Diary Entry 4

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamp light, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be. I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim subpattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour. I lie down a lot now. Kai says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can. Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal. It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don't sleep. And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake, no! The fact is I am getting a little afraid of Kai. He seems very queer sometimes, and even Isabelle has an inexplicable look. It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, that perhaps it is the paper! I have watched Kai when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I've caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER! And Isabelle too. 

I caught her with her hand on it once. She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry, then asked me why I should frighten her so! Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and Kai's, and she wished we would be more careful! Did that not sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself! Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was. Kai is pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper addiction. I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was BECAUSE of the wallpaper he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away. I don't want to leave now until I have found it out. There is one week more, and I think that will be enough. I'm feeling ever so much better! I don't sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime. 

In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing. There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously. It is the strangest yellow, the wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw not beautiful ones like buttercups, but foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining room, skulking in the parlour, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair. Even when I go to ride, I turn my head suddenly and surprise there it is that smell! Such a peculiar odour, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyse it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odour I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the cabin down to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the COLOR of the paper! A yellow smell. There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even SMOOCH, as if it had been rubbed over and over. I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round and round and round and round, it makes me dizzy! I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes, I have finally found out the front pattern DOES move�"and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind it, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. 

Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern, it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads. They get through, and then the pattern strangles them and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white! If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half bad. I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I'll tell you why privately, I've seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know Kai would suspect something at once. Kai is so queer now, that I don't want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself. I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once. But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at a time. And though I always see her, she MAY be able to creep faster than I can turn! I have watched her sometimes away off in the open mountain fog, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind. If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the one below! I mean to try it, little by little. I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time!