The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories
“How do you do, Arobin?” said Robert, rising from the obscurity.
“Oh! Lebrun. To be sure! I heard yesterday you were back. How did they
treat you down in Mexique?”
“Fairly well.”
“But not well enough to keep you there. Stunning girls, though, in
Mexico. I thought I should never get away from Vera Cruz when I was
down there a couple of years ago.”
“Did they embroider slippers and tobacco pouches and hat-bands and
things for you?” asked Edna.
“Oh! my! no! I didn’t get so deep in their regard. I fear they made
more impression on me than I made on them.”
“You were less fortunate than Robert, then.”
“I am always less fortunate than Robert. Has he been imparting tender
confidences?”
“I’ve been imposing myself long enough,” said Robert, rising, and
shaking hands with Edna. “Please convey my regards to Mr. Pontellier
when you write.”
He shook hands with Arobin and went away.
“Fine fellow, that Lebrun,” said Arobin when Robert had gone. “I never
heard you speak of him.”
“I knew him last summer at Grand Isle,” she replied. “Here is that
photograph of yours. Don’t you want it?”
“What do I want with it? Throw it away.” She threw it back on the
table.
“I’m not going to Mrs. Merriman’s,” she said. “If you see her, tell her
so. But perhaps I had better write. I think I shall write now, and say
that I am sorry her child is sick, and tell her not to count on me.”
“It would be a good scheme,” acquiesced Arobin. “I don’t blame you;
stupid lot!”
Edna opened the blotter, and having procured paper and pen, began to
write the note. Arobin lit a cigar and read the evening paper, which he
had in his pocket.
“What is the date?” she asked. He told her.
“Will you mail this for me when you go out?”
“Certainly.” He read to her little bits out of the newspaper, while she
straightened things on the table.
“What do you want to do?” he asked, throwing aside the paper. “Do you
want to go out for a walk or a drive or anything? It would be a fine
night to drive.”
“No; I don’t want to do anything but just be quiet. You go away and
amuse yourself. Don’t stay.”
“I’ll go away if I must; but I shan’t amuse myself. You know that I
only live when I am near you.”
He stood up to bid her good night.
“Is that one of the things you always say to women?”
“I have said it before, but I don’t think I ever came so near meaning
it,” he answered with a smile. There were no warm lights in her eyes;
only a dreamy, absent look.
“Good night. I adore you. Sleep well,” he said, and he kissed her hand
and went away.
She stayed alone in a kind of reverie—a sort of stupor. Step by step
she lived over every instant of the time she had been with Robert after
he had entered Mademoiselle Reisz’s door. She recalled his words, his
looks. How few and meager they had been for her hungry heart! A
vision—a transcendently seductive vision of a Mexican girl arose before
her. She writhed with a jealous pang. She wondered when he would come
back. He had not said he would come back. She had been with him, had
heard his voice and touched his hand. But some way he had seemed nearer
to her off there in Mexico.
XXXV
The morning was full of sunlight and hope. Edna could see before her no
denial—only the promise of excessive joy. She lay in bed awake, with
bright eyes full of speculation. “He loves you, poor fool.” If she
could but get that conviction firmly fixed in her mind, what mattered
about the rest? She felt she had been childish and unwise the night
before in giving herself over to despondency. She recapitulated the
motives which no doubt explained Robert’s reserve. They were not
insurmountable; they would not hold if he really loved her; they could
not hold against her own passion, which he must come to realize in
time. She pictured him going to his business that morning. She even saw
how he was dressed; how he walked down one street, and turned the
corner of another; saw him bending over his desk, talking to people who
entered the office, going to his lunch, and perhaps watching for her on
the street. He would come to her in the afternoon or evening, sit and
roll his cigarette, talk a little, and go away as he had done the night
before. But how delicious it would be to have him there with her! She
would have no regrets, nor seek to penetrate his reserve if he still
chose to wear it.
Edna ate her breakfast only half dressed. The maid brought her a
delicious printed scrawl from Raoul, expressing his love, asking her to
send him some bonbons, and telling her they had found that morning ten
tiny white pigs all lying in a row beside Lidie’s big white pig.
A letter also came from her husband, saying he hoped to be back early
in March, and then they would get ready for that journey abroad which
he had promised her so long, which he felt now fully able to afford; he
felt able to travel as people should, without any thought of small
economies—thanks to his recent speculations in Wall Street.
Much to her surprise she received a note from Arobin, written at
midnight from the club. It was to say good morning to her, to hope she
had slept well, to assure her of his devotion, which he trusted she in
some faintest manner returned.
All these letters were pleasing to her. She answered the children in a
cheerful frame of mind, promising them bonbons, and congratulating them
upon their happy find of the little pigs.
She answered her husband with friendly evasiveness,—not with any fixed
design to mislead him, only because all sense of reality had gone out
of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and awaited the
consequences with indifference.
To Arobin’s note she made no reply. She put it under Celestine’s
stove-lid.
Edna worked several hours with much spirit. She saw no one but a
picture dealer, who asked her if it were true that she was going abroad
to study in Paris.
She said possibly she might, and he negotiated with her for some
Parisian studies to reach him in time for the holiday trade in
December.
Robert did not come that day. She was keenly disappointed. He did not
come the following day, nor the next. Each morning she awoke with hope,
and each night she was a prey to despondency. She was tempted to seek
him out. But far from yielding to the impulse, she avoided any occasion
which might throw her in his way. She did not go to Mademoiselle
Reisz’s nor pass by Madame Lebrun’s, as she might have done if he had
still been in Mexico.
When Arobin, one night, urged her to drive with him, she went—out to
the lake, on the Shell Road. His horses were full of mettle, and even a
little unmanageable. She liked the rapid gait at which they spun along,
and the quick, sharp sound of the horses’ hoofs on the hard road. They
did not stop anywhere to eat or to drink. Arobin was not needlessly
imprudent. But they ate and they drank when they regained Edna’s little
dining-room—which was comparatively early in the evening.
It was late when he left her. It was getting to be more than a passing
whim with Arobin to see her and be with her. He had detected the latent
sensuality, which unfolded under his delicate sense of her nature’s
requirements like a torpid, torrid, sensitive blossom.
There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there
hope when she awoke in the morning.
XXXVI
There was a garden out in the suburbs; a small, leafy corner, with a
few green tables under the orange trees. An old cat slept all day on
the stone step in the sun, and an old _mulatresse_ slept her idle hours
away in her chair at the open window, till some one happened to knock
on one of the green tables. She had milk and cream cheese to sell, and
bread and butter. There was no one who could make such excellent coffee
or fry a chicken so golden brown as she.
The place was too modest to attract the attention of people of fashion,
and so quiet as to have escaped the notice of those in search of
pleasure and dissipation. Edna had discovered it accidentally one day
when the high-board gate stood ajar. She caught sight of a little green
table, blotched with the checkered sunlight that filtered through the
quivering leaves overhead. Within she had found the slumbering
_mulatresse_, the drowsy cat, and a glass of milk which reminded her of
the milk she had tasted in Iberville.
She often stopped there during her perambulations; sometimes taking a
book with her, and sitting an hour or two under the trees when she
found the place deserted. Once or twice she took a quiet dinner there
alone, having instructed Celestine beforehand to prepare no dinner at
home. It was the last place in the city where she would have expected
to meet any one she knew.
Still she was not astonished when, as she was partaking of a modest
dinner late in the afternoon, looking into an open book, stroking the
cat, which had made friends with her—she was not greatly astonished to
see Robert come in at the tall garden gate.
“I am destined to see you only by accident,” she said, shoving the cat
off the chair beside her. He was surprised, ill at ease, almost
embarrassed at meeting her thus so unexpectedly.
“Do you come here often?” he asked.
“I almost live here,” she said.
“I used to drop in very often for a cup of Catiche’s good coffee. This
is the first time since I came back.”
“She’ll bring you a plate, and you will share my dinner. There’s always
enough for two—even three.” Edna had intended to be indifferent and as
reserved as he when she met him; she had reached the determination by a
laborious train of reasoning, incident to one of her despondent moods.
But her resolve melted when she saw him before designing Providence had
led him into her path.
“Why have you kept away from me, Robert?” she asked, closing the book
that lay open upon the table.
“Why are you so personal, Mrs. Pontellier? Why do you force me to
idiotic subterfuges?” he exclaimed with sudden warmth. “I suppose
there’s no use telling you I’ve been very busy, or that I’ve been sick,
or that I’ve been to see you and not found you at home. Please let me
off with any one of these excuses.”
“You are the embodiment of selfishness,” she said. “You save yourself
something—I don’t know what—but there is some selfish motive, and in
sparing yourself you never consider for a moment what I think, or how I
feel your neglect and indifference. I suppose this is what you would
call unwomanly; but I have got into a habit of expressing myself. It
doesn’t matter to me, and you may think me unwomanly if you like.”
“No; I only think you cruel, as I said the other day. Maybe not
intentionally cruel; but you seem to be forcing me into disclosures
which can result in nothing; as if you would have me bare a wound for
the pleasure of looking at it, without the intention or power of
healing it.”
“I’m spoiling your dinner, Robert; never mind what I say. You haven’t
eaten a morsel.”
“I only came in for a cup of coffee.” His sensitive face was all
disfigured with excitement.
“Isn’t this a delightful place?” she remarked. “I am so glad it has
never actually been discovered. It is so quiet, so sweet, here. Do you
notice there is scarcely a sound to be heard? It’s so out of the way;
and a good walk from the car. However, I don’t mind walking. I always
feel so sorry for women who don’t like to walk; they miss so much—so
many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life
on the whole.
“Catiche’s coffee is always hot. I don’t know how she manages it, here
in the open air. Celestine’s coffee gets cold bringing it from the
kitchen to the dining-room. Three lumps! How can you drink it so sweet?
Take some of the cress with your chop; it’s so biting and crisp. Then
there’s the advantage of being able to smoke with your coffee out here.