The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories
when he comes back?” she asked.
“Do? Nothing, except feel glad and happy to be alive.”
She was already glad and happy to be alive at the mere thought of his
return. The murky, lowering sky, which had depressed her a few hours
before, seemed bracing and invigorating as she splashed through the
streets on her way home.
She stopped at a confectioner’s and ordered a huge box of bonbons for
the children in Iberville. She slipped a card in the box, on which she
scribbled a tender message and sent an abundance of kisses.
Before dinner in the evening Edna wrote a charming letter to her
husband, telling him of her intention to move for a while into the
little house around the block, and to give a farewell dinner before
leaving, regretting that he was not there to share it, to help out with
the menu and assist her in entertaining the guests. Her letter was
brilliant and brimming with cheerfulness.
XXVII
“What is the matter with you?” asked Arobin that evening. “I never
found you in such a happy mood.” Edna was tired by that time, and was
reclining on the lounge before the fire.
“Don’t you know the weather prophet has told us we shall see the sun
pretty soon?”
“Well, that ought to be reason enough,” he acquiesced. “You wouldn’t
give me another if I sat here all night imploring you.” He sat close to
her on a low tabouret, and as he spoke his fingers lightly touched the
hair that fell a little over her forehead. She liked the touch of his
fingers through her hair, and closed her eyes sensitively.
“One of these days,” she said, “I’m going to pull myself together for a
while and think—try to determine what character of a woman I am; for,
candidly, I don’t know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I
am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can’t
convince myself that I am. I must think about it.”
“Don’t. What’s the use? Why should you bother thinking about it when I
can tell you what manner of woman you are.” His fingers strayed
occasionally down to her warm, smooth cheeks and firm chin, which was
growing a little full and double.
“Oh, yes! You will tell me that I am adorable; everything that is
captivating. Spare yourself the effort.”
“No; I shan’t tell you anything of the sort, though I shouldn’t be
lying if I did.”
“Do you know Mademoiselle Reisz?” she asked irrelevantly.
“The pianist? I know her by sight. I’ve heard her play.”
“She says queer things sometimes in a bantering way that you don’t
notice at the time and you find yourself thinking about afterward.”
“For instance?”
“Well, for instance, when I left her to-day, she put her arms around me
and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said.
‘The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and
prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the
weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.’”
“Whither would you soar?”
“I’m not thinking of any extraordinary flights. I only half comprehend
her.”
“I’ve heard she’s partially demented,” said Arobin.
“She seems to me wonderfully sane,” Edna replied.
“I’m told she’s extremely disagreeable and unpleasant. Why have you
introduced her at a moment when I desired to talk of you?”
“Oh! talk of me if you like,” cried Edna, clasping her hands beneath
her head; “but let me think of something else while you do.”
“I’m jealous of your thoughts to-night. They’re making you a little
kinder than usual; but some way I feel as if they were wandering, as if
they were not here with me.” She only looked at him and smiled. His
eyes were very near. He leaned upon the lounge with an arm extended
across her, while the other hand still rested upon her hair. They
continued silently to look into each other’s eyes. When he leaned
forward and kissed her, she clasped his head, holding his lips to hers.
It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really
responded. It was a flaming torch that kindled desire.
XXVIII
Edna cried a little that night after Arobin left her. It was only one
phase of the multitudinous emotions which had assailed her. There was
with her an overwhelming feeling of irresponsibility. There was the
shock of the unexpected and the unaccustomed. There was her husband’s
reproach looking at her from the external things around her which he
had provided for her external existence. There was Robert’s reproach
making itself felt by a quicker, fiercer, more overpowering love, which
had awakened within her toward him. Above all, there was understanding.
She felt as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to
look upon and comprehend the significance of life, that monster made up
of beauty and brutality. But among the conflicting sensations which
assailed her, there was neither shame nor remorse. There was a dull
pang of regret because it was not the kiss of love which had inflamed
her, because it was not love which had held this cup of life to her
lips.
XXIX
Without even waiting for an answer from her husband regarding his
opinion or wishes in the matter, Edna hastened her preparations for
quitting her home on Esplanade Street and moving into the little house
around the block. A feverish anxiety attended her every action in that
direction. There was no moment of deliberation, no interval of repose
between the thought and its fulfillment. Early upon the morning
following those hours passed in Arobin’s society, Edna set about
securing her new abode and hurrying her arrangements for occupying it.
Within the precincts of her home she felt like one who has entered and
lingered within the portals of some forbidden temple in which a
thousand muffled voices bade her begone.
Whatever was her own in the house, everything which she had acquired
aside from her husband’s bounty, she caused to be transported to the
other house, supplying simple and meager deficiencies from her own
resources.
Arobin found her with rolled sleeves, working in company with the
house-maid when he looked in during the afternoon. She was splendid and
robust, and had never appeared handsomer than in the old blue gown,
with a red silk handkerchief knotted at random around her head to
protect her hair from the dust. She was mounted upon a high stepladder,
unhooking a picture from the wall when he entered. He had found the
front door open, and had followed his ring by walking in
unceremoniously.
“Come down!” he said. “Do you want to kill yourself?” She greeted him
with affected carelessness, and appeared absorbed in her occupation.
If he had expected to find her languishing, reproachful, or indulging
in sentimental tears, he must have been greatly surprised.
He was no doubt prepared for any emergency, ready for any one of the
foregoing attitudes, just as he bent himself easily and naturally to
the situation which confronted him.
“Please come down,” he insisted, holding the ladder and looking up at
her.
“No,” she answered; “Ellen is afraid to mount the ladder. Joe is
working over at the ‘pigeon house’—that’s the name Ellen gives it,
because it’s so small and looks like a pigeon house—and some one has to
do this.”
Arobin pulled off his coat, and expressed himself ready and willing to
tempt fate in her place. Ellen brought him one of her dust-caps, and
went into contortions of mirth, which she found it impossible to
control, when she saw him put it on before the mirror as grotesquely as
he could. Edna herself could not refrain from smiling when she fastened
it at his request. So it was he who in turn mounted the ladder,
unhooking pictures and curtains, and dislodging ornaments as Edna
directed. When he had finished he took off his dust-cap and went out to
wash his hands.
Edna was sitting on the tabouret, idly brushing the tips of a feather
duster along the carpet when he came in again.
“Is there anything more you will let me do?” he asked.
“That is all,” she answered. “Ellen can manage the rest.” She kept the
young woman occupied in the drawing-room, unwilling to be left alone
with Arobin.
“What about the dinner?” he asked; “the grand event, the _coup
d’état?_”
“It will be day after to-morrow. Why do you call it the ‘_coup
d’état?_’ Oh! it will be very fine; all my best of everything—crystal,
silver and gold, Sèvres, flowers, music, and champagne to swim in. I’ll
let Léonce pay the bills. I wonder what he’ll say when he sees the
bills.”
“And you ask me why I call it a _coup d’état?_” Arobin had put on his
coat, and he stood before her and asked if his cravat was plumb. She
told him it was, looking no higher than the tip of his collar.
“When do you go to the ‘pigeon house?’—with all due acknowledgment to
Ellen.”
“Day after to-morrow, after the dinner. I shall sleep there.”
“Ellen, will you very kindly get me a glass of water?” asked Arobin.
“The dust in the curtains, if you will pardon me for hinting such a
thing, has parched my throat to a crisp.”
“While Ellen gets the water,” said Edna, rising, “I will say good-by
and let you go. I must get rid of this grime, and I have a million
things to do and think of.”
“When shall I see you?” asked Arobin, seeking to detain her, the maid
having left the room.
“At the dinner, of course. You are invited.”
“Not before?—not to-night or to-morrow morning or to-morrow noon or
night? or the day after morning or noon? Can’t you see yourself,
without my telling you, what an eternity it is?”
He had followed her into the hall and to the foot of the stairway,
looking up at her as she mounted with her face half turned to him.
“Not an instant sooner,” she said. But she laughed and looked at him
with eyes that at once gave him courage to wait and made it torture to
wait.
XXX
Though Edna had spoken of the dinner as a very grand affair, it was in
truth a very small affair and very select, in so much as the guests
invited were few and were selected with discrimination. She had counted
upon an even dozen seating themselves at her round mahogany board,
forgetting for the moment that Madame Ratignolle was to the last degree
_souffrante_ and unpresentable, and not foreseeing that Madame Lebrun
would send a thousand regrets at the last moment. So there were only
ten, after all, which made a cozy, comfortable number.
There were Mr. and Mrs. Merriman, a pretty, vivacious little woman in
the thirties; her husband, a jovial fellow, something of a
shallow-pate, who laughed a good deal at other people’s witticisms, and
had thereby made himself extremely popular. Mrs. Highcamp had
accompanied them. Of course, there was Alcée Arobin; and Mademoiselle
Reisz had consented to come. Edna had sent her a fresh bunch of violets
with black lace trimmings for her hair. Monsieur Ratignolle brought
himself and his wife’s excuses. Victor Lebrun, who happened to be in
the city, bent upon relaxation, had accepted with alacrity. There was a
Miss Mayblunt, no longer in her teens, who looked at the world through
lorgnettes and with the keenest interest. It was thought and said that
she was intellectual; it was suspected of her that she wrote under a
_nom de guerre_. She had come with a gentleman by the name of
Gouvernail, connected with one of the daily papers, of whom nothing
special could be said, except that he was observant and seemed quiet
and inoffensive. Edna herself made the tenth, and at half-past eight
they seated themselves at table, Arobin and Monsieur Ratignolle on
either side of their hostess.
Mrs. Highcamp sat between Arobin and Victor Lebrun. Then came Mrs.
Merriman, Mr. Gouvernail, Miss Mayblunt, Mr. Merriman, and Mademoiselle
Reisz next to Monsieur Ratignolle.
There was something extremely gorgeous about the appearance of the
table, an effect of splendor conveyed by a cover of pale yellow satin