by Kate Chopin
A little later when they sat upon a rustic bench which overlooked the smiling landscape about them, Adrienne was saying to Sister Agathe, who held her hand and stroked it fondly:
“Do you remember my first visit, four years ago, Sister Agathe? and what a surprise it was to you all!”
“As if I could forget it, dear child!”
“And I! Always shall I remember that morning as I walked along the boulevard with a heaviness of heart — oh, a heaviness which I hate to recall. Suddenly there was wafted to me the sweet odor of lilac blossoms. A young girl had passed me by, carrying a great bunch of them. Did you ever know, Sister Agathe, that there is nothing which so keenly revives a memory as a perfume — an odor?”
“I believe you are right, Adrienne. For now that you speak of it, I can feel how the odor of fresh bread — when Sister Jeanne bakes — always makes me think of the great kitchen of ma tante de Sierge, and crippled Julie, who sat always knitting at the sunny window. And I never smell the sweet scented honeysuckle without living again through the blessed day of my first communion.”
“Well, that is how it was with me, Sister Agathe, when the scent of the lilacs at once changed the whole current of my thoughts and my despondency. The boulevard, its noises, its passing throng, vanished from before my senses as completely as if they had been spirited away. I was standing here with my feet sunk in the green sward as they are now. I could see the sunlight glancing from that old white stone wall, could hear the notes of birds, just as we hear them now, and the humming of insects in the air. And through all I could see and could smell the lilac blossoms, nodding invitingly to me from their thick-leaved branches. It seems to me they are richer than ever this year, Sister Agathe. And do you know, I became like an enragée; nothing could have kept me back. I do not remember now where I was going; but I turned and retraced my steps homeward in a perfect fever of agitation: ‘Sophie! my little trunk — quick — the black one! A mere handful of clothes! I am going away. Don’t ask me any questions. I shall be back in a fortnight.’ And every year since then it is the same. At the very first whiff of a lilac blossom, I am gone! There is no holding me back.”
“And how I wait for you, and watch those lilac bushes, Adrienne! If you should once fail to come, it would be like the spring coming without the sunshine or the song of birds.
“But do you know, dear child, I have sometimes feared that in moments of despondency such as you have just described, I fear that you do not turn as you might to our Blessed Mother in heaven, who is ever ready to comfort and solace an afflicted heart with the precious balm of her sympathy and love.”
“Perhaps I do not, dear Sister Agathe. But you cannot picture the annoyances which I am constantly submitted to. That Sophie alone, with her detestable ways! I assure you she of herself is enough to drive me to St. Lazare.”
“Indeed, I do understand that the trials of one living in the world must be very great, Adrienne; particularly for you, my poor child, who have to bear them alone, since Almighty God was pleased to call to himself your dear husband. But on the other hand, to live one’s life along the lines which our dear Lord traces for each one of us, must bring with it resignation and even a certain comfort. You have your household duties, Adrienne, and your music, to which, you say, you continue to devote yourself. And then, there are always good works — the poor — who are always with us — to be relieved; the afflicted to be comforted.”
“But, Sister Agathe! Will you listen! Is it not La Rose that I hear moving down there at the edge of the pasture? I fancy she is reproaching me with being an ingrate, not to have pressed a kiss yet on that white forehead of hers. Come, let us go.”
The two women arose and walked again, hand in hand this time, over the tufted grass down the gentle decline where it sloped toward the broad, flat meadow, and the limpid stream that flowed cool and fresh from the woods. Sister Agathe walked with her composed, nunlike tread; Adrienne with a balancing motion, a bounding step, as though the earth responded to her light footfall with some subtle impulse all its own.
They lingered long upon the foot-bridge that spanned the narrow stream which divided the convent grounds from the meadow beyond. It was to Adrienne indescribably sweet to rest there in soft, low converse with this gentle-faced nun, watching the approach of evening. The gurgle of the running water beneath them; the lowing of cattle approaching in the distance, were the only sounds that broke upon the stillness, until the clear tones of the angelus bell pealed out from the convent tower. At the sound both women instinctively sank to their knees, signing themselves with the sign of the cross. And Sister Agathe repeated the customary invocation, Adrienne responding in musical tones:
“The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,
And she conceived by the Holy Ghost— “ and so forth, to the end of the brief prayer, after which they arose and retraced their steps toward the convent.
It was with subtle and naïve pleasure that Adrienne prepared herself that night for bed. The room which she shared with Sister Agathe was immaculately white. The walls were a dead white, relieved only by one florid print depicting Jacob’s dream at the foot of the ladder, upon which angels mounted and descended. The bare floors, a soft yellow-white, with two little patches of gray carpet beside each spotless bed. At the head of the white-draped beds were two bénitiers containing holy water absorbed in sponges.
Sister Agathe disrobed noiselessly behind her curtains and glided into bed without having revealed, in the faint candlelight, as much as a shadow of herself. Adrienne pattered about the room, shook and folded her garments with great care, placing them on the back of a chair as she had been taught to do when a child at the convent. It secretly pleased Sister Agathe to feel that her dear Adrienne clung to the habits acquired in her youth.
But Adrienne could not sleep. She did not greatly desire to do so. These hours seemed too precious to be cast into the oblivion of slumber.
“Are you not asleep, Adrienne?”
“No, Sister Agathe. You know it is always so the first night. The excitement of my arrival — I don’t know what — keeps me awake.”
“Say your ‘Hail, Mary,’ dear child, over and over.”
“I have done so, Sister Agathe; it does not help.”
“Then lie quite still on your side and think of nothing but your own respiration. I have heard that such inducement to sleep seldom fails.”
“I will try. Good night, Sister Agathe.”
“Good night, dear child. May the Holy Virgin guard you.”
An hour later Adrienne was still lying with wide, wakeful eyes, listening to the regular breathing of Sister Agathe. The trailing of the passing wind through the treetops, the ceaseless babble of the rivulet were some of the sounds that came to her faintly through the night.
The days of the fortnight which followed were in character much like the first peaceful, uneventful day of her arrival, with the exception only that she devoutly heard mass every morning at an early hour in the convent chapel, and on Sundays sang in the choir in her agreeable, cultivated voice, which was heard with delight and the warmest appreciation.
When the day of her departure came, Sister Agathe was not satisfied to say good-by at the portal as the others did. She walked down the drive beside the creeping old cabriolet, chattering her pleasant last words. And then she stood — it was as far as she might go — at the edge of the road, waving good-by in response to the fluttering of Adrienne’s handkerchief. Four hours later Sister Agathe, who was instructing a class of little girls for their first communion, looked up at the classroom clock and murmured : “Adrienne is at home now.”
Yes, Adrienne was at home. Paris had engulfed her.
At the very hour when Sister Agathe looked up at the clock, Adrienne, clad in a charming negligé, was reclining indolently in the depths of a luxurious armchair. The bright room was in its accustomed state of picturesque disorder. Musical scores were scattered upon the open piano. Thrown carelessly over the backs of chairs were puz
zling and astonishing-looking garments.
In a large gilded cage near the window perched a clumsy green parrot. He blinked stupidly at a young girl in street dress who was exerting herself to make him talk.
In the centre of the room stood Sophie, that thorn in her mistress’s side. With hands plunged in the deep pockets of her apron, her white starched cap quivering with each emphatic motion of her grizzled head, she was holding forth, to the evident ennui of the two young women. She was saying:
“Heaven knows I have stood enough in the six years I have been with Mademoiselle; but never such indignities as I have had to endure in the past two weeks at the hands of that man who calls himself a manager! The very first day — and I, good enough to notify him at once of Mademoiselle’s flight — he arrives like a lion; I tell you, like a lion. He insists upon knowing Mademoiselle’s whereabouts. How can I tell him any more than the statue out there in the square? He calls me a liar! Me, me — a liar! He declares he is ruined. The public will not stand La Petite Gilberta in the role which Mademoiselle has made so famous — La Petite Gilberta, who dances like a jointed wooden figure and sings like a traînée of a café chantant. If I were to tell La Gilberta that, as I easily might, I guarantee it would not be well for the few straggling hairs which he has left on that miserable head of his!
“What could he do? He was obliged to inform the public that Mademoiselle was ill; and then began my real torment! Answering this one and that one with their cards, their flowers, their dainties in covered dishes! which, I must admit, saved Florine and me much cooking. And all the while having to tell them that the physician had advised for Mademoiselle a rest of two weeks at some watering-place, the name of which I had forgotten!”
Adrienne had been contemplating old Sophie with quizzical, half-closed eyes, and pelting her with hot-house roses which lay in her lap, and which she nipped off short from their graceful stems for that purpose. Each rose struck Sophie full in the face; but they did not disconcert her or once stem the torrent of her talk.
“Oh, Adrienne!” entreated the young girl at the parrot’s cage. “Make her hush; please do something. How can you ever expect Zozo to talk? A dozen times he has been on the point of saying something! I tell you, she stupefies him with her chatter.”
“My good Sophie,” remarked Adrienne, not changing her attitude, “you see the roses are all used up. But I assure you, anything at hand goes,” carelessly picking up a book from the table beside her. “What is this? Mons. Zola! Now I warn you, Sophie, the weightiness, the heaviness of Mons. Zola are such that they cannot fail to prostrate you ; thankful you may be if they leave you with energy to regain your feet.”
“Mademoiselle’s pleasantries are all very well; but if I am to be shown the door for it — if I am to be crippled for it — I shall say that I think Mademoiselle is a woman without conscience and without heart. To torture a man as she does! A man? No, an angel!
“Each day he has come with sad visage and drooping mien. ‘No news, Sophie?’
“ ‘None, Monsieur Henri.’ ‘Have you no idea where she has gone?’ ‘Not any more than the statue in the square, Monsieur.’ ‘Is it perhaps possible that she may not return at all?’ with his face blanching like that curtain.
“I assure him you will be back at the end of the fortnight. I entreat him to have patience. He drags himself, désolé, about the room, picking up Mademoiselle’s fan, her gloves, her music, and turning them over and over in his hands. Mademoiselle’s slipper, which she took off to throw at me in the impatience of her departure, and which I purposely left lying where it fell on the chiffonier — he kissed it — I saw him do it — and thrust it into his pocket, thinking himself unobserved.
“The same song each day. I beg him to eat a little good soup which I have prepared. T cannot eat, my dear Sophie.’ The other night he came and stood long gazing out of the window at the stars. When he turned he was wiping his eyes; they were red. He said he had been riding in the dust, which had inflamed them. But I knew better; he had been crying.
“Ma foi! in his place I would snap my finger at such cruelty. I would go out and amuse myself. What is the use of being young!”
Adrienne arose with a laugh. She went and seizing old Sophie by the shoulders shook her till the white cap wobbled on her head.
“What is the use of all this litany, my good Sophie? Year after year the same! Have you forgotten that I have come a long, dusty journey by rail, and that I am perishing of hunger and thirst? Bring us a bottle of Chateau Yquem and a biscuit and my box of cigarettes.” Sophie had freed herself, and was retreating toward the door. “And, Sophie! If Monsieur Henri is still waiting, tell him to come up.”
It was precisely a year later. The spring had come again, and Paris was intoxicated.
Old Sophie sat in her kitchen discoursing to a neighbor who had come in to borrow some trifling kitchen utensil from the old bonne.
“You know, Rosalie, I begin to believe it is an attack of lunacy which seizes her once a year. I wouldn’t say it to everyone, but with you I know it will go no further. She ought to be treated for it; a physician should be consulted; it is not well to neglect such things and let them run on.
“It came this morning like a thunder clap. As I am sitting here, there had been no thought or mention of a journey. The baker had come into the kitchen — you know what a gallant he is — with always a girl in his eye. He laid the bread down upon the table and beside it a bunch of lilacs. I didn’t know they had bloomed yet. ‘For Mam’selle Florine, with my regards,’ he said with his foolish simper.
“Now, you know I was not going to call Florine from her work in order to present her the baker’s flowers. All the same, it would not do to let them wither. I went with them in my hand into the dining room to get a majolica pitcher which I had put away in the closet there, on an upper shelf, because the handle was broken. Mademoiselle, who rises early, had just come from her bath, and was crossing the hall that opens into the dining room. Just as she was, in her white peignoir, she thrust her head into the dining room, snuffling the air and exclaiming, ‘What do I smell?’
“She espied the flowers in my hand and pounced upon them like a cat upon a mouse. She held them up to her, burying her face in them for the longest time, only uttering a long ‘Ah!’
“Sophie, I am going away. Get out the little black trunk; a few of the plainest garments I have; my brown dress that I have not yet worn.”
“ ‘But, Mademoiselle,’ I protested, ‘you forget that you have ordered a breakfast of a hundred francs for tomorrow.’
“ ‘Shut up!’ she cried, stamping her foot.
“ ‘You forget how the manager will rave,’ I persisted, ‘and vilify me. And you will go like that without a word of adieu to Monsieur Paul, who is an angel if ever one trod the earth.’
“I tell you, Rosalie, her eyes flamed.
“ ‘Do as I tell you this instant,’ she exclaimed, ‘or I will strangle you — with your Monsieur Paul and your manager and your hundred francs!’ “
“Yes,” affirmed Rosalie, “it is insanity. I had a cousin seized in the same way one morning, when she smelled calf’s liver frying with onions. Before night it took two men to hold her.”
“I could well see it was insanity, my dear Rosalie, and I uttered not another word as I feared for my life. I simply obeyed her every command in silence. And now — whiff, she is gone! God knows where. But between us, Rosalie — I wouldn’t say it to Florine — but I believe it is for no good. I, in Monsieur Paul’s place, should have her watched. I would put a detective upon her track.
“Now I am going to close up; barricade the entire establishment. Monsieur Paul, the manager, visitors, all — all may ring and knock and shout themselves hoarse. I am tired of it all. To be vilified and called a liar — at my age, Rosalie!”
Adrienne left her trunk at the small railway station, as the old cabriolet was not at the moment available; and she gladly walked the mile or two of pleasant roadway which led to th
e convent. How infinitely calm, peaceful, penetrating was the charm of the verdant, undulating country spreading out on all sides of her! She walked along the clear smooth road, twirling her parasol; humming a gay tune; nipping here and there a bud or a waxlike leaf from the hedges along the way; and all the while drinking deep draughts of complacency and content.
She stopped, as she had always done, to pluck lilacs in her path.
As she approached the convent she fancied that a whitecapped face had glanced fleetingly from a window; but she must have been mistaken. Evidently she had not been seen, and this time would take them by surprise. She smiled to think how Sister Agathe would utter a little joyous cry of amazement, and in fancy she already felt the warmth and tenderness of the nun’s embrace. And how Sister Marceline and the others would laugh, and make game of her puffed sleeves! For puffed sleeves had come into fashion since last year; and the vagaries of fashion always afforded infinite merriment to the nuns. No, they surely had not seen her.
She ascended lightly the stone steps and rang the bell. She could hear the sharp metallic sound reverberate through the halls. Before its last note had died away the door was opened very slightly, very cautiously by a lay sister who stood there with downcast eyes and flaming cheeks. Through the narrow opening she thrust forward toward Adrienne a package and a letter, saying, in confused tones: “By order of our Mother Superior.” After which she closed the door hastily and turned the heavy key in the great lock.
Adrienne remained stunned. She could not gather her faculties to grasp the meaning of this singular reception. The lilacs fell from her arms to the stone portico on which she was standing. She turned the note and the parcel stupidly over in her hands, instinctively dreading what their contents might disclose.
The outlines of the crucifix were plainly to be felt through the wrapper of the bundle, and she guessed, without having courage to assure herself, that the jeweled necklace and the altar cloth accompanied it.