the snow was still falling thickly when orrin bosworth, who farmed the land south of lone-top, drove up in his cutter to saul rutledge’s gate. he was surprised to see two other cutters ahead of him. from them descended two muffled figures. bosworth, with increasing surprise, recognized deacon hibben, from north ashmore, and sylvester brand, the widower, from the old bearcliff farm on the way to lonetop.
it was not often that anybody in hemlock county entered saul rutledge’s gate; least of all in the dead of winter, and summoned (as bosworth, at any rate, had been) by mrs. rutledge, who passed, even in that unsocial region, for a woman of cold manners and solitary character. the situation was enough to excite the curiosity of a less imaginative man than orrin bosworth.
as he drove in between the broken-down white gate-posts topped by fluted urns the two men ahead of him were leading their horses to the adjoining shed. bosworth followed, and hitched his horse to a post. then the three tossed off the snow from their shoulders, clapped their numb hands together, and greeted each other.
“hallo, deacon.”
“well, well, orrin — .” they shook hands.
“‘day, bosworth,” said sylvester brand, with a brief nod. he seldom put any cordiality into his manner, and on this occasion he was still busy about his horse’s bridle and blanket.
orrin bosworth, the youngest and most communicative of the three, turned back to deacon hibben, whose long face, queerly blotched and mouldy-looking, with blinking peering eyes, was yet less forbidding than brand’s heavily-hewn countenance.
“queer, our all meeting here this way. mrs. rutledge sent me a message to come,” bosworth volunteered.
the deacon nodded. “i got a word from her too — andy pond come with it yesterday noon. i hope there’s no trouble here — ”
he glanced through the thickening fall of snow at the desolate front of the rutledge house, the more melancholy in its present neglected state because, like the gate-posts, it kept traces of former elegance. bosworth had often wondered how such a house had come to be built in that lonely stretch between north ashmore and cold corners. people said there had once been other houses like it, forming a little township called ashmore, a sort of mountain colony created by the caprice of an english royalist officer, one colonel ashmore, who had been murdered by the indians, with all his family, long before the revolution. this tale was confirmed by the fact that the ruined cellars of several smaller houses were still to be discovered under the wild growth of the adjoining slopes, and that the communion plate of the moribund episcopal church of cold corners was engraved with the name of colonel ashmore, who had given it to the church of ashmore in the year 1723. of the church itself no traces remained. doubtless it had been a modest wooden edifice, built on piles, and the conflagration which had burnt the other houses to the ground’s edge had reduced it utterly to ashes. the whole place, even in summer, wore a mournful solitary air, and people wondered why saul rutledge’s father had gone there to settle.
“i never knew a place,” deacon hibben said, “as seemed as far away from humanity. and yet it ain’t so in miles.”
“miles ain’t the only distance,” orrin bosworth answered; and the two men, followed by sylvester brand, walked across the drive to the front door. people in hemlock county did not usually come and go by their front doors, but all three men seemed to feel that, on an occasion which appeared to be so exceptional, the usual and more familiar approach by the kitchen would not be suitable.
they had judged rightly; the deacon had hardly lifted the knocker when the door opened and mrs. rutledge stood before them.
“walk right in,” she said in her usual dead-level tone; and bosworth, as he followed the others, thought to himself; “whatever’s happened, she’s not going to let it show in her face.”
it was doubtful, indeed, if anything unwonted could be made to show in prudence rutledge’s face, so limited was its scope, so fixed were its features. she was dressed for the occasion in a black calico with white spots, a collar of crochet-lace fastened by a gold brooch, and a gray woollen shawl crossed under her arms and tied at the back. in her small narrow head the only marked prominence was that of the brow projecting roundly over pale spectacled eyes. her dark hair, parted above this prominence, passed tight and fiat over the tips of her ears into a small braided coil at the nape; and her contracted head looked still narrower from being perched on a long hollow neck with cord-like throat-muscles. her eyes were of a pale cold gray, her complexion was an even white. her age might have been anywhere from thirty-five to sixty.
the room into which she led the three men had probably been the dining-room of the ashmore house. it was now used as a front parlour, and a black stove planted on a sheet of zinc stuck out from the delicately fluted panels of an old wooden mantel. a newly-lit fire smouldered reluctantly, and the room was at once close and bitterly cold.
“andy pond,” mrs. rutledge cried to some one at the back of the house, “step out and call mr. rutledge. you’ll likely find him in the wood-shed, or round the barn somewheres.” she rejoined her visitors. “please suit yourselves to seats,” she said.
the three men, with an increasing air of constraint, took the chairs she pointed out, and mrs. rutledge sat stiffly down upon a fourth, behind a rickety bead-work table. she glanced from one to the other of her visitors.
“i presume you folks are wondering what it is i asked you to come here for,” she said in her dead-level voice. orrin bosworth and deacon hibben murmured an assent; sylvester brand sat silent, his eyes, under their great thicket of eyebrows, fixed on the huge boot-tip swinging before him.
“well, i allow you didn’t expect it was for a party,” continued mrs. rutledge.
no one ventured to respond to this chill pleasantry, and she continued: “we’re in trouble here, and that’s the fact. and we need advice — mr. rutledge and myself do.” she cleared her throat, and added in a lower tone, her pitilessly clear eyes looking straight before her: “there’s a spell been cast over mr. rutledge.”
the deacon looked up sharply, an incredulous smile pinching his thin lips. “a spell?”
“that’s what i said: he’s bewitched.”
again the three visitors were silent; then bosworth, more at ease or less tongue-tied than the others, asked with an attempt at humour: “do you use the word in the strict scripture sense, mrs. rutledge?”
she glanced at him before replying: “that’s how he uses it.”
the deacon coughed and cleared his long rattling throat. “do you care to give us more particulars before your husband joins us?”
mrs. rutledge looked down at her clasped hands, as if considering the question. bosworth noticed that the inner fold of her lids was of the same uniform white as the rest of her skin, so that when she dropped them her rather prominent eyes looked like the sightless orbs of a marble statue. the impression was unpleasing, and he glanced away at the text over the mantelpiece, which read:
the soul that sinneth it shall die.
“no,” she said at length, “i’ll wait.”
at this moment sylvester brand suddenly stood up and pushed back his chair. “i don’t know,” he said, in his rough bass voice, “as i’ve got any particular lights on bible mysteries; and this happens to be the day i was to go down to starkfield to close a deal with a man.”
mrs. rutledge lifted one of her long thin hands. withered and wrinkled by hard work and cold, it was nevertheless of the same leaden white as her face. “you won’t be kept long,” she said. “won’t you be seated?”
farmer brand stood irresolute, his purplish underlip twitching. “the deacon here —— such things is more in his line . . . ”
“i want you should stay,” said mrs. rutledge quietly; and brand sat down again.
a silence fell, during which the four persons present seemed all to be listening for the sound of a step; but none was heard, and after a minute or two mrs. rutledge began to speak again.
“it’s down by that old shack on lamer’s pond; that’s where they meet,” she said suddenly.
bosworth, whose eyes were on sylvester brand’s face, fancied he saw a sort of inner flush darken the farmer’s heavy leathern skin. deacon hibben leaned forward, a glitter of curiosity in his eyes.
“they — who, mrs. rutledge?”
“my husband, saul rutledge . . . and her . . . ”
sylvester brand again stirred in his seat. “who do you mean by her?” he asked abruptly, as if roused out of some far-off musing.
mrs. rutledge’s body did not move; she simply revolved her head on her long neck and looked at him.
“your daughter, sylvester brand.”
the man staggered to his feet with an explosion of inarticulate sounds. “my — my daughter? what the hell are you talking about? my daughter? it’s a damned lie . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . ”
“your daughter ora, mr. brand,” said mrs. rutledge slowly.
bosworth felt an icy chill down his spine. instinctively he turned his eyes away from brand, and, they rested on the mildewed countenance of deacon hibben. between the blotches it had become as white as mrs. rutledge’s, and the deacon’s eyes burned in the whiteness like live embers among ashes.
brand gave a laugh: the rusty creaking laugh of one whose springs of mirth are never moved by gaiety. “my daughter ora?” he repeated.
“yes.”
“my dead daughter?”
“that’s what he says.”
“your husband?”
“that’s what mr. rutledge says.”
orrin bosworth listened with a sense of suffocation; he felt as if he were wrestling with long-armed horrors in a dream. he could no longer resist letting his eyes return to sylvester brand’s face. to his surprise it had resumed a natural imperturbable expression. brand rose to his feet. “is that all?” he queried contemptuously.
“all? ain’t it enough? how long is it since you folks seen saul rutledge, any of you?” mrs. rutledge flew out at them.
bosworth, it appeared, had not seen him for nearly a year; the deacon had only run across him once, for a minute, at the north ashmore post office, the previous autumn, and acknowledged that he wasn’t looking any too good then. brand said nothing, but stood irresolute.
“well, if you wait a minute you’ll see with your own eyes; and he’ll tell you with his own words. that’s what i’ve got you here for — to see for yourselves what’s come over him. then you’ll talk different,” she added, twisting her head abruptly toward sylvester brand.
the deacon raised a lean hand of interrogation.
“does your husband know we’ve been sent for on this business, mrs. rutledge?” mrs. rutledge signed assent.
“it was with his consent, then —?”
she looked coldly at her questioner. “i guess it had to be,” she said. again bosworth felt the chill down his spine. he tried to dissipate the sensation by speaking with an affectation of energy.
“can you tell us, mrs. rutledge, how this trouble you speak of shows itself . . . what makes you think . . .?”
she looked at him for a moment; then she leaned forward across the rickety bead-work table. a thin smile of disdain narrowed her colourless lips. “i don’t think — i know.”
“well — but how?”
she leaned closer, both elbows on the table, her voice dropping. “i seen ’em.”
in the ashen light from the veiling of snow beyond the windows the deacon’s little screwed-up eyes seemed to give out red sparks. “him and the dead?”
“him and the dead.”
“saul rutledge and — and ora brand?”
“that’s so.”
sylvester brand’s chair fell backward with a crash. he was on his feet again, crimson and cursing. “it’s a god-damned fiend-begotten lie . . . ”
“friend brand . . . friend brand . . . ” the deacon protested.
“here, let me get out of this. i want to see saul rutledge himself, and tell him — ”
“well, here he is,” said mrs. rutledge.
the outer door had opened; they heard the familiar stamping and shaking of a man who rids his garments of their last snowflakes before penetrating to the sacred precincts of the best parlour. then saul rutledge entered.
