Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters (50 page)

Evelina, unconscious of any distress but her own, sat upright, shivering in Ann Eliza’s hold, while she piled up, detail by detail, her dreary narrative.

‘The minute we got out there, and he found the job wasn’t as good as he expected, he changed. At first I thought he was sick – I used to try to keep him home and nurse him. Then I saw it was something different. He used to go off for hours at a time, and when he came back his eyes kinder had a fog over them. Sometimes he didn’t har’ly know me, and when he did he seemed to hate me. Once he hit me here.’ She touched her breast. ‘Do you remember, Ann Eliza, that time he didn’t come to see us for a week – the time after we all went to Central Park together – and you and I thought he must be sick?’

Ann Eliza nodded.

‘Well, that was the trouble – he’d been at it then. But nothing like as bad. After we’d been out there about a month he disappeared for a whole week. They took him back at the store, and gave him another chance; but the second time they discharged him, and he drifted round for ever so long before he could get another job. We spent all our money and had to move to a cheaper place. Then he got something to do, but they hardly paid him anything, and he didn’t stay there long. When he found out about the baby –’

‘The baby?’ Ann Eliza faltered.

‘It’s dead – it only lived a day. When he found out about it, he got mad, and said he hadn’t any money to pay doctors’ bills, and I’d better write to you to help us. He had an idea you had money hidden away that I didn’t know about.’ She turned to her sister with remorseful eyes. ‘It was him that made me get that hundred dollars out of you.’

‘Hush, hush. I always meant it for you anyhow.’

‘Yes, but I wouldn’t have taken it if he hadn’t been at me the whole time. He used to make me do just what he wanted. Well, when I said I wouldn’t write to you for more money he said I’d better try and earn some myself. That was when he struck
me.… Oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about yet!… I tried to get work at a milliner’s, but I was so sick I couldn’t stay. I was sick all the time. I wisht I’d ha’ died, Ann Eliza.’

‘No, no, Evelina.’

‘Yes, I do. It kept getting worse and worse. We pawned the furniture, and they turned us out because we couldn’t pay the rent; and so then we went to board with Mrs Hochmuller.’

Ann Eliza pressed her closer to dissemble her own tremor. ‘Mrs Hochmuller?’

‘Didn’t you know she was out there? She moved out a month after we did. She wasn’t bad to me, and I think she tried to keep him straight – but Linda –’

‘Linda –?’

‘Well, when I kep’ getting worse, and he was always off, for days at a time, the doctor had me sent to a hospital.’

‘A hospital? Sister – sister!’

‘It was better than being with him; and the doctors were real kind to me. After the baby was born I was very sick and had to stay there a good while. And one day when I was laying there Mrs Hochmuller came in as white as a sheet, and told me him and Linda had gone off together and taken all her money. That’s the last I ever saw of him.’ She broke off with a laugh and began to cough again.

Ann Eliza tried to persuade her to lie down and sleep, but the rest of her story had to be told before she could be soothed into consent. After the news of Ramy’s flight she had had brain fever, and had been sent to another hospital where she stayed a long time – how long she couldn’t remember. Dates and days meant nothing to her in the shapeless ruin of her life. When she left the hospital she found that Mrs Hochmuller had gone too. She was penniless, and had no one to turn to. A lady visitor at the hospital was kind, and found her a place where she did housework; but she was so weak they couldn’t keep her. Then she got a job as waitress in a down-town lunchroom, but one day she fainted while she was handing a dish, and that evening when they paid her they told her she needn’t come again.

‘After that I begged in the streets’ – (Ann Eliza’s grasp again grew tight) – ‘and one afternoon last week, when the matinees was coining out, I met a man with a pleasant face, something like Mr Hawkins, and he stopped and asked me what the trouble was. I told him if he’d give me five dollars I’d have money enough to buy a ticket back to New York, and he took a good look at me and said, well, if that was what I wanted he’d go straight to the station with me and give me the five dollars there. So he did – and he bought the ticket, and put me in the cars.’

Evelina sank back, her face a sallow wedge in the white cleft of the pillow. Ann Eliza leaned over her, and for a long time they held each other without speaking.

They were still clasped in this dumb embrace when there was a step in the shop and Ann Eliza, starting up, saw Miss Mellins in the doorway.

‘My sakes, Miss Bunner! What in the land are you doing? Miss Evelina – Mrs Ramy – it ain’t you?’

Miss Mellins’s eyes, bursting from their sockets, sprang from Evelina’s pallid face to the disordered supper table and the heap of worn clothes on the floor; then they turned back to Ann Eliza, who had placed herself on the defensive between her sister and the dress-maker.

‘My sister Evelina has come back – come back on a visit. she was taken sick in the cars on the way home – I guess she caught cold – so I made her go right to bed as soon as ever she got here.’

Ann Eliza was surprised at the strength and steadiness of her voice. Fortified by its sound she went on, her eyes on Miss Mellins’s baffled countenance: ‘Mr Ramy has gone west on a trip – a trip connected with his business; and Evelina is going to stay with me till he comes back.’

W
hat measure of belief her explanation of Evelina’s return obtained in the small circle of her friends Ann Eliza did not pause to enquire. Though she could not remember ever having told a lie before, she adhered with rigid tenacity to the consequences of her first lapse from truth, and fortified her original statement with additional details whenever a questioner sought to take her unawares.

But other and more serious burdens lay on her startled conscience. For the first time in her life she dimly faced the awful problem of the inutility of self-sacrifice. Hitherto she had never thought of questioning the inherited principles which had guided her life. Self-effacement for the good of others had always seemed to her both natural and necessary; but then she had taken it for granted that it implied the securing of that good. Now she perceived that to refuse the gifts of life does not ensure their transmission to those for whom they have been surrendered; and her familiar heaven was unpeopled. She felt she could no longer trust in the goodness of God, and there was only a black abyss above the roof of Bunner Sisters.

But there was little time to brood upon such problems. The care of Evelina filled Ann Eliza’s days and nights. The hastily summoned doctor had pronounced her to be suffering from pneumonia, and under his care the first stress of the disease was relieved. But her recovery was only partial, and long after the doctor’s visits had ceased she continued to lie in bed, too weak to move, and seemingly indifferent to everything about her.

At length one evening, about six weeks after her return, she said to her sister: ‘I don’t feel’s if I’d ever get up again.’

Ann Eliza turned from the kettle she was placing on the stove. She was startled by the echo the words woke in her own breast.

‘Don’t you talk like that, Evelina! I guess you’re on’y tired out – and disheartened.’

‘Yes, I’m disheartened,’ Evelina murmured.

A few months earlier Ann Eliza would have met the confession with a word of pious admonition; now she accepted it in silence.

‘Maybe you’ll brighten up when your cough gets better,’ she suggested.

‘Yes – or my cough’ll get better when I brighten up,’ Evelina retorted with a touch of her old tartness.

‘Does your cough keep on hurting you jest as much?’

‘I don’t see’s there’s much difference.’

‘Well, I guess I’ll get the doctor to come round again,’ Ann Eliza said, trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might speak of sending for the plumber or the gas-fitter.

‘It ain’t any use sending for the doctor – and who’s going to pay him?’

‘I am,’ answered the elder sister. ‘Here’s your tea, and a mite of toast. Don’t that tempt you?’

Already, in the watches of the night, Ann Eliza had been tormented by that same question – who was to pay the doctor? – and a few days before she had temporarily silenced it by borrowing twenty dollars of Miss Mellins. The transaction had cost her one of the bitterest struggles of her life. She had never borrowed a penny of anyone before, and the possibility of having to do so had always been classed in her mind among those shameful extremities to which Providence does not let decent people come. But nowadays she no longer believed in the personal supervision of Providence; and had she been compelled to steal the money instead of borrowing it, she would have felt that her conscience was the only tribunal before which she had to answer. Nevertheless, the actual humiliation of having to ask for the money was no less bitter; and she could hardly hope that Miss Mellins would view the
case with the same detachment as herself. Miss Mellins was very kind; but she not unnaturally felt that her kindness should be rewarded by according her the right to ask questions; and bit by bit Ann Eliza saw Evelina’s miserable secret slipping into the dress-maker’s possession.

When the doctor came she left him alone with Evelina, busying herself in the shop that she might have an opportunity of seeing him alone on his way out. To steady herself she began to sort a trayful of buttons, and when the doctor appeared she was reciting under her breath: ‘Twenty-four horn, two and a half cards fancy pearl …’ She saw at once that his look was grave.

He sat down on the chair beside the counter, and her mind travelled miles before he spoke.

‘Miss Bunner, the best thing you can do is to let me get a bed for your sister at St Luke’s.’

‘The hospital?’

‘Come now, you’re above that sort of prejudice, aren’t you?’ The doctor spoke in the tone of one who coaxes a spoiled child. ‘I know how devoted you are – but Mrs Ramy can be much better cared for there than here. You really haven’t time to look after her and attend to your business as well. There’ll be no expense, you understand –’

Ann Eliza made no answer. ‘You think my sister’s going to be sick a good while, then?’ she asked.

‘Well, yes – possibly.’

‘You think she’s very sick?’

‘Well, yes. She’s very sick.’

His face had grown still graver; he sat there as though he had never known what it was to hurry.

Ann Eliza continued to separate the pearl and horn buttons. Suddenly she lifted her eyes and looked at him. ‘Is she going to die?’

The doctor laid a kindly hand on hers. ‘We never say that, Miss Bunner. Human skill works wonders – and at the hospital Mrs Ramy would have every chance.’

‘What is it? What’s she dying of?’

The doctor hesitated, seeking to substitute a popular phrase for the scientific terminology which rose to his lips.

‘I want to know,’ Ann Eliza persisted.

‘Yes, of course; I understand. Well, your sister has had a hard time lately, and there is a complication of causes, resulting in consumption – rapid consumption. At the hospital –’

‘I’ll keep her here,’ said Ann Eliza quietly.

After the doctor had gone she went on for some time sorting the buttons; then she slipped the tray into its place on a shelf behind the counter and went into the back room. She found Evelina propped upright against the pillows, a flush of agitation on her cheeks. Ann Eliza pulled up the shawl which had slipped from her sister’s shoulders.

‘How long you’ve been! What’s he been saying?’

‘Oh, he went long ago – he on’y stopped to give me a prescription. I was sorting out that tray of buttons. Miss Mellins’s girl got them all mixed up.’

She felt Evelina’s eyes upon her.

‘He must have said something: what was it?’

‘Why, he said you’d have to be careful – and stay in bed – and take this new medicine he’s given you.’

‘Did he say I was going to get well?’

‘Why, Evelina!’

‘What’s the use, Ann Eliza? You can’t deceive me. I’ve just been up to look at myself in the glass; and I saw plenty of ’em in the hospital that looked like me. They didn’t get well, and I ain’t going to.’ Her head dropped back. ‘It don’t much matter – I’m about tired. On’y there’s one thing – Ann Eliza –’

The elder sister drew near to the bed.

‘There’s one thing I ain’t told you. I didn’t want to tell you yet because I was afraid you might be sorry – but if he says I’m going to die I’ve got to say it.’ She stopped to cough, and to Ann Eliza it now seemed as though every cough struck a minute from the hours remaining to her.

‘Don’t talk now – you’re tired.’

‘I’ll be tireder tomorrow, I guess. And I want you should know. Sit down close to me – there.’

Ann Eliza sat down in silence, stroking her shrunken hand. ‘I’m a Roman Catholic, Ann Eliza.’

‘Evelina – oh, Evelina Bunner! A Roman Catholic –
you
? Oh, Evelina, did
he
make you?’

Evelina shook her head. ‘I guess he didn’t have no religion; he never spoke of it. But you see Mrs Hochmuller was a Catholic, and so when I was sick she got the doctor to send me to a Roman Catholic hospital, and the sisters was so good to me there – and the priest used to come and talk to me; and the things he said kep’ me from going crazy. He seemed to make everything easier.’

‘Oh, sister, how could you?’ Ann Eliza wailed. She knew little of the Catholic religion except that ‘Papists’ believed in it – in itself a sufficient indictment. Her spiritual rebellion had not freed her from the formal part of her religious belief, and apostasy had always seemed to her one of the sins from which the pure in mind avert their thoughts.

‘And then when the baby was born,’ Evelina continued, ‘he christened it right away, so it could go to heaven; and after that, you see, I had to be a Catholic.’

‘I don’t see –’

‘Don’t I have to be where the baby is? I couldn’t ever ha’ gone there if I hadn’t been made a Catholic. Don’t you understand that?’