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CHAPTER 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 "***." 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, ***! 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, ***!" 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, ***, 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.