The Crocodile | Page 4

me that is impossible, for I am beyond its longest and
wildest reach. But with you it is different. Life has in store for you the
possibility of many misfortunes. Take care that 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