“Oh, that,” she cried out, “from you!” And slowly she stepped closer to say something to him; but she thought better of it. “Don’t you think,” she just let slip, “I’ve made it look at least—well—old?”
“As only a Westerner could want to make it look.” His sense of humor affectionately covered any lack of enthusiasm.
“Come, Jacky,” she urged at last, “I’ll show you all of it before lunch is ready.”
The stairs rose straight in the rear of the hall, directly opposite the main entrance, with its border of finely traceried windows, branching squarely to right and left two thirds of the way up. By the first door above the side whither Julia conducted her guest she stepped fondly back and announced:
“This, Jack, is your room. I hope you will like it.”
“Yes,” he murmured, distractedly gazing about him.
Despite the freshness of everything, despite the new woolen carpets, with their correct geometric designs, ones Julia had had copied from some battered relics which she had somehow acquired, despite the new chintzes and the recently refinished furniture so deliberately assembled there for the first time, despite the spickness and spanness of each suitably collected detail of the room’s decorations, a musty smell in the air caught his breath. The floor swooped reminiscently down toward the right; the boards of it made a stifled creak as he stepped across them. He himself was a little unsteady. The window gave on impenetrable fog. Hastings threw up the sash and peered out into the dampness; he heard the sound of unseen boats groping their ways through the distance; the water lapped and laved below him.
“Jack!” Julia called.
He turned to her, dazed, smiling in that way he had of trying to conceal his consciousness of inattention.
“Of course, it seems plain and spare and—rather humble, after Europe. I know that.”