Nancy had never been so much surprised in her life as she was by the aspect of old Mrs. Fuller’s room. The old lady, wrapped in a bed-jacket of orange and yellow brocade and supported by quantities of bright vermilion cushions, was sitting up in a gilded four-post bed, the curtains and valance of damasked maroon silk and the canopy sustained by four rouged Venetian amorini with golden wings. Over the mantelpiece was a copy of Giorgione’s “Pastorale.” Mirrors in frames of blown glass decorated with wreaths of pink glass rosebuds and blue glass forget-me-nots hung here and there on the white walls, the lighted candles in which gave the windowpanes such a bloom in the March dusk as is breathed upon ripe damsons. Bookcases on either side of the fireplace were filled with the sulphur backs of numerous French novels. On a mahogany table at the foot of the bed stood a green cornucopia of brilliantly tinted wax fruits that was being regarded with slant-eyed indifference by two antelopes of gilded wood, seated on either side.
Of course, Nancy had known that old Mrs. Fuller was different from the rest of the family; but this flaunting rococo bedroom made a sharper impression of that immense difference than could all the letters to her grandson. It was strange, too, that Bram should never have commented on this amazing room, set as it was in the heart of the house against which his boyhood had so bitterly revolted. In her astonishment at her surroundings she did not for the moment take in the aspect of the old lady herself; and then suddenly she saw the dark eyes of Bram staring at her from the middle of those vermilion cushions, the bright eyes of Bram flashing from a death’s head wrapped in parchment. She put her hand to her heart, and stopped short on her way across the room to salute the old lady.
“What’s the matter?” snapped a high incisive voice.
“Oh, you’re so like Bram,” cried Nancy, tears gushing like an uncontrollable spring from her inmost being, like blood from a wound, and yet without any awareness of grief, so that her voice was calm, her kiss of salutation not tremulous.
“Might I lift my little girl on Mrs. Fuller’s bed, nurse?” she asked.
“Don’t call her nurse,” the old lady rapped out. “This ain’t a hospital. It’s only that sanctimonious ghoul Caleb who calls her nurse. She’s my companion, Miss Emily Young. And why should the wretched child be lifted up to see an old bogey like myself?”
“I think she’d like to kiss you, if she may,” said Nancy.
“Yes, I would like to kiss you,” said Letizia.
The old woman’s eyes melted to an enchanting tenderness, and, oh, how often Nancy had seen Bram’s eyes melt so for her.
“Lift her up, Emily, lift her up,” said Mrs. Fuller.