The Awakening and Selected Short Stories - Page 123/161

Victor, with hammer and nails and scraps of scantling, was patching a

corner of one of the galleries. Mariequita sat nearby, 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.