The Crocodile | Page 7

mother came to life your father would ----"
Virginia did not finish. We were seated in the cool hall, for the porch
was piping hot, and our conversation was interrupted by a loud cry
emanating from the library.
"Allah -- Allah -- Allah!"
"If I weren't charitable, which I am," said Virginia, "I would say that

that was done for effect. He knows we're here. Bet you, he's looking at
himself in the glass."
"Virginia," I began angrily, and I was for telling her that she was
ill-natured, when the library door opened and my father came out.
"Oh!" said he, with a fine start, "I did not know you were there...."
Virginia gave me one look, at once hurt and amused. Then she turned
to my father and said gravely: "Did anything happen, Uncle Richard,
when you called? Did you see the -- the face -- of ----"
"No, child," said my father sadly. "I was so foolish, I may say
undignified, as to try a childish and foolish experiment. It is
unnecessary to say that the tall and stately form and classic face of
Richard's dear mother did not appear to me. But I caught a glimpse of
another face, Virginia ---- a face white and broken by sorrow and regret,
a face that it was not pleasant to see...How it all comes back to me," he
went on. "Here I stood by her casket, ignorant of time and place --
ignorant of all earthly things but loss -- and for the last time looked
upon her beauty. No, not for the last time,

For all my daily trances
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy bright eye glances
And where thy footstep gleams.
"Ay, child, but she was bonny! Was she not bonny, Richard?"
I do not know what prompted Virginia to ask the sudden question
which turned my father's face for a moment into a painful blank and
placed him in a position from which he extricated himself, I am forced
to believe, only by a real and searching act of memory.

"What was her name?" said Virginia quickly.
It was a full half minute before my father managed to stammer my
mother's name. But during the ensuing days it was constantly on his
lips, as if he wished to make up to it for the oblivion into which it had
been allowed to drop.
That afternoon it rained violently, and Virginia persuaded me to
explore with her the mysteries of the ancient and cobwebby attic that
occupied the whole upper floor of our house. It was a place in whose
slatted window blinds sparrows built their nests, and in which a period,
that of my mother's brief mistressship, had been perfectly preserved. It
was the most cheerful part of the house.
Among other things we found in a trunk of old fashion my mother's
wedding regalia. A dress of apple-green silk embroidered about the
neck and wrists with tiny forget-me-nots, faded to the palest shade of
lilac; a pair of tiny shoes of the same apple-green silk, with square toes
and dark jade buttons; a veil of venetian point, from which a large
square had been cut, and the brittle remnants of a wreath my mother's
wedding wreath, which old Ann had often told me was combined of
apple and orange flowers. When Virginia stood up and held the neck of
my mother's dress level with the neck of her own, it did not reach to her
ankles, and she smiled at me.
"Richard," she said, "I could not get into this dress. Your tall and
stately mother was no bigger than I."
"And no sweeter, I fancy," said I. For the being together with Virginia
over my mother's things had suddenly opened my heart to her.
"Oh, Virginia," I went on, "it makes me sick to think of your living on
in this dead house. I want you to be happy. I want to make you happy.
You are the only good thing that was ever in my life. I know it now.
And I -- I want to be happy, too...."
We explored the attic no more that day, and after supper we told my
father.

From the very announcement to him of our engagement a marked
change came over my father. Hitherto his influence had been for
darkness, but of a silent and quiet character, like that which clouds
spread through a wood at noon; but now he had become baleful and
pointed in his efforts to make us unhappy.
To set in motion any machinery of escape was too impracticable and
tedious to be thought of. Had I been for myself alone, I would have left
him at this period and endeavored to support myself. But with Virginia
to care for --