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The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories

by Kate Chopin · English · Gutenberg #160 · 378,797 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories

Author: Kate Chopin


        
Release date: March 11, 2006 [eBook #160]
                Most recently updated: September 2, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/160

Credits: Judith Boss and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AWAKENING, AND SELECTED SHORT STORIES ***



The Awakening
and Selected Short Stories

by Kate Chopin


Contents

 THE AWAKENING
 I
 II
 III
 IV
 V
 VI
 VII
 VIII
 IX
 X
 XI
 XII
 XIII
 XIV
 XV
 XVI
 XVII
 XVIII
 XIX
 XX
 XXI
 XXII
 XXIII
 XXIV
 XXV
 XXVI
 XXVII
 XXVIII
 XXIX
 XXX
 XXXI
 XXXII
 XXXIII
 XXXIV
 XXXV
 XXXVI
 XXXVII
 XXXVIII
 XXXIX

 BEYOND THE BAYOU

 MA’AME PÉLAGIE
 I
 II
 III
 IV

 DÉSIRÉE’S BABY

 A RESPECTABLE WOMAN

 THE KISS

 A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS

 THE LOCKET
 I
 II

 A REFLECTION




THE AWAKENING


I

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept
repeating over and over:

“_Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!_ That’s all right!”

He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody
understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side
of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with
maddening persistence.

Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper with any degree of
comfort, arose with an expression and an exclamation of disgust.

He walked down the gallery and across the narrow “bridges” which
connected the Lebrun cottages one with the other. He had been seated
before the door of the main house. The parrot and the mocking-bird were
the property of Madame Lebrun, and they had the right to make all the
noise they wished. Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their
society when they ceased to be entertaining.

He stopped before the door of his own cottage, which was the fourth one
from the main building and next to the last. Seating himself in a
wicker rocker which was there, he once more applied himself to the task
of reading the newspaper. The day was Sunday; the paper was a day old.
The Sunday papers had not yet reached Grand Isle. He was already
acquainted with the market reports, and he glanced restlessly over the
editorials and bits of news which he had not had time to read before
quitting New Orleans the day before.

Mr. Pontellier wore eye-glasses. He was a man of forty, of medium
height and rather slender build; he stooped a little. His hair was
brown and straight, parted on one side. His beard was neatly and
closely trimmed.

Once in a while he withdrew his glance from the newspaper and looked
about him. There was more noise than ever over at the house. The main
building was called “the house,” to distinguish it from the cottages.
The chattering and whistling birds were still at it. Two young girls,
the Farival twins, were playing a duet from “Zampa” upon the piano.
Madame Lebrun was bustling in and out, giving orders in a high key to a
yard-boy whenever she got inside the house, and directions in an
equally high voice to a dining-room servant whenever she got outside.
She was a fresh, pretty woman, clad always in white with elbow sleeves.
Her starched skirts crinkled as she came and went. Farther down, before
one of the cottages, a lady in black was walking demurely up and down,
telling her beads. A good many persons of the _pension_ had gone over
to the _Chênière Caminada_ in Beaudelet’s lugger to hear mass. Some
young people were out under the water-oaks playing croquet. Mr.
Pontellier’s two children were there—sturdy little fellows of four and
five. A quadroon nurse followed them about with a faraway, meditative
air.

Mr. Pontellier finally lit a cigar and began to smoke, letting the
paper drag idly from his hand. He fixed his gaze upon a white sunshade
that was advancing at snail’s pace from the beach. He could see it
plainly between the gaunt trunks of the water-oaks and across the
stretch of yellow camomile. The gulf looked far away, melting hazily
into the blue of the horizon. The sunshade continued to approach
slowly. Beneath its pink-lined shelter were his wife, Mrs. Pontellier,
and young Robert Lebrun. When they reached the cottage, the two seated
themselves with some appearance of fatigue upon the upper step of the
porch, facing each other, each leaning against a supporting post.

“What folly! to bathe at such an hour in such heat!” exclaimed Mr.
Pontellier. He himself had taken a plunge at daylight. That was why the
morning seemed long to him.

“You are burnt beyond recognition,” he added, looking at his wife as
one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered
some damage. She held up her hands, strong, shapely hands, and surveyed
them critically, drawing up her fawn sleeves above the wrists. Looking
at them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband
before leaving for the beach. She silently reached out to him, and he,
understanding, took the rings from his vest pocket and dropped them
into her open palm. She slipped them upon her fingers; then clasping
her knees, she looked across at Robert and began to laugh. The rings
sparkled upon her fingers. He sent back an answering smile.

“What is it?” asked Pontellier, looking lazily and amused from one to
the other. It was some utter nonsense; some adventure out there in the
water, and they both tried to relate it at once. It did not seem half
so amusing when told. They realized this, and so did Mr. Pontellier. He
yawned and stretched himself. Then he got up, saying he had half a mind
to go over to Klein’s hotel and play a game of billiards.

“Come go along, Lebrun,” he proposed to Robert. But Robert admitted
quite frankly that he preferred to stay where he was and talk to Mrs.
Pontellier.

“Well, send him about his business when he bores you, Edna,” instructed
her husband as he prepared to leave.

“Here, take the umbrella,” she exclaimed, holding it out to him. He
accepted the sunshade, and lifting it over his head descended the steps
and walked away.

“Coming back to dinner?” his wife called after him. He halted a moment
and shrugged his shoulders. He felt in his vest pocket; there was a
ten-dollar bill there. He did not know; perhaps he would return for the
early dinner and perhaps he would not. It all depended upon the company
which he found over at Klein’s and the size of “the game.” He did not
say this, but she understood it, and laughed, nodding good-by to him.

Both children wanted to follow their father when they saw him starting
out. He kissed them and promised to bring them back bonbons and
peanuts.

II

Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes were quick and bright; they were a yellowish
brown, about the color of her hair. She had a way of turning them
swiftly upon an object and holding them there as if lost in some inward
maze of contemplation or thought.

Her eyebrows were a shade darker than her hair. They were thick and
almost horizontal, emphasizing the depth of her eyes. She was rather
handsome than beautiful. Her face was captivating by reason of a
certain frankness of expression and a contradictory subtle play of
features. Her manner was engaging.

Robert rolled a cigarette. He smoked cigarettes because he could not
afford cigars, he said. He had a cigar in his pocket which Mr.
Pontellier had presented him with, and he was saving it for his
after-dinner smoke.

This seemed quite proper and natural on his part. In coloring he was
not unlike his companion. A clean-shaved face made the resemblance more
pronounced than it would otherwise have been. There rested no shadow of
care upon his open countenance. His eyes gathered in and reflected the
light and languor of the summer day.

Mrs. Pontellier reached over for a palm-leaf fan that lay on the porch
and began to fan herself, while Robert sent between his lips light
puffs from his cigarette. They chatted incessantly: about the things
around them; their amusing adventure out in the water—it had again
assumed its entertaining aspect; about the wind, the trees, the people
who had gone to the _Chênière;_ about the children playing croquet
under the oaks, and the Farival twins, who were now performing the
overture to “The Poet and the Peasant.”

Robert talked a good deal about himself. He was very young, and did not
know any better. Mrs. Pontellier talked a little about herself for the
same reason. Each was interested in what the other said. Robert spoke
of his intention to go to Mexico in the autumn, where fortune awaited
him. He was always intending to go to Mexico, but some way never got
there. Meanwhile he held on to his modest position in a mercantile
house in New Orleans, where an equal familiarity with English, French
and Spanish gave him no small value as a clerk and correspondent.

He was spending his summer vacation, as he always did, with his mother
at Grand Isle. In former times, before Robert could remember, “the
house” had been a summer luxury of the Lebruns. Now, flanked by its
dozen or more cottages, which were always filled with exclusive
visitors from the “_Quartier Français_,” it enabled Madame Lebrun to
maintain the easy and comfortable existence which appeared to be her
birthright.

Mrs. Pontellier talked about her father’s Mississippi plantation and
her girlhood home in the old Kentucky blue-grass country. She was an
American woman, with a small infusion of French which seemed to have
been lost in dilution. She read a letter from her sister, who was away
in the East, and who had engaged herself to be married. Robert was
interested, and wanted to know what manner of girls the sisters were,
what the father was like, and how long the mother had been dead.

When Mrs. Pontellier folded the letter it was time for her to dress for
the early dinner.

“I see Léonce isn’t coming back,” she said, with a glance in the
direction whence her husband had disappeared. Robert supposed he was
not, as there were a good many New Orleans club men over at Klein’s.

When Mrs. Pontellier left him to enter her room, the young man
descended the steps and strolled over toward the croquet players,
where, during the half-hour before dinner, he amused himself with the
little Pontellier children, who were very fond of him.

III

It was eleven o’clock that night when Mr. Pontellier returned from
Klein’s hotel. He was in an excellent humor, in high spirits, and very
talkative. His entrance awoke his wife, who was in bed and fast asleep
when he came in. He talked to her while he undressed, telling her
anecdotes and bits of news and gossip that he had gathered during the
day. From his trousers pockets he took a fistful of crumpled bank notes
and a good deal of silver coin, which he piled on the bureau
indiscriminately with keys, knife, handkerchief, and whatever else
happened to be in his pockets. She was overcome with sleep, and
answered him with little half utterances.

He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object
of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned
him, and valued so little his conversation.

Mr. Pontellier had forgotten the bonbons and peanuts for the boys.
Notwithstanding he loved them very much, and went into the adjoining
room where they slept to take a look at them and make sure that they
were resting comfortably. The result of his investigation was far from
satisfactory. He turned and shifted the youngsters about in bed. One of
them began to kick and talk about a basket full of crabs.

Mr. Pontellier returned to his wife with the information that Raoul had
a high fever and needed looking after. Then he lit a cigar and went and
sat near the open door to smoke it.

Mrs. Pontellier was quite sure Raoul had no fever. He had gone to bed
perfectly well, she said, and nothing had ailed him all day. Mr.
Pontellier was too well acquainted with fever symptoms to be mistaken.
He assured her the child was consuming at that moment in the next room.

He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of
the children. If it was not a mother’s place to look after children,
whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage
business. He could not be in two places at once; making a living for
his family on the street, and staying at home to see that no harm
befell them. He talked in a monotonous, insistent way.

Mrs. Pontellier sprang out of bed and went into the next room. She soon
came back and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning her head down on the
pillow. She said nothing, and refused to answer her husband when he
questioned her. When his cigar was smoked out he went to bed, and in
half a minute he was fast asleep.

Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly awake. She began to cry a
little, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her _peignoir_. Blowing out
the candle, which her husband had left burning, she slipped her bare
feet into a pair of satin _mules_ at the foot of the bed and went out
on the porch, where she sat down in the wicker chair and began to rock
gently to and fro.

It was then past midnight. The cottages were all dark. A single faint
light gleamed out from the hallway of the house. There was no sound
abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the top of a water-oak, and
the everlasting voice of the sea, that was not uplifted at that soft
hour. It broke like a mournful lullaby upon the night.

The tears came so fast to Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes that the damp sleeve
of her _peignoir_ no longer served to dry them. She was holding the
back of her chair with one hand; her loose sleeve had slipped almost to
the shoulder of her uplifted arm. Turning, she thrust her face,
steaming and wet, into the bend of her arm, and she went on crying
there, not caring any longer to dry her face, her eyes, her arms. She
could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the
foregoing were not uncommon in her married life. They seemed never
before to have weighed much against the abundance of her husband’s
kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit and
self-understood.

An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some
unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a
vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her
soul’s summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She
did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate,
which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She
was just having a good cry all to herself. The mosquitoes made merry
over her, biting her firm, round arms and nipping at her bare insteps.

The little stinging, buzzing imps succeeded in dispelling a mood which
might have held her there in the darkness half a night longer.

The following morning Mr. Pontellier was up in good time to take the
rockaway which was to convey him to the steamer at the wharf. He was
returning to the city to his business, and they would not see him again
at the Island till the coming Saturday. He had regained his composure,
which seemed to have been somewhat impaired the night before. He was
eager to be gone, as he looked forward to a lively week in Carondelet
Street.

Mr. Pontellier gave his wife half of the money which he had brought
away from Klein’s hotel the evening before. She liked money as well as
most women, and accepted it with no little satisfaction.

“It will buy a handsome wedding present for Sister Janet!” she
exclaimed, smoothing out the bills as she counted them one by one.

“Oh! we’ll treat Sister Janet better than that, my dear,” he laughed,
as he prepared to kiss her good-by.

The boys were tumbling about, clinging to his legs, imploring that
numerous things be brought back to them. Mr. Pontellier was a great
favorite, and ladies, men, children, even nurses, were always on hand
to say good-by to him. His wife stood smiling and waving, the boys
shouting, as he disappeared in the old rockaway down the sandy road.

A few days later a box arrived for Mrs. Pontellier from New Orleans. It
was from her husband. It was filled with _friandises_, with luscious
and toothsome bits—the finest of fruits, _patés_, a rare bottle or two,
delicious syrups, and bonbons in abundance.

Mrs. Pontellier was always very generous with the contents of such a
box; she was quite used to receiving them when away from home. The
_patés_ and fruit were brought to the dining-room; the bonbons were
passed around. And the ladies, selecting with dainty and discriminating
fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the
best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she
knew of none better.

IV

It would have been a difficult matter for Mr. Pontellier to define to
his own satisfaction or any one else’s wherein his wife failed in her
duty toward their children. It was something which he felt rather than
perceived, and he never voiced the feeling without subsequent regret
and ample atonement.

If one of the little Pontellier boys took a tumble whilst at play, he
was not apt to rush crying to his mother’s arms for comfort; he would
more likely pick himself up, wipe the water out of his eyes and the
sand out of his mouth, and go on playing. Tots as they were, they
pulled together and stood their ground in childish battles with doubled
fists and uplifted voices, which usually prevailed against the other
mother-tots. The quadroon nurse was looked upon as a huge encumbrance,
only good to button up waists and panties and to brush and part hair;
since it seemed to be a law of society that hair must be parted and
brushed.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women
seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them,
fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or
imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who
idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a
holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as
ministering angels.

Many of them were delicious in the role; one of them was the embodiment
of every womanly grace and charm. If her husband did not adore her, he
was a brute, deserving of death by slow torture. Her name was Adèle
Ratignolle. There are no words to describe her save the old ones that
have served so often to picture the bygone heroine of romance and the
fair lady of our dreams. There was nothing subtle or hidden about her
charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent: the spun-gold
hair that comb nor confining pin could restrain; the blue eyes that
were like nothing but sapphires; two lips that pouted, that were so red
one could only think of cherries or some other delicious crimson fruit
in looking at them. She was growing a little stout, but it did not seem
to detract an iota from the grace of every step, pose, gesture. One
would not have wanted her white neck a mite less full or her beautiful
arms more slender. Never were hands more exquisite than hers, and it
was a joy to look at them when she threaded her needle or adjusted her
gold thimble to her taper middle finger as she sewed away on the little
night-drawers or fashioned a bodice or a bib.

Madame Ratignolle was very fond of Mrs. Pontellier, and often she took
her sewing and went over to sit with her in the afternoons. She was
sitting there the afternoon of the day the box arrived from New
Orleans. She had possession of the rocker, and she was busily engaged
in sewing upon a diminutive pair of night-drawers.

She had brought the pattern of the drawers for Mrs. Pontellier to cut
out—a marvel of construction, fashioned to enclose a baby’s body so
effectually that only two small eyes might look out from the garment,
like an Eskimo’s. They were designed for winter wear, when treacherous
drafts came down chimneys and insidious currents of deadly cold found
their way through key-holes.

Mrs. Pontellier’s mind was quite at rest concerning the present
material needs of her children, and she could not see the use of
anticipating and making winter night garments the subject of her summer
meditations. But she did not want to appear unamiable and uninterested,
so she had brought forth newspapers, which she spread upon the floor of
the gallery, and under Madame Ratignolle’s directions she had cut a
pattern of the impervious garment.

Robert was there, seated as he had been the Sunday before, and Mrs.
Pontellier also occupied her former position on the upper step, leaning
listlessly against the post. Beside her was a box of bonbons, which she
held out at intervals to Madame Ratignolle.

That lady seemed at a loss to make a selection, but finally settled
upon a stick of nougat, wondering if it were not too rich; whether it
could possibly hurt her. Madame Ratignolle had been married seven
years. About every two years she had a baby. At that time she had three
babies, and was beginning to think of a fourth one. She was always
talking about her “condition.” Her “condition” was in no way apparent,
and no one would have known a thing about it but for her persistence in
making it the subject of conversation.

Robert started to reassure her, asserting that he had known a lady who
had subsisted upon nougat during the entire—but seeing the color mount
into Mrs. Pontellier’s face he checked himself and changed the subject.

Mrs. Pontellier, though she had married a Creole, was not thoroughly at
home in the society of Creoles; never before had she been thrown so
intimately among them. There were only Creoles that summer at Lebrun’s.
They all knew each other, and felt like one large family, among whom
existed the most amicable relations. A characteristic which
distinguished them and which impressed Mrs. Pontellier most forcibly
was their entire absence of prudery. Their freedom of expression was at
first incomprehensible to her, though she had no difficulty in
reconciling it with a lofty chastity which in the Creole woman seems to
be inborn and unmistakable.

Never would Edna Pontellier forget the shock with which she heard
Madame Ratignolle relating to old Monsieur Farival the harrowing story
of one of her _accouchements_, withholding no intimate detail. She was
growing accustomed to like shocks, but she could not keep the mounting
color back from her cheeks. Oftener than once her coming had
interrupted the droll story with which Robert was entertaining some
amused group of married women.

A book had gone the rounds of the _pension_. When it came her turn to
read it, she did so with profound astonishment. She felt moved to read
the book in secret and solitude, though none of the others had done
so,—to hide it from view at the sound of approaching footsteps. It was
openly criticised and freely discussed at table. Mrs. Pontellier gave
over being astonished, and concluded that wonders would never cease.

V

They formed a congenial group sitting there that summer
afternoon—Madame Ratignolle sewing away, often stopping to relate a
story or incident with much expressive gesture of her perfect hands;
Robert and Mrs. Pontellier sitting idle, exchanging occasional words,
glances or smiles which indicated a certain advanced stage of intimacy
and _camaraderie_.

He had lived in her shadow during the past month. No one thought
anything of it. Many had predicted that Robert would devote himself to
Mrs. Pontellier when he arrived. Since the age of fifteen, which was
eleven years before, Robert each summer at Grand Isle had constituted
himself the devoted attendant of some fair dame or damsel. Sometimes it
was a young girl, again a widow; but as often as not it was some
interesting married woman.

For two consecutive seasons he lived in the sunlight of Mademoiselle
Duvigne’s presence. But she died between summers; then Robert posed as
an inconsolable, prostrating himself at the feet of Madame Ratignolle
for whatever crumbs of sympathy and comfort she might be pleased to
vouchsafe.

Mrs. Pontellier liked to sit and gaze at her fair companion as she
might look upon a faultless Madonna.

“Could any one fathom the cruelty beneath that fair exterior?” murmured
Robert. “She knew that I adored her once, and she let me adore her. It
was ‘Robert, come; go; stand up; sit down; do this; do that; see if the
baby sleeps; my thimble, please, that I left God knows where. Come and
read Daudet to me while I sew.’”

“_Par exemple!_ I never had to ask. You were always there under my
feet, like a troublesome cat.”

“You mean like an adoring dog. And just as soon as Ratignolle appeared
on the scene, then it _was_ like a dog. ‘_Passez! Adieu! Allez
vous-en!_’”

“Perhaps I feared to make Alphonse jealous,” she interjoined, with
excessive naïveté. That made them all laugh. The right hand jealous of
the left! The heart jealous of the soul! But for that matter, the
Creole husband is never jealous; with him the gangrene passion is one
which has become dwarfed by disuse.

Meanwhile Robert, addressing Mrs Pontellier, continued to tell of his
one time hopeless passion for Madame Ratignolle; of sleepless nights,
of consuming flames till the very sea sizzled when he took his daily
plunge. While the lady at the needle kept up a little running,
contemptuous comment:

“_Blagueur—farceur—gros bête, va!_”

He never assumed this seriocomic tone when alone with Mrs. Pontellier.
She never knew precisely what to make of it; at that moment it was
impossible for her to guess how much of it was jest and what proportion
was earnest. It was understood that he had often spoken words of love
to Madame Ratignolle, without any thought of being taken seriously.
Mrs. Pontellier was glad he had not assumed a similar role toward
herself. It would have been unacceptable and annoying.

Mrs. Pontellier had brought her sketching materials, which she
sometimes dabbled with in an unprofessional way. She liked the
dabbling. She felt in it satisfaction of a kind which no other
employment afforded her.

She had long wished to try herself on Madame Ratignolle. Never had that
lady seemed a more tempting subject than at that moment, seated there
like some sensuous Madonna, with the gleam of the fading day enriching
her splendid color.

Robert crossed over and seated himself upon the step below Mrs.
Pontellier, that he might watch her work. She handled her brushes with
a certain ease and freedom which came, not from long and close
acquaintance with them, but from a natural aptitude. Robert followed
her work with close attention, giving forth little ejaculatory
expressions of appreciation in French, which he addressed to Madame
Ratignolle.

“_Mais ce n’est pas mal! Elle s’y connait, elle a de la force, oui._”

During his oblivious attention he once quietly rested his head against
Mrs. Pontellier’s arm. As gently she repulsed him. Once again he
repeated the offense. She could not but believe it to be
thoughtlessness on his part; yet that was no reason she should submit
to it. She did not remonstrate, except again to repulse him quietly but
firmly. He offered no apology. The picture completed bore no
resemblance to Madame Ratignolle. She was greatly disappointed to find
that it did not look like her. But it was a fair enough piece of work,
and in many respects satisfying.

Mrs. Pontellier evidently did not think so. After surveying the sketch
critically she drew a broad smudge of paint across its surface, and
crumpled the paper between her hands.

The youngsters came tumbling up the steps, the quadroon following at
the respectful distance which they required her to observe. Mrs.
Pontellier made them carry her paints and things into the house. She
sought to detain them for a little talk and some pleasantry. But they
were greatly in earnest. They had only come to investigate the contents
of the bonbon box. They accepted without murmuring what she chose to
give them, each holding out two chubby hands scoop-like, in the vain
hope that they might be filled; and then away they went.

The sun was low in the west, and the breeze soft and languorous that
came up from the south, charged with the seductive odor of the sea.
Children freshly befurbelowed, were gathering for their games under the
oaks. Their voices were high and penetrating.

Madame Ratignolle folded her sewing, placing thimble, scissors, and
thread all neatly together in the roll, which she pinned securely. She
complained of faintness. Mrs. Pontellier flew for the cologne water and
a fan. She bathed Madame Ratignolle’s face with cologne, while Robert
plied the fan with unnecessary vigor.

The spell was soon over, and Mrs. Pontellier could not help wondering
if there were not a little imagination responsible for its origin, for
the rose tint had never faded from her friend’s face.

She stood watching the fair woman walk down the long line of galleries
with the grace and majesty which queens are sometimes supposed to
possess. Her little ones ran to meet her. Two of them clung about her
white skirts, the third she took from its nurse and with a thousand
endearments bore it along in her own fond, encircling arms. Though, as
everybody well knew, the doctor had forbidden her to lift so much as a
pin!

“Are you going bathing?” asked Robert of Mrs. Pontellier. It was not so
much a question as a reminder.

“Oh, no,” she answered, with a tone of indecision. “I’m tired; I think
not.” Her glance wandered from his face away toward the Gulf, whose
sonorous murmur reached her like a loving but imperative entreaty.

“Oh, come!” he insisted. “You mustn’t miss your bath. Come on. The
water must be delicious; it will not hurt you. Come.”

He reached up for her big, rough straw hat that hung on a peg outside
the door, and put it on her head. They descended the steps, and walked
away together toward the beach. The sun was low in the west and the
breeze was soft and warm.

VI

Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach
with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the
second place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory
impulses which impelled her.

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,—the light
which, showing the way, forbids it.

At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to
dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome
her the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the
universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an
individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a
ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of
twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased
to vouchsafe to any woman.

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily
vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever
emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering,
clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in
abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is
sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

VII

Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a characteristic
hitherto contrary to her nature. Even as a child she had lived her own
small life all within herself. At a very early period she had
apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which
conforms, the inward life which questions.

That summer at Grand Isle she began to loosen a little the mantle of
reserve that had always enveloped her. There may have been—there must
have been—influences, both subtle and apparent, working in their
several ways to induce her to do this; but the most obvious was the
influence of Adèle Ratignolle. The excessive physical charm of the
Creole had first attracted her, for Edna had a sensuous susceptibility
to beauty. Then the candor of the woman’s whole existence, which every
one might read, and which formed so striking a contrast to her own
habitual reserve—this might have furnished a link. Who can tell what
metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy,
which we might as well call love.

The two women went away one morning to the beach together, arm in arm,
under the huge white sunshade. Edna had prevailed upon Madame
Ratignolle to leave the children behind, though she could not induce
her to relinquish a diminutive roll of needlework, which Adèle begged
to be allowed to slip into the depths of her pocket. In some
unaccountable way they had escaped from Robert.

The walk to the beach was no inconsiderable one, consisting as it did
of a long, sandy path, upon which a sporadic and tangled growth that
bordered it on either side made frequent and unexpected inroads. There
were acres of yellow camomile reaching out on either hand. Further away
still, vegetable gardens abounded, with frequent small plantations of
orange or lemon trees intervening. The dark green clusters glistened
from afar in the sun.

The women were both of goodly height, Madame Ratignolle possessing the
more feminine and matronly figure. The charm of Edna Pontellier’s
physique stole insensibly upon you. The lines of her body were long,
clean and symmetrical; it was a body which occasionally fell into
splendid poses; there was no suggestion of the trim, stereotyped
fashion-plate about it. A casual and indiscriminating observer, in
passing, might not cast a second glance upon the figure. But with more
feeling and discernment he would have recognized the noble beauty of
its modeling, and the graceful severity of poise and movement, which
made Edna Pontellier different from the crowd.

She wore a cool muslin that morning—white, with a waving vertical line
of brown running through it; also a white linen collar and the big
straw hat which she had taken from the peg outside the door. The hat
rested any way on her yellow-brown hair, that waved a little, was
heavy, and clung close to her head.

Madame Ratignolle, more careful of her complexion, had twined a gauze
veil about her head. She wore dogskin gloves, with gauntlets that
protected her wrists. She was dressed in pure white, with a fluffiness
of ruffles that became her. The draperies and fluttering things which
she wore suited her rich, luxuriant beauty as a greater severity of
line could not have done.

There were a number of bath-houses along the beach, of rough but solid
construction, built with small, protecting galleries facing the water.
Each house consisted of two compartments, and each family at Lebrun’s
possessed a compartment for itself, fitted out with all the essential
paraphernalia of the bath and whatever other conveniences the owners
might desire. The two women had no intention of bathing; they had just
strolled down to the beach for a walk and to be alone and near the
water. The Pontellier and Ratignolle compartments adjoined one another
under the same roof.

Mrs. Pontellier had brought down her key through force of habit.
Unlocking the door of her bath-room she went inside, and soon emerged,
bringing a rug, which she spread upon the floor of the gallery, and two
huge hair pillows covered with crash, which she placed against the
front of the building.

The two seated themselves there in the shade of the porch, side by
side, with their backs against the pillows and their feet extended.
Madame Ratignolle removed her veil, wiped her face with a rather
delicate handkerchief, and fanned herself with the fan which she always
carried suspended somewhere about her person by a long, narrow ribbon.
Edna removed her collar and opened her dress at the throat. She took
the fan from Madame Ratignolle and began to fan both herself and her
companion. It was very warm, and for a while they did nothing but
exchange remarks about the heat, the sun, the glare. But there was a
breeze blowing, a choppy, stiff wind that whipped the water into froth.
It fluttered the skirts of the two women and kept them for a while
engaged in adjusting, readjusting, tucking in, securing hair-pins and
hat-pins. A few persons were sporting some distance away in the water.
The beach was very still of human sound at that hour. The lady in black
was reading her morning devotions on the porch of a neighboring
bath-house. Two young lovers were exchanging their hearts’ yearnings
beneath the children’s tent, which they had found unoccupied.

Edna Pontellier, casting her eyes about, had finally kept them at rest
upon the sea. The day was clear and carried the gaze out as far as the
blue sky went; there were a few white clouds suspended idly over the
horizon. A lateen sail was visible in the direction of Cat Island, and
others to the south seemed almost motionless in the far distance.

“Of whom—of what are you thinking?” asked Adèle of her companion, whose
countenance she had been watching with a little amused attention,
arrested by the absorbed expression which seemed to have seized and
fixed every feature into a statuesque repose.

“Nothing,” returned Mrs. Pontellier, with a start, adding at once: “How
stupid! But it seems to me it is the reply we make instinctively to
such a question. Let me see,” she went on, throwing back her head and
narrowing her fine eyes till they shone like two vivid points of light.
“Let me see. I was really not conscious of thinking of anything; but
perhaps I can retrace my thoughts.”

“Oh! never mind!” laughed Madame Ratignolle. “I am not quite so
exacting. I will let you off this time. It is really too hot to think,
especially to think about thinking.”

“But for the fun of it,” persisted Edna. “First of all, the sight of
the water stretching so far away, those motionless sails against the
blue sky, made a delicious picture that I just wanted to sit and look
at. The hot wind beating in my face made me think—without any
connection that I can trace of a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow
that seemed as big as the ocean to the very little girl walking through
the grass, which was higher than her waist. She threw out her arms as
if swimming when she walked, beating the tall grass as one strikes out
in the water. Oh, I see the connection now!”

“Where were you going that day in Kentucky, walking through the grass?”

“I don’t remember now. I was just walking diagonally across a big
field. My sun-bonnet obstructed the view. I could see only the stretch
of green before me, and I felt as if I must walk on forever, without
coming to the end of it. I don’t remember whether I was frightened or
pleased. I must have been entertained.

“Likely as not it was Sunday,” she laughed; “and I was running away
from prayers, from the Presbyterian service, read in a spirit of gloom
by my father that chills me yet to think of.”

“And have you been running away from prayers ever since, _ma chère?_”
asked Madame Ratignolle, amused.

“No! oh, no!” Edna hastened to say. “I was a little unthinking child in
those days, just following a misleading impulse without question. On
the contrary, during one period of my life religion took a firm hold
upon me; after I was twelve and until—until—why, I suppose until now,
though I never thought much about it—just driven along by habit. But do
you know,” she broke off, turning her quick eyes upon Madame Ratignolle
and leaning forward a little so as to bring her face quite close to
that of her companion, “sometimes I feel this summer as if I were
walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking and
unguided.”

Madame Ratignolle laid her hand over that of Mrs. Pontellier, which was
near her. Seeing that the hand was not withdrawn, she clasped it firmly
and warmly. She even stroked it a little, fondly, with the other hand,
murmuring in an undertone, “_Pauvre chérie_.”

The action was at first a little confusing to Edna, but she soon lent
herself readily to the Creole’s gentle caress. She was not accustomed
to an outward and spoken expression of affection, either in herself or
in others. She and her younger sister, Janet, had quarreled a good deal
through force of unfortunate habit. Her older sister, Margaret, was
matronly and dignified, probably from having assumed matronly and
housewifely responsibilities too early in life, their mother having
died when they were quite young. Margaret was not effusive; she was
practical. Edna had had an occasional girl friend, but whether
accidentally or not, they seemed to have been all of one type—the
self-contained. She never realized that the reserve of her own
character had much, perhaps everything, to do with this. Her most
intimate friend at school had been one of rather exceptional
intellectual gifts, who wrote fine-sounding essays, which Edna admired
and strove to imitate; and with her she talked and glowed over the
English classics, and sometimes held religious and political
controversies.

Edna often wondered at one propensity which sometimes had inwardly
disturbed her without causing any outward show or manifestation on her
part. At a very early age—perhaps it was when she traversed the ocean
of waving grass—she remembered that she had been passionately enamored
of a dignified and sad-eyed cavalry officer who visited her father in
Kentucky. She could not leave his presence when he was there, nor
remove her eyes from his face, which was something like Napoleon’s,
with a lock of black hair failing across the forehead. But the cavalry
officer melted imperceptibly out of her existence.

At another time her affections were deeply engaged by a young gentleman
who visited a lady on a neighboring plantation. It was after they went
to Mississippi to live. The young man was engaged to be married to the
young lady, and they sometimes called upon Margaret, driving over of
afternoons in a buggy. Edna was a little miss, just merging into her
teens; and the realization that she herself was nothing, nothing,
nothing to the engaged young man was a bitter affliction to her. But
he, too, went the way of dreams.

She was a grown young woman when she was overtaken by what she supposed
to be the climax of her fate. It was when the face and figure of a
great tragedian began to haunt her imagination and stir her senses. The
persistence of the infatuation lent it an aspect of genuineness. The
hopelessness of it colored it with the lofty tones of a great passion.

The picture of the tragedian stood enframed upon her desk. Any one may
possess the portrait of a tragedian without exciting suspicion or
comment. (This was a sinister reflection which she cherished.) In the
presence of others she expressed admiration for his exalted gifts, as
she handed the photograph around and dwelt upon the fidelity of the
likeness. When alone she sometimes picked it up and kissed the cold
glass passionately.

Her marriage to Léonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in this
respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees
of Fate. It was in the midst of her secret great passion that she met
him. He fell in love, as men are in the habit of doing, and pressed his
suit with an earnestness and an ardor which left nothing to be desired.
He pleased her; his absolute devotion flattered her. She fancied there
was a sympathy of thought and taste between them, in which fancy she
was mistaken. Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her
sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic, and we need seek no
further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for
her husband.

The acme of bliss, which would have been a marriage with the tragedian,
was not for her in this world. As the devoted wife of a man who
worshiped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity
in the world of reality, closing the portals forever behind her upon
the realm of romance and dreams.

But it was not long before the tragedian had gone to join the cavalry
officer and the engaged young man and a few others; and Edna found
herself face to face with the realities. She grew fond of her husband,
realizing with some unaccountable satisfaction that no trace of passion
or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby
threatening its dissolution.

She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would
sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes
forget them. The year before they had spent part of the summer with
their grandmother Pontellier in Iberville. Feeling secure regarding
their happiness and welfare, she did not miss them except with an
occasional intense longing. Their absence was a sort of relief, though
she did not admit this, even to herself. It seemed to free her of a
responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not
fitted her.

Edna did not reveal so much as all this to Madame Ratignolle that
summer day when they sat with faces turned to the sea. But a good part
of it escaped her. She had put her head down on Madame Ratignolle’s
shoulder. She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her
own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like
wine, or like a first breath of freedom.

There was the sound of approaching voices. It was Robert, surrounded by
a troop of children, searching for them. The two little Pontelliers
were with him, and he carried Madame Ratignolle’s little girl in his
arms. There were other children beside, and two nurse-maids followed,
looking disagreeable and resigned.

The women at once rose and began to shake out their draperies and relax
their muscles. Mrs. Pontellier threw the cushions and rug into the
bath-house. The children all scampered off to the awning, and they
stood there in a line, gazing upon the intruding lovers, still
exchanging their vows and sighs. The lovers got up, with only a silent
protest, and walked slowly away somewhere else.

The children possessed themselves of the tent, and Mrs. Pontellier went
over to join them.

Madame Ratignolle begged Robert to accompany her to the house; she
complained of cramp in her limbs and stiffness of the joints. She
leaned draggingly upon his arm as they walked.

VIII

“Do me a favor, Robert,” spoke the pretty woman at his side, almost as
soon as she and Robert had started their slow, homeward way. She looked
up in his face, leaning on his arm beneath the encircling shadow of the
umbrella which he had lifted.

“Granted; as many as you like,” he returned, glancing down into her
eyes that were full of thoughtfulness and some speculation.

“I only ask for one; let Mrs. Pontellier alone.”

“_Tiens!_” he exclaimed, with a sudden, boyish laugh. “_Voilà que
Madame Ratignolle est jalouse!_”

“Nonsense! I’m in earnest; I mean what I say. Let Mrs. Pontellier
alone.”

“Why?” he asked; himself growing serious at his companion’s
solicitation.

“She is not one of us; she is not like us. She might make the
unfortunate blunder of taking you seriously.”

His face flushed with annoyance, and taking off his soft hat he began
to beat it impatiently against his leg as he walked. “Why shouldn’t she
take me seriously?” he demanded sharply. “Am I a comedian, a clown, a
jack-in-the-box? Why shouldn’t she? You Creoles! I have no patience
with you! Am I always to be regarded as a feature of an amusing
programme? I hope Mrs. Pontellier does take me seriously. I hope she
has discernment enough to find in me something besides the _blagueur_.
If I thought there was any doubt—”

“Oh, enough, Robert!” she broke into his heated outburst. “You are not
thinking of what you are saying. You speak with about as little
reflection as we might expect from one of those children down there
playing in the sand. If your attentions to any married women here were
ever offered with any intention of being convincing, you would not be
the gentleman we all know you to be, and you would be unfit to
associate with the wives and daughters of the people who trust you.”

Madame Ratignolle had spoken what she believed to be the law and the
gospel. The young man shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“Oh! well! That isn’t it,” slamming his hat down vehemently upon his
head. “You ought to feel that such things are not flattering to say to
a fellow.”

“Should our whole intercourse consist of an exchange of compliments?
_Ma foi!_”

“It isn’t pleasant to have a woman tell you—” he went on, unheedingly,
but breaking off suddenly: “Now if I were like Arobin—you remember
Alcée Arobin and that story of the consul’s wife at Biloxi?” And he
related the story of Alcée Arobin and the consul’s wife; and another
about the tenor of the French Opera, who received letters which should
never have been written; and still other stories, grave and gay, till
Mrs. Pontellier and her possible propensity for taking young men
seriously was apparently forgotten.

Madame Ratignolle, when they had regained her cottage, went in to take
the hour’s rest which she considered helpful. Before leaving her,
Robert begged her pardon for the impatience—he called it rudeness—with
which he had received her well-meant caution.

“You made one mistake, Adèle,” he said, with a light smile; “there is
no earthly possibility of Mrs. Pontellier ever taking me seriously. You
should have warned me against taking myself seriously. Your advice
might then have carried some weight and given me subject for some
reflection. _Au revoir_. But you look tired,” he added, solicitously.
“Would you like a cup of bouillon? Shall I stir you a toddy? Let me mix
you a toddy with a drop of Angostura.”

She acceded to the suggestion of bouillon, which was grateful and
acceptable. He went himself to the kitchen, which was a building apart
from the cottages and lying to the rear of the house. And he himself
brought her the golden-brown bouillon, in a dainty Sèvres cup, with a
flaky cracker or two on the saucer.

She thrust a bare, white arm from the curtain which shielded her open
door, and received the cup from his hands. She told him he was a _bon
garçon_, and she meant it. Robert thanked her and turned away toward
“the house.”

The lovers were just entering the grounds of the _pension_. They were
leaning toward each other as the water-oaks bent from the sea. There
was not a particle of earth beneath their feet. Their heads might have
been turned upside-down, so absolutely did they tread upon blue ether.
The lady in black, creeping behind them, looked a trifle paler and more
jaded than usual. There was no sign of Mrs. Pontellier and the
children. Robert scanned the distance for any such apparition. They
would doubtless remain away till the dinner hour. The young man
ascended to his mother’s room. It was situated at the top of the house,
made up of odd angles and a queer, sloping ceiling. Two broad dormer
windows looked out toward the Gulf, and as far across it as a man’s eye
might reach. The furnishings of the room were light, cool, and
practical.

Madame Lebrun was busily engaged at the sewing-machine. A little black
girl sat on the floor, and with her hands worked the treadle of the
machine. The Creole woman does not take any chances which may be
avoided of imperiling her health.

Robert went over and seated himself on the broad sill of one of the
dormer windows. He took a book from his pocket and began energetically
to read it, judging by the precision and frequency with which he turned
the leaves. The sewing-machine made a resounding clatter in the room;
it was of a ponderous, by-gone make. In the lulls, Robert and his
mother exchanged bits of desultory conversation.

“Where is Mrs. Pontellier?”

“Down at the beach with the children.”

“I promised to lend her the Goncourt. Don’t forget to take it down when
you go; it’s there on the bookshelf over the small table.” Clatter,
clatter, clatter, bang! for the next five or eight minutes.

“Where is Victor going with the rockaway?”

“The rockaway? Victor?”

“Yes; down there in front. He seems to be getting ready to drive away
somewhere.”

“Call him.” Clatter, clatter!

Robert uttered a shrill, piercing whistle which might have been heard
back at the wharf.

“He won’t look up.”

Madame Lebrun flew to the window. She called “Victor!” She waved a
handkerchief and called again. The young fellow below got into the
vehicle and started the horse off at a gallop.

Madame Lebrun went back to the machine, crimson with annoyance. Victor
was the younger son and brother—a _tête montée_, with a temper which
invited violence and a will which no ax could break.

“Whenever you say the word I’m ready to thrash any amount of reason
into him that he’s able to hold.”

“If your father had only lived!” Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter,
bang! It was a fixed belief with Madame Lebrun that the conduct of the
universe and all things pertaining thereto would have been manifestly
of a more intelligent and higher order had not Monsieur Lebrun been
removed to other spheres during the early years of their married life.

“What do you hear from Montel?” Montel was a middle-aged gentleman
whose vain ambition and desire for the past twenty years had been to
fill the void which Monsieur Lebrun’s taking off had left in the Lebrun
household. Clatter, clatter, bang, clatter!

“I have a letter somewhere,” looking in the machine drawer and finding
the letter in the bottom of the workbasket. “He says to tell you he
will be in Vera Cruz the beginning of next month,”—clatter,
clatter!—“and if you still have the intention of joining him”—bang!
clatter, clatter, bang!

“Why didn’t you tell me so before, mother? You know I wanted—” Clatter,
clatter, clatter!

“Do you see Mrs. Pontellier starting back with the children? She will
be in late to luncheon again. She never starts to get ready for
luncheon till the last minute.” Clatter, clatter! “Where are you
going?”

“Where did you say the Goncourt was?”

IX

Every light in the hall was ablaze; every lamp turned as high as it
could be without smoking the chimney or threatening explosion. The
lamps were fixed at intervals against the wall, encircling the whole
room. Some one had gathered orange and lemon branches, and with these
fashioned graceful festoons between. The dark green of the branches
stood out and glistened against the white muslin curtains which draped
the windows, and which puffed, floated, and flapped at the capricious
will of a stiff breeze that swept up from the Gulf.

It was Saturday night a few weeks after the intimate conversation held
between Robert and Madame Ratignolle on their way from the beach. An
unusual number of husbands, fathers, and friends had come down to stay
over Sunday; and they were being suitably entertained by their
families, with the material help of Madame Lebrun. The dining tables
had all been removed to one end of the hall, and the chairs ranged
about in rows and in clusters. Each little family group had had its say
and exchanged its domestic gossip earlier in the evening. There was now
an apparent disposition to relax; to widen the circle of confidences
and give a more general tone to the conversation.

Many of the children had been permitted to sit up beyond their usual
bedtime. A small band of them were lying on their stomachs on the floor
looking at the colored sheets of the comic papers which Mr. Pontellier
had brought down. The little Pontellier boys were permitting them to do
so, and making their authority felt.

Music, dancing, and a recitation or two were the entertainments
furnished, or rather, offered. But there was nothing systematic about
the programme, no appearance of prearrangement nor even premeditation.

At an early hour in the evening the Farival twins were prevailed upon
to play the piano. They were girls of fourteen, always clad in the
Virgin’s colors, blue and white, having been dedicated to the Blessed
Virgin at their baptism. They played a duet from “Zampa,” and at the
earnest solicitation of every one present followed it with the overture
to “The Poet and the Peasant.”

“_Allez vous-en! Sapristi!_” shrieked the parrot outside the door. He
was the only being present who possessed sufficient candor to admit
that he was not listening to these gracious performances for the first
time that summer. Old Monsieur Farival, grandfather of the twins, grew
indignant over the interruption, and insisted upon having the bird
removed and consigned to regions of darkness. Victor Lebrun objected;
and his decrees were as immutable as those of Fate. The parrot
fortunately offered no further interruption to the entertainment, the
whole venom of his nature apparently having been cherished up and
hurled against the twins in that one impetuous outburst.

Later a young brother and sister gave recitations, which every one
present had heard many times at winter evening entertainments in the
city.

A little girl performed a skirt dance in the center of the floor. The
mother played her accompaniments and at the same time watched her
daughter with greedy admiration and nervous apprehension. She need have
had no apprehension. The child was mistress of the situation. She had
been properly dressed for the occasion in black tulle and black silk
tights. Her little neck and arms were bare, and her hair, artificially
crimped, stood out like fluffy black plumes over her head. Her poses
were full of grace, and her little black-shod toes twinkled as they
shot out and upward with a rapidity and suddenness which were
bewildering.

But there was no reason why every one should not dance. Madame
Ratignolle could not, so it was she who gaily consented to play for the
others. She played very well, keeping excellent waltz time and infusing
an expression into the strains which was indeed inspiring. She was
keeping up her music on account of the children, she said; because she
and her husband both considered it a means of brightening the home and
making it attractive.

Almost every one danced but the twins, who could not be induced to
separate during the brief period when one or the other should be
whirling around the room in the arms of a man. They might have danced
together, but they did not think of it.

The children were sent to bed. Some went submissively; others with
shrieks and protests as they were dragged away. They had been permitted
to sit up till after the ice-cream, which naturally marked the limit of
human indulgence.

The ice-cream was passed around with cake—gold and silver cake arranged
on platters in alternate slices; it had been made and frozen during the
afternoon back of the kitchen by two black women, under the supervision
of Victor. It was pronounced a great success—excellent if it had only
contained a little less vanilla or a little more sugar, if it had been
frozen a degree harder, and if the salt might have been kept out of
portions of it. Victor was proud of his achievement, and went about
recommending it and urging every one to partake of it to excess.

After Mrs. Pontellier had danced twice with her husband, once with
Robert, and once with Monsieur Ratignolle, who was thin and tall and
swayed like a reed in the wind when he danced, she went out on the
gallery and seated herself on the low window-sill, where she commanded
a view of all that went on in the hall and could look out toward the
Gulf. There was a soft effulgence in the east. The moon was coming up,
and its mystic shimmer was casting a million lights across the distant,
restless water.

“Would you like to hear Mademoiselle Reisz play?” asked Robert, coming
out on the porch where she was. Of course Edna would like to hear
Mademoiselle Reisz play; but she feared it would be useless to entreat
her.

“I’ll ask her,” he said. “I’ll tell her that you want to hear her. She
likes you. She will come.” He turned and hurried away to one of the far
cottages, where Mademoiselle Reisz was shuffling away. She was dragging
a chair in and out of her room, and at intervals objecting to the
crying of a baby, which a nurse in the adjoining cottage was
endeavoring to put to sleep. She was a disagreeable little woman, no
longer young, who had quarreled with almost every one, owing to a
temper which was self-assertive and a disposition to trample upon the
rights of others. Robert prevailed upon her without any too great
difficulty.

She entered the hall with him during a lull in the dance. She made an
awkward, imperious little bow as she went in. She was a homely woman,
with a small weazened face and body and eyes that glowed. She had
absolutely no taste in dress, and wore a batch of rusty black lace with
a bunch of artificial violets pinned to the side of her hair.

“Ask Mrs. Pontellier what she would like to hear me play,” she
requested of Robert. She sat perfectly still before the piano, not
touching the keys, while Robert carried her message to Edna at the
window. A general air of surprise and genuine satisfaction fell upon
every one as they saw the pianist enter. There was a settling down, and
a prevailing air of expectancy everywhere. Edna was a trifle
embarrassed at being thus signaled out for the imperious little woman’s
favor. She would not dare to choose, and begged that Mademoiselle Reisz
would please herself in her selections.

Edna was what she herself called very fond of music. Musical strains,
well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind. She sometimes
liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle played or
practiced. One piece which that lady played Edna had entitled
“Solitude.” It was a short, plaintive, minor strain. The name of the
piece was something else, but she called it “Solitude.” When she heard
it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing
beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was
one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging
its flight away from him.

Another piece called to her mind a dainty young woman clad in an Empire
gown, taking mincing dancing steps as she came down a long avenue
between tall hedges. Again, another reminded her of children at play,
and still another of nothing on earth but a demure lady stroking a cat.

The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon the piano
sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier’s spinal column. It was not the
first time she had heard an artist at the piano. Perhaps it was the
first time she was ready, perhaps the first time her being was tempered
to take an impress of the abiding truth.

She waited for the material pictures which she thought would gather and
blaze before her imagination. She waited in vain. She saw no pictures
of solitude, of hope, of longing, or of despair. But the very passions
themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the
waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking,
and the tears blinded her.

Mademoiselle had finished. She arose, and bowing her stiff, lofty bow,
she went away, stopping for neither thanks nor applause. As she passed
along the gallery she patted Edna upon the shoulder.

“Well, how did you like my music?” she asked. The young woman was
unable to answer; she pressed the hand of the pianist convulsively.
Mademoiselle Reisz perceived her agitation and even her tears. She
patted her again upon the shoulder as she said:

“You are the only one worth playing for. Those others? Bah!” and she
went shuffling and sidling on down the gallery toward her room.

But she was mistaken about “those others.” Her playing had aroused a
fever of enthusiasm. “What passion!” “What an artist!” “I have always
said no one could play Chopin like Mademoiselle Reisz!” “That last
prelude! Bon Dieu! It shakes a man!”

It was growing late, and there was a general disposition to disband.
But some one, perhaps it was Robert, thought of a bath at that mystic
hour and under that mystic moon.

X

At all events Robert proposed it, and there was not a dissenting voice.
There was not one but was ready to follow when he led the way. He did
not lead the way, however, he directed the way; and he himself loitered
behind with the lovers, who had betrayed a disposition to linger and
hold themselves apart. He walked between them, whether with malicious
or mischievous intent was not wholly clear, even to himself.

The Pontelliers and Ratignolles walked ahead; the women leaning upon
the arms of their husbands. Edna could hear Robert’s voice behind them,
and could sometimes hear what he said. She wondered why he did not join
them. It was unlike him not to. Of late he had sometimes held away from
her for an entire day, redoubling his devotion upon the next and the
next, as though to make up for hours that had been lost. She missed him
the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as
one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about
the sun when it was shining.

The people walked in little groups toward the beach. They talked and
laughed; some of them sang. There was a band playing down at Klein’s
hotel, and the strains reached them faintly, tempered by the distance.
There were strange, rare odors abroad—a tangle of the sea smell and of
weeds and damp, new-plowed earth, mingled with the heavy perfume of a
field of white blossoms somewhere near. But the night sat lightly upon
the sea and the land. There was no weight of darkness; there were no
shadows. The white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the
mystery and the softness of sleep.

Most of them walked into the water as though into a native element. The
sea was quiet now, and swelled lazily in broad billows that melted into
one another and did not break except upon the beach in little foamy
crests that coiled back like slow, white serpents.

Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim. She had received
instructions from both the men and women; in some instances from the
children. Robert had pursued a system of lessons almost daily; and he
was nearly at the point of discouragement in realizing the futility of
his efforts. A certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in the
water, unless there was a hand near by that might reach out and
reassure her.

But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching
child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first
time alone, boldly and with over-confidence. She could have shouted for
joy. She did shout for joy, as with a sweeping stroke or two she lifted
her body to the surface of the water.

A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant
import had been given her to control the working of her body and her
soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She
wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.

Her unlooked-for achievement was the subject of wonder, applause, and
admiration. Each one congratulated himself that his special teachings
had accomplished this desired end.

“How easy it is!” she thought. “It is nothing,” she said aloud; “why
did I not discover before that it was nothing. Think of the time I have
lost splashing about like a baby!” She would not join the groups in
their sports and bouts, but intoxicated with her newly conquered power,
she swam out alone.

She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and
solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the
moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to
be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.

Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had
left there. She had not gone any great distance—that is, what would
have been a great distance for an experienced swimmer. But to her
unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect
of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to
overcome.

A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time
appalled and enfeebled her senses. But by an effort she rallied her
staggering faculties and managed to regain the land.

She made no mention of her encounter with death and her flash of
terror, except to say to her husband, “I thought I should have perished
out there alone.”

“You were not so very far, my dear; I was watching you,” he told her.

Edna went at once to the bath-house, and she had put on her dry clothes
and was ready to return home before the others had left the water. She
started to walk away alone. They all called to her and shouted to her.
She waved a dissenting hand, and went on, paying no further heed to
their renewed cries which sought to detain her.

“Sometimes I am tempted to think that Mrs. Pontellier is capricious,”
said Madame Lebrun, who was amusing herself immensely and feared that
Edna’s abrupt departure might put an end to the pleasure.

“I know she is,” assented Mr. Pontellier; “sometimes, not often.”

Edna had not traversed a quarter of the distance on her way home before
she was overtaken by Robert.

“Did you think I was afraid?” she asked him, without a shade of
annoyance.

“No; I knew you weren’t afraid.”

“Then why did you come? Why didn’t you stay out there with the others?”

“I never thought of it.”

“Thought of what?”

“Of anything. What difference does it make?”

“I’m very tired,” she uttered, complainingly.

“I know you are.”

“You don’t know anything about it. Why should you know? I never was so
exhausted in my life. But it isn’t unpleasant. A thousand emotions have
swept through me to-night. I don’t comprehend half of them. Don’t mind
what I’m saying; I am just thinking aloud. I wonder if I shall ever be
stirred again as Mademoiselle Reisz’s playing moved me to-night. I
wonder if any night on earth will ever again be like this one. It is
like a night in a dream. The people about me are like some uncanny,
half-human beings. There must be spirits abroad to-night.”

“There are,” whispered Robert, “Didn’t you know this was the
twenty-eighth of August?”

“The twenty-eighth of August?”

“Yes. On the twenty-eighth of August, at the hour of midnight, and if
the moon is shining—the moon must be shining—a spirit that has haunted
these shores for ages rises up from the Gulf. With its own penetrating
vision the spirit seeks some one mortal worthy to hold him company,
worthy of being exalted for a few hours into realms of the
semi-celestials. His search has always hitherto been fruitless, and he
has sunk back, disheartened, into the sea. But to-night he found Mrs.
Pontellier. Perhaps he will never wholly release her from the spell.
Perhaps she will never again suffer a poor, unworthy earthling to walk
in the shadow of her divine presence.”

“Don’t banter me,” she said, wounded at what appeared to be his
flippancy. He did not mind the entreaty, but the tone with its delicate
note of pathos was like a reproach. He could not explain; he could not
tell her that he had penetrated her mood and understood. He said
nothing except to offer her his arm, for, by her own admission, she was
exhausted. She had been walking alone with her arms hanging limp,
letting her white skirts trail along the dewy path. She took his arm,
but she did not lean upon it. She let her hand lie listlessly, as
though her thoughts were elsewhere—somewhere in advance of her body,
and she was striving to overtake them.

Robert assisted her into the hammock which swung from the post before
her door out to the trunk of a tree.

“Will you stay out here and wait for Mr. Pontellier?” he asked.

“I’ll stay out here. Good-night.”

“Shall I get you a pillow?”

“There’s one here,” she said, feeling about, for they were in the
shadow.

“It must be soiled; the children have been tumbling it about.”

“No matter.” And having discovered the pillow, she adjusted it beneath
her head. She extended herself in the hammock with a deep breath of
relief. She was not a supercilious or an over-dainty woman. She was not
much given to reclining in the hammock, and when she did so it was with
no cat-like suggestion of voluptuous ease, but with a beneficent repose
which seemed to invade her whole body.

“Shall I stay with you till Mr. Pontellier comes?” asked Robert,
seating himself on the outer edge of one of the steps and taking hold
of the hammock rope which was fastened to the post.

“If you wish. Don’t swing the hammock. Will you get my white shawl
which I left on the window-sill over at the house?”

“Are you chilly?”

“No; but I shall be presently.”

“Presently?” he laughed. “Do you know what time it is? How long are you
going to stay out here?”

“I don’t know. Will you get the shawl?”

“Of course I will,” he said, rising. He went over to the house, walking
along the grass. She watched his figure pass in and out of the strips
of moonlight. It was past midnight. It was very quiet.

When he returned with the shawl she took it and kept it in her hand.
She did not put it around her.

“Did you say I should stay till Mr. Pontellier came back?”

“I said you might if you wished to.”

He seated himself again and rolled a cigarette, which he smoked in
silence. Neither did Mrs. Pontellier speak. No multitude of words could
have been more significant than those moments of silence, or more
pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire.

When the voices of the bathers were heard approaching, Robert said
good-night. She did not answer him. He thought she was asleep. Again
she watched his figure pass in and out of the strips of moonlight as he
walked away.

XI

“What are you doing out here, Edna? I thought I should find you in
bed,” said her husband, when he discovered her lying there. He had
walked up with Madame Lebrun and left her at the house. His wife did
not reply.

“Are you asleep?” he asked, bending down close to look at her.

“No.” Her eyes gleamed bright and intense, with no sleepy shadows, as
they looked into his.

“Do you know it is past one o’clock? Come on,” and he mounted the steps
and went into their room.

“Edna!” called Mr. Pontellier from within, after a few moments had gone
by.

“Don’t wait for me,” she answered. He thrust his head through the door.

“You will take cold out there,” he said, irritably. “What folly is
this? Why don’t you come in?”

“It isn’t cold; I have my shawl.”

“The mosquitoes will devour you.”

“There are no mosquitoes.”

She heard him moving about the room; every sound indicating impatience
and irritation. Another time she would have gone in at his request. She
would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; not with any sense of
submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly, as
we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill of the life
which has been portioned out to us.

“Edna, dear, are you not coming in soon?” he asked again, this time
fondly, with a note of entreaty.

“No; I am going to stay out here.”

“This is more than folly,” he blurted out. “I can’t permit you to stay
out there all night. You must come in the house instantly.”

With a writhing motion she settled herself more securely in the
hammock. She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and
resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and
resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that
before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she
remembered that she had. But she could not realize why or how she
should have yielded, feeling as she then did.

“Léonce, go to bed,” she said, “I mean to stay out here. I don’t wish
to go in, and I don’t intend to. Don’t speak to me like that again; I
shall not answer you.”

Mr. Pontellier had prepared for bed, but he slipped on an extra
garment. He opened a bottle of wine, of which he kept a small and
select supply in a buffet of his own. He drank a glass of the wine and
went out on the gallery and offered a glass to his wife. She did not
wish any. He drew up the rocker, hoisted his slippered feet on the
rail, and proceeded to smoke a cigar. He smoked two cigars; then he
went inside and drank another glass of wine. Mrs. Pontellier again
declined to accept a glass when it was offered to her. Mr. Pontellier
once more seated himself with elevated feet, and after a reasonable
interval of time smoked some more cigars.

Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a
delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities
pressing into her soul. The physical need for sleep began to overtake
her; the exuberance which had sustained and exalted her spirit left her
helpless and yielding to the conditions which crowded her in.

The stillest hour of the night had come, the hour before dawn, when the
world seems to hold its breath. The moon hung low, and had turned from
silver to copper in the sleeping sky. The old owl no longer hooted, and
the water-oaks had ceased to moan as they bent their heads.

Edna arose, cramped from lying so long and still in the hammock. She
tottered up the steps, clutching feebly at the post before passing into
the house.

“Are you coming in, Léonce?” she asked, turning her face toward her
husband.

“Yes, dear,” he answered, with a glance following a misty puff of
smoke. “Just as soon as I have finished my cigar.”

XII

She slept but a few hours. They were troubled and feverish hours,
disturbed with dreams that were intangible, that eluded her, leaving
only an impression upon her half-awakened senses of something
unattainable. She was up and dressed in the cool of the early morning.
The air was invigorating and steadied somewhat her faculties. However,
she was not seeking refreshment or help from any source, either
external or from within. She was blindly following whatever impulse
moved her, as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction,
and freed her soul of responsibility.

Most of the people at that early hour were still in bed and asleep. A
few, who intended to go over to the _Chênière_ for mass, were moving
about. The lovers, who had laid their plans the night before, were
already strolling toward the wharf. The lady in black, with her Sunday
prayer-book, velvet and gold-clasped, and her Sunday silver beads, was
following them at no great distance. Old Monsieur Farival was up, and
was more than half inclined to do anything that suggested itself. He
put on his big straw hat, and taking his umbrella from the stand in the
hall, followed the lady in black, never overtaking her.

The little negro girl who worked Madame Lebrun’s sewing-machine was
sweeping the galleries with long, absent-minded strokes of the broom.
Edna sent her up into the house to awaken Robert.

“Tell him I am going to the _Chênière_. The boat is ready; tell him to
hurry.”

He had soon joined her. She had never sent for him before. She had
never asked for him. She had never seemed to want him before. She did
not appear conscious that she had done anything unusual in commanding
his presence. He was apparently equally unconscious of anything
extraordinary in the situation. But his face was suffused with a quiet
glow when he met her.

They went together back to the kitchen to drink coffee. There was no
time to wait for any nicety of service. They stood outside the window
and the cook passed them their coffee and a roll, which they drank and
ate from the window-sill. Edna said it tasted good.

She had not thought of coffee nor of anything. He told her he had often
noticed that she lacked forethought.

“Wasn’t it enough to think of going to the _Chênière_ and waking you
up?” she laughed. “Do I have to think of everything?—as Léonce says
when he’s in a bad humor. I don’t blame him; he’d never be in a bad
humor if it weren’t for me.”

They took a short cut across the sands. At a distance they could see
the curious procession moving toward the wharf—the lovers, shoulder to
shoulder, creeping; the lady in black, gaining steadily upon them; old
Monsieur Farival, losing ground inch by inch, and a young barefooted
Spanish girl, with a red kerchief on her head and a basket on her arm,
bringing up the rear.

Robert knew the girl, and he talked to her a little in the boat. No one
present understood what they said. Her name was Mariequita. She had a
round, sly, piquant face and pretty black eyes. Her hands were small,
and she kept them folded over the handle of her basket. Her feet were
broad and coarse. She did not strive to hide them. Edna looked at her
feet, and noticed the sand and slime between her brown toes.

Beaudelet grumbled because Mariequita was there, taking up so much
room. In reality he was annoyed at having old Monsieur Farival, who
considered himself the better sailor of the two. But he would not
quarrel with so old a man as Monsieur Farival, so he quarreled with
Mariequita. The girl was deprecatory at one moment, appealing to
Robert. She was saucy the next, moving her head up and down, making
“eyes” at Robert and making “mouths” at Beaudelet.

The lovers were all alone. They saw nothing, they heard nothing. The
lady in black was counting her beads for the third time. Old Monsieur
Farival talked incessantly of what he knew about handling a boat, and
of what Beaudelet did not know on the same subject.

Edna liked it all. She looked Mariequita up and down, from her ugly
brown toes to her pretty black eyes, and back again.

“Why does she look at me like that?” inquired the girl of Robert.

“Maybe she thinks you are pretty. Shall I ask her?”

“No. Is she your sweetheart?”

“She’s a married lady, and has two children.”

“Oh! well! Francisco ran away with Sylvano’s wife, who had four
children. They took all his money and one of the children and stole his
boat.”

“Shut up!”

“Does she understand?”

“Oh, hush!”

“Are those two married over there—leaning on each other?”

“Of course not,” laughed Robert.

“Of course not,” echoed Mariequita, with a serious, confirmatory bob of
the head.

The sun was high up and beginning to bite. The swift breeze seemed to
Edna to bury the sting of it into the pores of her face and hands.
Robert held his umbrella over her. As they went cutting sidewise
through the water, the sails bellied taut, with the wind filling and
overflowing them. Old Monsieur Farival laughed sardonically at
something as he looked at the sails, and Beaudelet swore at the old man
under his breath.

Sailing across the bay to the _Chênière Caminada_, Edna felt as if she
were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast,
whose chains had been loosening—had snapped the night before when the
mystic spirit was abroad, leaving her free to drift whithersoever she
chose to set her sails. Robert spoke to her incessantly; he no longer
noticed Mariequita. The girl had shrimps in her bamboo basket. They
were covered with Spanish moss. She beat the moss down impatiently, and
muttered to herself sullenly.

“Let us go to Grande Terre to-morrow?” said Robert in a low voice.

“What shall we do there?”

“Climb up the hill to the old fort and look at the little wriggling
gold snakes, and watch the lizards sun themselves.”

She gazed away toward Grande Terre and thought she would like to be
alone there with Robert, in the sun, listening to the ocean’s roar and
watching the slimy lizards writhe in and out among the ruins of the old
fort.

“And the next day or the next we can sail to the Bayou Brulow,” he went
on.

“What shall we do there?”

“Anything—cast bait for fish.”

“No; we’ll go back to Grande Terre. Let the fish alone.”

“We’ll go wherever you like,” he said. “I’ll have Tonie come over and
help me patch and trim my boat. We shall not need Beaudelet nor any
one. Are you afraid of the pirogue?”

“Oh, no.”

“Then I’ll take you some night in the pirogue when the moon shines.
Maybe your Gulf spirit will whisper to you in which of these islands
the treasures are hidden—direct you to the very spot, perhaps.”

“And in a day we should be rich!” she laughed. “I’d give it all to you,
the pirate gold and every bit of treasure we could dig up. I think you
would know how to spend it. Pirate gold isn’t a thing to be hoarded or
utilized. It is something to squander and throw to the four winds, for
the fun of seeing the golden specks fly.”

“We’d share it, and scatter it together,” he said. His face flushed.

They all went together up to the quaint little Gothic church of Our
Lady of Lourdes, gleaming all brown and yellow with paint in the sun’s
glare.

Only Beaudelet remained behind, tinkering at his boat, and Mariequita
walked away with her basket of shrimps, casting a look of childish ill
humor and reproach at Robert from the corner of her eye.

XIII

A feeling of oppression and drowsiness overcame Edna during the
service. Her head began to ache, and the lights on the altar swayed
before her eyes. Another time she might have made an effort to regain
her composure; but her one thought was to quit the stifling atmosphere
of the church and reach the open air. She arose, climbing over Robert’s
feet with a muttered apology. Old Monsieur Farival, flurried, curious,
stood up, but upon seeing that Robert had followed Mrs. Pontellier, he
sank back into his seat. He whispered an anxious inquiry of the lady in
black, who did not notice him or reply, but kept her eyes fastened upon
the pages of her velvet prayer-book.

“I felt giddy and almost overcome,” Edna said, lifting her hands
instinctively to her head and pushing her straw hat up from her
forehead. “I couldn’t have stayed through the service.” They were
outside in the shadow of the church. Robert was full of solicitude.

“It was folly to have thought of going in the first place, let alone
staying. Come over to Madame Antoine’s; you can rest there.” He took
her arm and led her away, looking anxiously and continuously down into
her face.

How still it was, with only the voice of the sea whispering through the
reeds that grew in the salt-water pools! The long line of little gray,
weather-beaten houses nestled peacefully among the orange trees. It
must always have been God’s day on that low, drowsy island, Edna
thought. They stopped, leaning over a jagged fence made of sea-drift,
to ask for water. A youth, a mild-faced Acadian, was drawing water from
the cistern, which was nothing more than a rusty buoy, with an opening
on one side, sunk in the ground. The water which the youth handed to
them in a tin pail was not cold to taste, but it was cool to her heated
face, and it greatly revived and refreshed her.

Madame Antoine’s cot was at the far end of the village. She welcomed
them with all the native hospitality, as she would have opened her door
to let the sunlight in. She was fat, and walked heavily and clumsily
across the floor. She could speak no English, but when Robert made her
understand that the lady who accompanied him was ill and desired to
rest, she was all eagerness to make Edna feel at home and to dispose of
her comfortably.

The whole place was immaculately clean, and the big, four-posted bed,
snow-white, invited one to repose. It stood in a small side room which
looked out across a narrow grass plot toward the shed, where there was
a disabled boat lying keel upward.

Madame Antoine had not gone to mass. Her son Tonie had, but she
supposed he would soon be back, and she invited Robert to be seated and
wait for him. But he went and sat outside the door and smoked. Madame
Antoine busied herself in the large front room preparing dinner. She
was boiling mullets over a few red coals in the huge fireplace.

Edna, left alone in the little side room, loosened her clothes,
removing the greater part of them. She bathed her face, her neck and
arms in the basin that stood between the windows. She took off her
shoes and stockings and stretched herself in the very center of the
high, white bed. How luxurious it felt to rest thus in a strange,
quaint bed, with its sweet country odor of laurel lingering about the
sheets and mattress! She stretched her strong limbs that ached a
little. She ran her fingers through her loosened hair for a while. She
looked at her round arms as she held them straight up and rubbed them
one after the other, observing closely, as if it were something she saw
for the first time, the fine, firm quality and texture of her flesh.
She clasped her hands easily above her head, and it was thus she fell
asleep.

She slept lightly at first, half awake and drowsily attentive to the
things about her. She could hear Madame Antoine’s heavy, scraping tread
as she walked back and forth on the sanded floor. Some chickens were
clucking outside the windows, scratching for bits of gravel in the
grass. Later she half heard the voices of Robert and Tonie talking
under the shed. She did not stir. Even her eyelids rested numb and
heavily over her sleepy eyes. The voices went on—Tonie’s slow, Acadian
drawl, Robert’s quick, soft, smooth French. She understood French
imperfectly unless directly addressed, and the voices were only part of
the other drowsy, muffled sounds lulling her senses.

When Edna awoke it was with the conviction that she had slept long and
soundly. The voices were hushed under the shed. Madame Antoine’s step
was no longer to be heard in the adjoining room. Even the chickens had
gone elsewhere to scratch and cluck. The mosquito bar was drawn over
her; the old woman had come in while she slept and let down the bar.
Edna arose quietly from the bed, and looking between the curtains of
the window, she saw by the slanting rays of the sun that the afternoon
was far advanced. Robert was out there under the shed, reclining in the
shade against the sloping keel of the overturned boat. He was reading
from a book. Tonie was no longer with him. She wondered what had become
of the rest of the party. She peeped out at him two or three times as
she stood washing herself in the little basin between the windows.

Madame Antoine had laid some coarse, clean towels upon a chair, and had
placed a box of _poudre de riz_ within easy reach. Edna dabbed the
powder upon her nose and cheeks as she looked at herself closely in the
little distorted mirror which hung on the wall above the basin. Her
eyes were bright and wide awake and her face glowed.

When she had completed her toilet she walked into the adjoining room.
She was very hungry. No one was there. But there was a cloth spread
upon the table that stood against the wall, and a cover was laid for
one, with a crusty brown loaf and a bottle of wine beside the plate.
Edna bit a piece from the brown loaf, tearing it with her strong, white
teeth. She poured some of the wine into the glass and drank it down.
Then she went softly out of doors, and plucking an orange from the
low-hanging bough of a tree, threw it at Robert, who did not know she
was awake and up.

An illumination broke over his whole face when he saw her and joined
her under the orange tree.

“How many years have I slept?” she inquired. “The whole island seems
changed. A new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving only you and
me as past relics. How many ages ago did Madame Antoine and Tonie die?
and when did our people from Grand Isle disappear from the earth?”

He familiarly adjusted a ruffle upon her shoulder.

“You have slept precisely one hundred years. I was left here to guard
your slumbers; and for one hundred years I have been out under the shed
reading a book. The only evil I couldn’t prevent was to keep a broiled
fowl from drying up.”

“If it has turned to stone, still will I eat it,” said Edna, moving
with him into the house. “But really, what has become of Monsieur
Farival and the others?”

“Gone hours ago. When they found that you were sleeping they thought it
best not to awake you. Any way, I wouldn’t have let them. What was I
here for?”

“I wonder if Léonce will be uneasy!” she speculated, as she seated
herself at table.

“Of course not; he knows you are with me,” Robert replied, as he busied
himself among sundry pans and covered dishes which had been left
standing on the hearth.

“Where are Madame Antoine and her son?” asked Edna.

“Gone to Vespers, and to visit some friends, I believe. I am to take
you back in Tonie’s boat whenever you are ready to go.”

He stirred the smoldering ashes till the broiled fowl began to sizzle
afresh. He served her with no mean repast, dripping the coffee anew and
sharing it with her. Madame Antoine had cooked little else than the
mullets, but while Edna slept Robert had foraged the island. He was
childishly gratified to discover her appetite, and to see the relish
with which she ate the food which he had procured for her.

“Shall we go right away?” she asked, after draining her glass and
brushing together the crumbs of the crusty loaf.

“The sun isn’t as low as it will be in two hours,” he answered.

“The sun will be gone in two hours.”

“Well, let it go; who cares!”

They waited a good while under the orange trees, till Madame Antoine
came back, panting, waddling, with a thousand apologies to explain her
absence. Tonie did not dare to return. He was shy, and would not
willingly face any woman except his mother.

It was very pleasant to stay there under the orange trees, while the
sun dipped lower and lower, turning the western sky to flaming copper
and gold. The shadows lengthened and crept out like stealthy, grotesque
monsters across the grass.

Edna and Robert both sat upon the ground—that is, he lay upon the
ground beside her, occasionally picking at the hem of her muslin gown.

Madame Antoine seated her fat body, broad and squat, upon a bench
beside the door. She had been talking all the afternoon, and had wound
herself up to the storytelling pitch.

And what stories she told them! But twice in her life she had left the
_Chênière Caminada_, and then for the briefest span. All her years she
had squatted and waddled there upon the island, gathering legends of
the Baratarians and the sea. The night came on, with the moon to
lighten it. Edna could hear the whispering voices of dead men and the
click of muffled gold.

When she and Robert stepped into Tonie’s boat, with the red lateen
sail, misty spirit forms were prowling in the shadows and among the
reeds, and upon the water were phantom ships, speeding to cover.

XIV

The youngest boy, Etienne, had been very naughty, Madame Ratignolle
said, as she delivered him into the hands of his mother. He had been
unwilling to go to bed and had made a scene; whereupon she had taken
charge of him and pacified him as well as she could. Raoul had been in
bed and asleep for two hours.

The youngster was in his long white nightgown, that kept tripping him
up as Madame Ratignolle led him along by the hand. With the other
chubby fist he rubbed his eyes, which were heavy with sleep and ill
humor. Edna took him in her arms, and seating herself in the rocker,
began to coddle and caress him, calling him all manner of tender names,
soothing him to sleep.

It was not more than nine o’clock. No one had yet gone to bed but the
children.

Léonce had been very uneasy at first, Madame Ratignolle said, and had
wanted to start at once for the _Chênière_. But Monsieur Farival had
assured him that his wife was only overcome with sleep and fatigue,
that Tonie would bring her safely back later in the day; and he had
thus been dissuaded from crossing the bay. He had gone over to Klein’s,
looking up some cotton broker whom he wished to see in regard to
securities, exchanges, stocks, bonds, or something of the sort, Madame
Ratignolle did not remember what. He said he would not remain away
late. She herself was suffering from heat and oppression, she said. She
carried a bottle of salts and a large fan. She would not consent to
remain with Edna, for Monsieur Ratignolle was alone, and he detested
above all things to be left alone.

When Etienne had fallen asleep Edna bore him into the back room, and
Robert went and lifted the mosquito bar that she might lay the child
comfortably in his bed. The quadroon had vanished. When they emerged
from the cottage Robert bade Edna good-night.

“Do you know we have been together the whole livelong day, Robert—since
early this morning?” she said at parting.

“All but the hundred years when you were sleeping. Good-night.”

He pressed her hand and went away in the direction of the beach. He did
not join any of the others, but walked alone toward the Gulf.

Edna stayed outside, awaiting her husband’s return. She had no desire
to sleep or to retire; nor did she feel like going over to sit with the
Ratignolles, or to join Madame Lebrun and a group whose animated voices
reached her as they sat in conversation before the house. She let her
mind wander back over her stay at Grand Isle; and she tried to discover
wherein this summer had been different from any and every other summer
of her life. She could only realize that she herself—her present
self—was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing
with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in
herself that colored and changed her environment, she did not yet
suspect.

She wondered why Robert had gone away and left her. It did not occur to
her to think he might have grown tired of being with her the livelong
day. She was not tired, and she felt that he was not. She regretted
that he had gone. It was so much more natural to have him stay when he
was not absolutely required to leave her.

As Edna waited for her husband she sang low a little song that Robert
had sung as they crossed the bay. It began with “Ah! _si tu savais_,”
and every verse ended with “_si tu savais_.”

Robert’s voice was not pretentious. It was musical and true. The voice,
the notes, the whole refrain haunted her memory.

XV

When Edna entered the dining-room one evening a little late, as was her
habit, an unusually animated conversation seemed to be going on.
Several persons were talking at once, and Victor’s voice was
predominating, even over that of his mother. Edna had returned late
from her bath, had dressed in some haste, and her face was flushed. Her
head, set off by her dainty white gown, suggested a rich, rare blossom.
She took her seat at table between old Monsieur Farival and Madame
Ratignolle.

As she seated herself and was about to begin to eat her soup, which had
been served when she entered the room, several persons informed her
simultaneously that Robert was going to Mexico. She laid her spoon down
and looked about her bewildered. He had been with her, reading to her
all the morning, and had never even mentioned such a place as Mexico.
She had not seen him during the afternoon; she had heard some one say
he was at the house, upstairs with his mother. This she had thought
nothing of, though she was surprised when he did not join her later in
the afternoon, when she went down to the beach.

She looked across at him, where he sat beside Madame Lebrun, who
presided. Edna’s face was a blank picture of bewilderment, which she
never thought of disguising. He lifted his eyebrows with the pretext of
a smile as he returned her glance. He looked embarrassed and uneasy.
“When is he going?” she asked of everybody in general, as if Robert
were not there to answer for himself.

“To-night!” “This very evening!” “Did you ever!” “What possesses him!”
were some of the replies she gathered, uttered simultaneously in French
and English.

“Impossible!” she exclaimed. “How can a person start off from Grand
Isle to Mexico at a moment’s notice, as if he were going over to
Klein’s or to the wharf or down to the beach?”

“I said all along I was going to Mexico; I’ve been saying so for
years!” cried Robert, in an excited and irritable tone, with the air of
a man defending himself against a swarm of stinging insects.

Madame Lebrun knocked on the table with her knife handle.

“Please let Robert explain why he is going, and why he is going
to-night,” she called out. “Really, this table is getting to be more
and more like Bedlam every day, with everybody talking at once.
Sometimes—I hope God will forgive me—but positively, sometimes I wish
Victor would lose the power of speech.”

Victor laughed sardonically as he thanked his mother for her holy wish,
of which he failed to see the benefit to anybody, except that it might
afford her a more ample opportunity and license to talk herself.

Monsieur Farival thought that Victor should have been taken out in
mid-ocean in his earliest youth and drowned. Victor thought there would
be more logic in thus disposing of old people with an established claim
for making themselves universally obnoxious. Madame Lebrun grew a
trifle hysterical; Robert called his brother some sharp, hard names.

“There’s nothing much to explain, mother,” he said; though he
explained, nevertheless—looking chiefly at Edna—that he could only meet
the gentleman whom he intended to join at Vera Cruz by taking such and
such a steamer, which left New Orleans on such a day; that Beaudelet
was going out with his lugger-load of vegetables that night, which gave
him an opportunity of reaching the city and making his vessel in time.

“But when did you make up your mind to all this?” demanded Monsieur
Farival.

“This afternoon,” returned Robert, with a shade of annoyance.

“At what time this afternoon?” persisted the old gentleman, with
nagging determination, as if he were cross-questioning a criminal in a
court of justice.

“At four o’clock this afternoon, Monsieur Farival,” Robert replied, in
a high voice and with a lofty air, which reminded Edna of some
gentleman on the stage.

She had forced herself to eat most of her soup, and now she was picking
the flaky bits of a _court bouillon_ with her fork.

The lovers were profiting by the general conversation on Mexico to
speak in whispers of matters which they rightly considered were
interesting to no one but themselves. The lady in black had once
received a pair of prayer-beads of curious workmanship from Mexico,
with very special indulgence attached to them, but she had never been
able to ascertain whether the indulgence extended outside the Mexican
border. Father Fochel of the Cathedral had attempted to explain it; but
he had not done so to her satisfaction. And she begged that Robert
would interest himself, and discover, if possible, whether she was
entitled to the indulgence accompanying the remarkably curious Mexican
prayer-beads.

Madame Ratignolle hoped that Robert would exercise extreme caution in
dealing with the Mexicans, who, she considered, were a treacherous
people, unscrupulous and revengeful. She trusted she did them no
injustice in thus condemning them as a race. She had known personally
but one Mexican, who made and sold excellent tamales, and whom she
would have trusted implicitly, so soft-spoken was he. One day he was
arrested for stabbing his wife. She never knew whether he had been
hanged or not.

Victor had grown hilarious, and was attempting to tell an anecdote
about a Mexican girl who served chocolate one winter in a restaurant in
Dauphine Street. No one would listen to him but old Monsieur Farival,
who went into convulsions over the droll story.

Edna wondered if they had all gone mad, to be talking and clamoring at
that rate. She herself could think of nothing to say about Mexico or
the Mexicans.

“At what time do you leave?” she asked Robert.

“At ten,” he told her. “Beaudelet wants to wait for the moon.”

“Are you all ready to go?”

“Quite ready. I shall only take a hand-bag, and shall pack my trunk in
the city.”

He turned to answer some question put to him by his mother, and Edna,
having finished her black coffee, left the table.

She went directly to her room. The little cottage was close and stuffy
after leaving the outer air. But she did not mind; there appeared to be
a hundred different things demanding her attention indoors. She began
to set the toilet-stand to rights, grumbling at the negligence of the
quadroon, who was in the adjoining room putting the children to bed.
She gathered together stray garments that were hanging on the backs of
chairs, and put each where it belonged in closet or bureau drawer. She
changed her gown for a more comfortable and commodious wrapper. She
rearranged her hair, combing and brushing it with unusual energy. Then
she went in and assisted the quadroon in getting the boys to bed.

They were very playful and inclined to talk—to do anything but lie
quiet and go to sleep. Edna sent the quadroon away to her supper and
told her she need not return. Then she sat and told the children a
story. Instead of soothing it excited them, and added to their
wakefulness. She left them in heated argument, speculating about the
conclusion of the tale which their mother promised to finish the
following night.

The little black girl came in to say that Madame Lebrun would like to
have Mrs. Pontellier go and sit with them over at the house till Mr.
Robert went away. Edna returned answer that she had already undressed,
that she did not feel quite well, but perhaps she would go over to the
house later. She started to dress again, and got as far advanced as to
remove her _peignoir_. But changing her mind once more she resumed the
_peignoir_, and went outside and sat down before her door. She was
overheated and irritable, and fanned herself energetically for a while.
Madame Ratignolle came down to discover what was the matter.

“All that noise and confusion at the table must have upset me,” replied
Edna, “and moreover, I hate shocks and surprises. The idea of Robert
starting off in such a ridiculously sudden and dramatic way! As if it
were a matter of life and death! Never saying a word about it all
morning when he was with me.”

“Yes,” agreed Madame Ratignolle. “I think it was showing us all—you
especially—very little consideration. It wouldn’t have surprised me in
any of the others; those Lebruns are all given to heroics. But I must
say I should never have expected such a thing from Robert. Are you not
coming down? Come on, dear; it doesn’t look friendly.”

“No,” said Edna, a little sullenly. “I can’t go to the trouble of
dressing again; I don’t feel like it.”

“You needn’t dress; you look all right; fasten a belt around your
waist. Just look at me!”

“No,” persisted Edna; “but you go on. Madame Lebrun might be offended
if we both stayed away.”

Madame Ratignolle kissed Edna good-night, and went away, being in truth
rather desirous of joining in the general and animated conversation
which was still in progress concerning Mexico and the Mexicans.

Somewhat later Robert came up, carrying his hand-bag.

“Aren’t you feeling well?” he asked.

“Oh, well enough. Are you going right away?”

He lit a match and looked at his watch. “In twenty minutes,” he said.
The sudden and brief flare of the match emphasized the darkness for a
while. He sat down upon a stool which the children had left out on the
porch.

“Get a chair,” said Edna.

“This will do,” he replied. He put on his soft hat and nervously took
it off again, and wiping his face with his handkerchief, complained of
the heat.

“Take the fan,” said Edna, offering it to him.

“Oh, no! Thank you. It does no good; you have to stop fanning some
time, and feel all the more uncomfortable afterward.”

“That’s one of the ridiculous things which men always say. I have never
known one to speak otherwise of fanning. How long will you be gone?”

“Forever, perhaps. I don’t know. It depends upon a good many things.”

“Well, in case it shouldn’t be forever, how long will it be?”

“I don’t know.”

“This seems to me perfectly preposterous and uncalled for. I don’t like
it. I don’t understand your motive for silence and mystery, never
saying a word to me about it this morning.” He remained silent, not
offering to defend himself. He only said, after a moment:

“Don’t part from me in any ill humor. I never knew you to be out of
patience with me before.”

“I don’t want to part in any ill humor,” she said. “But can’t you
understand? I’ve grown used to seeing you, to having you with me all
the time, and your action seems unfriendly, even unkind. You don’t even
offer an excuse for it. Why, I was planning to be together, thinking of
how pleasant it would be to see you in the city next winter.”

“So was I,” he blurted. “Perhaps that’s the—” He stood up suddenly and
held out his hand. “Good-by, my dear Mrs. Pontellier; good-by. You
won’t—I hope you won’t completely forget me.” She clung to his hand,
striving to detain him.

“Write to me when you get there, won’t you, Robert?” she entreated.

“I will, thank you. Good-by.”

How unlike Robert! The merest acquaintance would have said something
more emphatic than “I will, thank you; good-by,” to such a request.

He had evidently already taken leave of the people over at the house,
for he descended the steps and went to join Beaudelet, who was out
there with an oar across his shoulder waiting for Robert. They walked
away in the darkness. She could only hear Beaudelet’s voice; Robert had
apparently not even spoken a word of greeting to his companion.

Edna bit her handkerchief convulsively, striving to hold back and to
hide, even from herself as she would have hidden from another, the
emotion which was troubling—tearing—her. Her eyes were brimming with
tears.

For the first time she recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she
had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her earliest teens, and
later as a young woman. The recognition did not lessen the reality, the
poignancy of the revelation by any suggestion or promise of
instability. The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she
was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted
to penetrate. The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture
her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost
that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her
impassioned, newly awakened being demanded.

XVI

“Do you miss your friend greatly?” asked Mademoiselle Reisz one morning
as she came creeping up behind Edna, who had just left her cottage on
her way to the beach. She spent much of her time in the water since she
had acquired finally the art of swimming. As their stay at Grand Isle
drew near its close, she felt that she could not give too much time to
a diversion which afforded her the only real pleasurable moments that
she knew. When Mademoiselle Reisz came and touched her upon the
shoulder and spoke to her, the woman seemed to echo the thought which
was ever in Edna’s mind; or, better, the feeling which constantly
possessed her.

Robert’s going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the
meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way
changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which
seems to be no longer worth wearing. She sought him everywhere—in
others whom she induced to talk about him. She went up in the mornings
to Madame Lebrun’s room, braving the clatter of the old sewing-machine.
She sat there and chatted at intervals as Robert had done. She gazed
around the room at the pictures and photographs hanging upon the wall,
and discovered in some corner an old family album, which she examined
with the keenest interest, appealing to Madame Lebrun for enlightenment
concerning the many figures and faces which she discovered between its
pages.

There was a picture of Madame Lebrun with Robert as a baby, seated in
her lap, a round-faced infant with a fist in his mouth. The eyes alone
in the baby suggested the man. And that was he also in kilts, at the
age of five, wearing long curls and holding a whip in his hand. It made
Edna laugh, and she laughed, too, at the portrait in his first long
trousers; while another interested her, taken when he left for college,
looking thin, long-faced, with eyes full of fire, ambition and great
intentions. But there was no recent picture, none which suggested the
Robert who had gone away five days ago, leaving a void and wilderness
behind him.

“Oh, Robert stopped having his pictures taken when he had to pay for
them himself! He found wiser use for his money, he says,” explained
Madame Lebrun. She had a letter from him, written before he left New
Orleans. Edna wished to see the letter, and Madame Lebrun told her to
look for it either on the table or the dresser, or perhaps it was on
the mantelpiece.

The letter was on the bookshelf. It possessed the greatest interest and
attraction for Edna; the envelope, its size and shape, the post-mark,
the handwriting. She examined every detail of the outside before
opening it. There were only a few lines, setting forth that he would
leave the city that afternoon, that he had packed his trunk in good
shape, that he was well, and sent her his love and begged to be
affectionately remembered to all. There was no special message to Edna
except a postscript saying that if Mrs. Pontellier desired to finish
the book which he had been reading to her, his mother would find it in
his room, among other books there on the table. Edna experienced a pang
of jealousy because he had written to his mother rather than to her.

Every one seemed to take for granted that she missed him. Even her
husband, when he came down the Saturday following Robert’s departure,
expressed regret that he had gone.

“How do you get on without him, Edna?” he asked.

“It’s very dull without him,” she admitted. Mr. Pontellier had seen
Robert in the city, and Edna asked him a dozen questions or more. Where
had they met? On Carondelet Street, in the morning. They had gone “in”
and had a drink and a cigar together. What had they talked about?
Chiefly about his prospects in Mexico, which Mr. Pontellier thought
were promising. How did he look? How did he seem—grave, or gay, or how?
Quite cheerful, and wholly taken up with the idea of his trip, which
Mr. Pontellier found altogether natural in a young fellow about to seek
fortune and adventure in a strange, queer country.

Edna tapped her foot impatiently, and wondered why the children
persisted in playing in the sun when they might be under the trees. She
went down and led them out of the sun, scolding the quadroon for not
being more attentive.

It did not strike her as in the least grotesque that she should be
making of Robert the object of conversation and leading her husband to
speak of him. The sentiment which she entertained for Robert in no way
resembled that which she felt for her husband, or had ever felt, or
ever expected to feel. She had all her life long been accustomed to
harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had
never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her
own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them
and that they concerned no one but herself. Edna had once told Madame
Ratignolle that she would never sacrifice herself for her children, or
for any one. Then had followed a rather heated argument; the two women
did not appear to understand each other or to be talking the same
language. Edna tried to appease her friend, to explain.

“I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give
my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it
more clear; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend,
which is revealing itself to me.”

“I don’t know what you would call the essential, or what you mean by
the unessential,” said Madame Ratignolle, cheerfully; “but a woman who
would give her life for her children could do no more than that—your
Bible tells you so. I’m sure I couldn’t do more than that.”

“Oh, yes you could!” laughed Edna.

She was not surprised at Mademoiselle Reisz’s question the morning that
lady, following her to the beach, tapped her on the shoulder and asked
if she did not greatly miss her young friend.

“Oh, good morning, Mademoiselle; is it you? Why, of course I miss
Robert. Are you going down to bathe?”

“Why should I go down to bathe at the very end of the season when I
haven’t been in the surf all summer,” replied the woman, disagreeably.

“I beg your pardon,” offered Edna, in some embarrassment, for she
should have remembered that Mademoiselle Reisz’s avoidance of the water
had furnished a theme for much pleasantry. Some among them thought it
was on account of her false hair, or the dread of getting the violets
wet, while others attributed it to the natural aversion for water
sometimes believed to accompany the artistic temperament. Mademoiselle
offered Edna some chocolates in a paper bag, which she took from her
pocket, by way of showing that she bore no ill feeling. She habitually
ate chocolates for their sustaining quality; they contained much
nutriment in small compass, she said. They saved her from starvation,
as Madame Lebrun’s table was utterly impossible; and no one save so
impertinent a woman as Madame Lebrun could think of offering such food
to people and requiring them to pay for it.

“She must feel very lonely without her son,” said Edna, desiring to
change the subject. “Her favorite son, too. It must have been quite
hard to let him go.”

Mademoiselle laughed maliciously.

“Her favorite son! Oh, dear! Who could have been imposing such a tale
upon you? Aline Lebrun lives for Victor, and for Victor alone. She has
spoiled him into the worthless creature he is. She worships him and the
ground he walks on. Robert is very well in a way, to give up all the
money he can earn to the family, and keep the barest pittance for
himself. Favorite son, indeed! I miss the poor fellow myself, my dear.
I liked to see him and to hear him about the place—the only Lebrun who
is worth a pinch of salt. He comes to see me often in the city. I like
to play to him. That Victor! hanging would be too good for him. It’s a
wonder Robert hasn’t beaten him to death long ago.”

“I thought he had great patience with his brother,” offered Edna, glad
to be talking about Robert, no matter what was said.

“Oh! he thrashed him well enough a year or two ago,” said Mademoiselle.
“It was about a Spanish girl, whom Victor considered that he had some
sort of claim upon. He met Robert one day talking to the girl, or
walking with her, or bathing with her, or carrying her basket—I don’t
remember what;—and he became so insulting and abusive that Robert gave
him a thrashing on the spot that has kept him comparatively in order
for a good while. It’s about time he was getting another.”

“Was her name Mariequita?” asked Edna.

“Mariequita—yes, that was it; Mariequita. I had forgotten. Oh, she’s a
sly one, and a bad one, that Mariequita!”

Edna looked down at Mademoiselle Reisz and wondered how she could have
listened to her venom so long. For some reason she felt depressed,
almost unhappy. She had not intended to go into the water; but she
donned her bathing suit, and left Mademoiselle alone, seated under the
shade of the children’s tent. The water was growing cooler as the
season advanced. Edna plunged and swam about with an abandon that
thrilled and invigorated her. She remained a long time in the water,
half hoping that Mademoiselle Reisz would not wait for her.

But Mademoiselle waited. She was very amiable during the walk back, and
raved much over Edna’s appearance in her bathing suit. She talked about
music. She hoped that Edna would go to see her in the city, and wrote
her address with the stub of a pencil on a piece of card which she
found in her pocket.

“When do you leave?” asked Edna.

“Next Monday; and you?”

“The following week,” answered Edna, adding, “It has been a pleasant
summer, hasn’t it, Mademoiselle?”

“Well,” agreed Mademoiselle Reisz, with a shrug, “rather pleasant, if
it hadn’t been for the mosquitoes and the Farival twins.”

XVII

The Pontelliers possessed a very charming home on Esplanade Street in
New Orleans. It was a large, double cottage, with a broad front
veranda, whose round, fluted columns supported the sloping roof. The
house was painted a dazzling white; the outside shutters, or jalousies,
were green. In the yard, which was kept scrupulously neat, were flowers
and plants of every description which flourishes in South Louisiana.
Within doors the appointments were perfect after the conventional type.
The softest carpets and rugs covered the floors; rich and tasteful
draperies hung at doors and windows. There were paintings, selected
with judgment and discrimination, upon the walls. The cut glass, the
silver, the heavy damask which daily appeared upon the table were the
envy of many women whose husbands were less generous than Mr.
Pontellier.

Mr. Pontellier was very fond of walking about his house examining its
various appointments and details, to see that nothing was amiss. He
greatly valued his possessions, chiefly because they were his, and
derived genuine pleasure from contemplating a painting, a statuette, a
rare lace curtain—no matter what—after he had bought it and placed it
among his household gods.

On Tuesday afternoons—Tuesday being Mrs. Pontellier’s reception
day—there was a constant stream of callers—women who came in carriages
or in the street cars, or walked when the air was soft and distance
permitted. A light-colored mulatto boy, in dress coat and bearing a
diminutive silver tray for the reception of cards, admitted them. A
maid, in white fluted cap, offered the callers liqueur, coffee, or
chocolate, as they might desire. Mrs. Pontellier, attired in a handsome
reception gown, remained in the drawing-room the entire afternoon
receiving her visitors. Men sometimes called in the evening with their
wives.

This had been the programme which Mrs. Pontellier had religiously
followed since her marriage, six years before. Certain evenings during
the week she and her husband attended the opera or sometimes the play.

Mr. Pontellier left his home in the mornings between nine and ten
o’clock, and rarely returned before half-past six or seven in the
evening—dinner being served at half-past seven.

He and his wife seated themselves at table one Tuesday evening, a few
weeks after their return from Grand Isle. They were alone together. The
boys were being put to bed; the patter of their bare, escaping feet
could be heard occasionally, as well as the pursuing voice of the
quadroon, lifted in mild protest and entreaty. Mrs. Pontellier did not
wear her usual Tuesday reception gown; she was in ordinary house dress.
Mr. Pontellier, who was observant about such things, noticed it, as he
served the soup and handed it to the boy in waiting.

“Tired out, Edna? Whom did you have? Many callers?” he asked. He tasted
his soup and began to season it with pepper, salt, vinegar,
mustard—everything within reach.

“There were a good many,” replied Edna, who was eating her soup with
evident satisfaction. “I found their cards when I got home; I was out.”

“Out!” exclaimed her husband, with something like genuine consternation
in his voice as he laid down the vinegar cruet and looked at her
through his glasses. “Why, what could have taken you out on Tuesday?
What did you have to do?”

“Nothing. I simply felt like going out, and I went out.”

“Well, I hope you left some suitable excuse,” said her husband,
somewhat appeased, as he added a dash of cayenne pepper to the soup.

“No, I left no excuse. I told Joe to say I was out, that was all.”

“Why, my dear, I should think you’d understand by this time that people
don’t do such things; we’ve got to observe _les convenances_ if we ever
expect to get on and keep up with the procession. If you felt that you
had to leave home this afternoon, you should have left some suitable
explanation for your absence.

“This soup is really impossible; it’s strange that woman hasn’t learned
yet to make a decent soup. Any free-lunch stand in town serves a better
one. Was Mrs. Belthrop here?”

“Bring the tray with the cards, Joe. I don’t remember who was here.”

The boy retired and returned after a moment, bringing the tiny silver
tray, which was covered with ladies’ visiting cards. He handed it to
Mrs. Pontellier.

“Give it to Mr. Pontellier,” she said.

Joe offered the tray to Mr. Pontellier, and removed the soup.

Mr. Pontellier scanned the names of his wife’s callers, reading some of
them aloud, with comments as he read.

“‘The Misses Delasidas.’ I worked a big deal in futures for their
father this morning; nice girls; it’s time they were getting married.
‘Mrs. Belthrop.’ I tell you what it is, Edna; you can’t afford to snub
Mrs. Belthrop. Why, Belthrop could buy and sell us ten times over. His
business is worth a good, round sum to me. You’d better write her a
note. ‘Mrs. James Highcamp.’ Hugh! the less you have to do with Mrs.
Highcamp, the better. ‘Madame Laforcé.’ Came all the way from
Carrolton, too, poor old soul. ‘Miss Wiggs,’ ‘Mrs. Eleanor Boltons.’”
He pushed the cards aside.

“Mercy!” exclaimed Edna, who had been fuming. “Why are you taking the
thing so seriously and making such a fuss over it?”

“I’m not making any fuss over it. But it’s just such seeming trifles
that we’ve got to take seriously; such things count.”

The fish was scorched. Mr. Pontellier would not touch it. Edna said she
did not mind a little scorched taste. The roast was in some way not to
his fancy, and he did not like the manner in which the vegetables were
served.

“It seems to me,” he said, “we spend money enough in this house to
procure at least one meal a day which a man could eat and retain his
self-respect.”

“You used to think the cook was a treasure,” returned Edna,
indifferently.

“Perhaps she was when she first came; but cooks are only human. They
need looking after, like any other class of persons that you employ.
Suppose I didn’t look after the clerks in my office, just let them run
things their own way; they’d soon make a nice mess of me and my
business.”

“Where are you going?” asked Edna, seeing that her husband arose from
table without having eaten a morsel except a taste of the
highly-seasoned soup.

“I’m going to get my dinner at the club. Good night.” He went into the
hall, took his hat and stick from the stand, and left the house.

She was somewhat familiar with such scenes. They had often made her
very unhappy. On a few previous occasions she had been completely
deprived of any desire to finish her dinner. Sometimes she had gone
into the kitchen to administer a tardy rebuke to the cook. Once she
went to her room and studied the cookbook during an entire evening,
finally writing out a menu for the week, which left her harassed with a
feeling that, after all, she had accomplished no good that was worth
the name.

But that evening Edna finished her dinner alone, with forced
deliberation. Her face was flushed and her eyes flamed with some inward
fire that lighted them. After finishing her dinner she went to her
room, having instructed the boy to tell any other callers that she was
indisposed.

It was a large, beautiful room, rich and picturesque in the soft, dim
light which the maid had turned low. She went and stood at an open
window and looked out upon the deep tangle of the garden below. All the
mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid
the perfumes and the dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and
foliage. She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such
sweet, half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not
soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the
stars. They jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid
even of hope. She turned back into the room and began to walk to and
fro down its whole length without stopping, without resting. She
carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons,
rolled into a ball, and flung from her. Once she stopped, and taking
off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying
there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But her
small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the little
glittering circlet.

In a sweeping passion she seized a glass vase from the table and flung
it upon the tiles of the hearth. She wanted to destroy something. The
crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear.

A maid, alarmed at the din of breaking glass, entered the room to
discover what was the matter.

“A vase fell upon the hearth,” said Edna. “Never mind; leave it till
morning.”

“Oh! you might get some of the glass in your feet, ma’am,” insisted the
young woman, picking up bits of the broken vase that were scattered
upon the carpet. “And here’s your ring, ma’am, under the chair.”

Edna held out her hand, and taking the ring, slipped it upon her
finger.

XVIII

The following morning Mr. Pontellier, upon leaving for his office,
asked Edna if she would not meet him in town in order to look at some
new fixtures for the library.

“I hardly think we need new fixtures, Léonce. Don’t let us get anything
new; you are too extravagant. I don’t believe you ever think of saving
or putting by.”

“The way to become rich is to make money, my dear Edna, not to save
it,” he said. He regretted that she did not feel inclined to go with
him and select new fixtures. He kissed her good-by, and told her she
was not looking well and must take care of herself. She was unusually
pale and very quiet.

She stood on the front veranda as he quitted the house, and absently
picked a few sprays of jessamine that grew upon a trellis near by. She
inhaled the odor of the blossoms and thrust them into the bosom of her
white morning gown. The boys were dragging along the banquette a small
“express wagon,” which they had filled with blocks and sticks. The
quadroon was following them with little quick steps, having assumed a
fictitious animation and alacrity for the occasion. A fruit vender was
crying his wares in the street.

Edna looked straight before her with a self-absorbed expression upon
her face. She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the
children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes,
were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become
antagonistic.

She went back into the house. She had thought of speaking to the cook
concerning her blunders of the previous night; but Mr. Pontellier had
saved her that disagreeable mission, for which she was so poorly
fitted. Mr. Pontellier’s arguments were usually convincing with those
whom he employed. He left home feeling quite sure that he and Edna
would sit down that evening, and possibly a few subsequent evenings, to
a dinner deserving of the name.

Edna spent an hour or two in looking over some of her old sketches. She
could see their shortcomings and defects, which were glaring in her
eyes. She tried to work a little, but found she was not in the humor.
Finally she gathered together a few of the sketches—those which she
considered the least discreditable; and she carried them with her when,
a little later, she dressed and left the house. She looked handsome and
distinguished in her street gown. The tan of the seashore had left her
face, and her forehead was smooth, white, and polished beneath her
heavy, yellow-brown hair. There were a few freckles on her face, and a
small, dark mole near the under lip and one on the temple, half-hidden
in her hair.

As Edna walked along the street she was thinking of Robert. She was
still under the spell of her infatuation. She had tried to forget him,
realizing the inutility of remembering. But the thought of him was like
an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her. It was not that she dwelt
upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or
peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which
dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the
mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled
her with an incomprehensible longing.

Edna was on her way to Madame Ratignolle’s. Their intimacy, begun at
Grand Isle, had not declined, and they had seen each other with some
frequency since their return to the city. The Ratignolles lived at no
great distance from Edna’s home, on the corner of a side street, where
Monsieur Ratignolle owned and conducted a drug store which enjoyed a
steady and prosperous trade. His father had been in the business before
him, and Monsieur Ratignolle stood well in the community and bore an
enviable reputation for integrity and clearheadedness. His family lived
in commodious apartments over the store, having an entrance on the side
within the _porte cochère_. There was something which Edna thought very
French, very foreign, about their whole manner of living. In the large
and pleasant salon which extended across the width of the house, the
Ratignolles entertained their friends once a fortnight with a _soirée
musicale_, sometimes diversified by card-playing. There was a friend
who played upon the cello. One brought his flute and another his
violin, while there were some who sang and a number who performed upon
the piano with various degrees of taste and agility. The Ratignolles’
_soirées musicales_ were widely known, and it was considered a
privilege to be invited to them.

Edna found her friend engaged in assorting the clothes which had
returned that morning from the laundry. She at once abandoned her
occupation upon seeing Edna, who had been ushered without ceremony into
her presence.

“’Cité can do it as well as I; it is really her business,” she
explained to Edna, who apologized for interrupting her. And she
summoned a young black woman, whom she instructed, in French, to be
very careful in checking off the list which she handed her. She told
her to notice particularly if a fine linen handkerchief of Monsieur
Ratignolle’s, which was missing last week, had been returned; and to be
sure to set to one side such pieces as required mending and darning.

Then placing an arm around Edna’s waist, she led her to the front of
the house, to the salon, where it was cool and sweet with the odor of
great roses that stood upon the hearth in jars.

Madame Ratignolle looked more beautiful than ever there at home, in a
negligé which left her arms almost wholly bare and exposed the rich,
melting curves of her white throat.

“Perhaps I shall be able to paint your picture some day,” said Edna
with a smile when they were seated. She produced the roll of sketches
and started to unfold them. “I believe I ought to work again. I feel as
if I wanted to be doing something. What do you think of them? Do you
think it worth while to take it up again and study some more? I might
study for a while with Laidpore.”

She knew that Madame Ratignolle’s opinion in such a matter would be
next to valueless, that she herself had not alone decided, but
determined; but she sought the words of praise and encouragement that
would help her to put heart into her venture.

“Your talent is immense, dear!”

“Nonsense!” protested Edna, well pleased.

“Immense, I tell you,” persisted Madame Ratignolle, surveying the
sketches one by one, at close range, then holding them at arm’s length,
narrowing her eyes, and dropping her head on one side. “Surely, this
Bavarian peasant is worthy of framing; and this basket of apples! never
have I seen anything more lifelike. One might almost be tempted to
reach out a hand and take one.”

Edna could not control a feeling which bordered upon complacency at her
friend’s praise, even realizing, as she did, its true worth. She
retained a few of the sketches, and gave all the rest to Madame
Ratignolle, who appreciated the gift far beyond its value and proudly
exhibited the pictures to her husband when he came up from the store a
little later for his midday dinner.

Mr. Ratignolle was one of those men who are called the salt of the
earth. His cheerfulness was unbounded, and it was matched by his
goodness of heart, his broad charity, and common sense. He and his wife
spoke English with an accent which was only discernible through its
un-English emphasis and a certain carefulness and deliberation. Edna’s
husband spoke English with no accent whatever. The Ratignolles
understood each other perfectly. If ever the fusion of two human beings
into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely in their
union.

As Edna seated herself at table with them she thought, “Better a dinner
of herbs,” though it did not take her long to discover that it was no
dinner of herbs, but a delicious repast, simple, choice, and in every
way satisfying.

Monsieur Ratignolle was delighted to see her, though he found her
looking not so well as at Grand Isle, and he advised a tonic. He talked
a good deal on various topics, a little politics, some city news and
neighborhood gossip. He spoke with an animation and earnestness that
gave an exaggerated importance to every syllable he uttered. His wife
was keenly interested in everything he said, laying down her fork the
better to listen, chiming in, taking the words out of his mouth.

Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little
glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no
regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her,
and she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui. She was
moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle,—a pity for that
colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the
region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited
her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life’s delirium.
Edna vaguely wondered what she meant by “life’s delirium.” It had
crossed her thought like some unsought, extraneous impression.

XIX

Edna could not help but think that it was very foolish, very childish,
to have stamped upon her wedding ring and smashed the crystal vase upon
the tiles. She was visited by no more outbursts, moving her to such
futile expedients. She began to do as she liked and to feel as she
liked. She completely abandoned her Tuesdays at home, and did not
return the visits of those who had called upon her. She made no
ineffectual efforts to conduct her household _en bonne ménagère_, going
and coming as it suited her fancy, and, so far as she was able, lending
herself to any passing caprice.

Mr. Pontellier had been a rather courteous husband so long as he met a
certain tacit submissiveness in his wife. But her new and unexpected
line of conduct completely bewildered him. It shocked him. Then her
absolute disregard for her duties as a wife angered him. When Mr.
Pontellier became rude, Edna grew insolent. She had resolved never to
take another step backward.

“It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a
household, and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier days
which would be better employed contriving for the comfort of her
family.”

“I feel like painting,” answered Edna. “Perhaps I shan’t always feel
like it.”

“Then in God’s name paint! but don’t let the family go to the devil.
There’s Madame Ratignolle; because she keeps up her music, she doesn’t
let everything else go to chaos. And she’s more of a musician than you
are a painter.”

“She isn’t a musician, and I’m not a painter. It isn’t on account of
painting that I let things go.”

“On account of what, then?”

“Oh! I don’t know. Let me alone; you bother me.”

It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier’s mind to wonder if his wife were
not growing a little unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she
was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming
herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume
like a garment with which to appear before the world.

Her husband let her alone as she requested, and went away to his
office. Edna went up to her atelier—a bright room in the top of the
house. She was working with great energy and interest, without
accomplishing anything, however, which satisfied her even in the
smallest degree. For a time she had the whole household enrolled in the
service of art. The boys posed for her. They thought it amusing at
first, but the occupation soon lost its attractiveness when they
discovered that it was not a game arranged especially for their
entertainment. The quadroon sat for hours before Edna’s palette,
patient as a savage, while the house-maid took charge of the children,
and the drawing-room went undusted. But the house-maid, too, served her
term as model when Edna perceived that the young woman’s back and
shoulders were molded on classic lines, and that her hair, loosened
from its confining cap, became an inspiration. While Edna worked she
sometimes sang low the little air, “_Ah! si tu savais!_”

It moved her with recollections. She could hear again the ripple of the
water, the flapping sail. She could see the glint of the moon upon the
bay, and could feel the soft, gusty beating of the hot south wind. A
subtle current of desire passed through her body, weakening her hold
upon the brushes and making her eyes burn.

There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was
happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one
with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some
perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and
unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner,
fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone
and unmolested.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,—when it did
not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when
life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like
worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not
work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her
blood.

XX

It was during such a mood that Edna hunted up Mademoiselle Reisz. She
had not forgotten the rather disagreeable impression left upon her by
their last interview; but she nevertheless felt a desire to see
her—above all, to listen while she played upon the piano. Quite early
in the afternoon she started upon her quest for the pianist.
Unfortunately she had mislaid or lost Mademoiselle Reisz’s card, and
looking up her address in the city directory, she found that the woman
lived on Bienville Street, some distance away. The directory which fell
into her hands was a year or more old, however, and upon reaching the
number indicated, Edna discovered that the house was occupied by a
respectable family of mulattoes who had _chambres garnies_ to let. They
had been living there for six months, and knew absolutely nothing of a
Mademoiselle Reisz. In fact, they knew nothing of any of their
neighbors; their lodgers were all people of the highest distinction,
they assured Edna. She did not linger to discuss class distinctions
with Madame Pouponne, but hastened to a neighboring grocery store,
feeling sure that Mademoiselle would have left her address with the
proprietor.

He knew Mademoiselle Reisz a good deal better than he wanted to know
her, he informed his questioner. In truth, he did not want to know her
at all, or anything concerning her—the most disagreeable and unpopular
woman who ever lived in Bienville Street. He thanked heaven she had
left the neighborhood, and was equally thankful that he did not know
where she had gone.

Edna’s desire to see Mademoiselle Reisz had increased tenfold since
these unlooked-for obstacles had arisen to thwart it. She was wondering
who could give her the information she sought, when it suddenly
occurred to her that Madame Lebrun would be the one most likely to do
so. She knew it was useless to ask Madame Ratignolle, who was on the
most distant terms with the musician, and preferred to know nothing
concerning her. She had once been almost as emphatic in expressing
herself upon the subject as the corner grocer.

Edna knew that Madame Lebrun had returned to the city, for it was the
middle of November. And she also knew where the Lebruns lived, on
Chartres Street.

Their home from the outside looked like a prison, with iron bars before
the door and lower windows. The iron bars were a relic of the old
_régime_, and no one had ever thought of dislodging them. At the side
was a high fence enclosing the garden. A gate or door opening upon the
street was locked. Edna rang the bell at this side garden gate, and
stood upon the banquette, waiting to be admitted.

It was Victor who opened the gate for her. A black woman, wiping her
hands upon her apron, was close at his heels. Before she saw them Edna
could hear them in altercation, the woman—plainly an anomaly—claiming
the right to be allowed to perform her duties, one of which was to
answer the bell.

Victor was surprised and delighted to see Mrs. Pontellier, and he made
no attempt to conceal either his astonishment or his delight. He was a
dark-browed, good-looking youngster of nineteen, greatly resembling his
mother, but with ten times her impetuosity. He instructed the black
woman to go at once and inform Madame Lebrun that Mrs. Pontellier
desired to see her. The woman grumbled a refusal to do part of her duty
when she had not been permitted to do it all, and started back to her
interrupted task of weeding the garden. Whereupon Victor administered a
rebuke in the form of a volley of abuse, which, owing to its rapidity
and incoherence, was all but incomprehensible to Edna. Whatever it was,
the rebuke was convincing, for the woman dropped her hoe and went
mumbling into the house.

Edna did not wish to enter. It was very pleasant there on the side
porch, where there were chairs, a wicker lounge, and a small table. She
seated herself, for she was tired from her long tramp; and she began to
rock gently and smooth out the folds of her silk parasol. Victor drew
up his chair beside her. He at once explained that the black woman’s
offensive conduct was all due to imperfect training, as he was not
there to take her in hand. He had only come up from the island the
morning before, and expected to return next day. He stayed all winter
at the island; he lived there, and kept the place in order and got
things ready for the summer visitors.

But a man needed occasional relaxation, he informed Mrs. Pontellier,
and every now and again he drummed up a pretext to bring him to the
city. My! but he had had a time of it the evening before! He wouldn’t
want his mother to know, and he began to talk in a whisper. He was
scintillant with recollections. Of course, he couldn’t think of telling
Mrs. Pontellier all about it, she being a woman and not comprehending
such things. But it all began with a girl peeping and smiling at him
through the shutters as he passed by. Oh! but she was a beauty!
Certainly he smiled back, and went up and talked to her. Mrs.
Pontellier did not know him if she supposed he was one to let an
opportunity like that escape him. Despite herself, the youngster amused
her. She must have betrayed in her look some degree of interest or
entertainment. The boy grew more daring, and Mrs. Pontellier might have
found herself, in a little while, listening to a highly colored story
but for the timely appearance of Madame Lebrun.

That lady was still clad in white, according to her custom of the
summer. Her eyes beamed an effusive welcome. Would not Mrs. Pontellier
go inside? Would she partake of some refreshment? Why had she not been
there before? How was that dear Mr. Pontellier and how were those sweet
children? Had Mrs. Pontellier ever known such a warm November?

Victor went and reclined on the wicker lounge behind his mother’s
chair, where he commanded a view of Edna’s face. He had taken her
parasol from her hands while he spoke to her, and he now lifted it and
twirled it above him as he lay on his back. When Madame Lebrun
complained that it was _so_ dull coming back to the city; that she saw
_so_ few people now; that even Victor, when he came up from the island
for a day or two, had _so_ much to occupy him and engage his time; then
it was that the youth went into contortions on the lounge and winked
mischievously at Edna. She somehow felt like a confederate in crime,
and tried to look severe and disapproving.

There had been but two letters from Robert, with little in them, they
told her. Victor said it was really not worth while to go inside for
the letters, when his mother entreated him to go in search of them. He
remembered the contents, which in truth he rattled off very glibly when
put to the test.

One letter was written from Vera Cruz and the other from the City of
Mexico. He had met Montel, who was doing everything toward his
advancement. So far, the financial situation was no improvement over
the one he had left in New Orleans, but of course the prospects were
vastly better. He wrote of the City of Mexico, the buildings, the
people and their habits, the conditions of life which he found there.
He sent his love to the family. He inclosed a check to his mother, and
hoped she would affectionately remember him to all his friends. That
was about the substance of the two letters. Edna felt that if there had
been a message for her, she would have received it. The despondent
frame of mind in which she had left home began again to overtake her,
and she remembered that she wished to find Mademoiselle Reisz.

Madame Lebrun knew where Mademoiselle Reisz lived. She gave Edna the
address, regretting that she would not consent to stay and spend the
remainder of the afternoon, and pay a visit to Mademoiselle Reisz some
other day. The afternoon was already well advanced.

Victor escorted her out upon the banquette, lifted her parasol, and
held it over her while he walked to the car with her. He entreated her
to bear in mind that the disclosures of the afternoon were strictly
confidential. She laughed and bantered him a little, remembering too
late that she should have been dignified and reserved.

“How handsome Mrs. Pontellier looked!” said Madame Lebrun to her son.

“Ravishing!” he admitted. “The city atmosphere has improved her. Some
way she doesn’t seem like the same woman.”

XXI

Some people contended that the reason Mademoiselle Reisz always chose
apartments up under the roof was to discourage the approach of beggars,
peddlars and callers. There were plenty of windows in her little front
room. They were for the most part dingy, but as they were nearly always
open it did not make so much difference. They often admitted into the
room a good deal of smoke and soot; but at the same time all the light
and air that there was came through them. From her windows could be
seen the crescent of the river, the masts of ships and the big chimneys
of the Mississippi steamers. A magnificent piano crowded the apartment.
In the next room she slept, and in the third and last she harbored a
gasoline stove on which she cooked her meals when disinclined to
descend to the neighboring restaurant. It was there also that she ate,
keeping her belongings in a rare old buffet, dingy and battered from a
hundred years of use.

When Edna knocked at Mademoiselle Reisz’s front room door and entered,
she discovered that person standing beside the window, engaged in
mending or patching an old prunella gaiter. The little musician laughed
all over when she saw Edna. Her laugh consisted of a contortion of the
face and all the muscles of the body. She seemed strikingly homely,
standing there in the afternoon light. She still wore the shabby lace
and the artificial bunch of violets on the side of her head.

“So you remembered me at last,” said Mademoiselle. “I had said to
myself, ‘Ah, bah! she will never come.’”

“Did you want me to come?” asked Edna with a smile.

“I had not thought much about it,” answered Mademoiselle. The two had
seated themselves on a little bumpy sofa which stood against the wall.
“I am glad, however, that you came. I have the water boiling back
there, and was just about to make some coffee. You will drink a cup
with me. And how is _la belle dame?_ Always handsome! always healthy!
always contented!” She took Edna’s hand between her strong wiry
fingers, holding it loosely without warmth, and executing a sort of
double theme upon the back and palm.

“Yes,” she went on; “I sometimes thought: ‘She will never come. She
promised as those women in society always do, without meaning it. She
will not come.’ For I really don’t believe you like me, Mrs.
Pontellier.”

“I don’t know whether I like you or not,” replied Edna, gazing down at
the little woman with a quizzical look.

The candor of Mrs. Pontellier’s admission greatly pleased Mademoiselle
Reisz. She expressed her gratification by repairing forthwith to the
region of the gasoline stove and rewarding her guest with the promised
cup of coffee. The coffee and the biscuit accompanying it proved very
acceptable to Edna, who had declined refreshment at Madame Lebrun’s and
was now beginning to feel hungry. Mademoiselle set the tray which she
brought in upon a small table near at hand, and seated herself once
again on the lumpy sofa.

“I have had a letter from your friend,” she remarked, as she poured a
little cream into Edna’s cup and handed it to her.

“My friend?”

“Yes, your friend Robert. He wrote to me from the City of Mexico.”

“Wrote to _you_?” repeated Edna in amazement, stirring her coffee
absently.

“Yes, to me. Why not? Don’t stir all the warmth out of your coffee;
drink it. Though the letter might as well have been sent to you; it was
nothing but Mrs. Pontellier from beginning to end.”

“Let me see it,” requested the young woman, entreatingly.

“No; a letter concerns no one but the person who writes it and the one
to whom it is written.”

“Haven’t you just said it concerned me from beginning to end?”

“It was written about you, not to you. ‘Have you seen Mrs. Pontellier?
How is she looking?’ he asks. ‘As Mrs. Pontellier says,’ or ‘as Mrs.
Pontellier once said.’ ‘If Mrs. Pontellier should call upon you, play
for her that Impromptu of Chopin’s, my favorite. I heard it here a day
or two ago, but not as you play it. I should like to know how it
affects her,’ and so on, as if he supposed we were constantly in each
other’s society.”

“Let me see the letter.”

“Oh, no.”

“Have you answered it?”

“No.”

“Let me see the letter.”

“No, and again, no.”

“Then play the Impromptu for me.”

“It is growing late; what time do you have to be home?”

“Time doesn’t concern me. Your question seems a little rude. Play the
Impromptu.”

“But you have told me nothing of yourself. What are you doing?”

“Painting!” laughed Edna. “I am becoming an artist. Think of it!”

“Ah! an artist! You have pretensions, Madame.”

“Why pretensions? Do you think I could not become an artist?”

“I do not know you well enough to say. I do not know your talent or
your temperament. To be an artist includes much; one must possess many
gifts—absolute gifts—which have not been acquired by one’s own effort.
And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous
soul.”

“What do you mean by the courageous soul?”

“Courageous, _ma foi!_ The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.”

“Show me the letter and play for me the Impromptu. You see that I have
persistence. Does that quality count for anything in art?”

“It counts with a foolish old woman whom you have captivated,” replied
Mademoiselle, with her wriggling laugh.

The letter was right there at hand in the drawer of the little table
upon which Edna had just placed her coffee cup. Mademoiselle opened the
drawer and drew forth the letter, the topmost one. She placed it in
Edna’s hands, and without further comment arose and went to the piano.

Mademoiselle played a soft interlude. It was an improvisation. She sat
low at the instrument, and the lines of her body settled into
ungraceful curves and angles that gave it an appearance of deformity.
Gradually and imperceptibly the interlude melted into the soft opening
minor chords of the Chopin Impromptu.

Edna did not know when the Impromptu began or ended. She sat in the
sofa corner reading Robert’s letter by the fading light. Mademoiselle
had glided from the Chopin into the quivering love notes of Isolde’s
song, and back again to the Impromptu with its soulful and poignant
longing.

The shadows deepened in the little room. The music grew strange and
fantastic—turbulent, insistent, plaintive and soft with entreaty. The
shadows grew deeper. The music filled the room. It floated out upon the
night, over the housetops, the crescent of the river, losing itself in
the silence of the upper air.

Edna was sobbing, just as she had wept one midnight at Grand Isle when
strange, new voices awoke in her. She arose in some agitation to take
her departure. “May I come again, Mademoiselle?” she asked at the
threshold.

“Come whenever you feel like it. Be careful; the stairs and landings
are dark; don’t stumble.”

Mademoiselle reentered and lit a candle. Robert’s letter was on the
floor. She stooped and picked it up. It was crumpled and damp with
tears. Mademoiselle smoothed the letter out, restored it to the
envelope, and replaced it in the table drawer.

XXII

One morning on his way into town Mr. Pontellier stopped at the house of
his old friend and family physician, Doctor Mandelet. The Doctor was a
semi-retired physician, resting, as the saying is, upon his laurels. He
bore a reputation for wisdom rather than skill—leaving the active
practice of medicine to his assistants and younger contemporaries—and
was much sought for in matters of consultation. A few families, united
to him by bonds of friendship, he still attended when they required the
services of a physician. The Pontelliers were among these.

Mr. Pontellier found the Doctor reading at the open window of his
study. His house stood rather far back from the street, in the center
of a delightful garden, so that it was quiet and peaceful at the old
gentleman’s study window. He was a great reader. He stared up
disapprovingly over his eye-glasses as Mr. Pontellier entered,
wondering who had the temerity to disturb him at that hour of the
morning.

“Ah, Pontellier! Not sick, I hope. Come and have a seat. What news do
you bring this morning?” He was quite portly, with a profusion of gray
hair, and small blue eyes which age had robbed of much of their
brightness but none of their penetration.

“Oh! I’m never sick, Doctor. You know that I come of tough fiber—of
that old Creole race of Pontelliers that dry up and finally blow away.
I came to consult—no, not precisely to consult—to talk to you about
Edna. I don’t know what ails her.”

“Madame Pontellier not well,” marveled the Doctor. “Why, I saw her—I
think it was a week ago—walking along Canal Street, the picture of
health, it seemed to me.”

“Yes, yes; she seems quite well,” said Mr. Pontellier, leaning forward
and whirling his stick between his two hands; “but she doesn’t act
well. She’s odd, she’s not like herself. I can’t make her out, and I
thought perhaps you’d help me.”

“How does she act?” inquired the Doctor.

“Well, it isn’t easy to explain,” said Mr. Pontellier, throwing himself
back in his chair. “She lets the housekeeping go to the dickens.”

“Well, well; women are not all alike, my dear Pontellier. We’ve got to
consider—”

“I know that; I told you I couldn’t explain. Her whole attitude—toward
me and everybody and everything—has changed. You know I have a quick
temper, but I don’t want to quarrel or be rude to a woman, especially
my wife; yet I’m driven to it, and feel like ten thousand devils after
I’ve made a fool of myself. She’s making it devilishly uncomfortable
for me,” he went on nervously. “She’s got some sort of notion in her
head concerning the eternal rights of women; and—you understand—we meet
in the morning at the breakfast table.”

The old gentleman lifted his shaggy eyebrows, protruded his thick
nether lip, and tapped the arms of his chair with his cushioned
fingertips.

“What have you been doing to her, Pontellier?”

“Doing! _Parbleu!_”

“Has she,” asked the Doctor, with a smile, “has she been associating of
late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women—super-spiritual
superior beings? My wife has been telling me about them.”

“That’s the trouble,” broke in Mr. Pontellier, “she hasn’t been
associating with any one. She has abandoned her Tuesdays at home, has
thrown over all her acquaintances, and goes tramping about by herself,
moping in the street-cars, getting in after dark. I tell you she’s
peculiar. I don’t like it; I feel a little worried over it.”

This was a new aspect for the Doctor. “Nothing hereditary?” he asked,
seriously. “Nothing peculiar about her family antecedents, is there?”

“Oh, no, indeed! She comes of sound old Presbyterian Kentucky stock.
The old gentleman, her father, I have heard, used to atone for his
weekday sins with his Sunday devotions. I know for a fact, that his
race horses literally ran away with the prettiest bit of Kentucky
farming land I ever laid eyes upon. Margaret—you know Margaret—she has
all the Presbyterianism undiluted. And the youngest is something of a
vixen. By the way, she gets married in a couple of weeks from now.”

“Send your wife up to the wedding,” exclaimed the Doctor, foreseeing a
happy solution. “Let her stay among her own people for a while; it will
do her good.”

“That’s what I want her to do. She won’t go to the marriage. She says a
wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth. Nice thing
for a woman to say to her husband!” exclaimed Mr. Pontellier, fuming
anew at the recollection.

“Pontellier,” said the Doctor, after a moment’s reflection, “let your
wife alone for a while. Don’t bother her, and don’t let her bother you.
Woman, my dear friend, is a very peculiar and delicate organism—a
sensitive and highly organized woman, such as I know Mrs. Pontellier to
be, is especially peculiar. It would require an inspired psychologist
to deal successfully with them. And when ordinary fellows like you and
me attempt to cope with their idiosyncrasies the result is bungling.
Most women are moody and whimsical. This is some passing whim of your
wife, due to some cause or causes which you and I needn’t try to
fathom. But it will pass happily over, especially if you let her alone.
Send her around to see me.”

“Oh! I couldn’t do that; there’d be no reason for it,” objected Mr.
Pontellier.

“Then I’ll go around and see her,” said the Doctor. “I’ll drop in to
dinner some evening _en bon ami_.”

“Do! by all means,” urged Mr. Pontellier. “What evening will you come?
Say Thursday. Will you come Thursday?” he asked, rising to take his
leave.

“Very well; Thursday. My wife may possibly have some engagement for me
Thursday. In case she has, I shall let you know. Otherwise, you may
expect me.”

Mr. Pontellier turned before leaving to say:

“I am going to New York on business very soon. I have a big scheme on
hand, and want to be on the field proper to pull the ropes and handle
the ribbons. We’ll let you in on the inside if you say so, Doctor,” he
laughed.

“No, I thank you, my dear sir,” returned the Doctor. “I leave such
ventures to you younger men with the fever of life still in your
blood.”

“What I wanted to say,” continued Mr. Pontellier, with his hand on the
knob; “I may have to be absent a good while. Would you advise me to
take Edna along?”

“By all means, if she wishes to go. If not, leave her here. Don’t
contradict her. The mood will pass, I assure you. It may take a month,
two, three months—possibly longer, but it will pass; have patience.”

“Well, good-by, _à jeudi_,” said Mr. Pontellier, as he let himself out.

The Doctor would have liked during the course of conversation to ask,
“Is there any man in the case?” but he knew his Creole too well to make
such a blunder as that.

He did not resume his book immediately, but sat for a while
meditatively looking out into the garden.

XXIII

Edna’s father was in the city, and had been with them several days. She
was not very warmly or deeply attached to him, but they had certain
tastes in common, and when together they were companionable. His coming
was in the nature of a welcome disturbance; it seemed to furnish a new
direction for her emotions.

He had come to purchase a wedding gift for his daughter, Janet, and an
outfit for himself in which he might make a creditable appearance at
her marriage. Mr. Pontellier had selected the bridal gift, as every one
immediately connected with him always deferred to his taste in such
matters. And his suggestions on the question of dress—which too often
assumes the nature of a problem—were of inestimable value to his
father-in-law. But for the past few days the old gentleman had been
upon Edna’s hands, and in his society she was becoming acquainted with
a new set of sensations. He had been a colonel in the Confederate army,
and still maintained, with the title, the military bearing which had
always accompanied it. His hair and mustache were white and silky,
emphasizing the rugged bronze of his face. He was tall and thin, and
wore his coats padded, which gave a fictitious breadth and depth to his
shoulders and chest. Edna and her father looked very distinguished
together, and excited a good deal of notice during their
perambulations. Upon his arrival she began by introducing him to her
atelier and making a sketch of him. He took the whole matter very
seriously. If her talent had been ten-fold greater than it was, it
would not have surprised him, convinced as he was that he had
bequeathed to all of his daughters the germs of a masterful capability,
which only depended upon their own efforts to be directed toward
successful achievement.

Before her pencil he sat rigid and unflinching, as he had faced the
cannon’s mouth in days gone by. He resented the intrusion of the
children, who gaped with wondering eyes at him, sitting so stiff up
there in their mother’s bright atelier. When they drew near he motioned
them away with an expressive action of the foot, loath to disturb the
fixed lines of his countenance, his arms, or his rigid shoulders.

Edna, anxious to entertain him, invited Mademoiselle Reisz to meet him,
having promised him a treat in her piano playing; but Mademoiselle
declined the invitation. So together they attended a _soirée musicale_
at the Ratignolles’. Monsieur and Madame Ratignolle made much of the
Colonel, installing him as the guest of honor and engaging him at once
to dine with them the following Sunday, or any day which he might
select. Madame coquetted with him in the most captivating and naive
manner, with eyes, gestures, and a profusion of compliments, till the
Colonel’s old head felt thirty years younger on his padded shoulders.
Edna marveled, not comprehending. She herself was almost devoid of
coquetry.

There were one or two men whom she observed at the _soirée musicale;_
but she would never have felt moved to any kittenish display to attract
their notice—to any feline or feminine wiles to express herself toward
them. Their personality attracted her in an agreeable way. Her fancy
selected them, and she was glad when a lull in the music gave them an
opportunity to meet her and talk with her. Often on the street the
glance of strange eyes had lingered in her memory, and sometimes had
disturbed her.

Mr. Pontellier did not attend these _soirées musicales_. He considered
them _bourgeois_, and found more diversion at the club. To Madame
Ratignolle he said the music dispensed at her _soirées_ was too
“heavy,” too far beyond his untrained comprehension. His excuse
flattered her. But she disapproved of Mr. Pontellier’s club, and she
was frank enough to tell Edna so.

“It’s a pity Mr. Pontellier doesn’t stay home more in the evenings. I
think you would be more—well, if you don’t mind my saying it—more
united, if he did.”

“Oh! dear no!” said Edna, with a blank look in her eyes. “What should I
do if he stayed home? We wouldn’t have anything to say to each other.”

She had not much of anything to say to her father, for that matter; but
he did not antagonize her. She discovered that he interested her,
though she realized that he might not interest her long; and for the
first time in her life she felt as if she were thoroughly acquainted
with him. He kept her busy serving him and ministering to his wants. It
amused her to do so. She would not permit a servant or one of the
children to do anything for him which she might do herself. Her husband
noticed, and thought it was the expression of a deep filial attachment
which he had never suspected.

The Colonel drank numerous “toddies” during the course of the day,
which left him, however, imperturbed. He was an expert at concocting
strong drinks. He had even invented some, to which he had given
fantastic names, and for whose manufacture he required diverse
ingredients that it devolved upon Edna to procure for him.

When Doctor Mandelet dined with the Pontelliers on Thursday he could
discern in Mrs. Pontellier no trace of that morbid condition which her
husband had reported to him. She was excited and in a manner radiant.
She and her father had been to the race course, and their thoughts when
they seated themselves at table were still occupied with the events of
the afternoon, and their talk was still of the track. The Doctor had
not kept pace with turf affairs. He had certain recollections of racing
in what he called “the good old times” when the Lecompte stables
flourished, and he drew upon this fund of memories so that he might not
be left out and seem wholly devoid of the modern spirit. But he failed
to impose upon the Colonel, and was even far from impressing him with
this trumped-up knowledge of bygone days. Edna had staked her father on
his last venture, with the most gratifying results to both of them.
Besides, they had met some very charming people, according to the
Colonel’s impressions. Mrs. Mortimer Merriman and Mrs. James Highcamp,
who were there with Alcée Arobin, had joined them and had enlivened the
hours in a fashion that warmed him to think of.

Mr. Pontellier himself had no particular leaning toward horseracing,
and was even rather inclined to discourage it as a pastime, especially
when he considered the fate of that blue-grass farm in Kentucky. He
endeavored, in a general way, to express a particular disapproval, and
only succeeded in arousing the ire and opposition of his father-in-law.
A pretty dispute followed, in which Edna warmly espoused her father’s
cause and the Doctor remained neutral.

He observed his hostess attentively from under his shaggy brows, and
noted a subtle change which had transformed her from the listless woman
he had known into a being who, for the moment, seemed palpitant with
the forces of life. Her speech was warm and energetic. There was no
repression in her glance or gesture. She reminded him of some
beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.

The dinner was excellent. The claret was warm and the champagne was
cold, and under their beneficent influence the threatened
unpleasantness melted and vanished with the fumes of the wine.

Mr. Pontellier warmed up and grew reminiscent. He told some amusing
plantation experiences, recollections of old Iberville and his youth,
when he hunted ’possum in company with some friendly darky; thrashed
the pecan trees, shot the grosbec, and roamed the woods and fields in
mischievous idleness.

The Colonel, with little sense of humor and of the fitness of things,
related a somber episode of those dark and bitter days, in which he had
acted a conspicuous part and always formed a central figure. Nor was
the Doctor happier in his selection, when he told the old, ever new and
curious story of the waning of a woman’s love, seeking strange, new
channels, only to return to its legitimate source after days of fierce
unrest. It was one of the many little human documents which had been
unfolded to him during his long career as a physician. The story did
not seem especially to impress Edna. She had one of her own to tell, of
a woman who paddled away with her lover one night in a pirogue and
never came back. They were lost amid the Baratarian Islands, and no one
ever heard of them or found trace of them from that day to this. It was
a pure invention. She said that Madame Antoine had related it to her.
That, also, was an invention. Perhaps it was a dream she had had. But
every glowing word seemed real to those who listened. They could feel
the hot breath of the Southern night; they could hear the long sweep of
the pirogue through the glistening moonlit water, the beating of birds’
wings, rising startled from among the reeds in the salt-water pools;
they could see the faces of the lovers, pale, close together, rapt in
oblivious forgetfulness, drifting into the unknown.

The champagne was cold, and its subtle fumes played fantastic tricks
with Edna’s memory that night.

Outside, away from the glow of the fire and the soft lamplight, the
night was chill and murky. The Doctor doubled his old-fashioned cloak
across his breast as he strode home through the darkness. He knew his
fellow-creatures better than most men; knew that inner life which so
seldom unfolds itself to unanointed eyes. He was sorry he had accepted
Pontellier’s invitation. He was growing old, and beginning to need rest
and an imperturbed spirit. He did not want the secrets of other lives
thrust upon him.

“I hope it isn’t Arobin,” he muttered to himself as he walked. “I hope
to heaven it isn’t Alcée Arobin.”

XXIV

Edna and her father had a warm, and almost violent dispute upon the
subject of her refusal to attend her sister’s wedding. Mr. Pontellier
declined to interfere, to interpose either his influence or his
authority. He was following Doctor Mandelet’s advice, and letting her
do as she liked. The Colonel reproached his daughter for her lack of
filial kindness and respect, her want of sisterly affection and womanly
consideration. His arguments were labored and unconvincing. He doubted
if Janet would accept any excuse—forgetting that Edna had offered none.
He doubted if Janet would ever speak to her again, and he was sure
Margaret would not.

Edna was glad to be rid of her father when he finally took himself off
with his wedding garments and his bridal gifts, with his padded
shoulders, his Bible reading, his “toddies” and ponderous oaths.

Mr. Pontellier followed him closely. He meant to stop at the wedding on
his way to New York and endeavor by every means which money and love
could devise to atone somewhat for Edna’s incomprehensible action.

“You are too lenient, too lenient by far, Léonce,” asserted the
Colonel. “Authority, coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down
good and hard; the only way to manage a wife. Take my word for it.”

The Colonel was perhaps unaware that he had coerced his own wife into
her grave. Mr. Pontellier had a vague suspicion of it which he thought
it needless to mention at that late day.

Edna was not so consciously gratified at her husband’s leaving home as
she had been over the departure of her father. As the day approached
when he was to leave her for a comparatively long stay, she grew
melting and affectionate, remembering his many acts of consideration
and his repeated expressions of an ardent attachment. She was
solicitous about his health and his welfare. She bustled around,
looking after his clothing, thinking about heavy underwear, quite as
Madame Ratignolle would have done under similar circumstances. She
cried when he went away, calling him her dear, good friend, and she was
quite certain she would grow lonely before very long and go to join him
in New York.

But after all, a radiant peace settled upon her when she at last found
herself alone. Even the children were gone. Old Madame Pontellier had
come herself and carried them off to Iberville with their quadroon. The
old madame did not venture to say she was afraid they would be
neglected during Léonce’s absence; she hardly ventured to think so. She
was hungry for them—even a little fierce in her attachment. She did not
want them to be wholly “children of the pavement,” she always said when
begging to have them for a space. She wished them to know the country,
with its streams, its fields, its woods, its freedom, so delicious to
the young. She wished them to taste something of the life their father
had lived and known and loved when he, too, was a little child.

When Edna was at last alone, she breathed a big, genuine sigh of
relief. A feeling that was unfamiliar but very delicious came over her.
She walked all through the house, from one room to another, as if
inspecting it for the first time. She tried the various chairs and
lounges, as if she had never sat and reclined upon them before. And she
perambulated around the outside of the house, investigating, looking to
see if windows and shutters were secure and in order. The flowers were
like new acquaintances; she approached them in a familiar spirit, and
made herself at home among them. The garden walks were damp, and Edna
called to the maid to bring out her rubber sandals. And there she
stayed, and stooped, digging around the plants, trimming, picking dead,
dry leaves. The children’s little dog came out, interfering, getting in
her way. She scolded him, laughed at him, played with him. The garden
smelled so good and looked so pretty in the afternoon sunlight. Edna
plucked all the bright flowers she could find, and went into the house
with them, she and the little dog.

Even the kitchen assumed a sudden interesting character which she had
never before perceived. She went in to give directions to the cook, to
say that the butcher would have to bring much less meat, that they
would require only half their usual quantity of bread, of milk and
groceries. She told the cook that she herself would be greatly occupied
during Mr. Pontellier’s absence, and she begged her to take all thought
and responsibility of the larder upon her own shoulders.

That night Edna dined alone. The candelabra, with a few candles in the
center of the table, gave all the light she needed. Outside the circle
of light in which she sat, the large dining-room looked solemn and
shadowy. The cook, placed upon her mettle, served a delicious repast—a
luscious tenderloin broiled _à point_. The wine tasted good; the
_marron glacé_ seemed to be just what she wanted. It was so pleasant,
too, to dine in a comfortable _peignoir_.

She thought a little sentimentally about Léonce and the children, and
wondered what they were doing. As she gave a dainty scrap or two to the
doggie, she talked intimately to him about Etienne and Raoul. He was
beside himself with astonishment and delight over these companionable
advances, and showed his appreciation by his little quick, snappy barks
and a lively agitation.

Then Edna sat in the library after dinner and read Emerson until she
grew sleepy. She realized that she had neglected her reading, and
determined to start anew upon a course of improving studies, now that
her time was completely her own to do with as she liked.

After a refreshing bath, Edna went to bed. And as she snuggled
comfortably beneath the eiderdown a sense of restfulness invaded her,
such as she had not known before.

XXV

When the weather was dark and cloudy Edna could not work. She needed
the sun to mellow and temper her mood to the sticking point. She had
reached a stage when she seemed to be no longer feeling her way,
working, when in the humor, with sureness and ease. And being devoid of
ambition, and striving not toward accomplishment, she drew satisfaction
from the work in itself.

On rainy or melancholy days Edna went out and sought the society of the
friends she had made at Grand Isle. Or else she stayed indoors and
nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own
comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her as
if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.
Yet there were other days when she listened, was led on and deceived by
fresh promises which her youth held out to her.

She went again to the races, and again. Alcée Arobin and Mrs. Highcamp
called for her one bright afternoon in Arobin’s drag. Mrs. Highcamp was
a worldly but unaffected, intelligent, slim, tall blonde woman in the
forties, with an indifferent manner and blue eyes that stared. She had
a daughter who served her as a pretext for cultivating the society of
young men of fashion. Alcée Arobin was one of them. He was a familiar
figure at the race course, the opera, the fashionable clubs. There was
a perpetual smile in his eyes, which seldom failed to awaken a
corresponding cheerfulness in any one who looked into them and listened
to his good-humored voice. His manner was quiet, and at times a little
insolent. He possessed a good figure, a pleasing face, not overburdened
with depth of thought or feeling; and his dress was that of the
conventional man of fashion.

He admired Edna extravagantly, after meeting her at the races with her
father. He had met her before on other occasions, but she had seemed to
him unapproachable until that day. It was at his instigation that Mrs.
Highcamp called to ask her to go with them to the Jockey Club to
witness the turf event of the season.

There were possibly a few track men out there who knew the race horse
as well as Edna, but there was certainly none who knew it better. She
sat between her two companions as one having authority to speak. She
laughed at Arobin’s pretensions, and deplored Mrs. Highcamp’s
ignorance. The race horse was a friend and intimate associate of her
childhood. The atmosphere of the stables and the breath of the blue
grass paddock revived in her memory and lingered in her nostrils. She
did not perceive that she was talking like her father as the sleek
geldings ambled in review before them. She played for very high stakes,
and fortune favored her. The fever of the game flamed in her cheeks and
eyes, and it got into her blood and into her brain like an intoxicant.
People turned their heads to look at her, and more than one lent an
attentive ear to her utterances, hoping thereby to secure the elusive
but ever-desired “tip.” Arobin caught the contagion of excitement which
drew him to Edna like a magnet. Mrs. Highcamp remained, as usual,
unmoved, with her indifferent stare and uplifted eyebrows.

Edna stayed and dined with Mrs. Highcamp upon being urged to do so.
Arobin also remained and sent away his drag.

The dinner was quiet and uninteresting, save for the cheerful efforts
of Arobin to enliven things. Mrs. Highcamp deplored the absence of her
daughter from the races, and tried to convey to her what she had missed
by going to the “Dante reading” instead of joining them. The girl held
a geranium leaf up to her nose and said nothing, but looked knowing and
noncommittal. Mr. Highcamp was a plain, bald-headed man, who only
talked under compulsion. He was unresponsive. Mrs. Highcamp was full of
delicate courtesy and consideration toward her husband. She addressed
most of her conversation to him at table. They sat in the library after
dinner and read the evening papers together under the droplight; while
the younger people went into the drawing-room near by and talked. Miss
Highcamp played some selections from Grieg upon the piano. She seemed
to have apprehended all of the composer’s coldness and none of his
poetry. While Edna listened she could not help wondering if she had
lost her taste for music.

When the time came for her to go home, Mr. Highcamp grunted a lame
offer to escort her, looking down at his slippered feet with tactless
concern. It was Arobin who took her home. The car ride was long, and it
was late when they reached Esplanade Street. Arobin asked permission to
enter for a second to light his cigarette—his match safe was empty. He
filled his match safe, but did not light his cigarette until he left
her, after she had expressed her willingness to go to the races with
him again.

Edna was neither tired nor sleepy. She was hungry again, for the
Highcamp dinner, though of excellent quality, had lacked abundance. She
rummaged in the larder and brought forth a slice of Gruyere and some
crackers. She opened a bottle of beer which she found in the icebox.
Edna felt extremely restless and excited. She vacantly hummed a
fantastic tune as she poked at the wood embers on the hearth and
munched a cracker.

She wanted something to happen—something, anything; she did not know
what. She regretted that she had not made Arobin stay a half hour to
talk over the horses with her. She counted the money she had won. But
there was nothing else to do, so she went to bed, and tossed there for
hours in a sort of monotonous agitation.

In the middle of the night she remembered that she had forgotten to
write her regular letter to her husband; and she decided to do so next
day and tell him about her afternoon at the Jockey Club. She lay wide
awake composing a letter which was nothing like the one which she wrote
next day. When the maid awoke her in the morning Edna was dreaming of
Mr. Highcamp playing the piano at the entrance of a music store on
Canal Street, while his wife was saying to Alcée Arobin, as they
boarded an Esplanade Street car:

“What a pity that so much talent has been neglected! but I must go.”

When, a few days later, Alcée Arobin again called for Edna in his drag,
Mrs. Highcamp was not with him. He said they would pick her up. But as
that lady had not been apprised of his intention of picking her up, she
was not at home. The daughter was just leaving the house to attend the
meeting of a branch Folk Lore Society, and regretted that she could not
accompany them. Arobin appeared nonplused, and asked Edna if there were
any one else she cared to ask.

She did not deem it worth while to go in search of any of the
fashionable acquaintances from whom she had withdrawn herself. She
thought of Madame Ratignolle, but knew that her fair friend did not
leave the house, except to take a languid walk around the block with
her husband after nightfall. Mademoiselle Reisz would have laughed at
such a request from Edna. Madame Lebrun might have enjoyed the outing,
but for some reason Edna did not want her. So they went alone, she and
Arobin.

The afternoon was intensely interesting to her. The excitement came
back upon her like a remittent fever. Her talk grew familiar and
confidential. It was no labor to become intimate with Arobin. His
manner invited easy confidence. The preliminary stage of becoming
acquainted was one which he always endeavored to ignore when a pretty
and engaging woman was concerned.

He stayed and dined with Edna. He stayed and sat beside the wood fire.
They laughed and talked; and before it was time to go he was telling
her how different life might have been if he had known her years
before. With ingenuous frankness he spoke of what a wicked,
ill-disciplined boy he had been, and impulsively drew up his cuff to
exhibit upon his wrist the scar from a saber cut which he had received
in a duel outside of Paris when he was nineteen. She touched his hand
as she scanned the red cicatrice on the inside of his white wrist. A
quick impulse that was somewhat spasmodic impelled her fingers to close
in a sort of clutch upon his hand. He felt the pressure of her pointed
nails in the flesh of his palm.

She arose hastily and walked toward the mantel.

“The sight of a wound or scar always agitates and sickens me,” she
said. “I shouldn’t have looked at it.”

“I beg your pardon,” he entreated, following her; “it never occurred to
me that it might be repulsive.”

He stood close to her, and the effrontery in his eyes repelled the old,
vanishing self in her, yet drew all her awakening sensuousness. He saw
enough in her face to impel him to take her hand and hold it while he
said his lingering good night.

“Will you go to the races again?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ve had enough of the races. I don’t want to lose all
the money I’ve won, and I’ve got to work when the weather is bright,
instead of—”

“Yes; work; to be sure. You promised to show me your work. What morning
may I come up to your atelier? To-morrow?”

“No!”

“Day after?”

“No, no.”

“Oh, please don’t refuse me! I know something of such things. I might
help you with a stray suggestion or two.”

“No. Good night. Why don’t you go after you have said good night? I
don’t like you,” she went on in a high, excited pitch, attempting to
draw away her hand. She felt that her words lacked dignity and
sincerity, and she knew that he felt it.

“I’m sorry you don’t like me. I’m sorry I offended you. How have I
offended you? What have I done? Can’t you forgive me?” And he bent and
pressed his lips upon her hand as if he wished never more to withdraw
them.

“Mr. Arobin,” she complained, “I’m greatly upset by the excitement of
the afternoon; I’m not myself. My manner must have misled you in some
way. I wish you to go, please.” She spoke in a monotonous, dull tone.
He took his hat from the table, and stood with eyes turned from her,
looking into the dying fire. For a moment or two he kept an impressive
silence.

“Your manner has not misled me, Mrs. Pontellier,” he said finally. “My
own emotions have done that. I couldn’t help it. When I’m near you, how
could I help it? Don’t think anything of it, don’t bother, please. You
see, I go when you command me. If you wish me to stay away, I shall do
so. If you let me come back, I—oh! you will let me come back?”

He cast one appealing glance at her, to which she made no response.
Alcée Arobin’s manner was so genuine that it often deceived even
himself.

Edna did not care or think whether it were genuine or not. When she was
alone she looked mechanically at the back of her hand which he had
kissed so warmly. Then she leaned her head down on the mantelpiece. She
felt somewhat like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into
an act of infidelity, and realizes the significance of the act without
being wholly awakened from its glamour. The thought was passing vaguely
through her mind, “What would he think?”

She did not mean her husband; she was thinking of Robert Lebrun. Her
husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without
love as an excuse.

She lit a candle and went up to her room. Alcée Arobin was absolutely
nothing to her. Yet his presence, his manners, the warmth of his
glances, and above all the touch of his lips upon her hand had acted
like a narcotic upon her.

She slept a languorous sleep, interwoven with vanishing dreams.

XXVI

Alcée Arobin wrote Edna an elaborate note of apology, palpitant with
sincerity. It embarrassed her; for in a cooler, quieter moment it
appeared to her absurd that she should have taken his action so
seriously, so dramatically. She felt sure that the significance of the
whole occurrence had lain in her own self-consciousness. If she ignored
his note it would give undue importance to a trivial affair. If she
replied to it in a serious spirit it would still leave in his mind the
impression that she had in a susceptible moment yielded to his
influence. After all, it was no great matter to have one’s hand kissed.
She was provoked at his having written the apology. She answered in as
light and bantering a spirit as she fancied it deserved, and said she
would be glad to have him look in upon her at work whenever he felt the
inclination and his business gave him the opportunity.

He responded at once by presenting himself at her home with all his
disarming naïveté. And then there was scarcely a day which followed
that she did not see him or was not reminded of him. He was prolific in
pretexts. His attitude became one of good-humored subservience and
tacit adoration. He was ready at all times to submit to her moods,
which were as often kind as they were cold. She grew accustomed to him.
They became intimate and friendly by imperceptible degrees, and then by
leaps. He sometimes talked in a way that astonished her at first and
brought the crimson into her face; in a way that pleased her at last,
appealing to the animalism that stirred impatiently within her.

There was nothing which so quieted the turmoil of Edna’s senses as a
visit to Mademoiselle Reisz. It was then, in the presence of that
personality which was offensive to her, that the woman, by her divine
art, seemed to reach Edna’s spirit and set it free.

It was misty, with heavy, lowering atmosphere, one afternoon, when Edna
climbed the stairs to the pianist’s apartments under the roof. Her
clothes were dripping with moisture. She felt chilled and pinched as
she entered the room. Mademoiselle was poking at a rusty stove that
smoked a little and warmed the room indifferently. She was endeavoring
to heat a pot of chocolate on the stove. The room looked cheerless and
dingy to Edna as she entered. A bust of Beethoven, covered with a hood
of dust, scowled at her from the mantelpiece.

“Ah! here comes the sunlight!” exclaimed Mademoiselle, rising from her
knees before the stove. “Now it will be warm and bright enough; I can
let the fire alone.”

She closed the stove door with a bang, and approaching, assisted in
removing Edna’s dripping mackintosh.

“You are cold; you look miserable. The chocolate will soon be hot. But
would you rather have a taste of brandy? I have scarcely touched the
bottle which you brought me for my cold.” A piece of red flannel was
wrapped around Mademoiselle’s throat; a stiff neck compelled her to
hold her head on one side.

“I will take some brandy,” said Edna, shivering as she removed her
gloves and overshoes. She drank the liquor from the glass as a man
would have done. Then flinging herself upon the uncomfortable sofa she
said, “Mademoiselle, I am going to move away from my house on Esplanade
Street.”

“Ah!” ejaculated the musician, neither surprised nor especially
interested. Nothing ever seemed to astonish her very much. She was
endeavoring to adjust the bunch of violets which had become loose from
its fastening in her hair. Edna drew her down upon the sofa, and taking
a pin from her own hair, secured the shabby artificial flowers in their
accustomed place.

“Aren’t you astonished?”

“Passably. Where are you going? to New York? to Iberville? to your
father in Mississippi? where?”

“Just two steps away,” laughed Edna, “in a little four-room house
around the corner. It looks so cozy, so inviting and restful, whenever
I pass by; and it’s for rent. I’m tired looking after that big house.
It never seemed like mine, anyway—like home. It’s too much trouble. I
have to keep too many servants. I am tired bothering with them.”

“That is not your true reason, _ma belle_. There is no use in telling
me lies. I don’t know your reason, but you have not told me the truth.”
Edna did not protest or endeavor to justify herself.

“The house, the money that provides for it, are not mine. Isn’t that
enough reason?”

“They are your husband’s,” returned Mademoiselle, with a shrug and a
malicious elevation of the eyebrows.

“Oh! I see there is no deceiving you. Then let me tell you: It is a
caprice. I have a little money of my own from my mother’s estate, which
my father sends me by driblets. I won a large sum this winter on the
races, and I am beginning to sell my sketches. Laidpore is more and
more pleased with my work; he says it grows in force and individuality.
I cannot judge of that myself, but I feel that I have gained in ease
and confidence. However, as I said, I have sold a good many through
Laidpore. I can live in the tiny house for little or nothing, with one
servant. Old Celestine, who works occasionally for me, says she will
come stay with me and do my work. I know I shall like it, like the
feeling of freedom and independence.”

“What does your husband say?”

“I have not told him yet. I only thought of it this morning. He will
think I am demented, no doubt. Perhaps you think so.”

Mademoiselle shook her head slowly. “Your reason is not yet clear to
me,” she said.

Neither was it quite clear to Edna herself; but it unfolded itself as
she sat for a while in silence. Instinct had prompted her to put away
her husband’s bounty in casting off her allegiance. She did not know
how it would be when he returned. There would have to be an
understanding, an explanation. Conditions would some way adjust
themselves, she felt; but whatever came, she had resolved never again
to belong to another than herself.

“I shall give a grand dinner before I leave the old house!” Edna
exclaimed. “You will have to come to it, Mademoiselle. I will give you
everything that you like to eat and to drink. We shall sing and laugh
and be merry for once.” And she uttered a sigh that came from the very
depths of her being.

If Mademoiselle happened to have received a letter from Robert during
the interval of Edna’s visits, she would give her the letter
unsolicited. And she would seat herself at the piano and play as her
humor prompted her while the young woman read the letter.

The little stove was roaring; it was red-hot, and the chocolate in the
tin sizzled and sputtered. Edna went forward and opened the stove door,
and Mademoiselle rising, took a letter from under the bust of Beethoven
and handed it to Edna.

“Another! so soon!” she exclaimed, her eyes filled with delight. “Tell
me, Mademoiselle, does he know that I see his letters?”

“Never in the world! He would be angry and would never write to me
again if he thought so. Does he write to you? Never a line. Does he
send you a message? Never a word. It is because he loves you, poor
fool, and is trying to forget you, since you are not free to listen to
him or to belong to him.”

“Why do you show me his letters, then?”

“Haven’t you begged for them? Can I refuse you anything? Oh! you cannot
deceive me,” and Mademoiselle approached her beloved instrument and
began to play. Edna did not at once read the letter. She sat holding it
in her hand, while the music penetrated her whole being like an
effulgence, warming and brightening the dark places of her soul. It
prepared her for joy and exultation.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, letting the letter fall to the floor. “Why did you
not tell me?” She went and grasped Mademoiselle’s hands up from the
keys. “Oh! unkind! malicious! Why did you not tell me?”

“That he was coming back? No great news, _ma foi_. I wonder he did not
come long ago.”

“But when, when?” cried Edna, impatiently. “He does not say when.”

“He says ‘very soon.’ You know as much about it as I do; it is all in
the letter.”

“But why? Why is he coming? Oh, if I thought—” and she snatched the
letter from the floor and turned the pages this way and that way,
looking for the reason, which was left untold.

“If I were young and in love with a man,” said Mademoiselle, turning on
the stool and pressing her wiry hands between her knees as she looked
down at Edna, who sat on the floor holding the letter, “it seems to me
he would have to be some _grand esprit;_ a man with lofty aims and
ability to reach them; one who stood high enough to attract the notice
of his fellow-men. It seems to me if I were young and in love I should
never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.”

“Now it is you who are telling lies and seeking to deceive me,
Mademoiselle; or else you have never been in love, and know nothing
about it. Why,” went on Edna, clasping her knees and looking up into
Mademoiselle’s twisted face, “do you suppose a woman knows why she
loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself: ‘Go to! Here is a
distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall
proceed to fall in love with him.’ Or, ‘I shall set my heart upon this
musician, whose fame is on every tongue?’ Or, ‘This financier, who
controls the world’s money markets?’

“You are purposely misunderstanding me, _ma reine_. Are you in love
with Robert?”

“Yes,” said Edna. It was the first time she had admitted it, and a glow
overspread her face, blotching it with red spots.

“Why?” asked her companion. “Why do you love him when you ought not
to?”

Edna, with a motion or two, dragged herself o

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