The Yellow Wallpaper

5

It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.

But I tried it last night.

“Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really, dear, you are better!”

“Why darling!” said he, “our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can’t see how to leave before.

“What is it, little girl?” he said. “Don’t go walking about like that—you’ll get cold.”

“The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better. I feel really much easier about you.”

“My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?”

“I don’t weigh a bit more,” said I, “nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening, when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away.”

“Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug; “she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let’s improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!”

“Better in body perhaps”—I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.

“And you won’t go away?” I asked gloomily.

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.

When the sun shoots in through the east window—I always watch for that first long, straight ray—it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it.

There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.

Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John’s, and she wished we would be more careful!

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions,—why, that is something like it.

The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.

The fact is, I am getting a little afraid of John.

The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

That is, sometimes!

That is why I watch it always.

So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn’t,—I lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.

She didn’t know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry—asked me why I should frighten her so!

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.

John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy.

It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around, just as the sun does.

It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, that perhaps it is the paper!

It is a very bad habit, I am convinced, for, you see, I don’t sleep.

Indeed, he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal.

I though it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away.

I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.

I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.

I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.

I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move, and when I came back John was awake.

I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind,—that dim sub-pattern,—but now I am quite sure it is a woman.

He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.

By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I wouldn’t know it was the same paper.

By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

And that cultivates deceit, for I don’t tell them I’m awake,—oh, no!

Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!