The Crocodile | Page 4

you do not bring them upon yourself. Pray that you have not already done so by giving vent to ghoulish laughter in the presence of your dead mother. Now take yourself off and leave me with my memories."
That night there was an avenue of moss-shrouded live oaks in dreamland, down which I fled before the onrush of a mighty and ominous crocodile.
The next day was Christmas, and we resumed the monotony of our stolid and gloomy lives.
At eighteen I was a very serious and colorless youth. It may be that I contained the seeds of a rational outlook upon life, but so far they had not sprouted. My father's pervading melancholy was more strong in me than red blood and ambition. With him I looked forward to an indefinite extension of the past, enlivened, if I may use the paradox, by two demises, his and my own. I had much sober literature at my tongue tips, a condescending fondness for the great poets, a normal appetite, two suits of black, and a mouth stiff from never having learned to smile. I stood in stark ignorance of life, and had but the vaguest notion as to how babies are made. My father, preserved in melancholy as a bitter pickle in vinegar, had not aged or changed an iota from my earliest memory of him a very white man dressed in very black cloth.
One morning my father sent from the library for me, and when I had presented myself said shortly:
"Your Uncle Richard is dead. He has left nothing. He was guardian, as you may know, of Virginia Richmond, the daughter of his intimate friend. She is coming to live with us. Let us hope that she is sedate and reasonable. You have never seen anything of women. It may be that you will fall in love with her. You may consult with me if you do, though I am no longer in touch with youth. She is to have the south spare room. You may tell Ann. She will be here this evening (my father always spoke of the afternoon as the evening). You may tell her our ways, and our hatred of noise and frivolity. If she is a lady that will be sufficient. I think that is all."
My father sighed and turned away his face.
"To a large extent," he said, "she has been educated abroad. I hope that she will not bore you. But even if she should, try to be kind to her. I know you will be civil."
"Shall you be here to welcome her?" I asked.
"I shall hope to be," said my father. "But I have proposed to myself to gather some of the early jasmine to ---- If I am urgently needed for anything I shall be in the immediate vicinity of the vault."
Virginia Richmond arrived in an express wagon, together with her three trunks and two portmanteaus. She sat by the driver, a young Negro, with whom she had evidently established the most talkative terms, and did not wait for me to help her deferentially to the ground, but put a slender a foot on the wheel, and jumped.
"It's good to get here," she said. "Are you Richard?"
"Yes, Virginia," I said, and felt that I was smiling.
"Where's Uncle John?" she said. "I call him Uncle John because his brother was my adopted Uncle Richard always. And you're my Cousin Richard. And I'm your Cousin Virginia, going on seventeen, very talkative, affectionate, and hungry. How old are you?"
"I shall be nineteen in April," I said, "and my father is somewhere about the grounds" -- I did not like to say vault -- "and will try to find you something edible. Are you tired?"
"Do I look tired?"
"No," I said.
"How do I look?"
"Why," I said, "I think you look very well. I -- I like your look."
A better judge than I might have liked it. She had a rosy face of curves and dimples, unruly hair of many browns, eyes that were deep wonders of blue, a mouth of pearl and pomegranate.
"You," she said, "look very grave -- and yes, hungry. But you have nice eyes and a good skin, though it ought to be browner in this climate, and if you don't smile this minute I shall scream."
So I smiled, and we went into the house.
"My God! Cousin," she cried, to my mind most irreverently, "can't you open something and let in the light?"
"My father," I said, "prefers the house dark."
"Then let it be dark when he's in it," she cried, "and bright when he's out of it."
And she ran to a window and struggled with the shutter. When she had flung that open she braced herself for an attack upon the next; but I bowed to the inevitable and saved her from the trouble of consummating