Part 47 (2/2)

Sometimes he would wonder if it were death that ominously waited for him in that appalling, threatening stillness.

There had been days when he had tried to recall the sound of voices he had known. He had spent long hours in awakening in his memory those voices. He had wanted particularly to think of people laughing. He used to want to get the pitch of their laughing; to surround himself with the vibration of reiterated laughter. And then when he had gotten it so that he almost heard it, so that he felt that with concentrated attention he might hear the laughing, he would find himself listening to the frightful, numbing stillness.

He had not the courage to go on trying that.

Following the plow and the old gray mare through the fields with the dog skulking abjectly at his heels, he would think of that thing which he had done that had ostracized him from the rest of humanity. He never thought of the possibility of making his life over again. He could not have thought of it if he had wanted to. It was all too hopeless; too impossible to think about. The deadening quiet in which he had been steeped had drained him; sapped from him all initiative.

When evening came he would go into his shack and close the door. He would light the oil lamp on the old table that stood in the center of the room and he would go about getting supper for himself and the mongrel. He took great care always to move his pots and pans gently. If he picked up a plate he did it slowly, softly. When he put his bowl of food on the table he slid it consciously onto the surface without noise.

And going to and fro not oftener than he had to, his feet in their padded moccasins lifted him to his toes.

He ate quietly and quickly, swallowing his food without chewing, feeding himself and the dog with his fingers. And all the while feeling that the stillness was rus.h.i.+ng down from the hills and gathering to greater force about him.

And when he was quite finished with the clearing away of his dishes he would sit beside the table, the mongrel in front of him, and he would think frantically of the relief of talking. His lips would begin to quiver hideously; to move. That hoa.r.s.e, inhuman muttering that had no sound of voice in it would start. And then he would see the dog's eyes, filled with that horrid, beaten look, fixed on his mouth and he would stop, gasping.

Once every little while old man Efferts would come down to the shack in the valley.

He knew nothing of old man Efferts other than that ever since he had come to live at the farm Efferts had stopped in for an evening now and again.

At first he had resented old man Efferts' coming. Later when he had seen that Efferts would not interfere with him he had not minded so much. He had become quite used to seeing the bent, huddled figure of the man trailing down the hillside and shambling into the room to sit there opposite to him quite silent. Of late he had gone about fetching the old man a gla.s.s of cider and a piece of bread. And they had sat facing each other, never talking; just sitting rigidly with the dog on the floor between them and the silence spilling itself in gigantic floods all around them. And then old Efferts would light his pipe and when he had finished it he would get up and go out of the door. And after he had watched old man Efferts go, with the feeling that he might not be real, he would stumble up to his room to lie in the narrow wooden bed trying to shut his ears to the deafening silence about him; cringing between his blankets as the swell of it heightened insidiously.

He knew that the stillness had swamped itself into old man Efferts. He could see the stamp of it in the uncertain, stupefied face; in the bewildered eyes that had behind them something of the look that stayed on in the dog's eyes; in the thin-lipped mouth that drooled at the corners; in the old man's still, quiet way of moving, the unreal, phantom way in which the gray mare moved. He did not know why the old man should come to him to sit so dumbly opposite him for a whole evening. He did not care. He was long past caring.

There were times when he thought he might tell old man Efferts of that thing which he had done years ago and which had isolated him from his fellows. Not that he thought so much of it. He had almost forgotten it.

The stillness had made him forget everything but itself; had pushed everything out of his mind before its own spreading weight. But he kept the thought of speaking to Efferts of what he had done in the back of his head. He knew how his telling it to Efferts could not fail to act.

He knew that something would infallibly happen; that the surprise of it could not help but penetrate the thickness of Efferts' silence. He always felt, soothing himself with the thought of relief, that when the power of the stillness became unbearable he would shock old Efferts into talk. There were moments when he hungered savagely to force old Efferts out of his walling quiet. Moments when he was starving for the comfort of human sound. His voice and Efferts' voice. Voices that would rise above the stillness; voices that would penetrate cunningly through the quiet; voices that would speak and answer each other.

He was sitting in the center of his lamp lit room. He had had his supper and had cleared away the dishes with his usual crafty carefulness. He had lighted his pipe. He sat in the chair beside the table; his body quite rigid; his arms and legs stiffened to a torturing quiet. The mongrel crouched at his feet. There was something strange in the way the animal lay; in its tightened muscles that pulled and twitched as it breathed. Whenever he looked down his eyes met the dog's eyes.

Outside the heavy shadows of the night crept along the ground, pushed on by the rus.h.i.+ng, rising silence behind them. He knew that the stillness was rolling down the slope of those long hills. He knew that its awful quiet was gathering in the valley. He knew that it was trickling horridly still into the low ceilinged room. He had the feeling for the thousandth time that the most minute noise was swallowed up in the stillness before it came into being.

He looked up then to see the door shoved warily ajar. A wrinkled, ugly hand showed against the dark wood in a lighter patch of brown. A coa.r.s.e booted foot came behind the swing of the door. Standing against the black of the night he saw old man Efferts.

He watched the old man come into the room.

He saw him pull up a chair, lifting it from off the floor and setting it down opposite to him within the pooling s.p.a.ce of the yellow lamplight.

He stared at Efferts as he sank into the chair.

Old man Efferts took out his pipe and lit it.

He kept his eyes on Efferts as he had so often done; on the uncertain, stupefied face that was turned to him; on the bewildered eyes that had something behind them of the look that stayed on in the dog's eyes; on the thin-lipped mouth that drooled at the corners.

He got up then and went on his toes to the door and closed it softly. He felt that Efferts' eyes were on him; and the mongrel's eyes. He came back and sat down in his chair.

They both smoked quietly.

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