kleine stube einrichten
chapter 0ethan frome i had the story, bit by bit, from variouspeople, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.if you know starkfield, massachusetts, you know the post-office. if you know the post-office you must haveseen ethan frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and draghimself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade: and you must have askedwho he was. it was there that, several years ago, i sawhim for the first time; and the sight pulled me up sharp.
even then he was the most striking figurein starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man. it was not so much his great height thatmarked him, for the "natives" were easily singled out by their lank longitude fromthe stockier foreign breed: it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerkof a chain. there was something bleak andunapproachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that i took him foran old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two.
i had this from harmon gow, who had driventhe stage from bettsbridge to starkfield in pre-trolley days and knew the chronicle ofall the families on his line. "he's looked that way ever since he had hissmash-up; and that's twenty-four years ago come next february," harmon threw outbetween reminiscent pauses. the "smash-up" it was--i gathered from thesame informant--which, besides drawing the red gash across ethan frome's forehead, hadso shortened and warped his right side that it cost him a visible effort to take the few steps from his buggy to the post-officewindow. he used to drive in from his farm every dayat about noon, and as that was my own hour
for fetching my mail i often passed him inthe porch or stood beside him while we waited on the motions of the distributinghand behind the grating. i noticed that, though he came sopunctually, he seldom received anything but a copy of the bettsbridge eagle, which heput without a glance into his sagging pocket. at intervals, however, the post-masterwould hand him an envelope addressed to mrs. zenobia--or mrs. zeena-frome, andusually bearing conspicuously in the upper left-hand corner the address of some manufacturer of patent medicine and thename of his specific.
these documents my neighbour would alsopocket without a glance, as if too much used to them to wonder at their number andvariety, and would then turn away with a silent nod to the post-master. every one in starkfield knew him and gavehim a greeting tempered to his own grave mien; but his taciturnity was respected andit was only on rare occasions that one of the older men of the place detained him fora word. when this happened he would listen quietly,his blue eyes on the speaker's face, and answer in so low a tone that his wordsnever reached me; then he would climb stiffly into his buggy, gather up the reins
in his left hand and drive slowly away inthe direction of his farm. "it was a pretty bad smash-up?" i questioned harmon, looking after frome'sretreating figure, and thinking how gallantly his lean brown head, with itsshock of light hair, must have sat on his strong shoulders before they were bent outof shape. "wust kind," my informant assented."more'n enough to kill most men. but the fromes are tough. ethan'll likely touch a hundred.""good god!" i exclaimed. at the moment ethan frome, after climbingto his seat, had leaned over to assure
himself of the security of a wooden box--also with a druggist's label on it--which he had placed in the back of the buggy, and i saw his face as it probably looked whenhe thought himself alone. "that man touch a hundred?he looks as if he was dead and in hell now!" harmon drew a slab of tobacco from hispocket, cut off a wedge and pressed it into the leather pouch of his cheek."guess he's been in starkfield too many winters. most of the smart ones get away.""why didn't he?"
"somebody had to stay and care for thefolks. there warn't ever anybody but ethan. fust his father--then his mother--then hiswife." "and then the smash-up?"harmon chuckled sardonically. "that's so. he had to stay then.""i see. and since then they've had to care forhim?" harmon thoughtfully passed his tobacco tothe other cheek. "oh, as to that: i guess it's always ethandone the caring."
though harmon gow developed the tale as faras his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between hisfacts, and i had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. but one phrase stuck in my memory andserved as the nucleus about which i grouped my subsequent inferences: "guess he's beenin starkfield too many winters." before my own time there was up i hadlearned to know what that meant. yet i had come in the degenerate day oftrolley, bicycle and rural delivery, when communication was easy between thescattered mountain villages, and the bigger towns in the valleys, such as bettsbridge
and shadd's falls, had libraries, theatresand y.m.c.a. halls to which the youth of the hills could descend for recreation. but when winter shut down on starkfield andthe village lay under a sheet of snow perpetually renewed from the pale skies, ibegan to see what life there--or rather its negation--must have been in ethan frome'syoung manhood. i had been sent up by my employers on a jobconnected with the big power-house at corbury junction, and a long-drawncarpenters' strike had so delayed the work that i found myself anchored at starkfield- -the nearest habitable spot--for the bestpart of the winter.
i chafed at first, and then, under thehypnotising effect of routine, gradually began to find a grim satisfaction in thelife. during the early part of my stay i had beenstruck by the contrast between the vitality of the climate and the deadness of thecommunity. day by day, after the december snows wereover, a blazing blue sky poured down torrents of light and air on the whitelandscape, which gave them back in an intenser glitter. one would have supposed that such anatmosphere must quicken the emotions as well as the blood; but it seemed to produceno change except that of retarding still
more the sluggish pulse of starkfield. when i had been there a little longer, andhad seen this phase of crystal clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold;when the storms of february had pitched their white tents about the devoted village and the wild cavalry of march winds hadcharged down to their support; i began to understand why starkfield emerged from itssix months' siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter. twenty years earlier the means ofresistance must have been far fewer, and the enemy in command of almost all thelines of access between the beleaguered
villages; and, considering these things, i felt the sinister force of harmon's phrase:"most of the smart ones get away." but if that were the case, how could anycombination of obstacles have hindered the flight of a man like ethan frome? during my stay at starkfield i lodged witha middle-aged widow colloquially known as mrs. ned hale. mrs. hale's father had been the villagelawyer of the previous generation, and "lawyer varnum's house," where my landladystill lived with her mother, was the most considerable mansion in the village.
it stood at one end of the main street, itsclassic portico and small-paned windows looking down a flagged path between norwayspruces to the slim white steeple of the congregational church. it was clear that the varnum fortunes wereat the ebb, but the two women did what they could to preserve a decent dignity; andmrs. hale, in particular, had a certain wan refinement not out of keeping with her paleold-fashioned house. in the "best parlour," with its blackhorse-hair and mahogany weakly illuminated by a gurgling carcel lamp, i listened everyevening to another and more delicately shaded version of the starkfield chronicle.
it was not that mrs. ned hale felt, oraffected, any social superiority to the people about her; it was only that theaccident of a finer sensibility and a little more education had put just enough distance between herself and her neighboursto enable her to judge them with detachment. she was not unwilling to exercise thisfaculty, and i had great hopes of getting from her the missing facts of ethan frome'sstory, or rather such a key to his character as should co-ordinate the facts iknew. her mind was a store-house of innocuousanecdote and any question about her
acquaintances brought forth a volume ofdetail; but on the subject of ethan frome i found her unexpectedly reticent. there was no hint of disapproval in herreserve; i merely felt in her an insurmountable reluctance to speak of himor his affairs, a low "yes, i knew them both... it was awful..." seeming to be the utmost concession that her distress couldmake to my curiosity. so marked was the change in her manner,such depths of sad initiation did it imply, that, with some doubts as to my delicacy, iput the case anew to my village oracle, harmon gow; but got for my pains only anuncomprehending grunt.
"ruth varnum was always as nervous as arat; and, come to think of it, she was the first one to see 'em after they was pickedup. it happened right below lawyer varnum's,down at the bend of the corbury road, just round about the time that ruth got engagedto ned hale. the young folks was all friends, and iguess she just can't bear to talk about it. she's had troubles enough of her own." all the dwellers in starkfield, as in morenotable communities, had had troubles enough of their own to make themcomparatively indifferent to those of their neighbours; and though all conceded that
ethan frome's had been beyond the commonmeasure, no one gave me an explanation of the look in his face which, as i persistedin thinking, neither poverty nor physical suffering could have put there. nevertheless, i might have contented myselfwith the story pieced together from these hints had it not been for the provocationof mrs. hale's silence, and--a little later--for the accident of personal contactwith the man. on my arrival at starkfield, denis eady,the rich irish grocer, who was the proprietor of starkfield's nearest approachto a livery stable, had entered into an agreement to send me over daily to corbury
flats, where i had to pick up my train forthe junction. but about the middle of the winter eady'shorses fell ill of a local epidemic. the illness spread to the other starkfieldstables and for a day or two i was put to it to find a means of transport. then harmon gow suggested that ethanfrome's bay was still on his legs and that his owner might be glad to drive me over.i stared at the suggestion. "ethan frome? but i've never even spoken to him.why on earth should he put himself out for me?"harmon's answer surprised me still more.
"i don't know as he would; but i know hewouldn't be sorry to earn a dollar." i had been told that frome was poor, andthat the saw-mill and the arid acres of his farm yielded scarcely enough to keep hishousehold through the winter; but i had not supposed him to be in such want as harmon's words implied, and i expressed my wonder."well, matters ain't gone any too well with him," harmon said. "when a man's been setting round like ahulk for twenty years or more, seeing things that want doing, it eats inter him,and he loses his grit. that frome farm was always 'bout as bare'sa milkpan when the cat's been round; and
you know what one of them old water-millsis wuth nowadays. when ethan could sweat over 'em both fromsunup to dark he kinder choked a living out of 'em; but his folks ate up mosteverything, even then, and i don't see how he makes out now. fust his father got a kick, out haying, andwent soft in the brain, and gave away money like bible texts afore he died. then his mother got queer and dragged alongfor years as weak as a baby; and his wife zeena, she's always been the greatest handat doctoring in the county. sickness and trouble: that's what ethan'shad his plate full up with, ever since the
very first helping." the next morning, when i looked out, i sawthe hollow-backed bay between the varnum spruces, and ethan frome, throwing back hisworn bearskin, made room for me in the sleigh at his side. after that, for a week, he drove me overevery morning to corbury flats, and on my return in the afternoon met me again andcarried me back through the icy night to starkfield. the distance each way was barely threemiles, but the old bay's pace was slow, and even with firm snow under the runners wewere nearly an hour on the way.
ethan frome drove in silence, the reinsloosely held in his left hand, his brown seamed profile, under the helmet-like peakof the cap, relieved against the banks of snow like the bronze image of a hero. he never turned his face to mine, oranswered, except in monosyllables, the questions i put, or such slightpleasantries as i ventured. he seemed a part of the mute melancholylandscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient inhim fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence. i simply felt that he lived in a depth ofmoral isolation too remote for casual
access, and i had the sense that hisloneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as i guessed that to be, but had in it, as harmon gow hadhinted, the profound accumulated cold of many starkfield winters. only once or twice was the distance betweenus bridged for a moment; and the glimpses thus gained confirmed my desire to knowmore. once i happened to speak of an engineeringjob i had been on the previous year in florida, and of the contrast between thewinter landscape about us and that in which i had found myself the year before; and to
my surprise frome said suddenly: "yes: iwas down there once, and for a good while afterward i could call up the sight of itin winter. but now it's all snowed under." he said no more, and i had to guess therest from the inflection of his voice and his sharp relapse into silence. another day, on getting into my train atthe flats, i missed a volume of popular science--i think it was on some recentdiscoveries in bio-chemistry--which i had carried with me to read on the way. i thought no more about it till i got intothe sleigh again that evening, and saw the
book in frome's hand."i found it after you were gone," he said. i put the volume into my pocket and wedropped back into our usual silence; but as we began to crawl up the long hill fromcorbury flats to the starkfield ridge i became aware in the dusk that he had turnedhis face to mine. "there are things in that book that ididn't know the first word about," he said. i wondered less at his words than at thequeer note of resentment in his voice. he was evidently surprised and slightlyaggrieved at his own ignorance. "does that sort of thing interest you?" i asked."it used to."
"there are one or two rather new things inthe book: there have been some big strides lately in that particular line ofresearch." i waited a moment for an answer that didnot come; then i said: "if you'd like to look the book through i'd be glad to leaveit with you." he hesitated, and i had the impression thathe felt himself about to yield to a stealing tide of inertia; then, "thank you--i'll take it," he answered shortly. i hoped that this incident might set upsome more direct communication between us. frome was so simple and straightforwardthat i was sure his curiosity about the book was based on a genuine interest in itssubject.
such tastes and acquirements in a man ofhis condition made the contrast more poignant between his outer situation andhis inner needs, and i hoped that the chance of giving expression to the lattermight at least unseal his lips. but something in his past history, or inhis present way of living, had apparently driven him too deeply into himself for anycasual impulse to draw him back to his kind. at our next meeting he made no allusion tothe book, and our intercourse seemed fated to remain as negative and one-sided as ifthere had been no break in his reserve. frome had been driving me over to the flatsfor about a week when one morning i looked
out of my window into a thick snow-fall. the height of the white waves massedagainst the garden-fence and along the wall of the church showed that the storm musthave been going on all night, and that the drifts were likely to be heavy in the open. i thought it probable that my train wouldbe delayed; but i had to be at the power- house for an hour or two that afternoon,and i decided, if frome turned up, to push through to the flats and wait there till mytrain came in. i don't know why i put it in theconditional, however, for i never doubted that frome would appear.
he was not the kind of man to be turnedfrom his business by any commotion of the elements; and at the appointed hour hissleigh glided up through the snow like a stage-apparition behind thickening veils ofgauze. i was getting to know him too well toexpress either wonder or gratitude at his keeping his appointment; but i exclaimed insurprise as i saw him turn his horse in a direction opposite to that of the corburyroad. "the railroad's blocked by a freight-trainthat got stuck in a drift below the flats," he explained, as we jogged off into thestinging whiteness. "but look here--where are you taking me,then?"
"straight to the junction, by the shortestway," he answered, pointing up school house hill with his whip. "to the junction--in this storm?why, it's a good ten miles!" "the bay'll do it if you give him time.you said you had some business there this afternoon. i'll see you get there."he said it so quietly that i could only answer: "you're doing me the biggest kindof a favour." "that's all right," he rejoined. abreast of the schoolhouse the road forked,and we dipped down a lane to the left,
between hemlock boughs bent inward to theirtrunks by the weight of the snow. i had often walked that way on sundays, andknew that the solitary roof showing through bare branches near the bottom of the hillwas that of frome's saw-mill. it looked exanimate enough, with its idlewheel looming above the black stream dashed with yellow-white spume, and its cluster ofsheds sagging under their white load. frome did not even turn his head as wedrove by, and still in silence we began to mount the next slope. about a mile farther, on a road i had nevertravelled, we came to an orchard of starved apple-trees writhing over a hillside amongoutcroppings of slate that nuzzled up
through the snow like animals pushing outtheir noses to breathe. beyond the orchard lay a field or two,their boundaries lost under drifts; and above the fields, huddled against the whiteimmensities of land and sky, one of those lonely new england farm-houses that makethe landscape lonelier. "that's my place," said frome, with asideway jerk of his lame elbow; and in the distress and oppression of the scene i didnot know what to answer. the snow had ceased, and a flash of waterysunlight exposed the house on the slope above us in all its plaintive ugliness. the black wraith of a deciduous creeperflapped from the porch, and the thin wooden
walls, under their worn coat of paint,seemed to shiver in the wind that had risen with the ceasing of the snow. "the house was bigger in my father's time:i had to take down the 'l,' a while back," frome continued, checking with a twitch ofthe left rein the bay's evident intention of turning in through the broken-down gate. i saw then that the unusually forlorn andstunted look of the house was partly due to the loss of what is known in new england asthe "l": that long deep-roofed adjunct usually built at right angles to the main house, and connecting it, by way ofstorerooms and tool-house, with the wood-
shed and cow-barn. whether because of its symbolic sense, theimage it presents of a life linked with the soil, and enclosing in itself the chiefsources of warmth and nourishment, or whether merely because of the consolatory thought that it enables the dwellers inthat harsh climate to get to their morning's work without facing the weather,it is certain that the "l" rather than the house itself seems to be the centre, the actual hearth-stone of the new englandfarm. perhaps this connection of ideas, which hadoften occurred to me in my rambles about
starkfield, caused me to hear a wistfulnote in frome's words, and to see in the diminished dwelling the image of his ownshrunken body. "we're kinder side-tracked here now," headded, "but there was considerable passing before the railroad was carried through tothe flats." he roused the lagging bay with anothertwitch; then, as if the mere sight of the house had let me too deeply into hisconfidence for any farther pretence of reserve, he went on slowly: "i've always set down the worst of mother's trouble tothat. when she got the rheumatism so bad shecouldn't move around she used to sit up
there and watch the road by the hour; andone year, when they was six months mending the bettsbridge pike after the floods, and harmon gow had to bring his stage roundthis way, she picked up so that she used to get down to the gate most days to see him. but after the trains begun running nobodyever come by here to speak of, and mother never could get it through her head whathad happened, and it preyed on her right along till she died." as we turned into the corbury road the snowbegan to fall again, cutting off our last glimpse of the house; and frome's silencefell with it, letting down between us the
old veil of reticence. this time the wind did not cease with thereturn of the snow. instead, it sprang up to a gale which nowand then, from a tattered sky, flung pale sweeps of sunlight over a landscapechaotically tossed. but the bay was as good as frome's word,and we pushed on to the junction through the wild white scene. in the afternoon the storm held off, andthe clearness in the west seemed to my inexperienced eye the pledge of a fairevening. i finished my business as quickly aspossible, and we set out for starkfield
with a good chance of getting there forsupper. but at sunset the clouds gathered again,bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from asky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts andeddies of the morning. it seemed to be a part of the thickeningdarkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer. the small ray of frome's lantern was soonlost in this smothering medium, in which even his sense of direction, and the bay'shoming instinct, finally ceased to serve us.
two or three times some ghostly landmarksprang up to warn us that we were astray, and then was sucked back into the mist; andwhen we finally regained our road the old horse began to show signs of exhaustion. i felt myself to blame for having acceptedfrome's offer, and after a short discussion i persuaded him to let me get out of thesleigh and walk along through the snow at the bay's side. in this way we struggled on for anothermile or two, and at last reached a point where frome, peering into what seemed to meformless night, said: "that's my gate down yonder."
the last stretch had been the hardest partof the way. the bitter cold and the heavy going hadnearly knocked the wind out of me, and i could feel the horse's side ticking like aclock under my hand. "look here, frome," i began, "there's noearthly use in your going any farther--" but he interrupted me: "nor you neither.there's been about enough of this for anybody." i understood that he was offering me anight's shelter at the farm, and without answering i turned into the gate at hisside, and followed him to the barn, where i helped him to unharness and bed down thetired horse.
when this was done he unhooked the lanternfrom the sleigh, stepped out again into the night, and called to me over his shoulder:"this way." far off above us a square of light trembledthrough the screen of snow. staggering along in frome's wake ifloundered toward it, and in the darkness almost fell into one of the deep driftsagainst the front of the house. frome scrambled up the slippery steps ofthe porch, digging a way through the snow with his heavily booted foot.then he lifted his lantern, found the latch, and led the way into the house. i went after him into a low unlit passage,at the back of which a ladder-like
staircase rose into obscurity. on our right a line of light marked thedoor of the room which had sent its ray across the night; and behind the door iheard a woman's voice droning querulously. frome stamped on the worn oil-cloth toshake the snow from his boots, and set down his lantern on a kitchen chair which wasthe only piece of furniture in the hall. then he opened the door. "come in," he said; and as he spoke thedroning voice grew still... it was that night that i found the clue toethan frome, and began to put together this vision of his story.
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