In the corner opposite to the mirror and placed “catty-corner,” as the occupier worded it, stood the stateliest of beds, upholstered and draped in heavy watered silk of a dull, even dingy, yellow. Its hangings were gathered at the top into the hollow of a great gold coronet, whence they spread and fell in folds that were looped back with silk cords. The walls were covered by that same texture of dull gold, held in place by tarnished gilt moldings.
Mrs. Hawthorne had wanted all this dusty and faded splendor removed,–it seemed to her the possible lurking-place of mice or worse,–but the agent would not hear of it. The noble landlord was not really eager to let.
So Mrs. Hawthorne, to brighten the room in spite of it, for she wished to keep it for her own, having taken a fancy to the fresco overhead,–that fascinating chariot driven 66among clouds by a radiant youth surrounded by smiling, flower-scattering maidens,–Mrs. Hawthorne to “gay up” the room, as she said, had hung windows and doors with draperies of her favorite cornflower blue, and covered the chairs with the same. On the floor she had stretched a pearl-gray carpet all aglow with wreaths of roses tied with ribbons of blue; and over the carpet–at the bedside, before the dressing-table, in front of the fireplace–laid down white bear-skins.
To cover further the yellow silk, she had hung in one panel of it a painting of the “Madonna della Seggiola,” in another, Carlo Dolci’s “Angel of the Annunciation,” and in another, Carlo Dolci’s Magdalen clasping the box of ointment–all works of art bought in Via dei Fossi, framed in great gilt-wood frames, like the mirror.
The lace curtains under the cornflower blue brocade were like Brussels wedding veils seen through a magnifying glass.
Yes, the room had been made to look bright. It had lamps of cream-colored biscuit, painted with roses and crowned with pink shades; it had polished brass fire-irons. But the point of supreme brightness was the dressing-table, where glittered in orderly display Mrs. Hawthorne’s American toilet silver, mirror, trays, brushes, boxes, bottles–solid, shining, richly embossed.
There was just one thing in all the room that looked poor, workaday. It was on the small table at the head of the bed, beside the candle-stick and match-safe, a black book, the commonest kind of Bible, such a Bible as is dispensed by those who have to furnish the sacred writings in large numbers–Sunday schools, for instance.
It was in fact a Sunday-school prize that now lay on the night-stand, in what the sober volume presented to a pious 67little girl must have thought strange company. Cover to cover with it, cheek by jowl, lay a book on etiquette.
It was for the Bible, however, that Mrs. Hawthorne reached after she had got into bed. She found her place. She read in it every night before sleeping, to keep a promise made long ago, and avoid the reproaches of a person gone from this earth, but who still, she never questioned, could be pleased or displeased with her actions.
She did not always try to understand or follow; when she was sleepy she read merely with her eyes. To-night her mind was too full of personal things to permit of strict attention to the text. As she enumerated the wonders of the House that Solomon built for the Lord, there formed no picture of it in her mind.