第42章

When the weather was dark and cloudy Edna could not work.She needed the sun to mellow and temper her mood to the sticking point.She had reached a stage when she seemed to be no longer feeling her way, working, when in the humor, with sureness and ease.And being devoid of ambition, and striving not toward accomplishment, she drew satisfaction from the work in itself.

On rainy or melancholy days Edna went out and sought the society of the friends she had made at Grand Isle.Or else she stayed indoors and nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own comfort and peace of mind.It was not despair; but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.Yet there were other days when she listened, was led on and deceived by fresh promises which her youth held out to her.

She went again to the races, and again.Alcee Arobin and Mrs.Highcamp called for her one bright afternoon in Arobin's drag.Mrs.Highcamp was a worldly but unaffected, intelligent, slim, tall blonde woman in the forties, with an indifferent manner and blue eyes that stared.She had a daughter who served her as a pretext for cultivating the society of young men of fashion.Alcee Arobin was one of them.He was afamiliar figure at the race course, the opera, the fashionable clubs.There was a perpetual smile in his eyes, which seldom failed to awaken a corresponding cheerfulness in any one who looked into them and listened to his good-humored voice.His manner was quiet, and at times a little insolent.He possessed a good figure, a pleasing face, not overburdened with depth of thought or feeling; and his dress was that of the conventional man of fashion.

He admired Edna extravagantly, after meeting her at the races with her father.He had met her before on other occasions, but she had seemed to him unapproachable until that day.It was at his instigation that Mrs.Highcamp called to ask her to go with them to the Jockey Club to witness the turf event of the season.

There were possibly a few track men out there who knew the race horse as well as Edna, but there was certainly none who knew it better.She sat between her two companions as one having authority to speak.She laughed at Arobin's pretensions, and deplored Mrs.Highcamp's ignorance.The race horse was a friend and intimate associate of her childhood.The atmosphere of the stables and the breath of the blue grass paddock revived in her memory and lingered in her nostrils.She did not perceive that she was talking like her father as the sleek geldings ambled in review before them.She played for very high stakes, and fortune favored her.The fever of the game flamed in her cheeks and eves, and it got into her blood and into her brain like an intoxicant.People turned their heads to look at her, and more than one lent an attentive car to her utterances, hoping thereby to secure the elusive but ever-desired "tip." Arobin caught the contagion of excitement which drew him to Edna like a magnet.Mrs.Highcamp remained, as usual, unmoved, with her indifferent stare and uplifted eyebrows.

Edna stayed and dined with Mrs.Highcamp upon being urged to do so.Arobin also remained and sent away his drag.

The dinner was quiet and uninteresting, save for the cheerful efforts of Arobin to enliven things.Mrs.Highcamp deplored the absence of her daughter from the races, and tried to convey to her what she had missed by going to the "Dante reading" instead of joining them.The girl held ageranium leaf up to her nose and said nothing, but looked knowing and noncommittal.Mr.Highcamp was a plain, bald-headed man, who only talked under compulsion.He was unresponsive.Mrs.Highcamp was full of delicate courtesy and consideration toward her husband.She addressed most of her conversation to him at table.They sat in the library after dinner and read the evening papers together under the droplight; while the younger people went into the drawing-room near by and talked.Miss Highcamp played some selections from Grieg upon the piano.She seemed to have apprehended all of the composer's coldness and none of his poetry.While Edna listened she could not help wondering if she had lost her taste for music.

When the time came for her to go home, Mr.Highcamp grunted a lame offer to escort her, looking down at his slippered feet with tactless concern.It was Arobin who took her home.The car ride was long, and it was late when they reached Esplanade Street.Arobin asked permission to enter for a second to light his cigarette--his match safe was empty.He filled his match safe, but did not light his cigarette until he left her, after she had expressed her willingness to go to the races with him again.

Edna was neither tired nor sleepy.She was hungry again, for the Highcamp dinner, though of excellent quality, had lacked abundance.She rummaged in the larder and brought forth a slice of Gruyere and some crackers.She opened a bottle of beer which she found in the icebox.Edna felt extremely restless and excited.She vacantly hummed a fantastic tune as she poked at the wood embers on the hearth and munched a cracker.

She wanted something to happen--something, anything; she did not know what.She regretted that she had not made Arobin stay a half hour to talk over the horses with her.She counted the money she had won.But there was nothing else to do, so she went to bed, and tossed there for hours in a sort of monotonous agitation.