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PART 5: Chapter 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.
Chapter 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 ***. 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 ***; "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, a 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.
Chapter 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 soiree 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 soiree 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 soirees
musicales.
He considered them bourgeois, and found more diversion at the club.
To Madame Ratignolle he said the music dispensed at her soirees 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 Alcee 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 Alcee Arobin."
Chapter 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, Leonce," 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
Leonce'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 a point. The wine tasted good; the marron glace
seemed to be just what she wanted.
It was so pleasant, too, to dine in a comfortable peignoir.
She thought a little sentimentally about Leonce 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.
Chapter 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.
Alcee 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. Alcee 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
Alcee 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, Alcee 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
"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.
Alcee 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.
Alcee 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.