Edmund
walked out of the grand room, down the steps to the entrance hall, which was as
empty as the rest of the house, and stopped on the round blue carpet. He had
looked through enough magazines to have more than a passing acquaintance with the
modern day décor of the well-to-do. Great sashes were always in season, it
seemed, combined with moldings of fruits and flowers and birds, copiously
detailed, large sweeping chandeliers, thick carpets intricately woven into red
and green and gold landscapes of pastoral themes, purple curtains with bells
and tassles and buttons, tall paper screens with mythical beasts lolling on
tufted hillsides, bejeweled family crests in every room, impressively scaled
pictures of ancestors on horseback mounted on each wall, enshrined in gold
frames for guests to admire. He had once visited the Gala manor in Rotunda with
his mother, and even that had been detailed and decorated ad infinitum.
But
Mr. Edward’s house was spared of such features, and Edmund was surprised he
felt disappointed. The walls were very tall, either white-washed stone or covered
in pale gold wallpaper, richly-textured, with plainly vaulted high ceilings.
The furniture was spotless, dusted just that morning, and oddly scaled, much
larger and taller than necessary, with the backs of chairs rising high and severe.
The glass windows reached almost to the ceiling, constructed of many sheets of
glass locked in an intricate, geometrical pattern of squares and triangles. The
windows were open to the hot morning air—he heard seagulls crying—and a breeze stirred
the white curtains and exotic plants on the windowsill. The room was octagonal,
and he suspected the rest of the house was also designed in much the same way.
He
moved to the window and touched the plants, feeling the cool soil between his
fingers. He had never seen such plants. They had long, fibrous roots that
budded and flowered, thick green stalks that split and narrowed into heavy pink
and white and yellow flowers. Other plants had been tended and cut, vines
lifted onto thin cane frames to encourage growth. A tiny plum tree, potted, trimmed
and carefully cultivated, was almost obscured under its masses of fruits. Edmund
leaned on the wide windowsill and pinched one of its plums, surprised to find
it ripe and warm from the sun.
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