“Look here, Frome,” I began, “there’s
no earthly 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 a night’s
shelter at the farm, and without answering I turned
into the gate at his side, and followed him to the
barn, where I helped him to unharness and bed down
the tired horse. When this was done he unhooked
the lantern from 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 trembled through
the screen of snow. Staggering along in Frome’s
wake I floundered toward it, and in the darkness almost
fell into one of the deep drifts against the front
of the house. Frome scrambled up the slippery
steps of the 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 the door of the room which had sent its ray
across the night; and behind the door I heard a woman’s
voice droning querulously.
Frome stamped on the worn oil-cloth to shake the snow
from his boots, and set down his lantern on a kitchen
chair which was the only piece of furniture in the
hall. Then he opened the door.
“Come in,” he said; and as he spoke the
droning voice grew still...
It was that night that I found the clue to Ethan Frome,
and began to put together this vision of his story.
The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts
at the windy corners. In a sky of iron the points
of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed
his cold fires. The moon had set, but the night
was so transparent that the white house-fronts between
the elms looked gray against the snow, clumps of bushes
made black stains on it, and the basement windows
of the church sent shafts of yellow light far across
the endless undulations.
Young Ethan Frome walked at a quick pace along the
deserted street, past the bank and Michael Eady’s
new brick store and Lawyer Varnum’s house with
the two black Norway spruces at the gate. Opposite
the Varnum gate, where the road fell away toward the
Corbury valley, the church reared its slim white steeple
and narrow peristyle. As the young man walked
toward it the upper windows drew a black arcade along
the side wall of the building, but from the lower openings,
on the side where the ground sloped steeply down to
the Corbury road, the light shot its long bars, illuminating
many fresh furrows in the track leading to the basement
door, and showing, under an adjoining shed, a line
of sleighs with heavily blanketed horses.
