Part 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 Cheniere; 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 Celina's husband.

Celina'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 Leonce Pontellier—but Raoul and Etienne!"

She understood now clearly what she had meant long ago when she

said to Adele 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 Leonce 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.