Gardner Hall was quiet, around Valentine Gardner, finally, because the renewal and renovation, had ended for that day.
Valentine walked down the long paneled corridor, towards the library, family portraits, seemed to look at her reproachfully, from gilt-edged frames.
Gardner Hall was impressive but gloomy, its architectural lightness, contradicted by the details, dark walnut, heavy, drapery, sense of dampness, although the roof no longer leaked.
Valentine sat down on the window seat covered with dark green velvet, and looked out of the high windows, to the wide grounds. A gray fog seemed to float half in the air, covering the summer greenery.
Valentine took her journal from the pocket of her dark skirt, its pale blue brocade cover soft and comforting under her fingers, and opened it, beginning to write. The screeching of an ink pen against the cream-colored pages was the only sound in the library, for quite some time, as narrow graceful cursive filled the pages.
The bell started ringing somewhere far away, it was a call for tea.
Tea was laid in the salon, the tea-set glistened in the milky light, as chalice-like teacups, patterned with mallow flowers, with golden rims, were precisely placed on a shiny silver tray.
Constance Gardner looked myopically around the parlor and remarked, "These renovations are expensive, Royal told me. Your taste, dear Valentine, nothing like this has been seen in Kingsport before, it's too, too continental. There must be a certain standard and moderation, in all things, even in expenses."
Aline Gardner, in her black dress, sat straight in her chair, and lifted her chin slightly. The oval-shaped cameo glistened in the light, as Aline continued, ""Is it true that a chapel and conservatory greenhouse will be built here? If so, that idea is simply moon-dreaming dearest Valentine. My brother has such fancies."
Valentine put down her cooled tea bowl on a small plate and answered, with a mild tone, " It is true that this renovation will take a long time, at a different stages, but the results will speak for themselves, so I hope. Lightness, light and airiness, and the heartbeat of nature inside, in these very rooms. I have chosen certain designers' works as an example, which will hopefully increase the value of the house in the future. And as for the chapel and the conservatory-greenhouse, Royal got the idea on our honeymoon, something new, and modern, and something old, he promised me so in the glow of Venice."
Constance Gardner sniffed.
Aline Gardner's features were calm, even placid, but her smile was a pale cold fleeting thing, as the maid entered the room and said, "Mrs. Valentine, the seamstress is here."
Slowly, in a soft, tender pink room that resembled a shell, if the shell had narrow, light Empire-style furniture, in a wing upstairs, Valentine, stood before the mirror, as mangolian white silk formed over her, clear, simple lines.
And in the evening, with the candles burning, the intermediate door opened as Royal gazed tenderly at the sight before him, as he pronounced, "I think a painting should be made, of you, it would suit."
Valentine, looked at her husband through her dressing table mirror and murmured, "Isn't that a little old fashioned, for you?
"Perhaps, it is so." Royal replied, pulling Valentine into his embrace, slowly, before the dinner bell rang.
Two days later in his study, Royal was sitting among folders and papers and looked up when Aline, with red spots on her cheeks, marched in front of him and exclaimed, "Aubrey is here, waiting in the library, it must be related to Uncle Robert's will."
Carefully, Royal followed his sister into the library, where a dry, short gray-haired man in an impeccable suit stood in front of the fireplace, looking around with neutral eyes.
Aubrey was the Gardner family lawyer.
With stiff formality he glanced at the paper in front of him and said, "Good, all concerned are now present. This will was the latest my late client made, and it is very straightforward. He gives the property known as the Gardner House, to jointly to his nieces, Miss Aline Adeline Gardner, and to Miss Dorothy Therese Gardner, until one of them marries, and then it passes to Mr. Royal Gardner. And to Royal Gardner my late client has given certain documents, in a sealed envelope, with the provision that he makes money with them."
Confused silence prevailed in the library, for a moment, an instant.
And then everyone started talking in unison.
The fog had finally subsided and the bright, soft summer shimmered behind the windows, of Gardner Hall.
Valentine Gardner felt a headache throbbing in her temples. Valerian water smelled faintly of in the room, but that was suddenly too much.
The sun and summer breeze swayed the soft grass, as listlessly Valentine touched the hatpins lined up on the dressing table.
A couple of hours later, Royal found Valentine asleep in the verdant sweet grass, a few feet from where an architect had suggested a pond, with a half-open book by her side, a volume of poems by Mallarmé, and a bluish-brocade notebook in a small basket.
The pages of the poetry book rustled in the wind, and Royal saw the poem that Valentine had read, it had been Les Fenêtres.
Gently Royal, lifted Valentine in his arms, and carried her inside, half whispering, drowsily Valentine murmured, "There are ants walking on the walls of Gardner Hall."
Royal, pressed a light kiss on the forehead of his beloved, and laughed, as he said, "You dreamed, Val, there are no ants in the walls here."
A/N:
Stéphane Mallarmé(1842 – 1898) He was a major French symbolist poet. Mallarmé's poetry has been the inspiration for several musical pieces, notably Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894). Maurice Ravel set Mallarmé's poetry to music in Trois poèmes de Mallarmé (1913).