Presently they passed through a second gate and left the outpost of trees behind. To the right stretched a broad expanse of turf, bare of trees or shrubs; Phillip called it the lawn. It led upward to a sloping terrace upon which, fair and white against a dense background of winter woods, guarded by a few sentinel trees which threw their leafless shadows upon the sunlit walls, stood the house, crowning the splendour of the landscape with its own gleaming beauty and quiet dignity. John drew a breath of intense pleasure as he looked, while Cardinal, moved to new impatience by the sight of the stables, rushed around the curve that, bordering the lawn, led to the house.
Elaine had been built by Phillip’s great-grandfather in the early part of the century, when three or four years was thought none too long for the rearing of a home. The great terrace had been pulled down from the ridge at the back and thrown up from the sloping meadow below by scores of toiling[217] slaves; the stone that formed the thick walls had been carted from quarries forty miles away as the crow flies; the timber had been felled upon the estate, sawn and cut and planed with infinite toil; the huge stone columns before the door had been erected by workmen brought from Italy for the purpose. That long-gone Phillip Ryerson had builded well, and to-day the house was as strong and undisturbed as when he had first led his young bride into it. Save that here and there the plaster covering the stones had cracked or chipped, the building showed no signs of any depredations of time or weather; nor had the civil strife which had waged hotly about it marred its beauty; though once, indeed, the great hall had been piled high with bundles of fodder and only a miracle had averted the applying of the torch by Northern soldiers.
The house was long—“Four feet longer than the White House at Washington,” Phillip assured—and two stories and a half in height. In the centre of the front an immense portico stood forth, its roofs supported by four great Greek Doric columns whose bases two men could scarce encircle with their arms. The masonry of the columns was hidden by plaster,[218] white and gleaming like the pediment above; and the same snowy hue was everywhere visible save upon the doors and windows and upon the ornamental lintels above them. These were of two shades of chocolate brown, and, with the hanging balcony above the front entrance, lent a pleasant suggestion of the Italian to the architecture. The white chimneys rising above the gables were topped with mellow ochre-tinted pots. Just now the shadows were gathering beneath the portico roof, but upon the rest of the house front the westerning sun shone warmly, delicately shadowing the walls with the tracery of spreading branches and throwing upon the great base of a column a grotesque silhouette of one of the two big lions which, standing at either side upon their stone acroteria, guarded the broad entrance.
As the carriage reached the corner of the house three dogs, a red-and-white setter, a dark brindle bull terrier and a toddling beagle, raced toward them, baying and yelping their welcome, while a flock of handsome bronze turkeys and two disdainful peacocks hurried across the drive toward the shelter of the trees. On the porch stood a white-haired[219] darky, and below, on the gravel, a younger one ready to take the horse.
“Hello, Uncle!” called Phillip. The elder darky grinned delightedly and bobbed his grizzled head.
“Howdy, Will!” The younger smiled from ear to ear and performed a subdued double-shuffle in the roadway. Phillip leaped to the porch, shook hands with the butler and turned to John.
“All out for Elaine!” he cried merrily. “Here’s where we stop, John. Look after those guns and umbrellas, Uncle. Out you come, sis!”
In the hall, broad, deep and high of ceiling, a room in itself, Margaret, drawing her gloves from palms that ached with holding the headstrong Cardinal, nodded smilingly toward a deep chair. John shook his head, however, and turning to one of the windows gazed out over the sloping, sun-bathed lawn to the timbered creek, to the fields beyond, to the purple rises and hills beyond those, and so to an almost cloudless horizon which already hinted of sunset. He received an impression of openness and space that was almost thrilling. Phillip, followed by the butler, came in with the luggage, and to the darky Margaret spoke:
“Has mother come down?”
[220]
“No’m, not yet. She said she’d wait till you-all come.”
“Very well. You’d better take Mr. North’s things to his room, Uncle; and perhaps you’d like to go up?” turning to John.
“Thank you, I will.”
“I’m going up to see mamma; I’ll be back in a minute or so, John. I’ve told them at the stable to bring the horses around; we’ll take a ride before supper.” Phillip tossed aside his cap and turned toward a door.
“But maybe Mr. North is tired, Phil, and would rather not ride this evening,” said Margaret.
“Tired! Shucks, Margey; why, you just can’t tire him! You want to ride, don’t you, John?”
“I should like to very much. It seems a mistake to stay indoors in this kind of weather—it’s grand. I’ll get washed up a bit and change my things. Don’t let your mother put herself to any inconvenience on my account, Phil, unless she would have come downstairs anyway—if I wasn’t here, I mean——”
“This is her usual time,” answered Margaret. “I suspect the reason she’s not already here to welcome you is that she’s doing an unusual amount[221] of primping on your account, Mr. North. Mamma is not beyond feminine coquetries, is she, Phil?”
“She’s the biggest flirt in four counties!” laughed Phillip. “I don’t doubt but that she’s been dressing for your conquest, John, ever since morning.”
“The extra exertion is quite unnecessary,” John replied gravely. “I came here quite prepared to fall victim to her charms.”
Uncle Casper, with John in tow, led the way through an old-style drawing-room at the right to a narrow entry from which stairs led upward to a similar hall on the second floor. John’s room was to the left, an immense apartment occupying the corner of the house toward the stables. On the front two large windows afforded the same broad view of the lawn and the country villageward that he had admired from the hall. On the side two other windows overlooked a space of turf that narrowed itself between two driveways until its apex lay just outside the gate of the stable-yard. To the right of it was the terrace and the lawn, to the left the thickly wooded ridge, rising abruptly from the back of the house and inviting to explorations with gun and dog. The stables were painted white, with brown roofs, and from the centre of[222] what was evidently the original structure arose against the clear sky an airy clock tower surmounted by a great iron vane. Beyond the stables the ground dipped to a hollow through which a small stream slipped down from the hill beyond; and across the hollow, disputing the edge of the rise with the primeval forest, lay a group of barns, folds, pens and sheds. On that side a door opened upon a balcony from which a flight of steps gave access to the ground. “Must have been designed for a bachelor apartment,” John thought. The room was well, if plainly furnished, and an antique testerbed, draped about with faded pink curtains, promised good repose. Near the bed a big fireplace was ablaze with pine logs that hurled their sparks against the brass fender with reports like miniature pistols. The warmth felt agreeable, since the four windows were wide open; and after Uncle Casper had taken his slow departure, John lighted a cigarette and, turning his broad back to the glow, clasped his hands behind him and gazed contentedly across the width of the room and out into the afternoon world. He had been several times abroad, although his travels there had followed well-worn roads, and he had looked about not a[223] little in his own country, and now he was telling himself that never had he found a place as beautiful as Elaine nor one better worth calling home.
Presently he threw aside his cigarette and struggled into a pair of riding breeches—discovering to his dismay that he had put on flesh since the summer—and worked his feet into a pair of boots. When he was dressed he glanced at his watch and found the time to be a quarter to four. From the stable the negro, Will, was bringing the horses, a big black stallion and a smaller but rangy-looking bay mare which John guessed to be a sister to Cardinal. He watched them pass toward the portico and made his way downstairs. Phillip was in the hall looking very handsome in whipcords, boots and brown tweed coat.
“Mamma asks me to apologize to you, old man, for not coming down. I think the excitement of seeing me again has rather upset her. I was to convey her compliments and say that she bids you welcome to Elaine and hopes to have the pleasure of seeing you at supper. There! Those are her own words, and I think I said them nicely. Are you all ready? We won’t have much time, but we can jog around a bit.”
[224]
“I hope Mrs. Ryerson is not ill?” asked John with concern.
“No; only a little headachey, I reckon. Margey made her lie down until supper.” A look of anxiety shaded his face for a moment. “I suppose it’s my being away so long, but she looks heaps thinner and poorer than I thought. Poor little mamma! She’s been getting more and more like a dear little ghost ever since father died. I’m beginning to think that maybe I’d ought to stay at home with her, John, instead of going away off there to college. But she won’t hear of it; it was father’s wish, she says. I reckon if he had wanted me to go to South Africa and dig gold she’d have insisted on my going. Well, come on. How’s Ruby, Will? All right? She looks fine. That’s my mare, John. Isn’t she a sweet one? You can have either of them. The stallion’s rather mean going through the gates, but except for that he’s a pretty steady horse. And the mare’s as nice as you’ll want.”
“I guess I’ll take the mare, if you don’t mind,” answered John. “I haven’t ridden since summer, and not a great deal then, and I guess she’ll break me in easier.”
“All right, then I’ll ride Winchester. Will, look[225] at Mr. North’s stirrups; you’ll have to let them out a good deal, I reckon. When Bob gets here tell him the trunk with the red stripes goes to Mr. North’s room. All right, John? We’ll ride over to the East Farm and call on Markham. He’s the overseer, you know, and a mighty nice fellow.”
But they didn’t have to go to the East Farm to see Markham, for they met him half a mile from the house; a tall, angular man of about forty years, with a long and drooping yellow mustache and a soft and deliberate Southern drawl that John liked to listen to. He rode a horse that was as near a c............