Ethan Frome
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 dough-nuts.
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.”
VII
Ethan went out into the passage to hang up his wet garments. He listened
for Zeena’s step and, not hearing it, called her name up the stairs. She
did not answer, and after a moment’s 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: “Supper’s about ready. Ain’t you
coming?”
She replied: “I don’t 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 you’re
tired after the long ride.”
Turning her head at this, she answered solemnly: “I’m 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 that’s 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. “I’ve 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 death-warrant. People
struggled on for years with “troubles,” but they almost always succumbed
to “complications.”
Ethan’s 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 didn’t 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 Shadd’s Falls and Bettsbridge for consultations. Eliza
Spears was wasting away with kidney trouble before she went to him, and
now she’s up and around, and singing in the choir.”
“Well, I’m 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 oughtn’t 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. She’ll be over to-morrow 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—” Ethan’s 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 didn’t. For I’d ’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 couldn’t 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 Zeena’s 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 haven’t got the money to pay for a girl, Zeena. You’ll have
to send her back: I can’t do it.”
“The doctor says it’ll be my death if I go on slaving the way I’ve had
to. He doesn’t understand how I’ve stood it as long as I have.”
“Slaving!—” He checked himself again, “You sha’n’t lift a hand, if he
says so. I’ll do everything round the house myself—”
She broke in: “You’re 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