The Awakening

hen the weather was dark and cloudy Edna could not work. She needed
the sun to mellow and temper her mood to the sticking point. She had
reached a stage when she seemed to be no longer feeling her way,
working, when in the humor, with sureness and ease. And being devoid of
ambition, and striving not toward accomplishment, she drew satisfaction
from the work in itself.

On rainy or melancholy days Edna went out and sought the society of the
friends she had made at Grand Isle. Or else she stayed indoors and
nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own
comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her as
if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.
Yet there were other days when she listened, was led on and deceived by
fresh promises which her youth held out to her.

She went again to the races, and again. Alcée Arobin and Mrs. Highcamp
called for her one bright afternoon in Arobin’s drag. Mrs. Highcamp was
a worldly but unaffected, intelligent, slim, tall blonde woman in the
forties, with an indifferent manner and blue eyes that stared. She had
a daughter who served her as a pretext for cultivating the society of
young men of fashion. Alcée Arobin was one of them. He was a familiar
figure at the race course, the opera, the fashionable clubs. There was
a perpetual smile in his eyes, which seldom failed to awaken a
corresponding cheerfulness in any one who looked into them and listened
to his good-humored voice. His manner was quiet, and at times a little
insolent. He possessed a good figure, a pleasing face, not overburdened
with depth of thought or feeling; and his dress was that of the
conventional man of fashion.

He admired Edna extravagantly, after meeting her at the races with her
father. He had met her before on other occasions, but she had seemed to
him unapproachable until that day. It was at his instigation that Mrs.
Highcamp called to ask her to go with them to the Jockey Club to
witness the turf event of the season.

There were possibly a few track men out there who knew the race horse
as well as Edna, but there was certainly none who knew it better. She
sat between her two companions as one having authority to speak. She
laughed at Arobin’s pretensions, and deplored Mrs. Highcamp’s
ignorance. The race horse was a friend and intimate associate of her
childhood. The atmosphere of the stables and the breath of the blue
grass paddock revived in her memory and lingered in her nostrils. She
did not perceive that she was talking like her father as the sleek
geldings ambled in review before them. She played for very high stakes,
and fortune favored her. The fever of the game flamed in her cheeks and
eyes, and it got into her blood and into her brain like an intoxicant.
People turned their heads to look at her, and more than one lent an
attentive ear to her utterances, hoping thereby to secure the elusive
but ever-desired “tip.” Arobin caught the contagion of excitement which
drew him to Edna like a magnet. Mrs. Highcamp remained, as usual,
unmoved, with her indifferent stare and uplifted eyebrows.

Edna stayed and dined with Mrs. Highcamp upon being urged to do so.
Arobin also remained and sent away his drag.

The dinner was quiet and uninteresting, save for the cheerful efforts
of Arobin to enliven things. Mrs. Highcamp deplored the absence of her
daughter from the races, and tried to convey to her what she had missed
by going to the “Dante reading” instead of joining them. The girl held
a geranium leaf up to her nose and said nothing, but looked knowing and
noncommittal. Mr. Highcamp was a plain, bald-headed man, who only
talked under compulsion. He was unresponsive. Mrs. Highcamp was full of
delicate courtesy and consideration toward her husband. She addressed
most of her conversation to him at table. They sat in the library after
dinner and read the evening papers together under the droplight; while
the younger people went into the drawing-room near by and talked. Miss
Highcamp played some selections from Grieg upon the piano. She seemed
to have apprehended all of the composer’s coldness and none of his
poetry. While Edna listened she could not help wondering if she had
lost her taste for music.

When the time came for her to go home, Mr. Highcamp grunted a lame
offer to escort her, looking down at his slippered feet with tactless
concern. It was Arobin who took her home. The car ride was long, and it
was late when they reached Esplanade Street. Arobin asked permission to
enter for a second to light his cigarette—his match safe was empty. He
filled his match safe, but did not light his cigarette until he left
her, after she had expressed her willingness to go to the races with
him again.

Edna was neither tired nor sleepy. She was hungry again, for the
Highcamp dinner, though of excellent quality, had lacked abundance. She
rummaged in the larder and brought forth a slice of Gruyere and some
crackers. She opened a bottle of beer which she found in the icebox.
Edna felt extremely restless and excited. She vacantly hummed a
fantastic tune as she poked at the wood embers on the hearth and
munched a cracker.

She wanted something to happen—something, anything; she did not know
what. She regretted that she had not made Arobin stay a half hour to
talk over the horses with her. She counted the money she had won. But
there was nothing else to do, so she went to bed, and tossed there for
hours in a sort of monotonous agitation.

In the middle of the night she remembered that she had forgotten to
write her regular letter to her husband; and she decided to do so next
day and tell him about her afternoon at the Jockey Club. She lay wide
awake composing a letter which was nothing like the one which she wrote
next day. When the maid awoke her in the morning Edna was dreaming of
Mr. Highcamp playing the piano at the entrance of a music store on
Canal Street, while his wife was saying to Alcée Arobin, as they
boarded an Esplanade Street car:

“What a pity that so much talent has been neglected! but I must go.”

When, a few days later, Alcée Arobin again called for Edna in his drag,
Mrs. Highcamp was not with him. He said they would pick her up. But as
that lady had not been apprised of his intention of picking her up, she
was not at home. The daughter was just leaving the house to attend the
meeting of a branch Folk Lore Society, and regretted that she could not
accompany them. Arobin appeared nonplused, and asked Edna if there were
any one else she cared to ask.

She did not deem it worth while to go in search of any of the
fashionable acquaintances from whom she had withdrawn herself. She
thought of Madame Ratignolle, but knew that her fair friend did not
leave the house, except to take a languid walk around the block with
her husband after nightfall. Mademoiselle Reisz would have laughed at
such a request from Edna. Madame Lebrun might have enjoyed the outing,
but for some reason Edna did not want her. So they went alone, she and
Arobin.

The afternoon was intensely interesting to her. The excitement came
back upon her like a remittent fever. Her talk grew familiar and
confidential. It was no labor to become intimate with Arobin. His
manner invited easy confidence. The preliminary stage of becoming
acquainted was one which he always endeavored to ignore when a pretty
and engaging woman was concerned.

He stayed and dined with Edna. He stayed and sat beside the wood fire.
They laughed and talked; and before it was time to go he was telling
her how different life might have been if he had known her years
before. With ingenuous frankness he spoke of what a wicked,
ill-disciplined boy he had been, and impulsively drew up his cuff to
exhibit upon his wrist the scar from a saber cut which he had received
in a duel outside of Paris when he was nineteen. She touched his hand
as she scanned the red cicatrice on the inside of his white wrist. A
quick impulse that was somewhat spasmodic impelled her fingers to close
in a sort of clutch upon his hand. He felt the pressure of her pointed
nails in the flesh of his palm.

She arose hastily and walked toward the mantel.

“The sight of a wound or scar always agitates and sickens me,” she
said. “I shouldn’t have looked at it.”

“I beg your pardon,” he entreated, following her; “it never occurred to
me that it might be repulsive.”

He stood close to her, and the effrontery in his eyes repelled the old,
vanishing self in her, yet drew all her awakening sensuousness. He saw
enough in her face to impel him to take her hand and hold it while he
said his lingering good night.

“Will you go to the races again?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ve had enough of the races. I don’t want to lose all
the money I’ve won, and I’ve got to work when the weather is bright,
instead of—”

“Yes; work; to be sure. You promised to show me your work. What morning
may I come up to your atelier? To-morrow?”

“No!”

“Day after?”

“No, no.”

“Oh, please don’t refuse me! I know something of such things. I might
help you with a stray suggestion or two.”

“No. Good night. Why don’t you go after you have said good night? I
don’t like you,” she went on in a high, excited pitch, attempting to
draw away her hand. She felt that her words lacked dignity and
sincerity, and she knew that he felt it.

“I’m sorry you don’t like me. I’m sorry I offended you. How have I
offended you? What have I done? Can’t you forgive me?” And he bent and
pressed his lips upon her hand as if he wished never more to withdraw
them.

“Mr. Arobin,” she complained, “I’m greatly upset by the excitement of
the afternoon; I’m not myself. My manner must have misled you in some
way. I wish you to go, please.” She spoke in a monotonous, dull tone.
He took his hat from the table, and stood with eyes turned from her,
looking into the dying fire. For a moment or two he kept an impressive
silence.

“Your manner has not misled me, Mrs. Pontellier,” he said finally. “My
own emotions have done that. I couldn’t help it. When I’m near you, how
could I help it? Don’t think anything of it, don’t bother, please. You
see, I go when you command me. If you wish me to stay away, I shall do
so. If you let me come back, I—oh! you will let me come back?”

He cast one appealing glance at her, to which she made no response.
Alcée Arobin’s manner was so genuine that it often deceived even
himself.

Edna did not care or think whether it were genuine or not. When she was
alone she looked mechanically at the back of her hand which he had
kissed so warmly. Then she leaned her head down on the mantelpiece. She
felt somewhat like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into
an act of infidelity, and realizes the significance of the act without
being wholly awakened from its glamour. The thought was passing vaguely
through her mind, “What would he think?”

She did not mean her husband; she was thinking of Robert Lebrun. Her
husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without
love as an excuse.

She lit a candle and went up to her room. Alcée Arobin was absolutely
nothing to her. Yet his presence, his manners, the warmth of his
glances, and above all the touch of his lips upon her hand had acted
like a narcotic upon her.

She slept a languorous sleep, interwoven with vanishing dreams.