Chapter III

Evered and his son drove home together through the clotting dusk in a silence that was habitual with them. The buggy was a light vehicle, the horse was swift and powerful, and they made good time. Evered, driving, used the whip now and then; and at each red-hot touch of the light lash the horse leaped like a stricken thing; and at each whiplash John Evered’s lips pressed firmly each against the other, as though to hold back the word he would have said. No good in speaking, he knew. It would only rouse the lightly slumbering anger in his father, only lead to more hurts for the horse, and a black scowl or an oath to himself. There were times when John Evered longed to put his strength against his father’s; when he was hungry for the feel of flesh beneath his smashing fists. But these moments were few. He understood the older man; there was a blood sympathy between them. He knew his father’s heart as no other did or could; and in the last analysis he loved his father loyally. Thus had he learned long patience and restraint. It is very easy to damn and hate a man like Evered, hot and fierce and ruthlessly overbearing. But John Evered, his son, who had suffered more from Evered than any other man, neither damned nor hated him.

They drove home together in silence. Evered sat still in his seat, but there was no relaxation in his attitude. He was still as a tiger is still before the charge and the leap. John at his side could feel the other’s shoulder muscles tensing. His father was always so, always a boiling vessel of emotions. You might call him a powerful man, a masterful man. John Evered knew him for a slave, for the slave of his own hot and angry pulse beats. And he loved and pitied him.

Out of Fraternity they took the Liberty road, and came presently to a turning which led them to the right, and so to the way to Evered’s farm, a narrow road, leading nowhere except into the farmyard, and traveled by few men who had no business there.

When they came into the farmyard it was almost dark. Yet there was still light enough to see, beyond the shadow of the barn, the sloping hillside that led down to Whitcher Swamp; and the swamp itself, brooding beneath its gray mists in the thickening night. The farm buildings were set on a jutting shoulder of the hill, looking out across the valley where the swamp lay, to Fraternity, and off toward Moody Mountain beyond the town. By day there was a glory in this valley that was spread below them; by night it was a place of dark and mystery. Sounds used to come up the hill from the swamp; the sounds of thrashing brush where the moose fed, or perhaps the clash of ponderous antlers in the fall, or the wicked scream of a marauding cat, or the harsh cries of night-hawks, or the tremolo hoot of an owl.

Built against the barn on the side away from the house there was a stout roofed stall; and opening from this stall a pen with board walls higher than a man’s head and cedar posts as thick as a man’s leg, set every four feet to support the planking of the walls. As the horse stopped in the farmyard and Evered and his son alighted, a sound came from this stall--a low, inhuman, monstrous sound, like the rumbling of a storm, like the complaint of a hungry beast, like the promise of evil things too dreadful for describing; the muffled roaring of Evered’s great red bull, disturbed by the sound of the horse. John Evered stood still for an instant, listening. It was impossible for most men to hear that sound without an appalling tremor of the heart. But Evered himself gave no heed to it. He spoke to the horse. He said “Hush, now. Still.”

The horse was as still as stone, yet it trembled as it had trembled at Will’s store. Evered gathered parcels from beneath the seat; and John filled his arms with what remained. They turned toward the house together, the son a little behind the father.

There was a light in the kitchen of the farmhouse; and a woman had come to the open door and was looking out toward them. She was silhouetted blackly by the light behind her. It revealed her figure as slim and pleasantly graven. The lamp’s rays turned her hair into an iridescent halo about her head. She rested one hand against the frame of the door; and her lifted arm guided her body into graceful lines.

She called to them in a low voice, “Do you need light?”

Evered answered. “If you were out of the door there’d be light enough,” he said.

The woman lifted her hand to her lips in a hurt little gesture; and she stepped aside with no further word. She still stood thus, at one side of the door, when they came in. The lamplight fell full upon her, full upon her countenance.

The woman’s face, the face of this woman whose body still bore youthful lines, was shocking. There were weary contours in it; there were shadows of pain beneath the eyes; there was anguish in the mobile lips. The hair which had seemed like a halo showed now like a white garland; snow white, though it still lay heavy and glossy as a girl’s. She was like a statue of sorrow; the figure of a sad and tortured life.

The woman was Evered’s second wife; Evered’s wife, Mary Evered. His wife, whom he had won in a courtship that was like red flowers in spring; whom he had made to suffer interminably, day by day, till suffering became routine and death would have been happiness; and whom--believe it or no--Evered had always and would forever love with a love that was like torment. There is set perversely in man and woman alike an impulse to tease and hurt and distress those whom we love. It is, of this stuff that lovers’ quarrels are made; it is from this that the heartbreaks of the honeymoon are born. The men and women of the fairy tales, who marry and live happily ever after, are fairy tales themselves; or else they never loved. For loving, which is sacrifice and service and kindness and devotion, is also misunderstanding and distortion and perversity and unhappiness most profound. It is a part of love to quarrel; the making-up is often so sweet it justifies the anguish of the conflict. Mary Evered knew this. But Evered had a stiff pride in him which would not let him yield; be he ever so deeply wrong he held his ground; and Mary was sick with much yielding.

Annie Paisley, who lived at the next farm on the North Fraternity road, had given Mary Evered something to think about when Paisley died, the year before.

For over Paisley’s very coffin Annie had said in a thoughtful, reminiscent way: “Yes, Mary; Jim ’uz a good husband to me for nigh on thirty year. A good pervider, and a kind man, and a good father. He never drunk, nor ever wasted what little money we got; and we always had plenty to do with; and the children liked him. Kind to me, he was. Gentle.” Her eyes had narrowed thoughtfully. “But Mary,” she said, “you know I never liked him.”

Mary Evered had been a girl of spirit and strength; and if she had not loved Evered she would never have stayed with him a year. Loving him she had stayed; and the bitter years rolled over her; stayed because she loved him, and because she--like her son--understood the heart of the man, and knew that through all his ruthless strength and hard purpose, with all his might he loved her.

She said now in the kitchen: “You got the salt pork?”

“Of course I got the salt pork,” Evered told her in a level tone that was like a whip across her shoulders. He dumped his parcels on the table, pointed to one; and she took it up in a hurried furtive way and turned to the stove. John laid down his bundles, and Evered said to him: “Put the horse away.” The young man nodded, and went out into the farmyard.

The horse still stood where Evered had bade it stand. John went to the creature’s head and laid his hand lightly on the velvety nose, and spoke softly; and after a moment the horse mouthed his hand with its lips. He took the bridle and led it toward the stable. There was a lantern hanging by the door, but he did not light it. The young man loved the still darkness of the night; there was some quality in the damp cool air which was like wine to him. And he needed no light for what he had to do; he knew every wooden peg in the barn’s stout frame, blindfolded; for the barn and the farm had been his world for more than twenty years.

Outside the stable door he stopped the horse and loosed the traces and led it out of the thills, which he lowered carefully to the ground. The horse turned, as of habit, to a tub full of water which stood beside the barn door; and while the creature drank John backed the buggy into the carriage shed and propped up the thills with a plank. When he came to the stable door again the horse was waiting for him; and he heard its breath whir in a soundless whinny of greeting. He stripped away the harness expertly, hanging it on pegs against the wall, and adjusted the halter. Once, while he worked, the red bull in its closed stall on the farther side of the barn bellowed softly; and the young man called to the beast in a tone that was at once strong and kindly.

He put the horse in its stall, tied the halter rope, and stepped out into the open floor of the barn to pull down hay for the beast. It was when he did so that he became conscious that someone was near. He could not have told how he knew; but there was, of a sudden, a warmth and a friendliness in the very air about him, so that his breath came a little more quickly. He stood very still for a moment; and then he looked toward the stable door. His eyes, accustomed to the dark, discovered her. She had come inside the barn and was standing against the wall, watching him. He could see the dim white blur of her face in the darkness; he could almost see the glow that lay always in her eyes for him.

He said quietly, “Hello, Ruth.”

And she answered him, “Hello, John.”

“I’ve got to pull down a little hay,” he said. It was as though he apologized for not coming at once to her side.

“Yes,” she told him, and stood there while he finished tending the horse.

When he had done he went toward her slowly and stood before her, and she moved a little nearer to him, so that he put his arms awkwardly round her shoulders and kissed her. He felt her lips move against his; felt her womanly and strong. There was no passion in their caress; only an awkward tenderness on his part, a deep affection on hers.

“I’m glad you came out,” he said; and she nodded against his shoulder.

They went into the barnyard, and his arm was about her waist.

“It’s warm to-night,” she told him. “Summer’s about here.”

He nodded. “We’ll have green peas by the Fourth if we don’t git a frost.”

Neither of them wanted to get at once to the house. There was youth in them; the house was no place for youth. She was Ruth MacLure, Mary Evered’s sister. Not, by that token, John Evered’s aunt; for John Evered’s mother was dead many years gone, before Evered took Mary MacLure for wife. A year ago old Bill MacLure had died and Ruth had come to live with her sister. John had never known her till then; since then he found it impossible to understand how he had ever lived without knowing her. She was years younger than her sister, three years younger than John Evered himself; and he loved her.

They crossed the barnyard to the fence and looked down into the shadowy pit of blackness where the swamp lay, half a mile below them. They rested their elbows on the top bar of the fence. Once or twice the bull muttered in his stall a few rods away. They could hear the champ of the horse’s teeth as the beast fed before sleeping; they could hear Evered’s cows stirring in their tie-up. The night was very still and warm, as though heaven brooded like a mother over the earth.

The girl said at last, “Semler was here while you were gone.”

The young man asked slowly, “What fetched him here?”

“He was on his way home from fishing, down in the swamp stream.”

“Did he do anything down there?”

“Had seventeen. One of them was thirteen inches long. He wanted to leave some, but Mary wouldn’t let him.”

They were silent for a moment, then John Evered said, “Best not tell my father.”

The girl cried under her breath, with an impatient gesture of her hand, “I’m not going to. But I hate it. It isn’t fair. Mary wants him to keep away. He bothers her.”

“I can keep him away.”

“You did tell him not to come.”

“I can make him not come,” said John Evered; and the girl fell silent, and said at last, “He’s writing to her. Oh, John, what can she do? More than she has done?”

“I’ll see to’t he stays away,” the young man promised; and the girl’s hand fell on his arm.

“Please do,” she said. “He’s so unfair to Mary.”

A little later, when they turned at last toward the house, John said half to himself, “If my father ever heard, he’d bust that man.”

“I wish he would,” the girl said hotly. “But--I’m afraid he’d find some way to blame Mary. He mustn’t know.”

“I’ll see Dane Semler,” John promised.

On the doorstep they kissed again. Then they went into the house together. Evered sitting by the lamp with his paper looked up at them bleakly, but said no word. Mary Evered smiled at her sister, smiled at John. She loved her husband’s son, had loved him like a mother since she came to the house and found him, a boy not four years old, helping with the chores as a grown man might have done. She had found something pitiful in the strength and the reserve of the little fellow; and she had mothered out of him some moments of softness and affection that would have surprised his father.

There was a certain measure of reassurance in his eyes as he returned her smile. But when he had sat down across the table from his father, where she could not see his face, he became sober and very thoughtful. He was considering the matter of Dane Semler.