If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hol-low-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade; and you must have asked who he was.

It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time; and the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man. It was not so much his great height that marked him, for the “natives” were easily singled out by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign breed: it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain. There was something bleak and unapproachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two. I had this from Harmon Gow, who had driven the stage from Bettsbridge to Starkfield in pre-trolley days and knew the chronicle of all the families on his line.

“He’s looked that way ever since he had his smash-up; and that’s twenty-four years ago come next February,” Har-mon threw out between reminiscent pauses.

Cette histoire, c'est brin à brin, et par maintes gens, qu'elle m'a été contée. Et, comme il arrive d'habitude en pareil cas, j'ai entendu chaque fois une version nouvelle.

Si vous connaissez Starkfield, Massachusetts, vous connaissez le bureau de poste. Si vous connaissez le bureau de poste, vous devez avoir vu Ethan Frome y conduire, laisser tomber les rênes de sa baie à dos creux et marcher sur le pavé de briques jusqu'à la colonnade blanche. Vous devez avoir demandé qui il était.

C'est là, au bureau, que je le vis moi-même pour la première fois, voici quelques années. Bien que cet homme ne fût plus qu'une ruine, sa physionomie se détachait parmi les autres. Ce n'était pas sa haute taille qui le désignait à l'atten-tion, puisque les Américains de vieille race ont très fréquem-ment cette stature élancée et mince, mais plutôt sa prestance et sa démarche. Son regard était à la fois triste et volontaire ; il conservait, en dépit d'une claudication manifeste, quelque chose de vigoureux. Son visage sévère, hâlé, fatigué par le rude travail des champs, était d'une indicible mélancolie. Ses cheveux grisonnants, ses yeux glacés, lui donnaient l'aspect de la vieillesse, et je m'étonnai lorsqu'on m'apprit qu'il n'avait guère passé la cinquantaine. Ce fut Harmon Gow qui me renseigna sur son âge. — Harmon Gow avait autre-fois conduit la diligence allant de Starkfield au gros bourg de Bettsbridge, à l'époque où n'existaient pas les tramways électriques, et il connaissait sur le bout du doigt la chronique intime de toutes les familles qui habitaient ou avaient habité le long de son ancien parcours.

— Il a cette tête-là depuis son accident, — me dit-il, hachant ses phrases au gré de ses souvenirs. — Et il y aura en février prochain vingt-quatre ans que la chose est arrivée…

Ethan Frome ~Chapter I

The “smash-up” it was—I gathered from the same in-formant—which, besides drawing the red gash across Ethan Frome’s forehead, had so shortened and warped his right side that it cost him a visible effort to take the few steps from his buggy to the post-office window. He used to drive in from his farm every day at about noon, and as that was my own hour for fetching my mail I often passed him in the porch or stood beside him while we waited on the motions of the dis-tributing hand behind the grating. I noticed that, though he came so punctually, he seldom received anything but a copy of the Bettsbridge Eagle, which he put without a glance into his sagging pocket. At intervals, however, the post-master would hand him an envelope addressed to Mrs. Zenobia—or Mrs. Zeena—Frome, and usually bearing conspicuously in the upper left-hand corner the address of some manufacturer of patent medicine and the name of his specific. These doc-uments my neighbour would also pocket without a glance, as if too much used to them to wonder at their number and variety, and would then turn away with a silent nod to the post-master.

Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tempered to his own grave mien; but his taciturnity was respected and it was only on rare occasions that one of the older men of the place detained him for a word. When this happened he would listen quietly, his blue eyes on the speaker’s СКАЧАТЬ

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