VI
Several days had gone by. Horace now slept in the hotel and the same pattern of events repeated itself every night: windows went on across the street and the light fell on his mirrors, or else he woke up and found the windows asleep.
One night he heard screams and saw flames in his mirror. At first he watched them as if they were flickers on a movie screen, but then he realized that if they showed in the mirror they must be somewhere in reality, and, springing up and swinging around, all at once, he saw them dancing out a window across the street, like devils in a puppet show. He scrambled out of bed, threw on his robe and put his face to one of his windows. As it caught flashes in its glass, his window seemed frightened at what was happening to the one across the street. There was a crowd below — he was on the second floor — and the firetruck was coming. Just then, he saw Mary leaning out another window of the hotel. She had already noticed him and was staring as if she did not quite recognize him. He waved, shut his window and went up the hall to rap on what he figured was her door. She burst right out saying:
“You’re wasting your time following me.”
And she slammed the door in his face.
He stayed there quietly until he heard her sobbing inside, then he answered:
“I wasn’t following you. But since we’ve met, why don’t we go home?”
“You go on if you want,” she said.
He thought he had sensed a note of longing in her voice, in spite of everything, and the next day he moved back happily into the black house. There he basked in the luxury of his surroundings, wandering like a sleepwalker among his riches. The familiar objects all seemed full of peaceful memories, the high ceilings braced against death, if it struck from above.
But when he went into the show room after dinner that evening, the piano reminded him of a big coffin, the silence of a wake. It was a resonant silence, as if it were mourning the death of a musician. He raised the top of the piano, and, suddenly, terrified, let it fall with a bang. For a moment he stood there with his arms in the air, as if someone were pointing a gun at him, but then he rushed out into the courtyard shouting:
“Who put Daisy in the piano?”
As his shouts echoed, he went on seeing her hair tangled in the strings, her face flattened by the weight of the lid. One of the twins answered his call but could not get a word out. Finally Alex appeared:
“The lady was in this afternoon. She came to get some clothes.”
“These surprises of hers are killing me,” Horace shouted, beside himself. But suddenly he calmed down: “Take Daisy to your room and have Frank come for her first thing in the morning. Wait!” he shouted again. “Something else.” And — after he had made sure the twins were out of earshot — lowering his voice to a whisper: “Tell Frank he can bring the other doll when he comes for her.”
That night he moved to another hotel. He was given a room with a single mirror. The yellow wallpaper had red flowers and green leaves woven in a pattern that suggested a trellis. The bedspread was also yellow and irritated him with its glare: it would be like sleeping outdoors.
The next morning he went home and had some large mirrors brought into the showroom to multiply the scenes in the glass cases. The day passed with no word from Frank. That evening, as Alex came into the showroom with the wine, he dropped the bottle. .
“Anything wrong?” Horace said.
He was wearing a mask and yellow gloves.
“I thought you were a bandit,” said Alex as Horace’s laugh blew billows in the black silk mask.
“It’s hot behind this thing, and it won’t let me drink my wine. But before I remove it I want you to take down the mirrors and stand them on the floor, leaning on chairs — like this,” said Horace, taking one down and showing him.
“They’d be safer if you leaned the glass on the wall,” Alex objected.
“No, because I still want them to reflect things.”
“You could lean their backs on the wall then.”
“No, because then they’d reflect upward and I have no interest in seeing my face.”
When Alex had done as he was told, Horace removed his mask and began to sip his wine, pacing up and down a carpeted aisle in the center of the room. The way the mirrors tipped forward slightly, toward him, leaning on the chairs that separated them from him, made him think of them as bowing servants watching him from under their raised eyelids. They also reflected the floor through the legs of the chairs, making it seem crooked. After a couple of drinks he was bothered by this effect and decided to go to bed.
The following morning — he had slept at home that night — the chauffeur came, on Mary’s behalf, to ask for money. He gave him the money without asking where she was, but assumed it meant she would not be back any time soon. So when the blonde arrived, he had her taken straight up to the bedroom. At dinnertime he had the twins dress her in an evening gown and bring her to the table. He ate with her sitting across from him. Afterward, in front of one of the twins, he asked Alex:
“Well, what do you think of this one?”
“A beauty, sir — very much like a spy I met during the war.”
“A lovely thought, Alex.”
The next day he told the twins:
“From now on you’re to call her Miss Eulalie.”
At dinnertime he asked the twins (who no longer hid from him):
“Can you tell me who’s in the dining room?”
“Miss Eulalie,” both twins said at once.
But, between themselves, making fun of Alex, they kept saying:
“It’s time to give the spy her hot water.”
VII
Mary was waiting in the student hotel, hoping he would return there. She went out only long enough for her room to be made. She carried her head high around the neighborhood, but walked in a haze, oblivious to her surroundings, thinking, “I am a woman who has lost her man to a doll. But if he could see me now he would be drawn to me.” Back in her room, she would open a book of poems bound in blue oilcloth and start to read aloud, in a rapt voice, waiting for Horace again. When he failed to show up, she would try to see into the poems, and if their meaning escaped her she abandoned herself to the thought that she was a martyr and that suffering would add to her charm. One afternoon she was able to understand a poem: it was as if someone had left a door open by chance, suddenly revealing what was inside. Then, for a moment, it seemed to her the wallpaper, the folding screen, even the washbowl with its nickel-plated taps also understood the poems, impelled by something in their nature to reach out toward the lofty rhythms and noble images. Often, in the middle of the night, she switched on her lamp and chose a poem as if she could choose a dream. Out walking again the next day in the neighborhood, she imagined her steps were poetry. And one morning she decided, “I would like Horace to know I’m walking alone among trees with a book in my hand.”
Accordingly, she packed again, sent for her chauffeur and had him drive her out to a place belonging to a cousin of her mother’s: it was in the outskirts and had trees. The cousin was an old maid who lived in an ancient house. When her huge bulk came heaving through the dim rooms, making the floor creak, a parrot squawked: “Hello, milksops!” Mary told Prairie of her troubles without shedding a tear. The fat cousin was horrified, then indignant, and finally tearful. But Mary calmly dispatched the chauffeur with instructions to get money from Horace. In case Horace asked after her, he was to say, as if on his own, that she was walking among trees with a book in her hand. If he wanted to know where she was, he should tell him. Finally, he was to report back at the same time the next day. Then she went and sat under a tree with her book, and the poems started to float out and spread through the countryside as if taking on the shapes of trees and drifting clouds.