Wilson The Painted Room

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-98826-099-4
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

The Painted Room is a book written by Margaret Wilson. The story revolves around a mysterious painted room that is the source of much fascination and speculation. The central characters discover the room and be drawn into a world of intrigue, danger, and adventure as they try to uncover the secrets of the room and the people who created it. The book is a mystery-thriller, with elements of romance and adventure woven into the narrative. The author uses vivid and descriptive language to create a rich and atmospheric setting, and may build suspense and tension through the twists and turns of the plot. The book is likely a character-driven story that explores themes of mystery, love, and adventure, as well as the power of imagination and the role of art in shaping our perceptions of the world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilson, Margaret

Leseproben

Chapter Two
"You go right over to the hall," Emily had said to Martha as they arrived home after five, "and I'll do your shoulder straps for you." She had gone upstairs, and presently hurried, in a comfortable mature way, to Martha's room. She opened the door, and almost blinked, for the uncompromising afternoon sun made even yet a startling welter of the purples and greens and creamy yellows before her. And then she said: "Oh! You here, Eve?" For in that whirl of gaudiness an auburn-haired, hawk-nosed, thin-faced girl sat in flesh-colored B.V.D.'s, on a black stool, with a dishpan half full of pitted cherries on the floor beside her, and in her lap a green bowl half full of moist seeds. "I got tired of hanging around over there. I wasn't doing anything. They're just fooling around for somebody to come and make them get to work." It was no concession to Emily's sense of propriety that made her hitch a fallen shoulder strap into decorum. Eve could have pitted cherries in Martha's sitting room stark naked with serenity. She had gone into shrieks of laughter the other day when Emily had described the careful way in which she in her girlhood, in her own room, with no man in the house, had put her arms into her wrapper in her bed, and had the essential garment all ready to pull about her as soon as she had put her first foot on the floor. Emily said to her now, "You needn't have done those cherries, Eve." "Oh, well, I thought I'd better be doing something to make myself popular. Everybody else is working—or pretending to." Eve grinned ingratiatingly. "Somebody called up, too, just now. That friend of Martha's. That Wilton, I think his name is." "Oh! Is HE here?" "Yes. Came out for to-night. Don't you like him?" "Yes. I like him. He's a nice boy. Clever, too." "That's what Martha said." Eve seemed always incredulous about masculine brilliancy. "Well, he's always got scholarships. He's earned his way, really, through college." "Hum!" commented Eve. College honors were nothing to her. "His father is the best barber in town, too," Emily continued. Eve turned and looked at her quickly. "The best what?" "Barber. You know that shop all plate glass and shining enamel that makes all the rest of the street look dirty? That's his shop. That's where we go for shampoos." Eve had been looking at Emily curiously, and the little grin had grown into a spreading smile. "You're the limit, Mrs. Kenworthy!" she said, admiringly. Then she saw Emily's purpose in coming, and got up. She stretched up an arm, spread her dripping fingers gingerly apart, and brushed back her hair with the inside of her elbow. "I'll do those straps. I've almost finished. Wait a minute." And she started, apparently, towards the bathroom. "Eve! Wait! I'll put your kimona on for you!" "Oh! I'm sorry I forgot!" "It's almost supper time. Bob may be home any time now." And Emily wrapped about her shoulders a wisp of georgette. And when the girl took a step forward with all the sunlight shining through her, and Emily saw through the sheer thing long pink legs, she suddenly realized why Bob had said indignantly that he would as soon meet her naked in the hall as in that thing. She laughed and said, "Eve, you really ought to have a thicker dressing gown!" "I have got one," Eve assured her. "I had to get one. Dad wouldn't go on the Pullman with me till he saw I had one. I hate a lot of cotton flannels." "Crêpe de Chine would do." "I know it. But it's sort of dowdy—crêpe de Chine. Put Martha's on me. I'll bring my own Victorian down to-morrow." Very quick to take a suggestion, properly made, Eve was. A gratifying girl to befriend, if a puzzling one. When Bob had grumbled that he didn't see any use sending a girl to college who didn't know enough to wear clothes, Emily had replied: "Oh, that girl is as good as gold, Bob. They all wear thin things in the halls, Martha says." Emily liked her. To be sure, the ease with which she had taken up her permanent abode at the Kenworthys' was somewhat—nonplusing. Emily had asked her, when Martha first brought her home, where she had been brought up. And she had said: "Oh, I never was brought up at all. I'm just the little prairie flower, growing wilder every hour. Just hauled about from aunt to boarding-school—between the devil and the deep sea all my tender days." Though she had said it so frankly, so seriously, Emily had thought it scarcely sufficient. But Martha had hooted at Emily's quizzings. "It's too funny the way you act, mother, as if maybe she wasn't fit to associate with your precious child. At school I'm simply nothing. I'm the least worm in the apple. But Eve's everything. The profs just eat out of her hands. She's chairman of the student council—you know—the gang that makes us all behave. She edits the magazine, and she'll be president of her class next year, as like as not. At school everybody wants to get a stand in with Eve. She'd never looked at me if her dad hadn't moved to this town. And now you don't know whether I better make her acquaintance or not!" "You know I didn't mean that, child. I simply asked who she was and where she had lived. That's only natural. I think she's a dear." And Emily had been reassured because it was her theory that women never again have such a capacity for judging one another rightly, and choosing friends wisely, as they have in college. No girl, she thought, looking at Eve's thin, rather over-bred face, fools a campusful of her companions. Bob said her father was always well spoken of. No one knew him very well. He had bought a great elevator in town some time ago, one of several he had in the state, and recently had bought a large old house and settled his family in it. That had consisted of his old bedridden mother and her nurse—until Eve's vacation had begun. Martha had gone at once to see her there, and, coming back, had said to Emily: "It's a funny sort of house, mother. It's furnished all right, and everything. But it looks like an orphan asylum." She had asked Eve to come and stay the night, and Eve had accepted gladly. Her grandmother, she told Emily, had been "out of her head, mildly" for months. Her nurses weren't very easy to get along with. "Dad had a hard enough time getting any he can trust grandma to," she had said, very sensibly. "He's away so much. These two are awfully good to her. I'll say that for them. They're sisters. So why should I come home for three months and ball everything up? I just keep still as a mouse and let them have their own way. Grandma never knows me. I never go into the room." Well, that was a nice sort of place for a young girl to spend her holiday, Emily had thought. "Stay with us," she had suggested. And she hadn't had to suggest it twice. Bob grumbled every day about this steady boarder, but that didn't excite Emily unduly. She liked Eve better and better. How sweet of her now, to think of doing those cherries! She was always doing little things that Martha would never have thought of. In fact, Emily had almost to acknowledge to herself that Eve had certain traits that Martha might well have had. Bob, of course, talked about them openly. Eve had a proper attitude towards her father, for one thing. She had said, quite naturally, that her dad was a lamb, a perfect duck, and a good old sport. And the fourth evening she had been at Emily's, the four of them, with another girl, Johnnie Benton, and another lad of the town, had been sitting on the veranda, waiting for the third lad to come in his car, so that the six of them could drive over to the lake to dance. They had heard some one come in, and called to him to come out, thinking it was the dilatory sixth. And Eve's father had come out to them. Bob couldn't get over that scene. Eve had sprung up and hugged him and kissed him and patted him. Emily, seeing even that greeting, would have been sure that Eve's rather shocking sophistication was only a pose. For she had started at once to get her things together to go home with him. And when Johnnie Benton had protested she had turned to him indignantly. "I like your nerve!" she had cried to him. "Do you suppose I'm going to a dance with you when I haven't seen my dad for six weeks?" And she wouldn't go. They couldn't persuade her. Bob, sitting there, had seen her father relishing the situation. The man obviously overflowed with pride in his "Evelyn." "Now, can you beat that?" Bob had demanded of Emily afterwards. "Can you imagine Martha cutting a dance for me? Maybe Eve'll do her some good. Can you beat that?" Emily couldn't possibly imagine Martha preferring her father to a dance, or to very much else. But she wouldn't acknowledge it. "Oh, well, Bob, that's another matter. It was sweet, the way she did it. But Eve hadn't seen him for weeks. And then, she hasn't got a mother. She's had to depend on him always. It's much more normal, I must say, for a girl to prefer a dance to her parents. You can't deny that." "I know it. But it's the principle of the thing." And he had liked Eve, till he had met her coming from the bathroom in what he called, "an obscene Mother Hubbard." And now, getting ready for supper, Emily wished she knew why Eve had, once, mentioned father-in-law in connection with Wilton. Bob would have laughed at her, if he had known, for she thought every man in town was in love with Martha, he said. A fat chance she had of getting near her as hard-headed a man as Wilton. He had too much sense to fall for any such kid as Martha, Bob had assured...