WHEN Evered reached the farm, dark had fully fallen; and the cold rain was splattering against the buildings, driven by fierce little gusts of wind from the northwest as the direction of the storm shifted. The man walked steadily enough, his head held high. What torment was hidden behind his proud bearing no man could guess. He went to the kitchen, and Ruth told him that John must be near done with the milking. Evered nodded, as though he were tired. Ruth saw that he was wet, and when he took off his coat and hat she brought him a cup of steaming tea and made him drink it. He said, “Thanks, Ruthie!” And he took the cup from her hands and sipped it slowly, the hot liquid bringing back his strength.
His trousers were soaked through at the knees. She bade him go in and change them; and he went to his room. When John came from the barn Evered had not yet come outinto the kitchen again. Supper was ready and Ruth went to his door and called to him.
He came out; and both Ruth and John saw the strange light in the man’s eyes. He did not speak and they did not speak to him. There was that about him which held them silent. He ate a little, then went to his room again and shut the door. They could hear him for a little while, walking to and fro. Then the sound of his footsteps ceased.
Only one door lay between his room and the kitchen; and unconsciously the two hushed their voices, so that they might not disturb him. John got into dry clothes, then helped Ruth with the dishes, brought fresh water from the pump to fill the tank at the end of the stove, brought wood for the morning, turned the separator, and finally sat smoking while she cleaned the parts of that instrument. They spoke now and then; but there was some constraint between them. Both of them were thinking of Evered.
Ruth, her work finished, came and sat down by the stove with a basket of socks to be darned, and her needle began to move carefully to and fro in the gaping holes she stretched across her darning egg.
John asked her in a low voice, “Did you mark trouble in my father this night?”
She looked at him, concern in her eyes. “Yes. There was something. He seemed happier, somehow; yet very sad too.”
He said, “His eyes were shining, like.”
“I saw,” she agreed.
John smoked for a little while. Then: “I’m wondering what it is,” he murmured. “Something has happened to him.”
Ruth, head bent above her work, remembered Darrin’s coming, his summons. But she said nothing till John asked: “Do you know what it was?”
“He was talking with Fred,” she said; and slowly, cheeks rosy, amended herself: “With Mr. Darrin.”
John nodded. “I knew they were away together.”
“Mr. Darrin came for him,” said Ruth. “He took your father away.”
They said no more of the matter, for there was nothing more to say; but they thought a great deal. Now and then they spoke of other things. Outside the house the wind was whistling and lashing the weatherboards with rain; and after a while the sharp sound ofthe raindrops was intensified to a clatter and John said, “It’s turned to hail. There’ll be snow by morning.”
The girl thought of Darrin. “He’ll be wet and cold out in this. He ought to come up to the barn.”
John smiled. “He can care for himself. His shelter will turn this, easy. He’d come if he wanted to come.”
His tone was friendly and Ruth asked, watching him, “You like Mr. Darrin, don’t you?”
“Yes,” John told her. “Yes,” he said slowly; “I like the man.”
What pain the words cost him he hid from her eyes altogether. She was, vaguely, a little disappointed. She had not wanted John to like Darrin; and yet she—loved the man. She must love him; she had longed for him so. Thinking of him as she sat here with her mending in her lap she felt again that unaccountable pang of loneliness. And the girl looked sidewise at John. John was watching the little flames that showed through the grate in the front of the stove. He seemed to pay no heed to her.
After a while Ruth said she would go tobed; and she put away her basket of mending, set her chair in place by the table and went to the door that led toward her own room. John, still sitting by the stove, had not turned. She stood in the doorway for a moment, watching him. There was a curious yearning in her eyes.
By and by she said softly, “Good night, John.”
He got up from his chair, and turned toward her and stood there. “Good night, Ruth,” he answered.
She did not close the door between them; and after a moment, as though without his own volition, his feet moved. He came toward her, came nearer where she stood.
She did not know whether to stay or to go. The girl was shaken, unsure of herself, afraid of her own impulses. And then she remembered that she loved Darrin, must love him. And she stepped back and shut the door slowly between them. Even with the door shut she stood still, listening; and she heard John turn and go back to his chair and sit down.
She was swept by an unaccountable wave of angry disappointment. And the girlturned into her room and with quick sharp movements loosed her garments and put them aside and made herself ready for bed. She blew out the light and lay down. But her eyes were wide, and she was wholly without desire to sleep. And by and by she began to cry, for no reason she could name. She was oppressed by a terrible weight of sorrow, indefinable. It was as though this great sorrow were in the very air about her. It was, she thought once gropingly, as though someone near her were dying in the night. Once before she slept she heard Evered moving to and fro in his room, adjoining hers.
John had no heart for sleep that night. He sat in the kitchen alone for a long time; and he went to bed at last, not because he was sleepy, but because there was nothing else to do. He put wood in the stove and shut it tightly; there would be some fire there in the morning. He put the cats into the shed and locked the outer door, and so went at last to his room. The man undressed slowly and blew out his light. When once he was abed the healthy habit of his lusty youth put him quickly to sleep. He slept with scarce a dream till an hour before dawn, and wokethen, and rose to dress for the morning’s chores.
From his window, even before the light came, he saw that some wet snow had fallen during the night. When he had made the fire in the kitchen and filled the kettle he put on his boots and went to the barn. There were inches of snow and half-frozen mud in the barnyard. It was cold and dreary in the open. A little snow fell fitfully now and then.
Within the barn the sweet odors that he loved greeted him. The place steamed pleasantly with the body warmth of the cattle and the horse stabled there; and he heard the pigs squealing softly, as though in their sleep, in their winter pen at the farther end of the barn floor. He lighted his lantern and hung it to a peg and fed the stock—a little grain to the horse, hay to the cows, some cut-up squash and a basketful of beets to the pigs. As an afterthought he gave beets to the cows as well. John worked swiftly, cleaned up the horse’s stall and the tie-up where the line of cows was secured. After he was done here he fed the bull, the red bull in its strong stall; and while the creature ate he cleaned the place and put fresh bedding in upon the floor. Thebull seemed undisturbed by his presence; it turned its great head now and then to look at him with steady eyes, but there was no ugliness in its movements. When he had finished his work John stroked the great creature’s flank and shoulder and neck for a moment.
He said under his breath, “You’re all right, old boy. You’re all right. You’re clever, by golly. Clever as a cow.”
When Fraternity says a beast is clever it means gentle and kind rather than shrewd. The bull seemed to understand what John said; or what lay in his tone. The great head turned and pressed against him, not roughly. John stroked it a minute more, then left the stall and took a last look round to be sure he had forgotten nothing, and then went to the house. Day was coming now; there was a ghostly gray light in the farmyard. And the snow had turned, for the time, to a drizzling, sleeting sprinkle of rain.
In the kitchen he found Ruth moving about; and she gave him the milk pails and he went out to milk. There were only three cows giving milk at that time. Two would come in in December; but for the present milkingwas a small chore. John was not long about it, but by the time he had finished and returned to the kitchen breakfast was almost ready. Evered had not yet come from his room.
Ruth half whispered: “He was up in the night. I think he’s asleep. I’m going to let him sleep a while.”
John nodded. “All right,” he agreed.
“He’s so tired,” said Ruth; and there was a gentleness in her tone which made John look at her with some surprise. She had not spoken gently of Evered for months past.
They separated the milk and gave the cats their morning ration and then they sat themselves down and breakfasted. When they were half done Ruth saw that day was fully come, and blew out the lamp upon the table between them. It left the kitchen so bleak and cheerless, however, that she lighted it again.
“I don’t like a day like this,” she said. “It’s ugly. Everything is ugly. It makes me nervous, somehow.”
She shivered a little and looked about her as though she felt some fearful thing at her very shoulder. John, more phlegmatic,watched her in some bewilderment. Ruth was not usually nervous.
They had not heard Evered stirring; and all that morning they moved on tiptoe about their work. John forebore to split wood in the shed, his usual task on stormy days, lest he waken his father. Ruth handled the dishes gently, careful not to rattle them; she swept the floor with easy strokes that made but little sound. When Evered came into the kitchen, a little before noon, she and John looked at the man with quick curiosity, not knowing what they would see.
They saw only that Evered’s head was held a little higher than was his custom of late; they saw that his eyes were sober and clear and thoughtful; they marked that his voice was gentle. He had dinner with them, speaking little, then went back to his room.
Soon after dinner Darrin came to the door. Ruth asked him in, but the man would not come. John was in the barn; and Ruth, a little uneasy and afraid before this man, wished John were here.
She asked Darrin, “Were you all right, last night?”
He said he had been comfortable; that hehad 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 foundherself 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. Thenearer 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.
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 toknow 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 herhotly 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 shapedEvered’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 countenancewas 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 thisinner 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 mostof 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.
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 ofstrength. 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.
Then the head swung back and struck Evered in the side, and he fell, over and over, rolling like a rabbit taken in midleap by the gunner’s charge of shot. And the red bull turned as a hound might have turned, with a speed that was unbelievable. Its head, its forequarters rose; they saw its feet come down with a curious chopping stroke—apparently not so desperately hard—saw its feet come down once, and twice upon the prostrate man.
It must be remembered that all this had passed quickly. It was no more than a fifth of a second that John Evered stopped withinthe gate of the pen. Then he was leaping toward the bull, and Ruth followed him. Darrin crouched in the gate, and his face was white as death. He cried, “Come back, Ruth!” And even as she ran after John she had time to look back toward Darrin and see him cowering there.
John took off his coat as he ran, took it off with a quick whipping motion. He swung it back behind him, round his head. And then as the bull’s body rose for another deadly downward hoofstroke John struck it in the flank with all his weight. He caught the beast faintly off balance, so that the bull pivoted on its hind feet, away from the fallen man; and before the great creature could turn John whipped his coat into its face, lashing it again and again. The bull shook its great head, turning away from the blinding blows; and John caught the coat about its head and held it there, his arms fairly round the bull’s neck. He was shouting, shouting into its very ear. Ruth even in that moment heard him. And she marked that his tone was gentle, quieting, kind. There was no harshness in it.
She needed no telling what to do. John had swung the bull away from Evered; hehad the creature blinded. She bent beside the prostrate man and tried to drag him to his feet, but Evered bent weakly in the middle. He was conscious, he looked up at her, his face quite calm and happy; and he shook his head. He said, “Go.”
The girl caught him beneath the shoulders and tried to drag him backward through the soft snow across the pen. It was hard work. John still blinding the bull, still calling out to the beast, was working it away from her.
She could not call on him for help; she turned and cried to Darrin, “Help me—carry him.”
Darrin came cautiously into the pen and approached her and took her arm. “Come away,” he said.
Her eyes blazed at him; and she cried again, “Carry him out.”
He said huskily, “Leave him. Leave him here. Come away.”
She had never released Evered’s shoulders, never ceased to tug at him. But Darrin took her arm now as though to pull her away; and she swung toward him so fiercely that he fell back from her. The girl began abruptly to cry; half with anger at Darrin, half with pityfor the broken man in her arms. And she tugged and tugged, sliding the limp body inch by inch toward safety.
Then she saw John beside her. He had guided the bull, half forcing, half persuading, to the entrance into the stall; he had worked the creature in, prodding it, urging; and shut and made secure the door. Now he was at her side. He knelt with her.
“He’s terribly hurt,” she said through her tears.
John nodded. “I’ll take him,” he told her.
So he gathered Evered into his arms, gathered him up so tenderly, and held the man against his breast, and Ruth supported Evered’s drooping head as she walked beside John. They came to the gate and it was too narrow for them to pass through. So Ruth went through alone, to open the wider gate from the outside.
She found Darrin there, standing uncertainly. She looked at him as she might have looked at a stranger. She was hardly conscious that he was there at all. When he saw what she meant to do he would have helped her. She turned to him then, and she seemed to bring her thoughts back from a great distance; she looked at him for a moment and then she said, “Go away!”
He cried, “Ruth! Please——”
She repeated, “I want you to go away. Oh,” she cried, “go away! Don’t ever come here again!”
Darrin moved back a step, and she swung the gate open so that John could come through, and closed it behind him, and walked with him to the kitchen door, supporting Evered’s head. Darrin hesitated, then followed them uncertainly.
When they came to the door Ruth opened it, and John—moving sidewise so that his burden should not brush against the door frame—went into the kitchen, and across. Ruth passed round him to open the door into Evered’s own room; and John went through.
When he reached the bedside and turned to lay Evered there he missed Ruth. He looked toward the kitchen; and he saw her standing in the outer doorway. Darrin was on the steps before her. John heard Darrin say something pleadingly. Ruth stood still for a moment. Then John saw her slowly shut the door, shutting out the other man.And he saw her turn the key and shoot the bolt.
She came toward him, running; and her eyes were full of tears.
They laid Evered on his own bed, the bed he and Mary Evered had shared. Ruth put the pillow under his head; and because it was cold in the room she would have drawn a blanket across him. John shook his head. He was loosening the other’s garments, making swift examination of his father’s hurts, pressing and probing firmly here and there.
Evered had drifted out of consciousness on the way to the house; but his eyes opened now and there was sweat on his forehead. He looked up at them steadily and soberly enough.
“You hurt me, John,” he said.
Ruth whispered, “I’ll telephone the doctor.”
Evered turned his head a little on the pillow, and looked toward her. “No,” he said, “no need.”
“Oh, there must be!” she cried. “There must be! He can——”
Evered interrupted her. “Don’t go, Ruthie. I want to talk to you.”
She was crying; she came slowly back tothe bedside. The sun was ready to dip behind the hills. Its last rays coming through the window fell across her face. She was somehow glorified. She put her hand on Evered’s head, and he—the native strength still alive within him—reached up and caught it in his and held it firmly thereafter for a space.
“You’re crying,” he said.
“I can’t help it,” she told him.
“Why are you crying?” he asked.
“Because I’m so sorry for you.”
A slow wave of happiness crept into his eyes. “You’re a good girl, Ruthie. You mustn’t cry for me.”
She brushed her sleeve across her eyes. “Why did you do it?” she asked almost fiercely. “Why did you let him get at you?”
“You’ve been hating me, Ruthie,” he told her gently. “Why do you cry for me?”
“Oh,” she told him, “I don’t hate you now. I don’t hate you now.”
He said weakly, “You’ve reason to hate me.”
“No, no!” she said. “Don’t be unhappy. You never meant—you loved Mary.”
“Aye,” he agreed, “I loved Mary. I loved Mary, and John loves you.”
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, John standing beside her; but she did not look up at him. Her eyes were all for Evered.
“Please,” she said. “Rest. Let me get the doctor.”
His head moved slowly in negation. “Something to tell you, Ruth, first—before the doctor comes.”
She looked toward John then, for decision or for reassurance. His eyes answered her; they bade her listen; they told her there was no work for the doctor here. So she turned back to Evered again. He was speaking slowly; she caught his words bending above him.
It was thus that the man told the story at last, without heat or passion, neither sparing himself nor condemning himself, but as though he spoke of another man. And he spoke of little things that he had not been conscious of noticing at the time—how when he took down his revolver to go after the bull the cats were frightened and ran from him; how as he passed through the barnyard the horse whinnied from its stall; how he was near stumbling over a ground sparrow’s nest in the open land above the woodlot; how ared squirrel mocked at him from a hemlock as he went on his way. It was as though he lived the day over while they listened. He told how he had come out above the spring; how he saw Mary and Dane Semler there.
“I believed she loved him,” he said.
And Ruth cried, “Oh, she never loved anyone but you.” She was not condemning, she was reassuring him; and he understood, his hand tightening on hers.
“I know,” he said. “And my unbelief was my great wrong to Mary; worse than the other.”
He went on steadily enough. “There was time,” he told her. “I could have turned him, stopped him, shot him. But I hated her; I let the bull come on.”
The girl scarce heard him. His words meant little to her; her sympathy for him was so profound that her only concern was to ease the man and make him happier.
She cried, “Don’t, don’t torment yourself! Please, I understand.”
“I killed her,” he said.
And as one would soothe a child, while the tears ran down her cheeks she bade him never mind.
“There, there. Never mind,” she pleaded.
“I killed her, but I loved her,” he went on implacably.
And he told them something of his sorrow afterward, and told them how he had stifled his remorse by telling himself that Mary was false; how he had kept his soul alive with that poor unction. He was weakening fast; the terrific battering which he had endured was having its effect upon even his great strength; but his voice went steadily on.
He came to Darrin, came to that scene with Darrin the night before, by the spring; and so told how Darrin had proved to him that Mary was—Mary. And at last, as though they must understand, he added, “So then I knew.”
They did not ask what he knew; these two did understand. They knew the man as no others would ever know him—knew his heart, knew his unhappiness. There was no need of his telling them how he had passed the night, and then the day. He did not try.
Ruth was comforting him; and he watched her with a strange and wistful light in his eyes.
“You’ve hated me, Ruthie,” he reminded her. “Do you hate me now?”
There was no hate in her, nothing but a flooding sympathy and sorrow for the broken man. She cried, “No, no!”
“You’re forgiving——”
“Yes. Please—please know.”
“Then Mary will,” he murmured half to himself.
Ruth nodded, and told him, “Yes, yes; she will. Please, never fear.”
For a little while he was silent, while she spoke to him hungrily and tenderly, as a mother might have spoken; and her arms round him seemed to feel the man slipping away. She was weeping terribly; and he put up one hand and brushed her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” he bade her. “It’s all right, don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it. I don’t want to help it. Oh, if there was only anything I could do.”
He smiled faintly; and his words were so husky she could scarcely hear.
“Go to John,” he said.
She held him closer. “Please——”
“Please go to John,” he urged again.
She still held him, but her arms relaxed alittle. She looked up at John, and saw the young man standing there beside her. And a picture came back to her—the picture of John throwing himself against the red bull’s flank, blinding it, urging it away. His voice had been so gentle, and sure, and strong. She herself in that moment had burned with hate of the bull. Yet there had been no hate in John, nothing but gentleness and strength.
She had coupled him with Evered in her thoughts for so long that there was a strange illumination in her memories now; she saw John as though she had never seen him before; and almost without knowing it she rose and stood before him.
John made no move to take her; but she put her arms round his neck and drew his head down. Only then did his arms go about her and hold her close. There was infinite comfort in them. He bent and kissed her. And strangely she thought of Darrin. There had been something hard and cruel in his embrace, there had been loneliness in his arms. There was only gentleness in John’s; and she was not lonely here. She looked up, smiling through her tears.
“Oh, John, John!” she whispered.
As they kissed so closely, the warm light from the west came through the window and enfolded them. And Evered, upon the bed, wearily turned his head till he could see them, watch them. While he watched, his eyes lighted with a slow contentment. And after a little a smile crept across his face, such a smile as comes only with supreme happiness and peace. A kindly, loving smile.
He was still smiling when they turned toward him again; but they understood at once that Evered himself had gone away.
THE END.