“I’ll let you wax long on the house’s wiring later.” She smirked in reply and moved on.
The last steps landed us in a broad portrait gallery running each direction along the entire front of the house. It was capped at the ends with the sweeping bays I’d seen from outside. Large paned windows lined the exterior wall to let in light. The gray was clearing to blue outside.
The opposite and interior wall was colored a deep, almost blood red and was filled with paintings and lined with bookcases and display tables.
“Look at all this.” I ran my finger along the case’s lead trim. It was warm to the touch. I bent and looked up into the case to find a small row of lights wired beneath.
“Get up.” Isabel tapped my back.
“The lighting is mounted in a tiny tape strip, not discrete bulbs. I’ve never seen a strip that small or this application.”
Isabel tapped my back again before walking on. I stood and studied the cases. They were filled with gloves, small books, tiny silver brushes, pillboxes—little personal treasures. It looked as if someone had dumped out the contents of the bedside tables and dresser drawers and arranged them for display. What was once personal and intimate felt oddly sterile and detached from use, if not meaning, in these cases with their small lights.
I thought back to my mom—the things she loved. The things that had meaning because she loved them. Her Austen books, now resting in a box on my bookshelf; her sterling silver pillbox tucked away in a shoe box in my closet. She had loved that tiny treasure, kept it close and polished it with the edge of her nightgown when the silver oxidized.
Isabel backtracked to me. “I’m sure all this came with the house. They probably had boxes of junk in the attic. One owner for all those years? Can you imagine what it must have been like, or how hard it’d be to let all this go?” She turned around slowly to take in the grandeur of the house.
“I doubt they had a choice.” My focus remained on the glass cases. “Makes you realize how deep the loss went. When industrialization came along, all this was a relic of the past.” I glanced to her. She looked doubtful that I knew what I was talking about. “Junior year. The Industrial Revolution and the rise of automation.”
She conceded with a nod and walked ahead again.
I called after her in a half whisper. “Can you imagine what this place must cost to run, not to mention the five full years of renovation?”
“I know what Daddy paid for two weeks.” She faced me and continued by walking backwards. I raised a brow and received a wagged finger in response. “Uh-uh . . . You don’t want to know.”
“You’re probably right. Hey . . . Come see this.” I stopped in front of a small velvet-lined and gold-latched book. It looked like a little handbag, a lady’s evening clutch, but it was a book.
Isabel materialized beside me. “It’s the Book of Common Prayer. They carried those to church on Sundays.” She pointed to the small book next to it. “And that’s a hymnal. Often one lady carried one, another the other, and they shared.”
“My mom used to have her own hymnal. It was as marked up as her Bible. She sang in the church choir for years. She said she felt closest to God in music.”
“She did?”
I glanced up. It always surprised us both when there was a memory we didn’t share.
“She stopped when I was young; I can only remember a few Sundays. She stood at the end of the first row, near the stairs to the altar, and after she couldn’t sing at church any longer, she’d sing softly while I played the piano . . . She left that hymnal to me. Some of them were the first songs I learned to play.”
Isabel looped her arm through mine and squeezed it. “Where is it now?”
“Home. With all the other music books I haven’t touched in years.” I caught sight of the small brass sign on the door next to us. “Didn’t Gertrude say the Green Room?”
“In Austen’s day they often named rooms this way.” Isabel opened the door and stepped inside while I glanced back to the glass-encased hymnal. Something about it struck me as sad and lost.
“Come see this,” Isabel called.
I leaned against the doorjamb and took in our room. By nature and inclination, I’m a hard sciences girl, raised by an electrician, and—although I love a special Saturday visit to Nordstrom’s makeup counter and I did once spend an entire paycheck on a pair of shoes—I’m not usually drawn to fluff and frill. But this room, all twenty by thirty feet of it, took my breath away. It transported me through time, into time, and told a story. The colors were rich and varied like the notes from the hymnal I’d just left in the gallery.
First and foremost, the room was green. My favorite color. Again, I was struck by its abundance here and its absence in my life. Austin, Texas, had not been green lately, and suddenly it felt more than “not green”—it felt dry and barren. Here I found it in shades I didn’t know existed and in textures I’d never touched. Green draped every soft surface.
The two full-size beds were covered in pillowy moss-toned duvets and draped in an avocado patterned silk held at the top by carved wood finials and gold detailing. The colors contrasted yet complemented each other. A small sofa sat beneath the central double window, covered in white with a spray of kelly-green flowers and a profusion of pillows. The desk chair, another armchair, and the curtains were upholstered in fabrics covering the spectrum from citrus to forest, with textures that made me want to rub them against my cheek. And the rug . . . I kicked off my shoes. It was thick and soft. My toes sank within the teal and gray swirls that covered the floor’s surface area.
As for hard surfaces, they were reserved to a writing desk set in front of the smaller side window, two large wardrobes on either sidewall near its respective bed, and the twelve inches of wood floor bordering the rug.
I turned my attention to the walls. They were papered in a cream color with laurel-colored vines running up every few inches. I ran a finger along a vine. It was slightly bumpy.
“Could these be hand painted? It’s three-dimensional.”
“Sure, lots of papers are, especially the really expensive ones.” Isabel dropped her handbag on one of the beds. “It feels a little too haute couture, doesn’t it? Modern meets Regency meets Limitless Funds.”
“Stop.” I flapped a hand to soften the command. “You’re used to this stuff, but it’s the most exquisite room I’ve ever seen. Don’t tell me this doesn’t floor you. You can’t have seen anything like this often—ceilings this high, the fabrics, the furniture. Look at those carvings.”
Isabel tipped her head back. “Plaster.” She then caught my expression and held her hands up in surrender. “What? They are. Plaster moldings applied to the ceiling. That’s how it’s done.”
“Please. Let me enjoy this.”