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 worthwhile 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 it as good as gymnastics,
I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the
corner over there where it has nos 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 it. She didn't
know I was in the Room. The 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!
