III
There was some hauling to be done at the lower end of the wood-lot,
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 wood-lot were darkly
blue, and beyond the white and scintillating fields patches of
far-off 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
medicine-bottle 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 Zeena's 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 Mattie's 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 sun's 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 loose-hung 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
hadn't 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 Frome's, 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 father's thriving "drug" business. Unhappily Orin Silver, a man
of far-reaching 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 to-night," and play "The Lost Chord" and a
pot-pourri from "Carmen." When she tried to extend the field of her
activities in the direction of stenography and book-keeping 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 father's 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 Zenobia's doctor recommended
her looking about for some one to help her with the house-work the
clan instantly saw the chance of exacting a compensation from
Mattie. Zenobia, though doubtful of the girl's efficiency, was
tempted by the freedom to find fault without much risk of losing
her; and so Mattie came to Starkfield.
Zenobia's fault-finding 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 girl's omissions; so that Ethan,
struggling on under the burden of his barren farm and failing
saw-mill, 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 sky-line.
It was formed of Zeena's obstinate silence, of Mattie's 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, man-like, he sought to postpone
certainty. The hauling was not over till mid-day, 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 there's 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
crimping-pins, rose a hard perpendicular bonnet, as to which Ethan's
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.
"I've got my shooting pains so bad that I'm going over to
Bettsbridge to spend the night with Aunt Martha Pierce and see that
new doctor," she answered in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she had
said she was going into the store-room 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 Zeena's history. Twice or thrice before she had
suddenly packed Ethan's 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 you're 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 I'd supposed you'd 'a' made any objection to Jotham Powell's
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 can't go on the way I
am much longer. The pains are clear away down to my ankles now, or
I'd 'a' walked in to Starkfield on my own feet, sooner'n 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.
I'd 'a' had two hours to wait in the station, but I'd sooner 'a'
done it, even with this cold, than to have you say-"
"Of course Jotham'll 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 husband's senior, and
he was only twenty-eight, 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: "I'd take you over myself, only I've 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 ain't 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 it'll 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 girl's moving figure, on the cat dozing in a
chair, and on the geraniums brought in from the door-way, 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 Zeena's 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 father's 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
didn't "say something," she would lift a finger and answer: "Because
I'm listening"; and on stormy nights, when the loud wind was about
the house, she would complain, if he spoke to her: "They're talking
so out there that I can't 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 Zeena's 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 sick-bed 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 mother's clothes and the sewing-machine. 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. Frome's long illness, they
would sell the farm and saw-mill and try their luck in a large town.
Ethan's 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.
Zeena's 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 Shadd's 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 mother's 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 farm-houses in the
neighbourhood where stricken creatures pined, and of others where
sudden tragedy had come of their presence. At times, looking at
Zeena's shut face, he felt the chill of such forebodings. At other
times her silence seemed deliberately assumed to conceal
far-reaching 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 Hale's 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
double-chin 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 Ethan's 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 Hale's astonishment. It
was the builder's 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 father's 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 nobody's 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 Hale's
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.
Ethan's 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 ain't in a
tight place, are you?"
"Not a bit," Ethan's pride retorted before his reason had time to
intervene.
"Well, that's 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 I'm fixing up a little house
for Ned and Ruth when they're married. I'm 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: it's not so
long ago since you fixed up your own place for Zeena."
Ethan left the grays in Hale's stable and went about some other
business in the village. As he walked away the builder's 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
sleigh-bells and a cutter passed him, drawn by a free-going horse.
Ethan recognised Michael Eady's 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 Ethan's
heart contracted as he listened to the dwindling bells. What more
likely than that Denis Eady had heard of Zeena's 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
half-laughing "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 Hale's 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 gold-edged 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.
Ethan's ears were alert for the jingle of sleigh-bells, 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. "She's up in her room," he said to
himself, "fixing herself up for supper"; and he remembered Zeena's
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 barn-door and craned his head into the obscurity,
half-fearing to discover Denis Eady's 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 kitchen-porch and turned the door-handle; 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 door-frame, 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 child's. 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 well-being. 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 Ethan's 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
it's about time for supper."
They drew their seats up to the table, and the cat, unbidden, jumped
between them into Zeena's 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
dough-nuts 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 there'd be more snow."
She feigned great interest. "Is that so? Do you suppose it'll
interfere with Zeena's 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, you're too greedy!" Mattie cried.
The cat, unnoticed, had crept up on muffled paws from Zeena's seat
to the table, and was stealthily elongating its body in the
direction of the milk-jug, which stood between Ethan and Mattie. The
two leaned forward at the same moment and their hands met on the
handle of the jug. Mattie's 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 pickle-dish, 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-it's all to pieces! What will Zeena say?"
But this time his courage was up. "Well, she'll have to say it to
the cat, any way!" he rejoined with a laugh, kneeling down at
Mattie's 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 step-ladder to reach it down from the top shelf of the
china-closet, where she keeps it with all her best things, and of
course she'll want to know why I did it-"
The case was so serious that it called forth all of Ethan's latent
resolution.
"She needn't know anything about it if you keep quiet. I'll get
another just like it to-morrow. Where did it come from? I'll go to
Shadd's Falls for it if I have to!"
"Oh, you'll never get another even there! It was a wedding
present-don't you remember? It came all the way from Philadelphia,
from Zeena's aunt that married the minister. That's why she wouldn't
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. "Don't, Matt, don't-oh, don't!"
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
candle-end, opened the china-closet, 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 Shadd's 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.
"It's all right, Matt. Come back and finish supper," he commanded
her.
Completely reassured, she shone on him through tear-hung 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 wood-lot.
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 day's 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 well-being 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."
Zeena's empty rocking-chair stood facing him. Mattie rose
obediently, and seated herself in it. As her young brown head
detached itself against the patch-work cushion that habitually
framed his wife's 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 can't 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 Zeena's 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 Ethan's
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 every-day 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 long-established 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 didn't forget; but it's as dark as Egypt outdoors. We might
go to-morrow if there's 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 wheat-field 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 ain't any more scared than you are!"
"Well, I'd be scared, then; I wouldn't do it. That's an ugly corner
down by the big elm. If a fellow didn't keep his eyes open he'd 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 we're well enough here."
She let her lids sink slowly, in the way he loved. "Yes, we're 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 out-of-doors, 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 they'll be setting a date
before long."
"Yes. I shouldn't 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: "It'll be your turn next, I wouldn't 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: "It's not because you
think Zeena's got anything against me, is it?"
His former dread started up full-armed 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 don't know. I thought last night she seemed to
have."
"I'd 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
hasn't 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
I'm just nervous, then. I'm not going to think about it any more."
"Oh, no-don't let's 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 palm-downward along the table till his
finger-tips 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 counter-current 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 Zeena's 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.
"She'll be rocking in it herself this time to-morrow," Ethan
thought. "I've been in a dream, and this is the only evening we'll
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 soap-box 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 Mattie's
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 wood-lot, 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 dish-pan 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 traveller's 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 tobacco-pouch 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
pickle-dish. 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 wood-lot 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 dinner-hour 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 self-derision,
what importance he had attached to the weighing of these
probabilities...
As soon as dinner was over he set out again for the wood-lot, 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: "I'll 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 half-way to the village when Jotham Powell
overtook him, urging the reluctant sorrel toward the Flats. "I'll
have to hurry up to do it," Ethan mused, as the sleigh dropped down
ahead of him over the dip of the school-house hill. He worked like
ten at the unloading, and when it was over hastened on to Michael
Eady's 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 you'll wait around till
the old man comes along maybe he can put his hand on it."
"I'm obliged to you, but I'll try if I can get it down at Mrs.
Homan's," Ethan answered, burning to be gone.
Denis's commercial instinct compelled him to aver on oath that what
Eady's store could not produce would never be found at the widow
Homan's; 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 wouldn't do as well
if she couldn't find it, the widow Homan finally hunted down her
solitary bottle of glue to its hiding-place in a medley of
cough-lozenges and corset-laces.
"I hope Zeena ain't 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 sleigh-bells, 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, I've 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-Zeena's come," she said in a whisper, clutching his
sleeve.
They stood and stared at each other, pale as culprits.
"But the sorrel's 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 Mattie's whisper.
She looked away from him uncertainly. "I don't know. She went right
up to her room."
"She didn't say anything?"
"No."
Ethan let out his doubts in a low whistle and thrust the bottle back
into his pocket. "Don't fret; I'll 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
Jotham's 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: "I'm obliged to you, but I guess I'll go
along back."
Ethan looked at him in surprise. "Better come up and dry off. Looks
as if there'd be something hot for supper."
Jotham's facial muscles were unmoved by this appeal and, his
vocabulary being limited, he merely repeated: "I guess I'll 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 re-entered 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 it's about time for supper."