Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters

by Edith Wharton

  ‘Why, yes, to be sure,’ she agreed. ‘Mr Ramy said if he was us he wouldn’t want to leave his money there any longer’n he could help.’

  ‘It was over a week ago he said it,’ Evelina reminded her.

  ‘I know; but he told me to wait till he’d found out for sure about that other investment; and we ain’t seen him since then.’

  Ann Eliza’s words released their secret fear. ‘I wonder what’s happened to him,’ Evelina said. ‘You don’t suppose he could be sick?’

  ‘I was wondering too,’ Ann Eliza rejoined; and the sisters looked down at their plates.

  ‘I should think you’d oughter do something about that money pretty soon,’ Evelina began again.

  ‘Well, I know I’d oughter. What would you do if you was me?’

  ‘If I was you,’ said her sister, with perceptible emphasis and a rising blush, ‘I’d go right round and see if Mr Ramy was sick. You could.’

  The words pierced Ann Eliza like a blade. ‘Yes, that’s so,’ she said.

  ‘It would only seem friendly, if he really is sick. If I was you I’d go today,’ Evelina continued; and after dinner Ann Eliza went.

  On the way she had to leave a parcel at the dyer’s, and having performed that errand she turned toward Mr Ramy’s shop. Never before had she felt so old, so hopeless and humble. She knew she was bound on a love-errand of Evelina’s, and the knowledge seemed to dry the last drop of young blood in her veins. It took from her, too, all her faded virginal shyness; and with a brisk composure she turned the handle of the clock-maker’s door.

  But as she entered her heart began to tremble, for she saw Mr Ramy, his face hidden in his hands, sitting behind the counter in an attitude of strange dejection. At the click of the latch he looked up slowly, fixing a lustreless stare on Ann Eliza. For a moment she thought he did not know her.

  ‘Oh, you’re sick!’ she exclaimed; and the sound of her voice seemed to recall his wandering senses.

  ‘Why, if it ain’t Miss Bunner!’ he said, in a low thick tone; but he made no attempt to move, and she noticed that his face was the colour of yellow ashes.

  ‘You are sick,’ she persisted, emboldened by his evident need of help. ‘Mr Ramy, it was real unfriendly of you not to let us know.’

  He continued to look at her with dull eyes. ‘I ain’t been sick,’ he said. ‘Leastways not very: only one of my old turns.’ He spoke in a slow laboured way, as if he had difficulty in getting his words together.

  ‘Rheumatism?’ she ventured, seeing how unwillingly he seemed to move.

  ‘Well – somethin’ like, maybe. I couldn’t hardly put a name to it.’

  ‘If it was anything like rheumatism, my grandmother used to make a tea –’ Ann Eliza began: she had forgotten, in the warmth of the moment, that she had only come as Evelina’s messenger.

  At the mention of tea an expression of uncontrollable repugnance passed over Mr Ramy’s face. ‘Oh, I guess I’m getting on all right. I’ve just got a headache today.’

  Ann Eliza’s courage dropped at the note of refusal in his voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said gently. ‘My sister and me’d have been glad to do anything we could for you.’

  ‘Thank you kindly,’ said Mr Ramy wearily; then, as she turned to the door, he added with an effort: ‘Maybe I’ll step round tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ll be real glad,’ Ann Eliza repeated. Her eyes were fixed on a dusty bronze clock in the window. She was unaware of looking at it at the time, but long afterward she remembered that it represented a Newfoundland dog with his paw on an open book.

  When she reached home there was a purchaser in the shop, turning over hooks and eyes under Evelina’s absent-minded supervision. Ann Eliza passed hastily into the back room, but in an instant she heard her sister at her side.

  ‘Quick! I told her I was goin’ to look for some smaller hooks – how is he?’ Evelina gasped.

  ‘He ain’t been very well,’ said Ann Eliza slowly, her eyes on Evelina’s eager face; ‘but he says he’ll be sure to be round tomorrow night.’

  ‘He will? Are you telling me the truth?’

  ‘Why, Evelina Bunner!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t care!’ cried the younger recklessly, rushing back into the shop.

  Ann Eliza stood burning with the shame of Evelina’s self-exposure. She was shocked that, even to her, Evelina should lay bare the nakedness of her emotion; and she tried to turn her thoughts from it as though its recollection made her a sharer in her sister’s debasement.

  The next evening, Mr Ramy reappeared, still somewhat sallow and red-lidded, but otherwise his usual self. Ann Eliza consulted him about the investment he had recommended, and after it had been settled that he should attend to the matter for her he took up the illustrated volume of Longfellow – for, as the sisters had learned, his culture soared beyond the newspapers – and read aloud, with a fine confusion of consonants, the poem on ‘Maidenhood’. Evelina lowered her lids while he read. It was a very beautiful evening, and Ann Eliza thought afterward how different life might have been with a companion who read poetry like Mr Ramy.

  VII

  During the ensuing weeks Mr Ramy, though his visits were as frequent as ever, did not seem to regain his usual spirits. He complained frequently of headache, but rejected Ann Eliza’s tentatively proffered remedies, and seemed to shrink from any prolonged investigation of his symptoms. July had come, with a sudden ardour of heat, and one evening, as the three sat together by the open window in the back room, Evelina said: ‘I dunno what I wouldn’t give, a night like this, for a breath of real country air.’

  ‘So would I,’ said Mr Ramy, knocking the ashes from his pipe. ‘I’d like to be setting in an arbour dis very minute.’

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely?’

  ‘I always think it’s real cool here – we’d be heaps hotter up where Miss Mellins is,’ said Ann Eliza.

  ‘Oh, I daresay – but we’d be heaps cooler somewhere else,’ her sister snapped: she was not infrequently exasperated by Ann Eliza’s furtive attempts to mollify Providence.

  A few days later Mr Ramy appeared with a suggestion which enchanted Evelina. He had gone the day before to see his friend, Mrs Hochmuller, who lived in the outskirts of Hoboken, and Mrs Hochmuller had proposed that on the following Sunday he should bring the Bunner sisters to spend the day with her.

  ‘She’s got a real garden, you know,’ Mr Ramy explained, ‘wid trees and a real summer-house to set in; and hens and chickens too. And it’s an elegant sail over on de ferry-boat.’

  The proposal drew no response from Ann Eliza. She was still oppressed by the recollection of her interminable Sunday in the Park; but, obedient to Evelina’s imperious glance, she finally faltered out an acceptance.

  The Sunday was a very hot one, and once on the ferry-boat Ann Eliza revived at the touch of the salt breeze, and the spectacle of the crowded waters; but when they reached the other shore, and stepped out on the dirty wharf, she began to ache with anticipated weariness. They got into a street-car, and were jolted from one mean street to another, till at length Mr Ramy pulled the conductor’s sleeve and they got out again; then they stood in the blazing sun, near the door of a crowded beer-saloon, waiting for another car to come; and that carried them out to a thinly settled district, past vacant lots and narrow brick houses standing in unsupported solitude, till they finally reached an almost rural region of scattered cottages and low wooden buildings that looked like village ‘stores’. Here the car finally stopped of its own accord, and they walked along a rutty road, past a stone-cutter’s yard with a high fence tapestried with theatrical advertisements, to a little red house with green blinds and a garden paling. Really, Mr Ramy had not deceived them. Clumps of dielytra and day-lilies bloomed behind the paling, and a crooked elm hung romantically over the gable of the house.

  At the gate Mrs Hochmuller, a broad woman in brick-brown merino, met them with nods and smiles, while her daughter Linda, a flaxen-haired girl with mottled r
ed cheeks and a sidelong stare, hovered inquisitively behind her. Mrs Hochmuller, leading the way into the house, conducted the Bunner sisters the way to her bedroom. Here they were invited to spread out on a mountainous white featherbed the cashmere mantles under which the solemnity of the occasion had compelled them to swelter, and when they had given their black silks the necessary twitch of readjustment, and Evelina had fluffed out her hair before a looking-glass framed in pink-shell work, their hostess led them to a stuffy parlour smelling of gingerbread. After another ceremonial pause, broken by polite enquiries and shy ejaculations, they were shown into the kitchen, where the table was already spread with strange-looking spice-cakes and stewed fruits, and where they presently found themselves seated between Mrs Hochmuller and Mr Ramy, while the staring Linda bumped back and forth from the stove with steaming dishes.

  To Ann Eliza the dinner seemed endless, and the rich fare strangely unappetizing. She was abashed by the easy intimacy of her hostess’s voice and eye. With Mr Ramy Mrs Hochmuller was almost flippantly familiar, and it was only when Ann Eliza pictured her generous form bent above his sick-bed that she could forgive her for tersely addressing him as ‘Ramy’. During one of the pauses of the meal Mrs Hochmuller laid her knife and fork against the edges of her plate, and, fixing her eyes on the clock-maker’s face, said accusingly: ‘You hat one of dem turns again, Ramy.’

  ‘I dunno as I had,’ he returned evasively.

  Evelina glanced from one to the other. ‘Mr Ramy has been sick,’ she said at length, as though to show that she also was in a position to speak with authority. ‘He’s complained very frequently of headaches.’

  ‘Ho! – I know him,’ said Mrs Hochmuller with a laugh, her eyes still on the clock-maker. ‘Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, Ramy?’

  Mr Ramy, who was looking at his plate, said suddenly one word which the sisters could not understand; it sounded to Ann Eliza like ‘Shwike’.

  Mrs Hochmuller laughed again. ‘My, my,’ she said, ‘wouldn’t you think he’d be ashamed to go and be sick and never dell me, me that nursed him troo dat awful fever?’

  ‘Yes, I should,’ said Evelina, with a spirited glance at Ramy; but he was looking at the sausages that Linda had just put on the table.

  When dinner was over Mrs Hochmuller invited her guests to step out of the kitchen-door, and they found themselves in a green enclosure, half garden, half orchard. Grey hens followed by golden broods clucked under the twisted apple-boughs, a cat dozed on the edge of an old well, and from tree to tree ran the network of clothes-line that denoted Mrs Hochmuller’s calling. Beyond the apple trees stood a yellow summer-house festooned with scarlet runners; and below it, on the farther side of a rough fence, the land dipped down, holding a bit of woodland in its hollow. It was all strangely sweet and still on that hot Sunday afternoon, and as she moved across the grass under the apple-boughs Ann Eliza thought of quiet afternoons in church, and of the hymns her mother had sung to her when she was a baby.

  Evelina was more restless. She wandered from the well to the summer-house and back, she tossed crumbs to the chickens and disturbed the cat with arch caresses; and at last she expressed a desire to go down into the wood.

  ‘I guess you got to go round by the road, then,’ said Mrs Hochmuller. ‘My Linda she goes troo a hole in de fence, but I guess you’d tear your dress if you was to dry.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ said Mr Ramy; and guided by Linda the pair walked along the fence till they reached a narrow gap in its boards. Through this they disappeared, watched curiously in their descent by the grinning Linda, while Mrs Hochmuller and Ann Eliza were left alone in the summer-house.

  Mrs Hochmuller looked at her guest with a confidential smile. ‘I guess dey’ll be gone quite a while,’ she remarked, jerking her double chin toward the gap in the fence. ‘Folks like dat don’t never remember about de dime.’ And she drew out her knitting.

  Ann Eliza could think of nothing to say.

  ‘Your sister she thinks a great lot of him, don’t she?’ her hostess continued.

  Ann Eliza’s cheeks grew hot. ‘Ain’t you a teeny bit lonesome away out here sometimes?’ she asked. ‘I should think you’d be scared nights, all alone with your daughter.’

  ‘Oh, no, I ain’t,’ said Mrs Hochmuller. ‘You see I take in washing – dat’s my business – and it’s a lot cheaper doing it out here dan in de city: where’d I get a drying-ground like dis in Hobucken? And den it’s safer for Linda too; it geeps her outer de streets.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ann Eliza, shrinking. She began to feel a distinct aversion for her hostess, and her eyes turned with involuntary annoyance to the square-backed form of Linda, still inquisitively suspended on the fence. It seemed to Ann Eliza that Evelina and her companion would never return from the wood; but they came at length, Mr Ramy’s brow pearled with perspiration, Evelina pink and conscious, a drooping bunch of ferns in her hand; and it was clear that, to her at least, the moments had been winged.

  ‘D’you suppose they’ll revive?’ she asked, holding up the ferns; but Ann Eliza, rising at her approach, said stiffly: ‘We’d better be getting home, Evelina.’

  ‘Mercy me! Ain’t you going to take your coffee first?’ Mrs Hochmuller protested; and Ann Eliza found to her dismay that another long gastronomic ceremony must intervene before politeness permitted them to leave. At length, however, they found themselves again on the ferry-boat. Water and sky were grey, with a dividing gleam of sunset that sent sleek opal waves in the boat’s wake. The wind had a cool tarry breath, as though it had travelled over miles of shipping, and the hiss of the water about the paddles was as delicious as though it had been splashed into their tired faces.

  Ann Eliza sat apart, looking away from the others. She had made up her mind that Mr Ramy had proposed to Evelina in the wood, and she was silently preparing herself to receive her sister’s confidence that evening.

  But Evelina was apparently in no mood for confidences. When they reached home she put her faded ferns in water, and after supper, when she had laid aside her silk dress and the forget-me-not bonnet, she remained silently seated in her rocking-chair near the open window. It was long since Ann Eliza had seen her in so uncommunicative a mood.

  The following Saturday Ann Eliza was sitting alone in the shop when the door opened and Mr Ramy entered. He had never before called at that hour, and she wondered a little anxiously what had brought him.

  ‘Has anything happened?’ she asked, pushing aside the basketful of buttons she had been sorting.

  ‘Not’s I know of,’ said Mr Ramy tranquilly. ‘But I always close up the store at two o’clock Saturdays at this season, so I thought I might as well call round and see you.’

  ‘I’m real glad, I’m sure,’ said Ann Eliza; ‘but Evelina’s out.’

  ‘I know dat,’ Mr Ramy answered. ‘I met her round de corner. She told me she got to go to dat new dyer’s up in Forty-eighth Street. She won’t be back for a couple of hours, har’ly, will she?’

  Ann Eliza looked at him with rising bewilderment. ‘No, I guess not,’ she answered; her instinctive hospitality prompting her to add: ‘Won’t you set down jest the same?’

  Mr Ramy sat down on the stool beside the counter, and Ann Eliza returned to her place behind it.

  ‘I can’t leave the store,’ she explained.

  ‘Well, I guess we’re very well here.’ Ann Eliza had become suddenly aware that Mr Ramy was looking at her with unusual intentness. Involuntarily her hand strayed to the thin streaks of hair on her temples, and thence descended to straighten the brooch beneath her collar.

  ‘You’re looking very well today, Miss Bunner,’ said Mr Ramy, following her gesture with a smile.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ann Eliza nervously. ‘I’m always well in health,’ she added.

  ‘I guess you’re healthier than your sister, even if you are less sizeable.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Evelina’s a mite nervous sometimes, but she ain’t a bit sickly.’

  ‘She eats hea
rtier than you do; but that don’t mean nothing,’ said Mr Ramy.

  Ann Eliza was silent. She could not follow the trend of his thought, and she did not care to commit herself farther about Evelina before she had ascertained if Mr Ramy considered nervousness interesting or the reverse.

  But Mr Ramy spared her all farther indecision.

  ‘Well, Miss Bunner,’ he said, drawing his stool closer to the counter, ‘I guess I might as well tell you fust as last what I come here for today. I want to get married.’

  Ann Eliza, in many a prayerful midnight hour, had sought to strengthen herself for the hearing of this avowal, but now that it had come she felt pitifully frightened and unprepared. Mr Ramy was leaning with both elbows on the counter, and she noticed that his nails were clean and that he had brushed his hat; yet even these signs had not prepared her!

  At last she heard herself say, with a dry throat in which her heart was hammering: ‘Mercy me, Mr Ramy!’

  ‘I want to get married,’ he repeated. ‘I’m too lonesome. It ain’t good for a man to live all alone, and eat noding but cold meat every day.’

  ‘No,’ said Ann Eliza softly.

  ‘And the dust fairly beats me.