After a moment Bosworth, trying to collect himself, glanced at the Deacon. “Why not ask Saul to make his own statement, if that’s what we’re here for?”
“That’s so,” the Deacon assented. He turned to Rutledge. “Will you try and give us your idea ... of ... of how it began?”
There was another silence. Then Rutledge tightened his grasp on his gaunt knees, and still looking straight ahead, with his curiously clear unseeing gaze: “Well,” he said, “I guess it begun away back, afore even I was married to Mrs. Rutledge....” He spoke in a low automatic tone, as if some invisible agent were dictating his words, or even uttering them for him. “You know,” he added, “Ora and me was to have been married.”
Sylvester Brand lifted his head. “Straighten that statement out first, please,” he interjected.
“What I mean is, we kept company. But Ora she was very young. Mr. Brand here he sent her away. She was gone nigh to three years, I guess. When she come back I was married.”
“That’s right,” Brand said, relapsing once more into his sunken attitude.
“And after she came back did you meet her again?” the Deacon continued.
“Alive?” Rutledge questioned.
A perceptible shudder ran through the room.
“Well—of course,” said the Deacon nervously.