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 dough-nuts.
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."