As the dancers poured out of the hall Frome, drawing back behind the
projecting storm-door, watched the segregation of the grotesquely
muffled groups, in which a moving lantern ray now and then lit up a
face flushed with food and dancing. The villagers, being afoot, were
the first to climb the slope to the main street, while the country
neighbours packed themselves more slowly into the sleighs under the
shed.

"Ain't you riding, Mattie?" a woman's voice called back from the throng
about the shed, and Ethan's heart gave a jump. From where he stood he
could not see the persons coming out of the hall till they had advanced
a few steps beyond the wooden sides of the storm-door; but through its
cracks he heard a clear voice answer: "Mercy no! Not on such a night."

She was there, then, close to him, only a thin board between. In another
moment she would step forth into the night, and his eyes, accustomed
to the obscurity, would discern her as clearly as though she stood in
daylight. A wave of shyness pulled him back into the dark angle of the
wall, and he stood there in silence instead of making his presence known
to her. It had been one of the wonders of their intercourse that from
the first, she, the quicker, finer, more expressive, instead of crushing
him by the contrast, had given him something of her own ease and
freedom; but now he felt as heavy and loutish as in his student days,
when he had tried to "jolly" the Worcester girls at a picnic.

He hung back, and she came out alone and paused within a few yards of
him. She was almost the last to leave the hall, and she stood looking
uncertainly about her as if wondering why he did not show himself.
Then a man's figure approached, coming so close to her that under their
formless wrappings they seemed merged in one dim outline.

"Gentleman friend gone back on you? Say, Matt, that's tough! No, I
wouldn't be mean enough to tell the other girls. I ain't as low-down as
that." (How Frome hated his cheap banter!) "But look at here, ain't it
lucky I got the old man's cutter down there waiting for us?"

Frome heard the girl's voice, gaily incredulous: "What on earth's your
father's cutter doin' down there?"

"Why, waiting for me to take a ride. I got the roan colt too. I kinder
knew I'd want to take a ride to-night," Eady, in his triumph, tried to
put a sentimental note into his bragging voice.

The girl seemed to waver, and Frome saw her twirl the end of her scarf
irresolutely about her fingers. Not for the world would he have made
a sign to her, though it seemed to him that his life hung on her next
gesture.

"Hold on a minute while I unhitch the colt," Denis called to her,
springing toward the shed.

She stood perfectly still, looking after him, in an attitude of tranquil
expectancy torturing to the hidden watcher. Frome noticed that she no
longer turned her head from side to side, as though peering through the
night for another figure. She let Denis Eady lead out the horse, climb
into the cutter and fling back the bearskin to make room for her at his
side; then, with a swift motion of flight, she turned about and darted
up the slope toward the front of the church.

"Good-bye! Hope you'll have a lovely ride!" she called back to him over
her shoulder.

Denis laughed, and gave the horse a cut that brought him quickly abreast
of her retreating figure.

"Come along! Get in quick! It's as slippery as thunder on this turn," he
cried, leaning over to reach out a hand to her.

She laughed back at him: "Good-night! I'm not getting in."

By this time they had passed beyond Frome's earshot and he could only
follow the shadowy pantomime of their silhouettes as they continued
to move along the crest of the slope above him. He saw Eady, after a
moment, jump from the cutter and go toward the girl with the reins over
one arm. The other he tried to slip through hers; but she eluded him
nimbly, and Frome's heart, which had swung out over a black void,
trembled back to safety. A moment later he heard the jingle of departing
sleigh bells and discerned a figure advancing alone toward the empty
expanse of snow before the church.

In the black shade of the Varnum spruces he caught up with her and she
turned with a quick "Oh!"

"Think I'd forgotten you, Matt?" he asked with sheepish glee.

She answered seriously: "I thought maybe you couldn't come back for me."

"Couldn't? What on earth could stop me?"

"I knew Zeena wasn't feeling any too good to-day."

"Oh, she's in bed long ago." He paused, a question struggling in him.
"Then you meant to walk home all alone?"

"Oh, I ain't afraid!" she laughed.

They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world
glimmering about them wide and grey under the stars. He brought his
question out.

"If you thought I hadn't come, why didn't you ride back with Denis
Eady?"

"Why, where were you? How did you know? I never saw you!"

Her wonder and his laughter ran together like spring rills in a thaw.
Ethan had the sense of having done something arch and ingenious. To
prolong the effect he groped for a dazzling phrase, and brought out, in
a growl of rapture: "Come along."

He slipped an arm through hers, as Eady had done, and fancied it was
faintly pressed against her side, but neither of them moved. It was so
dark under the spruces that he could barely see the shape of her head
beside his shoulder. He longed to stoop his cheek and rub it against
her scarf. He would have liked to stand there with her all night in the
blackness. She moved forward a step or two and then paused again above
the dip of the Corbury road. Its icy slope, scored by innumerable
runners, looked like a mirror scratched by travellers at an inn.

"There was a whole lot of them coasting before the moon set," she said.

"Would you like to come in and coast with them some night?" he asked.

"Oh, would you, Ethan? It would be lovely!"

"We'll come to-morrow if there's a moon."

She lingered, pressing closer to his side. "Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum
came just as near running into the big elm at the bottom. We were all
sure they were killed." Her shiver ran down his arm. "Wouldn't it have
been too awful? They're so happy!"

"Oh, Ned ain't much at steering. I guess I can take you down all right!"
he said disdainfully.

He was aware that he was "talking big," like Denis Eady; but his
reaction of joy had unsteadied him, and the inflection with which she
had said of the engaged couple "They're so happy!" made the words sound
as if she had been thinking of herself and him.

"The elm is dangerous, though. It ought to be cut down," she insisted.

"Would you be afraid of it, with me?"

"I told you I ain't the kind to be afraid" she tossed back, almost
indifferently; and suddenly she began to walk on with a rapid step.

These alterations of mood were the despair and joy of Ethan Frome. The
motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the
branches. The fact that he had no right to show his feelings, and thus
provoke the expression of hers, made him attach a fantastic importance
to every change in her look and tone. Now he thought she understood him,
and feared; now he was sure she did not, and despaired. To-night the
pressure of accumulated misgivings sent the scale drooping toward
despair, and her indifference was the more chilling after the flush of
joy into which she had plunged him by dismissing Denis Eady. He mounted
School House Hill at her side and walked on in silence till they
reached the lane leading to the saw-mill; then the need of some definite
assurance grew too strong for him.

"You'd have found me right off if you hadn't gone back to have that last
reel with Denis," he brought out awkwardly. He could not pronounce the
name without a stiffening of the muscles of his throat.

"Why, Ethan, how could I tell you were there?"

"I suppose what folks say is true," he jerked out at her, instead of
answering.

She stopped short, and he felt, in the darkness, that her face was
lifted quickly to his. "Why, what do folks say?"

"It's natural enough you should be leaving us" he floundered on,
following his thought.

"Is that what they say?" she mocked back at him; then, with a sudden
drop of her sweet treble: "You mean that Zeena--ain't suited with me any
more?" she faltered.

Their arms had slipped apart and they stood motionless, each seeking to
distinguish the other's face.

"I know I ain't anything like as smart as I ought to be," she went on,
while he vainly struggled for expression. "There's lots of things a
hired girl could do that come awkward to me still--and I haven't got much
strength in my arms. But if she'd only tell me I'd try. You know she
hardly ever says anything, and sometimes I can see she ain't suited,
and yet I don't know why." She turned on him with a sudden flash of
indignation. "You'd ought to tell me, Ethan Frome--you'd ought to! Unless
you want me to go too--"

Unless he wanted her to go too! The cry was balm to his raw wound. The
iron heavens seemed to melt and rain down sweetness. Again he struggled
for the all-expressive word, and again, his arm in hers, found only a
deep "Come along."

They walked on in silence through the blackness of the hemlock-shaded
lane, where Ethan's sawmill gloomed through the night, and out again
into the comparative clearness of the fields. On the farther side of the
hemlock belt the open country rolled away before them grey and lonely
under the stars. Sometimes their way led them under the shade of an
overhanging bank or through the thin obscurity of a clump of leafless
trees. Here and there a farmhouse stood far back among the fields, mute
and cold as a grave-stone. The night was so still that they heard the
frozen snow crackle under their feet. The crash of a loaded branch
falling far off in the woods reverberated like a musket-shot, and once a
fox barked, and Mattie shrank closer to Ethan, and quickened her steps.

At length they sighted the group of larches at Ethan's gate, and as they
drew near it the sense that the walk was over brought back his words.

"Then you don't want to leave us, Matt?"

He had to stoop his head to catch her stifled whisper: "Where'd I go, if
I did?"

The answer sent a pang through him but the tone suffused him with joy.
He forgot what else he had meant to say and pressed her against him so
closely that he seemed to feel her warmth in his veins.

"You ain't crying are you, Matt?"

"No, of course I'm not," she quavered.

They turned in at the gate and passed under the shaded knoll where,
enclosed in a low fence, the Frome grave-stones slanted at crazy angles
through the snow. Ethan looked at them curiously. For years that quiet
company had mocked his restlessness, his desire for change and freedom.
"We never got away--how should you?" seemed to be written on every
headstone; and whenever he went in or out of his gate he thought with a
shiver: "I shall just go on living here till I join them." But now all
desire for change had vanished, and the sight of the little enclosure
gave him a warm sense of continuance and stability.

"I guess we'll never let you go, Matt," he whispered, as though even the
dead, lovers once, must conspire with him to keep her; and brushing by
the graves, he thought: "We'll always go on living here together, and
some day she'll lie there beside me."

He let the vision possess him as they climbed the hill to the house.
He was never so happy with her as when he abandoned himself to these
dreams. Half-way up the slope Mattie stumbled against some unseen
obstruction and clutched his sleeve to steady herself. The wave of
warmth that went through him was like the prolongation of his vision.
For the first time he stole his arm about her, and she did not resist.
They walked on as if they were floating on a summer stream.

Zeena always went to bed as soon as she had had her supper, and the
shutterless windows of the house were dark. A dead cucumber-vine dangled
from the porch like the crape streamer tied to the door for a death, and
the thought flashed through Ethan's brain: "If it was there for Zeena--"
Then he had a distinct sight of his wife lying in their bedroom asleep,
her mouth slightly open, her false teeth in a tumbler by the bed...

They walked around to the back of the house, between the rigid
gooseberry bushes. It was Zeena's habit, when they came back late from
the village, to leave the key of the kitchen door under the mat. Ethan
stood before the door, his head heavy with dreams, his arm still about
Mattie. "Matt--" he began, not knowing what he meant to say.

She slipped out of his hold without speaking, and he stooped down and
felt for the key.

"It's not there!" he said, straightening himself with a start.

They strained their eyes at each other through the icy darkness. Such a
thing had never happened before.

"Maybe she's forgotten it," Mattie said in a tremulous whisper; but both
of them knew that it was not like Zeena to forget.

"It might have fallen off into the snow," Mattie continued, after a
pause during which they had stood intently listening.

"It must have been pushed off, then," he rejoined in the same tone.
Another wild thought tore through him. What if tramps had been
there--what if...

Again he listened, fancying he heard a distant sound in the house; then
he felt in his pocket for a match, and kneeling down, passed its light
slowly over the rough edges of snow about the doorstep.

He was still kneeling when his eyes, on a level with the lower panel of
the door, caught a faint ray beneath it. Who could be stirring in that
silent house? He heard a step on the stairs, and again for an instant
the thought of tramps tore through him. Then the door opened and he saw
his wife.

Against the dark background of the kitchen she stood up tall and
angular, one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast,
while the other held a lamp. The light, on a level with her chin, drew
out of the darkness her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of the
hand that clutched the quilt, and deepened fantastically the hollows and
prominences of her high-boned face under its ring of crimping-pins. To
Ethan, still in the rosy haze of his hour with Mattie, the sight came
with the intense precision of the last dream before waking. He felt as
if he had never before known what his wife looked like.

She drew aside without speaking, and Mattie and Ethan passed into the
kitchen, which had the deadly chill of a vault after the dry cold of the
night.

"Guess you forgot about us, Zeena," Ethan joked, stamping the snow from
his boots.

"No. I just felt so mean I couldn't sleep."

Mattie came forward, unwinding her wraps, the colour of the cherry scarf
in her fresh lips and cheeks. "I'm so sorry, Zeena! Isn't there anything
I can do?"

"No; there's nothing." Zeena turned away from her. "You might 'a' shook
off that snow outside," she said to her husband.

She walked out of the kitchen ahead of them and pausing in the hall
raised the lamp at arm's-length, as if to light them up the stairs.

Ethan paused also, affecting to fumble for the peg on which he hung his
coat and cap. The doors of the two bedrooms faced each other across the
narrow upper landing, and to-night it was peculiarly repugnant to him
that Mattie should see him follow Zeena.

"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.

Against the dark background of the kitchen she stood up tall and angular, one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast, while the other held a lamp.  As the dance ends, Ethan first hears and then sees Mattie emerge, but he shrinks back in the shadows to avoid initiating contact. The crowd thins out rapidly, and Mattie is left wondering what has kept Ethan from coming to meet her. As Mattie stands alone, Eady approaches, offering to take her for a ride in his father's cutter . Ethan, still hanging back, observes Mattie seeming to waver, and wonders whether she will go with Eady or refuse his attentions. After unhitching the horse from its post and setting the cutter in motion, Eady confidently calls out to Mattie to hop in. She politely declines. When Eady attempts to pick her up by linking arms with her, she draws away gracefully. As Frome listens to the bells of the cutter fade away in the distance, he sees Mattie's shadow walking alone up the hill toward the silent snow bank. Ethan quickly closes in on Mattie, surprising her with his presence when he catches up to her amidst the Varnums' spruce trees. She is genuinely caught off guard by his trick and lets out a peal of laughter that thrills Ethan. They link arms together and look at the "coasting hill," where people go sledding. Ethan says they can sled there the following night if the moon is out. Mattie mentions that Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum, a young engaged couple, nearly collided with the big elm at the bottom of the hill when they were sledding. "We were all sure they were killed," she says with a shudder. Beginning the hike home, Ethan continues to wonder about Mattie's feelings toward Eady and decides to press the issue by needling Mattie about her behavior at the dance. But his roundabout fashion of pursuing the conversation only leads Mattie to believe that Ethan's wife, Zeena, is on the verge of dismissing her. Mattie wonders if Ethan himself is similarly inclined, although dismissal of Mattie is the furthest thing from Ethan's mind. Left at an impasse, the couple drops the subject wordlessly, and Ethan and Mattie continue on their way. At the Frome gate, Ethan attempts to reassure Mattie, and the companions then draw together as they ascend the hill. Ethan, meditating on the prospect of being with Mattie always, puts his arm decidedly around her for the first time. At the back door of the dark house, Ethan searches for the key that Zeena usually leaves out for them, but he finds nothing. When Ethan kneels down for a more thorough search, he spies a faint ray of light behind the door. The door then opens to reveal Zeena, a sickly, complaining woman. Zeena explains that she was unable to sleep on account of her poor health, and she brings her lamp around to the stairs to light the way up. Ethan declares that he will be staying downstairs for a while, as he has some accounts to review. When Zeena dismisses the idea as a foolish one, he submissively follows her and Mattie upstairs, retiring into the bedroom with his wife.

In Mattie, Ethan finds a somewhat mystical kinship--the text compares Ethan's infatuation with his wife's cousin to the "shock of silent joy" that he feels when he contemplates the beauties of nature. Given his sensitivity to place, it is no surprise that Ethan feels especially energized during his nighttime walks home from town with Mattie. During these moments, Ethan feels most strongly the "sweetness" of the connection between them. Standing between Ethan and Mattie is the ailing Zeena, another character whom Wharton reveals only by hints and degrees. An early passage describes Zeena as having sharp and suspicious eyes, and although the conversation that Ethan remembers as he stands outside the church  seems harmless, Zeena's words resonate with hidden insight. For instance, when Zeena states to Ethan that the doctor thinks she shouldn't be left alone, it seems that she is arguing the necessity of a housekeeper, but underlying this remark is Zeena's sense that Ethan and Mattie could run off together. Just when we are sure that Zeena's sole concern is the possibility of Mattie leaving, she makes a caustic remark about the fact that since Mattie's arrival, Ethan has taken to shaving every day. This remark also seems to belie Zeena's well-founded suspicion of an intrigue between her husband and her cousin, as does her evening vigil. Wharton's caricature-like depiction of Zeena makes her seem like an old woman who possesses neither beauty nor kindness. Juxtaposed with Mattie, Zeena serves as a foil , highlighting Mattie's vigor. Mattie seems to embody health, with her vibrant scarf and her last name, Silver, which suggests brightness. Zeena, on the other hand, speaks in a "flat whine," and when she appears at the doorway to greet Ethan, Wharton dwells on her "flat breast," "puckered throat," and the "hollows and prominences" of her face. The contest for Ethan's heart is no contest at all--Mattie seems to be Ethan's soul-mate, Zeena a nagging, hypochondriacal shrew. Because the reader already knows, by the time the narrator meets Ethan, that Ethan is disfigured, a mood of foreboding hangs over the story. The "throng of disregarded hints and menaces" that crowd Ethan's mind at the dance foreshadows the impending danger. The conversation about the sledding hill, with its mention of the potentially deadly elm, also constitutes a deliberate and obvious foreshadowing of later events.


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!

He had been afraid that she would hate the hard life, the cold and
loneliness; but not a sign of discontent escaped her. Zeena took the
view that Mattie was bound to make the best of Starkfield since she
hadn't any other place to go to; but this did not strike Ethan as
conclusive. Zeena, at any rate, did not apply the principle in her own
case.

He felt all the more sorry for the girl because misfortune had, in
a sense, indentured her to them. Mattie Silver was the daughter of
a cousin of Zenobia Frome's, who had inflamed his clan with mingled
sentiments of envy and admiration by descending from the hills to
Connecticut, where he had married a Stamford girl and succeeded to
her father's thriving "drug" business. Unhappily Orin Silver, a man of
far-reaching aims, had died too soon to prove that the end justifies the
means. His accounts revealed merely what the means had been; and these
were such that it was fortunate for his wife and daughter that his books
were examined only after his impressive funeral. His wife died of the
disclosure, and Mattie, at twenty, was left alone to make her way on the
fifty dollars obtained from the sale of her piano. For this purpose her
equipment, though varied, was inadequate. She could trim a hat, make
molasses candy, recite "Curfew shall not ring to-night," and play "The
Lost Chord" and a pot-pourri from "Carmen." When she tried to extend the
field of her activities in the direction of stenography and book-keeping
her health broke down, and six months on her feet behind the counter of
a department store did not tend to restore it. Her nearest relations had
been induced to place their savings in her father's hands, and though,
after his death, they ungrudgingly acquitted themselves of the Christian
duty of returning good for evil by giving his daughter all the advice
at their disposal, they could hardly be expected to supplement it by
material aid. But when Zenobia's doctor recommended her looking about
for some one to help her with the house-work the clan instantly saw the
chance of exacting a compensation from Mattie. Zenobia, though doubtful
of the girl's efficiency, was tempted by the freedom to find fault
without much risk of losing her; and so Mattie came to Starkfield.

Zenobia's fault-finding was of the silent kind, but not the less
penetrating for that. During the first months Ethan alternately burned
with the desire to see Mattie defy her and trembled with fear of the
result. Then the situation grew less strained. The pure air, and the
long summer hours in the open, gave back life and elasticity to Mattie,
and Zeena, with more leisure to devote to her complex ailments, grew
less watchful of the girl's omissions; so that Ethan, struggling on
under the burden of his barren farm and failing saw-mill, could at least
imagine that peace reigned in his house.

There was really, even now, no tangible evidence to the contrary; but
since the previous night a vague dread had hung on his sky-line. It was
formed of Zeena's obstinate silence, of Mattie's sudden look of warning,
of the memory of just such fleeting imperceptible signs as those which
told him, on certain stainless mornings, that before night there would
be rain.

His dread was so strong that, man-like, he sought to postpone certainty.
The hauling was not over till mid-day, and as the lumber was to be
delivered to Andrew Hale, the Starkfield builder, it was really easier
for Ethan to send Jotham Powell, the hired man, back to the farm on
foot, and drive the load down to the village himself. He had scrambled
up on the logs, and was sitting astride of them, close over his shaggy
grays, when, coming between him and their streaming necks, he had a
vision of the warning look that Mattie had given him the night before.

"If there's going to be any trouble I want to be there," was his vague
reflection, as he threw to Jotham the unexpected order to unhitch the
team and lead them back to the barn.

It was a slow trudge home through the heavy fields, and when the two
men entered the kitchen Mattie was lifting the coffee from the stove and
Zeena was already at the table. Her husband stopped short at sight of
her. Instead of her usual calico wrapper and knitted shawl she wore her
best dress of brown merino, and above her thin strands of hair, which
still preserved the tight undulations of the crimping-pins, rose a hard
perpendicular bonnet, as to which Ethan's clearest notion was that he
had to pay five dollars for it at the Bettsbridge Emporium. On the floor
beside her stood his old valise and a bandbox wrapped in newspapers.

"Why, where are you going, Zeena?" he exclaimed.

"I've got my shooting pains so bad that I'm going over to Bettsbridge
to spend the night with Aunt Martha Pierce and see that new doctor," she
answered in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she had said she was going into
the store-room to take a look at the preserves, or up to the attic to go
over the blankets.

In spite of her sedentary habits such abrupt decisions were not without
precedent in Zeena's history. Twice or thrice before she had suddenly
packed Ethan's valise and started off to Bettsbridge, or even
Springfield, to seek the advice of some new doctor, and her husband had
grown to dread these expeditions because of their cost. Zeena always
came back laden with expensive remedies, and her last visit to
Springfield had been commemorated by her paying twenty dollars for an
electric battery of which she had never been able to learn the use. But
for the moment his sense of relief was so great as to preclude all other
feelings. He had now no doubt that Zeena had spoken the truth in saying,
the night before, that she had sat up because she felt "too mean" to
sleep: her abrupt resolve to seek medical advice showed that, as usual,
she was wholly absorbed in her health.

As if expecting a protest, she continued plaintively; "If you're too
busy with the hauling I presume you can let Jotham Powell drive me over
with the sorrel in time to ketch the train at the Flats."

Her husband hardly heard what she was saying. During the winter months
there was no stage between Starkfield and Bettsbridge, and the trains
which stopped at Corbury Flats were slow and infrequent. A rapid
calculation showed Ethan that Zeena could not be back at the farm before
the following evening....

"If I'd supposed you'd 'a' made any objection to Jotham Powell's driving
me over--" she began again, as though his silence had implied refusal. On
the brink of departure she was always seized with a flux of words. "All
I know is," she continued, "I can't go on the way I am much longer.
The pains are clear away down to my ankles now, or I'd 'a' walked in to
Starkfield on my own feet, sooner'n put you out, and asked Michael Eady
to let me ride over on his wagon to the Flats, when he sends to meet the
train that brings his groceries. I'd 'a' had two hours to wait in the
station, but I'd sooner 'a' done it, even with this cold, than to have
you say--"

"Of course Jotham'll drive you over," Ethan roused himself to answer.
He became suddenly conscious that he was looking at Mattie while Zeena
talked to him, and with an effort he turned his eyes to his wife. She
sat opposite the window, and the pale light reflected from the banks of
snow made her face look more than usually drawn and bloodless, sharpened
the three parallel creases between ear and cheek, and drew querulous
lines from her thin nose to the corners of her mouth. Though she was but
seven years her husband's senior, and he was only twenty-eight, she was
already an old woman.

Ethan tried to say something befitting the occasion, but there was only
one thought in his mind: the fact that, for the first time since
Mattie had come to live with them, Zeena was to be away for a night. He
wondered if the girl were thinking of it too....

He knew that Zeena must be wondering why he did not offer to drive her
to the Flats and let Jotham Powell take the lumber to Starkfield, and
at first he could not think of a pretext for not doing so; then he said:
"I'd take you over myself, only I've got to collect the cash for the
lumber."

As soon as the words were spoken he regretted them, not only because
they were untrue--there being no prospect of his receiving cash payment
from Hale--but also because he knew from experience the imprudence of
letting Zeena think he was in funds on the eve of one of her therapeutic
excursions. At the moment, however, his one desire was to avoid the long
drive with her behind the ancient sorrel who never went out of a walk.

Zeena made no reply: she did not seem to hear what he had said. She had
already pushed her plate aside, and was measuring out a draught from a
large bottle at her elbow.

"It ain't done me a speck of good, but I guess I might as well use it
up," she remarked; adding, as she pushed the empty bottle toward Mattie:
"If you can get the taste out it'll do for pickles."

The morning after the dance, Ethan heads out early to the wood lot to attend to some hauling. He and Zeena have not exchanged a single word since retiring the previous night, during which Ethan lay awake for many hours, preoccupied by his thoughts of Mattie. As he hauls the wood, Ethan regrets that he didn't kiss Mattie when they were alone together the night before. Ethan's mind then turns to the relationship between Mattie and Zeena, which has been chilly ever since Mattie came to live in Starkfield, after her father died. A sense of dread and foreboding fills Ethan, and he channels his fear by throwing himself into his work until midday. He considers driving his lumber load into the village at once, but then thinks better of it and returns to the house to check on the women. Coming in, he is surprised to see Zeena sitting at the table in her best dress, with a small piece of luggage at her side. She says that she cannot stand her recurring pains any longer and has resolved to set out for Bettsbridge on an overnight visit in order to see a new doctor. Ethan quickly agrees to Zeena's proposal that Jotham Powell, the hired man, drive her to the train station. He would drive her himself, he says, but he must collect a direct cash payment from Andrew Hale upon his delivery of a load of wood that afternoon. Ethan's excuse is a lie, since Hale is unlikely to pay up, but Ethan has no desire to go for a long ride with his wife.

As Ethan toils at his farm work, his thoughts of Mattie stream into a series of worries that reveal his capacity as a "seer," one who senses the subtle signs of looming tragedy. Ethan's thoughts also tell us about the nature of the tragic events to come, so that we too become seer of a sort. Wharton associates Ethan's insights into the future with his ability to predict rain, despite appearances to the contrary on "stainless" mornings. We can perceive that this statement is a metaphor for the state of Ethan and Mattie's relationship: although Ethan's conduct with Mattie has hitherto remained stainless, from our knowledge of his desire for her, we can predict the "storm" that they will soon experience. Ethan's reaction to his foresight is a passive denial. As he grows increasingly aware of an inevitable disaster surrounding his passion for Mattie, he throws himself into his logging with extra zeal, as though hard work will enable him to escape from what we already understand to be predestined. As Ethan muses on his present love for Mattie, the narrator muses on Ethan's loveless marriage, undertaken out of fear of misery rather than true devotion. The moment introduces one of the novel's themes: the conflict between warm inner desire and cold external realities. The theme receives emphasis when, in subsequent chapters, we learn of Ethan's dream to leave his farm and work in a town--perhaps even as an engineer--and see how circumstances conspire to thwart him. Again and again, Wharton links Starkfield's weather to the characters' emotional states to show that the external world takes precedence over the internal landscape of a character's being. No description in the novel is neutral. We learn that the bleakness of the New England winters contributed to the sense of loneliness and depression that pushed Ethan into Zeena's sickly arms: the marriage between Ethan and Zeena might not have happened if Ethan's mother "had died in spring instead of winter." Every setting seems to restrict, inhibit, and debilitate, generating sickness and disability--another of the novel's themes. By this point in the novel, we have learned of Ethan's mother's illness, of Zeena's maladies, and of the disabilities that Ethan suffers by the end of the story's plot. Zeena's unexpected departure for Bettsbridge can be seen as evidence of either naivete or mistrust. Certainly, departure is the last move that one would expect of a suspicious wife. For this reason, Ethan assumes--logically, but perhaps foolishly--that Zeena must truly need medical attention. A more skeptical interpreter of Zeena's trip might consider it a clever attempt to learn the true nature of Ethan's feelings for Mattie by putting those feelings to the test. Whatever the case, Ethan seems unable even to suspect his wife of having an ulterior motive. Ethan's attitude toward his wife lacks subtlety, as does Wharton's portrayal of Zeena as an ugly shrew. Neither the author nor Ethan seems to have any sympathy for Zeena, and, consequently, neither do we. Zeena exists not as a complicated character but as a stumbling block to Ethan's happiness with Mattie.


As soon as his wife had driven off Ethan took his coat and cap from the
peg. Mattie was washing up the dishes, humming one of the dance tunes
of the night before. He said "So long, Matt," and she answered gaily "So
long, Ethan"; and that was all.

It was warm and bright in the kitchen. The sun slanted through the south
window on the girl's moving figure, on the cat dozing in a chair, and on
the geraniums brought in from the door-way, where Ethan had planted
them in the summer to "make a garden" for Mattie. He would have liked to
linger on, watching her tidy up and then settle down to her sewing; but
he wanted still more to get the hauling done and be back at the farm
before night.

All the way down to the village he continued to think of his return to
Mattie. The kitchen was a poor place, not "spruce" and shining as his
mother had kept it in his boyhood; but it was surprising what a homelike
look the mere fact of Zeena's absence gave it. And he pictured what it
would be like that evening, when he and Mattie were there after supper.
For the first time they would be alone together indoors, and they would
sit there, one on each side of the stove, like a married couple, he in
his stocking feet and smoking his pipe, she laughing and talking in that
funny way she had, which was always as new to him as if he had never
heard her before.

The sweetness of the picture, and the relief of knowing that his fears
of "trouble" with Zeena were unfounded, sent up his spirits with a rush,
and he, who was usually so silent, whistled and sang aloud as he
drove through the snowy fields. There was in him a slumbering spark of
sociability which the long Starkfield winters had not yet extinguished.
By nature grave and inarticulate, he admired recklessness and gaiety in
others and was warmed to the marrow by friendly human intercourse. At
Worcester, though he had the name of keeping to himself and not being
much of a hand at a good time, he had secretly gloried in being clapped
on the back and hailed as "Old Ethe" or "Old Stiff"; and the cessation
of such familiarities had increased the chill of his return to
Starkfield.

There the silence had deepened about him year by year. Left alone, after
his father's accident, to carry the burden of farm and mill, he had had
no time for convivial loiterings in the village; and when his mother
fell ill the loneliness of the house grew more oppressive than that
of the fields. His mother had been a talker in her day, but after her
"trouble" the sound of her voice was seldom heard, though she had not
lost the power of speech. Sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when
in desperation her son asked her why she didn't "say something," she
would lift a finger and answer: "Because I'm listening"; and on stormy
nights, when the loud wind was about the house, she would complain, if
he spoke to her: "They're talking so out there that I can't hear you."

It was only when she drew toward her last illness, and his cousin
Zenobia Pierce came over from the next valley to help him nurse her,
that human speech was heard again in the house. After the mortal silence
of his long imprisonment Zeena's volubility was music in his ears. He
felt that he might have "gone like his mother" if the sound of a new
voice had not come to steady him. Zeena seemed to understand his case
at a glance. She laughed at him for not knowing the simplest sick-bed
duties and told him to "go right along out" and leave her to see to
things. The mere fact of obeying her orders, of feeling free to go about
his business again and talk with other men, restored his shaken balance
and magnified his sense of what he owed her. Her efficiency shamed and
dazzled him. She seemed to possess by instinct all the household wisdom
that his long apprenticeship had not instilled in him. When the end came
it was she who had to tell him to hitch up and go for the undertaker,
and she thought it "funny" that he had not settled beforehand who was
to have his mother's clothes and the sewing-machine. After the funeral,
when he saw her preparing to go away, he was seized with an unreasoning
dread of being left alone on the farm; and before he knew what he was
doing he had asked her to stay there with him. He had often thought
since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring
instead of winter...

When they married it was agreed that, as soon as he could straighten out
the difficulties resulting from Mrs. Frome's long illness, they would
sell the farm and saw-mill and try their luck in a large town. Ethan's
love of nature did not take the form of a taste for agriculture. He had
always wanted to be an engineer, and to live in towns, where there
were lectures and big libraries and "fellows doing things." A slight
engineering job in Florida, put in his way during his period of study at
Worcester, increased his faith in his ability as well as his eagerness
to see the world; and he felt sure that, with a "smart" wife like Zeena,
it would not be long before he had made himself a place in it.

Zeena's native village was slightly larger and nearer to the railway
than Starkfield, and she had let her husband see from the first that
life on an isolated farm was not what she had expected when she married.
But purchasers were slow in coming, and while he waited for them Ethan
learned the impossibility of transplanting her. She chose to look down
on Starkfield, but she could not have lived in a place which looked
down on her. Even Bettsbridge or Shadd's Falls would not have been
sufficiently aware of her, and in the greater cities which attracted
Ethan she would have suffered a complete loss of identity. And within
a year of their marriage she developed the "sickliness" which had since
made her notable even in a community rich in pathological instances.
When she came to take care of his mother she had seemed to Ethan like
the very genius of health, but he soon saw that her skill as a nurse had
been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms.

Then she too fell silent. Perhaps it was the inevitable effect of life
on the farm, or perhaps, as she sometimes said, it was because Ethan
"never listened." The charge was not wholly unfounded. When she spoke
it was only to complain, and to complain of things not in his power to
remedy; and to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed
the habit of not answering her, and finally of thinking of other things
while she talked. Of late, however, since he had reasons for observing
her more closely, her silence had begun to trouble him. He recalled his
mother's growing taciturnity, and wondered if Zeena were also turning
"queer." Women did, he knew. Zeena, who had at her fingers' ends the
pathological chart of the whole region, had cited many cases of the kind
while she was nursing his mother; and he himself knew of certain lonely
farm-houses in the neighbourhood where stricken creatures pined, and
of others where sudden tragedy had come of their presence. At times,
looking at Zeena's shut face, he felt the chill of such forebodings.
At other times her silence seemed deliberately assumed to conceal
far-reaching intentions, mysterious conclusions drawn from suspicions
and resentments impossible to guess. That supposition was even more
disturbing than the other; and it was the one which had come to him the
night before, when he had seen her standing in the kitchen door.

Now her departure for Bettsbridge had once more eased his mind, and all
his thoughts were on the prospect of his evening with Mattie. Only one
thing weighed on him, and that was his having told Zeena that he was to
receive cash for the lumber. He foresaw so clearly the consequences
of this imprudence that with considerable reluctance he decided to ask
Andrew Hale for a small advance on his load.

When Ethan drove into Hale's yard the builder was just getting out of
his sleigh.

"Hello, Ethe!" he said. "This comes handy."

Andrew Hale was a ruddy man with a big gray moustache and a stubbly
double-chin unconstrained by a collar; but his scrupulously clean shirt
was always fastened by a small diamond stud. This display of opulence
was misleading, for though he did a fairly good business it was known
that his easygoing habits and the demands of his large family frequently
kept him what Starkfield called "behind." He was an old friend of
Ethan's family, and his house one of the few to which Zeena occasionally
went, drawn there by the fact that Mrs. Hale, in her youth, had done
more "doctoring" than any other woman in Starkfield, and was still a
recognised authority on symptoms and treatment.

Hale went up to the grays and patted their sweating flanks.

"Well, sir," he said, "you keep them two as if they was pets."

Ethan set about unloading the logs and when he had finished his job he
pushed open the glazed door of the shed which the builder used as his
office. Hale sat with his feet up on the stove, his back propped against
a battered desk strewn with papers: the place, like the man, was warm,
genial and untidy.

"Sit right down and thaw out," he greeted Ethan.

The latter did not know how to begin, but at length he managed to bring
out his request for an advance of fifty dollars. The blood rushed to his
thin skin under the sting of Hale's astonishment. It was the builder's
custom to pay at the end of three months, and there was no precedent
between the two men for a cash settlement.

Ethan felt that if he had pleaded an urgent need Hale might have made
shift to pay him; but pride, and an instinctive prudence, kept him from
resorting to this argument. After his father's death it had taken time
to get his head above water, and he did not want Andrew Hale, or any one
else in Starkfield, to think he was going under again. Besides, he hated
lying; if he wanted the money he wanted it, and it was nobody's business
to ask why. He therefore made his demand with the awkwardness of a proud
man who will not admit to himself that he is stooping; and he was not
much surprised at Hale's refusal.

The builder refused genially, as he did everything else: he treated the
matter as something in the nature of a practical joke, and wanted to
know if Ethan meditated buying a grand piano or adding a "cupolo" to his
house; offering, in the latter case, to give his services free of cost.

Ethan's arts were soon exhausted, and after an embarrassed pause he
wished Hale good day and opened the door of the office. As he passed out
the builder suddenly called after him: "See here--you ain't in a tight
place, are you?"

"Not a bit," Ethan's pride retorted before his reason had time to
intervene.

"Well, that's good! Because I am, a shade. Fact is, I was going to ask
you to give me a little extra time on that payment. Business is pretty
slack, to begin with, and then I'm fixing up a little house for Ned and
Ruth when they're married. I'm glad to do it for 'em, but it costs." His
look appealed to Ethan for sympathy. "The young people like things nice.
You know how it is yourself: it's not so long ago since you fixed up
your own place for Zeena."

Ethan left the grays in Hale's stable and went about some other business
in the village. As he walked away the builder's last phrase lingered in
his ears, and he reflected grimly that his seven years with Zeena seemed
to Starkfield "not so long."

The afternoon was drawing to an end, and here and there a lighted pane
spangled the cold gray dusk and made the snow look whiter. The bitter
weather had driven every one indoors and Ethan had the long rural street
to himself. Suddenly he heard the brisk play of sleigh-bells and a
cutter passed him, drawn by a free-going horse. Ethan recognised Michael
Eady's roan colt, and young Denis Eady, in a handsome new fur cap,
leaned forward and waved a greeting. "Hello, Ethe!" he shouted and spun
on.

The cutter was going in the direction of the Frome farm, and Ethan's
heart contracted as he listened to the dwindling bells. What more likely
than that Denis Eady had heard of Zeena's departure for Bettsbridge, and
was profiting by the opportunity to spend an hour with Mattie? Ethan was
ashamed of the storm of jealousy in his breast. It seemed unworthy of
the girl that his thoughts of her should be so violent.

He walked on to the church corner and entered the shade of the Varnum
spruces, where he had stood with her the night before. As he passed
into their gloom he saw an indistinct outline just ahead of him. At
his approach it melted for an instant into two separate shapes and then
conjoined again, and he heard a kiss, and a half-laughing "Oh!" provoked
by the discovery of his presence. Again the outline hastily disunited
and the Varnum gate slammed on one half while the other hurried on ahead
of him. Ethan smiled at the discomfiture he had caused. What did it
matter to Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum if they were caught kissing each
other? Everybody in Starkfield knew they were engaged. It pleased Ethan
to have surprised a pair of lovers on the spot where he and Mattie had
stood with such a thirst for each other in their hearts; but he felt a
pang at the thought that these two need not hide their happiness.

He fetched the grays from Hale's stable and started on his long climb
back to the farm. The cold was less sharp than earlier in the day and a
thick fleecy sky threatened snow for the morrow. Here and there a star
pricked through, showing behind it a deep well of blue. In an hour
or two the moon would push over the ridge behind the farm, burn a
gold-edged rent in the clouds, and then be swallowed by them. A mournful
peace hung on the fields, as though they felt the relaxing grasp of the
cold and stretched themselves in their long winter sleep.

Ethan's ears were alert for the jingle of sleigh-bells, but not a sound
broke the silence of the lonely road. As he drew near the farm he saw,
through the thin screen of larches at the gate, a light twinkling in
the house above him. "She's up in her room," he said to himself, "fixing
herself up for supper"; and he remembered Zeena's sarcastic stare when
Mattie, on the evening of her arrival, had come down to supper with
smoothed hair and a ribbon at her neck.

He passed by the graves on the knoll and turned his head to glance at
one of the older headstones, which had interested him deeply as a boy
because it bore his name.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

ETHAN FROME AND ENDURANCE HIS WIFE,

WHO DWELLED TOGETHER IN PEACE

FOR FIFTY YEARS.

He used to think that fifty years sounded like a long time to live
together; but now it seemed to him that they might pass in a flash.
Then, with a sudden dart of irony, he wondered if, when their turn came,
the same epitaph would be written over him and Zeena.

He opened the barn-door and craned his head into the obscurity,
half-fearing to discover Denis Eady's roan colt in the stall beside
the sorrel. But the old horse was there alone, mumbling his crib with
toothless jaws, and Ethan whistled cheerfully while he bedded down the
grays and shook an extra measure of oats into their mangers. His was not
a tuneful throat--but harsh melodies burst from it as he locked the barn
and sprang up the hill to the house. He reached the kitchen-porch and
turned the door-handle; but the door did not yield to his touch.

Startled at finding it locked he rattled the handle violently; then
he reflected that Mattie was alone and that it was natural she should
barricade herself at nightfall. He stood in the darkness expecting to
hear her step. It did not come, and after vainly straining his ears he
called out in a voice that shook with joy: "Hello, Matt!"

Silence answered; but in a minute or two he caught a sound on the stairs
and saw a line of light about the door-frame, as he had seen it the
night before. So strange was the precision with which the incidents of
the previous evening were repeating themselves that he half expected,
when he heard the key turn, to see his wife before him on the threshold;
but the door opened, and Mattie faced him.

She stood just as Zeena had stood, a lifted lamp in her hand, against
the black background of the kitchen. She held the light at the same
level, and it drew out with the same distinctness her slim young throat
and the brown wrist no bigger than a child's. Then, striking upward, it
threw a lustrous fleck on her lips, edged her eyes with velvet shade,
and laid a milky whiteness above the black curve of her brows.

She wore her usual dress of darkish stuff, and there was no bow at her
neck; but through her hair she had run a streak of crimson ribbon. This
tribute to the unusual transformed and glorified her. She seemed to
Ethan taller, fuller, more womanly in shape and motion. She stood aside,
smiling silently, while he entered, and then moved away from him with
something soft and flowing in her gait. She set the lamp on the table,
and he saw that it was carefully laid for supper, with fresh dough-nuts,
stewed blueberries and his favourite pickles in a dish of gay red glass.
A bright fire glowed in the stove and the cat lay stretched before it,
watching the table with a drowsy eye.

Ethan was suffocated with the sense of well-being. He went out into the
passage to hang up his coat and pull off his wet boots. When he came
back Mattie had set the teapot on the table and the cat was rubbing
itself persuasively against her ankles.

"Why, Puss! I nearly tripped over you," she cried, the laughter
sparkling through her lashes.

Again Ethan felt a sudden twinge of jealousy. Could it be his coming
that gave her such a kindled face?

"Well, Matt, any visitors?" he threw off, stooping down carelessly to
examine the fastening of the stove.

She nodded and laughed "Yes, one," and he felt a blackness settling on
his brows.

"Who was that?" he questioned, raising himself up to slant a glance at
her beneath his scowl.

Her eyes danced with malice. "Why, Jotham Powell. He came in after he
got back, and asked for a drop of coffee before he went down home."

The blackness lifted and light flooded Ethan's brain. "That all? Well,
I hope you made out to let him have it." And after a pause he felt it
right to add: "I suppose he got Zeena over to the Flats all right?"

"Oh, yes; in plenty of time."

The name threw a chill between them, and they stood a moment looking
sideways at each other before Mattie said with a shy laugh. "I guess
it's about time for supper."

They drew their seats up to the table, and the cat, unbidden, jumped
between them into Zeena's empty chair. "Oh, Puss!" said Mattie, and they
laughed again.

Ethan, a moment earlier, had felt himself on the brink of eloquence;
but the mention of Zeena had paralysed him. Mattie seemed to feel the
contagion of his embarrassment, and sat with downcast lids, sipping her
tea, while he feigned an insatiable appetite for dough-nuts and sweet
pickles. At last, after casting about for an effective opening, he took
a long gulp of tea, cleared his throat, and said: "Looks as if there'd
be more snow."

She feigned great interest. "Is that so? Do you suppose it'll interfere
with Zeena's getting back?" She flushed red as the question escaped her,
and hastily set down the cup she was lifting.

Ethan reached over for another helping of pickles. "You never can tell,
this time of year, it drifts so bad on the Flats." The name had benumbed
him again, and once more he felt as if Zeena were in the room between
them.

"Oh, Puss, you're too greedy!" Mattie cried.

The cat, unnoticed, had crept up on muffled paws from Zeena's seat to
the table, and was stealthily elongating its body in the direction
of the milk-jug, which stood between Ethan and Mattie. The two leaned
forward at the same moment and their hands met on the handle of the jug.
Mattie's hand was underneath, and Ethan kept his clasped on it a
moment longer than was necessary. The cat, profiting by this unusual
demonstration, tried to effect an unnoticed retreat, and in doing so
backed into the pickle-dish, which fell to the floor with a crash.

Mattie, in an instant, had sprung from her chair and was down on her
knees by the fragments.

"Oh, Ethan, Ethan--it's all to pieces! What will Zeena say?"

But this time his courage was up. "Well, she'll have to say it to the
cat, any way!" he rejoined with a laugh, kneeling down at Mattie's side
to scrape up the swimming pickles.

She lifted stricken eyes to him. "Yes, but, you see, she never meant it
should be used, not even when there was company; and I had to get up on
the step-ladder to reach it down from the top shelf of the china-closet,
where she keeps it with all her best things, and of course she'll want
to know why I did it--"

The case was so serious that it called forth all of Ethan's latent
resolution.

"She needn't know anything about it if you keep quiet. I'll get another
just like it to-morrow. Where did it come from? I'll go to Shadd's Falls
for it if I have to!"

"Oh, you'll never get another even there! It was a wedding present--don't
you remember? It came all the way from Philadelphia, from Zeena's aunt
that married the minister. That's why she wouldn't ever use it. Oh,
Ethan, Ethan, what in the world shall I do?"

She began to cry, and he felt as if every one of her tears were pouring
over him like burning lead. "Don't, Matt, don't--oh, don't!" he implored
her.

She struggled to her feet, and he rose and followed her helplessly while
she spread out the pieces of glass on the kitchen dresser. It seemed to
him as if the shattered fragments of their evening lay there.

"Here, give them to me," he said in a voice of sudden authority.

She drew aside, instinctively obeying his tone. "Oh, Ethan, what are you
going to do?"

Without replying he gathered the pieces of glass into his broad palm
and walked out of the kitchen to the passage. There he lit a candle-end,
opened the china-closet, and, reaching his long arm up to the highest
shelf, laid the pieces together with such accuracy of touch that a close
inspection convinced him of the impossibility of detecting from below
that the dish was broken. If he glued it together the next morning
months might elapse before his wife noticed what had happened, and
meanwhile he might after all be able to match the dish at Shadd's Falls
or Bettsbridge. Having satisfied himself that there was no risk of
immediate discovery he went back to the kitchen with a lighter step, and
found Mattie disconsolately removing the last scraps of pickle from the
floor.

"It's all right, Matt. Come back and finish supper," he commanded her.

Completely reassured, she shone on him through tear-hung lashes, and his
soul swelled with pride as he saw how his tone subdued her. She did not
even ask what he had done. Except when he was steering a big log down
the mountain to his mill he had never known such a thrilling sense of
mastery.

As soon as Jotham and Zeena set out for Bettsbridge, Ethan departs to deliver the lumber load to Andrew Hale. During his journey, he is consumed by thoughts of his return to Mattie, imagining their first night alone together. After recounting these thoughts, the narrator segues smoothly into a description of the circumstances that surrounded Ethan's courtship of Zeena and their subsequent marriage. When Zeena came to help Ethan nurse his mother, her arrival made him feel less lonely. Fearing the return of his loneliness when his mother died, Ethan asked Zeena to marry him. He had originally planned to sell the farm and move to a larger town, but Zeena's illness soon rendered his dream impossible. Since he mentioned to Zeena that he would be receiving cash for the lumber load, Ethan decides to go ahead and ask Andrew Hale for a small direct payment. After unloading the lumber, Hale invites Ethan into his office, and Ethan requests an advance of fifty dollars. Hale politely refuses, citing his own financial constraints, and after a further exchange of civilities, Ethan leaves Hale to conduct some other business in the village. With the afternoon drawing to a close, the street stands relatively empty. After an interval of solitude, a swiftly moving horse-drawn sleigh carrying Denis Eady passes Ethan and heads in the direction of the Frome farm. Ethan feels a fleeting pang of jealousy, which he quickly suppresses as unworthy of his affections for Mattie. Under the cover of the Varnum spruces, Ethan happens upon Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum, locked together in a clandestine embrace. Realizing that they are being watched, the kissing couple quickly separates and departs. Ethan is left to reminisce about the scene, which, he notes, has taken place in the very spot where he and Mattie stood hesitating the previous night. Ethan makes the long climb back to the farm. When he arrives, he looks up to see a light issuing from Mattie's bedroom. He imagines her preparing herself for supper, and he thinks back to the evening of her arrival, when she had taken such care with her appearance. On his way to the house, Ethan passes a gravestone that he has often considered a curiosity. It marks the resting place of one of his ancestors, also named Ethan Frome, as well as that of the ancestor's wife, who was named Endurance. They dwelled together in peace for fifty years, the stone announces. Ethan wonders if the same words will be written about him and Zeena. Arriving home, Ethan finds the door locked. Mattie opens it, in her usual dress but with a streak of crimson ribbon in her hair. She has carefully set the supper table for Ethan with festive treats and colorful serving dishes. After Ethan removes his outerwear, he returns to the kitchen, where Mattie has put the teakettle on the table. She playfully admits to entertaining Jotham Powell over a cup of coffee, which makes Ethan prickle slightly with jealousy. At supper, the cat jumps up onto the table, upsetting and breaking a pickle dish. The accident drives Mattie to tears, because Zeena had forbidden her ever to use the dish, a favorite wedding present of Zeena's that came all the way from Philadelphia. Ethan confidently consoles her, balancing the fragments into a convincing whole high atop the closet, where it would be unlikely that Zeena could detect the breakage. Having averted the disaster, Ethan and Mattie settle back down at the table to finish their supper.

Ethan's silent fascination with the gravestone outside his house displays the extent to which his life is permeated by the severe, Puritan notion that all human action is predetermined. As he stares at the gravestone, which memorializes the lives and fifty-year marriage of ethan frome and endurance his wife, Ethan believes his own fate is spelled out before him. The former Frome's wife's name seems to embody Ethan's own situation: he no longer lives life but merely endures. Although Ethan fully recognizes the obstacle that Zeena poses to his happiness, he refuses to act to rectify the situation. Although Ethan believes that the course of his own marriage is fated by the marriage of his ancestor, the narrative plays upon the relationship between past and present within Ethan's own life. When Ethan attempts to rebel against his situation, his feelings for Mattie develop in a curious replay of his earlier courtship of Zeena. First, Ethan felt he needed Zeena, a family cousin who came to care for his mother. Now, Ethan finds himself falling for Mattie, a family cousin who has come to care for his wife. The narrative plays upon this parallel when Ethan comes home from his business transaction to find the porch door locked, just as he did the previous night--only this time it is Mattie and not Zeena who comes to the door. The illusion of a man-and-wife evening is set into motion but with a difference, symbolized by the crimson ribbon in Mattie's hair. In its coloring, the ribbon refers back to the daring cherry-colored scarf that Mattie wears at the dance hall. It alludes to the scarlet letter that Hester Prynne wears to symbolize her transgression in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic Puritan novel The Scarlet Letter. When the couple sits down to dinner, Wharton begins to describe the nooks and crannies of social artifice. The festive, rather impulsive-seeming, and sexually symbolic dishes Mattie has prepared--blueberries, pickles, doughnuts--indicate Mattie's awareness of the evening's clearly illicit nature. Nevertheless, Ethan and Mattie conduct the opening motions of their first supper alone with all of the elaborate gestures and rituals that might occur in the most fashionable cosmopolitan salon. Their stiff formality is shattered--literally--when the cat breaks Zeena's favorite wedding present, symbolizing the way that Mattie may break up Zeena and Ethan's marriage. Ethan's response to the broken dish is also symbolic. Rather than securing the shattered dish permanently with glue or simply throwing away the pieces and admitting that the dish has been broken, Ethan arranges the fragments into a delicate balance, postponing disaster. The dish, and his marriage, appear unbroken, but they may in fact fall to pieces with the slightest disturbance.


Ethan went out into the passage to hang up his wet garments. He listened
for Zeena's step and, not hearing it, called her name up the stairs. She
did not answer, and after a moment's hesitation he went up and opened
her door. The room was almost dark, but in the obscurity he saw her
sitting by the window, bolt upright, and knew by the rigidity of the
outline projected against the pane that she had not taken off her
travelling dress.

"Well, Zeena," he ventured from the threshold.

She did not move, and he continued: "Supper's about ready. Ain't you
coming?"

She replied: "I don't feel as if I could touch a morsel."

It was the consecrated formula, and he expected it to be followed, as
usual, by her rising and going down to supper. But she remained seated,
and he could think of nothing more felicitous than: "I presume you're
tired after the long ride."

Turning her head at this, she answered solemnly: "I'm a great deal
sicker than you think."

Her words fell on his ear with a strange shock of wonder. He had often
heard her pronounce them before--what if at last they were true?

He advanced a step or two into the dim room. "I hope that's not so,
Zeena," he said.

She continued to gaze at him through the twilight with a mien of wan
authority, as of one consciously singled out for a great fate. "I've got
complications," she said.

Ethan knew the word for one of exceptional import. Almost everybody in
the neighbourhood had "troubles," frankly localized and specified;
but only the chosen had "complications." To have them was in itself a
distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death-warrant. People
struggled on for years with "troubles," but they almost always succumbed
to "complications."

Ethan's heart was jerking to and fro between two extremities of feeling,
but for the moment compassion prevailed. His wife looked so hard and
lonely, sitting there in the darkness with such thoughts.

"Is that what the new doctor told you?" he asked, instinctively lowering
his voice.

"Yes. He says any regular doctor would want me to have an operation."

Ethan was aware that, in regard to the important question of surgical
intervention, the female opinion of the neighbourhood was divided, some
glorying in the prestige conferred by operations while others shunned
them as indelicate. Ethan, from motives of economy, had always been glad
that Zeena was of the latter faction.

In the agitation caused by the gravity of her announcement he sought
a consolatory short cut. "What do you know about this doctor anyway?
Nobody ever told you that before."

He saw his blunder before she could take it up: she wanted sympathy, not
consolation.

"I didn't need to have anybody tell me I was losing ground every day.
Everybody but you could see it. And everybody in Bettsbridge knows
about Dr. Buck. He has his office in Worcester, and comes over once
a fortnight to Shadd's Falls and Bettsbridge for consultations. Eliza
Spears was wasting away with kidney trouble before she went to him, and
now she's up and around, and singing in the choir."

"Well, I'm glad of that. You must do just what he tells you," Ethan
answered sympathetically.

She was still looking at him. "I mean to," she said. He was struck by a
new note in her voice. It was neither whining nor reproachful, but drily
resolute.

"What does he want you should do?" he asked, with a mounting vision of
fresh expenses.

"He wants I should have a hired girl. He says I oughtn't to have to do a
single thing around the house."

"A hired girl?" Ethan stood transfixed.

"Yes. And Aunt Martha found me one right off. Everybody said I was lucky
to get a girl to come away out here, and I agreed to give her a dollar
extry to make sure. She'll be over to-morrow afternoon."

Wrath and dismay contended in Ethan. He had foreseen an immediate demand
for money, but not a permanent drain on his scant resources. He no
longer believed what Zeena had told him of the supposed seriousness of
her state: he saw in her expedition to Bettsbridge only a plot hatched
between herself and her Pierce relations to foist on him the cost of a
servant; and for the moment wrath predominated.

"If you meant to engage a girl you ought to have told me before you
started," he said.

"How could I tell you before I started? How did I know what Dr. Buck
would say?"

"Oh, Dr. Buck--" Ethan's incredulity escaped in a short laugh. "Did Dr.
Buck tell you how I was to pay her wages?"

Her voice rose furiously with his. "No, he didn't. For I'd 'a' been
ashamed to tell him that you grudged me the money to get back my health,
when I lost it nursing your own mother!"

"You lost your health nursing mother?"

"Yes; and my folks all told me at the time you couldn't do no less than
marry me after--"

"Zeena!"

Through the obscurity which hid their faces their thoughts seemed to
dart at each other like serpents shooting venom. Ethan was seized
with horror of the scene and shame at his own share in it. It was as
senseless and savage as a physical fight between two enemies in the
darkness.

He turned to the shelf above the chimney, groped for matches and lit the
one candle in the room. At first its weak flame made no impression on
the shadows; then Zeena's face stood grimly out against the uncurtained
pane, which had turned from grey to black.

It was the first scene of open anger between the couple in their sad
seven years together, and Ethan felt as if he had lost an irretrievable
advantage in descending to the level of recrimination. But the practical
problem was there and had to be dealt with.

"You know I haven't got the money to pay for a girl, Zeena. You'll have
to send her back: I can't do it."

"The doctor says it'll be my death if I go on slaving the way I've had
to. He doesn't understand how I've stood it as long as I have."

"Slaving!--" He checked himself again, "You sha'n't lift a hand, if he
says so. I'll do everything round the house myself--"

She broke in: "You're neglecting the farm enough already," and this
being true, he found no answer, and left her time to add ironically:
"Better send me over to the almshouse and done with it... I guess
there's been Fromes there afore now."

The taunt burned into him, but he let it pass. "I haven't got the money.
That settles it."

There was a moment's pause in the struggle, as though the combatants
were testing their weapons. Then Zeena said in a level voice: "I thought
you were to get fifty dollars from Andrew Hale for that lumber."

"Andrew Hale never pays under three months." He had hardly spoken when
he remembered the excuse he had made for not accompanying his wife to
the station the day before; and the blood rose to his frowning brows.

"Why, you told me yesterday you'd fixed it up with him to pay cash down.
You said that was why you couldn't drive me over to the Flats."

Ethan had no suppleness in deceiving. He had never before been convicted
of a lie, and all the resources of evasion failed him. "I guess that was
a misunderstanding," he stammered.

"You ain't got the money?"

"No."

"And you ain't going to get it?"

"No."

"Well, I couldn't know that when I engaged the girl, could I?"

"No." He paused to control his voice. "But you know it now. I'm sorry,
but it can't be helped. You're a poor man's wife, Zeena; but I'll do the
best I can for you."

For a while she sat motionless, as if reflecting, her arms stretched
along the arms of her chair, her eyes fixed on vacancy. "Oh, I guess
we'll make out," she said mildly.

The change in her tone reassured him. "Of course we will! There's a
whole lot more I can do for you, and Mattie--"

Zeena, while he spoke, seemed to be following out some elaborate mental
calculation. She emerged from it to say: "There'll be Mattie's board
less, any how--"

Ethan, supposing the discussion to be over, had turned to go down to
supper. He stopped short, not grasping what he heard. "Mattie's board
less--?" he began.

Zeena laughed. It was on odd unfamiliar sound--he did not remember ever
having heard her laugh before. "You didn't suppose I was going to keep
two girls, did you? No wonder you were scared at the expense!"

He still had but a confused sense of what she was saying. From the
beginning of the discussion he had instinctively avoided the mention of
Mattie's name, fearing he hardly knew what: criticism, complaints, or
vague allusions to the imminent probability of her marrying. But the
thought of a definite rupture had never come to him, and even now could
not lodge itself in his mind.

"I don't know what you mean," he said. "Mattie Silver's not a hired
girl. She's your relation."

"She's a pauper that's hung onto us all after her father'd done his best
to ruin us. I've kep' her here a whole year: it's somebody else's turn
now."

As the shrill words shot out Ethan heard a tap on the door, which he had
drawn shut when he turned back from the threshold.

"Ethan--Zeena!" Mattie's voice sounded gaily from the landing, "do you
know what time it is? Supper's been ready half an hour."

Inside the room there was a moment's silence; then Zeena called out from
her seat: "I'm not coming down to supper."

"Oh, I'm sorry! Aren't you well? Sha'n't I bring you up a bite of
something?"

Ethan roused himself with an effort and opened the door. "Go along down,
Matt. Zeena's just a little tired. I'm coming."

He heard her "All right!" and her quick step on the stairs; then he
shut the door and turned back into the room. His wife's attitude was
unchanged, her face inexorable, and he was seized with the despairing
sense of his helplessness.

"You ain't going to do it, Zeena?"

"Do what?" she emitted between flattened lips.

"Send Mattie away--like this?"

"I never bargained to take her for life!"

He continued with rising vehemence: "You can't put her out of the house
like a thief--a poor girl without friends or money. She's done her best
for you and she's got no place to go to. You may forget she's your kin
but everybody else'll remember it. If you do a thing like that what do
you suppose folks'll say of you?"

Zeena waited a moment, as if giving him time to feel the full force
of the contrast between his own excitement and her composure. Then she
replied in the same smooth voice: "I know well enough what they say of
my having kep' her here as long as I have."

Ethan's hand dropped from the door-knob, which he had held clenched
since he had drawn the door shut on Mattie. His wife's retort was like a
knife-cut across the sinews and he felt suddenly weak and powerless.
He had meant to humble himself, to argue that Mattie's keep didn't cost
much, after all, that he could make out to buy a stove and fix up a
place in the attic for the hired girl--but Zeena's words revealed the
peril of such pleadings.

"You mean to tell her she's got to go--at once?" he faltered out, in
terror of letting his wife complete her sentence.

As if trying to make him see reason she replied impartially: "The girl
will be over from Bettsbridge to-morrow, and I presume she's got to have
somewheres to sleep."

Ethan looked at her with loathing. She was no longer the listless
creature who had lived at his side in a state of sullen self-absorption,
but a mysterious alien presence, an evil energy secreted from the long
years of silent brooding. It was the sense of his helplessness that
sharpened his antipathy. There had never been anything in her that
one could appeal to; but as long as he could ignore and command he had
remained indifferent. Now she had mastered him and he abhorred her.
Mattie was her relation, not his: there were no means by which he could
compel her to keep the girl under her roof. All the long misery of his
baffled past, of his youth of failure, hardship and vain effort, rose
up in his soul in bitterness and seemed to take shape before him in the
woman who at every turn had barred his way. She had taken everything
else from him; and now she meant to take the one thing that made up for
all the others. For a moment such a flame of hate rose in him that it
ran down his arm and clenched his fist against her. He took a wild step
forward and then stopped.

"You're--you're not coming down?" he said in a bewildered voice.

"No. I guess I'll lay down on the bed a little while," she answered
mildly; and he turned and walked out of the room.

In the kitchen Mattie was sitting by the stove, the cat curled up on her
knees. She sprang to her feet as Ethan entered and carried the covered
dish of meat-pie to the table.

"I hope Zeena isn't sick?" she asked.

"No."

She shone at him across the table. "Well, sit right down then. You must
be starving." She uncovered the pie and pushed it over to him. So they
were to have one more evening together, her happy eyes seemed to say!

He helped himself mechanically and began to eat; then disgust took him
by the throat and he laid down his fork.

Mattie's tender gaze was on him and she marked the gesture.

"Why, Ethan, what's the matter? Don't it taste right?"

"Yes--it's first-rate. Only I--" He pushed his plate away, rose from his
chair, and walked around the table to her side. She started up with
frightened eyes.

"Ethan, there's something wrong! I knew there was!"

She seemed to melt against him in her terror, and he caught her in his
arms, held her fast there, felt her lashes beat his cheek like netted
butterflies.

"What is it--what is it?" she stammered; but he had found her lips at
last and was drinking unconsciousness of everything but the joy they
gave him.

She lingered a moment, caught in the same strong current; then she
slipped from him and drew back a step or two, pale and troubled. Her
look smote him with compunction, and he cried out, as if he saw her
drowning in a dream: "You can't go, Matt! I'll never let you!"

"Go--go?" she stammered. "Must I go?"

The words went on sounding between them as though a torch of warning
flew from hand to hand through a black landscape.

Ethan was overcome with shame at his lack of self-control in flinging
the news at her so brutally. His head reeled and he had to support
himself against the table. All the while he felt as if he were still
kissing her, and yet dying of thirst for her lips.

"Ethan, what has happened? Is Zeena mad with me?"

Her cry steadied him, though it deepened his wrath and pity. "No, no,"
he assured her, "it's not that. But this new doctor has scared her about
herself. You know she believes all they say the first time she sees
them. And this one's told her she won't get well unless she lays up and
don't do a thing about the house--not for months--"

He paused, his eyes wandering from her miserably. She stood silent a
moment, drooping before him like a broken branch. She was so small and
weak-looking that it wrung his heart; but suddenly she lifted her head
and looked straight at him. "And she wants somebody handier in my place?
Is that it?"

"That's what she says to-night."

"If she says it to-night she'll say it to-morrow."

Both bowed to the inexorable truth: they knew that Zeena never changed
her mind, and that in her case a resolve once taken was equivalent to an
act performed.

There was a long silence between them; then Mattie said in a low voice:
"Don't be too sorry, Ethan."

"Oh, God--oh, God," he groaned. The glow of passion he had felt for her
had melted to an aching tenderness. He saw her quick lids beating back
the tears, and longed to take her in his arms and soothe her.

"You're letting your supper get cold," she admonished him with a pale
gleam of gaiety.

"Oh, Matt--Matt--where'll you go to?"

Her lids sank and a tremor crossed her face. He saw that for the first
time the thought of the future came to her distinctly. "I might get
something to do over at Stamford," she faltered, as if knowing that he
knew she had no hope.

He dropped back into his seat and hid his face in his hands. Despair
seized him at the thought of her setting out alone to renew the weary
quest for work. In the only place where she was known she was surrounded
by indifference or animosity; and what chance had she, inexperienced
and untrained, among the million bread-seekers of the cities? There came
back to him miserable tales he had heard at Worcester, and the faces
of girls whose lives had begun as hopefully as Mattie's.... It was not
possible to think of such things without a revolt of his whole being. He
sprang up suddenly.

"You can't go, Matt! I won't let you! She's always had her way, but I
mean to have mine now--"

Mattie lifted her hand with a quick gesture, and he heard his wife's
step behind him.

Zeena came into the room with her dragging down-at-the-heel step, and
quietly took her accustomed seat between them.

"I felt a little mite better, and Dr. Buck says I ought to eat all I can
to keep my strength up, even if I ain't got any appetite," she said in
her flat whine, reaching across Mattie for the teapot. Her "good" dress
had been replaced by the black calico and brown knitted shawl which
formed her daily wear, and with them she had put on her usual face and
manner. She poured out her tea, added a great deal of milk to it, helped
herself largely to pie and pickles, and made the familiar gesture of
adjusting her false teeth before she began to eat. The cat rubbed itself
ingratiatingly against her, and she said "Good Pussy," stooped to stroke
it and gave it a scrap of meat from her plate.

Ethan sat speechless, not pretending to eat, but Mattie nibbled
valiantly at her food and asked Zeena one or two questions about her
visit to Bettsbridge. Zeena answered in her every-day tone and, warming
to the theme, regaled them with several vivid descriptions of intestinal
disturbances among her friends and relatives. She looked straight at
Mattie as she spoke, a faint smile deepening the vertical lines between
her nose and chin.

When supper was over she rose from her seat and pressed her hand to the
flat surface over the region of her heart. "That pie of yours always
sets a mite heavy, Matt," she said, not ill-naturedly. She seldom
abbreviated the girl's name, and when she did so it was always a sign of
affability.

"I've a good mind to go and hunt up those stomach powders I got last
year over in Springfield," she continued. "I ain't tried them for quite
a while, and maybe they'll help the heartburn."

Mattie lifted her eyes. "Can't I get them for you, Zeena?" she ventured.

"No. They're in a place you don't know about," Zeena answered darkly,
with one of her secret looks.

She went out of the kitchen and Mattie, rising, began to clear the
dishes from the table. As she passed Ethan's chair their eyes met and
clung together desolately. The warm still kitchen looked as peaceful as
the night before. The cat had sprung to Zeena's rocking-chair, and the
heat of the fire was beginning to draw out the faint sharp scent of the
geraniums. Ethan dragged himself wearily to his feet.

"I'll go out and take a look around," he said, going toward the passage
to get his lantern.

As he reached the door he met Zeena coming back into the room, her lips
twitching with anger, a flush of excitement on her sallow face.
The shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging at her
down-trodden heels, and in her hands she carried the fragments of the
red glass pickle-dish.

"I'd like to know who done this," she said, looking sternly from Ethan
to Mattie.

There was no answer, and she continued in a trembling voice: "I went to
get those powders I'd put away in father's old spectacle-case, top of
the china-closet, where I keep the things I set store by, so's folks
shan't meddle with them--" Her voice broke, and two small tears hung
on her lashless lids and ran slowly down her cheeks. "It takes the
stepladder to get at the top shelf, and I put Aunt Philura Maple's
pickle-dish up there o' purpose when we was married, and it's never been
down since, 'cept for the spring cleaning, and then I always lifted it
with my own hands, so's 't it shouldn't get broke." She laid the fragments
reverently on the table. "I want to know who done this," she quavered.

At the challenge Ethan turned back into the room and faced her. "I can
tell you, then. The cat done it."

"The cat?"

"That's what I said."

She looked at him hard, and then turned her eyes to Mattie, who was
carrying the dish-pan to the table.

"I'd like to know how the cat got into my china-closet"' she said.

"Chasin' mice, I guess," Ethan rejoined. "There was a mouse round the
kitchen all last evening."

Zeena continued to look from one to the other; then she emitted her
small strange laugh. "I knew the cat was a smart cat," she said in a
high voice, "but I didn't know he was smart enough to pick up the pieces
of my pickle-dish and lay 'em edge to edge on the very shelf he knocked
'em off of."

Mattie suddenly drew her arms out of the steaming water. "It wasn't
Ethan's fault, Zeena! The cat did break the dish; but I got it down from
the china-closet, and I'm the one to blame for its getting broken."

Zeena stood beside the ruin of her treasure, stiffening into a stony
image of resentment, "You got down my pickle-dish-what for?"

A bright flush flew to Mattie's cheeks. "I wanted to make the
supper-table pretty," she said.

"You wanted to make the supper-table pretty; and you waited till my back
was turned, and took the thing I set most store by of anything I've got,
and wouldn't never use it, not even when the minister come to dinner,
or Aunt Martha Pierce come over from Bettsbridge--" Zeena paused with a
gasp, as if terrified by her own evocation of the sacrilege. "You're a
bad girl, Mattie Silver, and I always known it. It's the way your father
begun, and I was warned of it when I took you, and I tried to keep my
things where you couldn't get at 'em--and now you've took from me the one
I cared for most of all--" She broke off in a short spasm of sobs that
passed and left her more than ever like a shape of stone.

"If I'd 'a' listened to folks, you'd 'a' gone before now, and this
wouldn't 'a' happened," she said; and gathering up the bits of broken
glass she went out of the room as if she carried a dead body...

For a moment such a flame of hate rose in him that it ran down his arm and clenched his fist against her. He took a wild step forward and then stopped. "You're--you're not coming down?" he said in a bewildered voice. After hanging up his coat, Ethan calls to Zeena but receives no reply. He goes up the stairs and opens her door, revealing a nearly dark room. Still wearing her traveling clothes, Zeena sits silently at the window. When Ethan informs her that supper is ready, she says she has no appetite. Zeena cuts short Ethan's attempts to make small talk by announcing that she is much more ill than he thinks. She tells him that in the interest of preserving her health, she has engaged the services of a new hired girl, who will arrive the -following afternoon. Ethan becomes angry at this unforeseen expense, and a raging war of words ensues between him and Zeena. After a bitter haggle regarding Zeena's condition, in which she insists that she lost her health nursing his mother, Ethan resolutely declares that he lacks the funds to employ a hired girl. But, in so doing, he is caught in his own lie about the advance he had been planning to collect from Andrew Hale. When Zeena points out Ethan's inconsistency, he is somewhat shaken. Zeena then further agitates Ethan by announcing that Mattie has burdened the household for too long and will have to leave. With Mattie's board freed up, Zeena explains, they will be able to scrape together enough money for a hired girl after all. Just at that moment, Mattie calls up from the landing to announce that supper is waiting. Zeena replies by declining her supper, and Ethan sends Mattie downstairs, promising to follow shortly. Turning back to Zeena, Ethan lamely attempts to defend Mattie. Zeena refuses to listen, proclaiming that with the hired girl's arrival, Mattie must depart. Ethan fumes with hatred, but he stops himself from expressing it. Instead, he retreats from the bedroom as Zeena prepares to lie down for the night. In the kitchen, Mattie brings a meat pie to the table, and she and Ethan once again sit down to supper alone. Ethan assures Mattie that everything is fine, but his disgust makes him unable to eat, and his dark mood produces a new wave of anxiety in Mattie. As she questions Ethan further, he rises from his seat and moves around the table to her side. With a trembling perplexity, Mattie leans toward him. As if to resolve matters, Ethan takes her into his arms and kisses her fully upon the lips. She remains in his grasp for a moment and then draws back to make sense of the situation. With a violent outburst, Ethan declares that Mattie must not go. Confused at first, Mattie soon catches his meaning and realizes that Zeena intends for her to be replaced. After sitting in silence for a while, they forlornly begin to discuss Mattie's bleak prospects for future employment. Filled with indignation, Ethan exclaims that he means to protect Mattie from dismissal and expulsion. No sooner have the rebellious words erupted than Mattie raises her hand in warning--Zeena comes in and quietly takes her seat at the table between Ethan and Mattie. Citing her need for nourishment despite her lack of appetite, Zeena starts eating her meal. Ethan sits motionless and Mattie attempts to make polite conversation. The cat rubs up against Zeena, and she strokes it and feeds it a scrap of meat. After finishing her meal, Zeena rises from the table to find some old stomach powders. Mattie begins clearing the table, and Ethan muses that he will go outside to watch the nightfall. At the door, he meets an indignant Zeena on the verge of tears, holding the shards of the pickle dish in her hand and demanding an explanation. When pressed, Ethan blames the accident on the cat. Rushing to Ethan's defense, Mattie explains that she had taken the pickle dish down to decorate the supper table. Zeena reprimands Mattie for her sneakiness and declares that she should have turned her out long ago.

The increasing gravity of Zeena's illness--or at least what she claims is the increasing gravity of her illness--invests her with a ruthless authority in these scenes. Wharton compares Zeena's discussions of her sickness with the behavior of someone chosen for "a great fate." Zeena doesn't see her ailment as a curse; she acts as though her ability to live with suffering proves her "elect" status, her virtue, and fortitude. She casts herself as a noble martyr, telling Ethan that although anyone else would need an operation given her condition, she is willing to struggle on without one. Zeena's placement of herself in the role of a martyr is certainly Ethan's greatest obstacle in his attempt to keep Mattie, but even without Zeena claiming the higher moral ground, Ethan would be out of his depth. Zeena calls the shots because Mattie is her relative, not Ethan's. Likewise, the domestic realm is Zeena's concern, not Ethan's. Zeena's dominance within the household becomes obvious when Ethan, seething, has a sudden urge to strike at her but then inexplicably reverts to a state of passive bewilderment and meekness, retreating downstairs. Similarly, Zeena's well-timed entrance into the kitchen forces Ethan back into silence just as he has finally managed to reveal his true feelings to Mattie. Certainly, Ethan realizes that Zeena, a chronic hypochondriac, is exaggerating the severity of her illness in order to gain the upper hand in their relationship. Nevertheless, he remains powerless to oppose her. The self-possessed Zeena so carefully crafts her statements that, though they may be lies, Ethan cannot disprove them. Ethan, on the other hand, lacks grace and articulateness. He clumsily allows Zeena to catch him in his own lie about the lumber advance, and then proves unable to cover his tracks. As Wharton squarely notes, Ethan is no good at lying, and his natural streak of honesty is a factor in his eventual inability to realize his own dreams. The broken pickle dish that Zeena discovers at the top of the china closet symbolizes the shattered Frome marriage. Mattie is partially responsible for the breaking of both the pickle dish and the marriage, having handled them carelessly, and Ethan cowardly hides the broken state of each. Significantly, though, it was the cat that actually destroyed the dish. Throughout the narrative, the cat is associated with Zeena, so the cat's destruction of the pickle dish suggests that Zeena must share responsibility for the failure of her marriage. Zeena uses the dish as an excuse to vent anger that in fact stems from the disintegration of the relationships around her. She mourns for the destruction of the dish because she cannot openly mourn the collapse of her marriage and happiness. Meanwhile, the reader is left uncertain of Mattie's feelings, because Zeena's arrival cuts short Mattie's conversation with Ethan after he kisses her. We assume that she feels the same passion that Ethan does, but her words do not betray anything. Instead of discussing the kiss, she immediately turns the conversation to Zeena and the possibility of her own departure from the household.