"Very soon I start to Arizona for a short stay, thence to the most northern of the Aleutian Islands, where I expect to find Eskimo cliff-dwellers, and later to the region northwest of Hudson Bay. Be sure to write me, and Vernon—pardon my perhaps unjustifiable insistence—don't fail to secure police surveillance before you sleep."
When the door closed, Mr. Herriott wrote a telegram to the physician who attended Leighton, walked to the nearest telegraph office, and heard his message click over the wires.
A few days later he was not surprised to learn that only the sternly positive interdict of the doctor had frustrated an attempt to remove Leighton from Brooklyn at ten o'clock on Monday morning.
CHAPTER XIII
The first view of "Greyledge" suggested a stone crazy-quilt, so multitudinous were its angles, so incongruous its medley of styles; but examination showed architectural strata superimposed in such trend that the paradoxical dip had uplifted the oldest to the crest. Three stories, échelon, looked as if they had frozen in dancing a minuet, each receding yet rising, and when, as a bride, Nina Herriott stepped out of her carriage, she gayly made three very low bows to the dwelling that appeared courtesying to welcome her. The long first story was a piazza or loggia, with wide, round arches upheld by double shafts, closed in winter by glass doors and storm shutters, in summer noons sheltered from the glare of sun-smitten water by white and blue awnings. No railing divided it from the broad stone terrace just below, overhanging the lake that mirrored its carved and fluted balustrade where vine-fringed vases glowed with flowers for three months of each year. At the north end of the arcade, a round tower, rising one hundred and fifty feet, held a lamp with brilliant reflector that shone far out over the apparently shoreless lake on moonless and stormy nights, and at the south corner one of several flights of steps led to an arched and domed pavilion where boats were moored.
The second floor flowered into bay windows, mullioned and diamond paned; and the third might have slipped from some Swiss hillside, so full it seemed of small balconies, sharp gables, dormers, and deep recesses, and the steep roof that crowned the whole overhung like an Alpine hat the frivolous impertinence of trefoil and stained glass. Rains had bleached and snow storms pumiced the stone walls to a smooth, cool grey, silvered in spots by films of lichen, while on two turreted chimneys ivy had braved ascent to weave a cloak of glossy green across the sombre smoke stains garnered during many generations. The most elevated portion of the composite structure had been built on the side of a rocky hill, at some distance from the lake edge, and gradually the declivity had been graded for the later additions that finally advanced until they could see their own irregular façade reflected in the water spraying their foundations; consequently the floors were on different levels, and one went up and down short flights of steps to reach apartments in the same story.
Herriott tradition claimed that early French pioneers had here destroyed an Indian fort, and that their rude hunting lodge was succeeded by a missionary station, where a semi-circular excavation in the rock had served as oratory; in proof whereof an old wooden cross, partly gilded with tarnished, tattered gold leaf, still hung in the small stone cave that once echoed the antiphony of Latin chants, and held forever in its mossy crannies subtle, spicy survivals of sanctifying incense. Sheltered on the north by hills, clothed with vineyards along their southern face, the courtyard and shrubbery nestled close to the rocks, but eastward stretched wide fields and level meadows bounded by dense woods rising on steep uplands, blue in the distance; and south lay a garden of olden time, with primly boxed beds, walks hedged with lilacs, snow-balls, glistening rhododendrons, and masses of roses that ran riot to the foot of a high enclosing stone wall, where a shining mantle of ivy climbed to match its verdure with the velvet of hills that here circled like a clasping arm, reaching from far-away forests to the lake margin. The courtyard was so nearly on a level with the rear of the house that only three shallow steps were needed for entrance, and at this spot the range of color had been exhausted by masses of lilies, irises, peonies, and foliage plants—so brilliant that in the summer sunshine benignant nature seemed to have paved the place with a flawless prism.
On the morning after the arrival of Mr. Herriott's guests, breakfast had been served on the long, arcaded piazza, where stood three circular tables, each bright and fragrant from central piles of flowers and fruit. At the middle one Mr. Herriott sat with Eglah and Judge Kent, around that on his left were Miss Katrina Manning—an aunt of Noel's mother—Professor Cleveden, and Eliza Mitchell, and grouped at his right were Beatrix Roberts, a cousin of Miss Manning's, Dana Stapleton of New York, and Roger Hull, the young congressman from a northwestern State, whose devotion to Eglah had long been undisguised.
It was a cloudless summer day, and the crisp wind from the west drove the crystal water of the great inland sea into ruffles of foamy lace against the stone face of the terrace. If she had floated down from a Fragonard panel, or stepped out of a Watteau clavecin, Miss Manning could not have represented more picturesquely a dainty type of the long by-gone. Low in stature, slight and graceful, this airy old lady, with silver hair piled high on her head, where jewelled side combs held her curls close—habitually wore grey silk or velvet, and her bright, restless round eyes increased her likeness to a bird, hence Noel's pet name was "Auntie Dove." Her gowns were many years behind the reigning mode, and she shook her voluminous skirts in indignant scorn of close-clinging garments then coming rapidly into vogue. When her favorite young cousin Beatrix plucked up courage to denounce "antediluvian fashions," the grey old dame seized her by the shoulders and shook her till her teeth chattered.