Part 9

He said he had been comfortable; that he had been able to keep dry. He had come on no definite errand.

“I just--wanted to see you,” he said.

Ruth made no reply, because she did not know what to say.

Darrin asked, “Are you all all right here?”

“Why, yes,” she told him.

He looked to right and left, his eyes unable to meet hers. “Is Evered all right?” he asked.

She felt the tension in his voice without understanding it. “Yes,” she said uncertainly; and then: “Why?”

He tried to laugh. “Why, nothing. Where’s John?”

Ruth told him John was in the barn and Darrin went out there. Ruth was left alone in the house. Once or twice during the afternoon she saw John and Darrin in the barn door. They seemed to be doing nothing, sitting in the shelter there, whittling, smoking, talking slowly.

She felt the presence of Evered in his room, a presence like a brooding sorrow. It oppressed her. She became nervous, restless, moving aimlessly to and fro, and once she went to her room for something and found herself crying. She brushed away the tears impatiently, unable to understand. But she was afraid. There was something dreadful in the very air of the house.

At noon the wind had turned colder and for a time the sleet and rain altogether ceased. The temperature was dropping; crystals of ice formed on the puddles in the barnyard, and the patches of old snow which lay here and there stiffened like hot metal hardening in a mold. Then with the abrupt and surprising effect of a stage transformation snow began to come down from the lowering, driving clouds. This was in its way a whole-hearted snowstorm, in some contrast to the miserable drizzle of the night. It was fine and wet, and hard-driven by the wind. There were times when the barn, a little way from the house, was obscured by the flying flakes; and the trees beyond were wholly hidden behind a veil of white.

Ruth went about the house making sure that the windows were snug. From a front window she saw that the storm had thinned in that direction. She was able to look down into the orchard, which lay a little below the house, sloping away toward North Fraternity. The nearer trees were plain, the others were hidden from sight.

The driving wind plastered this wet snow against everything it touched. One side of every tree, one side of every twig assumed a garment of white. The windows which the wind struck were opaque with it. When Ruth went back to the kitchen she saw that a whole side of the barn was so completely covered by the snow blanket that the dark shingling was altogether hidden. Against the white background of the storm it was as though this side of the barn had ceased to exist. The illusion was so abrupt that for a moment it startled her.

The snow continued to fall for much of the afternoon; then the storm drifted past them and the hills all about were lighted up, not by the sun itself, but by an eerie blue light, which may have been the sun refracted and reflected by the snow that was still in the air above. The storm had left a snowy covering upon the world; and even this white blanket had a bluish tinge. Snow clung to windward of every tree and rock and building. Even the clothesline in the yard beside the house was hung with it.

At first, when the storm had but just passed, the scene was very beautiful; but in the blue light it was pitilessly, bleakly cold. Then distantly the sun appeared. Ruth saw it first indirectly. Down the valley to the southward, a valley like a groove between two hills, the low scurrying clouds began to lift; and so presently the end of the valley was revealed, and Ruth was able to look through beneath the screen of clouds, and she could see the slopes of a distant hill where the snow had fallen lightly, brilliantly illumined by the golden sun--gold on the white of the snow and the brown and the green of grass and of trees. Mystically beautiful--blue sky in the distance there; and, between, the sun-dappled hills. The scene was made more gorgeous by the somber light which still lay about the farm.

Then the clouds lifted farther and the sun came nearer. A little before sunset blue skies showed overhead, the sun streamed across the farm, the snow that had stuck against everything it touched began to sag and drop away; and the dripping of melting snow sounded cheerfully in the stillness of the late afternoon.

Ruth saw John and Darrin in the farmyard talking together, watching the skies. They came toward the house and John bade her come out to see. The three of them walked round to the front, where the eye might reach for miles into infinite vistas of beauty. They stood there for a little time.

The dropping sun bathed all the land in splendor; the winds had passed, the air was still as honey. Earth was become a thing of glory beyond compare.

They were still standing here when they heard the hoarse and furious bellow of the great red bull.

XVIII

Evered had not slept the night before. There was no sleep in the man. And this was not because he was torn and agonized; it was because he had never been so fully alive, so alert of mind and body.

Darrin’s accusation had come to him as no shock; Darrin’s proof that his wife was loyal had come as no surprise. He had expected neither; yet when they came it seemed to the man that he must have known they would come. It seemed to him that all the world must know what he had done; and it seemed to him that he must always have known his wife was--his wife forever.

His principal reaction was a great relief of spirit. He was unhappy, sorrowful; yet there was a pleasant ease and solace in his very unhappiness. For he was rid now, at last, of doubts and of uncertainties; his mind was no more beclouded; there were no more shadows of mystery and questioning. All was clear before him; all that there was to know he knew. And--his secret need no longer be borne alone. Darrin knew; it was as though the whole world knew. He was indescribably relieved by this certainty.

He did not at first look into the future at all. He let himself breathe the present. He came back to the farm and ate his supper and went to his room; and there was something that sang softly within him. It was almost as though his wife waited for him, comfortingly, there. Physically a little restless, he moved about for a time; but his mind was steady, his thoughts were calm.

His thoughts were memories, harking backward through the years.

Evered was at this time almost fifty years old. He was born in North Fraternity, in the house of his mother’s father, to which she had gone when her time came near. Evered’s own father had died weeks before, in the quiet fashion of the countryside. That had been on this hillside farm above the swamp, which Evered’s father had owned. His mother stayed upon the farm for a little, and when the time came she went to her home, and when Evered was a month old she had brought him back to the farm again.

She died, Evered remembered, when he was still a boy, nine or ten years old. She had not married a second time, but her brother had come to live with her, and he survived her and kept the farm alive and producing. He taught Evered the work that lay before him. He had been a butcher, and it was from him Evered learned the trade. A kind man, Evered remembered, but not over wise; and he had lacked understanding of the boy.

Evered had been a brilliant boy, active and wholly alive, his mind alert and keen, his muscles quick, his temper sharp. Yet his anger was accustomed to pass quickly, so that he had in him the stuff that makes friends; and he had friends in those days. Still in his teens he won the friendship of the older men, even as he dominated the boys of his own age. He and Lee Motley had grown up together. There had always been close sympathy between these two.

When he was nineteen he married, in the adventurous spirit of youth, a girl of the hills; a simple lovely child, not so old as he. Married her gaily, brought her home gaily. There had been affection between them, he knew now, but nothing more. He had thought himself heartbroken when, their boy child still a baby, she had died. But a year later he met Mary MacLure, and there had never been any other woman in the world for him thereafter.

Evered’s memories were very vivid; it needed no effort to bring back to him Mary’s face as he first saw her. A dance in the big hall halfway from North Fraternity to Montville. She came late, two men with her; and Evered saw her come into the door. He had come alone to the dance; he was free to devote himself to her, and within the half hour he had swept all others aside, and he and Mary MacLure danced and danced together, while their pulses sang in the soft air of the night, and their eyes, meeting, glowed and glowed.

Fraternity still talked of that swift, hot courtship. Evered had fought two men for her, and that fight was well remembered. He had fought for a clear field, and won it, though Mary MacLure scolded him for the winning, as long as she had heart to scold this man. From his first moment with her Evered had been lifted out of himself by the emotions she awoke in him. He loved her hotly and jealously and passionately; and in due course he won her.

Not too quickly, for Mary MacLure knew her worth and knew how to make herself dear to him. She humbled him, and at first he suffered this, till one night he came to her house when the flowers were abloom and the air was warm as a caress. And at first, seated on the steps of her porch with the man at her feet, she teased him lightly and provokingly, till he rose and stood above her. Something made her rise too; and then she was in his arms, lips yielding to his, trembling to his ardent whispers. For long minutes they stood so, conscious only of each other, drunk with the mutual ecstasy of conquest and of surrender, tempestuously embracing.

They were married, and he brought her home to the farm above the swamp, and because he loved her so well, because he loved her too well, he had watched over her with jealous eyes, had guarded her. She became a recluse. An isolation grew up about them. Evered wanted no human being in his life but her; and when the ardor of his love could find no other vent, it showed itself in cruel gibes at her, in reckless words.

Youth was still hot in the man. He and Mary might have weathered this hard period of adjustment, might have come to a quiet happiness together; but it was in these years that Evered killed Dave Riggs, a thing half accident. He had gone forth that day with bitterness in his heart; he had quarreled with Mary, and hated himself for it; and hated by proxy all the world besides. Riggs irritated him profoundly, roused the quick anger in the man. And when the hot clouds cleared from before his eyes Riggs was dead.

A thing that could not be undone, it had molded Evered’s soul into harsh and rugged lines. It was true, as he had told Darrin, that he had sought to make some amends; had offered help to the dead man’s wife, first openly, and then--when she cursed him from her door--in secret, hidden ways. But she left Fraternity and took her child, and they lost themselves in the outer world.

So Evered could not ease his conscience by the reparation he longed to make; and the thing lay with him always through the years thereafter. A thing fit to change a man in unpleasant fashion, the killing had shaped Evered’s whole life--to this black end that lay before him.

The man during this long night alone in his room thought back through all the years; and it was as though he sat in judgment on himself. There was, there had always been a native justice in him; he never deceived his own heart, never palliated even to himself his own ill deeds. There was no question in his mind now. He knew the thing he had done in all its ugly lights. And as he thought of it, sitting beside his bed, he played with the heavy knife which he had carried all these years. He fondled the thing in his hand, eyes half closed as he stared at it. He was not conscious that he held it. Yet it had become almost a part of him through long habit; and it was as much a part of him now as his own hand that held it. The heavy haft balanced so familiarly.

The night, and then the day. A steady calm possessed him. His memories flowed smoothly past, like the eternal cycle of the days. The man’s face did not change; he was expressionless. He was sunk so deep in his own thoughts that the turmoil there did not disturb his outward aspect. His countenance was grave and still. No tears flowed; this was no time for tears. It was an hour too deep for tears, a sorrow beyond weeping.

During the storm that day he went to the window now and then. And once in the morning he heard the red bull bellow in its pen; and once or twice thereafter, as the afternoon drove slowly on. Each time he heard this sound it was as though the man’s attention was caught and held. He stood still in a listening attitude, as though waiting for the bellow to be repeated; and it would be minutes on end before his eyes clouded with his own thoughts again.

It would be easy to say that Evered during this solitary night and day went mad with grief and self-condemning, but it would not be true. The man was never more sane. His thoughts were profound, but they were quiet and slow and unperturbed. They were almost impersonal. There is in most men--though in few women--this power to withdraw out of oneself or into an inner deeper self; this power to stand as spectator of one’s own actions. It is a manifestation of a deeper, more remote consciousness. It is as though there were a man within a man. And this inner soul has no emotions. It is unmoved by love or passion, by anger or hatred, by sorrow or grief, by hunger or by thirst. It watches warm caresses, it hears ardent words, it sees fierce blows, and listens to curses and lamentations with the same inscrutable and immutable calm. It can approve, it can condemn; but it neither rejoices nor bemoans. It is always conscious that the moment is nothing, eternity everything; that the whole alone has portent and importance. This inner self has a depth beyond plumbing; it has a strength unshakable; it has understanding beyond belief. It is not conscience, for it sets itself up as no arbiter of acts or deeds. It is simply a consciousness that that which is done is good or evil, kind or harsh, wise or foolish. This calm inner soul of souls might be called God in man.

Evered this day lived in this inner consciousness. As though he sat remote above the stream he watched the years of his memories flow by. He was, after the first moments, torn by no racking grief and wrenched by no remorseful torments and burned by no agonizing fires. He was without emotion, but not without judgment and not without decision. He moved through his thoughts as though to a definitely appointed and pre-determined end. A strange numbness possessed him, in which only his mind was alive.

He did not pity himself; neither did he damn himself. He did not pray that he might cancel all the past, for this inner consciousness knew the past could never be canceled. He simply thought upon it, with grave and sober consideration.

When his thoughts evidenced themselves in actions it was done slowly, and as though he did know not what he did. He got up from where he had been sitting and went to the window and looked out. The snow had ceased; the sun was breaking through. The world was never more beautiful, never more gloriously white and clean.

The man had held in his hands for most of the day that heavy knife of his. He put it now back in its sheath. Then he took off his shirt and washed himself. There was no fire of purpose in his eye; he was utterly calm and unhurried.

He put on a clean shirt. It was checked blue and white. Mary Evered had made it for him, as she was accustomed to make most of his clothes. When it was buttoned he drew his belt about him and buckled it snug. Then he sat down and took off his slippers--old, faded, rundown things that had eased his tired feet night by night for years. He took off these slippers and put on hobnailed shoes, lacing them securely.

When this was done the man stood for a little in the room, and he looked steadily before him. His eyes did not move to this side and that; there was no suggestion that he was taking farewell of the familiar things about him. It was more as though he looked upon something which other eyes could never see. And his face lighted a little; it was near smiling. There was peace in it.

I do not believe that there was any deadly purpose in Evered’s heart when he left his room. Fraternity thinks so; Fraternity has never thought anything else about the matter. He took his knife, in its sheath. That is proof enough for Fraternity. “He went to do the bull, and the bull done him.” That is what they say, have always said.

It does not occur to them that the man took the knife because he was a man; because it was not in him to lay down his life supinely; because battle had always been in his blood and was his instinct. It does not occur to them that there was in Evered’s mind this day the purpose of atonement, and nothing more. For Fraternity had never plumbed the man, had never understood him.

No matter. No need to dig for hidden things. Enough to know what Evered did.

He went from his room into the kitchen. No one was there. Ruth and John and Darrin were outside in front of the house. Thus they did not see him come out into the barnyard and go steadily and surely across and past the corner of the barn, till he came to the high-boarded walls of the red bull’s pen.

He put his hand against these board walls for a moment, with a gesture not unlike that of a blind man. One watching would have supposed that he walked unseeingly or that his eyes were closed. He went along the wall of the pen until he came to the narrow gate, set between two of the cedar posts, through which it was possible to enter.

Evered opened this gate, stepped inside the pen and shut the gate behind him. He took half a dozen paces forward, into the center of the inclosure, and stood still.

The red bull had heard the gate open; and the creature turned in its stall and came to the door between stall and pen. It saw Evered standing there; and after a moment the beast came slowly out, moving one foot at a time, carefully, like a watchful antagonist--came out till it was clear of the stall; till it and the man faced each other, not twenty feet apart.

After a moment the bull lowered its great head and emitted a harsh and angry bellow that was like a roar.

XIX

The beauty of the whole world in this hour should be remembered. Houses, trees, walls, shrubs, knolls--all were overlaid with the snow blanket inches deep. It had been faintly blue, this carpet of snow, in the first moments after the storm passed, and before the sun had broken through. When the sun illumined the hill about the farm the snow was dazzling white, blinding the eye with a thousand gleams, as though it were diamond dust spread all about them. Afterward, when John and Darrin and Ruth had passed to the front of the house to look across the valley and away, the sun descending lost its white glare; its rays took on a crimson hue. Where they struck the snow fairly it was rose pink; where shadows lay the blue was coming back again. The air was so clear that it seemed not to exist, yet did exist as a living, pulsing color which was all about--faint, hardly to be seen.

The three stood silent, watching all this. Ruth could not have spoken if she had wished to do so; she could scarce breathe. Darrin watched unseeingly, automatically, his thoughts busy elsewhere. John stood still, and his eyes were narrowed and his face was faintly flushed, either by the sun’s light or by the intoxication of beauty which was spread before him. And they were standing thus when there came to them through the still, liquid air the bellow of the bull.

John and Ruth reacted automatically to that sound. They were accustomed to the beast; they could to some extent distinguish between its outcries, guess at its moods from them. Its roaring was always frightful to an unaccustomed ear; but they were used to it, were disturbed only by some foreign note in the sound. They both knew now that the bull was murderously angry. They did not know, had no way of knowing what had roused it. It might be a dog, a cat; it might be that one of the cows had broken loose and was near its stall; it might be a pig; it might be a hen; it might be merely a rat running in awkward loping bounds across its pen. They did not stop to wonder; but John turned and ran toward the pen, and Ruth followed him, stumbling through the soft snow. Darrin, to whom the bull’s bellow had always been a frightful sound, was startled by it, would have asked a question. When he saw them run round the house he followed them.

John was in the lead, but Ruth was swift footed and was at his shoulder when he reached the gate of the pen. The walls of the inclosure and the gate itself were so high that they could not look over the top. But just beside the main gate there was a smaller one, like a door; too narrow and too low for the bull to pass, but large enough for a man. John fumbled with the latch of this gate; and his moment’s delay gave the others time to come up with him. When he opened the way and stepped into the pen Ruth and Darrin were at his shoulder. Thus that which was in the pen broke upon them all three at once--a picture never to be forgotten, indelibly imprinted on their minds.

The snow that had fallen in the inclosure was trampled here and there by the tracks of the bull and by the tracks of the man, and in one spot it was torn and tossed and crushed into mud, as though the two had come together there in some strange matching of strength. At this spot too there was a dark patch upon the snow; a patch that looked almost black. Yet Ruth knew what had made this patch, and clutched at her throat to stifle her scream; and John knew, and Darrin knew. And the two men were sick and shaken.

At the other side of the pen, perhaps a dozen long paces from where they stood, Evered and the bull faced each other. Neither had heard their coming, neither had seen them. They were, for the fraction of a second, motionless. The great bull’s head was lowered; its red neck was streaked with darker red where a long gash lay. From this gash dripped and dripped and spurted a little stream, a dark and ugly stream.

The man, Evered, stood erect and still, facing the bull. They saw that he bore the knife in his left hand; and they saw that his right arm was helpless, hanging in a curiously twisted way, bent backward below the elbow. The sleeve of his checked shirt was stained there, and his hand was red. His shoulder seemed somehow distorted. Yet he was erect and strong, and his face was steady and curiously peaceful, and he made no move to escape or to flee.

An eternity that was much less than a second passed while no man moved, while the bull stood still. Then its short legs seemed to bend under it; its great body hurtled forward. The vast bulk moved quick as light. It was upon the man.

They saw Evered strike, lightly, with his left hand; and there was no purpose behind the blow. It had not the strength to drive it home. At the same time the man leaped to one side, sliding his blade down the bull’s shoulder; leaped lightly and surely to one side. The bull swept almost past the man, the great head showed beyond him.