Darrin’s departure came abruptly. He had gone to the village one night
for his mail, and found a letter waiting, which he read with avid eyes.
Having read it he put it away in his pocket, and came to Will Bissell
and asked how he might most quickly reach Boston.
Will told him there was a morning train from town; and Darrin nodded and
left the store. He decided to walk the ten miles through the night. It
was cool and clear; the walk would be good for him. It would give him
time for thinking.
He went back to his camp and slept till three in the morning. Then he
made a little breakfast and ate it and packed his camp belongings under
his tarpaulin for cover. To the tarp he fastened a note, addressed to
Ruth. He wrote simply:
“_Dear Ruth_: I have to go away for four or five days, hurriedly. I
would have said goodby if there were time. If it rains will you
ask John to put my things under shelter somewhere? In the barn will
do. There is a camera set at the crossing of the brook where the
old pine is down. Perhaps he will find that and take care of it for
me. My other things in the box here are safe enough. The box is
waterproof.
“I will not be long gone. I’m taking the morning train from town.
Please remember me to Mr. Evered.
“Yours, FRED.”
At a little after four, dressed in tramping clothes, but with other
garments in a bundle under his arm, he started for town. He had time to
change his garments there, and cash a check at the bank, and have a more
substantial breakfast before he boarded the morning train.
Ruth discovered that Darrin had gone on the afternoon of his going. She
went down to his camp by the spring with an eagerness of anticipation
which she did not admit even to herself; and when she saw that he was
not there she was at once relieved and unhappy.
The girl had stopped on the knoll above the camp; and she stood there
for a moment looking all about, thinking Darrin might be somewhere
near. Then she marked the careful order of the spot, and saw that all
the camp gear was stowed away; and abruptly she guessed what had
happened. She ran then down the knoll, and so came almost at once upon
the note he had left for her.
She read this through, frowning and puzzling a little over the
intricacies of his handwriting; and she did not know whether to be
unhappy over his going or happy that he had remembered to leave this
word for her. She did not press the scribbled note against her bosom,
but she did read it through a second time, and then refold it carefully,
and then take it out and read it yet again. In the end it was still in
her hand when she turned reluctantly back up the hill. She put it in the
top drawer of her bureau in her room.
She told John and Evered at suppertime that Darrin was gone. Evered
seemed like a man relieved of a burden, till she added, “He’s coming
back again, though.”
John asked, “How do you know?”
“He left a note for me,” she said.
John bent over his plate, hiding the hurt in his eyes. The girl told him
of the camera set in the swamp, and John promised to go and fetch it,
and to bring Darrin’s other belongings under shelter in the woodshed or
the barn.
He managed this the next day; and Ruth made occasion to go to the barn
more than once for the sheer happiness of looking upon them. John caught
her at it once; but he did not let her know that he had seen. The young
man was in these days woefully unhappy.
It is fair to say that he had reason to be. Ruth was kind to him, never
spoke harshly or in an unfriendly fashion; in fact, she was almost too
friendly. There was a finality about her friendliness which baffled him
and erected a barrier between him and her. The man tried awkwardly to
bring matters back to the old sweet footing between them; but the girl
was of nimbler wit than he. She put him off without seeming to do so;
she erected an impassable defense about herself.
On the surface they were as they had always been. Evered could see no
difference in their bearing. Neighbors who occasionally stopped at the
house decided that John and Ruth were going to be married when the time
should come; and they told each other they had always said so. Before
others the relations between the two were pleasantly friendly; but there
were no longer the sweet stolen moments when their arms entwined and
their lips met. When they were alone together Ruth treated John as
though others were about; and John knew no way to break through her
barriers.
About the fifth day after Darrin’s going Ruth began to expect his
return. He did not come on that day, nor on the next, nor on the next
thereafter. She became a little wistful, a little lonely. Toward the
middle of the second week she found herself clinging with a desperate
earnestness to a despairing hope. He had promised to come back; she
thought he would come back. There had never been any word of more than
friendliness between them; yet the girl felt that such a word must come,
and that he would return to speak it.
One night she dreamed that he would never come again, and woke to find
tears streaming across her cheeks. She lay awake for a long time, eyes
wide and staring, wondering if she loved him.
During this interval of Darrin’s absence there manifested itself in
Evered a curious wistful desire to placate Ruth; to win her good will.
She noticed it first one day when the man had been very still, sitting
all day in the kitchen with his eyes before him, brooding over unguessed
matters. It was a day of blustering, blowing rain, a day when the wind
lashed about the house and there was little that could be done out of
doors. Ruth, busy about the room, watched Evered covertly; her eyes
strayed toward him now and again.
She had not fully realized till that day how much the man was aging. The
change had come gradually, but it had been marked. His hair, that had
been black as coal six months before, was iron gray now; it showed
glints that were snow white, here and there. The skin of his cheeks had
lost its bronze luster; it seemed to have grown loose, as though the man
were shrinking inside. It hung in little folds about his mouth and jaw.
His head, too, was bowing forward; his head that had always been so
erect, so firm, so hard and sternly poised. His neck seemed to be
weakening beneath the load it bore; and his shoulders were less square.
They hung forward, as though the man were cold and were guarding his
chest with his arms.
The fullness of the change came to Ruth with something of a shock, came
when she was thinking it strange that Evered should be content to remain
all day indoors. He was by nature an active man, of overflowing bodily
energy; he was used to go out in all weathers to his tasks. She had seen
him come in, dripping, in the past; his cheeks ruddy from the wet and
cold, his eyes glowing with the fire of health, his chest heaving to
great deep breaths of air. More and more often of late, she remembered,
he had stayed near the stove and the fire, as though it comforted him.
Ruth had not John’s sympathetic understanding of the heart of Evered;
nevertheless, she knew, as John did, that the man had--in his harsh
fashion--loved his dead wife well. She had always known this, even
though she had never been able to understand how a man might hurt the
woman he loved. If she had not known, she would not have blamed Evered
so bitterly for all the bitter past. It was one of the counts of her
indictment of him that he had indeed loved Mary; and that even so he
had made the dead woman unhappy through so many years.
Watching him this day Ruth thought that sorrow was breaking him; and the
thought somewhat modified, without her knowing it, the strength of her
condemnation of the man. When in mid afternoon he took from her the
shovel and broom with which she was preparing to clean out the ashes of
the stove, and did the task himself, she was amazed and angry with
herself to find in her heart a spark of pity for him.
“Let me do that, Ruthie,” he had said. “It’s hard for you.”
He had never been a man given to small chores about the house; he was
awkward at it. His very awkwardness, the earnestness of his clumsy
efforts--warmed the girl’s heart; she found her eyes wet as she watched
him, and took recourse in an abrupt protest.
“You’re spilling the ashes,” she said. “Here, let me.”
She would have taken the broom from him, but Evered would not let it go.
He looked toward her as they held the broom between them, and there was
in his eyes such an agony of desire to please her that the girl had to
turn away.
What was moving in Evered’s mind it is hard to say, hard to put in
words. He had not yet surrendered to regret for the thing he had done;
he was still able to bolster his courage, to strengthen himself by the
reflection that his wife had wronged him. He was still able to fan to
life the embers of his rage against her and against Semler. Yet the man
was finding it hard to endure the hatred in Ruth’s eyes, the silent
glances which met him when he went abroad, the ostracism of the village.
He wanted comradeship in these days as he had never wanted it before. He
desired the friendship of mankind; he desired, in an unformed way, the
affection of Ruth. The girl had come to symbolize in his thoughts
something like his own conscience. He was uncertainly conscious that if
she forgave him, looked kindly upon him, bore him no more malice, he
might altogether forgive himself for that which he had done.
Yet when he put this thought in words it evoked a revolt in his own
heart; and he would cry out to himself, “I need no forgiveness! I’ve
nothing to forgive! I was right to let the bull.... She was false as a
witch; false as hell!”
He found poor comfort in this thought. So long as he believed his wife
was guilty he could endure the torment of his own remorse, could relieve
the pain of it. And if Ruth would only smile upon him, be her old
friendly self to him again....
The man’s attentions to her were almost like an uncouth wooing. He began
to study the girl’s wants, to find little ways to help her, to
anticipate her desires, to ease her work about the house. He sought
opportunities to talk with her, and drove himself to speak gently and
ingratiatingly. He called her Ruthie, though she had always been Ruth to
him before.
The man was pitiful; the girl could not wholly harden her heart against
him. Naturally generous and kindly she caught herself thinking that
after all he had loved Mary well; that he missed her terribly. Once or
twice hearing him move about his room in the night she guessed his
loneliness. She was more and more sorry for Evered.
Ruth was not the only one who saw that the man was growing old too
swiftly. They marked the fact at Will Bissell’s store. Will saw it, and
Lee Motley saw it, and Jim Saladine; these three with a certain
sympathy. Jean Bubier saw it with sardonic amusement, tinged with
understanding. Old Man Varney saw it with malice; and Judd in the
meanness of his soul saw it with malignant delight.
“Looking for friends now, he is,” Judd exclaimed one night. “Him that
was so bold before. Tried to start talk with me to-day. I turned my back
on the man. I’d a mind to tell him why.”
Motley and Saladine spoke of the thing together. Motley said, “I think
he--thought a deal of Mary--in the man’s way.”
And Saladine nodded and said: “Yes. But--there’s more to it than that,
Lee. More than we know, I figure. Something hidden behind it all. A
black thing, if the whole truth was to come out. Or so it looks to me.”
Saladine was a steady, thoughtful man, and Motley respected his opinion,
and thought upon the matter much thereafter; but he was to come to no
conclusion.
On his farm the change in Evered manifested itself in more than one way;
in no way more markedly than in his lack of energy. He left most of the
chores to John; and, what was more significant, he gave over to John
full care of the huge red bull. It had been Evered’s delight to master
that brute and bend it to his will. John and Ruth both marked that he
avoided it in these later days. John had the feeding of it; he cleaned
its stall; he tossed in straw for the creature’s bed. The bull was
beginning to know him, to know that it need not fear him. He was
accustomed to go into its stall and move about the beast without
precautions, speaking gently when he spoke at all.
Ruth never saw this. She seldom went near the red bull’s stall. She
hated the animal and dreaded it. On one occasion she did go near its
pen. It was suppertime and the food was hot upon the table. She called
John from the woodshed, and then came to the kitchen door to summon
Evered. He was leaning against the high gate of the bull’s plank-walled
yard looking in at the animal. Ruth called to him to come to supper, but
he did not turn. She called again, and still the man did not move.
A little alarmed, for fear he might have been suddenly stricken sick,
she went swiftly across the barnyard to where he stood, and looked at
him, and looked into the pen.
Evered was watching the bull; and the bull stood a dozen feet away,
watching the man. There was a stillness about them both which frightened
the girl; a still intentness. Neither moved; their eyes met steadily
without shifting. There was no emotion in either of them. It was as
though the man were probing the bull’s mind, as though the bull would
read the man’s thoughts. They were like persons hypnotized. Ruth
shivered and touched Evered’s arm and shook it a little.
“Supper’s ready,” she said.
He turned to her with eyes still glazed from the intensity of their
stare.
“Supper?” he echoed. Then remembrance came to him; and he nodded heavily
and said with that wistfully ingratiating note in his voice, “Yes,
Ruthie, I’m coming. Come; let’s go together.”
He took her arm, and she had not the hardness of heart to break away
from him. They went into the house side by side.