“I guess I won’t come up yet awhile,”
he said, turning as if to go back to the kitchen.
Zeena stopped short and looked at him. “For
the land’s sake-what you going to do down here?”
“I’ve got the mill accounts to go over.”
She continued to stare at him, the flame of the unshaded
lamp bringing out with microscopic cruelty the fretful
lines of her face.
“At this time o’ night? You’ll
ketch your death. The fire’s out long ago.”
Without answering he moved away toward the kitchen.
As he did so his glance crossed Mattie’s and
he fancied that a fugitive warning gleamed through
her lashes. The next moment they sank to her flushed
cheeks and she began to mount the stairs ahead of Zeena.
“That’s so. It is powerful cold down
here,” Ethan assented; and with lowered head
he went up in his wife’s wake, and followed her
across the threshold of their room.
There was some hauling to be done at the lower end
of the wood-lot, and Ethan was out early the next
day.
The winter morning was as clear as crystal. The
sunrise burned red in a pure sky, the shadows on the
rim of the wood-lot were darkly blue, and beyond the
white and scintillating fields patches of far-off
forest hung like smoke.
It was in the early morning stillness, when his muscles
were swinging to their familiar task and his lungs
expanding with long draughts of mountain air, that
Ethan did his clearest thinking. He and Zeena
had not exchanged a word after the door of their room
had closed on them. She had measured out some
drops from a medicine-bottle on a chair by the bed
and, after swallowing them, and wrapping her head
in a piece of yellow flannel, had lain down with her
face turned away. Ethan undressed hurriedly and
blew out the light so that he should not see her when
he took his place at her side. As he lay there
he could hear Mattie moving about in her room, and
her candle, sending its small ray across the landing,
drew a scarcely perceptible line of light under his
door. He kept his eyes fixed on the light till
it vanished. Then the room grew perfectly black,
and not a sound was audible but Zeena’s asthmatic
breathing. Ethan felt confusedly that there were
many things he ought to think about, but through his
tingling veins and tired brain only one sensation
throbbed: the warmth of Mattie’s shoulder
against his. Why had he not kissed her when he
held her there? A few hours earlier he would
not have asked himself the question. Even a few
minutes earlier, when they had stood alone outside
the house, he would not have dared to think of kissing
her. But since he had seen her lips in the lamplight
he felt that they were his.
Now, in the bright morning air, her face was still
before him. It was part of the sun’s red
and of the pure glitter on the snow. How the
girl had changed since she had come to Starkfield!
He remembered what a colourless slip of a thing she
had looked the day he had met her at the station.
And all the first winter, how she had shivered with
cold when the northerly gales shook the thin clapboards
and the snow beat like hail against the loose-hung
windows!
