“I wonder why?” he said, in a voice choked by tenderness, and then he went up to her.
Their bedroom, like the rest of the cottage, spoke of the persistent struggle for individuality. The bed was a tent, with curtains and canopy of brown and white; old chintz the color of coffee which is three parts milk. There was a patchwork quilt. She had made it from sentiment, not industry. There was the shine of oak and the twinkle of metal about the furniture. The chairs had rush seats, and had been collected, one by one, from other cottages.
He sat down and looked at the figure which was stretched so quietly under the canopy of sad brown. I try to picture him as he sat in that room with his unconventional clothes—you know the sort of thing, velvet coat, baggy knickerbockers, and streaming ends of a vivid necktie—and rugged, simple face; he might have been a man of a hundred years back. He could have had no place in this whirling, struggling nineteenth century, this common age.
The cuckoo was calling, with a voice much the worse for wear, “Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuck-cuck-cuckoo, cuckoo, cuck. Cuck.” He groaned, remembering that she would never hear a word against the cuckoo—that genus of birds who scorned dull routine and domesticity. She used to add a bit mournfully, with one of those fierce sudden kisses which had bothered him so at the time, and which he would have given all his art for now, that a cuckoo sort of woman would have suited him. She filled the world—this dead, perplexing Adeline of his. Would he ever be able to touch or hear, or speak, or see without that tender, pensive ghost at his side!
He looked about him as the cuckoo called. The room was dear, so dear, from the days when Betty, a funny, bald baby, had kicked and gurgled in that queer oak cradle beside the bed. They had made the child participate in their eccentricities from the very start. She never had a perambulator, her dolly was a grotesque, home-made one, her clothes were made from mediæval designs.
Dear! with so many common, precious details. How many mornings had she sat before that shield-shaped glass, and wound the silk of her long, pale hair about her head! That little drawer on the left was sacred to her ribbons—an end of rose was hanging out.
And then he looked at her, going close to the bed and stooping as if to caress her. But the dead face tantalized him. The eternal, remorseful tenderness was strong on her lips of steel. There had always been a sprig of rue in her love. Why? that maddening why—never to be answered. There had been a locked chamber in her heart.
He turned away, not even kissing her brow. This still, white woman on the bed was not his. He and this soulless face were strangers. He felt her more in the never-ceasing call of the bird, in tall heads of lilies in the garden, and ephemeral patches of Shirley poppies which she had sown in March, in Betty’s ringing shout as she darted like a hummingbird across the grass.
The room became suddenly hateful; every corner, every picture on the wall was a pang. Her gown—the delicate gown she had given her life for—hung fresh on the nail. It seemed mutely to hold her shape: in the sleeves, the folds across the bosom, the short, round waist.
The sight of it was more than he could bear. She had been so clever, so daring, so different. Clever, not in a positive, productive way,—stupid women could produce,—but she had thrown her capacity about with royal lavishness; putting it into everything she did, if it were only a pudding, or a new border in the garden.