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Books at bedtime by calming anxiety, the locket by Kate Choppin.

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One night in autumn, a few men were gathered about a fire on the slope of the hill.

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They belonged to a small detachment of Confederate forces and were awaiting orders to march.

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Their grey uniforms were worn beyond the point of shabbyness.

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Another man was heating something in a cup over the embers.

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Two were lying in full length the little distance away, while a fourth was trying to decipher

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a letter and had drawn close to the light.

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He had unfastened his collar and a good bit of his flannel shirt front.

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What's that you got around your neck, Ned?

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Asked one of the men lying in obscurity.

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Ned or Edmund mechanically fastened another button of his shirt and did not reply.

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He went on reading his letter.

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Is it your sweetheart's picture?

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Taint no gals picture offered the man at the fire.

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He had removed his tin cup and was engaged in stirring its grimy contents with a small stick.

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That's a charm, some kind of hoody business that one of them priest gave him to keep him

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out of trouble.

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I know them Catholics.

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That's how come French he got promoted and never got a scratch since he's been in the

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ranks.

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Hey French, ain't I right?

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Edmund looked up absolutely from his letter.

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What is it he asked?

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Ain't that a charm you got around your neck?

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It must be Nick returned Edmund with a smile.

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I don't know how I could have gone through this year and a half without him.

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The letter had made Edmund heart sick and home sick.

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He stretched himself on his back and looked straight up at the blinking skies.

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But he was not thinking of them nor anything but a certain spring day when the bees were

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humming in the climitus.

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When a girl was saying goodbye to him, he could see her as she unclassed from her neck the

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locket which he fastened about his own.

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It was an old fashioned golden locket bearing miniatures of her father and mother with their

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names and the date of their marriage.

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It was her most precious earthly possession.

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Edmund could feel again the folds of the girl's soft white gown and see the droop of the

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injured angel sleeves as she circled her fair arms around his neck.

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Her sweet face, appealing pathetic, tormented by the pain of parting appeared before him

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as vividly as life.

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He turned over, burying his face in his arm and there he lay still and motionless.

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The profound and treacherous night with its silence and semblance of peace settled upon the

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camp.

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He dreamed that the fair octave brought him a letter.

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He had no chair to offer her and was pained and embarrassed at the condition of his garments.

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He was ashamed of the poor food which comprised the dinner at which he begged her to join them.

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He dreamt of a serpent coiling around his throat and then he strove to grasp it.

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The slimy thing had glided away from his clutch.

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Then his dream was clamor.

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Get your duds you, Frenchy, Nick was bellowing in his face.

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There was what appeared to be a scramble and a rush rather than any regulated movement.

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The hillside was allowed with clatter and motion, with sudden up springing lights among the

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pine.

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In the east the dawn was unfolding out of the darkness.

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Its glimmer was yet dim in the plain below.

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What it all about, wandered a big black bird perched in the top of the tallest tree.

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He was an old solitary and wise one, yet he was not wise enough to guess what it was that

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it was all about.

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So all day long he kept blinking and wondering.

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The noise reached far out over the plain and across the hills and awoke the little babes

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that were sleeping in their cradle.

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The smoke killed up towards the sun and shadowed the plain so that this stupid bird thought

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it was going to rain but the wise one knew better.

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They are children playing a game he thought.

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I shall know more about it if I watch long enough.

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At the approach of night they had all vanished away with their dinn and smoke.

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Then the old bird plundered its feathers.

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At last he had understood.

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With a flap of his great black wings he shot upwards, circling towards the plain.

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A man was picking his way across the plain.

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He was dressed in the garb of a clergyman.

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His mission was to administer the consolations of religion to any of the prostate figures

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in whom there might yet linger a spark of life.

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A negro accompanied him, bearing a bucket of water and a flask of wine.

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There were no wounded here.

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They had all been born away but there had treated been harried and the vultures and the good

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Samaritans would have to look to the dead.

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There was a soldier, a mere boy, lying with his face to the sky.

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His hands were catching the sword on either side and his fingernails were stuffed with earth

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and bits of grass that he had gathered in his despairing grass upon life.

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This musket was gone.

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He was hapless and his face and clothing were begrined.

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Around his neck hung a gold chain and lock it.

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The priest bending over him, unclassed the chain and removed it from the dead soldiers

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neck.

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He had grown used to the terrors of war and could face them unflinchingly, but it's

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pace us some way always brought the tears to his old dim eye.

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The angelus was ringing half a mile away.

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The priest and the negro nelton murmured together the evening benediction and a prayer for

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the dead.

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2.

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The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction.

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Along the leafy road which skirted an arrow torched with stream in central Louisiana,

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rumbled an old-fashioned cabrelay, much the worse for hard and rough usage over the country

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roads and lanes.

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The fat black horses went in a slow, measured trot, notwithstanding constant urging on the

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part of the fat black coachman.

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Within the vehicle was seated the fair Octavia and her old friend and neighbour, Judge

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Pilya, who had come to take her for a morning drive.

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Octavia wore a plain black dress, severe in its simplicity.

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The narrow belts held it at the waist and the sleeves were gathered into a close fitting

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waistband.

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She had discarded her hoop skirt and appeared not unlike in her.

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Beneath the folds of her bodice nestled the old locket.

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She never displayed it now.

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It had returned to her sanctified in her eyes, made precious as material things sometimes

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are by being forever identified with a significant moment in one's existence.

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A hundred times she had read over the letter with which the locket had come back to her.

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No later than that morning she had again poured over it.

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As she sat beside the window, smoothing the letter out upon her knee, heavy and spiced

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odours stalled into her with the songs of birds and the humming of insects in the air.

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She was so young and the world was so beautiful that there came over her a sense of unreality

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as she read again and again the pre-sletter.

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He told her of that autumn day, drawing its clothes, with the gold and the red fading out

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of the west and the night gathering its shadows to cover the faces of the dead.

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She could not believe that one of those dead was her own, with Visage uplifted to the grey

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sky in an agony of supplication.

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A spasm of resistance and rebellion seized and swept over her.

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Why was the spring here with its flowers and its deducted breath if he was dead?

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Why was she here?

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What further had she to do with life and the living?

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Like Tavir had experienced many such moments of despair, but a blessed resignation had

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never failed to follow and it fell then upon her like a mantle and enveloped her.

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I shall grow old and quiet and sad like poor Aunt Tavir, she murmured to herself as she

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folded the letter and replaced it into the secret ring.

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Already she gave herself a little d'umu'er like her Aunt Tavir.

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She walked with a slow guide in unconscious imitation of Mademoiselle Tavir, whom some

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youthful affliction had robbed of earthly compensation while leaving her in the possession

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of youth's illusions.

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As she sat in the old cabrelay beside the father of her dead lover again, there came

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to Octavia the terrible sense of loss which had assailed her so often before.

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The soul of her youth clamoured for its rights for a share in the world's glory and exaltation.

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She leaned back and drew her veil a little closer about her faith.

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It was an old black veil of her own Tavir's.

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A whiff of dust from the road had blown in and she wiped her cheeks and her eyes with

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her soft white handkerchief, a homemade handkerchief fabricated from one of her old fine

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muslin peticotes.

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Will you do me the favor Octavia?

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Requested the judge in the courteous tone which he'd never abandoned to remove that veil

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which you wear?

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It seems out of harmony some way with the beauty and promise of the day.

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The young girl obediently yielded to her old companion's wish and unpaining the cumbersome

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somber drapery from her bonnet, folded it neatly and laid it upon the seat in front of her.

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Ah, that is better, far better, he said in a tone expressing unbounded relief.

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He ever put it on again dear.

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Octavia felt a little hurt as if he wished to debar her from her share and parcel in the

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burden of affliction which had been placed upon all of them.

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Again, she drew forth the old muslin handkerchief.

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They had left the big road and turned into the level plain which had formerly been an

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old meadow.

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There were clumps of thorn trees here and there, gorgeous in their spring radiance.

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Some cattle were grazing off in the distance in spots where the grass was tall and luscious.

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At the far end of the meadow was a towering lilac hedge, skirting the lane that led to

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Judge Piliy's house.

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And the scent of its heavy blossoms met them like a soft and tender embrace of welcome.

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As they neared the house, the old gentleman placed a ram around the girl's shoulders and

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turning her face up to him, he said.

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"Do you not think that on a day like this miracles might happen when the whole earth is vibrant

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with life?

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Does it not seem to you, Octavia?

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That heaven might for once relent and give us back our dead?"

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He spoke very low, advisedly and impressively.

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In his voice was an old quaver which was not habitual and there was an agitation in every

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line of his fissage.

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She gazed at him with eyes that were full of supplication and a certain terror of joy.

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They had been driving through the lane with the towering hedge on one side and the open

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meadow on the other.

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The horses had somewhat quickened their lazy pace.

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As they turned into the avenue, leading to the house, a whole choir of feathered songsters

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fluted a sudden turret of melodious greeting from their leafy hiding places.

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Octavia felt as if she had passed into a stage of existence which was like a dream, more

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poignant and real in life.

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There was the old grey house with its sloping eaves.

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Amid the blur of grain and dimly she saw familiar faces and heard voices as if they came

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from far across the fields.

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An Edmund was holding her.

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Her dead Edmund, her living Edmund, and she felt the beating of his heart against her

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and the agonizing rapture of his kisses striving to awake her.

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It was if the spirit of life and the awakening spring had given back her soul to the youth

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and bade her rejoice.

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It was many hours later that Octavia drew the locket from her bosom and looked to Edmund

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with a questioning appeal in her glance.

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It was the night before an engagement, he said.

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In the hurry of the encounter and the retreat next day, I never missed it till the fight

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was over.

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I thought of course I had lost it in the heat of the struggle, but it was stolen.

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Stolen, she shut it and thought of the dead soldier with his face uplifted to the sky

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in an agony of supplication.

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Edmund said nothing, but he thought of his mess made, the one who had lain far back in

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the shadow, the one who had said nothing.

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