The Crocodile | Page 8

and I could not leave her while I made my own way the
impulse was empty. He made attacks on our happiness with tongue and
contrivance. He descended to raillery and sneers, even to coarseness.
Yet when the confines of endurance had been approached too closely,
and I threatened to cross them, he clung to me with such a seeming of
feeling and patheticness that I was forced to hold back. Through these
harsh times Virginia was all sweetness and patience, but her cheeks lost
their color and her body the delicious fullness of its lines.
My father was at times so eccentric in his behavior that I had it often in
mind to ask the investigations of a physician. But as often the horror of
a son prying after madness in his father withheld me. As always, his
actions centered around the observance of his private grief. And to that
great mental structure which he had made of my mother's beauties and
virtues, he added incessantly wings and superstructures, until we had
portrayed for us a woman in no way human or possible. To draw
odious comparisons between Virginia and my mother, between his
capacity for loving and my own, were his constant and indelicate
exercises.
"Do you think you love, Richard?" he would say. "If she were to die
this night, where would your love be at the end of the year? Is she
bonny enough to hold a man's heart till death shall seek him out too?
She's well enough in her way, your Virginia, I'll not deny that But does
a man remember what was only well enough? Does a man remember
the first peach he ate? Nay, he will not remember that. But will he
forget the first time that he heard Beethoven? Your mother, she was
that rich, strong music, she was -- the bonny one -- the unforgettable.

Ah, the majesty of her, Richard, that was only for me to approach!"
And such like, till the heart sickened in you. Often he made us go with
him to the vault and listen to his speeches, and kneel with him in the
wet. Finally he played on us a trick that had in it something of the truly
devilish, and was the beginning of the end. He began by insisting that
we should be married and appointing a day. There was to be a minister,
ourselves, and the servants. We were glad enough to be married, even
on such scanty terms, and I well remember with what eagerness I arose
on the glad morning, and slipped into my better suit of black, for I had
no gayer clothes. Virginia did not come down to breakfast, but toward
the close of that meal, at which my father was the nearest he ever came
to being cheerful, I heard her calling to me from the upper story. When
I knocked at her door she opened it a little and showed me a teary face.
"Richard," she said, "they've taken away my clothes and left only a
black dress. I won't be married in black."
"Does it matter, dear?" I said. "Put it on and we will ransack the attic
for something gayer."
But we found the attic locked. My father had provided against
resistance.
"Does it matter, dear?" I said. "It's not your clothes I'm marrying -- it's
my darling herself"
So she smiled bravely and we went downstairs. The ceremony was
appointed for eleven in the morning. But at that hour neither the
minister, nor my father, nor the servants were to be found. We waited
until twelve. Then I went out to look for my father. I went first to the
vault and there found him. He was kneeling in the wet, facing the door,
and holding in his hands the stuffed crocodile. He had, I suppose, been
calling the name of Allah in the wild hope of seeing my mother's face.
"Have you forgotten that we are to be married today?" I said.
He rose, hiding the crocodile beneath his coat.

"No," he said. "I had not forgotten that. Why should I be forgetting that?
But the minister, he could not come, at the last minute he could not
come."
"Then you should have told us," I said sternly.
"Would you be angry with me, Richard, my son?" he answered gently.
"Why couldn't the minister come?" I said, giving no heed to his
question.
The gentleness, which must have been play-acting, went out of my
father's voice.
"The minister," he said sneeringly, "faith, the minister, he had a more
important funeral to attend."
My gorge rose and fell.
"What have you done with Virginia's trunk?" I said.
"It will be back in her room by now," said my father.
"Thank you," said I, "and good-day