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At one end of the vast quarry was a demolished house, showing flues and fireplaces and a score of thicknesses of old wallpaper; and at night they might well have stood up on the tops of the buses! A dozen great spluttering violet arc-lights half-blinded you; down below were the watchmen's fires; overhead, the riveters had their fire-baskets; and in odd corners naphtha-lights guttered and flared.
His feelings were hurt; he passed broodingly to the front part of the house, and flung himself wearily into an armchair in the library. With glazed eyes he stared at shelves of books that meant to him just what the wallpaper meant, and he sighed from the abyss. His legs tossed and his arms flopped; he got up, scratched himself exhaustively, and shuffled to a window.
"Better wait till I come back from the office. Be back about six. Got to write some letters. Your case called next Thursday." And Sheriff Owen departed, leaving Pete staring at yellow wallpaper sprinkled with blue roses.
They were not, however, a helpless band. They, too, had their traditions, handed down by the fighting Shaws. Peter, the older son, became a soldier, and died bravely in the Crimean War. My father, through some outside influence, turned his attention to trade, learning to stain and emboss wallpaper by hand, and developing this work until he became the recognized expert in his field.
But whenever Aunt M'riar was not handicapping the desiccation of the walls by overcharging the atmosphere with moisture of the very wettest possible sort, Dolly and Dave could have the room to themselves, so long as they kep' their hands off the clean wallpaper; which was included in leaving be, obviously not an intrusion of a new stipulation.
The next day was Sunday, and Peckham was at something of a loss what to do with it. He hated the sight of his room. The odor of the straw matting and the pattern of the wallpaper were inextricably associated with those anticipations which he had been rudely cheated out of.
He knew that the Countess Olenska had brought some of her possessions with her bits of wreckage, she called them and these, he supposed, were represented by some small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze on the chimney-piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on the discoloured wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in old frames.
The room seemed to grow suddenly cold, and the faces of all the inmates became pale; they looked more squalid than ever the threadbare curtains, the rheumatic chairs, the soiled floor, sashes and wallpaper. Mr. Hugenot fumbled his shirt-bosom nervously, and his diamond pin, glaring like a lamp upon the worn garbs and faces of his compatriots, showed them still wanner and meaner by contrast.
"We should have walked into a dingy dining-room, with brown wallpaper and four steel engravings of bloodthirsty scenes from the Old Testament. A sleepy head waiter would have looked at me with a polite but puzzled expression, as if at a loss to know why on earth we had come. I should have enquired deprecatingly: 'What can you give us for lunch? What would he have replied?"
Old Goodwin's tall hat done up with some sticky stuff. Flies' picnic too. Never put a dress on her back like it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips. Just beginning to plump it out well. Rabbitpie we had that day. People looking after her. Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red wallpaper. Dockrell's, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly's tubbing night.
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