The dropping sun bathed all the land in splendor; the winds had passed, the air was still as honey. Earth was become a thing of glory beyond compare.
They were still standing here when they heard the hoarse and furious bellow of the great red bull.
XVIII
EVERED had not slept the night before. There was no sleep in the man. And this was not because he was torn and agonized; it was because he had never been so fully alive, so alert of mind and body.
Darrin’s accusation had come to him as no shock; Darrin’s proof that his wife was loyal had come as no surprise. He had expected neither; yet when they came it seemed to the man that he must have known they would come. It seemed to him that all the world must know what he had done; and it seemed to him that he must always have known his wife was—his wife forever.
His principal reaction was a great relief of spirit. He was unhappy, sorrowful; yet there was a pleasant ease and solace in his very unhappiness. For he was rid now, at last, of doubts and of uncertainties; his mind was no more beclouded; there were no more shadows of mystery and questioning. All was clear before him; all that there was to know he knew. And—his secret need no longer be borne alone. Darrin knew; it was as though the whole world knew. He was indescribably relieved by this certainty.
He did not at first look into the future at all. He let himself breathe the present. He came back to the farm and ate his supper and went to his room; and there was something that sang softly within him. It was almost as though his wife waited for him, comfortingly, there. Physically a little restless, he moved about for a time; but his mind was steady, his thoughts were calm.
His thoughts were memories, harking backward through the years.
Evered was at this time almost fifty years old. He was born in North Fraternity, in the house of his mother’s father, to which she had gone when her time came near. Evered’s own father had died weeks before, in the quiet fashion of the countryside. That had been on this hillside farm above the swamp, which Evered’s father had owned. His mother stayed upon the farm for a little, and when the time came she went to her home, and when Evered was a month old she had brought him back to the farm again.
She died, Evered remembered, when he was still a boy, nine or ten years old. She had not married a second time, but her brother had come to live with her, and he survived her and kept the farm alive and producing. He taught Evered the work that lay before him. He had been a butcher, and it was from him Evered learned the trade. A kind man, Evered remembered, but not over wise; and he had lacked understanding of the boy.