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.