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CHAPTER 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."