Read Online The Awakening by Kate Chopin - Free Book Online

window-sill. Edna said it tasted good. She had not thought of coffee nor of anything. He told her he had often noticed that she lacked forethought.
    "Wasn't it enough to think of going to the Chênière and waking you up?" she laughed. "Do I have to think of everything?—as Lèonce says when he's in a bad humor. I don't blame him; he'd never be in a bad humor if it weren't for me."
    They took a short cut across the sands. At a distance they could see the curious procession moving toward the wharf—the lovers, shoulder to shoulder, creeping; the lady in black, gaining steadily upon them; old Monsieur Farival, losing ground inch by inch, and a young barefooted Spanish girl, with a red kerchief on her head and a basket on her arm, bringing up the rear.
    Robert knew the girl, and he talked to her a little in the boat. No one present understood what they said. Her name was Mariequita. She had a round, sly, piquant face and pretty black eyes. Her hands were small, and she kept them folded over the handle of her basket. Her feet were broad and coarse. She did not strive to hide them. Edna looked at her feet, and noticed the sand and slime between her brown toes.
    Beaudelet grumbled because Mariequita was there, taking up so much room. In reality he was annoyed at having old Monsieur Farival, who considered himself the better sailor of the two. But he would not quarrel with so old a man as Monsieur Farival, so he quarreled with Mariequita. The girl was deprecatory at one moment, appealing to Robert. She was saucy the next, moving her head up and down, making "eyes" at Robert and making "mouths" at Beaudelet.
    The lovers were all alone. They saw nothing, they heard nothing. The lady in black was counting her beads for the third time. Old Monsieur Farival talked incessantly of what he knew about handling a boat, and of what Beaudelet did not know on the same subject.
    Edna liked it all. She looked Mariequita up and down, from her ugly brown toes to her pretty black eyes, and back again.
    "Why does she look at me like that?" inquired the girl of Robert.
    "Maybe she thinks you are pretty. Shall I ask her?"
    "No. Is she your sweetheart?"
    "She's a married lady, and has two children."
    "Oh! well! Francisco ran away with Sylvano's wife, who had four children. They took all his money and one of the children and stole his boat."
    "Shut up!"
    "Does she understand?"
    "Oh, hush!"
    "Are those two married over there—leaning on each other?"
    "Of course not," laughed Robert.
    "Of course not," echoed Mariequita, with a serious, confirmatory bob of the head.
    The sun was high up and beginning to bite. The swift breeze seemed to Edna to bury the sting of it into the pores of her face and hands. Robert held his umbrella over her.
    As they went cutting sidewise through the water, the sails bellied taut, with the wind filling and overflowing them. Old Monsieur Farival laughed sardonically at something as he looked at the sails, and Beaudelet swore at the old man under his breath.
    Sailing across the bay to the Chênière Caminada , Edna felt as if she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast, whose chains had been loosening—had snapped the night before when the mystic spirit was abroad, leaving her free to drift whithersoever she chose to set her sails. Robert spoke to her incessantly; he no longer noticed Mariequita. The girl had shrimps in her bamboo basket. They were covered with Spanish moss. She beat the moss down impatiently, and muttered to herself sullenly.
    "Let us go to Grande Terre tomorrow?" said Robert in a low voice.
    "What shall we do there?"
    "Climb up the hill to the old fort and look at the little wriggling gold snakes, and watch the lizards sun themselves."
    She gazed away toward Grande Terre and thought she would like to be alone there with Robert, in the sun, listening to the ocean's roar and watching the slimy lizards writhe in and out among the ruins of the old fort.
    "And the next day or the next we