by Kate Chopin
Near the end of the two weeks there was a queer, rambling little note that seemed to Graham wholly out of character and irrelevant:
“You are staying away very long. I feel that I need you, to interpret me to myself if for nothing else. I fear there are forces in life against which the intellectual training makes no provision. Why are we placed at the mercy of emotions? What are the books for after all if we can snatch from them no weapon with which to meet and combat unsuspected and undreamed of subtleties of existence? Oh dear! Oh dear! Come back and help me disentangle it all.” Graham was puzzled and uneasy.
III
He returned to the Branch with the full intention of reclaiming his own. He was gratified with the success of his experiment, which at the same time had been the means of procuring for Pauline a period of diversion such as he believed would benefit her. His intention was to remove the suggestion he had put upon Faverham when everything would, of course, be as it was before.
If his love for the girl had been of the blind, passionate, exacting sort, perhaps he would have done so, even against the odds of changed conditions which met him.
“It may be a passing infatuation,” she admitted with pathetic frankness. “I do not know; I have never felt anything like it before. If you wish — if you think it best and wisest to hold me to my promise you will find me ready to fulfill it. But as things are now, I must tell you that my whole temperament seems to have undergone a change. I — I sometimes — oh! I love him!”
She did not hide her face upon reaching the climax of her confession as most girls would have done, but looked out straight before her. They were sitting under the big maple where Faverham had read Browning to her; and the day was already beginning to fade. There was a light in her face that he had never seen there before; a glow such as he had never been able to kindle; whose source lay deeper in her soul than he had ever reached.
He took her small hand and stroked it quietly. His own hands were cold and moist. He said nothing except:
“You are quite free, dear; entirely free from any promise to me; don’t bother; don’t mind in the least.” He might have said much more, but it did not seem to him worth while. He was letting go of things as he sat there so quietly: of some hopes, a few plans, pictures, intentions, and his whole being was undergoing the wrench of separation.
She said nothing. Love is selfish. She was tasting the exultation of liberty and shrank from inflicting the panacea of conventional phrase or utterance upon a wounded soul.
There were more things than one to trouble Graham. How had his suggestion held and how would it hold? There was no doubt that Faverham was still under the influence of the spell, as Graham detected at once upon first meeting him. The suggestion seemed to have got beyond the professor’s control. He shuddered to think of the consequences; yet no course presented itself to him as acceptable but one of inactivity. There was nothing to do but hold off and let the experiment work itself out as it would.
Faverham said to him that night:
“I’m going away in the morning, old fellow. I’m a devilish nice sort of friend if you only knew it. Spare me the shame of explaining. When we meet again in town I hope I shall have pulled myself sufficiently together to understand a certain aberration of mind or morals — or — or — hang me if I know what I’m talking about!”
“I leave in the morning myself,” returned Graham. “I may as well tell you that Pauline and I have discovered that we are not of that singleness of thought and that oneness of heart which offer the traditional pretext for two beings to cast their lots in common. We might go up to town together in the morning, if you like.”
IV
A few months later Faverham and Pauline were married. Their marriage seemed to mark the culmination of a certain tortuous doubt that possessed itself of the young professor and rendered his days intolerable. “If, if, if!” kept buzzing in his brain: during hours of work; while he walked or rested or read; even throughout the night when he slept.
He remembered Faverham’s former dislike for the woman he had married. He realized that the aversion had been dispelled by means of a force whose limitations were as yet unknown; of whose possibilities he himself was wholly ignorant, and whose subtleties were beyond the control of his capacity. “How long will the suggestion hold?” This was the thought which preyed upon him. What if Faverham should awake some morning detesting the woman at his side! What if his infatuation should fade by degrees, imperceptibly; leaving her wrecked, stripped and shivering, to feed upon bitterness till the end of her days!
He visited them often during the first months of their marriage. People who knew them said their union was an ideal one; and for once, people were right. Unconscious impulses were tempering, acting, counteracting each other, inevitably working towards the moulding of these two into the ideal “one” of the poets’ dreams.
Graham, when he was with them, watched them stealthily, with a certain cat-like intensity which, had they been less occupied with each other, they might have noticed and resented. It was always with a temporary relief he quitted them; a feeling of thankfulness that the lighted fuse had not yet reached the dynamite in the cellar.
But the torture of uncertainty became almost unbearable and once or twice he went to them with the full intention of removing the suggestion; to see what would happen, and have done with it. But the sight of their content, their mutual sympathy, palsied his resolution, and he left as he had gone to them, the prey of doubt and sharp uneasiness.
One day Graham reasoned it all out with himself. The state of worry in which he lived had become unbearable. He determined to that evening, remove the suggestion which he had fixed upon Faverham six months before. If he found that he could do so, then it would easily follow that he could again renew it, if he thought best. But if the disillusion had to come finally to Faverham, why not have it come now, at once, at the outset of their married life, before Pauline had too firmly taken the habit of loving and while he, Graham, might still hold enough of the old influence to offer a balm to her intellect and her imagination if not to her heart.
Graham, that night, realized more keenly than ever the change which Pauline had undergone. He looked at her often as they sat at table, unable to define what was yet so apparent. She was a pretty woman now. There was color in her face whose contour was softened and embellished by a peculiarly happy arrangement of her brown hair. The pince-nez which she had substituted for the rather formidable spectacles, while depriving her face somewhat of its former student-air, lent it a piquancy that was very attractive. Her gown was rich as her husband’s purse could buy and its colors were marvelously soft, indefinable, harmonious, making of the garment a distinct part of herself and her surroundings.
Graham seemed to take his place and fit into this small ménage as an essential and valued part of it. He certainly felt in no trifling degree responsible for its existence. That night he felt like some patriarch of old about to immolate a cherished object upon the altar of science — a victim to the insatiable God of the Inevitable.
It was not during that pleasant moment of dining, but later in the evening that Graham chose to tempt once more the power which he had played with and which, like some venomous, unknown reptile had stung and wounded him.
They sat drowsily before the remnant of a wood-fire that had spent itself, and glowed now, and flamed fitfully. Faverham had been reading aloud by the light of a single lamp, soft lines whose beauty had melted and entered into their souls like an ointment, soothing them to inward contemplation rather than moving them to speech and wordy discussion. The book yet hung from his hand as he stared into the glow of embers. There was a flurry of rain beating against the window panes. Graham, buried in the cushioned depths of an arm chair, gazed at Faverham. Pauline had arisen and she walked slowly to and fro in the apartment, her garments making a soft, pleasant rustle as she moved in and out of the shadows. Graham felt that the moment had come.
He arose and went towards the lamp to l
ight the cigar which he took from his pocket. As he stood beside the table he rested a hand carelessly upon the shoulder of his friend.
“Pauline is the woman she was six months ago. She is not charming or attractive,” he suggested silently. “Pauline is the woman she was six months ago when she first went to Cedar Branch.” Graham lit his cigar at the lamp and returned to his chair in the shadow.
Faverham shivered as if a cold breath had swept by him, and drew his lounge a little nearer the fire. He turned his head and looked at his wife as she passed in her slow walk. Again he gazed into the fire, then restlessly back at his wife; over and over. Graham kept his eyes fixed upon him, silently repeating the suggestion.
Suddenly Faverham arose letting the book fall unnoticed to the floor. Impetuously he approached his wife and taking her in his arms as if he had been alone with her, he held her close, while passionately, almost rudely, he kissed her flushed and startled face, over and over, hungrily. She was panting, and red with confusion and annoyance when he finally released her from his ardent embrace.
“Polly, Polly!” he entreated, “forgive me,” for she went and hid her face in the cushion of a chair; “don’t mind, dearest. Graham knows how much I love you.” He turned and walked towards the fire. He was agitated and passed his hand in an unmeaning fashion across his forehead.
“I don’t know when I’ve made such an ass of myself,” he said apologetically in a low tone to Graham. “I hope you’ll forgive the tactless display of emotion. The truth is, I feel hardly responsible for it myself; more as if I had obeyed some imperative impulse driving me to an emphatic expression. I admit it was ill-timed,” he laughed; “overmastering love is my only excuse.”
Graham did not stay much longer. A sense of relief — release, was overpowering him. But he was baffled; he wanted to be alone to puzzle the phenomenon out according to his lights.
He did not lift his umbrella, but rather welcomed the dash of rain in his face as he strode along the glistening pavement. There was a good bit of a walk before him and it was only towards the end of it, when the rain had stopped and a few little stars were blinking down at him, that the truth finally dawned. He remembered that six months ago he had suggested to Faverham that Pauline was charming, captivating, intelligent, honest, worthy of study. But what about love? He had said nothing of that. Love had come unbidden, without a “will you?” or a “by your leave”; and there was love in possession, holding his own against any power of the universe. It was indeed a great illumination to Graham.
He gave rein to his imagination. Recalling Faverham’s singular actions under the last hypnotic suggestion, he hugged the fancy that the two forces, love, and the imperative suggestion had waged a short, fierce conflict within the man’s subconsciousness, and love had triumphed. He positively believed this.
Graham looked up at the little winking stars and they looked down at him. He bowed in acknowledgement to the supremacy of the moving power which is love; which is life.
SUZETTE
Ma’me Zidore thrust her head in at the window to tell Suzette that Michel Jardeau was dead.
“Ah, bon Dieu!” cried the girl, clasping her hands, “c’ pauv’ Michel!”
Ma’me Zidore had heard the news from one of Chartrand’s “hands” who was passing with his wagon through the cut-off when she was gathering wood. Her old back was at that moment bent beneath the fagots. She spoke loud and noisily in shrill outbursts. With her unsteady, claw-like fingers she kept brushing aside the wisp of wiry gray hair that fell across her withered cheek.
She knew the story from beginning to end. Michel had boarded the Grand Ecore flat that very morning at daybreak. Jules Bat, the ferry man, had found him waiting on the bank to cross when he carried the doctor over to see Racell’s sick child. He could not say whether Michel were drunk or not; he was gruff and ill-humored and seemed to be half asleep. Ma’me Zidore thought it highly probable that the young man had been carousing all night and was still under the influence of liquor when he lost his balance and fell into the water. A half dozen times Jules Bat had called out to him, warning him of his danger, for he persisted in standing at the open end of the boat. Then all in one miserable second over he went like a log. The water was high and turbid as a boiling caldron. Jules Bat saw no more of him than if he had been so many pounds of lead dropped into Red River.
A few people had assembled at their gates across the way, having gathered from snatches of the old woman’s penetrating tones that something of interest had happened. She left Suzette standing at the window and crossed the road slant-wise, her whole gaunt frame revealing itself through her scanty, worn garments as the soft, swift breeze struck her old body.
“Michel Jardeau est mort!” she croaked, telling her news so suddenly that the women all cried out in dismay, and little Pavie Ombre, who was just reviving from a spell of sickness, uttered not a sound, but swayed to and fro and sank gently down on her knees in a white, dead faint.
Suzette retired into the room and approaching the tiny mirror that hung above the chest of drawers proceeded to finish her toilet, in which task she had been interrupted by Ma’me Zidore’s abrupt announcement of Michel Jardeau’s death.
The girl every little while muttered under her breath:
“C’ pauv’ Michel.” Yet her eyes were quite dry; they gleamed, but not with tears. Regret over the loss of “poor Michel” was in nowise distracting her attention from the careful arrangement of a bunch of carnations in the coils of her lustrous brown hair.
Yet she was thinking of him and wondering why she did not care.
A year ago — not so long as that — she had loved him desperately. It began that day at the barbecue when, seized with sudden infatuation, he stayed beside her the whole day long; turning her head with his tones, his glances, and soft touches. Before that day he had seemed to care for little Pavie Ombre who had come out of her faint and was now wailing and sobbing across the way, indifferent to those who might hear her in passing along the road. But after that day he cared no longer for Pavie Ombre or any woman on earth besides Suzette. What a weariness that love had finally become to her, only herself knew.
Why did he persist? why could he not have understood? His attentions had fretted her beyond measure; it was torture to feel him there every Sunday at Mass with his eyes fastened upon her during the entire service. It was not her fault that he had grown desperate — that he was dead.
She turned her head this way and that way before the small glass noting the effect of the carnations in her hair. She gave light touches to the trimmings about her neck and waist, and adjusted the puffed sleeves of her white gown. She moved about the small room with a certain suppressed agitation, returning often to the mirror, and sometimes straying to the window.
Suzette was standing there when a sound arrested her attention — the distant tramp of an advancing herd of cattle. It was what she had been waiting for; what she had been listening for. Yet she trembled through her whole supple frame when she heard it, and the color began to mount into her cheeks. She stayed there at the window looking like a painted picture in its frame.
The house was small and low and stood a little back, with no inclosing fence about the grass plot that reached from the window quite to the edge of the road.
All was still, save for the tramp of the advancing herd. There was no dust, for it had rained during the morning; and Suzette could see them now, approaching with slow, swinging motion and tossing of long horns. Mothers had run out, gathering and snatching their little ones from the road. Baptiste, one of the drivers, shouted hoarsely, cracking his long whip, while a couple of dogs tore madly around snapping and barking.
The other driver, a straight-backed young fellow, sat his horse with familiar ease and carelessness. He wore a white flannel shirt, coarse trousers and leggings and a broad-brimmed gray felt. From the moment his figure appeared in sight, Suzette did not remove her eyes from him. The glow in her cheeks was resplendent now.
She w
as feeling in anticipation the penetration of his glance, the warmth of his smile when he should see her. He would ride up to the window, no doubt, to say good-by, and she would give him the carnations as a remembrance to keep till he came back.
But what did he mean? She turned a little chill with apprehension. Why, at that precious moment should he bother about the unruly beast that seemed bent upon making trouble? And there was that idiot, that pig of a Baptiste pulling up on the other side of him — talking to him, holding his attention. Mère de Dieu! how she hated and could have killed the fool!
With a single impulse there was a sudden quickened movement of the herd — a dash forward. Then they went! with lowered, tossing heads, rounding the bend that sloped down to the ford.
He had passed! He had not looked at her! He had not thought of her! He would be gone three weeks — three eternities! and every hour freighted with the one bitter remembrance of his indifference!
Suzette turned from the window — her face gray and pinched, with all the warmth and color gone out of it. She flung herself upon the bed and there she cried and moaned with wrenching sobs between.
The carnations drooped from their fastening and lay like a blood-stain upon her white neck.
THE LOCKET
I
One night in autumn a few men were gathered about a fire on the slope of a hill. They belonged to a small detachment of Confederate forces and were awaiting orders to march. Their gray uniforms were worn beyond the point of shabbiness. One of the men was heating something in a tin cup over the embers. Two were lying at full length a little distance away, while a fourth was trying to decipher a letter and had drawn close to the light. He had unfastened his collar and a good bit of his flannel shirt front.