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Ethan Frome, a novel by Edith Wharton

CHAPTER VIII

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_ When Ethan was called back to the farm by his father's illness his
mother gave him, for his own use, a small room behind the untenanted
"best parlour." Here he had nailed up shelves for his books, built
himself a box-sofa out of boards and a mattress, laid out his papers
on a kitchen-table, hung on the rough plaster wall an engraving of
Abraham Lincoln and a calendar with "Thoughts from the Poets," and
tried, with these meagre properties, to produce some likeness to the
study of a "minister" who had been kind to him and lent him books
when he was at Worcester. He still took refuge there in summer, but
when Mattie came to live at the farm he had to give her his stove,
and consequently the room was uninhabitable for several months of
the year.

To this retreat he descended as soon as the house was quiet, and
Zeena's steady breathing from the bed had assured him that there was
to be no sequel to the scene in the kitchen. After Zeena's departure
he and Mattie had stood speechless, neither seeking to approach the
other. Then the girl had returned to her task of clearing up the
kitchen for the night and he had taken his lantern and gone on his
usual round outside the house. The kitchen was empty when he came
back to it; but his tobacco-pouch and pipe had been laid on the
table, and under them was a scrap of paper torn from the back of a
seedsman's catalogue, on which three words were written: "Don't
trouble, Ethan."

Going into his cold dark "study" he placed the lantern on the table
and, stooping to its light, read the message again and again. It was
the first time that Mattie had ever written to him, and the
possession of the paper gave him a strange new sense of her
nearness; yet it deepened his anguish by reminding him that
henceforth they would have no other way of communicating with each
other. For the life of her smile, the warmth of her voice, only cold
paper and dead words!

Confused motions of rebellion stormed in him. He was too young, too
strong, too full of the sap of living, to submit so easily to the
destruction of his hopes. Must he wear out all his years at the side
of a bitter querulous woman? Other possibilities had been in him,
possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena's narrow-mindedness
and ignorance. And what good had come of it? She was a hundred times
bitterer and more discontented than when he had married her: the one
pleasure left her was to inflict pain on him. All the healthy
instincts of self-defence rose up in him against such waste...

He bundled himself into his old coon-skin coat and lay down on the
box-sofa to think. Under his cheek he felt a hard object with
strange protuberances. It was a cushion which Zeena had made for him
when they were engaged-the only piece of needlework he had ever seen
her do. He flung it across the floor and propped his head against
the wall...

He knew a case of a man over the mountain-a young fellow of about
his own age-who had escaped from just such a life of misery by going
West with the girl he cared for. His wife had divorced him, and he
had married the girl and prospered. Ethan had seen the couple the
summer before at Shadd's Falls, where they had come to visit
relatives. They had a little girl with fair curls, who wore a gold
locket and was dressed like a princess. The deserted wife had not
done badly either. Her husband had given her the farm and she had
managed to sell it, and with that and the alimony she had started a
lunch-room at Bettsbridge and bloomed into activity and importance.
Ethan was fired by the thought. Why should he not leave with Mattie
the next day, instead of letting her go alone? He would hide his
valise under the seat of the sleigh, and Zeena would suspect nothing
till she went upstairs for her afternoon nap and found a letter on
the bed...

His impulses were still near the surface, and he sprang up, re-lit
the lantern, and sat down at the table. He rummaged in the drawer
for a sheet of paper, found one, and began to write.

"Zeena, I've done all I could for you, and I don't see as it's been
any use. I don't blame you, nor I don't blame myself. Maybe both of
us will do better separate. I'm going to try my luck West, and you
can sell the farm and mill, and keep the money-"

His pen paused on the word, which brought home to him the relentless
conditions of his lot. If he gave the farm and mill to Zeena what
would be left him to start his own life with? Once in the West he
was sure of picking up work-he would not have feared to try his
chance alone. But with Mattie depending on him the case was
different. And what of Zeena's fate? Farm and mill were mortgaged to
the limit of their value, and even if she found a purchaser-in
itself an unlikely chance-it was doubtful if she could clear a
thousand dollars on the sale. Meanwhile, how could she keep the farm
going? It was only by incessant labour and personal supervision that
Ethan drew a meagre living from his land, and his wife, even if she
were in better health than she imagined, could never carry such a
burden alone.

Well, she could go back to her people, then, and see what they would
do for her. It was the fate she was forcing on Mattie-why not let
her try it herself? By the time she had discovered his whereabouts,
and brought suit for divorce, he would probably-wherever he was-be
earning enough to pay her a sufficient alimony. And the alternative
was to let Mattie go forth alone, with far less hope of ultimate
provision...

He had scattered the contents of the table-drawer in his search for
a sheet of paper, and as he took up his pen his eye fell on an old
copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle. The advertising sheet was folded
uppermost, and he read the seductive words: "Trips to the West:
Reduced Rates."

He drew the lantern nearer and eagerly scanned the fares; then the
paper fell from his hand and he pushed aside his unfinished letter.
A moment ago he had wondered what he and Mattie were to live on when
they reached the West; now he saw that he had not even the money to
take her there. Borrowing was out of the question: six months before
he had given his only security to raise funds for necessary repairs
to the mill, and he knew that without security no one at Starkfield
would lend him ten dollars. The inexorable facts closed in on him
like prison-warders handcuffing a convict. There was no way
out-none. He was a prisoner for life, and now his one ray of light
was to be extinguished.

He crept back heavily to the sofa, stretching himself out with limbs
so leaden that he felt as if they would never move again. Tears rose
in his throat and slowly burned their way to his lids.

As he lay there, the window-pane that faced him, growing gradually
lighter, inlaid upon the darkness a square of moon-suffused sky. A
crooked tree-branch crossed it, a branch of the apple-tree under
which, on summer evenings, he had sometimes found Mattie sitting
when he came up from the mill. Slowly the rim of the rainy vapours
caught fire and burnt away, and a pure moon swung into the blue.
Ethan, rising on his elbow, watched the landscape whiten and shape
itself under the sculpture of the moon. This was the night on which
he was to have taken Mattie coasting, and there hung the lamp to
light them! He looked out at the slopes bathed in lustre, the
silver-edged darkness of the woods, the spectral purple of the hills
against the sky, and it seemed as though all the beauty of the night
had been poured out to mock his wretchedness...

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 take 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. _

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