Evered

by Ben Ames Williams

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.