if you like,” she added, as the slender young figure moved wearily to the door. “Thank you,” Gabrielle answered, very low. “Good-night!” And it was only with his last glance at her that David realized with sudden compunction that she was on the verge of tears. [33]Tears, however, that she did not shed. She went resolutely up through the cold dark hallways and stairs to the third flight, where was the big room that had been assigned to her. The halls were pitchy dark, and the room, when she got to it, was impenetrably black. [33] Gabrielle groped for the matches, found them, struck a light, and drew toward her the hinged arm of the gaslight at the bureau. There was a bare brown marble top on the bureau, with a limp fringed towel laid across it; the bureau and the great table, desk, and bookcases were all enormous, heavy, and as impersonally bare as those in some old hotel. There was no closet, but there were two great wardrobes flanking a door that led to a sort of dressing passage or hallway, where there was a stationary washstand of wide, bare brown marble. There were four high windows, reaching to the floor, with iron balconies outside; these were curtained in old-rose brocade, all silvery scrolls and cyclamen, tassels and cords. The bed was walnut, decorated with dots and ripples in mill-work, flat and bare. There were antimacassars on all the chairs, the neat green blotter on the desk had seen much use, Gabrielle’s trunk and suitcase had been set down in the centre of everything, and in her hurried scramble for a brush and a handkerchief before dinner she had tumbled the contents of the latter dishearteningly upon a sort of lounge set “cater-cornered” toward the empty fireplace. Tumbled linen, the book she had been reading, her writing materials, a dozen disorderly trifles—Gabrielle quailed before the awful thought of having somehow to segregate them, to empty the suitcase and the trunk to-morrow. She was so dirty, too, and so cold, and the[34] bathroom was across that formidable dark hall! She opened the bed with vigorous tugging—the sheets felt icily damp and lifeless. [34] Suddenly, as she struggled about forlornly in the dim light, a tap on the door made her heart leap. The old house was sufficiently full of ghosts without any such tangible horrors as this! But it was only good-natured, pock-marked Maria, with a kettle of hot water and a sympathetic look.
Prev.
Back
Top