Part 8 (1/2)

Then the lights of Castle 'Cadia twinkled in their tree-setting at the top of the little knoll; the drought-hardened road became a gravelled carriage-drive under the pneumatic tires; and a final burst of speed sent the car rocketing to the summit of the knoll through a maple-shadowed avenue.

The great tree-trunk-pillared portico of the country house was deserted when the colonel cut out the motor-battery switch at the carriage step.

But a moment later a white-gowned figure appeared in the open doorway, and the colonel's daughter came to the step, to laugh gayly, and to say:

”Why, Mr. Ballard, I'm astounded! Have you really decided that it is quite safe to trust yourself in the camp of the enemy?”

Ballard had seen Castle 'Cadia at field-gla.s.s range; and he had Bromley's enthusiastic description of the house of marvels to push antic.i.p.ation some little distance along the way to meet the artistic reality. None the less, the reality came with the shock of the unexpected.

In the softened light of the shaded electric pendants, the ma.s.sive pillars of the portico appeared as single trees standing as they had grown in the mountain forest. Underfoot the floor was of hewn tree-trunks; but the house walls, like the pillars, were of logs in the rough, cunningly matched and fitted to conceal the carpentry.

A man had come to take the automobile, and the colonel paused to call attention to a needed adjustment of the motor. Ballard made use of the isolated moment.

”I have accounted for you at last,” he said, prolonging the greeting hand-clasp to the ultimate limit. ”I know now what has made you what you are.”

”Really?” she questioned lightly. ”And all these years I have been vainly imagining that I had acquired the manner of the civilized East!

Isn't it pathetic?”

”Very,” he agreed quite gravely. ”But the pathos is all on my side.”

”Meaning that I might let you go and dress for dinner? I shall. Enter the house of the enemy, Mr. Ballard. A cow-punching princess bids you welcome.”

She was looking him fairly in the eyes when she said it, and he acquitted her doubtfully of the charge of intention. But her repet.i.tion, accidental or incidental, of his own phrase was sufficiently disconcerting to make him awkwardly silent while she led the way into the s.p.a.cious reception-hall.

Here the spell of the enchantments laid fresh hold on him. The rustic exterior of the great house was only the artistically designed contrast--within were richness, refinement, and luxury unbounded. The floors were of polished wood, and the rugs were costly Daghestans.

Beyond portieres of curious Indian bead-work, there were vistas of harmonious interiors; carved furnis.h.i.+ngs, beamed and panelled ceilings, book-lined walls. The light everywhere came from the softly tinted electric globes. There was a great stone fireplace in the hall, but radiators flanked the openings, giving an added touch of modernity.

Ballard pulled himself together and strove to recall the fifty-mile, sky-reaching mountain barrier lying between all this twentieth-century country-house luxury and the nearest outpost of urban civilisation. It asked for a tremendous effort; and the realising anchor dragged again when Miss Craigmiles summoned a j.a.panese servant and gave him in charge.

”Show Mr. Ballard to the red room, Tagawi,” she directed. And then to the guest: ”We dine at seven--as informally as you please. You will find your bag in your room, and Tagawi will serve you. As you once told me when I teased you in your Boston workshop--'If you don't see what you want, ask for it.'”

The Kentuckian followed his guide up the broad stair and through a second-floor corridor which abated no jot of the down-stair magnificence. Neither did his room, for that matter. Hangings of Pompeian red gave it its name; and it was s.p.a.cious and high-studded, and critically up to date in its appointments.

The little brown serving-man deftly opened the bag brought by the colonel's messenger from Ballard's quarters at the Elbow Canyon camp, and laid out the guest's belongings. That done, he opened the door of the bath. ”The honourable excellency will observe the hot water; also cold. Are the orders other for me?”

Ballard shook his head, dismissed the smiling little man, and turned on the water.

”I reckon I'd better take it cold,” he said to himself; ”then I'll know certainly whether I'm awake or dreaming. By Jove! but this place is a poem! I don't wonder that the colonel is fighting Berserk to save it alive. And Mr. Pelham and his millionaires come calmly up to the counter and offer to buy it--with mere money!”

He filled the porcelain bath with a crystal-clear flood that, measured by its icy temperature, might have been newly distilled glacier drip; and the cold plunge did something toward establis.h.i.+ng the reality of things. But the incredibilities promptly rea.s.serted themselves when he went down a little in advance of the house-party guests, and met Elsa, and was presented to a low-voiced lady with silvery hair and the face of a chastened saint, named to him as Miss Cauffrey, but addressed by Elsa as ”Aunt June.”

”I hope you find yourself somewhat refreshed, Mr. Ballard,” said the sweet-voiced chatelaine. ”Elsa tells me you have been in the tropics, and our high alt.i.tudes must be almost distressing at first; I know I found them so.”

”Really, I hadn't noticed the change,” returned Ballard rather vaguely.

Then he bestirred himself, and tried to live up to the singularly out-of-place social requirements. ”I'm not altogether new to the alt.i.tudes, though I haven't been in the West for the past year or two.

For that matter, I can't quite realise that I am in the West at this moment--at least in the uncitied part.”

Miss Cauffrey smiled, and the king's daughter laughed softly.