"There is some mistake," he thought, as he had thought before. He lifted his bared head to the November sky in a kind of exaltation.
This did not fail him until he came back into his desolate home. He stood staring at the swept and garnished house. The disarray of the funeral was quite removed. His wife's room was ordered as usual; its windows stood open. Some of the dreadful flowers were still left about the house. He pulled them savagely from their places and threw them away. The servants stood crying in the hall; and the strange professional nurse, who had remained with the baby, came up and offered him the child—somewhat as if it had been a Bible text, he thought. He took the little thing into his arms, piously; but the baby began to cry, and hit him in the eyes with both fists.
"It's after her he do be cryin'," said Molly.
Avery handed her the child in silence. As he turned to go upstairs, Pink ran after him.
"Papa," said Pink, "do you expect Mummer Dee to make a very long visit in heaven? I should fink it was time for her to come home, by supper, shouldn't you, Papa?"
In their own rooms Marshall Avery sat him down alone. He bolted all the doors, and walked from limit to limit of the narrow space—his room and hers, with the door open between that he used to close because the baby bothered him. It stood wide open now. In his room some of his neckties and clothes were lying about; Jean used to attend to his things herself, even after she was ill—too ill, perhaps; he remembered reminding her rather positively if any of these trifles were neglected; once she had said, "I 'm not quite strong enough to-day."
On his bureau stood her photograph, framed in silver—a fair picture, in a white gown, with lace about the throat. It had Jean's own eyes; but nothing ever gave the expression of her mouth. He stood looking at her picture.
Presently he put it down, and came back into his wife's room. He shut the windows, for he shivered with cold, and stared about. The empty bed was made, straight and stark. The violets were drooping on the table beside her Bible, her basket, and her portfolio. He picked these things up, and laid them down again. He went mechanically to the bureau and opened the upper drawer. All her little dainty belongings were folded in their places,—her gloves, her handkerchiefs, the laces that she fancied, and the blond ribbons that she wore—the blue, the rose, the lavender, and the corn.
In this drawer a long narrow piece of white tissue-paper lay folded carefully across the glove box. He opened it idly. Something fell from it and seemed to leap to his fingers, and cling as if it would not leave them. It was a thick lock of her own long bright hair.
He caught it to his breast, his cheek, his lips. He cherished it wildly, as he would now have cherished her. The forgotten tenderness, the omitted gentleness of life, lavished itself on death, as remorse will lavish what love passed by. The touch of her hair on his hands smote the retreating form of his illusion out of him. He could not deceive himself any longer.