They turned in at the gates of Stormwood. Though the trees and bushes were gaunt and bare the grass already showed stretches of vivid green. In the fading light one caught glimpses through the shrubbery of the lake beyond. It was a dazzling sapphire blue in the sunset. A final turn of the drive. An avenue of trees. A house, massive, pillared, porticoed. The door opened as they drew up at the entrance. A maid in cap and apron stood in the doorway. A man appeared at the side of the car, coming seemingly from nowhere, greeted Paula civilly and drove the car off. The glow of an open fire in the hall welcomed them. “He’ll bring up your bag,” said Paula. “How’re the babies, Anna? Has Mr. Storm got here?”
“He telephoned, Mrs. Storm. He says he won’t be out till late—maybe ten or after. Anyway, you’re not to wait dinner.”
Paula, from being the limp, expert, fearless driver of the high-powered roadster was now suddenly very much the mistress of the house, quietly observant, giving an order with a lift of the eyebrow or a nod of the head. Would Dirk like to go to his room at once? Perhaps he’d like to look at the babies before they went to sleep for the night, though the nurse would probably throw him out. One of those stern British females. Dinner at seven-thirty. He needn’t dress. Just as he liked. Everything was very informal here. They roughed it. (Dirk had counted thirteen servants by noon next day and hadn’t been near the kitchen, laundry, or dairy.)
His room, when he reached it, he thought pretty awful. A great square chamber with narrow leaded windows, deep-set, on either side. From one he could get a glimpse of the lake, but only a glimpse. Evidently the family bedrooms were the lake rooms. In the DeJong code and class the guest had the best but evidently among these moneyed ones the family had the best and the guest was made comfortable, but was not pampered. It was a new angle for Dirk. He thought it startling but rather sensible. His bag had been brought up, unpacked, and stowed away in a closet before he reached his room. “Have to tell that to Selina,” he thought, grinning. He looked about the room, critically. It was done in a style that he vaguely defined as French. It gave him the feeling that he had stumbled accidentally into the chamber of a Récamier and couldn’t get out. Rose brocade with gold net and cream lace and rosebuds. “Swell place for a man,” he thought, and kicked a footstool—a fauteuil he supposed it was called, and was secretly glad that he could pronounce it faultlessly. Long mirrors, silken hanging, cream walls. The bed was lace hung. The coverlet was rose satin, feather-light. He explored his bathroom. It actually was a room, much larger than his alcove bedroom on Deming Place—as large as his own bedroom at home on the farm. The bath was done dazzlingly in blue and white. The tub was enormous and as solid as if the house had been built around it. There were towels and towels and towels in blue and white, ranging in size all the way from tiny embroidered wisps to fuzzy all-enveloping bath towels as big as a carpet.
He was much impressed.
He decided to bathe and change into dinner clothes and was glad of this when he found Paula in black chiffon before the fire in the great beamed room she had called the library. Dirk thought she looked very beautiful in that diaphanous stuff, with the pearls. Her heart-shaped face, with its large eyes that slanted a little at the corners; her long slim throat; her dark hair piled high and away from her little ears. He decided not to mention it.
“You look extremely dangerous,” said Paula.
“I am,” replied Dirk, “but it’s hunger that brings this look of the beast to my usually mild Dutch features. Also, why do you call this the library?” Empty shelves gaped from the wall on all sides. The room was meant to hold hundreds of volumes. Perhaps fifty or sixty in all now leaned limply against each other or lay supine.
Paula laughed. “They do look sort of sparse, don’t they? Theodore bought this place, you know, as is. We’ve books enough in town, of course. But I don’t read much out here. And Theodore!—I don’t believe he ever in his life read anything but detective stories and the newspapers.”
Dirk told himself that Paula had known her husband would not be home until ten and had deliberately planned a tête-à-tête meal. He would not, therefore, confess himself a little nettled when Paula said, “I’ve asked the Emerys in for dinner; and we’ll have a game of bridge afterward. Phil Emery, you know, the Third. He used to have it on his visiting card, like royalty.”