American gothic, p.65
American Gothic, page 65
“But there was the house and land,” I asked, – “what became of that part of the property?”
Mrs. Todd looked into the fire, and a shadow of disapproval flitted over her face.
“Poor old uncle!” she said, “he got childish about the matter. I was hoping to sell at first, and I had an offer, but he always run of an idea that there was more money hid away, and kept wanting me to delay; an’ he used to go up there all alone and search, and dig in the cellar, empty an’ bleak as ’t was in winter weather or any time. An’ he’d come and tell me he’d dreamed he found gold behind a stone in the cellar wall, or somethin’. And one night we all see the light o’ fire up that way, an’ the whole Landin’ took the road, and run to look, and the Tolland property was all in a light blaze. I expect the old gentleman had dropped fire about; he said he’d been up there to see if everything was safe in the afternoon. As for the land, ’t was so poor that everybody used to have a joke that the Tolland boys preferred to farm the sea instead. It’s ’most all grown up to bushes now, where it ain’t poor water grass in the low places. There’s some upland that has a pretty view, after you cross the brook bridge. Years an’ years after she died, there was some o’ her flowers used to come up an’ bloom in the door garden. I brought two or three that was unusual down here; they always come up and remind me of her, constant as the spring. But I never did want to fetch home that guitar, some way or ’nother; I would n’t let it go at the auction, either. It was hangin’ right there in the house when the fire took place. I’ve got some o’ her other little things scattered about the house: that picture on the mantelpiece belonged to her.”
I had often wondered where such a picture had come from, and why Mrs. Todd had chosen it; it was a French print of the statue of the Empress Josephine in the Savane at old Fort Royal, in Martinique.
VI.
Mrs. Todd drew her chair closer to mine; she held the cat and her knitting with one hand as she moved, but the cat was so warm and so sound asleep that she only stretched a lazy paw in spite of what must have felt like a slight earthquake. Mrs. Todd began to speak almost in a whisper.
“I ain’t told you all,” she continued; “no, I have n’t spoken of all to but very few. The way it came was this,” she said solemnly, and then stopped to listen to the wind, and sat for a moment in deferential silence, as if she waited for the wind to speak first. The cat suddenly lifted her head with quick excitement and gleaming eyes, and her mistress was leaning forward toward the fire with an arm laid on either knee, as if they were consulting the glowing coals for some augury. Mrs. Todd looked like an old prophetess as she sat there with the firelight shining on her strong face; she was posed for some great painter. The woman with the cat was as unconscious and as mysterious as any sibyl of the Sistine Chapel.
“There, that’s the last struggle o’ the gale,” said Mrs. Todd, nodding her head with impressive certainty and still looking into the bright embers of the fire. “You’ll see!” She gave me another quick glance, and spoke in a low tone as if we might be overheard.
“’T was such a gale as this the night Mis’ Tolland died. She appeared more comfortable the first o’ the evenin’; and Mrs. Begg was more spent than I, bein’ older, and a beautiful nurse that was the first to see and think of everything, but perfectly quiet an’ never asked a useless question. You remember her funeral when you first come to the Landing? And she consented to goin’ an’ havin’ a good sleep while she could, and left me one o’ those good little pewter lamps that burnt whale oil an’ made plenty o’ light in the room, but not too bright to be disturbin’.
“Poor Mis’ Tolland had been distressed the night before, an’ all that day, but as night come on she grew more and more easy, an’ was layin’ there asleep; ’t was like settin’ by any sleepin’ person, and I had none but usual thoughts. When the wind lulled and the rain, I could hear the seas, though more distant than this, and I don’ know’s I observed any other sound than what the weather made; ’t was a very solemn feelin’ night. I set close by the bed; there was times she looked to find somebody when she was awake. The light was on her face, so I could see her plain; there was always times when she wore a look that made her seem a stranger you’d never set eyes on before. I did think what a world it was that her an’ me should have come together so, and she have nobody but Dunnet Landin’ folks about her in her extremity. ‘You’re one o’ the stray ones, poor creatur’,’ I said. I remember those very words passin’ through my mind, but I saw reason to be glad she had some comforts, and didn’t lack friends at the last, though she’d seen misery an’ pain. I was glad she was quiet; all day she’d been restless, and we could n’t understand what she wanted from her French speech. We had the window open to give her air, an’ now an’ then a gust would strike that guitar that was on the wall and set it swinging by the blue ribbon, and soundin’ as if somebody begun to play it. I come near takin’ it down, but you never know what’ll fret a sick person an’ put ’em on the rack, an’ that guitar was one o’ the few things she’d brought with her.”
I nodded assent, and Mrs. Todd spoke still lower.
“I set there close by the bed; I’d been through a good deal for some days back, and I thought I might’s well be droppin’ asleep too, bein’ a quick person to wake. She looked to me as if she might last a day longer, certain, now she’d got more comfortable, but I was real tired, an’ sort o’ cramped as watchers will get, an’ a fretful feeling begun to creep over me such as they often do have. If you give way, there ain’t no support for the sick person; they can’t count on no composure o’ their own. Mis’ Tolland moved then, a little restless, an’ I forgot me quick enough, an’ begun to hum out a little part of a hymn tune just to make her feel everything was as usual an’ not wake up into a poor uncertainty. All of a sudden she set right up in bed with her eyes wide open, an’ I stood an’ put my arm behind her; she had n’t moved like that for days. And she reached out both her arms toward the door, an’ I looked the way she was lookin’, an’ I see some one was standin’ there against the dark. No, ’t wa’n’t Mis’ Begg; ’t was somebody a good deal shorter than Mis’ Begg. The lamplight struck across the room between us. I could n’t tell the shape, but ’t was a woman’s dark face lookin’ right at us; ’t wa’n’t but an instant I could see. I felt dreadful cold, and my head begun to swim; I thought the light went out; ’t wa’n’t but an instant, as I say, an’ when my sight come back I could n’t see nothing there. I was one that did n’t know what it was to faint away, no matter what happened; time was I felt above it in others, but ’t was somethin’ that made poor human natur’ quail. I saw very plain while I could see; ’t was a pleasant enough face, shaped somethin’ like Mis’ Tolland’s, and a kind of expectin’ look.
“No, I don’t expect I was asleep,” Mrs. Todd assured me quietly, after a moment’s pause, though I had not spoken. She gave a heavy sigh before she went on. I could see that the recollection moved her in the deepest way.
“I suppose if I had n’t been so spent an’ quavery with long watchin’, I might have kept my head an’ observed much better,” she added humbly; “but I see all I could bear. I did try to act calm, an’ I laid Mis’ Tolland down on her pillow, an’ I was a-shakin’ as I done it. All she did was to look up to me so satisfied and sort o’ questioning, an’ I looked back to her.
“ ‘You saw her, didn’t you?’ she says to me, speakin’ perfectly reasonable. ‘’T is my mother,’ she says again, very feeble, but lookin’ straight up at me, kind of surprised with the pleasure, and smiling as if she saw I was overcome, an’ would have said more if she could, but we had hold of hands. I see then her change was comin’, but I did n’t call Mis’ Begg, nor make no uproar. I felt calm then, an’ lifted to somethin’ different as I never was since. She opened her eyes just as she was goin’ –
“ ‘You saw her, did n’t you?’ she said the second time, an’ I says, ‘Yes, dear, I did; you ain’t never goin’ to feel strange an’ lonesome no more.’ An’ then in a few quiet minutes ’t was all over. I felt they’d gone away together. No, I wa’n’t alarmed afterward; ’t was just that one moment I could n’t live under, but I never called it beyond reason I should see the other watcher. I saw plain enough there was somebody there with me in the room.
VII.
“’T was just such a night as this Mis’ Tolland died,” repeated Mrs. Todd, returning to her usual tone and leaning back comfortably in her chair as she took up her knitting. “’T was just such a night as this. I’ve told the circumstances to but very few; but I don’t call it beyond reason. When folks is goin’ ’t is all natural, and only common things can jar upon the mind. You know plain enough there’s somethin’ beyond this world; the doors stand wide open. ‘There’s somethin’ of us that must still live on; we’ve got to join both worlds together an’ live in one but for the other.’ The doctor said that to me one day, an’ I never could forget it; he said ’t was in one o’ his old doctor’s books.”
We sat together in silence in the warm little room; the rain dropped heavily from the eaves, and the sea still roared, but the high wind had done blowing. We heard the far complaining fog horn of a steamer up the Bay.
“There goes the Boston boat out, pretty near on time,” said Mrs. Todd with satisfaction. “Sometimes these late August storms ’ll sound a good deal worse than they really be. I do hate to hear the poor steamers callin’ when they’re bewildered in thick nights in winter, comin’ on the coast. Yes, there goes the boat; they’ll find it rough at sea, but the storm ’s all over.”
Notes
THE FOREIGNER
1 The sound of the surf.
2 Gangsters or thugs (from the name of a New York City gang early in the nineteenth century).
3 Mrs. Todd has told the sea captains’ story with a straight face thus far, but now is allowing herself some amusement at a yarn that obviously had been heavily censored for the womenfolk in Dunnet Landing.
4 Mother’s speech is filled with echoes of the King James Bible. See Exodus 2:22 and Luke 10:29–37 (the parable of the Good Samaritan).
5 Useful or helpful.
6 From Arcadia (1590).
7 Day celebrating the saint after whom she was named.
8 Seagoing equivalent of a bus, which carries passengers, mail, and freight along the coast.
Kate Chopin (1851–1904)
Kate Chopin’s career never recovered from the harsh reviews that greeted her second novel, The Awakening (1899). Her work was rediscovered in the 1960s, a period much kinder to iconoclastic values than her own time had been. Many readers now regard her as one of the finest American authors of the late nineteenth century.
Chopin was bilingual in French and English, and her short-story style was influenced by Guy de Maupassant, whom she translated. Like Maupassant, Chopin is a master of the tightly structured tale which moves toward an unexpected twist. In the hands of some writers (as, in a harsh reading, O. Henry), this plot twist can be simply a trick; the best of these stories, however, will sustain rereading and reveal more than a thrill-producing mechanism.
In “Désirée’s Baby” (1893), Armand appears first as a monster who has been converted by love into a kindly husband (as is Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre). At the end, of course, Armand is revealed as simply a monster: Chopin indicates that he is not “human.” Readers may disagree about the point when Armand learns of his own heritage: at the end or earlier? But the source of his evil – the system of slavery – should be clear. Chopin also weaves subtle clues about the practice of miscegenation on the plantation. The secondary characters should be observed carefully since, as often in nineteenth-century discourse on race and sex, key points are often implied rather than stated directly. Who, for example, is La Blanche? Why does a crucial moment of recognition occur when Désirée looks at La Blanche’s son?
Text: Kate Chopin, Bayou Folk (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1894).
Désirée’s Baby
As the day was pleasant, Madame Valmondé drove over to L’Abri to see Désirée and the baby.
It made her laugh to think of Désirée with a baby. Why, it seemed but yesterday that Désirée was little more than a baby herself; when Monsieur in riding through the gateway of Valmondé had found her lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar.
The little one awoke in his arms and began to cry for “Dada.” That was as much as she could do or say. Some people thought she might have strayed there of her own accord, for she was of the toddling age. The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans, whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day, had crossed the ferry that Coton Maïs kept, just below the plantation. In time Madame Valmondé abandoned every speculation but the one that Désirée had been sent to her by a beneficent Providence to be the child of her affection, seeing that she was without child of the flesh. For the girl grew to be beautiful and gentle, affectionate and sincere, – the idol of Valmondé.
It was no wonder, when she stood one day against the stone pillar in whose shadow she had lain asleep, eighteen years before, that Armand Aubigny riding by and seeing her there, had fallen in love with her. That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot. The wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.
Monsieur Valmondé grew practical and wanted things well considered: that is, the girl’s obscure origin. Armand looked into her eyes and did not care. He was reminded that she was nameless. What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana? He ordered the corbeille1 from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he could until it arrived; then they were married.
Madame Valmondé had not seen Désirée and the baby for four weeks. When she reached L’Abri she shuddered at the first sight of it, as she always did. It was a sad looking place, which for many years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever to leave it. The roof came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house. Big, solemn oaks grew close to it, and their thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall. Young Aubigny’s rule was a strict one, too, and under it his negroes had forgotten how to be gay, as they had been during the old master’s easy-going and indulgent lifetime.
The young mother was recovering slowly, and lay full length, in her soft white muslins and laces, upon a couch. The baby was beside her, upon her arm, where he had fallen asleep, at her breast. The yellow nurse woman sat beside a window fanning herself.
Madame Valmondé bent her portly figure over Désirée and kissed her, holding her an instant tenderly in her arms. Then she turned to the child.
“This is not the baby!” she exclaimed, in startled tones. French was the language spoken at Valmondé in those days.
“I knew you would be astonished,” laughed Désirée, “at the way he has grown. The little cochon de lait!2 Look at his legs, mamma, and his hands and fingernails, – real finger-nails. Zandrine had to cut them this morning. Isn’t it true, Zandrine?”
The woman bowed her turbaned head majestically, “Mais si,3 Madame.”
“And the way he cries,” went on Désirée, “is deafening. Armand heard him the other day as far away as La Blanche’s cabin.”
Madame Valmondé had never removed her eyes from the child. She lifted it and walked with it over to the window that was lightest. She scanned the baby narrowly, then looked as searchingly at Zandrine whose face was turned to gaze across the fields.
“Yes, the child has grown, has changed,” said Madame Valmondé, slowly, as she replaced it beside its mother. “What does Armand say?”
Désirée’s face became suffused with a glow that was happiness itself.
“Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his name; though he says not, – that he would have loved a girl as well. But I know it isn’t true. I know he says that to please me. And mamma,” she added, drawing Madame Valmondé’s head down to her, and speaking in a whisper, “he hasn’t punished one of them – not one of them – since baby is born. Even Négrillon, who pretended to have burnt his leg that he might rest from work – he only laughed, and said Négrillon was a great scamp. Oh, mamma, I’m so happy; it frightens me.”
What Désirée said was true. Marriage, and later the birth of his son had softened Armand Aubigny’s imperious and exacting nature greatly. This was what made the gentle Désirée so happy, for she loved him desperately. When he frowned she trembled, but loved him. When he smiled she asked no greater blessing of God. But Armand’s dark, handsome face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the day he fell in love with her.
When the baby was about three months old, Désirée awoke one day to the conviction that there was something in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp. It had only been a disquieting suggestion; an air of mystery among the blacks; unexpected visits from far-off neighbors who could hardly account for their coming. Then a strange, an awful change in her husband’s manner, which she dared not ask him to explain. When he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out. He absented himself from home; and when there, avoided her presence and that of her child, without excuse. And the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves. Désirée was miserable enough to die.
