[CHAPTER XIV]
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 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, 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 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?”