章节正文
"You never tire me. You must have forgotten the hours and
hours at Grand Isle in which we grew accustomed to each other and
used to being together."
"I have forgotten nothing at Grand Isle," he said, not looking
at her, but rolling a cigarette. His tobacco pouch, which he laid
upon the table, was a fantasticembroidered silk affair, evidently
the handiwork of a woman.
"You used to carry your tobacco in a rubber pouch," said Edna,
picking up the pouch and examining the needlework.
"Yes; it was lost."
"Where did you buy this one? In Mexico?"
"It was given to me by a Vera Cruz girl; they are very
generous," he replied, striking a match and lighting his cigarette.
"They are very handsome, I suppose, those Mexican women; very
picturesque, with their black eyes and their lace scarfs."
"Some are; others are hideous. just as you find women
everywhere."
"What was she like--the one who gave you the pouch? You must
have known her very well."
"She was very ordinary. She wasn't of the slightest
importance. I knew her well enough."
"Did you visit at her house? Was it interesting? I should like
to know and hear about the people you met, and the impressions they
made on you."
"There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as
the imprint of an oar upon the water."
"Was she such a one?"
"It would be ungenerous for me to admit that she was of that
order and kind." He thrust the pouch back in his pocket, as if to
put away the subject with the trifle which had brought it up.
Arobin dropped in with a message from Mrs. Merriman, to say
that the card party was postponed on account of the illness of one
of her children.
"How do you do, Arobin?" said Robert, rising from the
obscurity.
"Oh! Lebrun. To be sure! I heard yesterday you were back.
How did they treat you down in Mexique?"
"Fairly well."
"But not well enough to keep you there. Stunning girls,
though, in Mexico. I thought I should never get away from Vera
Cruz when I was down there a couple of years ago."
"Did they embroider slippers and tobacco pouches and hat-bands
and things for you?" asked Edna.
"Oh! my! no! I didn't get so deep in their regard.
I fear they made more impression on me than I made on them."
"You were less fortunate than Robert, then."
"I am always less fortunate than Robert. Has he been
imparting tender confidences?"
"I've been imposing myself long enough," said Robert, rising,
and shaking hands with Edna. "Please convey my regards to Mr.
Pontellier when you write."
He shook hands with Arobin and went away.
"Fine fellow, that Lebrun," said Arobin when Robert had gone.
"I never heard you speak of him."
"I knew him last summer at Grand Isle," she replied. "Here is
that photograph of yours. Don't you want it?"
"What do I want with it? Throw it away." She threw it back on
the table.
"I'm not going to Mrs. Merriman's," she said. "If you see
her, tell her so. But perhaps I had better write. I think I shall
write now, and say that I am sorry her child is sick, and tell her
not to count on me."
"It would be a good scheme," acquiesced Arobin. "I don't blame you;
stupid lot!"
Edna opened the blotter, and having procured paper and pen,
began to write the note. Arobin lit a cigar and read the evening
paper, which he had in his pocket.
"What is the date?" she asked. He told her.
"Will you mail this for me when you go out?"
"Certainly." He read to her little bits out of the newspaper,
while she straightened things on the table.
"What do you want to do?" he asked, throwing aside the paper.
"Do you want to go out for a walk or a drive or anything? It would
be a fine night to drive."
"No; I don't want to do anything but just be quiet. You go
away and amuse yourself. Don't stay."
"I'll go away if I must; but I shan't amuse myself. You know
that I only live when I am near you."
He stood up to bid her good night.
"Is that one of the things you always say to women?"
"I have said it before, but I don't think I ever came so near
meaning it," he answered with a smile. There were no warm lights
in her eyes; only a dreamy, absent look.
"Good night. I adore you. Sleep well," he said, and he
kissed her hand and went away.
She stayed alone in a kind of reverie--a sort of stupor. Step
by step she lived over every instant of the time she had been with
Robert after he had entered Mademoiselle Reisz's door. She
recalled his words, his looks. How few and meager they had been
for her hungry heart! A vision--a transcendently seductive vision
of a Mexican girl arose before her. She writhed with a jealous
pang. She wondered when he would come back. He had not said he
would come back. She had been with him, had heard his voice and
touched his hand. But some way he had seemed nearer to her off
there in Mexico.
XXXV
The morning was full of sunlight and hope. Edna could see
before her no denial--only the promise of excessive joy. She lay
in bed awake, with bright eyes full of speculation. "He loves you,
poor fool." If she could but get that convictionfirmly fixed in
her mind, what mattered about the rest? She felt she had been
childish and unwise the night before in giving herself over to
despondency. She recapitulated the motives which no doubt
explained Robert's reserve. They were not insurmountable; they
would not hold if he really loved her; they could not hold against
her own passion, which he must come to realize in time. She
pictured him going to his business that morning. She even saw how
he was dressed; how he walked down one street, and turned the
corner of another; saw him bending over his desk, talking to people
who entered the office, going to his lunch, and perhaps watching
for her on the street. He would come to her in the afternoon or
evening, sit and roll his cigarette, talk a little, and go away as
he had done the night before. But how delicious it would be to have
him there with her! She would have no regrets, nor seek to penetrate
his reserve if he still chose to wear it.
Edna ate her breakfast only half dressed. The maid brought
her a delicious printed scrawl from Raoul, expressing his love,
asking her to send him some bonbons, and telling her they had found
that morning ten tiny white pigs all lying in a row beside Lidie's
big white pig.
A letter also came from her husband, saying he hoped to be
back early in March, and then they would get ready for that journey
abroad which he had promised her so long, which he felt now fully
able to afford; he felt able to travel as people should, without
any thought of small economies--thanks to his recent speculations
in Wall Street.
Much to her surprise she received a note from Arobin, written
at midnight from the club. It was to say good morning to her, to
hope she had slept well, to assure her of his devotion, which he
trusted she in some faintest manner returned.
All these letters were pleasing to her. She answered the
children in a cheerful frame of mind, promising them bonbons, and
congratulating them upon their happy find of the little pigs.
She answered her husband with friendly evasiveness, --not with
any fixed design to mislead him, only because all sense of reality
had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and
awaited the consequences with indifference.
To Arobin's note she made no reply. She put it under
Celestine's stove-lid.
Edna worked several hours with much spirit. She saw no one
but a picture dealer, who asked her if it were true that she was
going abroad to study in Paris.
She said possibly she might, and he negotiated with her for
some Parisian studies to reach him in time for the holiday trade in
December.
Robert did not come that day. She was keenly disappointed.
He did not come the following day, nor the next. Each morning
she awoke with hope, and each night she was a prey to despondency.
She was tempted to seek him out. But far from yielding to the impulse,
she avoided any occasion which might throw her in his way. She did not
go to Mademoiselle Reisz's nor pass by Madame Lebrun's, as she might
have done if he had still been in Mexico.
When Arobin, one night, urged her to drive with him, she
went--out to the lake, on the Shell Road. His horses were full of
mettle, and even a little unmanageable. She liked the rapid gait
at which they spun along, and the quick, sharp sound of the horses'
hoofs on the hard road. They did not stop anywhere to eat or to
drink. Arobin was not needlessly imprudent. But they ate and they
drank when they regained Edna's little dining-room--which was
comparatively early in the evening.
It was late when he left her. It was getting to be more than
a passing whim with Arobin to see her and be with her. He had
detected the latent sensuality, which unfolded under his delicate
sense of her nature's requirements like a torpid, torrid, sensitive
blossom.
There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor
was there hope when she awoke in the morning.
XXXVI
There was a garden out in the suburbs; a small, leafy corner,
with a few green tables under the orange trees. An old cat slept
all day on the stone step in the sun, and an old mulatresse
slept her idle hours away in her chair at the open window, till,
some one happened to knock on one of the green tables. She had
milk and cream cheese to sell, and bread and butter. There was no
one who could make such excellent coffee or fry a chicken so
golden brown as she.
The place was too modest to attract the attention of people of
fashion, and so quiet as to have escaped the notice of those in
search of pleasure and dissipation. Edna had discovered it
accidentally one day when the high-board gate stood ajar. She
caught sight of a little green table, blotched with the checkered
sunlight that filtered through the quivering leaves overhead.
Within she had found the slumbering mulatresse, the drowsy cat,
and a glass of milk which reminded her of the milk she had tasted
in Iberville.
She often stopped there during her perambulations; sometimes
taking a book with her, and sitting an hour or two under the trees
when she found the place deserted. Once or twice she took a quiet
dinner there alone, having instructed Celestine beforehand to
prepare no dinner at home. It was the last place in the city where
she would have expected to meet any one she knew.
Still she was not astonished when, as she was partaking of a
modest dinner late in the afternoon, looking into an open book,
stroking the cat, which had made friends with her--she was not
greatly astonished to see Robert come in at the tall garden gate.
"I am destined to see you only by accident," she said, shoving
the cat off the chair beside her. He was surprised, ill at ease,
almost embarrassed at meeting her thus so unexpectedly.
"Do you come here often?" he asked.
"I almost live here," she said.
"I used to drop in very often for a cup of Catiche's good
hours at Grand Isle in which we grew accustomed to each other and
used to being together."
"I have forgotten nothing at Grand Isle," he said, not looking
at her, but rolling a cigarette. His tobacco pouch, which he laid
upon the table, was a fantasticembroidered silk affair, evidently
the handiwork of a woman.
"You used to carry your tobacco in a rubber pouch," said Edna,
picking up the pouch and examining the needlework.
"Yes; it was lost."
"Where did you buy this one? In Mexico?"
"It was given to me by a Vera Cruz girl; they are very
generous," he replied, striking a match and lighting his cigarette.
"They are very handsome, I suppose, those Mexican women; very
picturesque, with their black eyes and their lace scarfs."
"Some are; others are hideous. just as you find women
everywhere."
"What was she like--the one who gave you the pouch? You must
have known her very well."
"She was very ordinary. She wasn't of the slightest
importance. I knew her well enough."
"Did you visit at her house? Was it interesting? I should like
to know and hear about the people you met, and the impressions they
made on you."
"There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as
the imprint of an oar upon the water."
"Was she such a one?"
"It would be ungenerous for me to admit that she was of that
order and kind." He thrust the pouch back in his pocket, as if to
put away the subject with the trifle which had brought it up.
Arobin dropped in with a message from Mrs. Merriman, to say
that the card party was postponed on account of the illness of one
of her children.
"How do you do, Arobin?" said Robert, rising from the
obscurity.
"Oh! Lebrun. To be sure! I heard yesterday you were back.
How did they treat you down in Mexique?"
"Fairly well."
"But not well enough to keep you there. Stunning girls,
though, in Mexico. I thought I should never get away from Vera
Cruz when I was down there a couple of years ago."
"Did they embroider slippers and tobacco pouches and hat-bands
and things for you?" asked Edna.
"Oh! my! no! I didn't get so deep in their regard.
I fear they made more impression on me than I made on them."
"You were less fortunate than Robert, then."
"I am always less fortunate than Robert. Has he been
imparting tender confidences?"
"I've been imposing myself long enough," said Robert, rising,
and shaking hands with Edna. "Please convey my regards to Mr.
Pontellier when you write."
He shook hands with Arobin and went away.
"Fine fellow, that Lebrun," said Arobin when Robert had gone.
"I never heard you speak of him."
"I knew him last summer at Grand Isle," she replied. "Here is
that photograph of yours. Don't you want it?"
"What do I want with it? Throw it away." She threw it back on
the table.
"I'm not going to Mrs. Merriman's," she said. "If you see
her, tell her so. But perhaps I had better write. I think I shall
write now, and say that I am sorry her child is sick, and tell her
not to count on me."
"It would be a good scheme," acquiesced Arobin. "I don't blame you;
stupid lot!"
Edna opened the blotter, and having procured paper and pen,
began to write the note. Arobin lit a cigar and read the evening
paper, which he had in his pocket.
"What is the date?" she asked. He told her.
"Will you mail this for me when you go out?"
"Certainly." He read to her little bits out of the newspaper,
while she straightened things on the table.
"What do you want to do?" he asked, throwing aside the paper.
"Do you want to go out for a walk or a drive or anything? It would
be a fine night to drive."
"No; I don't want to do anything but just be quiet. You go
away and amuse yourself. Don't stay."
"I'll go away if I must; but I shan't amuse myself. You know
that I only live when I am near you."
He stood up to bid her good night.
"Is that one of the things you always say to women?"
"I have said it before, but I don't think I ever came so near
meaning it," he answered with a smile. There were no warm lights
in her eyes; only a dreamy, absent look.
"Good night. I adore you. Sleep well," he said, and he
kissed her hand and went away.
She stayed alone in a kind of reverie--a sort of stupor. Step
by step she lived over every instant of the time she had been with
Robert after he had entered Mademoiselle Reisz's door. She
recalled his words, his looks. How few and meager they had been
for her hungry heart! A vision--a transcendently seductive vision
of a Mexican girl arose before her. She writhed with a jealous
pang. She wondered when he would come back. He had not said he
would come back. She had been with him, had heard his voice and
touched his hand. But some way he had seemed nearer to her off
there in Mexico.
XXXV
The morning was full of sunlight and hope. Edna could see
before her no denial--only the promise of excessive joy. She lay
in bed awake, with bright eyes full of speculation. "He loves you,
poor fool." If she could but get that convictionfirmly fixed in
her mind, what mattered about the rest? She felt she had been
childish and unwise the night before in giving herself over to
despondency. She recapitulated the motives which no doubt
explained Robert's reserve. They were not insurmountable; they
would not hold if he really loved her; they could not hold against
her own passion, which he must come to realize in time. She
pictured him going to his business that morning. She even saw how
he was dressed; how he walked down one street, and turned the
corner of another; saw him bending over his desk, talking to people
who entered the office, going to his lunch, and perhaps watching
for her on the street. He would come to her in the afternoon or
evening, sit and roll his cigarette, talk a little, and go away as
he had done the night before. But how delicious it would be to have
him there with her! She would have no regrets, nor seek to penetrate
his reserve if he still chose to wear it.
Edna ate her breakfast only half dressed. The maid brought
her a delicious printed scrawl from Raoul, expressing his love,
asking her to send him some bonbons, and telling her they had found
that morning ten tiny white pigs all lying in a row beside Lidie's
big white pig.
A letter also came from her husband, saying he hoped to be
back early in March, and then they would get ready for that journey
abroad which he had promised her so long, which he felt now fully
able to afford; he felt able to travel as people should, without
any thought of small economies--thanks to his recent speculations
in Wall Street.
Much to her surprise she received a note from Arobin, written
at midnight from the club. It was to say good morning to her, to
hope she had slept well, to assure her of his devotion, which he
trusted she in some faintest manner returned.
All these letters were pleasing to her. She answered the
children in a cheerful frame of mind, promising them bonbons, and
congratulating them upon their happy find of the little pigs.
She answered her husband with friendly evasiveness, --not with
any fixed design to mislead him, only because all sense of reality
had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and
awaited the consequences with indifference.
To Arobin's note she made no reply. She put it under
Celestine's stove-lid.
Edna worked several hours with much spirit. She saw no one
but a picture dealer, who asked her if it were true that she was
going abroad to study in Paris.
She said possibly she might, and he negotiated with her for
some Parisian studies to reach him in time for the holiday trade in
December.
Robert did not come that day. She was keenly disappointed.
He did not come the following day, nor the next. Each morning
she awoke with hope, and each night she was a prey to despondency.
She was tempted to seek him out. But far from yielding to the impulse,
she avoided any occasion which might throw her in his way. She did not
go to Mademoiselle Reisz's nor pass by Madame Lebrun's, as she might
have done if he had still been in Mexico.
When Arobin, one night, urged her to drive with him, she
went--out to the lake, on the Shell Road. His horses were full of
mettle, and even a little unmanageable. She liked the rapid gait
at which they spun along, and the quick, sharp sound of the horses'
hoofs on the hard road. They did not stop anywhere to eat or to
drink. Arobin was not needlessly imprudent. But they ate and they
drank when they regained Edna's little dining-room--which was
comparatively early in the evening.
It was late when he left her. It was getting to be more than
a passing whim with Arobin to see her and be with her. He had
detected the latent sensuality, which unfolded under his delicate
sense of her nature's requirements like a torpid, torrid, sensitive
blossom.
There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor
was there hope when she awoke in the morning.
XXXVI
There was a garden out in the suburbs; a small, leafy corner,
with a few green tables under the orange trees. An old cat slept
all day on the stone step in the sun, and an old mulatresse
slept her idle hours away in her chair at the open window, till,
some one happened to knock on one of the green tables. She had
milk and cream cheese to sell, and bread and butter. There was no
one who could make such excellent coffee or fry a chicken so
golden brown as she.
The place was too modest to attract the attention of people of
fashion, and so quiet as to have escaped the notice of those in
search of pleasure and dissipation. Edna had discovered it
accidentally one day when the high-board gate stood ajar. She
caught sight of a little green table, blotched with the checkered
sunlight that filtered through the quivering leaves overhead.
Within she had found the slumbering mulatresse, the drowsy cat,
and a glass of milk which reminded her of the milk she had tasted
in Iberville.
She often stopped there during her perambulations; sometimes
taking a book with her, and sitting an hour or two under the trees
when she found the place deserted. Once or twice she took a quiet
dinner there alone, having instructed Celestine beforehand to
prepare no dinner at home. It was the last place in the city where
she would have expected to meet any one she knew.
Still she was not astonished when, as she was partaking of a
modest dinner late in the afternoon, looking into an open book,
stroking the cat, which had made friends with her--she was not
greatly astonished to see Robert come in at the tall garden gate.
"I am destined to see you only by accident," she said, shoving
the cat off the chair beside her. He was surprised, ill at ease,
almost embarrassed at meeting her thus so unexpectedly.
"Do you come here often?" he asked.
"I almost live here," she said.
"I used to drop in very often for a cup of Catiche's good
- tobacco [tə´bækəu]
n.烟草(叶)；卷烟 (初中英语单词) - rubber [´rʌbə] n.(摩)擦的人；橡皮 (初中英语单词)
- striking [´straikiŋ] a.显著的，明显的 (初中英语单词)
- mexican [´meksikən] n.&a.墨西哥人(语)的 (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- trifle [´traifəl] n.琐事，小事；少量 (初中英语单词)
- account [ə´kaunt] vi.说明 vt.认为 n.帐目 (初中英语单词)
- illness [´ilnis] n.生病，不健康，疾病 (初中英语单词)
- yesterday [´jestədi] n.&ad.昨天；前不久 (初中英语单词)
- mexico [´meksikəu] n.墨西哥 (初中英语单词)
- impression [im´preʃən] n.印刷；印象；效果 (初中英语单词)
- fortunate [´fɔ:tʃənət] a.幸运的，侥幸的 (初中英语单词)
- convey [kən´vei] vt.运送；传达；转让 (初中英语单词)
- absent [´æbsənt, əb´sent] a.不在的 vt.使缺席 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- sunlight [´sʌnlait] n.日光 (初中英语单词)
- conviction [kən´vikʃən] n.定罪；确信，信服 (初中英语单词)
- firmly [´fə:mli] ad.坚固地，稳定地 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- delicious [di´liʃəs] a.美味的，可口的 (初中英语单词)
- midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
- devotion [di´vəuʃən] n.献身；忠诚；热爱 (初中英语单词)
- cheerful [´tʃiəful] a.快乐的；高兴的 (初中英语单词)
- promising [´prɔmisiŋ] a.有希望的；有为的 (初中英语单词)
- dealer [´di:lə] n.商人 (初中英语单词)
- abroad [ə´brɔ:d] ad.海外；到处；广泛 (初中英语单词)
- holiday [´hɔlidi] n.假日，假期，节日 (初中英语单词)
- keenly [´ki:nli] ad.敏锐地；强烈地 (初中英语单词)
- anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
- cheese [tʃi:z] n.干酪，乳酪 (初中英语单词)
- modest [´mɔdist] a.谦虚的；朴素的 (初中英语单词)
- fantastic [fæn´tæstik] a.奇异的；荒谬的 (高中英语单词)
- hideous [´hidiəs] a.丑陋的，可怕的 (高中英语单词)
- lasting [´lɑ:stiŋ] a.持久的；永远的 (高中英语单词)
- embroider [im´brɔidə] v.刺绣；修饰；渲染 (高中英语单词)
- meager [´mi:gə] a.瘦的；贫弱的 (高中英语单词)
- excessive [ik´sesiv] a.过分的；极端的 (高中英语单词)
- speculation [,spekju´leiʃən] n.思索，推测；投机 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- pleasing [´pli:ziŋ] a.使人愉快的；合意的 (高中英语单词)
- drowsy [´drauzi] a.困倦的；催眠的 (高中英语单词)
- lighting [´laitiŋ] n.照明，发光 (英语四级单词)
- parisian [pə´riziən] n.&a.巴黎人(的) (英语四级单词)
- beforehand [bi´fɔ:hænd] ad.事先；提前 (英语四级单词)
- imposing [im´pəuziŋ] a.壮丽的，堂皇的 (英语六级单词)
- dreamy [´dri:mi] a.心不在焉的；朦胧的 (英语六级单词)
- mademoiselle [,mædəmə´zel] n.小姐；法国女教师 (英语六级单词)
- unwise [ʌn´waiz] a.不聪明的，愚笨的 (英语六级单词)
- abandoned [ə´bændənd] a.被抛弃的；无约束的 (英语六级单词)
- latent [´leitənt] a.潜在的，潜伏的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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