Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to 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 in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was
he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He had only
taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept 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 no one 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 with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying 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 and piled 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, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to
sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines
bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed
away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was
waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did 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 that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.
When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!” The vacant stare and
the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes.
They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the 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 and exalted 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 saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. 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
Men and women alike often feel justified in imposing their own will upon another, whether with kind or cruel intentions. But in her moment of sudden clarity, she saw this act for what it was—a transgression.
Yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she hadn’t. Did it even matter? What did love mean against this newfound sense of self-possession, which she now realized was the strongest force within her?
“Free! Body and soul free!” she whispered to herself.
Outside the room, Josephine knelt by the door, pressing her lips to the keyhole and pleading, “Louise, open up! Please, open the door! You’re making yourself ill. What’s going on in there?”
“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in a potion of life from the open window.
Her mind raced forward, envisioning the days ahead—spring, summer, all the seasons that would belong solely to her. She sent up a quick prayer for a long life, ironic given that only yesterday she had dreaded the thought of its length.
Finally, she rose and opened the door to her sister’s pleading. There was a look of feverish triumph in her eyes, and she held herself like a goddess of Victory. She took her sister’s arm, and together they went down the stairs. Richards was waiting for them at the bottom.
At that moment, someone turned the front door key and stepped in. It was Brently Mallard, a bit travel-worn, carrying his bag and umbrella with quiet composure. He hadn’t been near the scene of the accident and had no idea of the events that had unfolded. He froze, bewildered, as Josephine screamed and Richards moved to shield him from his wife’s gaze.
But Richards was too late.
When the doctors arrived, they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.
