke for a little while, dragging forth verse after verse of sounding phrase which rang nobly even in his shrill and uncertain tones. More singing, more tears. A blur of pictures photographed themselves on Ruth’s eyes; words that she would never forget struck her ears in broken phrases. She sat still, steady and quiet. But her nerves were jangling; and it seemed to the girl she must have screamed aloud if the thing had not ended when it did.

Then the mile-long drive to the hilltop above Fraternity, with its iron fence round about, and the white stones within; and there the brief and solemn words, gentle with grief and glorious with triumphant hope, were spoken above the open grave. And the first clod fell. And by and by the last; and those who had come began to drift away to their homes, to their dinners, to the round of their daily lives.

Evered and John and Ruth drove home together in their light buggy, and Ruth sat on John’s knee. But there was no yielding in her, there was no softness about the girl. And no word was spoken by any one of them upon the way.

At home, alighting, she went forthwith into the house; and John put the horse up, while his father fed the pigs and the red bull in his stall. When they were done Ruth called them to dinner, appearing for an instant at the kitchen door. John reached the kitchen before his father; and the pain in him made him speak to the girl before Evered came.

“Ruthie,” he said softly. “Please don’t be too unhappy.”

She looked at him with steady eyes, a little sorrowful. “I’m not unhappy, John,” she said. “Because Mary is not unhappy, now. Don’t think about me.”

“I can’t help thinking about you,” he told her; and she knew what was behind his words, and shook her head.

“You’ll have to help it,” she said.

“Why, Ruthie,” he protested, “you know how I feel about you.”

Her eyes shone somberly. “It’s no good, John,” she answered. “You’re too much Evered. I can see clearer now.”

They had not, till then, marked Evered himself in the doorway. Ruth saw him and fell silent; and Evered asked her in a low steady voice, “You’re blaming me?”

“I’m cursing you,” said the girl.

Evered held still for a little, as though it were hard for him to muster words. Then he asked huskily, “What was my fault?”

She flung up her hand. “Everything!” she cried. “I’ve lived here with you. I’ve seen you--breaking Mary by inches, and nagging and teasing and pestering her. Till she was sick with it. And she kept loving you, so you could hurt her more. And you did. You loved to hurt her. Hard and cruel and mean and small--you’d have beat her as you do your beasts, if you’d dared. Coward too. Oh!”

She flung away, began to move dishes aimlessly about upon the table. Evered was gripped by a desire to placate her, to appease her; he thought of Dane Semler, wished to cry out that accusation against his wife. But he held his tongue. He had seen Semler with Mary; he had told John; Ruth knew that Semler had been upon the farm. But neither of them spoke of the man, then or thereafter. They told no one; and though Fraternity might wonder and conjecture, might guess at the meaning of Semler’s swift flight on the day of the tragedy, the town would never know.

Evered did not name Semler now; and it was not any sense of shame that held his tongue. He believed wholly in that which his eyes had seen, and all that it implied. Himself scarce knew why he did not speak; and he would never have acknowledged that it was desire to shield his wife, even from her own sister, which kept him silent. After a moment he sat down and they began to eat.

Toward the end of the meal he said to Ruth uneasily: “Feeling so, you’ll not be like to stay here with John and me.”

Ruth looked at him with a quick flash of eyes; she was silent, thoughtfully. She had not considered this; had not considered what she was to do. But instantly she knew.

“Yes, I’m going to stay,” she told Evered. “This thing isn’t done. There’s more to come. It must be so. For all you did there’s something that will come to you. I want to be here, to see.” Her hands clenched on the table edge. “I want to see you when it comes--see you squirm and crawl.”

There was such certainty in her tone that Evered, spite of himself, was shaken. He answered nothing; and the girl said again, “Yes; I am going to stay.”

The red bull in his stall bellowed aloud; a long, rumbling, terrible blare of challenge. It set the dishes dancing on the table before them; and when they listened they could hear the monstrous beast snorting in his stall.

IX

After the death of Mary Evered the days slipped away, and June passed to July, and July to August. Gardens prospered; the hay ripened in the fields; summer was busy with the land. But winter is never far away in these northern hills; and once in July and twice in August the men of the farms awoke in early morning to find frost faintly lying, so that there were blackened leaves in the gardens, and the beans had once to be replanted. Customary hazards of their arduous life.

The trout left quick water and moved into the deep pools; and a careful fisherman, not scorning the humble worm, might strip a pool if he were murderously inclined. The summer was dry; and as the brooks fell low and lower little fingerlings were left gasping and flopping upon the gravel of the shallows here and there. Nick Westley, the game warden for the district, and a Fraternity man, went about with dip net and pail, bailing penned trout from tiny shallows and carrying them to the larger pools where they might have a chance for life. Some of the more ardent fishermen imitated him; and some took advantage of the trout’s extremity to bring home catches they could never have made in normal times.

John Evered loved fishing; and he knew the little brook along the hither border of Whitcher Swamp, below the farm, as well as he knew his own hand. But this year had been busy; he found no opportunity to try the stream until the first week of July. One morning then, with steel rod and tiny hooks, and a can of bait at his belt, he struck down through the woodlot, past the spring where Mary had been killed, into the timber below, and so came to the wall that was the border of his father’s farm, and crossed into the swamp.

Whitcher Swamp is on the whole no pleasant place for a stroll; yet it has its charms for the wild things, and for this reason John loved it. Where he struck the marshy ground it was relatively easy going; and he took a way he knew and came to the brook and moved along it a little ways to a certain broad and open pool.

He thought the brook was lower than he had ever seen it at this season; and once he knelt and felt the water, and found it warm. He smiled at this with a certain gratification for the pool he sought was a spring hole, water bubbling up through pin gravel in the brook’s very bed, and the trout would be there to dwell in that cooler stream. When he came near the place, screened behind alders so that he could not be seen, he uttered an exclamation, and became as still as the trees about him while he watched.

There were trout in the pool, a very swarm of them, lying close on the yellow gravel bottom. The water, clear as crystal, was no more than three feet deep; and he could see them ever so plainly. Big fat fish, monsters, if one considered the brook in which he found them. He judged them all to be over nine inches, several above a foot, one perhaps fourteen inches long; and his eyes were shining. They were so utterly beautiful, every line of their graceful bodies, and every dappled spot upon their backs and sides as clear as though he held them in his hands.