Evered

by Ben Ames Williams

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.