"Would you like to hear Mademoiselle Reisz play?" asked Robert, coming
out on the porch where she was. Of course Edna would like to hear
Mademoiselle Reisz play; but she feared it would be useless to entreat
her.
"I'll ask her," he said. "I'll tell her that you want to hear her. She
likes you. She will come." He turned and hurried away to one of the far
cottages, where Mademoiselle Reisz was shuffling away. She was dragging
a chair in and out of her room, and at intervals objecting to the crying
of a baby, which a nurse in the adjoining cottage was endeavoring to put
to sleep. She was a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who
had quarreled with almost every one, owing to a temper which was
self-assertive and a disposition to trample upon the rights of others.
Robert prevailed upon her without any too great difficulty.
She entered the hall with him during a lull in the dance. She made an
awkward, imperious little bow as she went in. She was a homely woman,
with a small weazened face and body and eyes that glowed. She had
absolutely no taste in dress, and wore a batch of rusty black lace with
a bunch of artificial violets pinned to the side of her hair.
"Ask Mrs. Pontellier what she would like to hear me play," she requested
of Robert. She sat perfectly still before the piano, not touching the
keys, while Robert carried her message to Edna at the window. A general
air of surprise and genuine satisfaction fell upon every one as they saw
the pianist enter. There was a settling down, and a prevailing air
of expectancy everywhere. Edna was a trifle embarrassed at being thus
signaled out for the imperious little woman's favor. She would not dare
to choose, and begged that Mademoiselle Reisz would please herself in
her selections.
Edna was what she herself called very fond of music. Musical strains,
well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind. She sometimes
liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle played
or practiced. One piece which that lady played Edna had entitled
"Solitude." It was a short, plaintive, minor strain. The name of the
piece was something else, but she called it "Solitude." When she heard
it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside
a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one
of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its
flight away from him.
Another piece called to her mind a dainty young woman clad in an Empire
gown, taking mincing dancing steps as she came down a long avenue
between tall hedges. Again, another reminded her of children at play,
and still another of nothing on earth but a demure lady stroking a cat.