Great American Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)

by Paul Negri

  It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.

  The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

  One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

  It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

  The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

  It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.

  No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.

  There comes John, and I must put this away,—he hates to have me write a word.

  We have been here two weeks, and I haven’t felt like writing before, since that first day.

  I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.

  John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious.

  I am glad my case is not serious!

  But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.

  John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.

  Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way!

  I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!

  Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able,—to dress and entertain, and order things.

  It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!

  And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.

  I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wallpaper!

  At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.

  He said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.

  “You know the place is doing you good,” he said, “and really, dear, I don’t care to renovate the house just for a three months’ rental.”

  “Then do let us go downstairs,” I said, “there are such pretty rooms there.”

  Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain.

  But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.

  It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim.

  I’m really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.

  Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees.

  Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.

  I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.

  But I find I get pretty tired when I try.

  It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now.

  I wish I could get well faster.

  But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!

  There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

  I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didn’t match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

  I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.

  I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend.

  I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe.

  The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.

  The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother—they must have had perseverance as well as hatred.

  Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.

  But I don’t mind it a bit—only the paper.

  There comes John’s sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing.

  She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!

  But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows.

  There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.

  This wall-paper has a kind of subpattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.

  But in the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.

  There’s sister on the stairs!

  Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are all gone and I am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week.

  Of course I didn’t do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.

  But it tired me all the same.

  John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.

  But I don’t want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!

  Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.

  I don’t feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

  I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

  Of course I don’t when John is
here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.

  And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to.

  So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal.

  I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper.

  It dwells in my mind so!

  I lie here on this great immovable bed—it is nailed down, I believe—and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we’ll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.

  I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.

  It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.

  Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes—a kind of “debased Romanesque” with delirium tremens—go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

  But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase..

  The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.

  They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.

  There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,—the interminable grotesque seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.

  It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess.

  I don’t know why I should write this.

  I don’t want to.

  I don’t feel able.

  And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way—it is such a relief!

  But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

  Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.

  John says I mustn’t lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.

  Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.

  But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.

  It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.

  And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.

  He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.

  He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.

  There’s one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.

  If we had not used it, that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn’t have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.

  I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see.

  Of course I never mention it to them any more—I am too wise,—but I keep watch of it all the same.

  There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.

  Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.

  It is always the same shape, only very numerous.

  And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here!

  It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.

  But I tried it last night.

  It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does.

  I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.

  John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy.

  The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.

  I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move, and when I came back John was awake.

  “What is it, little girl?” he said. “Don’t go walking about like that—you’ll get cold.”

  I thought it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away.

  “Why darling!” said he, “our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can’t see how to leave before.

  “The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you.”

  “I don’t weigh a bit more,” said I, “nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away!”

  “Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug, “she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let’s improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!”

  “And you won’t go away?” I asked gloomily.

  “Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really dear you are better!”

  “Better in body perhaps—” I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.

  “My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?”

  So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn’t, and lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.

  On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.

  The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

  You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.

  The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions—why, that is something like it.

  That is, sometimes!

  There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.

  When the sun shoots in through the east window—I always watch for that first long, straight ray—it cha
nges so quickly that I never can quite believe it.

  That is why I watch it always.

  By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I wouldn’t know it was the same paper.

  At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

  I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman.

  By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.

  I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.

  Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal.

  It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don’t sleep.

  And that cultivates deceit, for I don’t tell them I’m awake—O no!

  The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.

  He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.

  It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis,—that perhaps it is the paper!

  I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.

  She didn’t know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper—she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry—asked me why I should frighten her so!

  Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John’s, and she wished we would be more careful!