The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories
Now, in the city—aren’t you going to smoke?”
“After a while,” he said, laying a cigar on the table.
“Who gave it to you?” she laughed.
“I bought it. I suppose I’m getting reckless; I bought a whole box.”
She was determined not to be personal again and make him uncomfortable.
The cat made friends with him, and climbed into his lap when he smoked
his cigar. He stroked her silky fur, and talked a little about her. He
looked at Edna’s book, which he had read; and he told her the end, to
save her the trouble of wading through it, he said.
Again he accompanied her back to her home; and it was after dusk when
they reached the little “pigeon-house.” She did not ask him to remain,
which he was grateful for, as it permitted him to stay without the
discomfort of blundering through an excuse which he had no intention of
considering. He helped her to light the lamp; then she went into her
room to take off her hat and to bathe her face and hands.
When she came back Robert was not examining the pictures and magazines
as before; he sat off in the shadow, leaning his head back on the chair
as if in a reverie. Edna lingered a moment beside the table, arranging
the books there. Then she went across the room to where he sat. She
bent over the arm of his chair and called his name.
“Robert,” she said, “are you asleep?”
“No,” he answered, looking up at her.
She leaned over and kissed him—a soft, cool, delicate kiss, whose
voluptuous sting penetrated his whole being—then she moved away from
him. He followed, and took her in his arms, just holding her close to
him. She put her hand up to his face and pressed his cheek against her
own. The action was full of love and tenderness. He sought her lips
again. Then he drew her down upon the sofa beside him and held her hand
in both of his.
“Now you know,” he said, “now you know what I have been fighting
against since last summer at Grand Isle; what drove me away and drove
me back again.”
“Why have you been fighting against it?” she asked. Her face glowed
with soft lights.
“Why? Because you were not free; you were Léonce Pontellier’s wife. I
couldn’t help loving you if you were ten times his wife; but so long as
I went away from you and kept away I could help telling you so.” She
put her free hand up to his shoulder, and then against his cheek,
rubbing it softly. He kissed her again. His face was warm and flushed.
“There in Mexico I was thinking of you all the time, and longing for
you.”
“But not writing to me,” she interrupted.
“Something put into my head that you cared for me; and I lost my
senses. I forgot everything but a wild dream of your some way becoming
my wife.”
“Your wife!”
“Religion, loyalty, everything would give way if only you cared.”
“Then you must have forgotten that I was Léonce Pontellier’s wife.”
“Oh! I was demented, dreaming of wild, impossible things, recalling men
who had set their wives free, we have heard of such things.”
“Yes, we have heard of such things.”
“I came back full of vague, mad intentions. And when I got here—”
“When you got here you never came near me!” She was still caressing his
cheek.
“I realized what a cur I was to dream of such a thing, even if you had
been willing.”
She took his face between her hands and looked into it as if she would
never withdraw her eyes more. She kissed him on the forehead, the eyes,
the cheeks, and the lips.
“You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of
impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I
am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not.
I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, ‘Here, Robert, take
her and be happy; she is yours,’ I should laugh at you both.”
His face grew a little white. “What do you mean?” he asked.
There was a knock at the door. Old Celestine came in to say that Madame
Ratignolle’s servant had come around the back way with a message that
Madame had been taken sick and begged Mrs. Pontellier to go to her
immediately.
“Yes, yes,” said Edna, rising; “I promised. Tell her yes—to wait for
me. I’ll go back with her.”
“Let me walk over with you,” offered Robert.
“No,” she said; “I will go with the servant.” She went into her room to
put on her hat, and when she came in again she sat once more upon the
sofa beside him. He had not stirred. She put her arms about his neck.
“Good-by, my sweet Robert. Tell me good-by.” He kissed her with a
degree of passion which had not before entered into his caress, and
strained her to him.
“I love you,” she whispered, “only you; no one but you. It was you who
awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream. Oh! you have
made me so unhappy with your indifference. Oh! I have suffered,
suffered! Now you are here we shall love each other, my Robert. We
shall be everything to each other. Nothing else in the world is of any
consequence. I must go to my friend; but you will wait for me? No
matter how late; you will wait for me, Robert?”
“Don’t go; don’t go! Oh! Edna, stay with me,” he pleaded. “Why should
you go? Stay with me, stay with me.”
“I shall come back as soon as I can; I shall find you here.” She buried
her face in his neck, and said good-by again. Her seductive voice,
together with his great love for her, had enthralled his senses, had
deprived him of every impulse but the longing to hold her and keep her.
XXXVII
Edna looked in at the drug store. Monsieur Ratignolle was putting up a
mixture himself, very carefully, dropping a red liquid into a tiny
glass. He was grateful to Edna for having come; her presence would be a
comfort to his wife. Madame Ratignolle’s sister, who had always been
with her at such trying times, had not been able to come up from the
plantation, and Adèle had been inconsolable until Mrs. Pontellier so
kindly promised to come to her. The nurse had been with them at night
for the past week, as she lived a great distance away. And Dr. Mandelet
had been coming and going all the afternoon. They were then looking for
him any moment.
Edna hastened upstairs by a private stairway that led from the rear of
the store to the apartments above. The children were all sleeping in a
back room. Madame Ratignolle was in the salon, whither she had strayed
in her suffering impatience. She sat on the sofa, clad in an ample
white _peignoir_, holding a handkerchief tight in her hand with a
nervous clutch. Her face was drawn and pinched, her sweet blue eyes
haggard and unnatural. All her beautiful hair had been drawn back and
plaited. It lay in a long braid on the sofa pillow, coiled like a
golden serpent. The nurse, a comfortable looking Griffe woman in white
apron and cap, was urging her to return to her bedroom.
“There is no use, there is no use,” she said at once to Edna. “We must
get rid of Mandelet; he is getting too old and careless. He said he
would be here at half-past seven; now it must be eight. See what time
it is, Joséphine.”
The woman was possessed of a cheerful nature, and refused to take any
situation too seriously, especially a situation with which she was so
familiar. She urged Madame to have courage and patience. But Madame
only set her teeth hard into her under lip, and Edna saw the sweat
gather in beads on her white forehead. After a moment or two she
uttered a profound sigh and wiped her face with the handkerchief rolled
in a ball. She appeared exhausted. The nurse gave her a fresh
handkerchief, sprinkled with cologne water.
“This is too much!” she cried. “Mandelet ought to be killed! Where is
Alphonse? Is it possible I am to be abandoned like this—neglected by
every one?”
“Neglected, indeed!” exclaimed the nurse. Wasn’t she there? And here
was Mrs. Pontellier leaving, no doubt, a pleasant evening at home to
devote to her? And wasn’t Monsieur Ratignolle coming that very instant
through the hall? And Joséphine was quite sure she had heard Doctor
Mandelet’s coupé. Yes, there it was, down at the door.
Adèle consented to go back to her room. She sat on the edge of a little
low couch next to her bed.
Doctor Mandelet paid no attention to Madame Ratignolle’s upbraidings.
He was accustomed to them at such times, and was too well convinced of
her loyalty to doubt it.
He was glad to see Edna, and wanted her to go with him into the salon
and entertain him. But Madame Ratignolle would not consent that Edna
should leave her for an instant. Between agonizing moments, she chatted
a little, and said it took her mind off her sufferings.
Edna began to feel uneasy. She was seized with a vague dread. Her own
like experiences seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered. She
recalled faintly an ecstasy of pain, the heavy odor of chloroform, a
stupor which had deadened sensation, and an awakening to find a little
new life to which she had given being, added to the great unnumbered
multitude of souls that come and go.
She began to wish she had not come; her presence was not necessary. She
might have invented a pretext for staying away; she might even invent a
pretext now for going. But Edna did not go. With an inward agony, with
a flaming, outspoken revolt against the ways of Nature, she witnessed
the scene of torture.
She was still stunned and speechless with emotion when later she leaned
over her friend to kiss her and softly say good-by. Adèle, pressing her
cheek, whispered in an exhausted voice: “Think of the children, Edna.
Oh think of the children! Remember them!”
XXXVIII
Edna still felt dazed when she got outside in the open air. The
Doctor’s coupé had returned for him and stood before the _porte
cochère_. She did not wish to enter the coupé, and told Doctor Mandelet
she would walk; she was not afraid, and would go alone. He directed his
carriage to meet him at Mrs. Pontellier’s, and he started to walk home
with her.
Up—away up, over the narrow street between the tall houses, the stars
were blazing. The air was mild and caressing, but cool with the breath
of spring and the night. They walked slowly, the Doctor with a heavy,
measured tread and his hands behind him; Edna, in an absent-minded way,
as she had walked one night at Grand Isle, as if her thoughts had gone
ahead of her and she was striving to overtake them.
“You shouldn’t have been there, Mrs. Pontellier,” he said. “That was no
place for you. Adèle is full of whims at such times. There were a dozen
women she might have had with her, unimpressionable women. I felt that
it was cruel, cruel. You shouldn’t have gone.”
“Oh, well!” she answered, indifferently. “I don’t know that it matters
after all. One has to think of the children some time or other; the
sooner the better.”
“When is Léonce coming back?”
“Quite soon. Some time in March.”
“And you are going abroad?”
“Perhaps—no, I am not going. I’m not going to be forced into doing
things. I don’t want to go abroad. I want to be let alone. Nobody has
any right—except children, perhaps—and even then, it seems to me—or it
did seem—” She felt that her speech was voicing the incoherency of her
thoughts, and stopped abruptly.
“The trouble is,” sighed the Doctor, grasping her meaning intuitively,
“that youth is given up to illusions. It seems to be a provision of
Nature; a decoy to secure mothers for the race. And Nature takes no
account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create,
and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.”
“Yes,” she said. “The years that are gone seem like dreams—if one might
go on sleeping and dreaming—but to wake up and find—oh! well! perhaps
it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to
remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”
“It seems to me, my dear child,” said the Doctor at parting, holding
her hand, “you seem to me to be in trouble. I am not going to ask for