Her letters Kate Chopin. She had given orders that she wished to remain undisturbed,
and moreover had locked the doors of her room. The house was very
still. The rain was falling steadily from a laden sky in which there was
no gleam, no wrift, no promise. A generous wood fire had been
lighted in the ample fireplace, and it brightened and illumined the luxurious apartment to
its furthermost corners. From some remote nook of her writing desk, the woman
took a thick bundle of letters, bound tightly together with strong, coarse swine,
and placed it upon the table in the center of the room. For
weeks she had been schooling herself for what she was about to do. There
was a strong deliberation in the lines of her long, thin, sensitive face.
Her hands, too, were long and delicate and blue veined. With
a pair of scissors, she snapped the cord by the letters together, thus
released the ones which were topmost slid down to the table, and she,
with a quick movement, thrust her fingers among them, scattering and churning them
over till they quite covered the broad surface of the table. Before her were
envelopes of various sizes and shapes, all of them addressed in the handwriting of
one man and one woman. He had sent her letters all back to her
one day, when sick with the dread of possibilities, she had asked to
have them returned. She had meant them to destroy them, all his and
her own. That was four years ago, and she had been feeding upon
them ever since. They had sustained her, she believed and kept her spirit
from perishing utterly. Now the day had come when the premonition of danger could
no longer remain unheeded. She knew that before many months repast, she would
have to part from her treasure, leaving it unguarded. She shrank from inflicting
the pain the anguish which the discovery of these letters would bring to others.
To one above all, who was near to her, and whose tenderness and
years of devotion had made him, in a manner dear to her, she
calmly selected a letter at random from the piled and cast it into the roaring
fire. A second one followed, almost as calmly. With the third,
her hand began to tremble, when, in a sudden paroxysm, she cast
a fourth, A fifth and a sixth into the flames in breathless succession.
Then she stopped and began to pant, for she was far from strong,
and she stayed staring into the fire with pained and savage eyes. Oh what
had she done? What had she not done? With feverish apprehension, she
began to search among the letters before her. Which of them had she so
ruthlessly, so so cruelly put out of her existence? Heaven to grant not
the first, that very first one, written before they had learned or dared
to say to each other, I love you. No, No, there
it was safe enough. She laughed with pleasure and held it to her lips.
What if that other, most precious and most imprudent one was missing,
in which every word of untempered passion had long ago eaten its way into her
brain, and which stirred her still today as it had done a hundred times
before. When she thought of it, she crushed it between her palms.
When she found it, she kissed it again and again. With her sharp
white teeth, she tore the far corner from the letter where the name was
written. She bit the torn scrap and tasted it between her lips, and
upon her tongue like some god given morsel. What unbounded thankfulness she felt it
not having destroyed them all. How desolate and empty would have been her remaining
days without them, with only her thoughts, elusive thoughts that she could not
hold in her hands and press as she did these to her cheeks and her
heart. This man had changed the water in her veins to wine, whose
taste had brought delirium to both of them. It was all one and past
now, save for these letters that she held encircled in her arms. She
stayed breathing softly and contentedly, and with the hectic cheek resting upon them,
she was thinking, think, you have a way to keep them without possible
ultimate injury to that other one, whom they would stab more cruelly than keen
nie blades. At last she felt the way. It was a way that
frightened and bewildered her to think of at first, but she had reached it
by deduction, too sure to admit of doubt. She meant, of course,
to destroy them herself before the inn came. But how does the end?
And when? Who can tell? She would guard again the possibility of
accident by leaving them in charge of the very one who, above all should
be spared a knowledge of their contempts. She roused herself from the stupor of
thought and gathered the scattered letters once more together, binding them again with a
tough twine. She wrapped the compact bulana tight sheet of white, polished paper.
Then she wrote an ink upon the back of it, in the large,
firm characters, I leave this package to the care of my husband,
with perfect faith in his loyalty and his love. I asked him to destroy
it unopened. It was not sealed. Only a bit of string held the
wrapper, which she could remove and replace it will whenever the humor came to
her, to pass an hour in some intoxicating dream of the days when she
felt she had lived. If he had come upon that bundle of letters in
the first flush of his poignant sorrow, there would not have been an instant's
hesitancy to destroy it promptly and without question. Would have seemed a welcome expression
of devotion, a way of reaching her, of crying out his love to
her while the world was still filled with the illusion of her presence. But
months had passed since that spring day when they had found her stretched upon the
floor, clutching the key of her writing desk, which she appeared to have
been attempting to reach when death overtook her. Day was much like that day
a year ago, when the leaves were falling in the rain, pouring steadily
from the leaden sky, which held no glean no promise. He had happened
accidentally upon the package in that remote nook of her desk, just as she
herself had done a year ago. He carried it to the table and laid
it down there, staring with puzzled eyes at the message which confronted him.
I leave this package to the care of my husband, with perfect faith in
his loyalty and his love. I asked him to destroy it unopened. She
had made no mistake. Every line of his face, no longer young,
spoke loyalty and honesty, and his eyes were as faithful as the dog's and
his loving. He was a tall, powerful man, standing there in the
firelight, with shoulders that stooped a little, and hair that was growing somewhat
thin and gray, and a face that was distinguished and must have been handsome
when he smiled. But he was slow destroy it unopened. He re read
half aloud, But why unopened? He took the package again in his hands,
and turning it about and feeling it, discovered that it was composed of
many letters, tightly packed together. So here were her letters, which was
asked she was asking him to destroy and open. She had never seemed in
her lifetime to have had a secret from him. He knew her to have
been cold and fashionless, but true and watchful of his comfort in his happiness.
Might he not be holding in his hands the secret of some other one
which had been confided to her, and which she had promised to guard.
But no, she would have indicated the fact by some additional line or word.
The secret was her own, something contained in these letters, and she
wanted it to die with her. If he could have thought of her as
on some distant, shadowy shore, waiting for him throughout the years, with
outstretched hands, to come and join her again, he would not have hesitated
with hopeful confidence. He would have thought, in that blessed meeting time,
soul soul, she would tell me all till then I can weight and trust.
But he could not think of her in any far off paradise awaiting him.
He felt that there was no smallest part of her anywhere in the universe,
more than there had been before she was born into the world. But
she had embodied herself with terrible significance and an intangible wish, uttered when life
still coursed through her veins, knowing that would reach him when the annihilation of
death was between them, but uttered with all confidence in its power and potency.
He was moved by the splendid daring, the magnificence of the act,
which at the same time exalted him and lifted him above the head of common
mortals. What secret, save one could a woman choose to have die with
her? As quickly as the suggestion came to his mind, so swiftly did
the man instinctive possession creep into his blood. His fingers cramped about the package
in his hands, and he sank into a chair beside the table. The
agonizing suspicion that perhaps another handshaired with him, her thoughts, her affection,
her life, deprived him. For a swift instant of honor and reason.
He thrust the end of his strong thumb beneath the string, which with a
single turn would have yielded with perfect faith in your loyalty and your love.
It was not. The written characters addressing themselves to the eye was like a
voice speaking to his soul. With a tremor of anguished he bowed his head
down upon the letters. He had once seen a clairvoyt hold a letter to
his forehead and purport in doing so to discover its contents. He wondered for
a while moment if such a gift for force of wishing might come to him,
But he was only conscious of the smooth surface of the paper, cold
against his brow, like a touch of a dead woman's hand. A half
hour passed before he lifted his head. An unspeakable conflict had raged within him,
but his loyalty in his love had conquered. His face was pale and
deep, blind with suffering, but there was no more hesitancy to be seen
there. He did not, for a moment think of casting the thick package
into the flames, to be licked by the fiery tongue and charred and half
revealed to his eyes that was not what she meant. He arose, and,
taking a heavy bronze paper away from the table, bound it securely to
the package. He walked to the window, looked out into the street below,
darkness had come, and it was still raining. He could hear the
rain dashing against the window panes, and could see it falling through the dull,
yellow rim of light cast by the lightest street lamp. He prepared himself
to go out, and, when quite ready to leave the house, thrust
the weighted package into the deep pocket of his topcoat. He did not hurry
along the street, as most people were doing at that hour, but walked
with long, slow, deliberate steps, not seeming to mind the penetrating chill
and rain driving into his face despite the shelter of his umbrella. His dwelling
was not far removed from the business section of the city, and it was
not a great whab before he found himself at the entrance of the bridge that
spanned the river, the deep, broad, swift, black river dividing two
states. He walked on and out to the very center of the structure.
The wind was blowing fiercely and keenly. The darkness where he stood was impenetrable.
The cells and of lights in the city he had left seemed like all
the stars of heavens massed together, sinking into some distant, mysterious horizon,
leaving him along in a black, boundless universe. He drew the package from
his pocket, and, leaning as far as he could over the broad stonn
rail of the bridge, cast it from him into the river. It fell
straight and swiftly from his hand. He could not follow its descent from the
darkness, nor hear its dip into the water far below, and vanished silently,
seemingly into some inky, unfathomable space. He felt as if he were
flinging it back to her in that unknown world whither she had gone. An
hour or two later, he sat at his table in the company of several
men whom he had invited that day to dine with him. A secret had
settled upon his spirit, a conviction assertatude that there could be but one secret
which a woman would choose to have died with her. This one thought was
possessing him and occupied his brain, keeping it nimble and alert with suspicion.
It clutched his heart, making every breath of existence a fresh moment of pain.
The men about him were no longer the friends of yesterday. In each
one he discerned a possible enemy. He tended absently to their talk. He
was remembering how she had conducted herself toward this one and that one, striving
to recall conversation, subtleties of facial expressions that might admit what he did not
suspect at the moment, shades of meeting in words that seemed ordinary. In
a change of social amenities, he led the conversation to the subject of women,
probing those men for their opinions and experiences there was not one, but
claimed some infallible power to command the affections of any woman whom his fancy might
select. He had heard the empty bows before from the same group, and
had always met it with good humored contempt. But to night every flagrant,
inane utterance was charged with a new meaning, revealing possibilities that he had hitherto
never taken into account. He was glad when they were gone. He was
eager to be alone, not from any desire or intention to sleep. He
was impatient. Who had gained her room that ruin which she had lived a
large portion of her life, and where he had found these letters? There
must surely be some of them somewhere, he thought, some forgotten scrap,
some written thought or expression, lying unguarded by an invisible command. At the
hour when he usually retired for the night. He set himself down before her
writing desk and began the search of drawers, slides, pigeon holes, nooks
and corners. He did not leave a scrap of anything unread. Many of
the letters which he found were old, some he had read before, others
were new to him. But in none did he find the faintest evidence that
his wife had not been the true and loyal woman he had always believed her
to be. The night was nearly spent before the fruit of search ended.
The brief, troubled sleep which he slashed before his hour for rising, was
freighted with feverish, grotesque dreams, though all of which he could hear and
could see dimly, the dark river rushing by, carrying away his heart,
his ambitions, his life. But it was not alone in letters that women
betrayed their emotions. He thought often he had known them, especially when in
love, to mark fugitive sentimental passages and books of verse or prose, thus
expressing and revealing their own hidden thought. Might she not have done this?
Then began a second and far more exhausting and arduous quest than the first,
Turning page by page the volumes that crowded her room, books of fiction,
poetry, philosophy. She had read them all. But nowhere, by the
shadow of a sign, could he find that the author had echoed the secrets
of her existence, the secret which he had held in his hands and had
cast into the river. He began cautiously and gradually to question this one and
that one, striving to learn by indirect ways which each had thought of her.
For the most he learned she had been unsympathetic because of her coldness of
manner. One had admired her intellect, another her accomplishments. A third had
thought her beautiful before disease claimed her, regretting, however, that her beauty
had liked a warmth of color and expression. She was praised by some for
gentleness and kindness, and by others for cleverness and tact. Oh, it
was useless to try to discover anything from men, he might have known.
It was women who would talk of what they knew. They did talk unreservedly.
Most of them had loved her. Those who had not had held her
in respect and esteem. And yet, and yet there is but one secret
which a woman would choose to have die with her. Was the thought which
continued to haunt him and deprive him of rest, days and nights of uncertainty,
being slowly to unnerve him and torture him. An assurance of the worst
that he dreaded would have offered him peace to most welcome, even at the
price of happiness. It seemed no longer of any moment to him that men
should come and go and fall, or rise in the world, and wed
and die. He did not signify if money came to him by a turn
of chance or eluded him. Empty and meaningly seemed to him all devices which
the world offers for men's entertainment, the food and the drinks that before him
had lost their flavor. He did not longer know or care if the sun
shone or the clouds lowered him. A cruel hazard had struck him there where
he was weakest, shattering his whole being, leaving him with but one wish
in his soul, one gnawing desire to know the mystery which he had held
in his hands and cast into the river. One night, when there was
no star shining, he wandered restlessly upon the streets. He no longer sought
to know from men or women wi they dared not or could not tell him.
Only the river knew. He went and stood again upon the bridge,
where he had stood many an hour since that night, when the darkness then
had closed around him and engulfed his manhood. Only the river knew. It
babbled, and he listened to it and told him nothing, But it promised
all. He could hear it, promising him with caressing voice, peace,
in sweet repose. He could hear the sweep, the song of the water,
inviting him a moment more. And he had gone to seek her,
and to join her and her secret thought, and the immeasurable rest