“Well, suppose it should? Does not my white head entitle me to all such luxuries of old age and decrepitude? Don’t bother me, Elsie.”
She put out her hand with a repellent gesture, but Elsie seized it, and clasping both her palms over the cold fingers, said, with irresistible tenderness,—
“Come, dearie!—come, my dearie!”
Without a word Mrs. Gerome turned and followed her across the lawn and into the house, whose internal arrangement was somewhat at variance with its unpretending exterior.
The rooms were large, with low ceilings; and fire-places, originally wide and deep, had been recently filled and fitted up with handsome grates, while the heavy mantelpieces of carved cedar, that once matched the broad facings of the windows and the massive panels of the doors, were exchanged for costly verd antique and lumachella. The narrow passage running 80 through the centre of the building was also wainscoted with cedar and adorned with fine engravings of Landseer’s best pictures, whose richly carved walnut frames looked almost cedarn in the pale chill light that streamed upon them through the violet-colored glass which surrounded the front door and effectually subdued the hot golden glare of the sunny sun. The old-fashioned folding doors that formerly connected the parlor and library had been removed to make room for a low, wide arch, over which drooped lace curtains, partially looped with blue silk cord and tassels, and both apartments were furnished with sofas and chairs of rosewood and blue satin damask, while the velvet carpet, with its azure ground strewn with wreaths of white roses and hyacinths, corresponded in color. Handsome book-cases, burdened with precious lore, lined the walls of the rear room; and on either side of a massive ormolu escritoire, bronze candelabra shed light on the blue velvet desk where lay delicate sheets of gossamer paper with varied and outré monograms, guarded by an exquisite marble statuette of Harpocrates, which stood in the mirror-panelled recess reserved for pen, ink, and sealing-wax. The air was fragrant with the breath of flowers that nodded to each other from costly vases scattered through both apartments; and, before one of the windows, rose a bronze stand containing china jars filled with pelargoniums, in brilliant bloom. An Erard piano occupied one corner of the parlor, and the large harp-shaped stand at its side was heaped with books and unbound sheets of music. Here two long wax candles were now burning brightly, and, on the oval marble table in the centre of the floor, was a superb silver lamp representing Psyche bending over Cupid, and supporting the finely-cut globe, whose soft radiance streamed down on her burnished wings and eagerly-parted sweet Greek lips. The design of this exceedingly beautiful lamp would not have disgraced Benvenuto Cellini, nor its execution have reflected discredit upon the genius of Felicie Fauveau, though to neither of these distinguished artificers could its origin have been justly ascribed. In its mellow, magical glow, the fine paintings suspended on the walls seemed to catch a gleam of “that light 81 that never was on sea or land,” for their dim, purplish Alpine gorges were filled with snowy phantasmagoria of rushing avalanches; their foaming cataracts braided glittering spray into spectral similitude of Undine tresses and Undine faces; their desolate red deserts grew vaguely populous with mirage mockeries; their green dells and grassy hill-sides, couching careless herds, and fleecy flocks, borrowed all Arcadia’s repose; and the marble busts of Beethoven and of Handel, placed on brackets above the piano, shone as if rapt, transfigured in the mighty inspiration that gave to mankind “Fidelio” and the “Messiah.”
On the sofa which partially filled the oriel window, where the lace drapery was looped back to admit the breeze, lay an ivory box containing materials and models for wax-flowers; and, in one corner, half thrust under the edge of the silken cushion, was an unfinished wreath of waxen convolvulus and a cluster of gentians. There, too, open at the page that narrated the death-struggle, lay Liszt’s “Life of Chopin,” pressed face downwards, with two purple pansies crushed and staining the leaves; and a small gold thimble peeping out of a crevice in the damask tattled of the careless feminine fingers that had left these traces of disorder.
The collection of pictures was unlike those usually brought from Europe by cultivated tourists, for it contained no Madonnas, no Magdalenes, no Holy Families, no Descents or Entombments, no Saints, or Sibyls, or martyrs; and consisted of wild mid-mountain scenery, of solemn surf-swept strands, of lonely moonlit moors, of crimson sunsets in Cobi or Sahara, and of a few gloomy, ferocious faces, among which the portrait of Salvator Rosa smiled sardonically, and a head of frenzied Jocasta was preëminently hideous.
As Mrs. Gerome entered the parlor and brightened the flame of the Psyche lamp, her eyes accidentally fell upon the bust of Beethoven, where, in gilt letters, she had inscribed his own triumphant declaration, “Music is like wine, inflaming men to new achievements; and I am the Bacchus who serves it out to them.” While she watched the rayless marble orbs, more eloquent than dilating darkening human pupils, 82 a shadow dense and mysterious drifted over her frigid face, and, without removing her eyes from the bust above her, she sat down before the piano, and commenced one of those marvellous symphonies which he had commended to the study of Goethe.
Ere it was ended Elsie came in, bearing a waiter on which stood a silver epergne filled with fruit, a basket of cake, and a goblet of iced tea.
“My child, I bring your supper here because the dining-room looks lonesome at night.”