Chapter XVII

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 out into 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 of the 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 to bed; 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 girl turned 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 woke then, 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. The bull 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 milking was 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 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.