The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories
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