Ethan Frome
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 Matt’s 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 didn’t come up.”
All his tenderness rushed to his lips. He looked at her and said: “I’ll
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 meat-pie. When warmth began to radiate from the
stove, and the first ray of sunlight lay on the kitchen floor, Ethan’s
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 Zeena’s
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 don’t 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 ain’t going to
trouble.”
“I guess things’ll straighten out,” he added.
There was no answer but a quick throb of her lids, and he went on: “She
ain’t said anything this morning?”
“No. I haven’t seen her yet.”
“Don’t you take any notice when you do.”
With this injunction he left her and went out to the cow-barn. 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
pitch-fork to say: “Dan’l Byrne’s goin’ over to the Flats to-day noon,
an’ he c’d take Mattie’s 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
girl’d be at the Flats at five, and I was to take Mattie then, so’s ’t
she could ketch the six o’clock 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 ain’t so sure about Mattie’s
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 pie-dish;
then she rose from her seat and, walking over to the window, snipped two
or three yellow leaves from the geraniums. “Aunt Martha’s ain’t got a
faded leaf on ’em; but they pine away when they ain’t cared for,” she
said reflectively. Then she turned to Jotham and asked: “What time’d you
say Dan’l Byrne’d 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 Dan’l Byrne’ll be round to take it over to the Flats,” she
said.
“I’m much obliged to you, Zeena,” said Mattie.
“I’d like to go over things with you first,” Zeena continued in an
unperturbed voice. “I know there’s a huckabuck towel missing; and I
can’t make out what you done with that match-safe ’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 Dan’l come round, then.”
Ethan finished his usual morning tasks about the house and barn; then
he said to Jotham: “I’m 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 Mattie’s 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
Mattie’s 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 kind-hearted
man, might be induced to reconsider his refusal and advance a small sum
on the lumber if he were told that Zeena’s ill-health made it necessary
to hire a servant. Hale, after all, knew enough of Ethan’s 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. Hale’s 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. Ethan’s 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 Hale’s sleigh in the distance. He
hurried forward to meet it, but as it drew nearer he saw that it was
driven by the carpenter’s 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, you’ll find him down home now. He ain’t 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. Kidder’s plasters and set right up into
the fire.”
Beaming maternally on Ethan, she bent over to add: “I on’y just heard
from Mr. Hale ’bout Zeena’s going over to Bettsbridge to see that new
doctor. I’m real sorry she’s feeling so bad again! I hope he thinks he
can do something for her. I don’t know anybody round here’s had more
sickness than Zeena. I always tell Mr. Hale I don’t know what she’d ’a’
done if she hadn’t ’a’ had you to look after her; and I used to say
the same thing ’bout your mother. You’ve 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, “You’ve 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 big-boned
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: “Where’s Mattie?”
Without lifting her eyes from the page she replied: “I presume she’s
getting down her trunk.”
The blood rushed to his face. “Getting down her trunk—alone?”
“Jotham Powell’s down in the wood-lot, and Dan’l Byrne says he darsn’t
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 Mattie’s 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 door-knob.
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 red-and-white quilt on her narrow
bed, the pretty pin-cushion 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
Ethan’s 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, don’t—oh, _Matt_!”
She started up, lifting her wet face to his. “Ethan—I thought I wasn’t
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 wasn’t 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 Zeena’s voice calling out from below: “Dan’l
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
Ethan’s lips and died there. Mattie found her handkerchief and dried her
eyes; then, bending down, she took hold of a handle of the trunk.