‘It was right there I found your locket,’ he said, pushing his foot into a dense tuft of blueberry bushes.
‘I never saw anybody with such sharp eyes!’ she answered. She sat down on the tree-trunk in the sun and he sat down beside her.
‘You were as pretty as a picture in that pink hat,’ he said.
She laughed with pleasure. ‘Oh, I guess it was the hat!’ she rejoined.
They had never before avowed their inclination so openly, and Ethan, for a moment, had the illusion that he was a free man, wooing the girl he meant to marry. He looked at her hair and longed to touch it again, and to tell her that it smelt of the woods; but he had never learned to say such things.
Suddenly she rose to her feet and said: ‘We mustn’t stay here any longer’
He continued to gaze at her vaguely, only half-roused from his dream. ‘There’s plenty of time,’ he answered.
They stood looking at each other as if the eyes of each were straining to absorb and hold fast the other’s image. There were things he had to say to her before they parted, but he could not say them in that place of summer memories, and he turned and followed her in silence to the sleigh. As they drove away the sun sank behind the hill and the pine-boles turned from red to grey.
By a devious track between the fields they wound back to the Starkfield road. Under the open sky the light was still clear, with a reflection of cold red on the eastern hills. The clumps of trees in the snow seemed to draw together in ruffled lumps, like birds with their heads under their wings; and the sky, as it paled, rose higher, leaving the earth more alone.
As they turned into the Starkfield road Ethan said: ‘Matt, what do you mean to do?’
She did not answer at once, but at length she said: ‘I’ll try to get a place in a store.’
‘You know you can’t do it. The bad air and the standing all day nearly killed you before.’
‘I’m a lot stronger than I was before I came to Starkfield.’
‘And now you’re going to throw away all the good it’s done you!’
There seemed to be no answer to this, and again they drove on for a while without speaking. With every yard of the way some spot where they had stood, and laughed together or been silent, clutched at Ethan and dragged him back.
‘Isn’t there any of your father’s folks could help you?’
‘There isn’t any of ’em I’d ask.’
He lowered his voice to say: ‘You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you if I could.’
‘I know there isn’t.’
‘But I can’t—’
She was silent, but he felt a slight tremor in the shoulder against his.
‘Oh, Matt,’ he broke out, ‘if I could ha’ gone with you now, I’d ha’ done it—’
She turned to him, pulling a scrap of paper from her breast. ‘Ethan – I found this,’ she stammered. Even in the failing light he saw it was the letter to his wife that he had begun the night before and forgotten to destroy. Through his astonishment there ran a fierce thrill of joy. ‘Matt –’ he cried; ‘if I could ha’ done it, would you?’
‘Oh, Ethan, Ethan – what’s the use?’ With a sudden movement she tore the letter in shreds and sent them fluttering off into the snow.
‘Tell me, Matt! Tell me!’ he adjured her.
She was silent for a moment; then she said, in such a low tone that he had to stoop his head to hear her: ‘I used to think of it sometimes, summer nights, when the moon was so bright I couldn’t sleep.’
His heart reeled with the sweetness of it. ‘As long ago as that?’
She answered, as if the date had long been fixed for her: ‘The first time was at Shadow Pond.’
‘Was that why you gave me my coffee before the others?’
‘I don’t know. Did I? I was dreadfully put out when you
wouldn’t go to the picnic with me; and then, when I saw you coming down the road, I thought maybe you’d gone home that way o’ purpose; and that made me glad.’
They were silent again. They had reached the point where the road dipped to the hollow by Ethan’s mill and as they descended the darkness descended with them, dropping down like a black veil from the heavy hemlock boughs.
‘I’m tied hand and foot, Matt. There isn’t a thing I can do,’ he began again.
‘You must write to me sometimes, Ethan.’
‘Oh, what good’ll writing do? I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you’re sick and when you’re lonesome.’
‘You mustn’t think but what I’ll do all right.’
‘You won’t need me, you mean? I suppose you’ll marry!’
‘Oh, Ethan!’ she cried.
‘I don’t know how it is you make me feel, Matt. I’d a’most rather have you dead than that!’
‘Oh, I wish I was, I wish I was!’ she sobbed.
The sound of her weeping shook him out of his dark anger, and he felt ashamed.
‘Don’t let’s talk that way,’ he whispered.
‘Why shouldn’t we, when it’s true? I’ve been wishing it every minute of the day.’
‘Matt! You be quiet! Don’t you say it.’
‘There’s never anybody been good to me but you.’
‘Don’t say that either, when I can’t lift a hand for you!’
‘Yes; but it’s true just the same.’
They had reached the top of School House Hill and Starkfield lay below them in the twilight. A cutter, mounting the road from the village, passed them by in a joyous flutter of bells, and they straightened themselves and looked ahead with rigid faces. Along the main street lights had begun to shine from the house-fronts and stray figures were turning in here and there at the gates. Ethan, with a touch of his whip, roused the sorrel to a languid trot.
As they drew near the end of the village the cries of children reached them, and they saw a knot of boys, with sleds behind them, scattering across the open space before the church.
‘I guess this’ll be their last coast for a day or two,’ Ethan said, looking up at the mild sky.
Mattie was silent, and he added: ‘We were to have gone down last night.’
Still she did not speak and, prompted by an obscure desire to help himself and her through their miserable last hour, he went on discursively: ‘Ain’t it funny we haven’t been down together but just that once last winter?’
She answered: ‘It wasn’t often I got down to the village.’
‘That’s so,’ he said.
They had reached the crest of the Corbury road, and between the indistinct white glimmer of the church and the black curtain of the Varnum spruces the slope stretched away below them without a sled on its length. Some erratic impulse prompted Ethan to say: ‘How’d you like me to take you down now?’
She forced a laugh. ‘Why, there isn’t time!’
‘There’s all the time we want. Come along!’ His one desire now was to postpone the moment of turning the sorrel toward the Flats.
‘But the girl,’ she faltered. ‘The girl’ll be waiting at the station.’
‘Well, let her wait. You’d have to if she didn’t. Come!’
The note of authority in his voice seemed to subdue her, and when he had jumped from the sleigh she let him help her out, saying only, with a vague feint of reluctance: ‘But there isn’t a sled round anywheres.’
‘Yes, there is! Right over there under the spruces.
He threw the bearskin over the sorrel, who stood passively by the roadside, hanging a meditative head. Then he caught Mattie’s hand and drew her after him toward the sled.
She seated herself obediently and he took his place behind her, so close that her hair brushed his face. ‘All right, Matt?’ he called out, as if the width of the road had been between them.
She turned her head to say: ‘It’s dreadfully dark. Are you sure you can see?’
He laughed contemptuously: ‘I could go down this coast with my eyes tied!’ and she laughed with him, as if she liked his audacity. Nevertheless he sat still a moment, straining his eyes down the long hill, for it was the most confusing hour of the evening, the hour when the last clearness from the upper sky is merged with the rising night in a blur that disguises landmarks and falsifies distances.
‘Now!’ he cried.
The sled started with a bound, and they flew on through the dusk, gathering smoothness and speed as they went, with the hollow night opening out below them and the air singing by like an organ. Mattie sat perfectly still, but as they reached the bend at the foot of the hill, where the big elm thrust out a deadly elbow, he fancied that she shrank a little closer.
‘Don’t be scared, Matt!’ he cried exultantly, as they spun safely past it and flew down the second slope; and when they reached the level ground beyond, and the speed of the sled began to slacken, he heard her give a little laugh of glee.
They sprang off and started to walk back up the hill. Ethan dragged the sled with one hand and passed the other through Mattie’s arm.
‘Were you scared I’d run you into the elm?’ he asked with a boyish laugh.
‘I told you I was never scared with you,’ she answered.
The strange exultation of his mood had brought on one of his rare fits of boastfulness. ‘It
is
a tricky place, though. The least swerve, and we’d never ha’ come up again. But I can measure distances to a hair’s-breadth – always could.’
She murmured: ‘I always say you’ve got the surest eye …’
Deep silence had fallen with the starless dusk, and they leaned on each other without speaking; but at every step of their climb Ethan said to himself: ‘It’s the last time we’ll ever walk together.’
They mounted slowly to the top of the hill. When they were abreast of the church he stooped his head to her to ask:
‘Are you tired?’ and she answered, breathing quickly: ‘It was splendid!’
With a pressure of his arm he guided her toward the Norway spruces. ‘I guess this sled must be Ned Hale’s. Anyhow I’ll leave it where I found it.’ He drew the sled up to the Varnum gate and rested it against the fence. As he raised himself he suddenly felt Mattie close to him among the shadows.
‘Is this where Ned and Ruth kissed each other?’ she whispered breathlessly, and flung her arms about him. Her lips, groping for his, swept over his face, and he held her fast in a rapture of surprise.
‘Good-bye – good-bye,’ she stammered, and kissed him again.
‘Oh, Matt, I can’t let you go!’ broke from him in the same old cry.
She freed herself from his hold and he heard her sobbing. ‘Oh, I can’t go either!’ she wailed.
‘Matt! What’ll we do? What’ll we do?’
They clung to each other’s hands like children, and her body shook with desperate sobs.
Through the stillness they heard the church clock striking five.
‘Oh, Ethan, it’s time!’ she cried.
He drew her back to him. ‘Time for what? You don’t suppose I’m going to leave you now?’
‘If I missed my train where’d I go?’
‘Where are you going if you catch it?’
She stood silent, her hands lying cold and relaxed in his.
‘What’s the good of either of us going anywheres without the other one now?’ he said.
She remained motionless, as if she had not heard him. Then she snatched her hands from his, threw her arms about his neck, and pressed a sudden drenched cheek against his face. ‘Ethan! Ethan! I want you to take me down again!’
‘Down where?’
‘The coast. Right off,’ she panted. ‘So ’t we’ll never come up any more.’
‘Matt! What on earth do you mean?’
She put her lips close against his ear to say: ‘Right into the big elm. You said you could. So ’t we’d never have to leave each other any more.’
‘Why, what are you talking of? You’re crazy!’
‘I’m not crazy; but I will be if I leave you.’
‘Oh, Matt, Matt –’ he groaned.
She tightened her fierce hold about his neck. Her face lay close to his face.
‘Ethan, where’ll I go if I leave you? I don’t know how to get along alone. You said so yourself just now. Nobody but you was ever good to me. And there’ll be that strange girl in the house … and she’ll sleep in my bed, where I used to lay nights and listen to hear you come up the stairs …’
The words were like fragments torn from his heart. With them came the hated vision of the house he was going back to – of the stairs he would have to go up every night, of the woman who would wait for him there. And the sweetness of Mattie’s avowal, the wild wonder of knowing at last that all that had happened to him had happened to her too, made the other vision more abhorrent, the other life more intolerable to return to …
Her pleadings still came to him between short sobs, but he no longer heard what she was saying. Her hat had slipped back and he was stroking her hair. He wanted to get the feeling of it into his hand, so that it would sleep there like a seed in winter. Once he found her mouth again, and they seemed to be by the pond together in the burning August sun. But his cheek touched hers, and it was cold and full of weeping, and he saw the road to the Flats under the night and heard the whistle of the train up the line.
The spruces swathed them in blackness and silence. They might have been in their coffins underground. He said to himself: ‘Perhaps it’ll feel like this …’ and then again: ‘After this I sha’n’t feel anything …’
Suddenly he heard the old sorrel whinny across the road, and thought: ‘He’s wondering why he doesn’t get his supper …’
‘Come,’ Mattie whispered, tugging at his hand.
Her sombre violence constrained him: she seemed the embodied instrument of fate. He pulled the sled out, blinking like a night-bird as he passed from the shade of the spruces into the transparent dusk of the open. The slope below them was deserted. All Starkfield was at supper, and not a figure crossed the open space before the church. The sky, swollen with the clouds that announce a thaw, hung as low as before a summer storm. He strained his eyes through the dimness, and they seemed less keen, less capable than usual.
He took his seat on the sled and Mattie instantly placed herself in front of him. Her hat had fallen into the snow and his lips were in her hair. He stretched out his legs, drove his heels into the road to keep the sled from slipping forward, and bent her head back between his hands. Then suddenly he sprang up again.
‘Get up,’ he ordered her.
It was the tone she always heeded, but she cowered down in her seat, repeating vehemently: ‘No, no, no!’