ETHAN FROME
I had the story bit by bit from various people and as generally happens in such cases each time it was a different story
If you know Starkfield Massachusetts you know the postoffice If you know the postoffice you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it drop the reins on his hollowbacked bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade and you must have asked who he was
It was there that several years ago I saw him for the first time and the sight pulled me up sharp Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield though he was but the ruin of a man It was not so much his great height that marked him for the natives were easily singled out by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign breed it was the careless powerful look he had in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain There was something bleak and unapproachable in his face and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fiftytwo I had this from Harmon Gow who had driven the stage from Bettsbridge to Starkfield in pretrolley days and knew the chronicle of all the families on his line
Hes looked that way ever since he had his smashup and thats twentyfour years ago come next February Harmon threw out between reminiscent pauses
The smashup it was—I gathered from the same informant—which besides drawing the red gash across Ethan Fromes forehead had so shortened and warped his right side that it cost him a visible effort to take the few steps from his buggy to the postoffice window He used to drive in from his farm every day at about noon and as that was my own hour for fetching my mail I often passed him in the porch or stood beside him while we waited on the motions of the distributing hand behind the grating I noticed that though he came so punctually he seldom received anything but a copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle which he put without a glance into his sagging pocket At intervals however the postmaster would hand him an envelope addressed to Mrs Zenobia—or Mrs ZeenaFrome and usually bearing conspicuously in the upper lefthand corner the address of some manufacturer of patent medicine and the name of his specific These documents my neighbour would also pocket without a glance as if too much used to them to wonder at their number and variety and would then turn away with a silent nod to the postmaster
Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tempered to his own grave mien but his taciturnity was respected and it was only on rare occasions that one of the older men of the place detained him for a word When this happened he would listen quietly his blue eyes on the speakers face and answer in so low a tone that his words never reached me then he would climb stiffly into his buggy gather up the reins in his left hand and drive slowly away in the direction of his farm
It was a pretty bad smashup I questioned Harmon looking after Fromes retreating figure and thinking how gallantly his lean brown head with its shock of light hair must have sat on his strong shoulders before they were bent out of shape
Wust kind my informant assented Moren enough to kill most men But the Fromes are tough Ethanll likely touch a hundred
Good God I exclaimed At the moment Ethan Frome after climbing to his seat had leaned over to assure himself of the security of a wooden box—also with a druggists label on it—which he had placed in the back of the buggy and I saw his face as it probably looked when he thought himself alone That man touch a hundred He looks as if he was dead and in hell now
Harmon drew a slab of tobacco from his pocket cut off a wedge and pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek Guess hes been in Starkfield too many winters Most of the smart ones get away
Why didnt he
Somebody had to stay and care for the folks There warnt ever anybody but Ethan Fust his father—then his mother—then his wife
And then the smashup
Harmon chuckled sardonically Thats so He had to stay then
I see And since then theyve had to care for him
Harmon thoughtfully passed his tobacco to the other cheek Oh as to that I guess its always Ethan done the caring
Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus about which I grouped my subsequent inferences Guess hes been in Starkfield too many winters
Before my own time there was up I had learned to know what that meant Yet I had come in the degenerate day of trolley bicycle and rural delivery when communication was easy between the scattered mountain villages and the bigger towns in the valleys such as Bettsbridge and Shadds Falls had libraries theatres and Y M C A halls to which the youth of the hills could descend for recreation But when winter shut down on Starkfield and the village lay under a sheet of snow perpetually renewed from the pale skies I began to see what life there—or rather its negation—must have been in Ethan Fromes young manhood
I had been sent up by my employers on a job connected with the big powerhouse at Corbury Junction and a longdrawn carpenters strike had so delayed the work that I found myself anchored at Starkfield—the nearest habitable spot—for the best part of the winter I chafed at first and then under the hypnotising effect of routine gradually began to find a grim satisfaction in the life During the early part of my stay I had been struck by the contrast between the vitality of the climate and the deadness of the community Day by day after the December snows were over a blazing blue sky poured down torrents of light and air on the white landscape which gave them back in an intenser glitter One would have supposed that such an atmosphere must quicken the emotions as well as the blood but it seemed to produce no change except that of retarding still more the sluggish pulse of Starkfield When I had been there a little longer and had seen this phase of crystal clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold when the storms of February had pitched their white tents about the devoted village and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down to their support I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from its six months siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter Twenty years earlier the means of resistance must have been far fewer and the enemy in command of almost all the lines of access between the beleaguered villages and considering these things I felt the sinister force of Harmons phrase Most of the smart ones get away But if that were the case how could any combination of obstacles have hindered the flight of a man like Ethan Frome
During my stay at Starkfield I lodged with a middleaged widow colloquially known as Mrs Ned Hale Mrs Hales father had been the village lawyer of the previous generation and lawyer Varnums house where my landlady still lived with her mother was the most considerable mansion in the village It stood at one end of the main street its classic portico and smallpaned windows looking down a flagged path between Norway spruces to the slim white steeple of the Congregational church It was clear that the Varnum fortunes were at the ebb but the two women did what they could to preserve a decent dignity and Mrs Hale in particular had a certain wan refinement not out of keeping with her pale oldfashioned house
In the best parlour with its black horsehair and mahogany weakly illuminated by a gurgling Carcel lamp I listened every evening to another and more delicately shaded version of the Starkfield chronicle It was not that Mrs Ned Hale felt or affected any social superiority to the people about her it was only that the accident of a finer sensibility and a little more education had put just enough distance between herself and her neighbours to enable her to judge them with detachment She was not unwilling to exercise this faculty and I had great hopes of getting from her the missing facts of Ethan Fromes story or rather such a key to his character as should coordinate the facts I knew Her mind was a storehouse of innocuous anecdote and any question about her acquaintances brought forth a volume of detail but on the subject of Ethan Frome I found her unexpectedly reticent There was no hint of disapproval in her reserve I merely felt in her an insurmountable reluctance to speak of him or his affairs a low Yes I knew them both it was awful seeming to be the utmost concession that her distress could make to my curiosity
So marked was the change in her manner such depths of sad initiation did it imply that with some doubts as to my delicacy I put the case anew to my village oracle Harmon Gow but got for my pains only an uncomprehending grunt
Ruth Varnum was always as nervous as a rat and come to think of it she was the first one to see em after they was picked up It happened right below lawyer Varnums down at the bend of the Corbury road just round about the time that Ruth got engaged to Ned Hale The young folks was all friends and I guess she just cant bear to talk about it Shes had troubles enough of her own
All the dwellers in Starkfield as in more notable communities had had troubles enough of their own to make them comparatively indifferent to those of their neighbours and though all conceded that Ethan Fromes had been beyond the common measure no one gave me an explanation of the look in his face which as I persisted in thinking neither poverty nor physical suffering could have put there Nevertheless I might have contented myself with the story pieced together from these hints had it not been for the provocation of Mrs Hales silence and—a little later—for the accident of personal contact with the man
On my arrival at Starkfield Denis Eady the rich Irish grocer who was the proprietor of Starkfields nearest approach to a livery stable had entered into an agreement to send me over daily to Corbury Flats where I had to pick up my train for the Junction But about the middle of the winter Eadys horses fell ill of a local epidemic The illness spread to the other Starkfield stables and for a day or two I was put to it to find a means of transport Then Harmon Gow suggested that Ethan Fromes bay was still on his legs and that his owner might be glad to drive me over
I stared at the suggestion Ethan Frome But Ive never even spoken to him Why on earth should he put himself out for me
Harmons answer surprised me still more I dont know as he would but I know he wouldnt be sorry to earn a dollar
I had been told that Frome was poor and that the sawmill and the arid acres of his farm yielded scarcely enough to keep his household through the winter but I had not supposed him to be in such want as Harmons words implied and I expressed my wonder
Well matters aint gone any too well with him Harmon said When a mans been setting round like a hulk for twenty years or more seeing things that want doing it eats inter him and he loses his grit That Frome farm was always bout as bares a milkpan when the cats been round and you know what one of them old watermills is wuth nowadays When Ethan could sweat over em both from sunup to dark he kinder choked a living out of em but his folks ate up most everything even then and I dont see how he makes out now Fust his father got a kick out haying and went soft in the brain and gave away money like Bible texts afore he died Then his mother got queer and dragged along for years as weak as a baby and his wife Zeena shes always been the greatest hand at doctoring in the county Sickness and trouble thats what Ethans had his plate full up with ever since the very first helping
The next morning when I looked out I saw the hollowbacked bay between the Varnum spruces and Ethan Frome throwing back his worn bearskin made room for me in the sleigh at his side After that for a week he drove me over every morning to Corbury Flats and on my return in the afternoon met me again and carried me back through the icy night to Starkfield The distance each way was barely three miles but the old bays pace was slow and even with firm snow under the runners we were nearly an hour on the way Ethan Frome drove in silence the reins loosely held in his left hand his brown seamed profile under the helmetlike peak of the cap relieved against the banks of snow like the bronze image of a hero He never turned his face to mine or answered except in monosyllables the questions I put or such slight pleasantries as I ventured He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape an incarnation of its frozen woe with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight tragic as I guessed that to be but had in it as Harmon Gow had hinted the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters
Only once or twice was the distance between us bridged for a moment and the glimpses thus gained confirmed my desire to know more Once I happened to speak of an engineering job I had been on the previous year in Florida and of the contrast between the winter landscape about us and that in which I had found myself the year before and to my surprise Frome said suddenly Yes I was down there once and for a good while afterward I could call up the sight of it in winter But now its all snowed under
He said no more and I had to guess the rest from the inflection of his voice and his sharp relapse into silence
Another day on getting into my train at the Flats I missed a volume of popular science—I think it was on some recent discoveries in biochemistry—which I had carried with me to read on the way I thought no more about it till I got into the sleigh again that evening and saw the book in Fromes hand
I found it after you were gone he said
I put the volume into my pocket and we dropped back into our usual silence but as we began to crawl up the long hill from Corbury Flats to the Starkfield ridge I became aware in the dusk that he had turned his face to mine
There are things in that book that I didnt know the first word about he said
I wondered less at his words than at the queer note of resentment in his voice He was evidently surprised and slightly aggrieved at his own ignorance
Does that sort of thing interest you I asked
It used to
There are one or two rather new things in the book there have been some big strides lately in that particular line of research I waited a moment for an answer that did not come then I said If youd like to look the book through Id be glad to leave it with you
He hesitated and I had the impression that he felt himself about to yield to a stealing tide of inertia then Thank you—Ill take it he answered shortly
I hoped that this incident might set up some more direct communication between us Frome was so simple and straightforward that I was sure his curiosity about the book was based on a genuine interest in its subject Such tastes and acquirements in a man of his condition made the contrast more poignant between his outer situation and his inner needs and I hoped that the chance of giving expression to the latter might at least unseal his lips But something in his past history or in his present way of living had apparently driven him too deeply into himself for any casual impulse to draw him back to his kind At our next meeting he made no allusion to the book and our intercourse seemed fated to remain as negative and onesided as if there had been no break in his reserve
Frome had been driving me over to the Flats for about a week when one morning I looked out of my window into a thick snowfall The height of the white waves massed against the gardenfence and along the wall of the church showed that the storm must have been going on all night and that the drifts were likely to be heavy in the open I thought it probable that my train would be delayed but I had to be at the powerhouse for an hour or two that afternoon and I decided if Frome turned up to push through to the Flats and wait there till my train came in I dont know why I put it in the conditional however for I never doubted that Frome would appear He was not the kind of man to be turned from his business by any commotion of the elements and at the appointed hour his sleigh glided up through the snow like a stageapparition behind thickening veils of gauze
I was getting to know him too well to express either wonder or gratitude at his keeping his appointment but I exclaimed in surprise as I saw him turn his horse in a direction opposite to that of the Corbury road
The railroads blocked by a freighttrain that got stuck in a drift below the Flats he explained as we jogged off into the stinging whiteness
But look here—where are you taking me then
Straight to the Junction by the shortest way he answered pointing up School House Hill with his whip
To the Junction—in this storm Why its a good ten miles
The bayll do it if you give him time You said you had some business there this afternoon Ill see you get there
He said it so quietly that I could only answer Youre doing me the biggest kind of a favour
Thats all right he rejoined
Abreast of the schoolhouse the road forked and we dipped down a lane to the left between hemlock boughs bent inward to their trunks by the weight of the snow I had often walked that way on Sundays and knew that the solitary roof showing through bare branches near the bottom of the hill was that of Fromes sawmill It looked exanimate enough with its idle wheel looming above the black stream dashed with yellowwhite spume and its cluster of sheds sagging under their white load Frome did not even turn his head as we drove by and still in silence we began to mount the next slope About a mile farther on a road I had never travelled we came to an orchard of starved appletrees writhing over a hillside among outcroppings of slate that nuzzled up through the snow like animals pushing out their noses to breathe Beyond the orchard lay a field or two their boundaries lost under drifts and above the fields huddled against the white immensities of land and sky one of those lonely New England farmhouses that make the landscape lonelier
Thats my place said Frome with a sideway jerk of his lame elbow and in the distress and oppression of the scene I did not know what to answer The snow had ceased and a flash of watery sunlight exposed the house on the slope above us in all its plaintive ugliness The black wraith of a deciduous creeper flapped from the porch and the thin wooden walls under their worn coat of paint seemed to shiver in the wind that had risen with the ceasing of the snow
The house was bigger in my fathers time I had to take down the L a while back Frome continued checking with a twitch of the left rein the bays evident intention of turning in through the brokendown gate
I saw then that the unusually forlorn and stunted look of the house was partly due to the loss of what is known in New England as the L that long deeproofed adjunct usually built at right angles to the main house and connecting it by way of storerooms and toolhouse with the woodshed and cowbarn Whether because of its symbolic sense the image it presents of a life linked with the soil and enclosing in itself the chief sources of warmth and nourishment or whether merely because of the consolatory thought that it enables the dwellers in that harsh climate to get to their mornings work without facing the weather it is certain that the L rather than the house itself seems to be the centre the actual hearthstone of the New England farm Perhaps this connection of ideas which had often occurred to me in my rambles about Starkfield caused me to hear a wistful note in Fromes words and to see in the diminished dwelling the image of his own shrunken body
Were kinder sidetracked here now he added but there was considerable passing before the railroad was carried through to the Flats He roused the lagging bay with another twitch then as if the mere sight of the house had let me too deeply into his confidence for any farther pretence of reserve he went on slowly Ive always set down the worst of mothers trouble to that When she got the rheumatism so bad she couldnt move around she used to sit up there and watch the road by the hour and one year when they was six months mending the Bettsbridge pike after the floods and Harmon Gow had to bring his stage round this way she picked up so that she used to get down to the gate most days to see him But after the trains begun running nobody ever come by here to speak of and mother never could get it through her head what had happened and it preyed on her right along till she died
As we turned into the Corbury road the snow began to fall again cutting off our last glimpse of the house and Fromes silence fell with it letting down between us the old veil of reticence This time the wind did not cease with the return of the snow Instead it sprang up to a gale which now and then from a tattered sky flung pale sweeps of sunlight over a landscape chaotically tossed But the bay was as good as Fromes word and we pushed on to the Junction through the wild white scene
In the afternoon the storm held off and the clearness in the west seemed to my inexperienced eye the pledge of a fair evening I finished my business as quickly as possible and we set out for Starkfield with a good chance of getting there for supper But at sunset the clouds gathered again bringing an earlier night and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer
The small ray of Fromes lantern was soon lost in this smothering medium in which even his sense of direction and the bays homing instinct finally ceased to serve us Two or three times some ghostly landmark sprang up to warn us that we were astray and then was sucked back into the mist and when we finally regained our road the old horse began to show signs of exhaustion I felt myself to blame for having accepted Fromes offer and after a short discussion I persuaded him to let me get out of the sleigh and walk along through the snow at the bays side In this way we struggled on for another mile or two and at last reached a point where Frome peering into what seemed to me formless night said Thats my gate down yonder
The last stretch had been the hardest part of the way The bitter cold and the heavy going had nearly knocked the wind out of me and I could feel the horses side ticking like a clock under my hand
Look here Frome I began theres no earthly use in your going any farther— but he interrupted me Nor you neither Theres been about enough of this for anybody
I understood that he was offering me a nights shelter at the farm and without answering I turned into the gate at his side and followed him to the barn where I helped him to unharness and bed down the tired horse When this was done he unhooked the lantern from the sleigh stepped out again into the night and called to me over his shoulder This way
Far off above us a square of light trembled through the screen of snow Staggering along in Fromes wake I floundered toward it and in the darkness almost fell into one of the deep drifts against the front of the house Frome scrambled up the slippery steps of the porch digging a way through the snow with his heavily booted foot Then he lifted his lantern found the latch and led the way into the house I went after him into a low unlit passage at the back of which a ladderlike staircase rose into obscurity On our right a line of light marked the door of the room which had sent its ray across the night and behind the door I heard a womans voice droning querulously
Frome stamped on the worn oilcloth to shake the snow from his boots and set down his lantern on a kitchen chair which was the only piece of furniture in the hall Then he opened the door
Come in he said and as he spoke the droning voice grew still
It was that night that I found the clue to Ethan Frome and began to put together this vision of his story
I
The village lay under two feet of snow with drifts at the windy corners In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires The moon had set but the night was so transparent that the white housefronts between the elms looked gray against the snow clumps of bushes made black stains on it and the basement windows of the church sent shafts of yellow light far across the endless undulations
Young Ethan Frome walked at a quick pace along the deserted street past the bank and Michael Eadys new brick store and Lawyer Varnums house with the two black Norway spruces at the gate Opposite the Varnum gate where the road fell away toward the Corbury valley the church reared its slim white steeple and narrow peristyle As the young man walked toward it the upper windows drew a black arcade along the side wall of the building but from the lower openings on the side where the ground sloped steeply down to the Corbury road the light shot its long bars illuminating many fresh furrows in the track leading to the basement door and showing under an adjoining shed a line of sleighs with heavily blanketed horses
The night was perfectly still and the air so dry and pure that it gave little sensation of cold The effect produced on Frome was rather of a complete absence of atmosphere as though nothing less tenuous than ether intervened between the white earth under his feet and the metallic dome overhead Its like being in an exhausted receiver he thought Four or five years earlier he had taken a years course at a technological college at Worcester and dabbled in the laboratory with a friendly professor of physics and the images supplied by that experience still cropped up at unexpected moments through the totally different associations of thought in which he had since been living His fathers death and the misfortunes following it had put a premature end to Ethans studies but though they had not gone far enough to be of much practical use they had fed his fancy and made him aware of huge cloudy meanings behind the daily face of things
As he strode along through the snow the sense of such meanings glowed in his brain and mingled with the bodily flush produced by his sharp tramp At the end of the village he paused before the darkened front of the church He stood there a moment breathing quickly and looking up and down the street in which not another figure moved The pitch of the Corbury road below lawyer Varnums spruces was the favourite coastingground of Starkfield and on clear evenings the church corner rang till late with the shouts of the coasters but tonight not a sled darkened the whiteness of the long declivity The hush of midnight lay on the village and all its waking life was gathered behind the church windows from which strains of dancemusic flowed with the broad bands of yellow light
The young man skirting the side of the building went down the slope toward the basement door To keep out of range of the revealing rays from within he made a circuit through the untrodden snow and gradually approached the farther angle of the basement wall Thence still hugging the shadow he edged his way cautiously forward to the nearest window holding back his straight spare body and craning his neck till he got a glimpse of the room
Seen thus from the pure and frosty darkness in which he stood it seemed to be seething in a mist of heat The metal reflectors of the gasjets sent crude waves of light against the whitewashed walls and the iron flanks of the stove at the end of the hall looked as though they were heaving with volcanic fires The floor was thronged with girls and young men Down the side wall facing the window stood a row of kitchen chairs from which the older women had just risen By this time the music had stopped and the musicians—a fiddler and the young lady who played the harmonium on Sundays—were hastily refreshing themselves at one corner of the suppertable which aligned its devastated piedishes and icecream saucers on the platform at the end of the hall The guests were preparing to leave and the tide had already set toward the passage where coats and wraps were hung when a young man with a sprightly foot and a shock of black hair shot into the middle of the floor and clapped his hands The signal took instant effect The musicians hurried to their instruments the dancers—some already halfmuffled for departure—fell into line down each side of the room the older spectators slipped back to their chairs and the lively young man after diving about here and there in the throng drew forth a girl who had already wound a cherrycoloured fascinator about her head and leading her up to the end of the floor whirled her down its length to the bounding tune of a Virginia reel
Fromes heart was beating fast He had been straining for a glimpse of the dark head under the cherrycoloured scarf and it vexed him that another eye should have been quicker than his The leader of the reel who looked as if he had Irish blood in his veins danced well and his partner caught his fire As she passed down the line her light figure swinging from hand to hand in circles of increasing swiftness the scarf flew off her head and stood out behind her shoulders and Frome at each turn caught sight of her laughing panting lips the cloud of dark hair about her forehead and the dark eyes which seemed the only fixed points in a maze of flying lines
The dancers were going faster and faster and the musicians to keep up with them belaboured their instruments like jockeys lashing their mounts on the homestretch yet it seemed to the young man at the window that the reel would never end Now and then he turned his eyes from the girls face to that of her partner which in the exhilaration of the dance had taken on a look of almost impudent ownership Denis Eady was the son of Michael Eady the ambitious Irish grocer whose suppleness and effrontery had given Starkfield its first notion of smart business methods and whose new brick store testified to the success of the attempt His son seemed likely to follow in his steps and was meanwhile applying the same arts to the conquest of the Starkfield maidenhood Hitherto Ethan Frome had been content to think him a mean fellow but now he positively invited a horsewhipping It was strange that the girl did not seem aware of it that she could lift her rapt face to her dancers and drop her hands into his without appearing to feel the offence of his look and touch
Frome was in the habit of walking into Starkfield to fetch home his wifes cousin Mattie Silver on the rare evenings when some chance of amusement drew her to the village It was his wife who had suggested when the girl came to live with them that such opportunities should be put in her way Mattie Silver came from Stamford and when she entered the Fromes household to act as her cousin Zeenas aid it was thought best as she came without pay not to let her feel too sharp a contrast between the life she had left and the isolation of a Starkfield farm But for this—as Frome sardonically reflected—it would hardly have occurred to Zeena to take any thought for the girls amusement
When his wife first proposed that they should give Mattie an occasional evening out he had inwardly demurred at having to do the extra two miles to the village and back after his hard day on the farm but not long afterward he had reached the point of wishing that Starkfield might give all its nights to revelry
Mattie Silver had lived under his roof for a year and from early morning till they met at supper he had frequent chances of seeing her but no moments in her company were comparable to those when her arm in his and her light step flying to keep time with his long stride they walked back through the night to the farm He had taken to the girl from the first day when he had driven over to the Flats to meet her and she had smiled and waved to him from the train crying out You must be Ethan as she jumped down with her bundles while he reflected looking over her slight person She dont look much on housework but she aint a fretter anyhow But it was not only that the coming to his house of a bit of hopeful young life was like the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth The girl was more than the bright serviceable creature he had thought her She had an eye to see and an ear to hear he could show her things and tell her things and taste the bliss of feeling that all he imparted left long reverberations and echoes he could wake at will
It was during their night walks back to the farm that he felt most intensely the sweetness of this communion He had always been more sensitive than the people about him to the appeal of natural beauty His unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility and even in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it He did not even know whether any one else in the world felt as he did or whether he was the sole victim of this mournful privilege Then he learned that one other spirit had trembled with the same touch of wonder that at his side living under his roof and eating his bread was a creature to whom he could say Thats Orion down yonder the big fellow to the right is Aldebaran and the bunch of little ones—like bees swarming—theyre the Pleiades or whom he could hold entranced before a ledge of granite thrusting up through the fern while he unrolled the huge panorama of the ice age and the long dim stretches of succeeding time The fact that admiration for his learning mingled with Matties wonder at what he taught was not the least part of his pleasure And there were other sensations less definable but more exquisite which drew them together with a shock of silent joy the cold red of sunset behind winter hills the flight of cloudflocks over slopes of golden stubble or the intensely blue shadows of hemlocks on sunlit snow When she said to him once It looks just as if it was painted it seemed to Ethan that the art of definition could go no farther and that words had at last been found to utter his secret soul
As he stood in the darkness outside the church these memories came back with the poignancy of vanished things Watching Mattie whirl down the floor from hand to hand he wondered how he could ever have thought that his dull talk interested her To him who was never gay but in her presence her gaiety seemed plain proof of indifference The face she lifted to her dancers was the same which when she saw him always looked like a window that has caught the sunset He even noticed two or three gestures which in his fatuity he had thought she kept for him a way of throwing her head back when she was amused as if to taste her laugh before she let it out and a trick of sinking her lids slowly when anything charmed or moved her
The sight made him unhappy and his unhappiness roused his latent fears His wife had never shown any jealousy of Mattie but of late she had grumbled increasingly over the housework and found oblique ways of attracting attention to the girls inefficiency Zeena had always been what Starkfield called sickly and Frome had to admit that if she were as ailing as she believed she needed the help of a stronger arm than the one which lay so lightly in his during the night walks to the farm Mattie had no natural turn for housekeeping and her training had done nothing to remedy the defect She was quick to learn but forgetful and dreamy and not disposed to take the matter seriously Ethan had an idea that if she were to marry a man she was fond of the dormant instinct would wake and her pies and biscuits become the pride of the county but domesticity in the abstract did not interest her At first she was so awkward that he could not help laughing at her but she laughed with him and that made them better friends He did his best to supplement her unskilled efforts getting up earlier than usual to light the kitchen fire carrying in the wood overnight and neglecting the mill for the farm that he might help her about the house during the day He even crept down on Saturday nights to scrub the kitchen floor after the women had gone to bed and Zeena one day had surprised him at the churn and had turned away silently with one of her queer looks
Of late there had been other signs of her disfavour as intangible but more disquieting One cold winter morning as he dressed in the dark his candle flickering in the draught of the illfitting window he had heard her speak from the bed behind him
The doctor dont want I should be left without anybody to do for me she said in her flat whine
He had supposed her to be asleep and the sound of her voice had startled him though she was given to abrupt explosions of speech after long intervals of secretive silence
He turned and looked at her where she lay indistinctly outlined under the dark calico quilt her highboned face taking a grayish tinge from the whiteness of the pillow
Nobody to do for you he repeated
If you say you cant afford a hired girl when Mattie goes
Frome turned away again and taking up his razor stooped to catch the reflection of his stretched cheek in the blotched lookingglass above the washstand
Why on earth should Mattie go
Well when she gets married I mean his wifes drawl came from behind him
Oh shed never leave us as long as you needed her he returned scraping hard at his chin
I wouldnt ever have it said that I stood in the way of a poor girl like Mattie marrying a smart fellow like Denis Eady Zeena answered in a tone of plaintive selfeffacement
Ethan glaring at his face in the glass threw his head back to draw the razor from ear to chin His hand was steady but the attitude was an excuse for not making an immediate reply
And the doctor dont want I should be left without anybody Zeena continued He wanted I should speak to you about a girl hes heard about that might come—
Ethan laid down the razor and straightened himself with a laugh
Denis Eady If thats all I guess theres no such hurry to look round for a girl
Well Id like to talk to you about it said Zeena obstinately
He was getting into his clothes in fumbling haste All right But I havent got the time now Im late as it is he returned holding his old silver turnipwatch to the candle
Zeena apparently accepting this as final lay watching him in silence while he pulled his suspenders over his shoulders and jerked his arms into his coat but as he went toward the door she said suddenly and incisively I guess youre always late now you shave every morning
That thrust had frightened him more than any vague insinuations about Denis Eady It was a fact that since Mattie Silvers coming he had taken to shaving every day but his wife always seemed to be asleep when he left her side in the winter darkness and he had stupidly assumed that she would not notice any change in his appearance Once or twice in the past he had been faintly disquieted by Zenobias way of letting things happen without seeming to remark them and then weeks afterward in a casual phrase revealing that she had all along taken her notes and drawn her inferences Of late however there had been no room in his thoughts for such vague apprehensions Zeena herself from an oppressive reality had faded into an insubstantial shade All his life was lived in the sight and sound of Mattie Silver and he could no longer conceive of its being otherwise But now as he stood outside the church and saw Mattie spinning down the floor with Denis Eady a throng of disregarded hints and menaces wove their cloud about his brain
II
As the dancers poured out of the hall Frome drawing back behind the projecting stormdoor watched the segregation of the grotesquely muffled groups in which a moving lantern ray now and then lit up a face flushed with food and dancing The villagers being afoot were the first to climb the slope to the main street while the country neighbours packed themselves more slowly into the sleighs under the shed
Aint you riding Mattie a womans voice called back from the throng about the shed and Ethans heart gave a jump From where he stood he could not see the persons coming out of the hall till they had advanced a few steps beyond the wooden sides of the stormdoor but through its cracks he heard a clear voice answer Mercy no Not on such a night
She was there then close to him only a thin board between In another moment she would step forth into the night and his eyes accustomed to the obscurity would discern her as clearly as though she stood in daylight A wave of shyness pulled him back into the dark angle of the wall and he stood there in silence instead of making his presence known to her It had been one of the wonders of their intercourse that from the first she the quicker finer more expressive instead of crushing him by the contrast had given him something of her own ease and freedom but now he felt as heavy and loutish as in his student days when he had tried to jolly the Worcester girls at a picnic
He hung back and she came out alone and paused within a few yards of him She was almost the last to leave the hall and she stood looking uncertainly about her as if wondering why he did not show himself Then a mans figure approached coming so close to her that under their formless wrappings they seemed merged in one dim outline
Gentleman friend gone back on you Say Matt thats tough No I wouldnt be mean enough to tell the other girls I aint as lowdown as that How Frome hated his cheap banter But look a here aint it lucky I got the old mans cutter down there waiting for us
Frome heard the girls voice gaily incredulous What on earths your fathers cutter doin down there
Why waiting for me to take a ride I got the roan colt too I kinder knew Id want to take a ride tonight Eady in his triumph tried to put a sentimental note into his bragging voice
The girl seemed to waver and Frome saw her twirl the end of her scarf irresolutely about her fingers Not for the world would he have made a sign to her though it seemed to him that his life hung on her next gesture
Hold on a minute while I unhitch the colt Denis called to her springing toward the shed
She stood perfectly still looking after him in an attitude of tranquil expectancy torturing to the hidden watcher Frome noticed that she no longer turned her head from side to side as though peering through the night for another figure She let Denis Eady lead out the horse climb into the cutter and fling back the bearskin to make room for her at his side then with a swift motion of flight she turned about and darted up the slope toward the front of the church
Goodbye Hope youll have a lovely ride she called back to him over her shoulder
Denis laughed and gave the horse a cut that brought him quickly abreast of her retreating figure
Come along Get in quick Its as slippery as thunder on this turn he cried leaning over to reach out a hand to her
She laughed back at him Goodnight Im not getting in
By this time they had passed beyond Fromes earshot and he could only follow the shadowy pantomime of their silhouettes as they continued to move along the crest of the slope above him He saw Eady after a moment jump from the cutter and go toward the girl with the reins over one arm The other he tried to slip through hers but she eluded him nimbly and Fromes heart which had swung out over a black void trembled back to safety A moment later he heard the jingle of departing sleigh bells and discerned a figure advancing alone toward the empty expanse of snow before the church
In the black shade of the Varnum spruces he caught up with her and she turned with a quick Oh
Think Id forgotten you Matt he asked with sheepish glee
She answered seriously I thought maybe you couldnt come back for me
Couldnt What on earth could stop me
I knew Zeena wasnt feeling any too good today
Oh shes in bed long ago He paused a question struggling in him Then you meant to walk home all alone
Oh I aint afraid she laughed
They stood together in the gloom of the spruces an empty world glimmering about them wide and grey under the stars He brought his question out
If you thought I hadnt come why didnt you ride back with Denis Eady
Why where were you How did you know I never saw you
Her wonder and his laughter ran together like spring rills in a thaw Ethan had the sense of having done something arch and ingenious To prolong the effect he groped for a dazzling phrase and brought out in a growl of rapture Come along
He slipped an arm through hers as Eady had done and fancied it was faintly pressed against her side but neither of them moved It was so dark under the spruces that he could barely see the shape of her head beside his shoulder He longed to stoop his cheek and rub it against her scarf He would have liked to stand there with her all night in the blackness She moved forward a step or two and then paused again above the dip of the Corbury road Its icy slope scored by innumerable runners looked like a mirror scratched by travellers at an inn
There was a whole lot of them coasting before the moon set she said
Would you like to come in and coast with them some night he asked
Oh would you Ethan It would be lovely
Well come tomorrow if theres a moon
She lingered pressing closer to his side Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum came just as near running into the big elm at the bottom We were all sure they were killed Her shiver ran down his arm Wouldnt it have been too awful Theyre so happy
Oh Ned aint much at steering I guess I can take you down all right he said disdainfully
He was aware that he was talking big like Denis Eady but his reaction of joy had unsteadied him and the inflection with which she had said of the engaged couple Theyre so happy made the words sound as if she had been thinking of herself and him
The elm is dangerous though It ought to be cut down she insisted
Would you be afraid of it with me
I told you I aint the kind to be afraid she tossed back almost indifferently and suddenly she began to walk on with a rapid step
These alterations of mood were the despair and joy of Ethan Frome The motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches The fact that he had no right to show his feelings and thus provoke the expression of hers made him attach a fantastic importance to every change in her look and tone Now he thought she understood him and feared now he was sure she did not and despaired Tonight the pressure of accumulated misgivings sent the scale drooping toward despair and her indifference was the more chilling after the flush of joy into which she had plunged him by dismissing Denis Eady He mounted School House Hill at her side and walked on in silence till they reached the lane leading to the sawmill then the need of some definite assurance grew too strong for him
Youd have found me right off if you hadnt gone back to have that last reel with Denis he brought out awkwardly He could not pronounce the name without a stiffening of the muscles of his throat
Why Ethan how could I tell you were there
I suppose what folks say is true he jerked out at her instead of answering
She stopped short and he felt in the darkness that her face was lifted quickly to his Why what do folks say
Its natural enough you should be leaving us he floundered on following his thought
Is that what they say she mocked back at him then with a sudden drop of her sweet treble You mean that Zeena—aint suited with me any more she faltered
Their arms had slipped apart and they stood motionless each seeking to distinguish the others face
I know I aint anything like as smart as I ought to be she went on while he vainly struggled for expression Theres lots of things a hired girl could do that come awkward to me still—and I havent got much strength in my arms But if shed only tell me Id try You know she hardly ever says anything and sometimes I can see she aint suited and yet I dont know why She turned on him with a sudden flash of indignation Youd ought to tell me Ethan Frome—youd ought to Unless you want me to go too—
Unless he wanted her to go too The cry was balm to his raw wound The iron heavens seemed to melt and rain down sweetness Again he struggled for the allexpressive word and again his arm in hers found only a deep Come along
They walked on in silence through the blackness of the hemlockshaded lane where Ethans sawmill gloomed through the night and out again into the comparative clearness of the fields On the farther side of the hemlock belt the open country rolled away before them grey and lonely under the stars Sometimes their way led them under the shade of an overhanging bank or through the thin obscurity of a clump of leafless trees Here and there a farmhouse stood far back among the fields mute and cold as a gravestone The night was so still that they heard the frozen snow crackle under their feet The crash of a loaded branch falling far off in the woods reverberated like a musketshot and once a fox barked and Mattie shrank closer to Ethan and quickened her steps
At length they sighted the group of larches at Ethans gate and as they drew near it the sense that the walk was over brought back his words
Then you dont want to leave us Matt
He had to stoop his head to catch her stifled whisper Whered I go if I did
The answer sent a pang through him but the tone suffused him with joy He forgot what else he had meant to say and pressed her against him so closely that he seemed to feel her warmth in his veins
You aint crying are you Matt
No of course Im not she quavered
They turned in at the gate and passed under the shaded knoll where enclosed in a low fence the Frome gravestones slanted at crazy angles through the snow Ethan looked at them curiously For years that quiet company had mocked his restlessness his desire for change and freedom We never got away—how should you seemed to be written on every headstone and whenever he went in or out of his gate he thought with a shiver I shall just go on living here till I join them But now all desire for change had vanished and the sight of the little enclosure gave him a warm sense of continuance and stability
I guess well never let you go Matt he whispered as though even the dead lovers once must conspire with him to keep her and brushing by the graves he thought Well always go on living here together and some day shell lie there beside me
He let the vision possess him as they climbed the hill to the house He was never so happy with her as when he abandoned himself to these dreams Halfway up the slope Mattie stumbled against some unseen obstruction and clutched his sleeve to steady herself The wave of warmth that went through him was like the prolongation of his vision For the first time he stole his arm about her and she did not resist They walked on as if they were floating on a summer stream
Zeena always went to bed as soon as she had had her supper and the shutterless windows of the house were dark A dead cucumbervine dangled from the porch like the crape streamer tied to the door for a death and the thought flashed through Ethans brain If it was there for Zeena— Then he had a distinct sight of his wife lying in their bedroom asleep her mouth slightly open her false teeth in a tumbler by the bed
They walked around to the back of the house between the rigid gooseberry bushes It was Zeenas habit when they came back late from the village to leave the key of the kitchen door under the mat Ethan stood before the door his head heavy with dreams his arm still about Mattie Matt— he began not knowing what he meant to say
She slipped out of his hold without speaking and he stooped down and felt for the key
Its not there he said straightening himself with a start
They strained their eyes at each other through the icy darkness Such a thing had never happened before
Maybe shes forgotten it Mattie said in a tremulous whisper but both of them knew that it was not like Zeena to forget
It might have fallen off into the snow Mattie continued after a pause during which they had stood intently listening
It must have been pushed off then he rejoined in the same tone Another wild thought tore through him What if tramps had been there—what if
Again he listened fancying he heard a distant sound in the house then he felt in his pocket for a match and kneeling down passed its light slowly over the rough edges of snow about the doorstep
He was still kneeling when his eyes on a level with the lower panel of the door caught a faint ray beneath it Who could be stirring in that silent house He heard a step on the stairs and again for an instant the thought of tramps tore through him Then the door opened and he saw his wife
Against the dark background of the kitchen she stood up tall and angular one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast while the other held a lamp The light on a level with her chin drew out of the darkness her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of the hand that clutched the quilt and deepened fantastically the hollows and prominences of her highboned face under its ring of crimpingpins To Ethan still in the rosy haze of his hour with Mattie the sight came with the intense precision of the last dream before waking He felt as if he had never before known what his wife looked like
She drew aside without speaking and Mattie and Ethan passed into the kitchen which had the deadly chill of a vault after the dry cold of the night
Guess you forgot about us Zeena Ethan joked stamping the snow from his boots
No I just felt so mean I couldnt sleep
Mattie came forward unwinding her wraps the colour of the cherry scarf in her fresh lips and cheeks Im so sorry Zeena Isnt there anything I can do
No theres nothing Zeena turned away from her You might a shook off that snow outside she said to her husband
She walked out of the kitchen ahead of them and pausing in the hall raised the lamp at armslength as if to light them up the stairs
Ethan paused also affecting to fumble for the peg on which he hung his coat and cap The doors of the two bedrooms faced each other across the narrow upper landing and tonight it was peculiarly repugnant to him that Mattie should see him follow Zeena
I guess I wont come up yet awhile he said turning as if to go back to the kitchen
Zeena stopped short and looked at him For the lands sake—what you going to do down here
Ive got the mill accounts to go over
She continued to stare at him the flame of the unshaded lamp bringing out with microscopic cruelty the fretful lines of her face
At this time o night Youll ketch your death The fires out long ago
Without answering he moved away toward the kitchen As he did so his glance crossed Matties and he fancied that a fugitive warning gleamed through her lashes The next moment they sank to her flushed cheeks and she began to mount the stairs ahead of Zeena
Thats so It is powerful cold down here Ethan assented and with lowered head he went up in his wifes wake and followed her across the threshold of their room
III
There was some hauling to be done at the lower end of the woodlot and Ethan was out early the next day
The winter morning was as clear as crystal The sunrise burned red in a pure sky the shadows on the rim of the woodlot were darkly blue and beyond the white and scintillating fields patches of faroff forest hung like smoke
It was in the early morning stillness when his muscles were swinging to their familiar task and his lungs expanding with long draughts of mountain air that Ethan did his clearest thinking He and Zeena had not exchanged a word after the door of their room had closed on them She had measured out some drops from a medicinebottle on a chair by the bed and after swallowing them and wrapping her head in a piece of yellow flannel had lain down with her face turned away Ethan undressed hurriedly and blew out the light so that he should not see her when he took his place at her side As he lay there he could hear Mattie moving about in her room and her candle sending its small ray across the landing drew a scarcely perceptible line of light under his door He kept his eyes fixed on the light till it vanished Then the room grew perfectly black and not a sound was audible but Zeenas asthmatic breathing Ethan felt confusedly that there were many things he ought to think about but through his tingling veins and tired brain only one sensation throbbed the warmth of Matties shoulder against his Why had he not kissed her when he held her there A few hours earlier he would not have asked himself the question Even a few minutes earlier when they had stood alone outside the house he would not have dared to think of kissing her But since he had seen her lips in the lamplight he felt that they were his
Now in the bright morning air her face was still before him It was part of the suns red and of the pure glitter on the snow How the girl had changed since she had come to Starkfield He remembered what a colourless slip of a thing she had looked the day he had met her at the station And all the first winter how she had shivered with cold when the northerly gales shook the thin clapboards and the snow beat like hail against the loosehung windows
He had been afraid that she would hate the hard life the cold and loneliness but not a sign of discontent escaped her Zeena took the view that Mattie was bound to make the best of Starkfield since she hadnt any other place to go to but this did not strike Ethan as conclusive Zeena at any rate did not apply the principle in her own case
He felt all the more sorry for the girl because misfortune had in a sense indentured her to them Mattie Silver was the daughter of a cousin of Zenobia Fromes who had inflamed his clan with mingled sentiments of envy and admiration by descending from the hills to Connecticut where he had married a Stamford girl and succeeded to her fathers thriving drug business Unhappily Orin Silver a man of farreaching aims had died too soon to prove that the end justifies the means His accounts revealed merely what the means had been and these were such that it was fortunate for his wife and daughter that his books were examined only after his impressive funeral His wife died of the disclosure and Mattie at twenty was left alone to make her way on the fifty dollars obtained from the sale of her piano For this purpose her equipment though varied was inadequate She could trim a hat make molasses candy recite Curfew shall not ring tonight and play The Lost Chord and a potpourri from Carmen When she tried to extend the field of her activities in the direction of stenography and bookkeeping her health broke down and six months on her feet behind the counter of a department store did not tend to restore it Her nearest relations had been induced to place their savings in her fathers hands and though after his death they ungrudgingly acquitted themselves of the Christian duty of returning good for evil by giving his daughter all the advice at their disposal they could hardly be expected to supplement it by material aid But when Zenobias doctor recommended her looking about for some one to help her with the housework the clan instantly saw the chance of exacting a compensation from Mattie Zenobia though doubtful of the girls efficiency was tempted by the freedom to find fault without much risk of losing her and so Mattie came to Starkfield
Zenobias faultfinding was of the silent kind but not the less penetrating for that During the first months Ethan alternately burned with the desire to see Mattie defy her and trembled with fear of the result Then the situation grew less strained The pure air and the long summer hours in the open gave back life and elasticity to Mattie and Zeena with more leisure to devote to her complex ailments grew less watchful of the girls omissions so that Ethan struggling on under the burden of his barren farm and failing sawmill could at least imagine that peace reigned in his house
There was really even now no tangible evidence to the contrary but since the previous night a vague dread had hung on his skyline It was formed of Zeenas obstinate silence of Matties sudden look of warning of the memory of just such fleeting imperceptible signs as those which told him on certain stainless mornings that before night there would be rain
His dread was so strong that manlike he sought to postpone certainty The hauling was not over till midday and as the lumber was to be delivered to Andrew Hale the Starkfield builder it was really easier for Ethan to send Jotham Powell the hired man back to the farm on foot and drive the load down to the village himself He had scrambled up on the logs and was sitting astride of them close over his shaggy grays when coming between him and their streaming necks he had a vision of the warning look that Mattie had given him the night before
If theres going to be any trouble I want to be there was his vague reflection as he threw to Jotham the unexpected order to unhitch the team and lead them back to the barn
It was a slow trudge home through the heavy fields and when the two men entered the kitchen Mattie was lifting the coffee from the stove and Zeena was already at the table Her husband stopped short at sight of her Instead of her usual calico wrapper and knitted shawl she wore her best dress of brown merino and above her thin strands of hair which still preserved the tight undulations of the crimpingpins rose a hard perpendicular bonnet as to which Ethans clearest notion was that he had to pay five dollars for it at the Bettsbridge Emporium On the floor beside her stood his old valise and a bandbox wrapped in newspapers
Why where are you going Zeena he exclaimed
Ive got my shooting pains so bad that Im going over to Bettsbridge to spend the night with Aunt Martha Pierce and see that new doctor she answered in a matteroffact tone as if she had said she was going into the storeroom to take a look at the preserves or up to the attic to go over the blankets
In spite of her sedentary habits such abrupt decisions were not without precedent in Zeenas history Twice or thrice before she had suddenly packed Ethans valise and started off to Bettsbridge or even Springfield to seek the advice of some new doctor and her husband had grown to dread these expeditions because of their cost Zeena always came back laden with expensive remedies and her last visit to Springfield had been commemorated by her paying twenty dollars for an electric battery of which she had never been able to learn the use But for the moment his sense of relief was so great as to preclude all other feelings He had now no doubt that Zeena had spoken the truth in saying the night before that she had sat up because she felt too mean to sleep her abrupt resolve to seek medical advice showed that as usual she was wholly absorbed in her health
As if expecting a protest she continued plaintively If youre too busy with the hauling I presume you can let Jotham Powell drive me over with the sorrel in time to ketch the train at the Flats
Her husband hardly heard what she was saying During the winter months there was no stage between Starkfield and Bettsbridge and the trains which stopped at Corbury Flats were slow and infrequent A rapid calculation showed Ethan that Zeena could not be back at the farm before the following evening
If Id supposed youd a made any objection to Jotham Powells driving me over— she began again as though his silence had implied refusal On the brink of departure she was always seized with a flux of words All I know is she continued I cant go on the way I am much longer The pains are clear away down to my ankles now or Id a walked in to Starkfield on my own feet soonern put you out and asked Michael Eady to let me ride over on his wagon to the Flats when he sends to meet the train that brings his groceries Id a had two hours to wait in the station but Id sooner a done it even with this cold than to have you say—
Of course Jothamll drive you over Ethan roused himself to answer He became suddenly conscious that he was looking at Mattie while Zeena talked to him and with an effort he turned his eyes to his wife She sat opposite the window and the pale light reflected from the banks of snow made her face look more than usually drawn and bloodless sharpened the three parallel creases between ear and cheek and drew querulous lines from her thin nose to the corners of her mouth Though she was but seven years her husbands senior and he was only twentyeight she was already an old woman
Ethan tried to say something befitting the occasion but there was only one thought in his mind the fact that for the first time since Mattie had come to live with them Zeena was to be away for a night He wondered if the girl were thinking of it too
He knew that Zeena must be wondering why he did not offer to drive her to the Flats and let Jotham Powell take the lumber to Starkfield and at first he could not think of a pretext for not doing so then he said Id take you over myself only Ive got to collect the cash for the lumber
As soon as the words were spoken he regretted them not only because they were untrue—there being no prospect of his receiving cash payment from Hale—but also because he knew from experience the imprudence of letting Zeena think he was in funds on the eve of one of her therapeutic excursions At the moment however his one desire was to avoid the long drive with her behind the ancient sorrel who never went out of a walk
Zeena made no reply she did not seem to hear what he had said She had already pushed her plate aside and was measuring out a draught from a large bottle at her elbow
It aint done me a speck of good but I guess I might as well use it up she remarked adding as she pushed the empty bottle toward Mattie If you can get the taste out itll do for pickles
IV
As soon as his wife had driven off Ethan took his coat and cap from the peg Mattie was washing up the dishes humming one of the dance tunes of the night before He said So long Matt and she answered gaily So long Ethan and that was all
It was warm and bright in the kitchen The sun slanted through the south window on the girls moving figure on the cat dozing in a chair and on the geraniums brought in from the doorway where Ethan had planted them in the summer to make a garden for Mattie He would have liked to linger on watching her tidy up and then settle down to her sewing but he wanted still more to get the hauling done and be back at the farm before night
All the way down to the village he continued to think of his return to Mattie The kitchen was a poor place not spruce and shining as his mother had kept it in his boyhood but it was surprising what a homelike look the mere fact of Zeenas absence gave it And he pictured what it would be like that evening when he and Mattie were there after supper For the first time they would be alone together indoors and they would sit there one on each side of the stove like a married couple he in his stocking feet and smoking his pipe she laughing and talking in that funny way she had which was always as new to him as if he had never heard her before
The sweetness of the picture and the relief of knowing that his fears of trouble with Zeena were unfounded sent up his spirits with a rush and he who was usually so silent whistled and sang aloud as he drove through the snowy fields There was in him a slumbering spark of sociability which the long Starkfield winters had not yet extinguished By nature grave and inarticulate he admired recklessness and gaiety in others and was warmed to the marrow by friendly human intercourse At Worcester though he had the name of keeping to himself and not being much of a hand at a good time he had secretly gloried in being clapped on the back and hailed as Old Ethe or Old Stiff and the cessation of such familiarities had increased the chill of his return to Starkfield
There the silence had deepened about him year by year Left alone after his fathers accident to carry the burden of farm and mill he had had no time for convivial loiterings in the village and when his mother fell ill the loneliness of the house grew more oppressive than that of the fields His mother had been a talker in her day but after her trouble the sound of her voice was seldom heard though she had not lost the power of speech Sometimes in the long winter evenings when in desperation her son asked her why she didnt say something she would lift a finger and answer Because Im listening and on stormy nights when the loud wind was about the house she would complain if he spoke to her Theyre talking so out there that I cant hear you
It was only when she drew toward her last illness and his cousin Zenobia Pierce came over from the next valley to help him nurse her that human speech was heard again in the house After the mortal silence of his long imprisonment Zeenas volubility was music in his ears He felt that he might have gone like his mother if the sound of a new voice had not come to steady him Zeena seemed to understand his case at a glance She laughed at him for not knowing the simplest sickbed duties and told him to go right along out and leave her to see to things The mere fact of obeying her orders of feeling free to go about his business again and talk with other men restored his shaken balance and magnified his sense of what he owed her Her efficiency shamed and dazzled him She seemed to possess by instinct all the household wisdom that his long apprenticeship had not instilled in him When the end came it was she who had to tell him to hitch up and go for the undertaker and she thought it funny that he had not settled beforehand who was to have his mothers clothes and the sewingmachine After the funeral when he saw her preparing to go away he was seized with an unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm and before he knew what he was doing he had asked her to stay there with him He had often thought since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring instead of winter
When they married it was agreed that as soon as he could straighten out the difficulties resulting from Mrs Fromes long illness they would sell the farm and sawmill and try their luck in a large town Ethans love of nature did not take the form of a taste for agriculture He had always wanted to be an engineer and to live in towns where there were lectures and big libraries and fellows doing things A slight engineering job in Florida put in his way during his period of study at Worcester increased his faith in his ability as well as his eagerness to see the world and he felt sure that with a smart wife like Zeena it would not be long before he had made himself a place in it
Zeenas native village was slightly larger and nearer to the railway than Starkfield and she had let her husband see from the first that life on an isolated farm was not what she had expected when she married But purchasers were slow in coming and while he waited for them Ethan learned the impossibility of transplanting her She chose to look down on Starkfield but she could not have lived in a place which looked down on her Even Bettsbridge or Shadds Falls would not have been sufficiently aware of her and in the greater cities which attracted Ethan she would have suffered a complete loss of identity And within a year of their marriage she developed the sickliness which had since made her notable even in a community rich in pathological instances When she came to take care of his mother she had seemed to Ethan like the very genius of health but he soon saw that her skill as a nurse had been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms
Then she too fell silent Perhaps it was the inevitable effect of life on the farm or perhaps as she sometimes said it was because Ethan never listened The charge was not wholly unfounded When she spoke it was only to complain and to complain of things not in his power to remedy and to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed the habit of not answering her and finally of thinking of other things while she talked Of late however since he had reasons for observing her more closely her silence had begun to trouble him He recalled his mothers growing taciturnity and wondered if Zeena were also turning queer Women did he knew Zeena who had at her fingers ends the pathological chart of the whole region had cited many cases of the kind while she was nursing his mother and he himself knew of certain lonely farmhouses in the neighbourhood where stricken creatures pined and of others where sudden tragedy had come of their presence At times looking at Zeenas shut face he felt the chill of such forebodings At other times her silence seemed deliberately assumed to conceal farreaching intentions mysterious conclusions drawn from suspicions and resentments impossible to guess That supposition was even more disturbing than the other and it was the one which had come to him the night before when he had seen her standing in the kitchen door
Now her departure for Bettsbridge had once more eased his mind and all his thoughts were on the prospect of his evening with Mattie Only one thing weighed on him and that was his having told Zeena that he was to receive cash for the lumber He foresaw so clearly the consequences of this imprudence that with considerable reluctance he decided to ask Andrew Hale for a small advance on his load
When Ethan drove into Hales yard the builder was just getting out of his sleigh
Hello Ethe he said This comes handy
Andrew Hale was a ruddy man with a big gray moustache and a stubbly doublechin unconstrained by a collar but his scrupulously clean shirt was always fastened by a small diamond stud This display of opulence was misleading for though he did a fairly good business it was known that his easygoing habits and the demands of his large family frequently kept him what Starkfield called behind He was an old friend of Ethans family and his house one of the few to which Zeena occasionally went drawn there by the fact that Mrs Hale in her youth had done more doctoring than any other woman in Starkfield and was still a recognised authority on symptoms and treatment
Hale went up to the grays and patted their sweating flanks
Well sir he said you keep them two as if they was pets
Ethan set about unloading the logs and when he had finished his job he pushed open the glazed door of the shed which the builder used as his office Hale sat with his feet up on the stove his back propped against a battered desk strewn with papers the place like the man was warm genial and untidy
Sit right down and thaw out he greeted Ethan
The latter did not know how to begin but at length he managed to bring out his request for an advance of fifty dollars The blood rushed to his thin skin under the sting of Hales astonishment It was the builders custom to pay at the end of three months and there was no precedent between the two men for a cash settlement
Ethan felt that if he had pleaded an urgent need Hale might have made shift to pay him but pride and an instinctive prudence kept him from resorting to this argument After his fathers death it had taken time to get his head above water and he did not want Andrew Hale or any one else in Starkfield to think he was going under again Besides he hated lying if he wanted the money he wanted it and it was nobodys business to ask why He therefore made his demand with the awkwardness of a proud man who will not admit to himself that he is stooping and he was not much surprised at Hales refusal
The builder refused genially as he did everything else he treated the matter as something in the nature of a practical joke and wanted to know if Ethan meditated buying a grand piano or adding a cupolo to his house offering in the latter case to give his services free of cost
Ethans arts were soon exhausted and after an embarrassed pause he wished Hale good day and opened the door of the office As he passed out the builder suddenly called after him See here—you aint in a tight place are you
Not a bit Ethans pride retorted before his reason had time to intervene
Well thats good Because I am a shade Fact is I was going to ask you to give me a little extra time on that payment Business is pretty slack to begin with and then Im fixing up a little house for Ned and Ruth when theyre married Im glad to do it for em but it costs His look appealed to Ethan for sympathy The young people like things nice You know how it is yourself its not so long ago since you fixed up your own place for Zeena
Ethan left the grays in Hales stable and went about some other business in the village As he walked away the builders last phrase lingered in his ears and he reflected grimly that his seven years with Zeena seemed to Starkfield not so long
The afternoon was drawing to an end and here and there a lighted pane spangled the cold gray dusk and made the snow look whiter The bitter weather had driven every one indoors and Ethan had the long rural street to himself Suddenly he heard the brisk play of sleighbells and a cutter passed him drawn by a freegoing horse Ethan recognised Michael Eadys roan colt and young Denis Eady in a handsome new fur cap leaned forward and waved a greeting Hello Ethe he shouted and spun on
The cutter was going in the direction of the Frome farm and Ethans heart contracted as he listened to the dwindling bells What more likely than that Denis Eady had heard of Zeenas departure for Bettsbridge and was profiting by the opportunity to spend an hour with Mattie Ethan was ashamed of the storm of jealousy in his breast It seemed unworthy of the girl that his thoughts of her should be so violent
He walked on to the church corner and entered the shade of the Varnum spruces where he had stood with her the night before As he passed into their gloom he saw an indistinct outline just ahead of him At his approach it melted for an instant into two separate shapes and then conjoined again and he heard a kiss and a halflaughing Oh provoked by the discovery of his presence Again the outline hastily disunited and the Varnum gate slammed on one half while the other hurried on ahead of him Ethan smiled at the discomfiture he had caused What did it matter to Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum if they were caught kissing each other Everybody in Starkfield knew they were engaged It pleased Ethan to have surprised a pair of lovers on the spot where he and Mattie had stood with such a thirst for each other in their hearts but he felt a pang at the thought that these two need not hide their happiness
He fetched the grays from Hales stable and started on his long climb back to the farm The cold was less sharp than earlier in the day and a thick fleecy sky threatened snow for the morrow Here and there a star pricked through showing behind it a deep well of blue In an hour or two the moon would push over the ridge behind the farm burn a goldedged rent in the clouds and then be swallowed by them A mournful peace hung on the fields as though they felt the relaxing grasp of the cold and stretched themselves in their long winter sleep
Ethans ears were alert for the jingle of sleighbells but not a sound broke the silence of the lonely road As he drew near the farm he saw through the thin screen of larches at the gate a light twinkling in the house above him Shes up in her room he said to himself fixing herself up for supper and he remembered Zeenas sarcastic stare when Mattie on the evening of her arrival had come down to supper with smoothed hair and a ribbon at her neck
He passed by the graves on the knoll and turned his head to glance at one of the older headstones which had interested him deeply as a boy because it bore his name
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ETHAN FROME AND ENDURANCE HIS WIFE WHO DWELLED TOGETHER IN PEACE FOR FIFTY YEARS
He used to think that fifty years sounded like a long time to live together but now it seemed to him that they might pass in a flash Then with a sudden dart of irony he wondered if when their turn came the same epitaph would be written over him and Zeena
He opened the barndoor and craned his head into the obscurity halffearing to discover Denis Eadys roan colt in the stall beside the sorrel But the old horse was there alone mumbling his crib with toothless jaws and Ethan whistled cheerfully while he bedded down the grays and shook an extra measure of oats into their mangers His was not a tuneful throat—but harsh melodies burst from it as he locked the barn and sprang up the hill to the house He reached the kitchenporch and turned the doorhandle but the door did not yield to his touch
Startled at finding it locked he rattled the handle violently then he reflected that Mattie was alone and that it was natural she should barricade herself at nightfall He stood in the darkness expecting to hear her step It did not come and after vainly straining his ears he called out in a voice that shook with joy Hello Matt
Silence answered but in a minute or two he caught a sound on the stairs and saw a line of light about the doorframe as he had seen it the night before So strange was the precision with which the incidents of the previous evening were repeating themselves that he half expected when he heard the key turn to see his wife before him on the threshold but the door opened and Mattie faced him
She stood just as Zeena had stood a lifted lamp in her hand against the black background of the kitchen She held the light at the same level and it drew out with the same distinctness her slim young throat and the brown wrist no bigger than a childs Then striking upward it threw a lustrous fleck on her lips edged her eyes with velvet shade and laid a milky whiteness above the black curve of her brows
She wore her usual dress of darkish stuff and there was no bow at her neck but through her hair she had run a streak of crimson ribbon This tribute to the unusual transformed and glorified her She seemed to Ethan taller fuller more womanly in shape and motion She stood aside smiling silently while he entered and then moved away from him with something soft and flowing in her gait She set the lamp on the table and he saw that it was carefully laid for supper with fresh doughnuts stewed blueberries and his favourite pickles in a dish of gay red glass A bright fire glowed in the stove and the cat lay stretched before it watching the table with a drowsy eye
Ethan was suffocated with the sense of wellbeing He went out into the passage to hang up his coat and pull off his wet boots When he came back Mattie had set the teapot on the table and the cat was rubbing itself persuasively against her ankles
Why Puss I nearly tripped over you she cried the laughter sparkling through her lashes
Again Ethan felt a sudden twinge of jealousy Could it be his coming that gave her such a kindled face
Well Matt any visitors he threw off stooping down carelessly to examine the fastening of the stove
She nodded and laughed Yes one and he felt a blackness settling on his brows
Who was that he questioned raising himself up to slant a glance at her beneath his scowl
Her eyes danced with malice Why Jotham Powell He came in after he got back and asked for a drop of coffee before he went down home
The blackness lifted and light flooded Ethans brain That all Well I hope you made out to let him have it And after a pause he felt it right to add I suppose he got Zeena over to the Flats all right
Oh yes in plenty of time
The name threw a chill between them and they stood a moment looking sideways at each other before Mattie said with a shy laugh I guess its about time for supper
They drew their seats up to the table and the cat unbidden jumped between them into Zeenas empty chair Oh Puss said Mattie and they laughed again
Ethan a moment earlier had felt himself on the brink of eloquence but the mention of Zeena had paralysed him Mattie seemed to feel the contagion of his embarrassment and sat with downcast lids sipping her tea while he feigned an insatiable appetite for doughnuts and sweet pickles At last after casting about for an effective opening he took a long gulp of tea cleared his throat and said Looks as if thered be more snow
She feigned great interest Is that so Do you suppose itll interfere with Zeenas getting back She flushed red as the question escaped her and hastily set down the cup she was lifting
Ethan reached over for another helping of pickles You never can tell this time of year it drifts so bad on the Flats The name had benumbed him again and once more he felt as if Zeena were in the room between them
Oh Puss youre too greedy Mattie cried
The cat unnoticed had crept up on muffled paws from Zeenas seat to the table and was stealthily elongating its body in the direction of the milkjug which stood between Ethan and Mattie The two leaned forward at the same moment and their hands met on the handle of the jug Matties hand was underneath and Ethan kept his clasped on it a moment longer than was necessary The cat profiting by this unusual demonstration tried to effect an unnoticed retreat and in doing so backed into the pickledish which fell to the floor with a crash
Mattie in an instant had sprung from her chair and was down on her knees by the fragments
Oh Ethan Ethan—its all to pieces What will Zeena say
But this time his courage was up Well shell have to say it to the cat any way he rejoined with a laugh kneeling down at Matties side to scrape up the swimming pickles
She lifted stricken eyes to him Yes but you see she never meant it should be used not even when there was company and I had to get up on the stepladder to reach it down from the top shelf of the chinacloset where she keeps it with all her best things and of course shell want to know why I did it—
The case was so serious that it called forth all of Ethans latent resolution
She neednt know anything about it if you keep quiet Ill get another just like it tomorrow Where did it come from Ill go to Shadds Falls for it if I have to
Oh youll never get another even there It was a wedding present—dont you remember It came all the way from Philadelphia from Zeenas aunt that married the minister Thats why she wouldnt ever use it Oh Ethan Ethan what in the world shall I do
She began to cry and he felt as if every one of her tears were pouring over him like burning lead Dont Matt dont—oh dont he implored her
She struggled to her feet and he rose and followed her helplessly while she spread out the pieces of glass on the kitchen dresser It seemed to him as if the shattered fragments of their evening lay there
Here give them to me he said in a voice of sudden authority
She drew aside instinctively obeying his tone Oh Ethan what are you going to do
Without replying he gathered the pieces of glass into his broad palm and walked out of the kitchen to the passage There he lit a candleend opened the chinacloset and reaching his long arm up to the highest shelf laid the pieces together with such accuracy of touch that a close inspection convinced him of the impossibility of detecting from below that the dish was broken If he glued it together the next morning months might elapse before his wife noticed what had happened and meanwhile he might after all be able to match the dish at Shadds Falls or Bettsbridge Having satisfied himself that there was no risk of immediate discovery he went back to the kitchen with a lighter step and found Mattie disconsolately removing the last scraps of pickle from the floor
Its all right Matt Come back and finish supper he commanded her
Completely reassured she shone on him through tearhung lashes and his soul swelled with pride as he saw how his tone subdued her She did not even ask what he had done Except when he was steering a big log down the mountain to his mill he had never known such a thrilling sense of mastery
V
They finished supper and while Mattie cleared the table Ethan went to look at the cows and then took a last turn about the house The earth lay dark under a muffled sky and the air was so still that now and then he heard a lump of snow come thumping down from a tree far off on the edge of the woodlot
When he returned to the kitchen Mattie had pushed up his chair to the stove and seated herself near the lamp with a bit of sewing The scene was just as he had dreamed of it that morning He sat down drew his pipe from his pocket and stretched his feet to the glow His hard days work in the keen air made him feel at once lazy and light of mood and he had a confused sense of being in another world where all was warmth and harmony and time could bring no change The only drawback to his complete wellbeing was the fact that he could not see Mattie from where he sat but he was too indolent to move and after a moment he said Come over here and sit by the stove
Zeenas empty rockingchair stood facing him Mattie rose obediently and seated herself in it As her young brown head detached itself against the patchwork cushion that habitually framed his wifes gaunt countenance Ethan had a momentary shock It was almost as if the other face the face of the superseded woman had obliterated that of the intruder After a moment Mattie seemed to be affected by the same sense of constraint She changed her position leaning forward to bend her head above her work so that he saw only the foreshortened tip of her nose and the streak of red in her hair then she slipped to her feet saying I cant see to sew and went back to her chair by the lamp
Ethan made a pretext of getting up to replenish the stove and when he returned to his seat he pushed it sideways that he might get a view of her profile and of the lamplight falling on her hands The cat who had been a puzzled observer of these unusual movements jumped up into Zeenas chair rolled itself into a ball and lay watching them with narrowed eyes
Deep quiet sank on the room The clock ticked above the dresser a piece of charred wood fell now and then in the stove and the faint sharp scent of the geraniums mingled with the odour of Ethans smoke which began to throw a blue haze about the lamp and to hang its greyish cobwebs in the shadowy corners of the room
All constraint had vanished between the two and they began to talk easily and simply They spoke of everyday things of the prospect of snow of the next church sociable of the loves and quarrels of Starkfield The commonplace nature of what they said produced in Ethan an illusion of longestablished intimacy which no outburst of emotion could have given and he set his imagination adrift on the fiction that they had always spent their evenings thus and would always go on doing so
This is the night we were to have gone coasting Matt he said at length with the rich sense as he spoke that they could go on any other night they chose since they had all time before them
She smiled back at him I guess you forgot
No I didnt forget but its as dark as Egypt outdoors We might go tomorrow if theres a moon
She laughed with pleasure her head tilted back the lamplight sparkling on her lips and teeth That would be lovely Ethan
He kept his eyes fixed on her marvelling at the way her face changed with each turn of their talk like a wheatfield under a summer breeze It was intoxicating to find such magic in his clumsy words and he longed to try new ways of using it
Would you be scared to go down the Corbury road with me on a night like this he asked
Her cheeks burned redder I aint any more scared than you are
Well Id be scared then I wouldnt do it Thats an ugly corner down by the big elm If a fellow didnt keep his eyes open hed go plumb into it He luxuriated in the sense of protection and authority which his words conveyed To prolong and intensify the feeling he added I guess were well enough here
She let her lids sink slowly in the way he loved Yes were well enough here she sighed
Her tone was so sweet that he took the pipe from his mouth and drew his chair up to the table Leaning forward he touched the farther end of the strip of brown stuff that she was hemming Say Matt he began with a smile what do you think I saw under the Varnum spruces coming along home just now I saw a friend of yours getting kissed
The words had been on his tongue all the evening but now that he had spoken them they struck him as inexpressibly vulgar and out of place
Mattie blushed to the roots of her hair and pulled her needle rapidly twice or thrice through her work insensibly drawing the end of it away from him I suppose it was Ruth and Ned she said in a low voice as though he had suddenly touched on something grave
Ethan had imagined that his allusion might open the way to the accepted pleasantries and these perhaps in turn to a harmless caress if only a mere touch on her hand But now he felt as if her blush had set a flaming guard about her He supposed it was his natural awkwardness that made him feel so He knew that most young men made nothing at all of giving a pretty girl a kiss and he remembered that the night before when he had put his arm about Mattie she had not resisted But that had been outofdoors under the open irresponsible night Now in the warm lamplit room with all its ancient implications of conformity and order she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable
To ease his constraint he said I suppose theyll be setting a date before long
Yes I shouldnt wonder if they got married some time along in the summer She pronounced the word married as if her voice caressed it It seemed a rustling covert leading to enchanted glades A pang shot through Ethan and he said twisting away from her in his chair Itll be your turn next I wouldnt wonder
She laughed a little uncertainly Why do you keep on saying that
He echoed her laugh I guess I do it to get used to the idea
He drew up to the table again and she sewed on in silence with dropped lashes while he sat in fascinated contemplation of the way in which her hands went up and down above the strip of stuff just as he had seen a pair of birds make short perpendicular flights over a nest they were building At length without turning her head or lifting her lids she said in a low tone Its not because you think Zeenas got anything against me is it
His former dread started up fullarmed at the suggestion Why what do you mean he stammered
She raised distressed eyes to his her work dropping on the table between them I dont know I thought last night she seemed to have
Id like to know what he growled
Nobody can tell with Zeena It was the first time they had ever spoken so openly of her attitude toward Mattie and the repetition of the name seemed to carry it to the farther corners of the room and send it back to them in long repercussions of sound Mattie waited as if to give the echo time to drop and then went on She hasnt said anything to you
He shook his head No not a word
She tossed the hair back from her forehead with a laugh I guess Im just nervous then Im not going to think about it any more
Oh no—dont lets think about it Matt
The sudden heat of his tone made her colour mount again not with a rush but gradually delicately like the reflection of a thought stealing slowly across her heart She sat silent her hands clasped on her work and it seemed to him that a warm current flowed toward him along the strip of stuff that still lay unrolled between them Cautiously he slid his hand palmdownward along the table till his fingertips touched the end of the stuff A faint vibration of her lashes seemed to show that she was aware of his gesture and that it had sent a countercurrent back to her and she let her hands lie motionless on the other end of the strip
As they sat thus he heard a sound behind him and turned his head The cat had jumped from Zeenas chair to dart at a mouse in the wainscot and as a result of the sudden movement the empty chair had set up a spectral rocking
Shell be rocking in it herself this time tomorrow Ethan thought Ive been in a dream and this is the only evening well ever have together The return to reality was as painful as the return to consciousness after taking an anaesthetic His body and brain ached with indescribable weariness and he could think of nothing to say or to do that should arrest the mad flight of the moments
His alteration of mood seemed to have communicated itself to Mattie She looked up at him languidly as though her lids were weighted with sleep and it cost her an effort to raise them Her glance fell on his hand which now completely covered the end of her work and grasped it as if it were a part of herself He saw a scarcely perceptible tremor cross her face and without knowing what he did he stooped his head and kissed the bit of stuff in his hold As his lips rested on it he felt it glide slowly from beneath them and saw that Mattie had risen and was silently rolling up her work She fastened it with a pin and then finding her thimble and scissors put them with the roll of stuff into the box covered with fancy paper which he had once brought to her from Bettsbridge
He stood up also looking vaguely about the room The clock above the dresser struck eleven
Is the fire all right she asked in a low voice
He opened the door of the stove and poked aimlessly at the embers When he raised himself again he saw that she was dragging toward the stove the old soapbox lined with carpet in which the cat made its bed Then she recrossed the floor and lifted two of the geranium pots in her arms moving them away from the cold window He followed her and brought the other geraniums the hyacinth bulbs in a cracked custard bowl and the German ivy trained over an old croquet hoop
When these nightly duties were performed there was nothing left to do but to bring in the tin candlestick from the passage light the candle and blow out the lamp Ethan put the candlestick in Matties hand and she went out of the kitchen ahead of him the light that she carried before her making her dark hair look like a drift of mist on the moon
Good night Matt he said as she put her foot on the first step of the stairs
She turned and looked at him a moment Good night Ethan she answered and went up
When the door of her room had closed on her he remembered that he had not even touched her hand
VI
The next morning at breakfast Jotham Powell was between them and Ethan tried to hide his joy under an air of exaggerated indifference lounging back in his chair to throw scraps to the cat growling at the weather and not so much as offering to help Mattie when she rose to clear away the dishes
He did not know why he was so irrationally happy for nothing was changed in his life or hers He had not even touched the tip of her fingers or looked her full in the eyes But their evening together had given him a vision of what life at her side might be and he was glad now that he had done nothing to trouble the sweetness of the picture He had a fancy that she knew what had restrained him
There was a last load of lumber to be hauled to the village and Jotham Powell—who did not work regularly for Ethan in winter—had come round to help with the job But a wet snow melting to sleet had fallen in the night and turned the roads to glass There was more wet in the air and it seemed likely to both men that the weather would milden toward afternoon and make the going safer Ethan therefore proposed to his assistant that they should load the sledge at the woodlot as they had done on the previous morning and put off the teaming to Starkfield till later in the day This plan had the advantage of enabling him to send Jotham to the Flats after dinner to meet Zenobia while he himself took the lumber down to the village
He told Jotham to go out and harness up the greys and for a moment he and Mattie had the kitchen to themselves She had plunged the breakfast dishes into a tin dishpan and was bending above it with her slim arms bared to the elbow the steam from the hot water beading her forehead and tightening her rough hair into little brown rings like the tendrils on the travellers joy
Ethan stood looking at her his heart in his throat He wanted to say We shall never be alone again like this Instead he reached down his tobaccopouch from a shelf of the dresser put it into his pocket and said I guess I can make out to be home for dinner
She answered All right Ethan and he heard her singing over the dishes as he went
As soon as the sledge was loaded he meant to send Jotham back to the farm and hurry on foot into the village to buy the glue for the pickledish With ordinary luck he should have had time to carry out this plan but everything went wrong from the start On the way over to the woodlot one of the greys slipped on a glare of ice and cut his knee and when they got him up again Jotham had to go back to the barn for a strip of rag to bind the cut Then when the loading finally began a sleety rain was coming down once more and the tree trunks were so slippery that it took twice as long as usual to lift them and get them in place on the sledge It was what Jotham called a sour morning for work and the horses shivering and stamping under their wet blankets seemed to like it as little as the men It was long past the dinnerhour when the job was done and Ethan had to give up going to the village because he wanted to lead the injured horse home and wash the cut himself
He thought that by starting out again with the lumber as soon as he had finished his dinner he might get back to the farm with the glue before Jotham and the old sorrel had had time to fetch Zenobia from the Flats but he knew the chance was a slight one It turned on the state of the roads and on the possible lateness of the Bettsbridge train He remembered afterward with a grim flash of selfderision what importance he had attached to the weighing of these probabilities
As soon as dinner was over he set out again for the woodlot not daring to linger till Jotham Powell left The hired man was still drying his wet feet at the stove and Ethan could only give Mattie a quick look as he said beneath his breath Ill be back early
He fancied that she nodded her comprehension and with that scant solace he had to trudge off through the rain
He had driven his load halfway to the village when Jotham Powell overtook him urging the reluctant sorrel toward the Flats Ill have to hurry up to do it Ethan mused as the sleigh dropped down ahead of him over the dip of the schoolhouse hill He worked like ten at the unloading and when it was over hastened on to Michael Eadys for the glue Eady and his assistant were both down street and young Denis who seldom deigned to take their place was lounging by the stove with a knot of the golden youth of Starkfield They hailed Ethan with ironic compliment and offers of conviviality but no one knew where to find the glue Ethan consumed with the longing for a last moment alone with Mattie hung about impatiently while Denis made an ineffectual search in the obscurer corners of the store
Looks as if we were all sold out But if youll wait around till the old man comes along maybe he can put his hand on it
Im obliged to you but Ill try if I can get it down at Mrs Homans Ethan answered burning to be gone
Deniss commercial instinct compelled him to aver on oath that what Eadys store could not produce would never be found at the widow Homans but Ethan heedless of this boast had already climbed to the sledge and was driving on to the rival establishment Here after considerable search and sympathetic questions as to what he wanted it for and whether ordinary flour paste wouldnt do as well if she couldnt find it the widow Homan finally hunted down her solitary bottle of glue to its hidingplace in a medley of coughlozenges and corsetlaces
I hope Zeena aint broken anything she sets store by she called after him as he turned the greys toward home
The fitful bursts of sleet had changed into a steady rain and the horses had heavy work even without a load behind them Once or twice hearing sleighbells Ethan turned his head fancying that Zeena and Jotham might overtake him but the old sorrel was not in sight and he set his face against the rain and urged on his ponderous pair
The barn was empty when the horses turned into it and after giving them the most perfunctory ministrations they had ever received from him he strode up to the house and pushed open the kitchen door
Mattie was there alone as he had pictured her She was bending over a pan on the stove but at the sound of his step she turned with a start and sprang to him
See here Matt Ive got some stuff to mend the dish with Let me get at it quick he cried waving the bottle in one hand while he put her lightly aside but she did not seem to hear him
Oh Ethan—Zeenas come she said in a whisper clutching his sleeve
They stood and stared at each other pale as culprits
But the sorrels not in the barn Ethan stammered
Jotham Powell brought some goods over from the Flats for his wife and he drove right on home with them she explained
He gazed blankly about the kitchen which looked cold and squalid in the rainy winter twilight
How is she he asked dropping his voice to Matties whisper
She looked away from him uncertainly I dont know She went right up to her room
She didnt say anything
No
Ethan let out his doubts in a low whistle and thrust the bottle back into his pocket Dont fret Ill come down and mend it in the night he said He pulled on his wet coat again and went back to the barn to feed the greys
While he was there Jotham Powell drove up with the sleigh and when the horses had been attended to Ethan said to him You might as well come back up for a bite He was not sorry to assure himself of Jothams neutralising presence at the supper table for Zeena was always nervous after a journey But the hired man though seldom loth to accept a meal not included in his wages opened his stiff jaws to answer slowly Im obliged to you but I guess Ill go along back
Ethan looked at him in surprise Better come up and dry off Looks as if thered be something hot for supper
Jothams facial muscles were unmoved by this appeal and his vocabulary being limited he merely repeated I guess Ill go along back
To Ethan there was something vaguely ominous in this stolid rejection of free food and warmth and he wondered what had happened on the drive to nerve Jotham to such stoicism Perhaps Zeena had failed to see the new doctor or had not liked his counsels Ethan knew that in such cases the first person she met was likely to be held responsible for her grievance
When he reentered the kitchen the lamp lit up the same scene of shining comfort as on the previous evening The table had been as carefully laid a clear fire glowed in the stove the cat dozed in its warmth and Mattie came forward carrying a plate of doughnuts
She and Ethan looked at each other in silence then she said as she had said the night before I guess its about time for supper
VII
Ethan went out into the passage to hang up his wet garments He listened for Zeenas step and not hearing it called her name up the stairs She did not answer and after a moments hesitation he went up and opened her door The room was almost dark but in the obscurity he saw her sitting by the window bolt upright and knew by the rigidity of the outline projected against the pane that she had not taken off her travelling dress
Well Zeena he ventured from the threshold
She did not move and he continued Suppers about ready Aint you coming
She replied I dont feel as if I could touch a morsel
It was the consecrated formula and he expected it to be followed as usual by her rising and going down to supper But she remained seated and he could think of nothing more felicitous than I presume youre tired after the long ride
Turning her head at this she answered solemnly Im a great deal sicker than you think
Her words fell on his ear with a strange shock of wonder He had often heard her pronounce them before—what if at last they were true
He advanced a step or two into the dim room I hope thats not so Zeena he said
She continued to gaze at him through the twilight with a mien of wan authority as of one consciously singled out for a great fate Ive got complications she said
Ethan knew the word for one of exceptional import Almost everybody in the neighbourhood had troubles frankly localized and specified but only the chosen had complications To have them was in itself a distinction though it was also in most cases a deathwarrant People struggled on for years with troubles but they almost always succumbed to complications
Ethans heart was jerking to and fro between two extremities of feeling but for the moment compassion prevailed His wife looked so hard and lonely sitting there in the darkness with such thoughts
Is that what the new doctor told you he asked instinctively lowering his voice
Yes He says any regular doctor would want me to have an operation
Ethan was aware that in regard to the important question of surgical intervention the female opinion of the neighbourhood was divided some glorying in the prestige conferred by operations while others shunned them as indelicate Ethan from motives of economy had always been glad that Zeena was of the latter faction
In the agitation caused by the gravity of her announcement he sought a consolatory short cut What do you know about this doctor anyway Nobody ever told you that before
He saw his blunder before she could take it up she wanted sympathy not consolation
I didnt need to have anybody tell me I was losing ground every day Everybody but you could see it And everybody in Bettsbridge knows about Dr Buck He has his office in Worcester and comes over once a fortnight to Shadds Falls and Bettsbridge for consultations Eliza Spears was wasting away with kidney trouble before she went to him and now shes up and around and singing in the choir
Well Im glad of that You must do just what he tells you Ethan answered sympathetically
She was still looking at him I mean to she said He was struck by a new note in her voice It was neither whining nor reproachful but drily resolute
What does he want you should do he asked with a mounting vision of fresh expenses
He wants I should have a hired girl He says I oughtnt to have to do a single thing around the house
A hired girl Ethan stood transfixed
Yes And Aunt Martha found me one right off Everybody said I was lucky to get a girl to come away out here and I agreed to give her a dollar extry to make sure Shell be over tomorrow afternoon
Wrath and dismay contended in Ethan He had foreseen an immediate demand for money but not a permanent drain on his scant resources He no longer believed what Zeena had told him of the supposed seriousness of her state he saw in her expedition to Bettsbridge only a plot hatched between herself and her Pierce relations to foist on him the cost of a servant and for the moment wrath predominated
If you meant to engage a girl you ought to have told me before you started he said
How could I tell you before I started How did I know what Dr Buck would say
Oh Dr Buck— Ethans incredulity escaped in a short laugh Did Dr Buck tell you how I was to pay her wages
Her voice rose furiously with his No he didnt For Id a been ashamed to tell him that you grudged me the money to get back my health when I lost it nursing your own mother
You lost your health nursing mother
Yes and my folks all told me at the time you couldnt do no less than marry me after—
Zeena
Through the obscurity which hid their faces their thoughts seemed to dart at each other like serpents shooting venom Ethan was seized with horror of the scene and shame at his own share in it It was as senseless and savage as a physical fight between two enemies in the darkness
He turned to the shelf above the chimney groped for matches and lit the one candle in the room At first its weak flame made no impression on the shadows then Zeenas face stood grimly out against the uncurtained pane which had turned from grey to black
It was the first scene of open anger between the couple in their sad seven years together and Ethan felt as if he had lost an irretrievable advantage in descending to the level of recrimination But the practical problem was there and had to be dealt with
You know I havent got the money to pay for a girl Zeena Youll have to send her back I cant do it
The doctor says itll be my death if I go on slaving the way Ive had to He doesnt understand how Ive stood it as long as I have
Slaving— He checked himself again You shant lift a hand if he says so Ill do everything round the house myself—
She broke in Youre neglecting the farm enough already and this being true he found no answer and left her time to add ironically Better send me over to the almshouse and done with it I guess theres been Fromes there afore now
The taunt burned into him but he let it pass I havent got the money That settles it
There was a moments pause in the struggle as though the combatants were testing their weapons Then Zeena said in a level voice I thought you were to get fifty dollars from Andrew Hale for that lumber
Andrew Hale never pays under three months He had hardly spoken when he remembered the excuse he had made for not accompanying his wife to the station the day before and the blood rose to his frowning brows
Why you told me yesterday youd fixed it up with him to pay cash down You said that was why you couldnt drive me over to the Flats
Ethan had no suppleness in deceiving He had never before been convicted of a lie and all the resources of evasion failed him I guess that was a misunderstanding he stammered
You aint got the money
No
And you aint going to get it
No
Well I couldnt know that when I engaged the girl could I
No He paused to control his voice But you know it now Im sorry but it cant be helped Youre a poor mans wife Zeena but Ill do the best I can for you
For a while she sat motionless as if reflecting her arms stretched along the arms of her chair her eyes fixed on vacancy Oh I guess well make out she said mildly
The change in her tone reassured him Of course we will Theres a whole lot more I can do for you and Mattie—
Zeena while he spoke seemed to be following out some elaborate mental calculation She emerged from it to say Therell be Matties board less any how—
Ethan supposing the discussion to be over had turned to go down to supper He stopped short not grasping what he heard Matties board less— he began
Zeena laughed It was on odd unfamiliar sound—he did not remember ever having heard her laugh before You didnt suppose I was going to keep two girls did you No wonder you were scared at the expense
He still had but a confused sense of what she was saying From the beginning of the discussion he had instinctively avoided the mention of Matties name fearing he hardly knew what criticism complaints or vague allusions to the imminent probability of her marrying But the thought of a definite rupture had never come to him and even now could not lodge itself in his mind
I dont know what you mean he said Mattie Silvers not a hired girl Shes your relation
Shes a pauper thats hung onto us all after her fatherd done his best to ruin us Ive kep her here a whole year its somebody elses turn now
As the shrill words shot out Ethan heard a tap on the door which he had drawn shut when he turned back from the threshold
Ethan—Zeena Matties voice sounded gaily from the landing do you know what time it is Suppers been ready half an hour
Inside the room there was a moments silence then Zeena called out from her seat Im not coming down to supper
Oh Im sorry Arent you well Shant I bring you up a bite of something
Ethan roused himself with an effort and opened the door Go along down Matt Zeenas just a little tired Im coming
He heard her All right and her quick step on the stairs then he shut the door and turned back into the room His wifes attitude was unchanged her face inexorable and he was seized with the despairing sense of his helplessness
You aint going to do it Zeena
Do what she emitted between flattened lips
Send Mattie away—like this
I never bargained to take her for life
He continued with rising vehemence You cant put her out of the house like a thief—a poor girl without friends or money Shes done her best for you and shes got no place to go to You may forget shes your kin but everybody elsell remember it If you do a thing like that what do you suppose folksll say of you
Zeena waited a moment as if giving him time to feel the full force of the contrast between his own excitement and her composure Then she replied in the same smooth voice I know well enough what they say of my having kep her here as long as I have
Ethans hand dropped from the doorknob which he had held clenched since he had drawn the door shut on Mattie His wifes retort was like a knifecut across the sinews and he felt suddenly weak and powerless He had meant to humble himself to argue that Matties keep didnt cost much after all that he could make out to buy a stove and fix up a place in the attic for the hired girl—but Zeenas words revealed the peril of such pleadings
You mean to tell her shes got to go—at once he faltered out in terror of letting his wife complete her sentence
As if trying to make him see reason she replied impartially The girl will be over from Bettsbridge tomorrow and I presume shes got to have somewheres to sleep
Ethan looked at her with loathing She was no longer the listless creature who had lived at his side in a state of sullen selfabsorption but a mysterious alien presence an evil energy secreted from the long years of silent brooding It was the sense of his helplessness that sharpened his antipathy There had never been anything in her that one could appeal to but as long as he could ignore and command he had remained indifferent Now she had mastered him and he abhorred her Mattie was her relation not his there were no means by which he could compel her to keep the girl under her roof All the long misery of his baffled past of his youth of failure hardship and vain effort rose up in his soul in bitterness and seemed to take shape before him in the woman who at every turn had barred his way She had taken everything else from him and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for all the others For a moment such a flame of hate rose in him that it ran down his arm and clenched his fist against her He took a wild step forward and then stopped
Youre—youre not coming down he said in a bewildered voice
No I guess Ill lay down on the bed a little while she answered mildly and he turned and walked out of the room
In the kitchen Mattie was sitting by the stove the cat curled up on her knees She sprang to her feet as Ethan entered and carried the covered dish of meatpie to the table
I hope Zeena isnt sick she asked
No
She shone at him across the table Well sit right down then You must be starving She uncovered the pie and pushed it over to him So they were to have one more evening together her happy eyes seemed to say
He helped himself mechanically and began to eat then disgust took him by the throat and he laid down his fork
Matties tender gaze was on him and she marked the gesture
Why Ethan whats the matter Dont it taste right
Yes—its first—rate Only I— He pushed his plate away rose from his chair and walked around the table to her side She started up with frightened eyes
Ethan theres something wrong I knew there was
She seemed to melt against him in her terror and he caught her in his arms held her fast there felt her lashes beat his cheek like netted butterflies
What is it—what is it she stammered but he had found her lips at last and was drinking unconsciousness of everything but the joy they gave him
She lingered a moment caught in the same strong current then she slipped from him and drew back a step or two pale and troubled Her look smote him with compunction and he cried out as if he saw her drowning in a dream You cant go Matt Ill never let you
Go—go she stammered Must I go
The words went on sounding between them as though a torch of warning flew from hand to hand through a black landscape
Ethan was overcome with shame at his lack of selfcontrol in flinging the news at her so brutally His head reeled and he had to support himself against the table All the while he felt as if he were still kissing her and yet dying of thirst for her lips
Ethan what has happened Is Zeena mad with me
Her cry steadied him though it deepened his wrath and pity No no he assured her its not that But this new doctor has scared her about herself You know she believes all they say the first time she sees them And this ones told her she wont get well unless she lays up and dont do a thing about the house—not for months—
He paused his eyes wandering from her miserably She stood silent a moment drooping before him like a broken branch She was so small and weaklooking that it wrung his heart but suddenly she lifted her head and looked straight at him And she wants somebody handier in my place Is that it
Thats what she says tonight
If she says it tonight shell say it tomorrow
Both bowed to the inexorable truth they knew that Zeena never changed her mind and that in her case a resolve once taken was equivalent to an act performed
There was a long silence between them then Mattie said in a low voice Dont be too sorry Ethan
Oh God—oh God he groaned The glow of passion he had felt for her had melted to an aching tenderness He saw her quick lids beating back the tears and longed to take her in his arms and soothe her
Youre letting your supper get cold she admonished him with a pale gleam of gaiety
Oh Matt—Matt—wherell you go to
Her lids sank and a tremor crossed her face He saw that for the first time the thought of the future came to her distinctly I might get something to do over at Stamford she faltered as if knowing that he knew she had no hope
He dropped back into his seat and hid his face in his hands Despair seized him at the thought of her setting out alone to renew the weary quest for work In the only place where she was known she was surrounded by indifference or animosity and what chance had she inexperienced and untrained among the million breadseekers of the cities There came back to him miserable tales he had heard at Worcester and the faces of girls whose lives had begun as hopefully as Matties It was not possible to think of such things without a revolt of his whole being He sprang up suddenly
You cant go Matt I wont let you Shes always had her way but I mean to have mine now—
Mattie lifted her hand with a quick gesture and he heard his wifes step behind him
Zeena came into the room with her dragging downattheheel step and quietly took her accustomed seat between them
I felt a little mite better and Dr Buck says I ought to eat all I can to keep my strength up even if I aint got any appetite she said in her flat whine reaching across Mattie for the teapot Her good dress had been replaced by the black calico and brown knitted shawl which formed her daily wear and with them she had put on her usual face and manner She poured out her tea added a great deal of milk to it helped herself largely to pie and pickles and made the familiar gesture of adjusting her false teeth before she began to eat The cat rubbed itself ingratiatingly against her and she said Good Pussy stooped to stroke it and gave it a scrap of meat from her plate
Ethan sat speechless not pretending to eat but Mattie nibbled valiantly at her food and asked Zeena one or two questions about her visit to Bettsbridge Zeena answered in her everyday tone and warming to the theme regaled them with several vivid descriptions of intestinal disturbances among her friends and relatives She looked straight at Mattie as she spoke a faint smile deepening the vertical lines between her nose and chin
When supper was over she rose from her seat and pressed her hand to the flat surface over the region of her heart That pie of yours always sets a mite heavy Matt she said not illnaturedly She seldom abbreviated the girls name and when she did so it was always a sign of affability
Ive a good mind to go and hunt up those stomach powders I got last year over in Springfield she continued I aint tried them for quite a while and maybe theyll help the heartburn
Mattie lifted her eyes Cant I get them for you Zeena she ventured
No Theyre in a place you dont know about Zeena answered darkly with one of her secret looks
She went out of the kitchen and Mattie rising began to clear the dishes from the table As she passed Ethans chair their eyes met and clung together desolately The warm still kitchen looked as peaceful as the night before The cat had sprung to Zeenas rockingchair and the heat of the fire was beginning to draw out the faint sharp scent of the geraniums Ethan dragged himself wearily to his feet
Ill go out and take a look around he said going toward the passage to get his lantern
As he reached the door he met Zeena coming back into the room her lips twitching with anger a flush of excitement on her sallow face The shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging at her downtrodden heels and in her hands she carried the fragments of the red glass pickledish
Id like to know who done this she said looking sternly from Ethan to Mattie
There was no answer and she continued in a trembling voice I went to get those powders Id put away in fathers old spectaclecase top of the chinacloset where I keep the things I set store by sos folks shant meddle with them— Her voice broke and two small tears hung on her lashless lids and ran slowly down her cheeks It takes the stepladder to get at the top shelf and I put Aunt Philura Maples pickledish up there o purpose when we was married and its never been down since cept for the spring cleaning and then I always lifted it with my own hands sos t shouldnt get broke She laid the fragments reverently on the table I want to know who done this she quavered
At the challenge Ethan turned back into the room and faced her I can tell you then The cat done it
The cat
Thats what I said
She looked at him hard and then turned her eyes to Mattie who was carrying the dishpan to the table
Id like to know how the cat got into my chinacloset she said
Chasin mice I guess Ethan rejoined There was a mouse round the kitchen all last evening
Zeena continued to look from one to the other then she emitted her small strange laugh I knew the cat was a smart cat she said in a high voice but I didnt know he was smart enough to pick up the pieces of my pickledish and lay em edge to edge on the very shelf he knocked em off of
Mattie suddenly drew her arms out of the steaming water It wasnt Ethans fault Zeena The cat did break the dish but I got it down from the chinacloset and Im the one to blame for its getting broken
Zeena stood beside the ruin of her treasure stiffening into a stony image of resentment You got down my pickledishwhat for
A bright flush flew to Matties cheeks I wanted to make the suppertable pretty she said
You wanted to make the suppertable pretty and you waited till my back was turned and took the thing I set most store by of anything Ive got and wouldnt never use it not even when the minister come to dinner or Aunt Martha Pierce come over from Bettsbridge— Zeena paused with a gasp as if terrified by her own evocation of the sacrilege Youre a bad girl Mattie Silver and I always known it Its the way your father begun and I was warned of it when I took you and I tried to keep my things where you couldnt get at em—and now youve took from me the one I cared for most of all— She broke off in a short spasm of sobs that passed and left her more than ever like a shape of stone
If Id a listened to folks youd a gone before now and this wouldnt a happened she said and gathering up the bits of broken glass she went out of the room as if she carried a dead body
VIII
When Ethan was called back to the farm by his fathers illness his mother gave him for his own use a small room behind the untenanted best parlour Here he had nailed up shelves for his books built himself a boxsofa out of boards and a mattress laid out his papers on a kitchentable hung on the rough plaster wall an engraving of Abraham Lincoln and a calendar with Thoughts from the Poets and tried with these meagre properties to produce some likeness to the study of a minister who had been kind to him and lent him books when he was at Worcester He still took refuge there in summer but when Mattie came to live at the farm he had to give her his stove and consequently the room was uninhabitable for several months of the year
To this retreat he descended as soon as the house was quiet and Zeenas steady breathing from the bed had assured him that there was to be no sequel to the scene in the kitchen After Zeenas departure he and Mattie had stood speechless neither seeking to approach the other Then the girl had returned to her task of clearing up the kitchen for the night and he had taken his lantern and gone on his usual round outside the house The kitchen was empty when he came back to it but his tobaccopouch and pipe had been laid on the table and under them was a scrap of paper torn from the back of a seedsmans catalogue on which three words were written Dont trouble Ethan
Going into his cold dark study he placed the lantern on the table and stooping to its light read the message again and again It was the first time that Mattie had ever written to him and the possession of the paper gave him a strange new sense of her nearness yet it deepened his anguish by reminding him that henceforth they would have no other way of communicating with each other For the life of her smile the warmth of her voice only cold paper and dead words
Confused motions of rebellion stormed in him He was too young too strong too full of the sap of living to submit so easily to the destruction of his hopes Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman Other possibilities had been in him possibilities sacrificed one by one to Zeenas narrowmindedness and ignorance And what good had come of it She was a hundred times bitterer and more discontented than when he had married her the one pleasure left her was to inflict pain on him All the healthy instincts of selfdefence rose up in him against such waste
He bundled himself into his old coonskin coat and lay down on the boxsofa to think Under his cheek he felt a hard object with strange protuberances It was a cushion which Zeena had made for him when they were engaged—the only piece of needlework he had ever seen her do He flung it across the floor and propped his head against the wall
He knew a case of a man over the mountain—a young fellow of about his own age—who had escaped from just such a life of misery by going West with the girl he cared for His wife had divorced him and he had married the girl and prospered Ethan had seen the couple the summer before at Shadds Falls where they had come to visit relatives They had a little girl with fair curls who wore a gold locket and was dressed like a princess The deserted wife had not done badly either Her husband had given her the farm and she had managed to sell it and with that and the alimony she had started a lunchroom at Bettsbridge and bloomed into activity and importance Ethan was fired by the thought Why should he not leave with Mattie the next day instead of letting her go alone He would hide his valise under the seat of the sleigh and Zeena would suspect nothing till she went upstairs for her afternoon nap and found a letter on the bed
His impulses were still near the surface and he sprang up relit the lantern and sat down at the table He rummaged in the drawer for a sheet of paper found one and began to write
Zeena Ive done all I could for you and I dont see as its been any use I dont blame you nor I dont blame myself Maybe both of us will do better separate Im going to try my luck West and you can sell the farm and mill and keep the money—
His pen paused on the word which brought home to him the relentless conditions of his lot If he gave the farm and mill to Zeena what would be left him to start his own life with Once in the West he was sure of picking up work—he would not have feared to try his chance alone But with Mattie depending on him the case was different And what of Zeenas fate Farm and mill were mortgaged to the limit of their value and even if she found a purchaser—in itself an unlikely chance—it was doubtful if she could clear a thousand dollars on the sale Meanwhile how could she keep the farm going It was only by incessant labour and personal supervision that Ethan drew a meagre living from his land and his wife even if she were in better health than she imagined could never carry such a burden alone
Well she could go back to her people then and see what they would do for her It was the fate she was forcing on Mattie—why not let her try it herself By the time she had discovered his whereabouts and brought suit for divorce he would probably—wherever he was—be earning enough to pay her a sufficient alimony And the alternative was to let Mattie go forth alone with far less hope of ultimate provision
He had scattered the contents of the tabledrawer in his search for a sheet of paper and as he took up his pen his eye fell on an old copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle The advertising sheet was folded uppermost and he read the seductive words Trips to the West Reduced Rates
He drew the lantern nearer and eagerly scanned the fares then the paper fell from his hand and he pushed aside his unfinished letter A moment ago he had wondered what he and Mattie were to live on when they reached the West now he saw that he had not even the money to take her there Borrowing was out of the question six months before he had given his only security to raise funds for necessary repairs to the mill and he knew that without security no one at Starkfield would lend him ten dollars The inexorable facts closed in on him like prisonwarders handcuffing a convict There was no way out—none He was a prisoner for life and now his one ray of light was to be extinguished
He crept back heavily to the sofa stretching himself out with limbs so leaden that he felt as if they would never move again Tears rose in his throat and slowly burned their way to his lids
As he lay there the windowpane that faced him growing gradually lighter inlaid upon the darkness a square of moonsuffused sky A crooked treebranch crossed it a branch of the appletree under which on summer evenings he had sometimes found Mattie sitting when he came up from the mill Slowly the rim of the rainy vapours caught fire and burnt away and a pure moon swung into the blue Ethan rising on his elbow watched the landscape whiten and shape itself under the sculpture of the moon This was the night on which he was to have taken Mattie coasting and there hung the lamp to light them He looked out at the slopes bathed in lustre the silveredged darkness of the woods the spectral purple of the hills against the sky and it seemed as though all the beauty of the night had been poured out to mock his wretchedness
He fell asleep and when he woke the chill of the winter dawn was in the room He felt cold and stiff and hungry and ashamed of being hungry He rubbed his eyes and went to the window A red sun stood over the grey rim of the fields behind trees that looked black and brittle He said to himself This is Matts last day and tried to think what the place would be without her
As he stood there he heard a step behind him and she entered
Oh Ethan—were you here all night
She looked so small and pinched in her poor dress with the red scarf wound about her and the cold light turning her paleness sallow that Ethan stood before her without speaking
You must be frozen she went on fixing lustreless eyes on him
He drew a step nearer How did you know I was here
Because I heard you go down stairs again after I went to bed and I listened all night and you didnt come up
All his tenderness rushed to his lips He looked at her and said Ill come right along and make up the kitchen fire
They went back to the kitchen and he fetched the coal and kindlings and cleared out the stove for her while she brought in the milk and the cold remains of the meatpie When warmth began to radiate from the stove and the first ray of sunlight lay on the kitchen floor Ethans dark thoughts melted in the mellower air The sight of Mattie going about her work as he had seen her on so many mornings made it seem impossible that she should ever cease to be a part of the scene He said to himself that he had doubtless exaggerated the significance of Zeenas threats and that she too with the return of daylight would come to a saner mood
He went up to Mattie as she bent above the stove and laid his hand on her arm I dont want you should trouble either he said looking down into her eyes with a smile
She flushed up warmly and whispered back No Ethan I aint going to trouble
I guess thingsll straighten out he added
There was no answer but a quick throb of her lids and he went on She aint said anything this morning
No I havent seen her yet
Dont you take any notice when you do
With this injunction he left her and went out to the cowbarn He saw Jotham Powell walking up the hill through the morning mist and the familiar sight added to his growing conviction of security
As the two men were clearing out the stalls Jotham rested on his pitchfork to say Danl Byrnes goin over to the Flats today noon an he cd take Matties trunk along and make it easier ridin when I take her over in the sleigh
Ethan looked at him blankly and he continued Mis Frome said the new girld be at the Flats at five and I was to take Mattie then sos t she could ketch the six oclock train for Stamford
Ethan felt the blood drumming in his temples He had to wait a moment before he could find voice to say Oh it aint so sure about Matties going—
That so said Jotham indifferently and they went on with their work
When they returned to the kitchen the two women were already at breakfast Zeena had an air of unusual alertness and activity She drank two cups of coffee and fed the cat with the scraps left in the piedish then she rose from her seat and walking over to the window snipped two or three yellow leaves from the geraniums Aunt Marthas aint got a faded leaf on em but they pine away when they aint cared for she said reflectively Then she turned to Jotham and asked What timed you say Danl Byrned be along
The hired man threw a hesitating glance at Ethan
Round about noon he said
Zeena turned to Mattie That trunk of yours is too heavy for the sleigh and Danl Byrnell be round to take it over to the Flats she said
Im much obliged to you Zeena said Mattie
Id like to go over things with you first Zeena continued in an unperturbed voice I know theres a huckabuck towel missing and I cant take out what you done with that matchsafe t used to stand behind the stuffed owl in the parlour
She went out followed by Mattie and when the men were alone Jotham said to his employer I guess I better let Danl come round then
Ethan finished his usual morning tasks about the house and barn then he said to Jotham Im going down to Starkfield Tell them not to wait dinner
The passion of rebellion had broken out in him again That which had seemed incredible in the sober light of day had really come to pass and he was to assist as a helpless spectator at Matties banishment His manhood was humbled by the part he was compelled to play and by the thought of what Mattie must think of him Confused impulses struggled in him as he strode along to the village He had made up his mind to do something but he did not know what it would be
The early mist had vanished and the fields lay like a silver shield under the sun It was one of the days when the glitter of winter shines through a pale haze of spring Every yard of the road was alive with Matties presence and there was hardly a branch against the sky or a tangle of brambles on the bank in which some bright shred of memory was not caught Once in the stillness the call of a bird in a mountain ash was so like her laughter that his heart tightened and then grew large and all these things made him see that something must be done at once
Suddenly it occurred to him that Andrew Hale who was a kindhearted man might be induced to reconsider his refusal and advance a small sum on the lumber if he were told that Zeenas illhealth made it necessary to hire a servant Hale after all knew enough of Ethans situation to make it possible for the latter to renew his appeal without too much loss of pride and moreover how much did pride count in the ebullition of passions in his breast
The more he considered his plan the more hopeful it seemed If he could get Mrs Hales ear he felt certain of success and with fifty dollars in his pocket nothing could keep him from Mattie
His first object was to reach Starkfield before Hale had started for his work he knew the carpenter had a job down the Corbury road and was likely to leave his house early Ethans long strides grew more rapid with the accelerated beat of his thoughts and as he reached the foot of School House Hill he caught sight of Hales sleigh in the distance He hurried forward to meet it but as it drew nearer he saw that it was driven by the carpenters youngest boy and that the figure at his side looking like a large upright cocoon in spectacles was that of Mrs Hale Ethan signed to them to stop and Mrs Hale leaned forward her pink wrinkles twinkling with benevolence
Mr Hale Why yes youll find him down home now He aint going to his work this forenoon He woke up with a touch o lumbago and I just made him put on one of old Dr Kidders plasters and set right up into the fire
Beaming maternally on Ethan she bent over to add I ony just heard from Mr Hale bout Zeenas going over to Bettsbridge to see that new doctor Im real sorry shes feeling so bad again I hope he thinks he can do something for her I dont know anybody round heres had more sickness than Zeena I always tell Mr Hale I dont know what shed a done if she hadnt a had you to look after her and I used to say the same thing bout your mother Youve had an awful mean time Ethan Frome
She gave him a last nod of sympathy while her son chirped to the horse and Ethan as she drove off stood in the middle of the road and stared after the retreating sleigh
It was a long time since any one had spoken to him as kindly as Mrs Hale Most people were either indifferent to his troubles or disposed to think it natural that a young fellow of his age should have carried without repining the burden of three crippled lives But Mrs Hale had said Youve had an awful mean time Ethan Frome and he felt less alone with his misery If the Hales were sorry for him they would surely respond to his appeal
He started down the road toward their house but at the end of a few yards he pulled up sharply the blood in his face For the first time in the light of the words he had just heard he saw what he was about to do He was planning to take advantage of the Hales sympathy to obtain money from them on false pretences That was a plain statement of the cloudy purpose which had driven him in headlong to Starkfield
With the sudden perception of the point to which his madness had carried him the madness fell and he saw his life before him as it was He was a poor man the husband of a sickly woman whom his desertion would leave alone and destitute and even if he had had the heart to desert her he could have done so only by deceiving two kindly people who had pitied him
He turned and walked slowly back to the farm
IX
At the kitchen door Daniel Byrne sat in his sleigh behind a bigboned grey who pawed the snow and swung his long head restlessly from side to side
Ethan went into the kitchen and found his wife by the stove Her head was wrapped in her shawl and she was reading a book called Kidney Troubles and Their Cure on which he had had to pay extra postage only a few days before
Zeena did not move or look up when he entered and after a moment he asked Wheres Mattie
Without lifting her eyes from the page she replied I presume shes getting down her trunk
The blood rushed to his face Getting down her trunk—alone
Jotham Powells down in the woodlot and Danl Byrne says he darsnt leave that horse she returned
Her husband without stopping to hear the end of the phrase had left the kitchen and sprung up the stairs The door of Matties room was shut and he wavered a moment on the landing Matt he said in a low voice but there was no answer and he put his hand on the doorknob
He had never been in her room except once in the early summer when he had gone there to plaster up a leak in the eaves but he remembered exactly how everything had looked the redandwhite quilt on her narrow bed the pretty pincushion on the chest of drawers and over it the enlarged photograph of her mother in an oxydized frame with a bunch of dyed grasses at the back Now these and all other tokens of her presence had vanished and the room looked as bare and comfortless as when Zeena had shown her into it on the day of her arrival In the middle of the floor stood her trunk and on the trunk she sat in her Sunday dress her back turned to the door and her face in her hands She had not heard Ethans call because she was sobbing and she did not hear his step till he stood close behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders
Matt—oh dont—oh Matt
She started up lifting her wet face to his Ethan—I thought I wasnt ever going to see you again
He took her in his arms pressing her close and with a trembling hand smoothed away the hair from her forehead
Not see me again What do you mean
She sobbed out Jotham said you told him we wasnt to wait dinner for you and I thought—
You thought I meant to cut it he finished for her grimly
She clung to him without answering and he laid his lips on her hair which was soft yet springy like certain mosses on warm slopes and had the faint woody fragrance of fresh sawdust in the sun
Through the door they heard Zeenas voice calling out from below Danl Byrne says you better hurry up if you want him to take that trunk
They drew apart with stricken faces Words of resistance rushed to Ethans lips and died there Mattie found her handkerchief and dried her eyes then—bending down she took hold of a handle of the trunk
Ethan put her aside You let go Matt he ordered her
She answered It takes two to coax it round the corner and submitting to this argument he grasped the other handle and together they manoeuvred the heavy trunk out to the landing
Now let go he repeated then he shouldered the trunk and carried it down the stairs and across the passage to the kitchen Zeena who had gone back to her seat by the stove did not lift her head from her book as he passed Mattie followed him out of the door and helped him to lift the trunk into the back of the sleigh When it was in place they stood side by side on the doorstep watching Daniel Byrne plunge off behind his fidgety horse
It seemed to Ethan that his heart was bound with cords which an unseen hand was tightening with every tick of the clock Twice he opened his lips to speak to Mattie and found no breath At length as she turned to reenter the house he laid a detaining hand on her
Im going to drive you over Matt he whispered
She murmured back I think Zeena wants I should go with Jotham
Im going to drive you over he repeated and she went into the kitchen without answering
At dinner Ethan could not eat If he lifted his eyes they rested on Zeenas pinched face and the corners of her straight lips seemed to quiver away into a smile She ate well declaring that the mild weather made her feel better and pressed a second helping of beans on Jotham Powell whose wants she generally ignored
Mattie when the meal was over went about her usual task of clearing the table and washing up the dishes Zeena after feeding the cat had returned to her rockingchair by the stove and Jotham Powell who always lingered last reluctantly pushed back his chair and moved toward the door
On the threshold he turned back to say to Ethan What timell I come round for Mattie
Ethan was standing near the window mechanically filling his pipe while he watched Mattie move to and fro He answered You neednt come round Im going to drive her over myself
He saw the rise of the colour in Matties averted cheek and the quick lifting of Zeenas head
I want you should stay here this afternoon Ethan his wife said Jotham can drive Mattie over
Mattie flung an imploring glance at him but he repeated curtly Im going to drive her over myself
Zeena continued in the same even tone I wanted you should stay and fix up that stove in Matties room afore the girl gets here It aint been drawing right for nigh on a month now
Ethans voice rose indignantly If it was good enough for Mattie I guess its good enough for a hired girl
That girl thats coming told me she was used to a house where they had a furnace Zeena persisted with the same monotonous mildness
Shed better ha stayed there then he flung back at her and turning to Mattie he added in a hard voice You be ready by three Matt Ive got business at Corbury
Jotham Powell had started for the barn and Ethan strode down after him aflame with anger The pulses in his temples throbbed and a fog was in his eyes He went about his task without knowing what force directed him or whose hands and feet were fulfilling its orders It was not till he led out the sorrel and backed him between the shafts of the sleigh that he once more became conscious of what he was doing As he passed the bridle over the horses head and wound the traces around the shafts he remembered the day when he had made the same preparations in order to drive over and meet his wifes cousin at the Flats It was little more than a year ago on just such a soft afternoon with a feel of spring in the air The sorrel turning the same big ringed eye on him nuzzled the palm of his hand in the same way and one by one all the days between rose up and stood before him
He flung the bearskin into the sleigh climbed to the seat and drove up to the house When he entered the kitchen it was empty but Matties bag and shawl lay ready by the door He went to the foot of the stairs and listened No sound reached him from above but presently he thought he heard some one moving about in his deserted study and pushing open the door he saw Mattie in her hat and jacket standing with her back to him near the table
She started at his approach and turning quickly said Is it time
What are you doing here Matt he asked her
She looked at him timidly I was just taking a look round—thats all she answered with a wavering smile
They went back into the kitchen without speaking and Ethan picked up her bag and shawl
Wheres Zeena he asked
She went upstairs right after dinner She said she had those shooting pains again and didnt want to be disturbed
Didnt she say goodbye to you
No That was all she said
Ethan looking slowly about the kitchen said to himself with a shudder that in a few hours he would be returning to it alone Then the sense of unreality overcame him once more and he could not bring himself to believe that Mattie stood there for the last time before him
Come on he said almost gaily opening the door and putting her bag into the sleigh He sprang to his seat and bent over to tuck the rug about her as she slipped into the place at his side Now then go long he said with a shake of the reins that sent the sorrel placidly jogging down the hill
We got lots of time for a good ride Matt he cried seeking her hand beneath the fur and pressing it in his His face tingled and he felt dizzy as if he had stopped in at the Starkfield saloon on a zero day for a drink
At the gate instead of making for Starkfield he turned the sorrel to the right up the Bettsbridge road Mattie sat silent giving no sign of surprise but after a moment she said Are you going round by Shadow Pond
He laughed and answered I knew youd know
She drew closer under the bearskin so that looking sideways around his coatsleeve he could just catch the tip of her nose and a blown brown wave of hair They drove slowly up the road between fields glistening under the pale sun and then bent to the right down a lane edged with spruce and larch Ahead of them a long way off a range of hills stained by mottlings of black forest flowed away in round white curves against the sky The lane passed into a pinewood with boles reddening in the afternoon sun and delicate blue shadows on the snow As they entered it the breeze fell and a warm stillness seemed to drop from the branches with the dropping needles Here the snow was so pure that the tiny tracks of woodanimals had left on it intricate lacelike patterns and the bluish cones caught in its surface stood out like ornaments of bronze
Ethan drove on in silence till they reached a part of the wood where the pines were more widely spaced then he drew up and helped Mattie to get out of the sleigh They passed between the aromatic trunks the snow breaking crisply under their feet till they came to a small sheet of water with steep wooded sides Across its frozen surface from the farther bank a single hill rising against the western sun threw the long conical shadow which gave the lake its name It was a shy secret spot full of the same dumb melancholy that Ethan felt in his heart
He looked up and down the little pebbly beach till his eye lit on a fallen treetrunk half submerged in snow
Theres where we sat at the picnic he reminded her
The entertainment of which he spoke was one of the few that they had taken part in together a church picnic which on a long afternoon of the preceding summer had filled the retired place with merrymaking Mattie had begged him to go with her but he had refused Then toward sunset coming down from the mountain where he had been felling timber he had been caught by some strayed revellers and drawn into the group by the lake where Mattie encircled by facetious youths and bright as a blackberry under her spreading hat was brewing coffee over a gipsy fire He remembered the shyness he had felt at approaching her in his uncouth clothes and then the lighting up of her face and the way she had broken through the group to come to him with a cup in her hand They had sat for a few minutes on the fallen log by the pond and she had missed her gold locket and set the young men searching for it and it was Ethan who had spied it in the moss That was all but all their intercourse had been made up of just such inarticulate flashes when they seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods
It was right there I found your locket he said pushing his foot into a dense tuft of blueberry bushes
I never saw anybody with such sharp eyes she answered
She sat down on the treetrunk in the sun and he sat down beside her
You were as pretty as a picture in that pink hat he said
She laughed with pleasure Oh I guess it was the hat she rejoined
They had never before avowed their inclination so openly and Ethan for a moment had the illusion that he was a free man wooing the girl he meant to marry He looked at her hair and longed to touch it again and to tell her that it smelt of the woods but he had never learned to say such things
Suddenly she rose to her feet and said We mustnt stay here any longer
He continued to gaze at her vaguely only halfroused from his dream Theres plenty of time he answered
They stood looking at each other as if the eyes of each were straining to absorb and hold fast the others image There were things he had to say to her before they parted but he could not say them in that place of summer memories and he turned and followed her in silence to the sleigh As they drove away the sun sank behind the hill and the pineboles turned from red to grey
By a devious track between the fields they wound back to the Starkfield road Under the open sky the light was still clear with a reflection of cold red on the eastern hills The clumps of trees in the snow seemed to draw together in ruffled lumps like birds with their heads under their wings and the sky as it paled rose higher leaving the earth more alone
As they turned into the Starkfield road Ethan said Matt what do you mean to do
She did not answer at once but at length she said Ill try to get a place in a store
You know you cant do it The bad air and the standing all day nearly killed you before
Im a lot stronger than I was before I came to Starkfield
And now youre going to throw away all the good its done you
There seemed to be no answer to this and again they drove on for a while without speaking With every yard of the way some spot where they had stood and laughed together or been silent clutched at Ethan and dragged him back
Isnt there any of your fathers folks could help you
There isnt any of em Id ask
He lowered his voice to say You know theres nothing I wouldnt do for you if I could
I know there isnt
But I cant—
She was silent but he felt a slight tremor in the shoulder against his
Oh Matt he broke out if I could ha gone with you now Id ha done it—
She turned to him pulling a scrap of paper from her breast Ethan—I found this she stammered Even in the failing light he saw it was the letter to his wife that he had begun the night before and forgotten to destroy Through his astonishment there ran a fierce thrill of joy Matt— he cried if I could ha done it would you
Oh Ethan Ethan—whats the use With a sudden movement she tore the letter in shreds and sent them fluttering off into the snow
Tell me Matt Tell me he adjured her
She was silent for a moment then she said in such a low tone that he had to stoop his head to hear her I used to think of it sometimes summer nights when the moon was so bright I couldnt sleep
His heart reeled with the sweetness of it As long ago as that
She answered as if the date had long been fixed for her The first time was at Shadow Pond
Was that why you gave me my coffee before the others
I dont know Did I I was dreadfully put out when you wouldnt go to the picnic with me and then when I saw you coming down the road I thought maybe youd gone home that way o purpose and that made me glad
They were silent again They had reached the point where the road dipped to the hollow by Ethans mill and as they descended the darkness descended with them dropping down like a black veil from the heavy hemlock boughs
Im tied hand and foot Matt There isnt a thing I can do he began again
You must write to me sometimes Ethan
Oh what goodll writing do I want to put my hand out and touch you I want to do for you and care for you I want to be there when youre sick and when youre lonesome
You mustnt think but what Ill do all right
You wont need me you mean I suppose youll marry
Oh Ethan she cried
I dont know how it is you make me feel Matt Id amost rather have you dead than that
Oh I wish I was I wish I was she sobbed
The sound of her weeping shook him out of his dark anger and he felt ashamed
Dont lets talk that way he whispered
Why shouldnt we when its true Ive been wishing it every minute of the day
Matt You be quiet Dont you say it
Theres never anybody been good to me but you
Dont say that either when I cant lift a hand for you
Yes but its true just the same
They had reached the top of School House Hill and Starkfield lay below them in the twilight A cutter mounting the road from the village passed them by in a joyous flutter of bells and they straightened themselves and looked ahead with rigid faces Along the main street lights had begun to shine from the housefronts and stray figures were turning in here and there at the gates Ethan with a touch of his whip roused the sorrel to a languid trot
As they drew near the end of the village the cries of children reached them and they saw a knot of boys with sleds behind them scattering across the open space before the church
I guess thisll be their last coast for a day or two Ethan said looking up at the mild sky
Mattie was silent and he added We were to have gone down last night
Still she did not speak and prompted by an obscure desire to help himself and her through their miserable last hour he went on discursively Aint it funny we havent been down together but just that once last winter
She answered It wasnt often I got down to the village
Thats so he said
They had reached the crest of the Corbury road and between the indistinct white glimmer of the church and the black curtain of the Varnum spruces the slope stretched away below them without a sled on its length Some erratic impulse prompted Ethan to say Howd you like me to take you down now
She forced a laugh Why there isnt time
Theres all the time we want Come along His one desire now was to postpone the moment of turning the sorrel toward the Flats
But the girl she faltered The girlll be waiting at the station
Well let her wait Youd have to if she didnt Come
The note of authority in his voice seemed to subdue her and when he had jumped from the sleigh she let him help her out saying only with a vague feint of reluctance But there isnt a sled round anywheres
Yes there is Right over there under the spruces He threw the bearskin over the sorrel who stood passively by the roadside hanging a meditative head Then he caught Matties hand and drew her after him toward the sled
She seated herself obediently and he took his place behind her so close that her hair brushed his face All right Matt he called out as if the width of the road had been between them
She turned her head to say Its dreadfully dark Are you sure you can see
He laughed contemptuously I could go down this coast with my eyes tied and she laughed with him as if she liked his audacity Nevertheless he sat still a moment straining his eyes down the long hill for it was the most confusing hour of the evening the hour when the last clearness from the upper sky is merged with the rising night in a blur that disguises landmarks and falsifies distances
Now he cried
The sled started with a bound and they flew on through the dusk gathering smoothness and speed as they went with the hollow night opening out below them and the air singing by like an organ Mattie sat perfectly still but as they reached the bend at the foot of the hill where the big elm thrust out a deadly elbow he fancied that she shrank a little closer
Dont be scared Matt he cried exultantly as they spun safely past it and flew down the second slope and when they reached the level ground beyond and the speed of the sled began to slacken he heard her give a little laugh of glee
They sprang off and started to walk back up the hill Ethan dragged the sled with one hand and passed the other through Matties arm
Were you scared Id run you into the elm he asked with a boyish laugh
I told you I was never scared with you she answered
The strange exaltation of his mood had brought on one of his rare fits of boastfulness It is a tricky place though The least swerve and wed never ha come up again But I can measure distances to a hairsbreadthalways could
She murmured I always say youve got the surest eye
Deep silence had fallen with the starless dusk and they leaned on each other without speaking but at every step of their climb Ethan said to himself Its the last time well ever walk together
They mounted slowly to the top of the hill When they were abreast of the church he stooped his head to her to ask Are you tired and she answered breathing quickly It was splendid
With a pressure of his arm he guided her toward the Norway spruces I guess this sled must be Ned Hales Anyhow Ill leave it where I found it He drew the sled up to the Varnum gate and rested it against the fence As he raised himself he suddenly felt Mattie close to him among the shadows
Is this where Ned and Ruth kissed each other she whispered breathlessly and flung her arms about him Her lips groping for his swept over his face and he held her fast in a rapture of surprise
Goodbyegoodbye she stammered and kissed him again
Oh Matt I cant let you go broke from him in the same old cry
She freed herself from his hold and he heard her sobbing Oh I cant go either she wailed
Matt Whatll we do Whatll we do
They clung to each others hands like children and her body shook with desperate sobs
Through the stillness they heard the church clock striking five
Oh Ethan its time she cried
He drew her back to him Time for what You dont suppose Im going to leave you now
If I missed my train whered I go
Where are you going if you catch it
She stood silent her hands lying cold and relaxed in his
Whats the good of either of us going anywheres without the other one now he said
She remained motionless as if she had not heard him Then she snatched her hands from his threw her arms about his neck and pressed a sudden drenched cheek against his face Ethan Ethan I want you to take me down again
Down where
The coast Right off she panted So t well never come up any more
Matt What on earth do you mean
She put her lips close against his ear to say Right into the big elm You said you could So t wed never have to leave each other any more
Why what are you talking of Youre crazy
Im not crazy but I will be if I leave you
Oh Matt Matt— he groaned
She tightened her fierce hold about his neck Her face lay close to his face
Ethan wherell I go if I leave you I dont know how to get along alone You said so yourself just now Nobody but you was ever good to me And therell be that strange girl in the house and shell sleep in my bed where I used to lay nights and listen to hear you come up the stairs
The words were like fragments torn from his heart With them came the hated vision of the house he was going back to—of the stairs he would have to go up every night of the woman who would wait for him there And the sweetness of Matties avowal the wild wonder of knowing at last that all that had happened to him had happened to her too made the other vision more abhorrent the other life more intolerable to return to
Her pleadings still came to him between short sobs but he no longer heard what she was saying Her hat had slipped back and he was stroking her hair He wanted to get the feeling of it into his hand so that it would sleep there like a seed in winter Once he found her mouth again and they seemed to be by the pond together in the burning August sun But his cheek touched hers and it was cold and full of weeping and he saw the road to the Flats under the night and heard the whistle of the train up the line
The spruces swathed them in blackness and silence They might have been in their coffins underground He said to himself Perhaps itll feel like this and then again After this I shant feel anything
Suddenly he heard the old sorrel whinny across the road and thought Hes wondering why he doesnt get his supper
Come Mattie whispered tugging at his hand
Her sombre violence constrained him she seemed the embodied instrument of fate He pulled the sled out blinking like a nightbird as he passed from the shade of the spruces into the transparent dusk of the open The slope below them was deserted All Starkfield was at supper and not a figure crossed the open space before the church The sky swollen with the clouds that announce a thaw hung as low as before a summer storm He strained his eyes through the dimness and they seemed less keen less capable than usual
He took his seat on the sled and Mattie instantly placed herself in front of him Her hat had fallen into the snow and his lips were in her hair He stretched out his legs drove his heels into the road to keep the sled from slipping forward and bent her head back between his hands Then suddenly he sprang up again
Get up he ordered her
It was the tone she always heeded but she cowered down in her seat repeating vehemently No no no
Get up
Why
I want to sit in front
No no How can you steer in front
I dont have to Well follow the track
They spoke in smothered whispers as though the night were listening
Get up Get up he urged her but she kept on repeating Why do you want to sit in front
Because I—because I want to feel you holding me he stammered and dragged her to her feet
The answer seemed to satisfy her or else she yielded to the power of his voice He bent down feeling in the obscurity for the glassy slide worn by preceding coasters and placed the runners carefully between its edges She waited while he seated himself with crossed legs in the front of the sled then she crouched quickly down at his back and clasped her arms about him Her breath in his neck set him shuddering again and he almost sprang from his seat But in a flash he remembered the alternative She was right this was better than parting He leaned back and drew her mouth to his
Just as they started he heard the sorrels whinny again and the familiar wistful call and all the confused images it brought with it went with him down the first reach of the road Halfway down there was a sudden drop then a rise and after that another long delirious descent As they took wing for this it seemed to him that they were flying indeed flying far up into the cloudy night with Starkfield immeasurably below them falling away like a speck in space Then the big elm shot up ahead lying in wait for them at the bend of the road and he said between his teeth We can fetch it I know we can fetch it—
As they flew toward the tree Mattie pressed her arms tighter and her blood seemed to be in his veins Once or twice the sled swerved a little under them He slanted his body to keep it headed for the elm repeating to himself again and again I know we can fetch it and little phrases she had spoken ran through his head and danced before him on the air The big tree loomed bigger and closer and as they bore down on it he thought Its waiting for us it seems to know But suddenly his wifes face with twisted monstrous lineaments thrust itself between him and his goal and he made an instinctive movement to brush it aside The sled swerved in response but he righted it again kept it straight and drove down on the black projecting mass There was a last instant when the air shot past him like millions of fiery wires and then the elm
The sky was still thick but looking straight up he saw a single star and tried vaguely to reckon whether it were Sirius or—or—The effort tired him too much and he closed his heavy lids and thought that he would sleep The stillness was so profound that he heard a little animal twittering somewhere near by under the snow It made a small frightened cheep like a field mouse and he wondered languidly if it were hurt Then he understood that it must be in pain pain so excruciating that he seemed mysteriously to feel it shooting through his own body He tried in vain to roll over in the direction of the sound and stretched his left arm out across the snow And now it was as though he felt rather than heard the twittering it seemed to be under his palm which rested on something soft and springy The thought of the animals suffering was intolerable to him and he struggled to raise himself and could not because a rock or some huge mass seemed to be lying on him But he continued to finger about cautiously with his left hand thinking he might get hold of the little creature and help it and all at once he knew that the soft thing he had touched was Matties hair and that his hand was on her face
He dragged himself to his knees the monstrous load on him moving with him as he moved and his hand went over and over her face and he felt that the twittering came from her lips
He got his face down close to hers with his ear to her mouth and in the darkness he saw her eyes open and heard her say his name
Oh Matt I thought wed fetched it he moaned and far off up the hill he heard the sorrel whinny and thought I ought to be getting him his feed
THE QUERULOUS DRONE ceased as I entered Fromes kitchen and of the two women sitting there I could not tell which had been the speaker
One of them on my appearing raised her tall bony figure from her seat not as if to welcome me—for she threw me no more than a brief glance of surprise—but simply to set about preparing the meal which Fromes absence had delayed A slatternly calico wrapper hung from her shoulders and the wisps of her thin grey hair were drawn away from a high forehead and fastened at the back by a broken comb She had pale opaque eyes which revealed nothing and reflected nothing and her narrow lips were of the same sallow colour as her face
The other woman was much smaller and slighter She sat huddled in an armchair near the stove and when I came in she turned her head quickly toward me without the least corresponding movement of her body Her hair was as grey as her companions her face as bloodless and shrivelled but ambertinted with swarthy shadows sharpening the nose and hollowing the temples Under her shapeless dress her body kept its limp immobility and her dark eyes had the bright witchlike stare that disease of the spine sometimes gives
Even for that part of the country the kitchen was a poorlooking place With the exception of the darkeyed womans chair which looked like a soiled relic of luxury bought at a country auction the furniture was of the roughest kind Three coarse china plates and a brokennosed milkjug had been set on a greasy table scored with knifecuts and a couple of strawbottomed chairs and a kitchen dresser of unpainted pine stood meagrely against the plaster walls
My its cold here The fire must be most out Frome said glancing about him apologetically as he followed me in
The tall woman who had moved away from us toward the dresser took no notice but the other from her cushioned niche answered complainingly in a high thin voice Its ony just been made up this very minute Zeena fell asleep and slep ever so long and I thought Id be frozen stiff before I could wake her up and get her to tend to it
I knew then that it was she who had been speaking when we entered
Her companion who was just coming back to the table with the remains of a cold mincepie in a battered piedish set down her unappetising burden without appearing to hear the accusation brought against her
Frome stood hesitatingly before her as she advanced then he looked at me and said This is my wife Mis Frome After another interval he added turning toward the figure in the armchair And this is Miss Mattie Silver
Mrs Hale tender soul had pictured me as lost in the Flats and buried under a snowdrift and so lively was her satisfaction on seeing me safely restored to her the next morning that I felt my peril had caused me to advance several degrees in her favour
Great was her amazement and that of old Mrs Varnum on learning that Ethan Fromes old horse had carried me to and from Corbury Junction through the worst blizzard of the winter greater still their surprise when they heard that his master had taken me in for the night
Beneath their wondering exclamations I felt a secret curiosity to know what impressions I had received from my night in the Frome household and divined that the best way of breaking down their reserve was to let them try to penetrate mine I therefore confined myself to saying in a matteroffact tone that I had been received with great kindness and that Frome had made a bed for me in a room on the groundfloor which seemed in happier days to have been fitted up as a kind of writingroom or study
Well Mrs Hale mused in such a storm I suppose he felt he couldnt do less than take you in—but I guess it went hard with Ethan I dont believe but what youre the only stranger has set foot in that house for over twenty years Hes that proud he dont even like his oldest friends to go there and I dont know as any do any more except myself and the doctor
You still go there Mrs Hale I ventured
I used to go a good deal after the accident when I was first married but after awhile I got to think it made em feel worse to see us And then one thing and another came and my own troubles But I generally make out to drive over there round about New Years and once in the summer Only I always try to pick a day when Ethans off somewheres Its bad enough to see the two women sitting there—but his face when he looks round that bare place just kills me You see I can look back and call it up in his mothers day before their troubles
Old Mrs Varnum by this time had gone up to bed and her daughter and I were sitting alone after supper in the austere seclusion of the horsehair parlour Mrs Hale glanced at me tentatively as though trying to see how much footing my conjectures gave her and I guessed that if she had kept silence till now it was because she had been waiting through all the years for some one who should see what she alone had seen
I waited to let her trust in me gather strength before I said Yes its pretty bad seeing all three of them there together
She drew her mild brows into a frown of pain It was just awful from the beginning I was here in the house when they were carried up—they laid Mattie Silver in the room youre in She and I were great friends and she was to have been my bridesmaid in the spring When she came to I went up to her and stayed all night They gave her things to quiet her and she didnt know much till tord morning and then all of a sudden she woke up just like herself and looked straight at me out of her big eyes and said Oh I dont know why Im telling you all this Mrs Hale broke off crying
She took off her spectacles wiped the moisture from them and put them on again with an unsteady hand It got about the next day she went on that Zeena Frome had sent Mattie off in a hurry because she had a hired girl coming and the folks here could never rightly tell what she and Ethan were doing that night coasting when theyd ought to have been on their way to the Flats to ketch the train I never knew myself what Zeena thought—I dont to this day Nobody knows Zeenas thoughts Anyhow when she heard o the accident she came right in and stayed with Ethan over to the ministers where theyd carried him And as soon as the doctors said that Mattie could be moved Zeena sent for her and took her back to the farm
And there shes been ever since
Mrs Hale answered simply There was nowhere else for her to go and my heart tightened at the thought of the hard compulsions of the poor
Yes there shes been Mrs Hale continued and Zeenas done for her and done for Ethan as good as she could It was a miracle considering how sick she was—but she seemed to be raised right up just when the call came to her Not as shes ever given up doctoring and shes had sick spells right along but shes had the strength given her to care for those two for over twenty years and before the accident came she thought she couldnt even care for herself
Mrs Hale paused a moment and I remained silent plunged in the vision of what her words evoked Its horrible for them all I murmured
Yes its pretty bad And they aint any of em easy people either Mattie was before the accident I never knew a sweeter nature But shes suffered too much—thats what I always say when folks tell me how shes soured And Zeena she was always cranky Not but what she bears with Mattie wonderful—Ive seen that myself But sometimes the two of them get going at each other and then Ethans faced break your heart When I see that I think its him that suffers most anyhow it aint Zeena because she aint got the time Its a pity though Mrs Hale ended sighing that theyre all shut up theren that one kitchen In the summertime on pleasant days they move Mattie into the parlour or out in the dooryard and that makes it easier but winters theres the fires to be thought of and there aint a dime to spare up at the Fromes
Mrs Hale drew a deep breath as though her memory were eased of its long burden and she had no more to say but suddenly an impulse of complete avowal seized her
She took off her spectacles again leaned toward me across the beadwork tablecover and went on with lowered voice There was one day about a week after the accident when they all thought Mattie couldnt live Well I say its a pity she did I said it right out to our minister once and he was shocked at me Only he wasnt with me that morning when she first came to And I say if shed ha died Ethan might ha lived and the way they are now I dont sees theres much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard cept that down there theyre all quiet and the women have got to hold their tongues