3 short stories of Kate Chopin

The Storm
1898
by Kate Chopin
(1851-1904)
I
The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain. Bobinôt, who was accustomed to converse on terms of perfect equality with his little son, called the child''s attention to certain sombre clouds that were rolling with sinister intention from the west, accompanied by a sullen, threatening roar. They were at Friedheimer''s store and decided to remain there till the storm had passed. They sat within the door on two empty kegs. Bibi was four years old and looked very wise.
"Mama''ll be ''fraid, yes, he suggested with blinking eyes.
"She''ll shut the house. Maybe she got Sylvie helpin'' her this evenin''," Bobinôt responded reassuringly.
"No; she ent got Sylvie. Sylvie was helpin'' her yistiday,'' piped Bibi.
Bobinôt arose and going across to the counter purchased a can of shrimps, of which Calixta was very fond. Then he retumed to his perch on the keg and sat stolidly holding the can of shrimps while the storm burst. It shook the wooden store and seemed to be ripping great furrows in the distant field. Bibi laid his little hand on his father''s knee and was not afraid.

II
Calixta, at home, felt no uneasiness for their safety. She sat at a side window sewing furiously on a sewing machine. She was greatly occupied and did not notice the approaching storm. But she felt very warm and often stopped to mop her face on which the perspiration gathered in beads. She unfastened her white sacque at the throat. It began to grow dark, and suddenly realizing the situation she got up hurriedly and went about closing windows and doors.
Out on the small front gallery she had hung Bobinôt''s Sunday clothes to dry and she hastened out to gather them before the rain fell. As she stepped outside, Alcée Laballière rode in at the gate. She had not seen him very often since her marriage, and never alone. She stood there with Bobinôt''s coat in her hands, and the big rain drops began to fall. Alcée rode his horse under the shelter of a side projection where the chickens had huddled and there were plows and a harrow piled up in the corner.
"May I come and wait on your gallery till the storm is over, Calixta?" he asked.
Come ''long in, M''sieur Alcée."
His voice and her own startled her as if from a trance, and she seized Bobinôt''s vest. Alcée, mounting to the porch, grabbed the trousers and snatched Bibi''s braided jacket that was about to be carried away by a sudden gust of wind. He expressed an intention to remain outside, but it was soon apparent that he might as well have been out in the open: the water beat in upon the boards in driving sheets, and he went inside, closing the door after him. It was even necessary to put something beneath the door to keep the water out.
"My! what a rain! It''s good two years sence it rain'' like that," exclaimed Calixta as she rolled up a piece of bagging and Alcée helped her to thrust it beneath the crack.
She was a little fuller of figure than five years before when she married; but she had lost nothing of her vivacity. Her blue eyes still retained their melting quality; and her yellow hair, dishevelled by the wind and rain, kinked more stubbornly than ever about her ears and temples.
The rain beat upon the low, shingled roof with a force and clatter that threatened to break an entrance and deluge them there. They were in the dining room?"the sitting room?"the general utility room. Adjoining was her bed room, with Bibi''s couch along side her own. The door stood open, and the room with its white, monumental bed, its closed shutters, looked dim and mysterious.
Alcée flung himself into a rocker and Calixta nervously began to gather up from the floor the lengths of a cotton sheet which she had been sewing.
lf this keeps up, Dieu sait if the levees goin'' to stan it!" she exclaimed.
"What have you got to do with the levees?"
"I got enough to do! An'' there''s Bobinôt with Bibi out in that storm?"if he only didn'' left Friedheimer''s!"
"Let us hope, Calixta, that Bobinôt''s got sense enough to come in out of a cyclone."
She went and stood at the window with a greatly disturbed look on her face. She wiped the frame that was clouded with moisture. It was stiflingly hot. Alcée got up and joined her at the window, looking over her shoulder. The rain was coming down in sheets obscuring the view of far-off cabins and enveloping the distant wood in a gray mist. The playing of the lightning was incessant. A bolt struck a tall chinaberry tree at the edge of the field. It filled all visible space with a blinding glare and the crash seemed to invade the very boards they stood upon.
Calixta put her hands to her eyes, and with a cry, staggered backward. Alcée''s arm encircled her, and for an instant he drew her close and spasmodically to him.
"Bonté!" she cried, releasing herself from his encircling arm and retreating from the window, the house''ll go next! If I only knew w''ere Bibi was!" She would not compose herself; she would not be seated. Alcée clasped her shoulders and looked into her face. The contact of her warm, palpitating body when he had unthinkingly drawn her into his arms, had aroused all the old-time infatuation and desire for her flesh.
"Calixta," he said, "don''t be frightened. Nothing can happen. The house is too low to be struck, with so many tall trees standing about. There! aren''t you going to be quiet? say, aren''t you?" He pushed her hair back from her face that was warm and steaming. Her lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seed. Her white neck and a glimpse of her full, firm bosom disturbed him powerfully. As she glanced up at him the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire. He looked down into her eyes and there was nothing for him to do but to gather her lips in a kiss. It reminded him of Assumption.
"Do you remember?"in Assumption, Calixta?" he asked in a low voice broken by passion. Oh! she remembered; for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail. Now?"well, now?"her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts.
They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms. She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber; as white as the couch she lay upon. Her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world.
The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached.
When he touched her breasts they gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life''s mystery.
He stayed cushioned upon her, breathless, dazed, enervated, with his heart beating like a hammer upon her. With one hand she clasped his head, her lips lightly touching his forehead. The other hand stroked with a soothing rhythm his muscular shoulders.
The growl of the thunder was distant and passing away. The rain beat softly upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield.

III
The rain was over; and the sun was turning the glistening green world into a palace of gems. Calixta, on the gallery, watched Alcée ride away. He turned and smiled at her with a beaming face; and she lifted her pretty chin in the air and laughed aloud.
Bobinôt and Bibi, trudging home, stopped without at the cistern to make themselves presentable.
"My! Bibi, w''at will yo'' mama say! You ought to be ashame''. You oughta'' put on those good pants. Look at ''em! An'' that mud on yo'' collar! How you got that mud on yo'' collar, Bibi? I never saw such a boy!" Bibi was the picture of pathetic resignation. Bobinôt was the embodiment of serious solicitude as he strove to remove from his own person and his son''s the signs of their tramp over heavy roads and through wet fields. He scraped the mud off Bibi''s bare legs and feet with a stick and carefully removed all traces from his heavy brogans. Then, prepared for the worst?"the meeting with an over-scrupulous housewife, they entered cautiously at the back door.
Calixta was preparing supper. She had set the table and was dripping coffee at the hearth. She sprang up as they came in.
"Oh, Bobinôt! You back! My! but I was uneasy. W''ere you been during the rain? An'' Bibi? he ain''t wet? he ain''t hurt?" She had clasped Bibi and was kissing him effusively. Bobinôt''s explanations and apologies which he had been composing all along the way, died on his lips as Calixta felt him to see if he were dry, and seemed to express nothing but satisfaction at their safe return.
"I brought you some shrimps, Calixta," offered Bobinôt, hauling the can from his ample side pocket and laying it on the table.
"Shrimps! Oh, Bobinôt! you too good fo'' anything!" and she gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek that resounded, "J''vous réponds, we''ll have a feas'' to-night! umph-umph!"
Bobinôt and Bibi began to relax and enjoy themselves, and when the three seated themselves at table they laughed much and so loud that anyone might have heard them as far away as Laballière''s.

IV
Alcée Laballière wrote to his wife, Clarisse, that night. It was a loving letter, full of tender solicitude. He told her not to hurry back, but if she and the babies liked it at Biloxi, to stay a month longer. He was getting on nicely; and though he missed them, he was willing to bear the separation a while longer?"realizing that their health and pleasure were the first things to be considered.

V
As for Clarisse, she was charmed upon receiving her husband''s letter. She and the babies were doing well. The society was agreeable; many of her old friends and acquaintances were at the bay. And the first free breath since her marriage seemed to restore the pleasant liberty of her maiden days. Devoted as she was to her husband, their intimate conjugal life was something which she was more than willing to forego for a while.
So the storm passed and every one was happy.

-----------------The end--------------

WISER THAN A GOD
1889
"To love and be wise is scarcely granted even to a God."
Latin proverb
I
"You might at least show some distaste for the task, Paula," said Mrs. Von Stoltz, in her querulous invalid voice, to her daughter who stood before the glass bestowing a few final touches of embellishment upon an otherwise plain toilet.
"And to what purpose, Mutterchen? The task is not entirely to my liking, I''ll admit; but there can be no question as to its results, which you even must concede are gratifying."
"Well, it''s not the career your poor father had in view for you. How often he has told me when I complained that you were kept too closely at work, ''I want that Paula shall be at the head,''" with appealing look through the window and up into the gray, November sky into that far "somewhere," which might be the abode of her departed husband.
"It isn''t a career at all, mama; it''s only a make-shift," answered the girl, noting the happy effect of an amber pin that she had thrust through the coils of her lustrous yellow hair. "The pot must be kept boiling at all hazards, pending the appearance of that hoped for career. And you forget that an occasion like this gives me the very opportunities I want."
"I can''t see the advantages of bringing your talent down *****ch banal servitude. Who are those people, anyway?"
The mother''s question ended in a cough which shook her into speechless exhaustion.
"Ah! I have let you sit too long by the window, mother," said Paula, hastening to wheel the invalid''s chair nearer the grate fire that was throwing genial light and warmth into the room, turning its plainness to beauty as by a touch of enchantment. "By the way," she added, having arranged her mother as comfortably as might be, "I haven''t yet qualified for that ''banal servitude,'' as you call it." And approaching the piano which stood in a distant alcove of the room, she took up a roll of music that lay curled up on the instrument, straightened it out before her. Then, seeming to remember the question which her mother had asked, turned on the stool to answer it. "Don''t you know? The Brainards, very swell people, and awfully rich. The daughter is that girl whom I once told you about, having gone to the Conservatory to cultivate her voice and old Engfelder told her in his brusque way to go back home, that his system was not equal to overcoming impossibilities."
"Oh, those people."
"Yes; this little party is given in honor of the son''s return from Yale or Harvard, or some place or other." And turning to the piano she softly ran over the dances, whilst the mother gazed into the fire with unresigned sadness, which the bright music seemed to deepen.
"Well, there''ll be no trouble about2that" 4 said Paula, with comfortable assurance, having ended the last waltz. "There''s nothing here to tempt me into flights of originality; there''ll be no difficulty in keeping to the hand-organ effect."
"Don''t leave me with those dreadful impressions, Paula; my poor nerves are on edge."
"You are too hard on the dances, mamma. There are certain strains here and there that I thought not bad."
"It''s your youth that finds it so; I have outlived such illusions."
"What an inconsistent little mother it is!" the girl exclaimed, laughing. "You told me only yesterday it was my youth that was so impatient with the commonplace happenings of everyday life. That age, needing to seek its delights, finds them often in unsuspected places, wasn''t that it?"
"Don''t chatter, Paula; some music, some music!"
"What shall it be?" asked Paula, touching a succession of harmonious chords. "It must be short."
"The ''Berceuse,'' then; Chopin''s. But soft, soft and a little slowly as your dear father used to play it."
Mrs. Von Stoltz leaned her head back amongst the cushions, and with eyes closed, drank in the wonderful strains that came like an ethereal voice out of the past, lulling her spirit into the quiet of sweet memories.
When the last soft notes had melted into silence, Paula approached her mother and looking into the pale face saw that tears stood beneath the closed eyelids. "Ah! mamma, I have made you unhappy," she cried, in distress.
"No, my child; you have given me a joy that you don''t dream of. I have no more pain. Your music has done for me what Faranelli''s singing did for poor King Philip of Spain; it has cured me."
There was a glow of pleasure on the warm face and the eyes with almost the brightness of health. "Whilst I listened to you, Paula, my soul went out from me and lived again through an evening long ago. We were in our pretty room at Leipsic. The soft air and the moonlight came through the open-curtained window, making a quivering fretwork along the gleaming waxed floor. You lay in my arms and I felt again the pressure of your warm, plump little body against me. Your father was at the piano playing the ''Berceuse,'' and all at once you drew my head down and whispered, ''Ist es nicht wonderschen, mama?'' When it ended, you were sleeping and your father took you from my arms and laid you gently in bed."
Paula knelt beside her mother, holding the frail hands which she kissed tenderly.
"Now you must go, liebchen. Ring for Berta, she will do all that is needed. I feel very strong to-night. But do not come back too late."
"I shall be home as early as possible; likely in the last car, I couldn''t stay longer or I should have to walk. You know the house in case there should be need to send for me?"
"Yes, yes; but there will be no need."
Paula kissed her mother lovingly and went out into the drear November night with the roll of dances under her arm.
II
The door of the stately mansion at which Paula rang, was opened by a footman, who invited her to "kindly walk upstairs."
"Show the young lady into the music room, James," called from some upper region a voice, doubtless the same whose impossibilities had been so summarily dealt with by Herr Engfelder, and Paula was led through a suite of handsome apartments, the warmth and mellow light of which were very grateful, after the chill outdoor air.
Once in the music room, she removed her wraps and seated herself comfortably to await developments. Before her stood the magnificent Steinway, on which her eyes rested with greedy admiration, and her fingers twitched with a desire to awaken its inviting possibilities. The odor of flowers impregnated the air like a subtle intoxicant and over everything hung a quiet smile of expectancy, disturbed by an occasional feminine flutter above stairs, or muffled suggestions of distant household sounds.
Presently, a young man entered the drawing room,- no doubt, the college student, for he looked critically and with an air of proprietorship at the festive arrangements, venturing the bestowal of a few improving touches. Then, gazing with pardonable complacency at his own handsome, athletic figure in the mirror, he saw reflected Paula looking at him, with a demure smile lighting her blue eyes.
"By Jove!" was his startled exclamation. Then, approaching, "I beg pardon, Miss- Miss-"
"Von Stoltz."
"Miss Von Stoltz," drawing the right conclusion from her simple toilet and the roll of music. "I hadn''t seen you when I came in. Have you been here long? and sitting all alone, too? That''s certainly rough."
"Oh, I''ve been here but a few moments, and was very well entertained."
"I dare say," with a glance full of prognostic complimentary utterances, which a further acquaintance might develop.
As he was lighting the gas of a side bracket that she might better see to read her music, Mrs. Brainard and her daughter came into the room, radiantly attired and both approached Paula with sweet and polite greeting.
"George, in mercy!" exclaimed her mother, "put out that gas, you are killing the effect of the candle light."
"But Miss Von Stoltz can''t read her music without it, mother."
"I''ve no doubt Miss Von Stoltz knows her pieces by heart," Mrs. Brainard replied, seeking corroboration from Paula''s glance.
"No, madam; I''m not accustomed to playing dance music, and this is quite new to me," the girl rejoined, touching the loose sheets that George had conveniently straightened out and placed on the rack.
"Oh, dear! ''not accustomed,''?" said Miss Brainard. "And Mr. Sohmeir told us he knew you would give satisfaction."
Paula hastened to reassure the thoroughly alarmed young lady on the point of her ability to give perfect satisfaction.
The door bell now began to ring incessantly. Up the stairs, tripped fleeting opera-cloaked figures, followed by their black robed attendants. The rooms commenced to fill with the pretty hub-bub that a bevy of girls can make when inspired by a close masculine proximity; and Paula, not waiting to be asked, struck the opening bars of an inspiring waltz.
Some hours later, during a lull in the dancing, when the men were making vigorous applications of fans and handkerchiefs; and the girls beginning to throw themselves into attitudes of picturesque exhaustion- save for the always indefatigable few- a proposition was ventured, backed by clamorous entreaties, which induced George to bring forth his banjo. And an agreeable moment followed, in which that young man''s skill met with a truly deserving applause. Never had his audience beheld such proficiency as he displayed in the handling of his instrument, which was now behind him, now overhead, and again swinging in mid-air like the pendulum of a clock and sending forth the sounds of stirring melody. Sounds so inspiring that a pretty little black-eyed fairy, an acknowledged votary of Terpsichore, and George''s particular admiration, was moved to contribute a few passes of a Virginia breakdown, as she had studied it from life on a Southern plantation. The act closing amid a spontaneous babel of hand clapping and admiring bravos.
It must be admitted that this little episode, however graceful, was hardly a fitting prelude to the magnificent "Jewel Song from ''Faust,''" with which Miss Brainard next consented to regale the company. That Miss Brainard possessed a voice, was a fact that had existed as matter of tra***ion in the family as far back almost as the days of that young lady''s baby utterances, in which loving ears had already detected the promise which time had so recklessly fulfilled.
True genius is not to be held in abeyance, though a host of Engfelders would rise to quell it with their mundane protests!
Miss Brainard''s ren***ion was a triumphant achievement of sound, and with the proud flush of success moving her to kind condescension, she asked Miss Von Stoltz to "please play something."
Paula amiably consented, choosing a selection from the Modern Classic. How little did her au***ors appreciate in the performance the results of a life study, of a drilling that had made her amongst the knowing an acknowledged mistress of technique. But to her skill she added the touch and interpretation of the artist; and in hearing her, even Ignorance paid to her genius the tribute of a silent emotion.
When she arose there was a moment of quiet, which was broken by the black-eyed fairy, always ready to cast herself into a breach, observing, flippantly, "How pretty!" "Just lovely!" from another; and "What wouldn''t I give to play like that." Each inane compliment falling like a dash of cold water on Paula''s ardor.
She then became solicitous about the hour, with reference to her car, and George who stood near looked at his watch and informed her that the last car had gone by a full half hour before.
"But," he added, "if you are not expecting any one to call for you, I will gladly see you home."
"I expect no one, for the car that passes here would have set me down at my door," and in this avowal of difficulties, she tacitly accepted George''s offer.
The situation was new. It gave her a feeling of elation to be walking through the quiet night with this handsome young fellow. He talked so freely and so pleasantly. She felt such a comfort in his strong protective nearness. In clinging to him against the buffets of the staggering wind she could feel the muscles of his arms, like steel.
He was so unlike any man of her acquaintance. Strictly unlike Poldorf, the pianist, the short rotun***y of whose person could have been less objectionable, if she had not known its cause to lie in an inordinate consumption of beer. Old Engfelder, with his long hair, his spectacles and his loose, disjointed figure, was hors de combat in comparison. And of Max Kuntzler, the talented composer, her teacher of harmony, she could at the moment think of no positive point of objection against him, save the vague, general, serious one of his unlikeness to George.
Her new-awakened admiration, though, was not deaf to a little inexplicable wish that he had not been so proficient with the banjo.
On they went chatting gaily, until turning the corner of the street in which she lived, Paula saw that before the door stood Dr. Sinn''s buggy.
Brainard could feel the quiver of surprised distress that shook her frame, as she said, hurrying along, "Oh! mamma must be ill- worse; they have called the doctor."
Reaching the house, she threw open wide the door that was unlocked, and he stood hesitatingly back. The gas in the small hall burned at its full, and showed Berta at the top of the stairs, speechless, with terrified eyes, looking down at her. And coming to meet her, was a neighbor, who strove with well-meaning solicitude to keep her back, to hold her yet a moment in ignorance of the cruel blow that fate had dealt her whilst she had in happy unconsciousness played her music for the dance.

Wiser than a God (continued)
III
Several months had passed since the dreadful night when death had deprived Paula for the second time of a loved parent.
After the first shock of grief was over, the girl had thrown all her energies into work, with the view of attaining that position in the musical world which her father and mother had dreamed might be hers.
She had remained in the small home occupying now but the half of it; and here she kept house with the faithful Berta''s aid.
Friends were both kind and attentive to the stricken girl. But there had been two, whose constant devotion spoke of an interest deeper than mere friendly solicitude.
Max Kuntzler''s love for Paula was something that had taken hold of his sober middle age with an enduring strength which was not to be lessened or shaken, by her rejection of it. He had asked leave to remain her friend, and while holding the tender, watchful privileges which that comprehensive title may imply, had refrained from further thrusting a warmer feeling on her acceptance.
Paula one evening was seated in her small sitting-room, working over some musical transpositions, when a bang at the bell was followed by a footstep in the hall which made her hand and heart tremble.
George Brainard entered the room, and before she could rise to greet him, had seated himself in the vacant chair beside her.
"What an untiring worker you are," he said, glancing down at the scores before her. "I always feel that my presence interrupts you; and yet I don''t know that a judicious interruption isn''t the wholesomest thing for you sometimes."
"You forget," she said, smiling into his face, "that I was trained to it. I must keep myself fitted to my calling. Rest would mean deterioration."
"Would you not be willing to follow some other calling?" he asked, looking at her with unusual earnestness in his dark, handsome eyes.
"Oh, never!"
"Not if it were a calling that asked only for the labor of loving?"
She made no answer, but kept her eyes fixed on the idle traceries that she drew with her pencil on the sheets before her.
He arose and made a few impatient turns about the room, then coming again to her side, said abruptly:
"Paula, I love you. It isn''t telling you something that you don''t know, unless you have been without bodily perceptions. Today there is something driving me to speak it out in words. Since I have known you," he continued, striving to look into her face that bent low over the work before her, "I have been mounting into higher and always higher circles of Paradise, under a blessed illusion that you- cared for me. But today, a feeling of dread has been forcing itself upon me- dread that with a word you might throw me back into a gulf that would now be one of everlasting misery. Say if you love me, Paula. I believe you do, and yet I wait with indefinable doubts for your answer."
He took her hand which she did not withdraw from his.
"Why are you speechless? Why don''t you say something to me!" he asked desperately.
"I am speechless with joy and misery," she answered. "To know that you love me, gives me happiness enough to brighten a lifetime. And I am miserable, feeling that you have spoken the signal that must part us."
"You love me, and speak of parting. Never! You will be my wife. From this moment we belong to each other. Oh, my Paula," he said, drawing her to his side, "my whole existence will be devoted to your happiness."
"I can''t marry you," she said shortly, disengaging his hand from her waist.
"Why?" he asked abruptly. They stood looking into each other''s eyes.
"Because it doesn''t enter into the purpose of my life."
"I don''t ask you to give up anything in your life. I only beg you to let me share it with you."
George had known Paula only as the daughter of the undemonstrative American woman. He had never before seen her with the father''s emotional nature aroused in her. The color mounted into her cheeks, and her blue eyes were almost black with intensity of feeling.
"Hush," she said; "don''t tempt me further." And she cast herself on her knees before the table near which they stood, gathering the music that lay upon it into an armful, and resting her hot cheek upon it.
"What do you know of my life," she exclaimed passionately. "What can you guess of it? Is music anything more to you than the pleasing distraction? Can''t you feel that with me, it courses with the blood through my veins? That it''s something dearer than life, than riches, even than love?" with a quiver of pain.
"Paula listen to me; don''t speak like a mad woman."
She sprang up and held out an arm to ward away his nearer approach.
"Would you go into a convent, and ask to be your wife a nun who has vowed herself to the service of God?"
"Yes, if that nun loved me; she would owe to herself, to me and to God to be my wife."
Paula seated herself on the sofa, all emotion seeming suddenly to have left her; and he came and sat beside her.
"Say only that you love me, Paula," he urged persistently.
"I love you," she answered low and with pale lips.
He took her in his arms, holding her in silent rapture against his heart and kissing the white lips back into red life.
"You will be my wife?"
"You must wait. Come back in a week and I will answer you." He was forced to be content with the delay.
The days of probation being over, George went for his answer, which was given him by the old lady who occupied the upper story.
"Ach Gott! Fraulein Von Stoltz ist schon im Leipsic gegangen!"- *001 All that has not been many years ago. George Brainard is as handsome as ever, though growing a little stout in the quiet routine of domestic life. He has quite lost a pretty taste for music that formerly distinguished him as a skilful banjoist. This loss his little
black-eyed wife deplores; though she has herself made concessions to the advancing years, and abandoned Virginia breakdowns as incompatible with the serious offices of wifehood and matrimony.
You may have seen in the morning paper, that the renowned pianist, Fraulein Paula Von Stoltz, is resting in Leipsic, after an extended and remunerative concert tour.
Professor Max Kuntzler is also in Leipsic- with the ever persistent will- the dogged patience that so often wins in the end.
-----------THE END-----------

The Story of An Hour
1894
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 hte 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 owuld belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they ahve a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly 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 keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you 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 through that open window.
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 feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister''s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine''s piercing cry; at Richards'' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.
-------The end--------

Hi hi, đây là mấy truyện bọn tớ được học, fải công nhận là bà Kate Chopin này viết truyện ngắn hay dã man.
Đọc cứ fải tấm tắc mãi.