A
feeling of oppression and drowsiness overcame Edna during the service. Her head
began to ache, and the lights on the altar swayed before her eyes. Another time
she might have made an effort to regain her composure; but her one thought was
to quit the stifling atmosphere of the church and reach the open air. She arose,
climbing over Robert's feet with a muttered apology. Old Monsieur Farival,
flurried, curious, stood up, but upon seeing that Robert had followed Mrs.
Pontellier, he sank back into his seat. He whispered an anxious inquiry of the
lady in black, who did not notice him or reply, but kept her eyes fastened upon
the pages of her velvet prayer-book.
"I felt giddy and almost
overcome," Edna said, lifting her hands instinctively to her head and pushing
her straw hat up from her forehead. "I couldn't have stayed
through the service." They were outside in the shadow of the church. Robert
was full of solicitude.
"It was folly to have thought
of going in the first place, let alone staying. Come over to Madame Antoine's;
you can rest there." He took her arm and led her away, looking anxiously and
continuously down into her face.
How still it was, with only
the voice of the sea whispering through the reeds that grew in the salt-water
pools! The long line of little gray, weather-beaten houses nestled peacefully
among the orange trees. It must always have been God's day on that low, drowsy
island, Edna thought. They stopped, leaning over a jagged fence made of
sea-drift, to ask for water. A youth, a mild-faced Acadian, was drawing water
from the cistern, which was nothing more than a rusty buoy, with an opening on
one side, sunk in the ground. The water which the youth handed to them in a tin
pail was not cold to taste, but it was cool to her heated face, and it greatly
revived and refreshed her.
Madame Antoine's cot was at
the far end of the village. She welcomed them with all the native hospitality,
as she would have opened her door to let the sunlight in. She was fat, and
walked heavily and clumsily across the floor. She could speak no English, but
when Robert made her understand that the lady who accompanied him was ill and
desired to rest, she was all eagerness to make Edna feel at home and to dispose
of her comfortably.
The whole place was
immaculately clean, and the big, four-posted bed, snow-white, invited one to
repose. It stood in a small side room which looked out across a narrow grass
plot toward the shed, where there was a disabled boat lying keel upward.
Madame Antoine had not gone
to mass. Her son Tonie had, but she supposed he would soon be back, and she
invited Robert to be seated and wait for him. But he went and sat outside the
door and smoked. Madame Antoine busied herself in the large front room preparing
dinner. She was boiling mullets over a few red coals in the huge fireplace.
Edna, left alone in the
little side room, loosened her clothes, removing the greater part of them. She
bathed her face, her neck and arms in the basin that stood between the windows.
She took off her shoes and stockings and stretched herself in the very center of
the high, white bed. How luxurious it felt to rest thus in a strange, quaint
bed, with its sweet country odor of laurel lingering about the sheets and
mattress! She stretched her strong limbs that ached a little. She ran her
fingers through her loosened hair for a while. She looked at her round arms as
she held them straight up and rubbed them one after the other, observing
closely, as if it were something she saw for the first time, the fine, firm
quality and texture of her flesh. She clasped her hands easily above her head,
and it was thus she fell asleep.
She slept lightly at first,
half awake and drowsily attentive to the things about her. She could hear Madame
Antoine's heavy, scraping tread as she walked back and forth on the sanded
floor. Some chickens were clucking outside the windows, scratching
for bits of gravel in the grass. Later she half heard the voices of Robert
and Tonie talking under the shed. She did not stir. Even her eyelids rested numb
and heavily over her sleepy eyes. The voices went on - Tonie's slow, Acadian
drawl, Robert's quick, soft, smooth French. She understood French imperfectly
unless directly addressed, and the voices were only part of the other drowsy,
muffled sounds lulling her senses.
When Edna awoke it was with
the conviction that she had slept long and soundly. The voices were hushed under
the shed. Madame Antoine's step was no longer to be heard in the adjoining room.
Even the chickens had gone elsewhere to scratch and cluck. The mosquito bar was
drawn over her; the old woman had come in while she slept and let down the bar.
Edna arose quietly from the bed, and looking between the curtains of the window,
she saw by the slanting rays of the sun that the afternoon was far advanced.
Robert was out there under the shed, reclining in the shade against the sloping
keel of the overturned
boat. He was reading from a book. Tonie was no longer with him. She wondered
what had become of the rest of the party. She peeped out at him two or three
times as she stood washing herself in the little basin between the windows.
Madame Antoine had laid some
coarse, clean towels upon a chair, and had placed a box of poudre de
riz within easy reach. Edna dabbed the powder upon her nose and cheeks
as she looked at herself closely in the little distorted mirror which hung on
the wall above the basin. Her eyes were bright and wide awake and her face
glowed.
When she had completed her
toilet she walked into the adjoining room. She was very hungry. No one was
there. But there was a cloth spread upon the table that stood against the wall,
and a cover was laid for one, with a crusty brown loaf and a bottle of wine
beside the plate. Edna bit a piece from the brown loaf, tearing it with her
strong, white teeth. She poured some of the wine into the glass and drank it
down. Then she went softly out of doors, and plucking an orange from the
low-hanging
bough of a tree, threw it at Robert, who did not know she was awake and up.
An illumination broke over
his face when he saw her and joined her under the orange tree.
"How many years have I
slept?" she inquired. "The whole island seems changed. A new race of beings must
have sprung up, leaving only you and me as past relics. How many ages ago did
Madame Antoine and Tonie die? and when did our people from Grand Isle disappear
from the earth?"
He familiarly adjusted a
ruffle upon her shoulder.
"You have slept precisely one
hundred years. I was left here to guard your slumbers; and for one hundred years
I have been out under the shed reading a book. The only evil I couldn't prevent
was to keep a broiled fowl from drying up."
"If it has turned to stone,
still will I eat it," said Edna, moving with him into the house. "But really,
what has become of Monsieur Farival and the others?"
"Gone hours ago. When they
found that you were sleeping they thought it best
not to awake you. Any way, I wouldn't have let them. What was I here for?"
"I wonder if Léonce will be
uneasy!" she speculated, as she seated herself at table.
"Of course not; he knows you
are with me," Robert replied, as he busied himself among sundry pans and covered
dishes which had been left standing on the hearth.
"Where are Madame Antoine and
her son?" asked Edna.
"Gone to Vespers, and to
visit some friends, I believe. I am to take you back in Tonie's boat whenever
you are ready to go."
He stirred the smoldering
ashes till the broiled fowl began to sizzle afresh. He served her with no mean
repast, dripping the coffee anew and sharing it with her. Madame Antoine had
cooked little else than the mullets, but while Edna slept Robert had foraged the
island. He was childishly gratified to discover her appetite, and to see the
relish with which she ate the food which he had procured for her.
"Shall we go right away?" she
asked, after draining her glass and brushing together the crumbs of the crusty loaf.
"The sun isn't as low as it
will be in two hours," he answered.
"The sun will be gone in two
hours."
"Well, let it go; who cares!"
They waited a good while
under the orange trees, till Madame Antoine came back, panting, waddling, with a
thousand apologies to explain her absence. Tonie did not dare to return. He was
shy, and would not willingly face any woman except his mother.
It was very pleasant to stay
there under the orange trees, while the sun dipped lower and lower, turning the
western sky to flaming copper and gold. The shadows lengthened and crept out
like stealthy, grotesque monsters across the grass.
Edna and Robert both sat upon
the ground - that is, he lay upon the ground beside her, occasionally picking at
the hem of her muslin gown.
Madame Antoine seated her fat
body, broad and squat, upon a bench beside the door. She had been talking all
the afternoon, and had wound herself up to the story-telling pitch.
And what stories she told
them! But twice in her life she had left the Chênière Caminada
and then for the briefest span. All her years she had squatted and waddled there
upon the island, gathering legends of the Baratarians and the sea. The night
came on, with the moon to lighten it. Edna could hear the whispering voices of
dead men and the click of muffled gold.
When she and Robert stepped
into Tonie's boat, with the red lateen sail, misty spirit forms were prowling in
the shadows and among the reeds, and upon the water were phantom ships, speeding
to cover.