At the noon meal he had been asleep, from nervous exhaustion.
And at supper time neither of them had thought of food.
The boy did not even know what was wrong with him, why he felt weak and peaceful.
That was how he felt ás he lay in bed.
The lamp was still burning; it was now full dark outside.
Some time had elapsed, but it seemed to him that if he turned his head he would still see the two of them, himself and the man, kneeling beside the bed, or anyway, in the rug the indentations of the twin pairs of knees without tangible substance.
Even the air seemed still to excrete that monotonous voice as of someone talking in a dream, talking, adjuring, arguing with a Presence who could not even make a phantom indentation in an actual rug.
He was lying so, on his back, his hands crossed on his breast like a tomb effigy, when he heard again feet on the cramped stairs.
They were not the man’s; he had heard McEachern drive away in the buggy, departing in the twilight to drive three miles and to a church which was not Presbyterian, to serve the expiation which he had set himself for the morning.
Without turning his head the boy heard Mrs. McEachern toil slowly up the stairs.
He heard her approach across the floor.
He did not look, though after a time her shadow came and fell upon the wall where he could see it, and he saw that she was carrying something.
It was a tray of food.
She set the tray on the bed.
He had not once looked at her.
He had not moved.
“Joe,” she said.
He didn’t move.
“Joe,” she said.
She could see that his eyes were open.
She did not touch him.
“I ain’t hungry,” he said.
She didn’t move.
She stood, her hands folded into her apron.
She didn’t seem to be looking at him, either.
She seemed to be speaking to the wall beyond the bed.
“I know what you think.
It ain’t that.
He never told me to bring it to you.
It was me that thought to do it.
He don’t know.
It ain’t any food he sent you,” He didn’t move.
His face was calm as a graven face, looking up at the steep pitch of the plank ceiling.
“You haven’t eaten today.
Sit up and eat.
It wasn’t him that told me to bring it to you.
He don’t know it.
I waited until he was gone and then I fixed it myself.”
He sat up then.
While she watched him he rose from the bed and took the tray and carried it to the corner and turned it upside down, dumping the dishes and food and all onto the floor.
Then he returned to the bed, carrying the empty tray as though it were a monstrance and he the bearer, his surplice the cutdown undergarment which had been bought for a man to wear.
She was not watching him now, though she had not moved.
Her hands were still rolled into her apron.
He got back into bed and lay again on his back, his eyes wide and still upon the ceiling.
He could see her motionless shadow, shapeless, a little hunched.
Then it went away.
He did not look, but he could hear her kneel in the corner, gathering the broken dishes back into the tray.
Then she left the room.
It was quite still then.
The lamp burned steadily above the steady wick; on the wall the flitting shadows of whirling moths were as large as birds.