XII
She would not have believed that so soon after Jean’s death she could find herself settling back into a routined life. At first there had been the long, empty days and the longer nights when the house seemed a vast, empty place from which the spirit or thing or whatever it might be called which had made it different from other places had fled. But Mrs. Daquin had removed most of the things which too vividly brought back memories of Jean.
“There’s no use of keeping things that only make you sad,” she had said. “I get the creeps every time I go to see Mrs. Simpkins—those dried flowers from her husband’s funeral hanging in the frame in her parlour. There’ll be nothing like that around here—a dead person’s dead and you can’t bring him back, no matter how much you loved him.”
At first Mimi had objected strenuously to Mrs. Daquin’s seemingly ruthless disposal of all the things which to her were so intimately associated with Jean. They had, however, brought little furniture from New Orleans, only Jean’s books and a few odds and ends. These latter Mimi removed to her own room and then she willingly consented to whatever changes her stepmother desired. A new parlour set was purchased as soon after the funeral as was decently possible. New wallpaper appeared in the long dark hall and in Mrs. Daquin’s bedroom. Out, too, went the bedroom furniture of mottled walnut. A brass bed with frolicsome curves and angles of shiny metal contrasting with the cloudy dullness of the heavier portions took its place. The imperfect set of plain white china with the narrow border of gold and blue was stored in the attic. In its stead appeared china of awe-inspiring combinations of bluebirds kissing on the wing, many cupolaed pagodas, sampans rowed by fat-bellied Chinamen, and trees of a design never produced even by a profligate Nature. Mimi took only a perfunctory interest in these changes other than vouchsafing a listless “They’re pretty,” when pressed for comment by Mrs. Daquin.
Mimi at times was amazed at her ready acceptance of the uneventful life. She was grateful that she had apparently been wrong in her estimation of her stepmother. Mrs. Daquin seemed changed, chastened by Jean’s death. She had really loved her husband in her own fashion even when she had been most irritated by what to her seemed his lack of intelligence in grasping opportunities for advancement or gain. Now that he was dead, she found herself regarding him not in the light of the later years but more as she had during their short courtship and the first year of their marriage. This mood was sustained by the very evident advantages which she found coming to her as a recently bereaved widow. She knew that in time this too would pass. In time Jean would be but a faint memory to most of those with whom she associated.
It was not conscious dishonesty nor was she a deliberate poseuse when she accepted the little attentions, the deference which they bestowed on her. Mrs. Daquin found herself for the first time a personage in her own right. All her youth she had lived under the dominating influence of her father, and even after her marriage to so retiring a person as Jean, she found that her handicap in being a woman in a conventional society was very great. Her father had not attended the funeral but he had wired and written her repeatedly urging her to return to Chicago. This she resolved not to do—at least not unless circumstances compelled such a step—for she was enjoying too greatly for immediate surrender her new importance.
The mood thus engendered worked to Mimi’s advantage though she did not fully understand the reasons for that good fortune. Mrs. Daquin was kindly in her manner, far more so than she had ever been before. When after a few weeks they began to be seen on the streets, Mimi was always to be seen with her stepmother, both clad in the depressingly sombre blacks of sorrow which custom demanded. Mimi’s oval, cream-coloured face topped by its aureole of reddish gold peeped out with startling beauty from the black bonnet tied under her chin with strings of the same colour. Mrs. Daquin did not fare so well in her melancholy raiment, her brown skin and hair offering not so marked a contrast as in Mimi’s case. She suffered the loss of comeliness cheerfully, however, for its added advantages in sympathetic attention.
Careless as usual of material things, they found Jean had not made a will. Mr. Hunter had volunteered to relieve them of the burdens of settling the estate and his report had shown that not much had been left. Jean had not secured the full value of his property in New Orleans and the cash he had secured had been invested largely in purchasing stock in the Lincoln Mutual Insurance Company. This would in time prove a sound investment, but at present there was little return from it. The deeds to the house given them by Mr. Robertson had been made out in Mrs. Daquin’s name. Mr. Robertson volunteered to contribute a definite sum each month to their support when he saw that his daughter had no intentions of returning to Chicago as he wished. Mimi, trained to do no work which would bring her appreciable income or which she could have accepted without lowering their social status, found herself faced with the Hobson’s choice of teaching school or enduring the loss of many little comforts and even a few necessities which before had seemed to her so natural she had never given thought to their source. She did not grumble but
