A feeling of oppression and drowsiness overcame Edna during the
service. Her head began to ache, and the lights on the altar swayed
before her eyes. Another time she might have made an effort to regain
her composure; but her one thought was to quit the stifling atmosphere
of the church and reach the open air. She arose, climbing over Robert’s
feet with a muttered apology. Old Monsieur Farival, flurried, curious,
stood up, but upon seeing that Robert had followed Mrs. Pontellier, he
sank back into his seat. He whispered an anxious inquiry of the lady in
black, who did not notice him or reply, but kept her eyes fastened upon
the pages of her velvet prayer-book.
“I felt giddy and almost overcome,” Edna said, lifting her hands
instinctively to her head and pushing her straw hat up from her
forehead. “I couldn’t have stayed through the service.” They were
outside in the shadow of the church. Robert was full of solicitude.
“It was folly to have thought of going in the first place, let alone
staying. Come over to Madame Antoine’s; you can rest there.” He took
her arm and led her away, looking anxiously and continuously down into
her face.
How still it was, with only the voice of the sea whispering through the
reeds that grew in the salt-water pools! The long line of little gray,
weather-beaten houses nestled peacefully among the orange trees. It
must always have been God’s day on that low, drowsy island, Edna
thought. They stopped, leaning over a jagged fence made of sea-drift,
to ask for water. A youth, a mild-faced Acadian, was drawing water from
the cistern, which was nothing more than a rusty buoy, with an opening
on one side, sunk in the ground. The water which the youth handed to
them in a tin pail was not cold to taste, but it was cool to her heated
face, and it greatly revived and refreshed her.
Madame Antoine’s cot was at the far end of the village. She welcomed
them with all the native hospitality, as she would have opened her door
to let the sunlight in. She was fat, and walked heavily and clumsily
across the floor. She could speak no English, but when Robert made her
understand that the lady who accompanied him was ill and desired to
rest, she was all eagerness to make Edna feel at home and to dispose of
her comfortably.
The whole place was immaculately clean, and the big, four-posted bed,
snow-white, invited one to repose. It stood in a small side room which
looked out across a narrow grass plot toward the shed, where there was
a disabled boat lying keel upward.
Madame Antoine had not gone to mass. Her son Tonie had, but she
supposed he would soon be back, and she invited Robert to be seated and
wait for him. But he went and sat outside the door and smoked. Madame
Antoine busied herself in the large front room preparing dinner. She
was boiling mullets over a few red coals in the huge fireplace.
Edna, left alone in the little side room, loosened her clothes,
removing the greater part of them. She bathed her face, her neck and
arms in the basin that stood between the windows. She took off her
shoes and stockings and stretched herself in the very center of the
high, white bed. How luxurious it felt to rest thus in a strange,
quaint bed, with its sweet country odor of laurel lingering about the
sheets and mattress! She stretched her strong limbs that ached a
little. She ran her fingers through her loosened hair for a while. She
looked at her round arms as she held them straight up and rubbed them
one after the other, observing closely, as if it were something she saw
for the first time, the fine, firm quality and texture of her flesh.
She clasped her hands easily above her head, and it was thus she fell
asleep.
She slept lightly at first, half awake and drowsily attentive to the
things about her. She could hear Madame Antoine’s heavy, scraping tread
as she walked back and forth on the sanded floor. Some chickens were
clucking outside the windows, scratching for bits of gravel in the
grass. Later she half heard the voices of Robert and Tonie talking
under the shed. She did not stir. Even her eyelids rested numb and
heavily over her sleepy eyes. The voices went on—Tonie’s slow, Acadian
drawl, Robert’s quick, soft, smooth French. She understood French
imperfectly unless directly addressed, and the voices were only part of
the other drowsy, muffled sounds lulling her senses.
When Edna awoke it was with the conviction that she had slept long and
soundly. The voices were hushed under the shed. Madame Antoine’s step
was no longer to be heard in the adjoining room. Even the chickens had
gone elsewhere to scratch and cluck. The mosquito bar was drawn over
her; the old woman had come in while she slept and let down the bar.
Edna arose quietly from the bed, and looking between the curtains of
the window, she saw by the slanting rays of the sun that the afternoon
was far advanced. Robert was out there under the shed, reclining in the
shade against the sloping keel of the overturned boat. He was reading
from a book. Tonie was no longer with him. She wondered what had become
of the rest of the party. She peeped out at him two or three times as
she stood washing herself in the little basin between the windows.
Madame Antoine had laid some coarse, clean towels upon a chair, and had
placed a box of _poudre de riz_ within easy reach. Edna dabbed the
powder upon her nose and cheeks as she looked at herself closely in the
little distorted mirror which hung on the wall above the basin. Her
eyes were bright and wide awake and her face glowed.
When she had completed her toilet she walked into the adjoining room.
She was very hungry. No one was there. But there was a cloth spread
upon the table that stood against the wall, and a cover was laid for
one, with a crusty brown loaf and a bottle of wine beside the plate.
Edna bit a piece from the brown loaf, tearing it with her strong, white
teeth. She poured some of the wine into the glass and drank it down.
Then she went softly out of doors, and plucking an orange from the
low-hanging bough of a tree, threw it at Robert, who did not know she
was awake and up.
An illumination broke over his whole face when he saw her and joined
her under the orange tree.
“How many years have I slept?” she inquired. “The whole island seems
changed. A new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving only you and
me as past relics. How many ages ago did Madame Antoine and Tonie die?
and when did our people from Grand Isle disappear from the earth?”
He familiarly adjusted a ruffle upon her shoulder.
“You have slept precisely one hundred years. I was left here to guard
your slumbers; and for one hundred years I have been out under the shed
reading a book. The only evil I couldn’t prevent was to keep a broiled
fowl from drying up.”
“If it has turned to stone, still will I eat it,” said Edna, moving
with him into the house. “But really, what has become of Monsieur
Farival and the others?”
“Gone hours ago. When they found that you were sleeping they thought it
best not to awake you. Any way, I wouldn’t have let them. What was I
here for?”
“I wonder if Léonce will be uneasy!” she speculated, as she seated
herself at table.
“Of course not; he knows you are with me,” Robert replied, as he busied
himself among sundry pans and covered dishes which had been left
standing on the hearth.
“Where are Madame Antoine and her son?” asked Edna.
“Gone to Vespers, and to visit some friends, I believe. I am to take
you back in Tonie’s boat whenever you are ready to go.”
He stirred the smoldering ashes till the broiled fowl began to sizzle
afresh. He served her with no mean repast, dripping the coffee anew and
sharing it with her. Madame Antoine had cooked little else than the
mullets, but while Edna slept Robert had foraged the island. He was
childishly gratified to discover her appetite, and to see the relish
with which she ate the food which he had procured for her.
“Shall we go right away?” she asked, after draining her glass and
brushing together the crumbs of the crusty loaf.
“The sun isn’t as low as it will be in two hours,” he answered.
“The sun will be gone in two hours.”
“Well, let it go; who cares!”
They waited a good while under the orange trees, till Madame Antoine
came back, panting, waddling, with a thousand apologies to explain her
absence. Tonie did not dare to return. He was shy, and would not
willingly face any woman except his mother.
It was very pleasant to stay there under the orange trees, while the
sun dipped lower and lower, turning the western sky to flaming copper
and gold. The shadows lengthened and crept out like stealthy, grotesque
monsters across the grass.
Edna and Robert both sat upon the ground—that is, he lay upon the
ground beside her, occasionally picking at the hem of her muslin gown.
Madame Antoine seated her fat body, broad and squat, upon a bench
beside the door. She had been talking all the afternoon, and had wound
herself up to the storytelling pitch.
And what stories she told them! But twice in her life she had left the
_Chênière Caminada_, and then for the briefest span. All her years she
had squatted and waddled there upon the island, gathering legends of
the Baratarians and the sea. The night came on, with the moon to
lighten it. Edna could hear the whispering voices of dead men and the
click of muffled gold.
When she and Robert stepped into Tonie’s boat, with the red lateen
sail, misty spirit forms were prowling in the shadows and among the
reeds, and upon the water were phantom ships, speeding to cover.