Evered held still for a little, as though it were hard for him to muster words. Then he asked huskily, “What was my fault?”
She flung up her hand. “Everything!” she cried. “I’ve lived here with you. I’ve seen you—breaking Mary by inches, and nagging and teasing and pestering her. Till she was sick with it. And she kept loving you, so you could hurt her more. And you did. You loved to hurt her. Hard and cruel and mean and small—you’d have beat her as you do your beasts, if you’d dared. Coward too. Oh!”
She flung away, began to move dishes aimlessly about upon the table. Evered was gripped by a desire to placate her, to appease her; he thought of Dane Semler, wished to cry out that accusation against his wife. But he held his tongue. He had seen Semler with Mary; he had told John; Ruth knew that Semler had been upon the farm. But neither of them spoke of the man, then or thereafter. They told no one; and though Fraternity might wonder and conjecture, might guess at the meaning of Semler’s swift flight on the day of the tragedy, the town would never know.
Evered did not name Semler now; and it was not any sense of shame that held his tongue. He believed wholly in that which his eyes had seen, and all that it implied. Himself scarce knew why he did not speak; and he would never have acknowledged that it was desire to shield his wife, even from her own sister, which kept him silent. After a moment he sat down and they began to eat.
Toward the end of the meal he said to Ruth uneasily: “Feeling so, you’ll not be like to stay here with John and me.”
Ruth looked at him with a quick flash of eyes; she was silent, thoughtfully. She had not considered this; had not considered what she was to do. But instantly she knew.
“Yes, I’m going to stay,” she told Evered. “This thing isn’t done. There’s more to come. It must be so. For all you did there’s something that will come to you. I want to be here, to see.” Her hands clenched on the table edge. “I want to see you when it comes—see you squirm and crawl.”
There was such certainty in her tone that Evered, spite of himself, was shaken. He answered nothing; and the girl said again, “Yes; I am going to stay.”
The red bull in his stall bellowed aloud; a long, rumbling, terrible blare of challenge. It set the dishes dancing on the table before them; and when they listened they could hear the monstrous beast snorting in his stall.