“I don’t want to keep them off,” Carin called. “Oh, how wonderful it all is! Aunt Zillah, we are going to have an adventure.”
“No doubt,” said Aunt Zillah, quite as light-hearted and care-free as any of the young people. “It is impossible to avoid adventures. Life itself is an adventure.”
They had to ride a mile after they entered the gate before they came to the house, and the only indications that they were near the habitation of man were the paths which ran here and there among laurel or rhododendron, and the rustic seats which were placed at intervals along the way. But at last the house arose before them. It had started out to be what Mr. Carson would have called a Southern mansion. The double gallery should have been supported by fluted pillars, but instead of these classic shafts, the boles of eight great chestnut trees served the purpose. The house had never been properly painted, only “primed” with ochre which had faded until it was almost the color of the ground around it, but over this had grown a multitude of vines. English ivy, Virginia creeper, trumpet flower, honeysuckle, purple and white clematis, the Dorothy Perkins rose and the matrimony vine climbed, ramped, and enwrapped according to their dispositions, till the ragged looking house was as gay as a castle with banners.
On the lower gallery, in white linen, very stately and hospitable in appearance, sat Rowantree himself.
“What a pleasure to have guests,” he said with an English accent, coming forward to assist Miss Zillah from her horse. “We have been looking forward to this honor with the greatest appreciation.”
Miss Zillah could be stately herself when occasion demanded, and she was quite as polite as Mr. Rowantree when she thanked him. If Mr. Rowantree could have had his way, he would have beaten his hands together and summoned his slaves to lead the horses to the stables. But the truth—the bare and undecorated truth—was that there were neither slaves nor stables, the first never having come into Mr. Rowantree’s life, and the second having been burned to the ground a few years back. But the horses, which Mr. Rowantree and Keefe cared for, were no doubt much happier let loose in a field near at hand. The ponies in particular were enthusiastic, and their cheerful neighings could be heard at intervals the rest of the day.
Aunt Zillah, followed by her two girls, entered what the Rowantrees were pleased to call their “drawing-room.” It was large enough to deserve the name, no question about that. And the outlook from its great windows was so beautiful—the house being on a rise and overlooking the forest about it and glimpsing the mountains beyond—that curtains would have been a mere drawback. Nor could any wall covering have been softer in color than the gray building paper which had been tacked on the joists of the house, since the builders never had got as far as lath and plaster. There was no chimney shelf, but there was a large fireplace, heaped for the occasion with oleander leaves. A few pieces of fine mahogany furniture were surrounded by the rudest mountain chairs, and the wall decorations consisted of a beautiful clock which kept the time of sunrise and moonrise as well as the hours of the day; in addition there were two fine, mellow portraits in oil, a fowling piece, two broken tennis rackets and some mountain baskets.
Miss Zillah was too delicate-minded to take stock of anybody’s possessions, but the eager girls, set on their own sort of an adventure, noticed these odds and ends with one sweep of their eyes. Then, the next moment, the mistress of the house entered, and all was forgotten in looking at her.
She was taller than Barbara Summers, whom they both used as a standard for sweet women, but still she was small. Her face was unmistakably Irish; her eyes gray-misted blue, her hair as black as Keefe O’Connor’s. Her mouth was sad and glad at once, and there was a strange, appealing look in her face as of wanting something. She seemed homesick for something—perhaps for something she never had had. The girls felt that if she had a happy time she wouldn’t, in the midst of it, be able to forget sorrow; and that if she were very sorrowful, she would still manage to hold on to joy. Carin said afterward that her face made her think of Ellen Terry’s. Azalea had not, of course, seen this great actress, but she, too, thought somehow of acting. As soon as Mrs. Rowantree began to talk, Azalea felt as if she were in a story book or on the stage. Like Rowantree himself, his wife was dressed in white, but it was, as Azalea could not help noticing, a very old frock with various rents in it, just as Mr. Rowantree’s linen was frayed and ragged. But these things seemed, somehow, to make the “adventure” all the more interesting. Mrs. Rowantree had quick, gay motions, and she walked down the length of the long curious room as if she were tripping on her toes.
“Miss Pace, it’s a great pleasure to be meeting you,” she said, not waiting for an introduction, but grasping Miss Zillah’s hand. To Carin and Azalea she said: “Young faces are flowers at the feast!” Her way was so quaintly old-fashioned, so charming, so dramatic, that Azalea again thought of play-acting; yet Mrs. Rowantree was nothing, it seemed, if not sincere. So perhaps it was best, Azalea decided, to think of this as the most charming “really truly” thing that had come her way.