Chapter XI

Darrin came to the farm. He made his camp by the spring where Mary Evered had loved to sit, and where she had been killed. John knew this at the time, was on the spot when Darrin built his fireplace in a bank of earth, waist high, and watched the other shape hemlock boughs into a rain-shedding shelter.

He did not remonstrate; but he did say, “Shouldn’t think you’d want to sleep here.”

Darrin looked at him curiously; and he laughed a little.

“You mean--the red bull?” he asked. And when John nodded he said, “Oh, I’m not afraid of ghosts. The world’s full of ghosts.” There was a sudden hardness in his eye. “I’m a sort of a ghost myself, in a way.”

John wondered what he meant; but he was not given to much questioning, and did not ask. Nevertheless, Darrin’s word stayed hauntingly in his mind.

He told Ruth where Darrin was camping; and the girl listened thoughtfully, but made no comment. John knew that Ruth was accustomed to go to the spring now and then, as her sister had done. He wondered whether she would go there now. There was no jealousy in John; his heart was not built for it. Nevertheless, there was a deep concern for Ruth, deeper than he had any way of expressing. The matter worried him a little.

They did not speak of Darrin’s camping place to Evered, and Evered asked no questions. Darrin came to the house occasionally for supplies, but it happened that he did not encounter Evered at such times. He was always careful to ask for the man, to leave some word of greeting for him; and once he bade them tell Evered to come down and see his camp. They did not do so. Some instinct, unspoken and unacknowledged, impelled both Ruth and John to keep Evered and Darrin apart. Neither was conscious of this feeling, yet both were moved by it.

John, prompted to some extent by his father’s warning, had begun in an awkward fashion to seek to please Ruth and to win back favor in her eyes. He felt himself uneasy and at a loss in the presence of Darrin, felt himself at a disadvantage in any contest with the other. John was a man of the country, of the farm, and he had grace to know it. Darrin had the ease of one who has rubbed shoulders with many men in many places; he was not confused in Ruth’s presence; he was rather at his best when she was near, while John was ill at ease and words came hard to him. Darrin took care to be friendly with them both; and he and John on more than one night drove deep into the swamp together on Darrin’s quest. John, busy about the farm, was unable to join Darrin in the daytime; but the other scoured through the marsh for tracks and traces, and then enlisted John to help him move cameras into position, lay flash-powder traps, or stalk the moose at their feeding in desperate attempts at camera snap-shooting.

Sometimes, in the afternoons, John knew that Ruth went down to the spring and talked with Darrin. Darrin told her of his ventures in the swamp; and she told Darrin in her turn the story of the tragedy that had been enacted here by the spring where he was camping. John, crossing the woodlot on some errand, came upon them there one afternoon, and passed by on the knoll above them without having been seen. The picture they made remained with him and troubled him.

When Darrin had been some ten days on the farm and September was coming in with a full moon in the skies it happened one night that Evered drove to Fraternity for the mail and left John and Ruth alone together. When she had done with the dishes she came out to find him on the door-step, smoking in the moonlight; and she stood above him for a moment, till he looked up at her with some question in his eyes.

She asked then, “Are you going into the swamp with Mr. Darrin to-night?”

He said, “No. He’s out of plates. There’s some due to-morrow; and he’s waiting.”

She was silent a moment longer, then said swiftly, as though anxious to be rid of the words, “Let’s go down and see him.”

If John was hurt or sorry he made no sign. He got to his feet. “Why, all right,” he said. “It’s bright. We’ll not need a lantern.”

As they moved across the barnyard to the bars and entered the woodlot the girl began to talk, in a swift low voice, as though to cover some unadmitted embarrassment. A wiser man might have been disturbed; but John was not analytical, and so he enjoyed it. It was the first time they had talked together at any length since Mary died. It was, he thought, like the old happy times. He felt warmed and comforted and happier than he had been for many weeks past. She was like the old Ruth again, he told himself.

Darrin was glad to see them. He built up his fire and made a place for Ruth to sit upon his blankets, leaning against a bowlder, and offered John cigars. The man knew how to play host, knew how to be interesting. John saw Ruth laugh wholeheartedly for the first time in months. He thought she was never so lovely as laughing.

When they went back up the hill together she fell silent and sober again; and he looked down and saw her eyes, clear in the moonlight. Abruptly, without knowing what he did, he put his arm round her; and for an instant she seemed to yield to him, so that he drew her toward him as he was used to do. He would have kissed her.

She broke away and cried out: “No, no, no! I told you no, John.”

He said gently, “I think a lot of you, Ruth.”

She shook her head, backing away from him; and he heard the angry note creep back into her voice. “You mustn’t, ever,” she told him. “Oh, can’t you understand?”

Some hot strain in the man came to the surface; he cried with an eloquence that was strange on his slow lips, “I love you. That’s all I understand. I always will. You’ve got to know that too. You----”

She said, “Hush! I won’t listen. You--you’re your father over. He’s not content but he master everyone and every thing; master everyone about him. Break them. Master his beasts and his wife. You’re his own son. You’re an Evered.” Her hands were tightening into fists at her side. “Oh, you would want to boss me the way he---- I won’t, I won’t! You shan’t--shan’t ever do it.”

“I’ll be kind to you,” he said.

There was a softer note in her voice. “John, John,” she told him. “I’m sorry. I did love you. I tried to shut my eyes. I tried to pretend that Mary was happy with him. You’re like him. I thought I’d be happy with you. She told me one day how he used be. It frightened me, because he was like you. But I did love you, John. Till Mary died. Then I knew. He’d killed her. He made her want to die. And he had driven that great bull into a killing thing--by the way he treated it.

“Oh, I’ve seen your father clear, John. I know what he is. You’re like him. I couldn’t ever love you.”

He said in a hot quick tone--because she was very lovely--that she would love him, must, some day; and she shook her head.

“Don’t you see?” she told him. “You’re trying already to make me do what you want. Oh, John, can’t you Evereds see any living thing without crushing it? Mr. Darrin----” She caught herself, went on. “See how different he is. He goes into the swamp, and he has to be a thousand times more careful, more crafty than you when you hunt. But you come home with a bloody ugly thing across your shoulders; and he comes with a lovely picture, that will always be beautiful, and that so many people will see. He outwits the animals; he proves himself against them. But he doesn’t kill them to do it, John. You--your father---- Oh, can’t you ever see?”

His thoughts were not quick enough to cope with her; but he said awkwardly, “I’m not--always killing things. I’ve left many a trout go that I might have killed. And deer too.”

“Because it’s the law,” she said harshly. “But it’s in you to kill--crush and bruise and destroy. Don’t you see the difference? You don’t have to beat a thing, a beast, to make it yield to you. You Evereds.”

“I’m not a horse beater,” he said.

“It’s the blood of you,” she told him. “You will be.”

“There’s some times,” he suggested, “when you’ve got to be hard.”

“I’ve heard your father say that very thing.”

They were moving slowly homeward now, speaking brokenly, with longer silences between. The night was almost as bright as day, the moon in midheavens above them. Ahead the barn and the house bulked large, casting dark shadows narrowly along their foundation walls. There was a fragrance of the hayfields in the air. The rake itself lay a little at one side as they came into the barnyard, its spindling curved tines making it look not unlike a spider crouching there. The bars rattled when John lowered them for her to pass through; and the red bull in the barn heard the sound and snorted sullenly at them.

John said to her, “You’d be having a man handle that bull by kindness, maybe.”

She swung about and said quickly, “I’d be having a man take an ax and chop that red bull to little bits.”

He stood still and she looked up at him; and after an instant she hotly asked, “Are you laughing? Why are you laughing at me?”

He said gently, “You that were so strong against any killing--talking so of the red bull.”

She cried furiously, “Oh, you---- John Evered, you! I hate you! I’ll always hate you. You and your father--both of you. Don’t you laugh at me!”

A little frightened at the storm he had evoked he touched her arm. She wrenched violently away, was near falling, recovered herself. “Don’t touch me!” she bade him.

He watched her run into the house.