The Story of an HourKate Chopin
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to breakto her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed inhalf concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had beenin the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with BrentlyMallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of itstruth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend inbearing the sad message.She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability toaccept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have noone follow her.There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank,pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver withthe new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler wascrying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly,and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met andpiled one above the other in the west facing her window.She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, exceptwhen a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleepcontinues to sob in its dreams.She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certainstrength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder onone of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated asuspension of intelligent.There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? Shedid not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky,reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing thatwas approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerlessas her two white slender hands would have been.When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. Shesaid it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terrorthat had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, andthe coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear andexalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death;the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she sawbeyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to herabsolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself.There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men andwomen believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kindintention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that briefmoment of illumination.And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What couldlove, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which shesuddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring foradmission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door—you will make yourself ill. What areyou doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door.""Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life throughthat open window.Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" originally published 1894.Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days,and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverishtriumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She claspedher sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at thebottom.Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, alittle travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from thescene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine'spiercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.But Richards was too late.When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.
