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Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
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Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
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About This Book
Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a "hired girl", Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.
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IX
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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 āKidney Troubles and Their Cureā 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: āWhereās Mattie?ā
Without lifting her eyes from the page she replied: āI presume sheās getting down her trunk.ā
The blood rushed to his face. āGetting down her trunkāalone?ā
āJotham Powellās down in the wood-lot, and Danāl Byrne says he darsnāt leave that horse,ā 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 Mattieās room was shut, and he wavered a moment on the landing. āMatt,ā 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 Ethanās 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.
āMattāoh, donātāoh, Matt!ā
She started up, lifting her wet face to his. āEthanāI thought I wasnāt ever going to see you again!ā
He took her in his arms, pressing her close, and with a trembling hand smoothed away the hair from her forehead.
āNot see me again? What do you mean?ā
She sobbed out: āJotham said you told him we wasnāt to wait dinner for you, and I thoughtāā
āYou thought I meant to cut it?ā 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 Zeenaās voice calling out from below: āDanāl Byrne says you better hurry up if you want him to take that trunk.ā
They drew apart with stricken faces. Words of resistance rushed to Ethanās lips and died there. Mattie found her handkerchief and dried her eyes; then, bending down, she took hold of a handle of the trunk.
Ethan put her aside. āYou let go, Matt,ā he ordered her.
She answered: āIt takes two to coax it round the cornerā; and submitting to this argument he grasped the other handle, and together they manoeuvred the heavy trunk out to the landing.
āNow let go,ā he repeated; then he shouldered the trunk and carried it down the stairs and across the passage to the kitchen. Zeena, who had gone back to her seat by the stove, did not lift her head from her book as he passed. Mattie followed him out of the door and helped him to lift the trunk into the back of the sleigh. When it was in place they stood side by side on the door-step, watching Daniel Byrne plunge off behind his fidgety horse.
It seemed to Ethan that his heart was bound with cords which an unseen hand was tightening with every tick of the clock. Twice he opened his lips to speak to Mattie and found no breath. At length, as she turned to re-enter the house, he laid a detaining hand on her.
āIām going to drive you over, Matt,ā he whispered.
She murmured back: āI think Zeena wants I should go with Jotham.ā
āIām going to drive you over,ā he repeated; and she went into the kitchen without answering.
At dinner Ethan could not eat. If he lifted his eyes they rested on Zeenaās pinched face, and the corners of her straight lips seemed to quiver away into a smile. She ate well, declaring that the mild weather made her feel better, and pressed a second helping of beans on Jotham Powell, whose wants she generally ignored.
Mattie, when the meal was over, went about her usual task of clearing the table and washing up the dishes. Zeena, after feeding the cat, had returned to her rocking-chair by the stove, and Jotham Powell, who always lingered last, reluctantly pushed back his chair and moved toward the door.
On the threshold he turned back to say to Ethan: āWhat timeāll I come round for Mattie?ā
Ethan was standing near the window, mechanically filling his pipe while he watched Mattie move to and fro. He answered: āYou neednāt come round; Iām going to drive her over myself.ā
He saw the rise of the colour in Mattieās averted cheek, and the quick lifting of Zeenaās head.
āI want you should stay here this afternoon, Ethan,ā his wife said. āJotham can drive Mattie over.ā
Mattie flung an imploring glance at him, but he repeated curtly: āIām going to drive her over myself.ā
Zeena continued in the same even tone: āI wanted you should stay and fix up that stove in Mattieās room afore the girl gets here. It aināt been drawing right for nigh on a month now.ā
Ethanās voice rose indignantly. āIf it was good enough for Mattie I guess itās good enough for a hired girl.ā
āThat girl thatās coming told me she was used to a house where they had a furnace,ā Zeena persisted with the same monotonous mildness.
āSheād better haā stayed there then,ā he flung back at her; and turning to Mattie he added in a hard voice: āYou be ready by three, Matt; Iāve got business at Corbury.ā
Jotham Powell had started for the barn, and Ethan strode down after him aflame with anger. The pulses in his temples throbbed and a fog was in his eyes. He went about his task without knowing what force directed him, or whose hands and feet were fulfilling its orders. It was not till he led out the sorrel and backed him between the shafts of the sleigh that he once more became conscious of what he was doing. As he passed the bridle over the horseās head, and wound the traces around the shafts, he remembered the day when he had made the same preparations in order to drive over and meet his wifeās cousin at the Flats. It was little more than a year ago, on just such a soft afternoon, with a āfeelā of spring in the air. The sorrel, turning the same big ringed eye on him, nuzzled the palm of his hand in the same way; and one by one all the days between rose up and stood before him...
He flung the bearskin into the sleigh, climbed to the seat, and drove up to the house. When he entered the kitchen it was empty, but Mattieās bag and shawl lay ready by the door. He went to the foot of the stairs and listened. No sound reached him from above, but presently he thought he heard some one moving about in his deserted study, and pushing open the door he saw Mattie, in her hat and jacket, standing with her back to him near the table.
She started at his approach and turning quickly, said: āIs it time?ā
āWhat are you doing here, Matt?ā he asked her.
She looked at him timidly. āI was just taking a look roundāthatās all,ā she answered, with a wavering smile.
They went back into the kitchen without speaking, and Ethan picked up her bag and shawl.
āWhereās Zeena?ā he asked.
āShe went upstairs right after dinner. She said she had those shooting pains again, and didnāt want to be disturbed.ā
āDidnāt she say good-bye to you?ā
āNo. That was all she said.ā
Ethan, looking slowly about the kitchen, said to himself with a shudder that in a few hours he would be returning to it alone. Then the sense of unreality overcame him once more, and he could not bring himself to believe that Mattie stood there for the last time before him.
āCome on,ā he said almost gaily, opening the door and putting her bag into the sleigh. He sprang to his seat and bent over to tuck the rug about her as she slipped into the place at his side. āNow then, go ālong,ā he said, with a shake of the reins that sent the sorrel placidly jogging down the hill.
āWe got lots of time for a good ride, Matt!ā he cried, seeking her hand beneath the fur and pressing it in his. His face tingled and he felt dizzy, as if he had stopped in at the Starkfield saloon on a zero day for a drink.
At the gate, instead of making for Starkfield, he turned the sorrel to the right, up the Bettsbridge road. Mattie sat silent, giving no sign of surprise; but after a moment she said: āAre you going round by Shadow Pond?ā
He laughed and answered: āI knew youād know!ā
She drew closer under the bearskin, so that, looking sideways around his coat-sleeve, he could just catch the tip of her nose and a blown brown wave of hair. They drove slowly up the road between fields glistening under the pale sun, and then bent to the right down a lane edged with spruce and larch. Ahead of them, a long way off, a range of hills stained by mottlings of black forest flowed away in round white curves against the sky. The lane passed into a pine-wood with boles reddening in the afternoon sun and delicate blue shadows on the snow. As they entered it the breeze fell and a warm stillness seemed to drop from the branches with the dropping needles. Here the snow was so pure that the tiny tracks of wood-animals had left on it intricate lace-like patterns, and the bluish cones caught in its surface stood out like ornaments of bronze.
Ethan drove on in silence till they reached a part of the wood where the pines were more widely spaced; then he drew up and helped Mattie to get out of the sleigh. They passed between the aromatic trunks, the snow breaking crisply under their feet, till they came to a small sheet of water with steep wooded sides. Across its frozen surface, from the farther bank, a single hill rising against the western sun threw the long conical shadow which gave the lake its name. It was a shy secret spot, full of the same dumb melancholy that Ethan felt in his heart.
He looked up and down the little pebbly beach till his eye lit on a fallen tree-trunk half submerged in snow.
āThereās where we sat at the picnic,ā he reminded her.
The entertainment of which he spoke was one of the few that they had taken part in together: a āchurch picnicā which, on a long afternoon of the preceding summer, had filled the retired place with merry-making. Mattie had begged him to go with her but he had refused. Then, toward sunset, coming down from the mountain where he had been felling timber, he had been caught by some strayed revellers and drawn into the group by the lake, where Mattie, encircled by facetious youths, and bright as a blackberry under her spreading hat, was brewing coffee over a gipsy fire. He remembered the shyness he had felt at approaching her in his uncouth clothes, and then the lighting up of her face, and the way she had broken through the group to come to him with a cup in her hand. They had sat for a few minutes on the fallen log by the pond, and she had missed her gold locket, and set the young men searching for it; and it was Ethan who had spied it in the moss.... That was all; but all their intercourse had been made up of just such inarticulate flashes, when they seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods...
āIt was right there I found your locket,ā he said, pushing his foot into a dense tuft of ...