The Awakening and Selected Short Stories - Page 144/161

Mrs. Baroda was a little provoked to learn that her husband expected his

friend, Gouvernail, up to spend a week or two on the plantation.

They had entertained a good deal during the winter; much of the time had

also been passed in New Orleans in various forms of mild dissipation.

She was looking forward to a period of unbroken rest, now, and

undisturbed tete-a-tete with her husband, when he informed her that

Gouvernail was coming up to stay a week or two.

This was a man she had heard much of but never seen. He had been her

husband's college friend; was now a journalist, and in no sense a

society man or "a man about town," which were, perhaps, some of the

reasons she had never met him. But she had unconsciously formed an

image of him in her mind. She pictured him tall, slim, cynical; with

eye-glasses, and his hands in his pockets; and she did not like him.

Gouvernail was slim enough, but he wasn't very tall nor very cynical;

neither did he wear eyeglasses nor carry his hands in his pockets. And

she rather liked him when he first presented himself.

But why she liked him she could not explain satisfactorily to herself

when she partly attempted to do so. She could discover in him none of

those brilliant and promising traits which Gaston, her husband, had

often assured her that he possessed. On the contrary, he sat rather mute

and receptive before her chatty eagerness to make him feel at home

and in face of Gaston's frank and wordy hospitality. His manner was as

courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he

made no direct appeal to her approval or even esteem.

Once settled at the plantation he seemed to like to sit upon the wide

portico in the shade of one of the big Corinthian pillars, smoking his

cigar lazily and listening attentively to Gaston's experience as a sugar

planter.

"This is what I call living," he would utter with deep satisfaction, as

the air that swept across the sugar field caressed him with its warm and

scented velvety touch. It pleased him also to get on familiar terms with

the big dogs that came about him, rubbing themselves sociably against

his legs. He did not care to fish, and displayed no eagerness to go out

and kill grosbecs when Gaston proposed doing so.

Gouvernail's personality puzzled Mrs. Baroda, but she liked him. Indeed,

he was a lovable, inoffensive fellow. After a few days, when she could

understand him no better than at first, she gave over being puzzled and

remained piqued. In this mood she left her husband and her guest, for

the most part, alone together. Then finding that Gouvernail took no

manner of exception to her action, she imposed her society upon him,

accompanying him in his idle strolls to the mill and walks along the

batture. She persistently sought to penetrate the reserve in which he

had unconsciously enveloped himself.