________________________________________________
_ 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." _
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