1893

MRS. MOBRY'S REASON

by Kate Chopin

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.