The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  "I'll have a doctor come and dress the wound in the morning," he said to the prisoner. "It will do very well until then, if you will keep quiet. If the doctor asks you how the wound was caused, you can say that you were struck by the bullet fired from the woods. It would do you no good to have it known that you were shot while attempting to escape."

  The prisoner uttered no word of thanks or apology, but sat in sullen silence. When the wounded arm had been bandaged, Polly and her father returned to the house.

  The sheriff was in an unusually thoughtful mood that evening. He put salt in his coffee at supper, and poured vinegar over his pancakes. To many of Polly's questions he returned random answers. When he had gone to bed he lay awake for several hours.

  In the silent watches of the night, when he was alone with God, there came into his mind a flood of unaccustomed thoughts. An hour or two before, standing face to face with death, he had experienced a sensation similar to that which drowning men are said to feel—a kind of clarifying of the moral faculty, in which the veil of the flesh, with its obscuring passions and prejudices, is pushed aside for a moment, and all the acts of one's life stand out, in the clear light of truth, in their correct proportions and relations,—a state of mind in which one sees himself as God may be supposed to see him. In the reaction following his rescue, this feeling had given place for a time to far different emotions. But now, in the silence of midnight, something of this clearness of spirit returned to the sheriff. He saw that he had owed some duty to this son of his,—that neither law nor custom could destroy a responsibility inherent in the nature of mankind. He could not thus, in the eyes of God at least, shake off the consequences of his sin. Had he never sinned, this wayward spirit would never have come back from the vanished past to haunt him. As these thoughts came, his anger against the mulatto died away, and in its place there sprang up a great pity. The hand of parental authority might have restrained the passions he had seen burning in the prisoner's eyes when the desperate man spoke the words which had seemed to doom his father to death. The sheriff felt that he might have saved this fiery spirit from the slough of slavery; that he might have sent him to the free North, and given him there, or in some other land, an opportunity to turn to usefulness and honorable pursuits the talents that had run to crime, perhaps to madness; he might, still less, have given this son of his the poor simulacrum of liberty which men of his caste could possess in a slave-holding community; or least of all, but still something, he might have kept the boy on the plantation, where the burdens of slavery would have fallen lightly upon him.

  The sheriff recalled his own youth. He had inherited an honored name to keep untarnished; he had had a future to make; the picture of a fair young bride had beckoned him on to happiness. The poor wretch now stretched upon a pallet of straw between the brick walls of the jail had had none of these things,—no name, no father, no mother—in the true meaning of motherhood,—and until the past few years no possible future, and then one vague and shadowy in its outline, and dependent for form and substance upon the slow solution of a problem in which there were many unknown quantities.

  From what he might have done to what he might yet do was an easy transition for the awakened conscience of the sheriff. It occurred to him, purely as a hypothesis, that he might permit his prisoner to escape; but his oath of office, his duty as sheriff, stood in the way of such a course, and the sheriff dismissed the idea from his mind. He could, however, investigate the circumstances of the murder, and move Heaven and earth to discover the real criminal, for he no longer doubted the prisoner's innocence; he could employ counsel for the accused, and perhaps influence public opinion in his favor. An acquittal once secured, some plan could be devised by which the sheriff might in some degree atone for his crime against this son of his—against society—against God.

  When the sheriff had reached this conclusion he fell into an unquiet slumber, from which he awoke late the next morning.

  He went over to the jail before breakfast and found the prisoner lying on his pallet, his face turned to the wall; he did not move when the sheriff rattled the door.

  "Good-morning," said the latter, in a tone intended to waken the prisoner.

  There was no response. The sheriff looked more keenly at the recumbent figure; there was an unnatural rigidity about its attitude.

  He hastily unlocked the door and, entering the cell, bent over the prostrate form. There was no sound of breathing; he turned the body over—it was cold and stiff. The prisoner had torn the bandage from his wound and bled to death during the night. He had evidently been dead several hours.

  CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935)

  There are worse fates than being known for, indeed, exclusively identified with, a single title: in the case of Charlotte Perkins Gil-man, author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, and, in her time, renowned as a leading feminist-theorist, that title is of course "The Yellow Wallpaper." Had Gilman written nothing else, she would yet be, so far as a general readership is concerned, as famous as she is now. In Gilman's own time, her most popular book was Women and Economics (1898), called the "Bible" of the women's movement.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, where she was raised fatherless. In 1884 she married a Providence artist whom she divorced after four years, convinced that her domestic situation was driving her mad. The "dark fog" of mental illness that precipitated this break is brilliantly suggested by "The Yellow Wallpaper." (For more details of Gilman's self-scrutinized life as it relates to her art, see her autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, published in 1935.)

  It might be noted in passing that Gilman was another important and unconventional talent singled out by William Dean Howells, who included "The Yellow Wallpaper" in his Great Modern American Stories (1920).

  Gilman was a prominent feminist and woman of letters who lectured widely. Her most important titles include Man-Made World (1911), Herland (1915), His Religion and Hers (1923). Apart from "The Yellow Wallpaper," she wrote a number of engaging short stories, among them the rather more light-hearted, "When I Was a Witch." But "The Yellow Wallpaper," a Poe-like descent into the mind, not of a murderer, but of a victim, a female victim, remains her masterpiece.

  The Yellow Wallpaper

  IT is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

  A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!

  Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

  Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

  John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in man. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

  John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

  You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?

  If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?

  My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.

  So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is—and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.

  Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

  Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

  But what is one to do?

  I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meet with he
avy opposition.

  I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.

  So I will let it alone and talk about the house.

  The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.

  There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden—large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.

  There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.

  There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and co-heirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.

  That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care—there is something strange about the house—I can feel it.

  I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window.

  I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.

  But John says if I feel so I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.

  I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it.

  He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another.

  He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.

  I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.

  He said we came here solely on my account; that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. "Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time." So we took the nursery at the top of the house.

  It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.

  The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

  One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

  It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

  The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

  It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.

  No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.

  There comes John, and I must put this away—he hates to have me write a word.

  We have been here two weeks, and I haven't felt like writing before, since that first day.

  I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.

  John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious.

  I am glad my case is not serious!

  But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.

  John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.

  Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way!

  I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!

  Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able—to dress and entertain, and order things.

  It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!

  And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.

  I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wallpaper!

  At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.

  He said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.

  "You know the place is doing you good," he said, "and really, dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three months' rental."

  "Then do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are such pretty rooms there."

  Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain.

  But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.

  It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim.

  I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.

  Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees.

  Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.

  I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.

  But I find I get pretty tired when I try.

  It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillowcase as to let me have those stimulating people about now.

  I wish I could get well faster.

  But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!

  There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

  I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

  I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.

  I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend.

  I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe.

  The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw su
ch ravages as the children have made here.

  The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother—they must have had perseverance as well as hatred.

  Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.

  But I don't mind it a bit—only the paper.

  There comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing.

  She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!

  But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows.

  There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.

  This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.

  But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.

  There's sister on the stairs!

  Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are all gone and I am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week.

  Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.

  But it tired me all the same.

  John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.

  But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!

  Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.

  I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.