But Olive was dreaming or else stupid, for she only shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered, “the country does seem somehow familiar, yet it did not at first. Don’t you believe that all the world, at least the world of outside things, of hills and trees and valleys and water, somehow belongs alike to all of us and once we have seen a landscape and moved about in it, why we are at home. There isn’t any strangeness in nature, there can’t be; it is only people and houses and streets that are odd and unlike and fail to belong to us.”
Donald Harmon met his four guests some yards up the road on their approach to the house. As he was holding a great St. Bernard dog by the collar and as it bounded away from him all of a sudden, nearly upsetting Olive and Jessica in the rapture of its welcome, the little party entered “The Towers” with too much laughter and excitement for Olive to feel any self-consciousness or emotion. Indeed, she quite forgot all of her past foolishness in meeting Mrs. Harmon and Elizabeth again after so many eventful months. Elizabeth was able to walk about the room quite easily and of course her first inquiry was for Jack.
Without a chance for exchanging views, Jean and Olive both decided at once that the drawing room at “The Towers,” in spite of its magnificence, was one of the darkest and most unattractive rooms either of them had ever seen. For everything was very stiff and formal and without life or fragrance. Carved black furniture sat stiffly against the walls, which were hung with old portraits of men and women in high fluted ruffs, with gorgeous embroidered clothes and hard, cold faces. Over in one corner stood a tea table piled with silver and white linen and having a large arm chair near it carved like a throne. And behind this chair was a portrait of a beautiful boy of ten or twelve, who looked a little like Donald Harmon.
“My aunt will be down in a few minutes, Katherine,” Mrs. Harmon had said as soon as her guests were seated. “She has asked us to wait tea for her.” And Jean and Olive both noticed that Mrs. Harmon’s manner was a little constrained and that she kept looking at Olive as though she intended asking her some question, but as the question was never asked, the girls must have been mistaken. However, the conversation in the little company did not become general, for no one except Miss Winthrop seemed to feel at ease, until by and by the tap, tap, tap of a long stick was heard coming along the hall and with a low bow the butler flung open the drawing room door.
Everybody sat up straighter in their high-back chairs; Jean could not forbear a slight wink at Donald, but Olive felt her heart rise up in her throat. Why on earth was the old mistress of “The Towers” so formidable that the entire neighborhood felt an awe of her? Olive was rather sorry that she was competing for one of her prizes offered to the Junior students at Primrose Hall.
“Madame Van Mater,” the butler announced very distinctly and at the name of the owner of the white house, which Olive now heard for the first time since her arrival at Primrose Hall, the young girl caught at the sides of her chair, and drew in her breath sharply. Then when no one was looking at her, smiled at herself and turned her gaze curiously on their ancient hostess.
CHAPTER XI
“SLEEPY HOLLOW, A LAND OF DREAMS”
For the first time in her life she now beheld a lady for whom there is no English expression so good as the French, “a grande dame.”
There was still daylight in Madame Van Mater’s drawing room, but she stood for a moment in the center of her doorway staring with brilliant, hard, black eyes from one guest to the other and slightly inclining her head. Then she walked over to the high, carved chair near the tea table and sat down under the picture of the little boy. Feeble from old age, she was yet of too determined a spirit to accept help from any one, for when Donald tried to slip a cushion under her feet, she calmly motioned it away. Her hair, which was snow white, was piled high on her head by a careful maid; her skin, showing the remorseless touch of age, was yet as delicately powdered and rouged as if she had been an actress about to make her debut, and she was carefully dressed in a gown of deep purple silk with lace at her throat and old amethysts. And yet no art or effort could hide the ravages of age and of sorrow in the face, though the coldness of her air and expression suggested that she would have repelled grief as well as love whenever she was humanly able.
The atmosphere of the old drawing room was not any more cheerful after its hostess had entered. Indeed, no one in the room seemed to be able to speak except Miss Winthrop, for Mrs. Harmon was plainly ill at ease and even Elizabeth had been taught to treat this wealthy old aunt, whose fortune she expected some day to share with her brother, with more respect than she showed to any one else in the world.