The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories
nothing except to offer her his arm, for, by her own admission, she was
exhausted. She had been walking alone with her arms hanging limp,
letting her white skirts trail along the dewy path. She took his arm,
but she did not lean upon it. She let her hand lie listlessly, as
though her thoughts were elsewhere—somewhere in advance of her body,
and she was striving to overtake them.
Robert assisted her into the hammock which swung from the post before
her door out to the trunk of a tree.
“Will you stay out here and wait for Mr. Pontellier?” he asked.
“I’ll stay out here. Good-night.”
“Shall I get you a pillow?”
“There’s one here,” she said, feeling about, for they were in the
shadow.
“It must be soiled; the children have been tumbling it about.”
“No matter.” And having discovered the pillow, she adjusted it beneath
her head. She extended herself in the hammock with a deep breath of
relief. She was not a supercilious or an over-dainty woman. She was not
much given to reclining in the hammock, and when she did so it was with
no cat-like suggestion of voluptuous ease, but with a beneficent repose
which seemed to invade her whole body.
“Shall I stay with you till Mr. Pontellier comes?” asked Robert,
seating himself on the outer edge of one of the steps and taking hold
of the hammock rope which was fastened to the post.
“If you wish. Don’t swing the hammock. Will you get my white shawl
which I left on the window-sill over at the house?”
“Are you chilly?”
“No; but I shall be presently.”
“Presently?” he laughed. “Do you know what time it is? How long are you
going to stay out here?”
“I don’t know. Will you get the shawl?”
“Of course I will,” he said, rising. He went over to the house, walking
along the grass. She watched his figure pass in and out of the strips
of moonlight. It was past midnight. It was very quiet.
When he returned with the shawl she took it and kept it in her hand.
She did not put it around her.
“Did you say I should stay till Mr. Pontellier came back?”
“I said you might if you wished to.”
He seated himself again and rolled a cigarette, which he smoked in
silence. Neither did Mrs. Pontellier speak. No multitude of words could
have been more significant than those moments of silence, or more
pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire.
When the voices of the bathers were heard approaching, Robert said
good-night. She did not answer him. He thought she was asleep. Again
she watched his figure pass in and out of the strips of moonlight as he
walked away.
XI
“What are you doing out here, Edna? I thought I should find you in
bed,” said her husband, when he discovered her lying there. He had
walked up with Madame Lebrun and left her at the house. His wife did
not reply.
“Are you asleep?” he asked, bending down close to look at her.
“No.” Her eyes gleamed bright and intense, with no sleepy shadows, as
they looked into his.
“Do you know it is past one o’clock? Come on,” and he mounted the steps
and went into their room.
“Edna!” called Mr. Pontellier from within, after a few moments had gone
by.
“Don’t wait for me,” she answered. He thrust his head through the door.
“You will take cold out there,” he said, irritably. “What folly is
this? Why don’t you come in?”
“It isn’t cold; I have my shawl.”
“The mosquitoes will devour you.”
“There are no mosquitoes.”
She heard him moving about the room; every sound indicating impatience
and irritation. Another time she would have gone in at his request. She
would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; not with any sense of
submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly, as
we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill of the life
which has been portioned out to us.
“Edna, dear, are you not coming in soon?” he asked again, this time
fondly, with a note of entreaty.
“No; I am going to stay out here.”
“This is more than folly,” he blurted out. “I can’t permit you to stay
out there all night. You must come in the house instantly.”
With a writhing motion she settled herself more securely in the
hammock. She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and
resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and
resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that
before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she
remembered that she had. But she could not realize why or how she
should have yielded, feeling as she then did.
“Léonce, go to bed,” she said, “I mean to stay out here. I don’t wish
to go in, and I don’t intend to. Don’t speak to me like that again; I
shall not answer you.”
Mr. Pontellier had prepared for bed, but he slipped on an extra
garment. He opened a bottle of wine, of which he kept a small and
select supply in a buffet of his own. He drank a glass of the wine and
went out on the gallery and offered a glass to his wife. She did not
wish any. He drew up the rocker, hoisted his slippered feet on the
rail, and proceeded to smoke a cigar. He smoked two cigars; then he
went inside and drank another glass of wine. Mrs. Pontellier again
declined to accept a glass when it was offered to her. Mr. Pontellier
once more seated himself with elevated feet, and after a reasonable
interval of time smoked some more cigars.
Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a
delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities
pressing into her soul. The physical need for sleep began to overtake
her; the exuberance which had sustained and exalted her spirit left her
helpless and yielding to the conditions which crowded her in.
The stillest hour of the night had come, the hour before dawn, when the
world seems to hold its breath. The moon hung low, and had turned from
silver to copper in the sleeping sky. The old owl no longer hooted, and
the water-oaks had ceased to moan as they bent their heads.
Edna arose, cramped from lying so long and still in the hammock. She
tottered up the steps, clutching feebly at the post before passing into
the house.
“Are you coming in, Léonce?” she asked, turning her face toward her
husband.
“Yes, dear,” he answered, with a glance following a misty puff of
smoke. “Just as soon as I have finished my cigar.”
XII
She slept but a few hours. They were troubled and feverish hours,
disturbed with dreams that were intangible, that eluded her, leaving
only an impression upon her half-awakened senses of something
unattainable. She was up and dressed in the cool of the early morning.
The air was invigorating and steadied somewhat her faculties. However,
she was not seeking refreshment or help from any source, either
external or from within. She was blindly following whatever impulse
moved her, as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction,
and freed her soul of responsibility.
Most of the people at that early hour were still in bed and asleep. A
few, who intended to go over to the _Chênière_ for mass, were moving
about. The lovers, who had laid their plans the night before, were
already strolling toward the wharf. The lady in black, with her Sunday
prayer-book, velvet and gold-clasped, and her Sunday silver beads, was
following them at no great distance. Old Monsieur Farival was up, and
was more than half inclined to do anything that suggested itself. He
put on his big straw hat, and taking his umbrella from the stand in the
hall, followed the lady in black, never overtaking her.
The little negro girl who worked Madame Lebrun’s sewing-machine was
sweeping the galleries with long, absent-minded strokes of the broom.
Edna sent her up into the house to awaken Robert.
“Tell him I am going to the _Chênière_. The boat is ready; tell him to
hurry.”
He had soon joined her. She had never sent for him before. She had
never asked for him. She had never seemed to want him before. She did
not appear conscious that she had done anything unusual in commanding
his presence. He was apparently equally unconscious of anything
extraordinary in the situation. But his face was suffused with a quiet
glow when he met her.
They went together back to the kitchen to drink coffee. There was no
time to wait for any nicety of service. They stood outside the window
and the cook passed them their coffee and a roll, which they drank and
ate from the window-sill. Edna said it tasted good.
She had not thought of coffee nor of anything. He told her he had often
noticed that she lacked forethought.
“Wasn’t it enough to think of going to the _Chênière_ and waking you
up?” she laughed. “Do I have to think of everything?—as Léonce says
when he’s in a bad humor. I don’t blame him; he’d never be in a bad
humor if it weren’t for me.”
They took a short cut across the sands. At a distance they could see
the curious procession moving toward the wharf—the lovers, shoulder to
shoulder, creeping; the lady in black, gaining steadily upon them; old
Monsieur Farival, losing ground inch by inch, and a young barefooted
Spanish girl, with a red kerchief on her head and a basket on her arm,
bringing up the rear.
Robert knew the girl, and he talked to her a little in the boat. No one
present understood what they said. Her name was Mariequita. She had a
round, sly, piquant face and pretty black eyes. Her hands were small,
and she kept them folded over the handle of her basket. Her feet were
broad and coarse. She did not strive to hide them. Edna looked at her
feet, and noticed the sand and slime between her brown toes.
Beaudelet grumbled because Mariequita was there, taking up so much
room. In reality he was annoyed at having old Monsieur Farival, who
considered himself the better sailor of the two. But he would not
quarrel with so old a man as Monsieur Farival, so he quarreled with
Mariequita. The girl was deprecatory at one moment, appealing to
Robert. She was saucy the next, moving her head up and down, making
“eyes” at Robert and making “mouths” at Beaudelet.
The lovers were all alone. They saw nothing, they heard nothing. The
lady in black was counting her beads for the third time. Old Monsieur
Farival talked incessantly of what he knew about handling a boat, and
of what Beaudelet did not know on the same subject.
Edna liked it all. She looked Mariequita up and down, from her ugly
brown toes to her pretty black eyes, and back again.
“Why does she look at me like that?” inquired the girl of Robert.
“Maybe she thinks you are pretty. Shall I ask her?”
“No. Is she your sweetheart?”
“She’s a married lady, and has two children.”
“Oh! well! Francisco ran away with Sylvano’s wife, who had four
children. They took all his money and one of the children and stole his
boat.”
“Shut up!”
“Does she understand?”
“Oh, hush!”
“Are those two married over there—leaning on each other?”
“Of course not,” laughed Robert.
“Of course not,” echoed Mariequita, with a serious, confirmatory bob of
the head.
The sun was high up and beginning to bite. The swift breeze seemed to
Edna to bury the sting of it into the pores of her face and hands.
Robert held his umbrella over her. As they went cutting sidewise
through the water, the sails bellied taut, with the wind filling and
overflowing them. Old Monsieur Farival laughed sardonically at
something as he looked at the sails, and Beaudelet swore at the old man
under his breath.
Sailing across the bay to the _Chênière Caminada_, Edna felt as if she
were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast,
whose chains had been loosening—had snapped the night before when the
mystic spirit was abroad, leaving her free to drift whithersoever she
chose to set her sails. Robert spoke to her incessantly; he no longer
noticed Mariequita. The girl had shrimps in her bamboo basket. They