rare and chosen loveliness, should blossom to a flower of moonlight beauty on a hill.
Joel took him downstairs to the kitchen before saying good night. They crossed the hall and passed through the great dining-room. It was also a noble gleaming room of white, as grand and spacious as a room in a château, but warm, and familiar, comforting as home. Then they passed through a service corridor that connected the kitchen and the pantry with the dining-room, and instantly he found himself in another part of this enchanted world—the part that cooked and served and with viewless grace, and magic stealth and instancy—performed the labours of this enchanted house.
It was such a kitchen as he had never seen before—a kitchen such as he had never dreamed possible. In its space, its order, its astounding cleanliness, it had the beauty of a great machine—a machine of tremendous power, fabulous richness and complexity—which in its ordered magnificence, its vast readiness, had the clear and glittering precision of a geometric pattern. Even the stove—a vast hooded range as large as those in a great restaurant—glittered with the groomed perfection of a racing motor. There was, as well, an enormous electric stove that was polished like a silver ornament, the pots and pans were hung in gleaming rows, in vast but orderly profusion ranging from great copper kettles big enough to roast an ox to little pans and skillets just large enough to poach an egg, but all hung there in regimented order, instant readiness, shining like mirrors, scrubbed and polished into gleaming discs, the battered cleanliness of well-used copper, seasoned iron and heavy steel.
The great cupboards were crowded with huge stacks of gleaming china ware and crockery, enough to serve the needs of a hotel. And the long kitchen table, as well as the chairs and woodwork of the rooms, was white and shining as a surgeon’s table: the sinks and drains were blocks of creamy porcelain, clean scrubbed copper, shining steel.
It would be impossible to describe in detail the lavish variety, the orderly complexity, the gleaming cleanliness of that great room, but the effect it wrought upon his senses was instant and overwhelming. It was one of the most beautiful, spacious, thrilling, and magnificently serviceable rooms that he had ever seen: everything in it was designed for use, and edged with instant readiness; there was not a single thing in the room
