“She’s downstairs,” said Sylvia, tapping upon a glass door with the key. A woman’s figure appeared with an orange-shaded lamp in the passage.
“Open quickly, Mrs. Gainsborough. We’re frozen,” Sylvia called. As the woman opened the door, Sylvia went on in her deep voice:
“We’ve brought an old friend of Lily’s back from the dance. It wasn’t really worth going to. Oh, I oughtn’t to have said that, ought I?” she laughed, turning round to Michael. “Come in and get warm. This is Mrs. Gainsborough, who’s the queen of cards.”
“Get along with you, you great saucy thing,” said Mrs. Gainsborough, laughing.
She was a woman of enormous size with a triplication of chins. Her crimson cheeks shone with the same glister as her black dress; and her black hair, so black that it must have been dyed, was parted in the middle and lay in a chignon upon her neck. She seemed all the larger, sitting in this small room full of Victorian finery, and Michael was amused to hear her address Sylvia as “great.”
“We want something to eat and something to drink, you lovely old mountain,” Sylvia said.
Mrs. Gainsborough doubled herself up and smacked her knees in a tempest of wheezy laughter.
“Sit here, you terrors, while I get the cloth on the dining-room table,” and out she went, her laughter dying in sibilations along the diminutive corridor. Lily had flung herself down in an armchair near the fire. Behind her stood a small mahogany table on which was a glass case of humming-birds; by her elbow on the wall was a white china bell coronated with a filigree of gilt, and by chance the antimacassar on the chair was of Berlin wool checkered black and blue. She in her pierrette’s dress of black with light blue pompons looked strangely remote from present time in that setting. Michael could not connect this secluded house with anything which had made an impression upon him during his experience of the underworld. Here was nothing that was not cozy and old-fashioned; here was no sign of decay, whether in the fabric of the house or in the attitude of the people living there. This small square room with the heavy furniture that occupied so much of the space had no demirep demeanor. That horsehair sofa with lyre-shaped sides and back of floriated wood; that brass birdcage hanging in the window against the curtains of maroon serge; those cabinets in miniature, some lacquered, some of plain wood with tiny drop-handles of brass; those black chairs with seats of gilded cane; those trays with marquetery in mother-of-pearl of wreaths and rivulets and parrots; that table-cloth like a dish of black Sèvres; those simpering steel engravings—there was nothing that did not bespeak the sobriety of the Victorian prime here miraculously preserved. Lily and Sylvia in such dresses belonged to a period of fantasy; Mrs. Gainsborough was in keeping with her furniture; and Michael, as he looked at himself in the glass overmantel, did not think that he was seeming very intrusive.
“Whose are these rooms?” he asked. Lily was adorable, but he did not believe they were her creation or discovery.
“I found them,” said Sylvia. “The old girl who owns the house is bad, but beautiful. Aren’t you, you most astonishing but attractive mammoth?” This was addressed to Mrs. Gainsborough, who was at the moment panting into the room for some accessory to the dining-table.