by Kate Chopin
“I know all you would say,” she replied, “I have been over the whole ground myself, over and over, but it is useless. I have found that there are certain things which a woman can’t philosophize about, any more than she can about death when it touches that which is near to her.”
“But you don’t think— “
“Hush! don’t speak of it ever again. I think nothing!” closing her eyes, and with a little shudder drawing closer to him.
As he kissed his wife with passionate fondness, Faraday thought, “I love her none the less for it, but my Nellie is only a woman, after all.”
With man’s usual inconsistency, he had quite forgotten the episode of the portrait.
MISS WITHERWELL’S MISTAKE
It was seldom that the Saturday edition, of the Boredomville Battery appeared with its pages ungraced by a contribution from Miss Frances Witherwell’s lively and prolific pen. If it were not a tale of passion, acted beneath those blue and southern skies — traditionally supposed to foster the growth of soft desire, and whither she loved to cast her lines — it might be an able treatise on “The Wintering of Canaries,” or “Security Against the Moth.” I recall at the moment, a paper for which the matrons of Boredomville were themselves much beholden to the spinster, Miss Witherwell, entitled, “A Word to Mothers.”
Her neat and pretty home standing on the outskirts of the town, proved that she held nothing in common with that oft-cited Mrs. Jelleby, who has served not a little to bring the female litterateur into disrepute. Indeed, many of her most pungent conceptions are known to have come to her, whilst engaged in some such domestic occupation as sprinkling camphor in the folds of the winter curtains, or lining trunks with tar-paper, to prevent moths. And she herself tells of that poetic, enigmatic inspiration “Trust Not!” having flashed upon her, whilst she stood at the pantry-shelf washing with her own safe hands, her cut-glass goblets in warm soap-suds.
Being exact and punctilious in her working methods, and moreover, holding a moneyed interest in the Battery, she stood well with the staff of that journal. With promptness and precision that seldom miscarried, her article was handed in on Wednesday; the following Friday found her in the editorial rooms, proof before her. Then, with eagle eye to detect, and bold hand to eliminate, she removed the possibility of those demoniac vagaries, in which the type-setter proverbially delights.
One crisp November morning, a letter came to Miss Witherwell. It was from her brother Hiram, a St. Louis merchant, who had removed from Boredomville with his modest capital, when he sagaciously detected signs of commercial paralysis falling upon that otherwise attractive town. The letter threw Miss Witherwell into a singular flutter of contending sensations; announcing as it did, a visit from her niece, Mildred. Naturally to a maiden lady of fixed and lofty intellectual and other habits, there could only be a foretaste of disturbance in such an announcement. That the girl had had a love affair, made the situation none the more inviting to Miss Witherwell, for whom two such divergent cupids, as love in real life, and love in fiction, held themselves at widely distant points of view. It was hoped that a visit to her aunt, would help to turn the fair Mildred’s thoughts from a lover, to whom her parents strongly objected. Not on any ground touching his personality, as Hiram Wither-well informed his sister; for the young man possessed the desirable qualifications of gentle birth, exceptional education, and no pronounced bad habits. Yet, was he so ineligible, from the well understood, worldly standpoint, that not for a moment, could he be thought a fitting mate for Mildred. Mr. Witherwell went on to say that his daughter had behaved well, in the somewhat painful matter of submitting to her parents’ wishes. The young man had been no less tractable; indeed, he had lately quitted St Louis; and Mr. Witherwell felt hopeful, that time and change of scene would bring Mildred back to them completely reconciled, poor child, to the wordly wisdom of those who know the world so much better than she.
Miss Witherwell’s agitation upon the receipt of this letter, resolved itself into a kind of folded and practical resignation, which moved her to the inspection of the cakebox. She remembered her niece as a girl of twelve, afflicted with a morbid craving for sweets, which might have survived her young ladyhood; possibly, too, she had retained the habits of teasing Mouchette, and bothering the cook out of her seven senses. Her astonishment partook therefore of the nature of a shock, at beholding the tall, handsome girl who kissed her effusively, and greeted her with an impressive, “dear aunt Frances” and brought into the quiet household a whiff of ozone that actually waked the slumbering songsters.
So little of the hoyden of twelve remained in this well mannered young lady of nineteen, that it was, with hesitancy, that Miss Witherwell passed her the large cake at tea, and was well pleased to find one recognizable trait enduring in spite of years and thwarted love.
“I very much fear, my dear, that such attractions as Boredomville can offer will prove inadequate in reconciling you to this temporary separation from the more varied enjoyments of your St. Louis life,” said Miss Witherwell to her niece, with a dignity vastly impressive, but quite ordinary, with the august spinster.
“You mistake my purpose in coming to you, dear aunt, if you fancy I am seeking vain enjoyment,” answered the girl, spreading a generous layer of delicious peach jam on her third slice of buttered bread. “The joys of life, with much of its sorrows, I hope, lie behind me. If I could feel sure that the future held some field of usefulness! Let me trouble you for half a cup of that exquisite tea — thanks, aunt Frances — as I was saying — another lump of sugar, please — some field of usefulness; don’t you know, that would serve to draw me out of myself; that would let me forget my own troubles in lightening the misery of others.”
“Ah! to have tasted the bitter cup so young,” thought Miss Witherwell; “poor girl! poor heart!” But being an undemonstrative woman she said nothing; only coughed behind her hand, and then looked gloomily down whilst she rolled a very large napkin and forced it into the compass of a very small ring.
A few eventful days went by, in which Mildred gathered mild solace from the sympathetic hearing which her aunt lent to the unfolding of her pessimistic views of life. At last there came some very ugly weather, and with it, what Miss Witherwell called one of her “staying colds.”
“Mildred, my dear,” she said to her niece on a Friday morning, when icy honors held possession of out-doors, “I shall ask you to do me a service to-day. I have observed that however inclement the weather may be, it does not deter you from your daily walk. And you are right. Therein, lies the secret of the canker at your heart, having left the bloom in your cheek untouched.” Then laying a finger lightly on the girl’s glowing cheek, “You will stop at the office of the Battery, will you not, my dear? and say that I sent you. There will be no impropriety, else I should not want you to go. Ask to see the proof of my article which will appear tomorrow, and look it carefully over, correcting all errors. If you should encounter difficulties, Mr. Wilson will gladly assist you in meeting them.” “Mr. Wilson?” “Yes, the new assistant editor; a charming young man whom I find much more amenable than Hudson Jones.”
The wind and an open umbrella helped to hurry her over the glassy street, and as the driving sleet pricked her glowing face like sharp needles, Mildred clutched tragically at her ulster, muttering, “Wilson, Wilson; heaven and earth, what memories!” Her heart sank as she realized how common the name was. Had she ever looked into a newspaper that it had not confronted her with its prefixes of Johns, Toms or Harrys, and usually, heaven save the mark, in the police record. In yielding to her parents’ wishes, and shutting Roland Wilson out of her life, Mildred meant and hoped to put him as effectually from out of her heart. Much help that promised to count, was at hand, in her happy and healthful youth with its unbounded resources, but! —
After bewildering the small Cerberus, who mounted guard at the head of the editorial stairs, with the glaringly unbelievable announcement that she was “Miss Witherwell,” and then, making known h
er errand to a person whose province in life seemed the acceptance of any and everything with impartial resignation, she was politely seated at a desk and left to her own devices, and Miss Witherwell’s proof.
The situation was certainly new, and she thought extremely interesting, as she flutteringly settled herself and qualified for her unaccustomed task by a generous moistening of her Faber No. 2 between the prettiest of red lips. She was quick enough to detect errors, and at the same time to feel her ignorance of what she knew must be technical methods of correction. She looked about her for the outside assistance which her aunt suggested, but she was quite alone in the small room that was separated from an adjoining one by a light partition. Through the door that stood ajar she could hear that some one was at work. By leaning and peering forward she saw the angle of a shirt-sleeved arm. A further craning of the neck and she caught sight of a shoulder, a leg, and a section of a blonde head that made her heart leap and beat in a most undisciplined manner. Another and more comprehensive look into the adjoining room revealed to her Roland Wilson standing behind a high desk. She trembled lest he should see her; then grew faint at the possibility of his not seeing her. When the latter contingency seemed likely to become a certainty, she coughed, an aggressive little cough, and so probably unreal and unlike anything which had ever afflicted her before, that it failed to bring the hoped-for recognition from Roland Wilson. A second and third repetition of that exasperating little cough, finally moved the young man to the consciousness that some female, with a trouble of the larynx, was somewhere in his too close vicinity, and turning to close the door and shut out the interruption, he saw Mildred, pale and red — almost crying, but most certainly laughing, looking up at him.
There was a rapturous meeting of outstretched hands, followed by a moment of hesitancy. Uncertainty on his part — indecision on hers. Then a spontaneous pressure of the yet clasped hands, warm and full of assurance from each. If little Cerberus had not been so near, and if there had not been the likelihood of sudden interruption, there is every reason to believe the cordiality of this unlooked-for meeting would have waxed much more emphatic; for surely, youth and red lips are temptations.
“Mildred, child! this passes my understanding,” said Miss Witherwell on the following morning to her niece, as she looked over her article in the Battery, “The Use and Abuse of the Corset,” an unusually strong thing, Hudson Jones had pronounced it — handled in that free, fearless, almost heroic style, permitted to so well established a veteran in journalism as Miss Witherwell. Never before had anything from her pen appeared in so slovenly garb. Instinctively she sent her pencil dashing through it in cabalistic correction. The defects were grievous; the errata appalling!
“Can it be possible you saw Mr. Wilson?” she asked. “A tall, light young man?”
“Oh! yes, aunt, quite certain. Tall as you say, and fair; with dark-blue eyes like two deep wells of thought; a man to remind one of celestial music, and a silky moustache. Oh! I’m quite sure!”
“Humph! that will do; I dare say it was he; but not in his proper mind.”
“Well, aunt Frances, I admit that I don’t believe he saw it.” “What?” turning upon her in blank surprise.
“Yes; you see, I tried to correct the thing — I mean the article — myself, and didn’t know how. Mr. Wilson was willing enough to help me, but I bundled it up and told him it was all right. You know, yourself, aunt Frances, it isn’t a theme any girl would like to dwell upon with a young man — highly indelicate. I couldn’t have done it.”
“False modesty, indeed; perniciously false! This confession implies a serious error in your bringing up, and I wonder at your father for it.”
Mildred begged permission to vindicate herself on the following week, and so skilfully did she perform her task; in such trim and pleasing shape did “Some Errors in Modern Elocution” appear, on the following Saturday, that Miss Witherwell was ready to forgive. Thereafter, as the winter was very inclement and Miss Witherwell’s cold clung to her with more than the persistency of a lover, besides the lady thought it was well to give her niece something to keep her out of mischief, Mildred was entrusted with the proud task of correcting Miss Witherwell’s proof-sheets, once a week, at the Battery office.
The days crept into midwinter, and Mildred had yet shown no disposition to return home. This was considered a good omen by all, and no interference was offered to what seemed a whimsical idea of hers, to linger so long in Boredomville.
Mildred sat one day, deep in a comfortable arm-chair on one side the pleasant grate-fire, that was throwing dim and fitful lights into the cosy room. Miss Witherwell occupied the other side, but not in the same lounging attitude as her niece. Miss Witherwell, the elder, sat prim and upright. The canaries were dead asleep under the dark cover that she had thrown over their cage; and Mouchette lay curled on the rug, insensible to any world but that which haunts feline dreams.
“Aunt,” said Mildred, moved by a sudden impulse to be communicative, “do you know, I have a little story in my mind: a little love story.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Miss Witherwell in pleased surprise; and seizing the poker she drove it into the soft yielding coal with an emphasis that started a burst of joyous, dancing lights. What she thought was, that a happy deliverance from love-sickness and a colorless future had come to her niece in the form of this pleasing vocation. What she said was: “Have you thought it out fully? I shall be pleased to hear the synopsis.”
“No,” returned Mildred, dubiously fixing her gaze far in the fire and clasping her hands over her knee. “That’s where I want your help, don’t you know, to complete it. You see, it’s about two lovers— “
“Yes, certainly. It is a very proper number.”
“They, poor things, have been separated by a cruel, unjust fate or by a sordid parent. What do you think of the situation?”
“An excellent one,” said Miss Witherwell, approvingly. “Not altogether new, yet with capabilities of development. Well?”
“Well, he’s just the noblest, the truest of men, with every honorable instinct that a human being could possess.”
“Be careful not to overdraw, Mildred.”
“Yes, to be sure. That is an important point I had forgotten. In short, however, he has everything in his favor, save wealth. And they love each other — oh, devotedly! But they submit to what seems an inevitable decree and part, thinking never to meet again; then this same capricious fate brings them once more together, under peculiar circumstances.”
“That might be made extremely effective,” interrupted Miss Wither-well, her bold imagination crowded with situations which offered only the difficulty of a choice.
“This is the point where I need your advice, aunt. Bear in mind that being brought — almost forced together — through outside influences, they grow to love each other to desperation.”
“Your hero must now perform some act to ingratiate himself with the obdurate parent,” spoke Miss Witherwell, didactically, but warmly. “Let him save the father from some imminent peril — a railroad accident — a shipwreck. Let him, by some clever combination, avert a business catastrophe — let him— “
“No, no, aunt! I can’t force situations. You’ll find I’m extremely realistic. The only point for consideration is, to marry or not to marry; that is the question.”
Miss Witherwell looked at her niece, aghast. “The poison of the realistic school has certainly tainted and withered your fancy in the bud, my dear, if you hesitate a moment. Marry them, most certainly, or let them die.”
“Thanks, aunt Frances; I believe your suggestion is worth consideration.”
This ended the conversation; but, needless to say, Miss Witherwell took a keen, though unobtrusive interest in the course of her niece’s love story, and she could not so far do violence to her journalistic habit that had become second nature, as to withhold points that were always gratefully received.
“I think I shall end it to-day, aunt; you shall know the dénouem
ent this evening,” said Mildred, as she started for her accustomed Friday afternoon visit to the Battery office.
It was later than her usual hour for returning. The lamps had long been lighted, and Miss Witherwell had grown first a little impatient at her niece’s prolonged absence, then disturbed; and was finally becoming alarmed, when she heard the garden gate slam. This was the signal with her to pour boiling water on the tea, which having done, she reseated herself with regained composure.
Mildred entered the room, followed by a tall young man whose handsome, open countenance beamed with happiness.
“Mr. Wilson,” said Miss Witherwell, advancing toward him with dignity and extending her hand, “I am pleased to see you, and glad that you should have accompanied my niece home. An unseemly hour for her to have been on the streets alone,” with a reproving glance at Mildred. “Pray be seated, and permit me to offer you a cup of tea.”
The young man stood erect and unbending before her, not offering to take the hand which she held out to him.
“Miss Witherwell,” he said, “before accepting your hospitality, I must make a disclosure!”
Miss Witherwell sank into a chair under pressure of a premonitory suspicion.
“He only wants to tell you the end of my story, aunt Frances,” said Mildred, kneeling upon the low cushion which stood beside her aunt’s chair, and at the same time taking that lady’s hand in both hers. Then she turned toward Roland Wilson, saying : “Come, Roland, I know that aunt Frances will forgive us; for I have only followed her advice in closing my little love story with the happiest of marriages!”
Roland Wilson is now editor in chief of the Boredomville Battery, and is in a fair way to realize a handsome competence, if not a large fortune. Hiram Witherwell has grown reconciled to the match, and is secretly very proud of his son-in-law. Miss Witherwell still writes her brilliant articles for the Battery; she has grown older in years, but not in reality; indeed, the company and proximity of her niece and nephew has so brightened and cheered her, that she seems to grow younger every day; and is often heard to say, in her decided manner, that no mistake was ever more lucky.