“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
your confidence. I will only say that if ever you feel moved to give it
to me, perhaps I might help you. I know I would understand. And I tell
you there are not many who would—not many, my dear.”
“Some way I don’t feel moved to speak of things that trouble me. Don’t
think I am ungrateful or that I don’t appreciate your sympathy. There
are periods of despondency and suffering which take possession of me.
But I don’t want anything but my own way. That is wanting a good deal,
of course, when you have to trample upon the lives, the hearts, the
prejudices of others—but no matter—still, I shouldn’t want to trample
upon the little lives. Oh! I don’t know what I’m saying, Doctor. Good
night. Don’t blame me for anything.”
“Yes, I will blame you if you don’t come and see me soon. We will talk
of things you never have dreamt of talking about before. It will do us
both good. I don’t want you to blame yourself, whatever comes. Good
night, my child.”
She let herself in at the gate, but instead of entering she sat upon
the step of the porch. The night was quiet and soothing. All the
tearing emotion of the last few hours seemed to fall away from her like
a somber, uncomfortable garment, which she had but to loosen to be rid
of. She went back to that hour before Adèle had sent for her; and her
senses kindled afresh in thinking of Robert’s words, the pressure of
his arms, and the feeling of his lips upon her own. She could picture
at that moment no greater bliss on earth than possession of the beloved
one. His expression of love had already given him to her in part. When
she thought that he was there at hand, waiting for her, she grew numb
with the intoxication of expectancy. It was so late; he would be asleep
perhaps. She would awaken him with a kiss. She hoped he would be asleep
that she might arouse him with her caresses.
Still, she remembered Adèle’s voice whispering, “Think of the children;
think of them.” She meant to think of them; that determination had
driven into her soul like a death wound—but not to-night. To-morrow
would be time to think of everything.
Robert was not waiting for her in the little parlor. He was nowhere at
hand. The house was empty. But he had scrawled on a piece of paper that
lay in the lamplight:
“I love you. Good-by—because I love you.”
Edna grew faint when she read the words. She went and sat on the sofa.
Then she stretched herself out there, never uttering a sound. She did
not sleep. She did not go to bed. The lamp sputtered and went out. She
was still awake in the morning, when Celestine unlocked the kitchen
door and came in to light the fire.
XXXIX
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.
BEYOND THE BAYOU
The bayou curved like a crescent around the point of land on which La
Folle’s cabin stood. Between the stream and the hut lay a big abandoned
field, where cattle were pastured when the bayou supplied them with
water enough. Through the woods that spread back into unknown regions
the woman had drawn an imaginary line, and past this circle she never
stepped. This was the form of her only mania.
She was now a large, gaunt black woman, past thirty-five. Her real name
was Jacqueline, but every one on the plantation called her La Folle,
because in childhood she had been frightened literally “out of her
senses,” and had never wholly regained them.
It was when there had been skirmishing and sharpshooting all day in the
woods. Evening was near when P’tit Maître, black with powder and
crimson with blood, had staggered into the cabin of Jacqueline’s
mother, his pursuers close at his heels. The sight had stunned her
childish reason.
She dwelt alone in her solitary cabin, for the rest of the quarters had
long since been removed beyond her sight and knowledge. She had more
physical strength than most men, and made her patch of cotton and corn
and tobacco like the best of them. But of the world beyond the bayou
she had long known nothing, save what her morbid fancy conceived.
People at Bellissime had grown used to her and her way, and they
thought nothing of it. Even when “Old Mis’” died, they did not wonder
that La Folle had not crossed the bayou, but had stood upon her side of
it, wailing and lamenting.
P’tit Maître was now the owner of Bellissime. He was a middle-aged man,
with a family of beautiful daughters about him, and a little son whom
La Folle loved as if he had been her own. She called him Chéri, and so
did every one else because she did.
None of the girls had ever been to her what Chéri was. They had each
and all loved to be with her, and to listen to her wondrous stories of
things that always happened “yonda, beyon’ de bayou.”
But none of them had stroked her black hand quite as Chéri did, nor
rested their heads against her knee so confidingly, nor fallen asleep
in her arms as he used to do. For Chéri hardly did such things now,
since he had become the proud possessor of a gun, and had had his black
curls cut off.
That summer—the summer Chéri gave La Folle two black curls tied with a
knot of red ribbon—the water ran so low in the bayou that even the
little children at Bellissime were able to cross it on foot, and the
cattle were sent to pasture down by the river. La Folle was sorry when
they were gone, for she loved these dumb companions well, and liked to
feel that they were there, and to hear them browsing by night up to her
own enclosure.
It was Saturday afternoon, when the fields were deserted. The men had
flocked to a neighboring village to do their week’s trading, and the
women were occupied with household affairs,—La Folle as well as the
others. It was then she mended and washed her handful of clothes,
scoured her house, and did her baking.
In this last employment she never forgot Chéri. To-day she had
fashioned croquignoles of the most fantastic and alluring shapes for
him. So when she saw the boy come trudging across the old field with
his gleaming little new rifle on his shoulder, she called out gayly to
him, “Chéri! Chéri!”
But Chéri did not need the summons, for he was coming straight to her.
His pockets all bulged out with almonds and raisins and an orange that
he had secured for her from the very fine dinner which had been given
that day up at his father’s house.
He was a sunny-faced youngster of ten. When he had emptied his pockets,
La Folle patted his round red cheek, wiped his soiled hands on her
apron, and smoothed his hair. Then she watched him as, with his cakes
in his hand, he crossed her strip of cotton back of the cabin, and
disappeared into the wood.
He had boasted of the things he was going to do with his gun out there.
“You think they got plenty deer in the wood, La Folle?” he had
inquired, with the calculating air of an experienced hunter.
“_Non, non!_” the woman laughed. “Don’t you look fo’ no deer, Chéri.
Dat’s too big. But you bring La Folle one good fat squirrel fo’ her
dinner to-morrow, an’ she goin’ be satisfi’.”
“One squirrel ain’t a bite. I’ll bring you mo’ ’an one, La Folle,” he
had boasted pompously as he went away.
When the woman, an hour later, heard the report of the boy’s rifle
close to the wood’s edge, she would have thought nothing of it if a
sharp cry of distress had not followed the sound.
She withdrew her arms from the tub of suds in which they had been
plunged, dried them upon her apron, and as quickly as her trembling
limbs would bear her, hurried to the spot whence the ominous report had
come.
It was as she feared. There she found Chéri stretched upon the ground,
with his rifle beside him. He moaned piteously:—
“I’m dead, La Folle! I’m dead! I’m gone!”
“_Non, non!_” she exclaimed resolutely, as she knelt beside him. “Put
you’ arm ’roun’ La Folle’s nake, Chéri. Dat’s nuttin’; dat goin’ be
nuttin’.” She lifted him in her powerful arms.
Chéri had carried his gun muzzle-downward. He had stumbled,—he did not
know how. He only knew that he had a ball lodged somewhere in his leg,
and he thought that his end was at hand. Now, with his head upon the
woman’s shoulder, he moaned and wept with pain and fright.
“Oh, La Folle! La Folle! it hurt so bad! I can’ stan’ it, La Folle!”
“Don’t cry, _mon bébé, mon bébé, mon Chéri!_” the woman spoke
soothingly as she covered the ground with long strides. “La Folle goin’
mine you; Doctor Bonfils goin’ come make _mon Chéri_ well agin.”
She had reached the abandoned field. As she crossed it with her
precious burden, she looked constantly and restlessly from side to
side. A terrible fear was upon her,—the fear of the world beyond the
bayou, the morbid and insane dread she had been under since childhood.
When she was at the bayou’s edge she stood there, and shouted for help
as if a life depended upon it:—
“Oh, P’tit Maître! P’tit Maître! Venez donc! Au secours! Au secours!”
No voice responded. Chéri’s hot tears were scalding her neck. She
called for each and every one upon the place, and still no answer came.
She shouted, she wailed; but whether her voice remained unheard or
unheeded, no reply came to her frenzied cries. And all the while Chéri
moaned and wept and entreated to be taken home to his mother.
La Folle gave a last despairing look around her. Extreme terror was
upon her. She clasped the child close against her breast, where he
could feel her heart beat like a muffled hammer. Then shutting her
eyes, she ran suddenly down the shallow bank of the bayou, and never
stopped till she had climbed the opposite shore.
She stood there quivering an instant as she opened her eyes. Then she
plunged into the footpath through the trees.
She spoke no more to Chéri, but muttered constantly, “Bon Dieu, ayez
pitié La Folle! Bon Dieu, ayez pitié moi!”
Instinct seemed to guide her. When the pathway spread clear and smooth
enough before her, she again closed her eyes tightly against the sight
of that unknown and terrifying world.
A child, playing in some weeds, caught sight of her as she neared the
quarters. The little one uttered a cry of dismay.
“La Folle!” she screamed, in her piercing treble. “La Folle done cross
de bayer!”
Quickly the cry passed down the line of cabins.
“Yonda, La Folle done cross de bayou!”
Children, old men, old women, young ones with infants in their arms,
flocked to doors and windows to see this awe-inspiring spectacle. Most
of them shuddered with superstitious dread of what it might portend.
“She totin’ Chéri!” some of them shouted.
Some of the more daring gathered about her, and followed at her heels,
only to fall back with new terror when she turned her distorted face
upon them. Her eyes were bloodshot and the saliva had gathered in a
white foam on her black lips.
Some one had run ahead of her to where P’tit Maître sat with his family
and guests upon the gallery.
“P’tit Maître! La Folle done cross de bayou! Look her! Look her yonda
totin’ Chéri!” This startling intimation was the first which they had
of the woman’s approach.
She was now near at hand. She walked with long strides. Her eyes were
fixed desperately before her, and she breathed heavily, as a tired ox.
At the foot of the stairway, which she could not have mounted, she laid
the boy in his father’s arms. Then the world that had looked red to La
Folle suddenly turned black,—like that day she had seen powder and
blood.
She reeled for an instant. Before a sustaining arm could reach her, she
fell heavily to the ground.
When La Folle regained consciousness, she was at home again, in her own
cabin and upon her own bed. The moon rays, streaming in through the
open door and windows, gave what light was needed to the old black
mammy who stood at the table concocting a tisane of fragrant herbs. It
was very late.
Others who had come, and found that the stupor clung to her, had gone
again. P’tit Maître had been there, and with him Doctor Bonfils, who
said that La Folle might die.
But death had passed her by. The voice was very clear and steady with
which she spoke to Tante Lizette, brewing her tisane there in a corner.
“Ef you will give me one good drink tisane, Tante Lizette, I b’lieve
I’m goin’ sleep, me.”
And she did sleep; so soundly, so healthfully, that old Lizette without
compunction stole softly away, to creep back through the moonlit fields
to her own cabin in the new quarters.
The first touch of the cool gray morning awoke La Folle. She arose,
calmly, as if no tempest had shaken and threatened her existence but
yesterday.
