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PART 2: Chapter 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.
Chapter 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 Adele 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 Adele
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
bathhouse.
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 Adele 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 chere?" 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 cherie."
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 Leonce 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.
Chapter 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.
"Voila 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 Alcee Arobin and that
story of the consul's wife at Biloxi?"
And he related the story of Alcee 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, Adele," 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 Sevres 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 garcon, 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 wateroaks 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 ***, 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, ***! 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 tete montee, 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, ***!
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, ***, 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"--***!
clatter, clatter, ***!
"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?"
Chapter 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 ***'s colors, blue and white, having
been dedicated to the Blessed *** 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.
Chapter 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.