Part IX

Every light in the hall was ablaze; every lamp turned as high

as it could be without smoking the chimney or threatening explosion.

The lamps were fixed at intervals against the wall, encircling the whole room.

Some one had gathered orange and lemon branches, and with these fashioned

graceful festoons between. The dark green of the branches stood out

and glistened against the white muslin curtains which draped the windows,

and which puffed, floated, and flapped at the capricious will of a stiff

breeze that swept up from the Gulf.

It was Saturday night a few weeks after the intimate

conversation held between Robert and Madame Ratignolle on their way

from the beach. An unusual number of husbands, fathers, and

friends had come down to stay over Sunday; and they were being

suitably entertained by their families, with the material help of

Madame Lebrun. The dining tables had all been removed to one end

of the hall, and the chairs ranged about in rows and in clusters.

Each little family group had had its say and exchanged its domestic

gossip earlier in the evening. There was now an apparent

disposition to relax; to widen the circle of confidences and give

a more general tone to the conversation.

Many of the children had been permitted to sit up beyond their

usual bedtime. A small band of them were lying on their stomachs

on the floor looking at the colored sheets of the comic papers

which Mr. Pontellier had brought down. The little Pontellier boys

were permitting them to do so, and making their authority felt.

Music, dancing, and a recitation or two were the

entertainments furnished, or rather, offered. But there was nothing

systematic about the programme, no appearance of prearrangement nor

even premeditation.

At an early hour in the evening the Farival twins were

prevailed upon to play the piano. They were girls of fourteen,

always clad in the Virgin's colors, blue and white, having been

dedicated to the Blessed Virgin at their baptism. They played a

duet from "Zampa," and at the earnest solicitation of every one

present followed it with the overture to "The Poet and the

Peasant."

"Allez vous-en! Sapristi!" shrieked the parrot outside the

door. He was the only being present who possessed sufficient

candor to admit that he was not listening to these gracious

performances for the first time that summer. Old Monsieur Farival,

grandfather of the twins, grew indignant over the interruption,

and insisted upon having the bird removed and consigned

to regions of darkness. Victor Lebrun objected;

and his decrees were as immutable as those of Fate.

The parrot fortunately offered no further interruption

to the entertainment, the whole venom of his nature

apparently having been cherished up and hurled against

the twins in that one impetuous outburst.

Later a young brother and sister gave recitations, which every

one present had heard many times at winter evening entertainments

in the city.

A little girl performed a skirt dance in the center of the

floor. The mother played her accompaniments and at the same time

watched her daughter with greedy admiration and nervous

apprehension. She need have had no apprehension. The child was

mistress of the situation. She had been properly dressed for the

occasion in black tulle and black silk tights. Her little neck and

arms were bare, and her hair, artificially crimped, stood out like

fluffy black plumes over her head. Her poses were full of grace,

and her little black-shod toes twinkled as they shot out and upward

with a rapidity and suddenness which were bewildering.

But there was no reason why every one should not dance.

Madame Ratignolle could not, so it was she who gaily consented to

play for the others. She played very well, keeping excellent waltz

time and infusing an expression into the strains which was indeed

inspiring. She was keeping up her music on account of the

children, she said; because she and her husband both considered it

a means of brightening the home and making it attractive.

Almost every one danced but the twins, who could not be

induced to separate during the brief period when one or the other

should be whirling around the room in the arms of a man. They

might have danced together, but they did not think of it.

The children were sent to bed. Some went submissively;

others with shrieks and protests as they were dragged away.

They had been permitted to sit up till after the ice-cream,

which naturally marked the limit of human indulgence.

The ice-cream was passed around with cake—gold and silver

cake arranged on platters in alternate slices; it had been made and

frozen during the afternoon back of the kitchen by two black women,

under the supervision of Victor. It was pronounced a great

success—excellent if it had only contained a little less vanilla

or a little more sugar, if it had been frozen a degree harder, and

if the salt might have been kept out of portions of it. Victor was

proud of his achievement, and went about recommending it and urging

every one to partake of it to excess.

After Mrs. Pontellier had danced twice with her husband, once

with Robert, and once with Monsieur Ratignolle, who was thin and

tall and swayed like a reed in the wind when he danced, she went

out on the gallery and seated herself on the low window-sill, where

she commanded a view of all that went on in the hall and could look

out toward the Gulf. There was a soft effulgence in the east. The

moon was coming up, and its mystic shimmer was casting a million

lights across the distant, restless water.

"Would you like to hear Mademoiselle Reisz play?" asked

Robert, coming out on the porch where she was. Of course Edna

would like to hear Mademoiselle Reisz play; but she feared it would

be useless to entreat her.

"I'll ask her," he said. "I'll tell her that you want to hear

her. She likes you. She will come." He turned and hurried away to

one of the far cottages, where Mademoiselle Reisz was shuffling

away. She was dragging a chair in and out of her room, and at

intervals objecting to the crying of a baby, which a nurse in the

adjoining cottage was endeavoring to put to sleep. She was a

disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who had quarreled with

almost every one, owing to a temper which was self-assertive and a

disposition to trample upon the rights of others. Robert prevailed

upon her without any too great difficulty.

She entered the hall with him during a lull in the dance. She

made an awkward, imperious little bow as she went in. She was a

homely woman, with a small weazened face and body and eyes that

glowed. She had absolutely no taste in dress, and wore a batch of

rusty black lace with a bunch of artificial violets pinned to the

side of her hair.

"Ask Mrs. Pontellier what she would like to hear me play," she

requested of Robert. She sat perfectly still before the piano, not

touching the keys, while Robert carried her message to Edna at the

window. A general air of surprise and genuine satisfaction fell

upon every one as they saw the pianist enter. There was a settling

down, and a prevailing air of expectancy everywhere. Edna was a

trifle embarrassed at being thus signaled out for the imperious

little woman's favor. She would not dare to choose, and begged

that Mademoiselle Reisz would please herself in her selections.

Edna was what she herself called very fond of music. Musical

strains, well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind.

She sometimes liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame

Ratignolle played or practiced. One piece which that lady played

Edna had entitled "Solitude." It was a short, plaintive, minor

strain. The name of the piece was something else, but she called

it "Solitude." When she heard it there came before her imagination

the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the

seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless

resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight

away from him.

Another piece called to her mind a dainty young woman clad in

an Empire gown, taking mincing dancing steps as she came down a

long avenue between tall hedges. Again, another reminded her of

children at play, and still another of nothing on earth but a

demure lady stroking a cat.

The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon the

piano sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier's spinal column. It

was not the first time she had heard an artist at the piano.

Perhaps it was the first time she was ready, perhaps the first time

her being was tempered to take an impress of the abiding truth.

She waited for the material pictures which she thought would

gather and blaze before her imagination. She waited in vain. She

saw no pictures of solitude, of hope, of longing, or of despair.

But the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul,

swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid

body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her.

Mademoiselle had finished. She arose, and bowing her stiff,

lofty bow, she went away, stopping for neither, thanks nor

applause. As she passed along the gallery she patted Edna upon the

shoulder.

"Well, how did you like my music?" she asked. The young woman

was unable to answer; she pressed the hand of the pianist

convulsively. Mademoiselle Reisz perceived her agitation and even

her tears. She patted her again upon the shoulder as she said:

"You are the only one worth playing for. Those others? Bah!"

and she went shuffling and sidling on down the gallery toward her

room.

But she was mistaken about "those others." Her playing had

aroused a fever of enthusiasm. "What passion!" "What an artist!"

"I have always said no one could play Chopin like Mademoiselle

Reisz!" "That last prelude! Bon Dieu! It shakes a man!"

It was growing late, and there was a general disposition to

disband. But some one, perhaps it was Robert, thought of a bath at

that mystic hour and under that mystic moon.