Ethan Frome / Sous la neige. Edith Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ a vus la première lorsqu'on les a ramassés… Tenez, c'était justement au bas de la maison des Varnum, au tournant de la route de Corbury… Ruth venait alors de s'accorder avec Ned Hale… Tout ce jeune monde était ami… La pauvre femme, elle a eu assez de ses propres malheurs !

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      Ethan Frome ~Chapter I

      All the dwellers in Starkfield, as in more notable communities, had had troubles enough of their own to make them comparatively indifferent to those of their neighbours; and though all conceded that Ethan Frome’s had been beyond the common measure, no one gave me an explana-tion of the look in his face which, as I persisted in thinking, neither poverty nor physical suffering could have put there. Nevertheless, I might have contented myself with the story pieced together from these hints had it not been for the provocation of Mrs. Hale’s silence, and—a little later—for the accident of personal contact with the man.

      On my arrival at Starkfield, Denis Eady, the rich Irish grocer, who was the proprietor of Starkfield’s nearest ap-proach to a livery stable, had entered into an agreement to send me over daily to Corbury Flats, where I had to pick up my train for the Junction. But about the middle of the win-ter Eady’s horses fell ill of a local epidemic. The illness spread to the other Starkfield stables and for a day or two I was put to it to find a means of transport. Then Harmon Gow sug-gested that Ethan Frome’s bay was still on his legs and that his owner might be glad to drive me over.

      I stared at the suggestion. “Ethan Frome? But I’ve nev-er even spoken to him. Why on earth should he put himself out for me?”

      Harmon’s answer surprised me still more. “I don’t know as he would; but I know he wouldn’t be sorry to earn a dollar.”

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      Sous la neige~ Chapitre I

      Les habitants de Starkfield, en cela fort semblables au reste des hommes, avaient en effet assez de leurs pro-pres malheurs sans se passionner outre mesure pour ceux de leurs voisins. Et, bien que tous tinssent le cas de Frome pour exceptionnel, aucun ne réussit à m'expliquer son regard étrange. J'avais beau me dire qu'il était impossible que la misère et la souffrance eussent suffi à le marquer ainsi… J'eu-sse peut-être fini par me contenter de ces bribes d'histoire, sans l'espèce de provocation qu'était le silence même de Mrs. Hale et le hasard qui bientôt me rapprocha d'Ethan Frome lui-même.

      Ma résidence à Starkfield m'obligeait à redescendre chaque jour sur Corbury Flats, où je prenais le train pour Corbury Junction. Lors de mon installation, je m'étais en-tendu avec le riche épicier irlandais, Denis Eady, qui louait aussi des voitures, pour me faire conduire chaque jour à la gare. Vers le milieu de l'hiver, les chevaux de mon loueur tombèrent tous malades, à la suite d'une épidémie locale. La maladie se propageait à toutes les écuries du village, et, pour quelques jours, je fus obligé de chercher un expédient. A ce moment, Harmon Gow m'apprit que le cheval d'Ethan Frome était indemne et que son maître consentirait peut-être à me transporter.

      La proposition m'étonna.

      — Ethan Frome ? Mais je ne lui ai jamais parlé ! … Pour quelle raison consentirait-il à se charger de moi ?

      La réponse d'Harmon Gow accrut encore ma surprise :

      — Je ne sais pas s'il le ferait pour vos beaux yeux, mais très certainement il ne sera pas fâché de gagner un dollar…

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      Ethan Frome ~Chapter I

      I had been told that Frome was poor, and that the saw-mill and the arid acres of his farm yielded scarcely enough to keep his household through the winter; but I had not sup-posed him to be in such want as Harmon’s words implied, and I expressed my wonder.

      “Well, matters ain’t gone any too well with him,” Har-mon said. “When a man’s been setting round like a hulk for twenty years or more, seeing things that want doing, it eats inter him, and he loses his grit. That Frome farm was always ‘bout as bare’s a milkpan when the cat’s been round; and you know what one of them old water-mills is wuth nowadays. When Ethan could sweat over ‘em both from sunup to dark he kinder choked a living out of ‘em; but his folks ate up most everything, even then, and I don’t see how he makes out now. Fust his father got a kick, out haying, and went soft in the brain, and gave away money like Bible texts afore he died. Then his mother got queer and dragged along for years as weak as a baby; and his wife Zeena, she’s always been the greatest hand at doctoring in the county. Sickness and trou-ble: that’s what Ethan’s had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping.”

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      Sous la neige~ Chapitre I

      On m'avait bien dit que Frome était pauvre et que sa scierie jointe aux quelques acres pierreux de sa culture, suffisaient difficilement à faire bouillir la marmite pendant les mois d'hiver. Toutefois je ne m'étais pas figuré une misère aussi complète et je ne pus m'empêcher d'exprimer mon étonnement à Harmon, qui reprit :

      — Oh ! ses affaires ne vont pas très bien ! Quand un homme est depuis vingt ans courbé comme une vieille car-casse de navire, sans pouvoir faire ce qu'il veut, il se mange les sangs et perd courage. La ferme de Frome, ça n'a jamais été grand-chose, et vous savez, d'autre part, ce que rapporte aujourd'hui une de ces vieilles scieries… Lorsque Ethan pou-vait encore peiner sur les deux de front, du matin au soir et du soir au matin, on avait juste, chez lui, de quoi vivre… Et encore, même à cette époque, son monde lui dévorait tout, et je ne sais vraiment pas comment diable il s'en tirait… Ça commença avec son père, qui attrapa un coup de pied de cheval en faisant les foins : le mal lui monta au cerveau, et le pauvre bonhomme jetait l'argent par les fenêtres comme si de rien n'était… Puis ce fut sa mère qui devint drôle… Elle traîna de longue années en enfance… Maintenant, c'est Zee-na, sa femme… Celle-là a passé sa vie à droguer… Au fond, voyez-vous, la maladie et le souci, ce sont les seules choses dont Ethan ait toujours eu son assiette pleine…

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      Ethan Frome ~Chapter I

      The next morning, when I looked out, I saw the hollow-backed bay between the Varnum spruces, and Ethan Frome, throwing back his worn bearskin, made room for me in the sleigh at his side. After that, for a week, he drove me over every morning to Corbury Flats, and on my return in the afternoon met me again and carried me back through the icy night to Starkfield. The distance each way was barely three miles, but the old bay’s pace was slow, and even with firm snow under the runners we were nearly an hour on the way. Ethan Frome drove in silence, the reins loosely held in his left hand, his brown seamed profile, under the hel-met-like peak of the cap, relieved against the banks of snow like the bronze image of a hero. He never turned his face to mine, or answered, except in monosyllables, the questions I put, or such slight pleasantries as I ventured. He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Har-mon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.

      Only once or twice was the distance between us bridged for a moment; and the glimpses thus gained con-firmed my desire to know more. Once I happened to speak of an engineering job I had been on the previous year in Florida, and of the contrast between the winter landscape about us and that in which I had found myself the year before; and to my surprise Frome said suddenly: “Yes: I was down there once, and СКАЧАТЬ