1893
MRS. MOBRY'S REASON
by Kate Chopin
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
I
It was in the springtime and under the blossom-laden branches of
an apple tree that Editha Payne finally accepted John Mobry for her
husband.
For three years she had been refusing him, with an obstinacy that
made people wonder only a little less than they marvelled at the
persistence of his desire to marry her. She was simply a nobody- an
English girl with antecedents shrouded in obscurity; a governess,
moreover; not in her first youth, and none too handsome. But John
Mobry was of that class of men who, when they want something,
usually keep on wanting it and striving for it so long as there is
possibility of attainment in view.
Chance brought him to her that spring day out under the blossoms, at
a moment when inward forces were at work with her to weaken and undo
the determination of a lifetime.
She looked away from him, far away from him, far away across the
green hills that the sun had touched and quickened, and beyond, into
the impenetrable mist. Her tired face wore the look of the conquered
who has made a brave fight and would rest.
"Well, John, if you want it," she said, placing her hand in his.
And as she did so she formed the inward resolve that her eyes should
never again look into the impenetrable mist. But why she had ever
rejected him was something which people kept on asking themselves
and each other for the length of time that people will ask such
things.
The answer came slowly- twenty-five years later. Most people had
forgotten by that time that they ever wanted to know why.
II
Again it was springtime.
A young man who had been trying to read, where he lounged in the
deep embrasure of a window, turned to say to the girl who sat
playing at the piano:
"Naomi, why is it the spring always comes like a revelation- a
delicious surprise?"
"Wait, Sigmund," and she played the closing bars of the piece of
music that was open before her, then rising, went to join him at the
window.
She was a splendid type of physical health and beauty, lithe,
supple, firm of flesh, wearing youth's colors in cheek and lip,
youth's gloss and glow in the waves of her thick brown hair. Her brown
eyes drowsed and gleamed alternately, and questioned often.
"The spring?" she said, "why does it come like a revelation? How
should I know? This is surely reversing roles when you question."
She took the book from his hand to glance carelessly through its
pages.
"Do you know, you are a very curious young woman," he said,
looking at her with something of admiration, but yet superciliously,
for he was young, and a college student. "You gave me the same reply
this morning when I asked you- what was it, now, I asked you?"
"To define the quality in Chopin's music that charms me. Well,"
she continued, "I don't know the 'why' of things. That certain sounds,
scenes, impressions move me I know, because I feel it. I don't
bother about reasons. Remember, Sigmund, I know so little."
"Oh, you want training, no doubt, and it's an immense pity you've
never received it. Let us go through a course together this summer. Do
you agree to it?"
He was the lordly collegiate, sure of his weapons.
"I don't believe I do, Sigmund," Naomi laughed. "And if I did it
would be useless, for mamma never would consent. You know what she
thinks of ologies and isms and all that for women."
"Oh, isms and ologies do not constitute solely the training I have
in mind."
"Why, my recollection never goes back to any time when books
formed an important feature of my life," she interrupted. "I've
lived more than half my days under the sky, galloping over the
hills, as often as not with the rain stinging my face. Oh, the open
air and all that it teems with! There's nothing like it, Sigmund. What
color! Look, now, at the purple wrapping those hills away to the east.
See the hundred shades of green spreading before us, with the
new-plowed fields between making brown dashes and patches. And then
the sky, so blue where it frames those white velvet clouds. They'll be
red and gold this evening."
"What a greedy eye you have- a veritable savage eye for pure
color. Do you know how to use it? to make it serve you?"
"Oh, no, Sigmund," she said. "Music's the only thing I've studied
and learned. Mamma couldn't have prevented that if she'd wanted to,
I believe. There's nothing that has the meaning for me in this world
that sound has. I feel as if the Truth were going to come to me,
some day, through the harmony of it. I wonder if anyone else has an
ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of
the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that
the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth
breathe, Sigmund?" she asked, with wide eyes that filled with
merriment when she saw the astonishment in his.
Then, half laughing, half singing the gay refrain of a comic opera
air, she sprang with quick catlike movement to her feet, and seizing a
foil from against the wall, whirled with it into position in the
center of the room.
Her companion had been as quick to follow. They measured their
distances with stately grace, and looked a continuous challenge into
each other's eyes. Then for five long minutes, as they stood face to
face exchanging skillful thrust and parry, no sound was heard but
the clink and scrape of the slender steels; on the hardwood floor
the stamp of advancing feet in the charge. It was only when Mrs.
Mobry's long, pale face looked in at the cautiously opened door that
the engagement ended.
"Why, Naomi," she said, a little apologetically, coming into the
room, "I didn't hear the piano and-"
"And you wondered what disaster could have happened," the girl
replied, flushed and amused as she replaced her weapon upon the
wall. "I was only giving Cousin Sigmund a lesson with the foils,
Mamma."
"You know your father comes on the early train today, Naomi; he'll
be disappointed if you're not at the station to meet him, dear."
"And a perfect right he'd have to be disappointed, and bewildered,
too. When have I ever failed him?"
And she quitted the room, making, as she left it, a pass at
Sigmund with an imaginary weapon, and laughing gaily as she did so.
Mrs. Mobry went to the piano and gathered together the sheets of
music that Naomi had left there in some disorder, and arranged them
upon the stand. She had the appearance of seeking occupation; a
house full of servants left her little or none of a manual sort, for
wealth was one of the things which John Mobry had persistently wanted,
long ago.
Mrs. Mobry was past fifty, with her hair, that was turning gray,
carefully parted and brushed smooth down upon her temples. When she
seated herself and began to rock gently, she drew the cape which she
wore closely about her thin shoulders.
"Don't you find it chill, Sigmund," she said, "with that window
open? I dare say not, though; young blood is warm."
But Sigmund went and closed the window, making no boast that his
veins were scintillant. He only said:
"You're right, Aunt Editha; this early spring air is treacherous."
"I wanted to speak with you a moment alone, dear," she commenced
at once, coughing uneasily behind her hand. "It may be, and I trust it
is, wholly unnecessary, this caution; but it's best to be open, so far
as we can be, in this world. And, of course, when young people are
thrown together-"
Sigmund, to quote his thoughts, literally, wondered what his aunt
was driving at.
"I only want to say- as you perhaps are not aware of it- that it's
our intention, and Naomi's, too, that she shall never marry. As you
will be with us all summer I thought it best to acquaint you at once
with such little family arrangements, so that we may all feel
comfortable and avoid unpleasant consequences." Mrs. Mobry smiled
feebly as she said this, and smoothed down the hair on her temples
with her long thin hands.
"Has Naomi made you such a promise?" Sigmund asked, thinking it a
great pity if she had.
"Oh, there's been no promise, but it has been always understood.
I've impressed upon her since she was a little child that she is to
remain with me always. It looks selfish- I know it looks selfish; your
Uncle John even thinks so, though he has never opposed my wish."
"I see rather a natural instinct in this wish of yours than cold
selfishness, Aunt Editha. Something you can't overcome, perhaps. I
remember now hearing how fearfully cut up you were two years ago
when Edward married."
Mrs. Mobry grew a shade paler, and her voice trembled when she said:
"I can't pardon Edward. It was treacherous, marrying in that way,
knowing how I opposed it. It was unfortunate that your uncle should
have sent him to take charge of the business in Middleburg. That
marriage could not have come about if he had been here at my side,
where his place was."
"But, Aunt Editha, it isn't such a calamity after all. He has
married a charming woman, and seems perfectly happy. If you would
consent to visit him, and were to see his content with your bodily
eyes I think you would be reconciled to his coup d'etat."
Sigmund thought his aunt Editha rather stupidly set in her ideas.
But as he had already recognized the possibility of falling in love
with his cousin, Naomi, he was not ill-pleased that Mrs. Mobry had
so considerately warned him. If he walked into the fire now it would
be with open eyes.
Sigmund was the son of Mr. Mobry's sister; a student of medicine,
twenty-two years of age, a little run down and overworked, and
hoping for recuperation amid these Western hills. He had visited his
uncle's family often as a child, when he and his cousin Edward- two
years his senior- had been friends. But his absence this time had
lasted four years. He had left Naomi an awkward, boisterous girl of
fourteen. When he returned he found that she had undergone a seeming
re-creation.
He himself was a good-looking young blond fellow, full of hope and
belief in his future; though he tried hard to cultivate an interesting
cynicism, which he could never succeed in making anyone believe in.
III
Had Mrs. Mobry's intention been that Sigmund should fall in love
with her daughter she could not have designed a plan more
Machiavellian than the one she employed. But her only thought had been
a caution against marriage. Thus there was no cause to grumble, for
she had done her work well and surely.
This caution served Sigmund as his only shield- poor fool; all
others, he set aside at once. It was more than a shield. It was a
license, drawn, signed, stamped and delivered to his conscience, which
permitted him to live at Naomi's side with his young nature all
unbridled to wound itself after the manner of young unbridled natures.
They lived such a joyous life during those spring and summer days,
and did so many things that were delightful! For must it not have been
a delight to rise when the morning was yet gray, and to tramp-
high-booted both of them- through the brush of the hillside, crisp and
silvered with dew? To silently wait with ready rifle for the young
covey to start with sudden whirr from the fence corners? To watch
the east begin to fire and set the wet earth sparkling?
But perhaps they liked it better, or certainly as well, when they
sat side by side in Naomi's wagonette and went jogging to town,
three miles away, behind the fat, lazy pony who always wanted to
stop and drink when they crossed the shallow ford of the Meramec,
where the water ran like liquid crystal over the shining pebbles
beneath. He always wanted to stop, too, and rest under the branches of
the big walnut tree that marked the limit of the Mobry's field. It was
a whim of Naomi's to let her pony do what he wanted to, and as often
as not he wanted to nibble the grass that grew tender along the
edges of the road.
It is no wonder then that their little jogs to town consumed an
incredible length of time. Yet what had they to do with time but to
waste it? And this they did from morning till night. Sometimes upon
the river that twines like a silver ribbon through the green slopes of
Southern Missouri, seated in Naomi's slender boat, they floated in
midstream when the stars or moon were over them. They skirted the
banks, gliding under the shade of hanging willows when the sun grew
hot and lurid, as it did often when the summer days came.
Then Sigmund's blue eyes saw nothing in all the world so good to
look upon as Naomi's brown ones, that filled with wonder at the
sweet trouble which stirred her when she caught his gaze and
answered it.
There was much reading in books, too, during that summer time. There
are many things in books beside isms and ologies. The world has always
its poets who sing. And, strangely enough, Sigmund could think of no
training so fit for Naomi's untrammelled thought as to follow Lancelot
in his loves or Juliet in her hot despair. And Naomi often sighed over
such tales, and wept sometimes, for Sigmund told them from his
heart, and they seemed very real.
Mrs. Mobry's first care- and John Mobry's, too, for that matter- was
always Naomi's health; then, Naomi's happiness. These had been from
babyhood so fixed and well established that the mother could surely
have been forgiven had she permitted her solicitude to wane sometimes.
But this she never did. The color must be always there in Naomi's
cheek, or she must know why it was not. When the girl grew languid and
dreamy- the summer being hot- the mother must know why it was so.
"I'm sure I don't know, mamma. This heavy heat would make anyone's
blood run a little sluggishly, I think."
IV
One morning when the family arose and assembled at an early
breakfast, it was to find that Naomi had been up long before and had
gone for one of her tramps. The gardener had seen her pass when he
left his cottage just at daybreak, and she had called to him: "We
are no sluggards to lie abed, Heinrich, when the earth has waked
up," so he said.
They thought at every moment she would enter, flushed and
dishevelled, to take her place at table. Sigmund was restless
because she was not there; Mrs. Mobry anxious, as she gazed constantly
from the window and listened to every sound. When the meal ended,
and John Mobry was forced to leave for the station without giving
Naomi the accustomed morning farewell, it was plainly a thing that
gave him annoyance and pain, for that early kiss from the daughter
he loved was a day's inspiration to him.
Sigmund went in search of her. He was quite sure she would be up
on the summit of that nearest hill, seated upon the rocky plateau that
he knew. But she was not there, nor in the oak grove, nor in any of
the places where he looked. The time was speeding, and the sun had
grown fierce. He retraced his steps, sure that he would find her at
home when he reached there. Passing an opening in the wood that led
down to the river, and where it was narrow, he turned instinctively,
thinking that she might be there by the water, where she loved to sit.
And there he found her. But she was across the stream in her boat,
resting motionless under the willow branches, her big straw hat
hanging down over the side of her face.
"Naomi! oh, Naomi!" Sigmund called.
At the sound of his voice she looked up, then seizing the oars she
pulled with vigorous strokes across the water toward the spot where he
stood waiting for her. She sprang from the boat, heedless of the aid
which he offered, and passing him quickly, hastened up the slope,
where she seated herself, when she had reached its summit, upon the
huge trunk of a fallen tree.
Sigmund followed in some surprise, and went to sit beside her.
"We mustn't linger here too long, Naomi; Aunt Editha is worried
about your absence. Why did you stay so long away? You shouldn't do
such cruel things."
"Sigmund," she whispered, and drawing nearer to him twined her
arms around his neck. "I want you to kiss me, Sigmund."
Had the earth trembled, that Sigmund shook like that? And had the
sky and the air grown red before his eyes? Were his arms turned wooden
that they should hang at his side, when hers were around him? He was
hoping a senseless hope for strength when she kissed him. Then his
arms did their office. He could not help it; he was young and so
human. But he sought no further kiss. He only sat motionless with
Naomi in his arms; her head resting upon his heart where his pulses
had gone mad.
"Ah, Sigmund, this is just as I was dreaming it this morning when
I awoke. Then I was angry because you were sleeping off there in
your room like a senseless log, when I was awake and wanted you. And
you slept on and never came to me. How could you do it? I was angry
and went away and walked over the hills. I thought you would come
after me, but you never did. I wouldn't go back till you came. And
just now, I went in the boat, and when I was out there in the middle
of the stream- listen, Sigmund- the sun struck me upon the head,
with something in its hand- no, no, not in his hand-"
"Naomi-"
-"And after that I didn't care, for I know everything now. I know
what the birds are saying up in the trees-"
"Naomi, look at me!"
"Like Siegfried when he played upon his pipe under a tree, last
winter in town. I can tell you everything that the fishes say in the
water. They were talking under the boat when you called me-"
"Naomi! Oh, God- Naomi, look at me!"
He did look into her eyes then- her eyes that he loved so, and there
was no more light in them.
"Aunt Editha," said Sigmund, entering his aunt's room, where she was
in restless movement, as she had been all morning- "Aunt Editha, Naomi
is in the library. I left her there. She must have been chilled by the
early morning air, I'm afraid. And the sun seems to have made her ill-
wait- Aunt Editha-," for Mrs. Mobry had clutched Sigmund's arm with
fingers like steel, and was staggering toward the library.
"How dare you tell me Naomi's ill? She can't be ill," she gasped;
"she was never ill in all her life."
They had reached the library, and facing the door through which they
entered Naomi sat upon a lounge. She was playing like a little
child, with scraps of paper that she was tearing and placing in rows
upon the cushion beside her. An instant more, and Mrs. Mobry lay in
Sigmund's arms like one dead.
But when night came she kneeled, sobbing as a culprit might, at
her husband's feet, telling him a broken story that he scarcely heeded
in his anguish.
"It has been in the blood that is mine for generations, John, and
I knew it, and I married you.
"Oh, God! if it might end with me and with her- my stricken dove!
But, John," she whispered with a new terror in her eyes, "Edward has
already a child. Others will be born to him, and I see the crime of my
marriage reaching out to curse me through the lips of generations that
will come."
THE END
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