Victor, with hammer and nails and scraps of scantling, was patching a
corner of one of the galleries. Mariequita sat near by, dangling her
legs, watching him work, and handing him nails from the tool-box. The
sun was beating down upon them. The girl had covered her head with her
apron folded into a square pad. They had been talking for an hour or
more. She was never tired of hearing Victor describe the dinner at Mrs.
Pontellier’s. He exaggerated every detail, making it appear a veritable
Lucullean feast. The flowers were in tubs, he said. The champagne was
quaffed from huge golden goblets. Venus rising from the foam could have
presented no more entrancing a spectacle than Mrs. Pontellier, blazing
with beauty and diamonds at the head of the board, while the other
women were all of them youthful houris, possessed of incomparable
charms. She got it into her head that Victor was in love with Mrs.
Pontellier, and he gave her evasive answers, framed so as to confirm
her belief. She grew sullen and cried a little, threatening to go off
and leave him to his fine ladies. There were a dozen men crazy about
her at the _Chênière;_ and since it was the fashion to be in love with
married people, why, she could run away any time she liked to New
Orleans with Célina’s husband.
Célina’s husband was a fool, a coward, and a pig, and to prove it to
her, Victor intended to hammer his head into a jelly the next time he
encountered him. This assurance was very consoling to Mariequita. She
dried her eyes, and grew cheerful at the prospect.
They were still talking of the dinner and the allurements of city life
when Mrs. Pontellier herself slipped around the corner of the house.
The two youngsters stayed dumb with amazement before what they
considered to be an apparition. But it was really she in flesh and
blood, looking tired and a little travel-stained.
“I walked up from the wharf,” she said, “and heard the hammering. I
supposed it was you, mending the porch. It’s a good thing. I was always
tripping over those loose planks last summer. How dreary and deserted
everything looks!”
It took Victor some little time to comprehend that she had come in
Beaudelet’s lugger, that she had come alone, and for no purpose but to
rest.
“There’s nothing fixed up yet, you see. I’ll give you my room; it’s the
only place.”
“Any corner will do,” she assured him.
“And if you can stand Philomel’s cooking,” he went on, “though I might
try to get her mother while you are here. Do you think she would come?”
turning to Mariequita.
Mariequita thought that perhaps Philomel’s mother might come for a few
days, and money enough.
Beholding Mrs. Pontellier make her appearance, the girl had at once
suspected a lovers’ rendezvous. But Victor’s astonishment was so
genuine, and Mrs. Pontellier’s indifference so apparent, that the
disturbing notion did not lodge long in her brain. She contemplated
with the greatest interest this woman who gave the most sumptuous
dinners in America, and who had all the men in New Orleans at her feet.
“What time will you have dinner?” asked Edna. “I’m very hungry; but
don’t get anything extra.”
“I’ll have it ready in little or no time,” he said, bustling and
packing away his tools. “You may go to my room to brush up and rest
yourself. Mariequita will show you.”
“Thank you,” said Edna. “But, do you know, I have a notion to go down
to the beach and take a good wash and even a little swim, before
dinner?”
“The water is too cold!” they both exclaimed. “Don’t think of it.”
“Well, I might go down and try—dip my toes in. Why, it seems to me the
sun is hot enough to have warmed the very depths of the ocean. Could
you get me a couple of towels? I’d better go right away, so as to be
back in time. It would be a little too chilly if I waited till this
afternoon.”
Mariequita ran over to Victor’s room, and returned with some towels,
which she gave to Edna.
“I hope you have fish for dinner,” said Edna, as she started to walk
away; “but don’t do anything extra if you haven’t.”
“Run and find Philomel’s mother,” Victor instructed the girl. “I’ll go
to the kitchen and see what I can do. By Gimminy! Women have no
consideration! She might have sent me word.”
Edna walked on down to the beach rather mechanically, not noticing
anything special except that the sun was hot. She was not dwelling upon
any particular train of thought. She had done all the thinking which
was necessary after Robert went away, when she lay awake upon the sofa
till morning.
She had said over and over to herself: “To-day it is Arobin; to-morrow
it will be some one else. It makes no difference to me, it doesn’t
matter about Léonce Pontellier—but Raoul and Etienne!” She understood
now clearly what she had meant long ago when she said to Adèle
Ratignolle that she would give up the unessential, but she would never
sacrifice herself for her children.
Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never
lifted. There was no one thing in the world that she desired. There was
no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even
realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him
would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone. The children
appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had
overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul’s slavery for the rest
of her days. But she knew a way to elude them. She was not thinking of
these things when she walked down to the beach.
The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the
million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never
ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander
in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there
was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the
air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the
water.
Edna had found her old bathing suit still hanging, faded, upon its
accustomed peg.
She put it on, leaving her clothing in the bath-house. But when she was
there beside the sea, absolutely alone, she cast the unpleasant,
pricking garments from her, and for the first time in her life she
stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that
beat upon her, and the waves that invited her.
How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! how
delicious! She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a
familiar world that it had never known.
The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like
serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she
walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and
reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is
sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
She went on and on. She remembered the night she swam far out, and
recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to
regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on,
thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little
child, believing that it had no beginning and no end.
Her arms and legs were growing tired.
She thought of Léonce and the children. They were a part of her life.
But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and
soul. How Mademoiselle Reisz would have laughed, perhaps sneered, if
she knew! “And you call yourself an artist! What pretensions, Madame!
The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies.”
Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her.
“Good-by—because I love you.” He did not know; he did not understand.
He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have
understood if she had seen him—but it was too late; the shore was far
behind her, and her strength was gone.
She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an
instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father’s voice and her sister
Margaret’s. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the
sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked
across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of
pinks filled the air.