Death in the Castle

Part One

THE DELICATE SUNSHINE OF an English spring shone through the tall and mullioned windows of the castle. He had been up since dawn, on horseback as he was every morning, riding about the farm while she slept. By the time he had cantered home it was half past nine and he was hungry. He had tramped into the dining hall where they had all their meals, except tea. She talked sometimes of a breakfast room, but he was accustomed from his earliest memory to this enormous room and the long table beneath the chandelier where they now sat, he at the north end and she at the south.

This morning, however, she had been up earlier than usual. How else could the bowl of daffodils on the table be explained? They lifted their yellow trumpets, three or four dozen of them, in a big silver bowl on the lace mat. Unless Kate had got into the garden? Years ago they had decided not to talk at breakfast, though the decision had been forgotten more often than not. She had even complained because he expected her, a young bride, to eat breakfast with him. He could see her yet, a slip of a girl, an English beauty, blue eyes under honey-colored hair, facing him across the distance. He could hear her high sweet voice, complaining and willful.

“It’s such a beastly time of day, Richard! My parents never wanted to see each other so early.”

“My dear,” he had retorted, laughing. “If I had been compelled to face your mother every morning I might have felt the same. She is a Gorgon but you’re not. You’ve a face like a rose, Mary, and I want to see it across my breakfast kidney and bacon. It’s my prerogative.”

“All the same, I shan’t talk,” she had threatened while her eyes smiled.

“You needn’t,” he had said, and through the thirty-five years of their happy marriage she had been very nearly silent in the morning, though faithfully breakfasting with him. Stubborn little thing!

He looked at the rose of a face now, across the table. It was still pretty, a slightly faded rose, perhaps, but worth looking at, and not at all what her mother’s had been — more like her father’s perhaps, a gentle peer retiring too early to a crumbling Cornwall fortress of a castle. He had merely brought her from one castle to another, except that he had not allowed this castle to crumble and never would, in spite of these preposterous times when one was to be penalized, it seemed, for having been born in one’s family seat.

She caught his half-frowning glance over the daffodils and lifted her eyebrows to inquire.

“Nothing,” he said abruptly, “just remembering an odd moment.”

Wells, who was both cook and butler in these lean days, had been standing with his back to them, facing the buffet; he now broke an egg into hot water. She liked her egg poached, with a side serving of kippered herring. Wells, tall and erect in a worn gray uniform, was bone thin with age; his white hair was brushed carefully, his hands were still steady. He had been footman when Sir Richard was a boy and Lady Mary a small fair-haired girl in short white frocks. They were enchanted enemies in those days, he and she, their families distant neighbors, and Mary had pretended not to see Richard when he came with his mother to tea and showed off with handsprings and gymnastics when the two of them were sent out to play on the lawn.

Wells turned to reveal a long and melancholy face. “Will you have an egg this morning, Sir Richard? With your kidney and bacon?”

“I will, thanks,” he replied. “I daresay I’ll need it. Is Kate gone to the station yet?”

“It’s a bit early, sir. She’s just dusting the great hall, preparatory to the American, sir.”

“Go and tell her she’ll be late.”

“Yes, Sir Richard.”

The old man left the room, coping bravely with a slight limp. Silence fell. Lady Mary drank her tea, gazing reflectively at the daffodils. Sir Richard buttered his toast and glanced at her.

“I say, my dear, you’ll meet with us, you know.”

For a moment he thought she would not break her silence. Then she spoke, her voice still high and sweet and oddly youthful with the hair now white.

“I hadn’t thought I should. Must I?”

“I shan’t want to meet him alone,” he said.

“Did you telephone Philip Webster?”

“By Jove, I forgot!” He leapt to his feet and was halfway to the door when she spoke again.

“I telephoned him.”

He paused. “What? I say, that was good of you! I don’t know why I forgot—”

“You won’t need me if he’s here.”

“Yes, I shall. Moral support. Webster’s such a pessimist — convinced the worst will happen, and I am too easily convinced.”

He sat down again. Somehow once the conversation was begun, he wanted to keep it going. “It was Webster who thought of this business with the American. He’ll push me. He’ll tell me the country is doomed and the castle with it and all that rot.”

She poured a second cup of tea. “Why he should have found the American, of all people! Perhaps it was because your father sold the two paintings from the ballroom to an American the year we were married. But that was so long ago! Remember? To pay for our honeymoon tour, I’m afraid, poor dear!”

“I paid for the honeymoon,” Sir Richard said flatly. It was the ballrooms he paid for. “Everything for the land, in those days,” he went on, grumbling. “He scrimped me to the bone at Oxford. A lot of good it did! The land was never better, but it’s still not enough, unless we modernize. And taxes! I thought when we let the damned public come in we might be saved. Nothing is enough, it seems. Government wants everything.”

She spread marmalade on a bit of toast. “Yes, it was the paintings reminded Philip. Fancy his resorting to an American otherwise!”

He was suddenly irritable. The pounding headache, to which he had become liable in the last year, had attacked him again. “Stop complaining about what I cannot help,” he said sharply.

Out in the hall Wells stood in disapproval of his granddaughter. “Kate, you’re wanted. They think you’ll be late.”

“Yes, Granddad, just one more minute, please.”

She was dusting the cabinet of heavy oak, English oak, carved with the royal arms. Five hundred years the castle had been the home of royalty and then it had been given to the Sedgeley family, and another five hundred years had passed. Kate dreamed through the centuries while she worked day after day, remembering the books she had pored over in the library during the years she had been growing up in the castle. They had spoiled her, Sir Richard and Lady Mary, making a pet of her and then sending her to school in London, when her grandfather was only the butler. They had spoiled her as they had her father, Colin, who had grown up in the castle too. He had refused to go properly into service as footman under his father; instead he had run off to London, had been an artist for awhile, then when the war came along joined the Air Force and got himself trained as a pilot

All in one year Colin had married, become a war hero, and been killed in an air raid on London the very day he had been given leave to see his newborn daughter. Kate’s mother had been killed too, and the baby had been saved only because someone had had the wit to push her in her basket under a kitchen table.

An orphan at the age of nine days, Kate had been brought back to the castle by her grandfather. Wells was all she had known in the way of parents, for her grandmother, Elsie Wells, had died when Colin was born. As for Kate’s mother’s side of the family, nothing was ever said. Kate early learned that there were some things about which one did not speak; questions were not asked for answers would not be forthcoming.

Her grandfather had brought her up well, teaching her what he knew and training her in the old ways; but there had come a time when Sir Richard and Lady Mary — Sir Richard especially — had insisted that Kate have more education than the village school could give, so she had been sent to London. Wells did not approve, but there was nothing he could say or do against Sir Richard. Kate had been glad to go. In London she had learned new ways of usefulness. She could drive the car now when Sir Richard wanted her to; she could help Lady Mary with her correspondence. She was considerably more than a servant, considerably less than a daughter; but the castle was her home.

What her life might have been without the shelter of the castle she could not guess; what her life, and her grandfather’s too, might be if the castle were no longer to be home was something she would not think about.

“You’re working too hard,” Wells said as he sat down heavily in a huge oak chair, King Charles’s chair. He sat nowadays whenever he could, even for a moment.

Kate went on dusting the intricate details of the table, a long slab of polished wood set upon iron legs and claw feet holding balls of crystal.

“Not really,” she said cheerfully. “I like working about, Granddad.”

“You’re as headstrong as your father,” Wells said, but his tone had more pride than criticism in it. “I could do nothing with Colin from the moment he was born. And when he married above his station—”

She interrupted. “Now, Granddad, you’ve told me that over and over, and I’ve far too much on my mind now to listen again to that old story.”

He got to his feet. “You’re Miss Bossy, as usual, and have been since you were born. You take after your dad all right. You’d better get yourself into the hall, or—”

He moved slowly toward the door but Kate flew ahead of him and was in the great hall before be was.

“Good morning, Sir Richard, Grandfather says you called me?”

She saw as she talked that his cup was empty and she took it from the table to the buffet and filled it with hot coffee, hot milk and two lumps of sugar, moving deftly and swiftly, a small alert figure.

“You’ll be late,” Sir Richard grumbled, accepting the service.

“Take off your apron, Kate,” Lady Mary directed.

She took it off. “Yes, my lady. I’m quite ready, as you see — a clean blouse and my tweed skirt. I’ve only to slip on my jacket and brush my hair back.”

“I say you’ll be late,” Sir Richard repeated.

She smiled at him, coaxing, her brown hair curling about her vivid face.

“Sir Richard, dear, I will not be late. I know how long it takes.”

“You always drive too fast, you young rascal—”

“Ah no, I don’t, sir. I’m that careful you wouldn’t believe—”

“You’re what I wouldn’t believe. You do everything too fast.”

“Have I ever had a smash?”

“You’ve never had to drive an American before.”

Kate laughed, “You make it sound as though he weren’t human!”

“I’m not sure of the breed!”

They had been talking as equals, a young woman and an older man, and Sir Richard enjoyed it. She knew from habit, however, exactly when to slip from the role of almost daughter to almost maid, and she did so now.

“Please, Sir Richard, how will I know the American when I see him?”

“How should I know? I’ve never seen him myself.”

Lady Mary interrupted, but mild and detached as usual. “He’ll be the only one who doesn’t look an Englishman, I daresay.”

Kate laughed again, a pleasant ready music, rippling with gaiety. “Perhaps I’ll coax him back on the train again to America! Or, if I don’t like his looks, I’ll tell him about the Duke’s bedroom and properly frighten him.”

Sir Richard put down his cup. “He should be in King John’s room. We must show him our best.”

“Too damp,” Lady Mary said. “There’s that drip in the left corner of the ceiling where the plaster fell. Years ago it was, and it still drips. I can’t think why. Wells, why don’t you know?”

“Nobody has ever known, my lady.”

“Ah well, it can’t matter now, since the castle’s to he sold, it seems — unless some one thinks of something.”

“It’s a crime, my lady — asking your pardon.” Wells said.

Sir Richard pounded his fist on the table. “Kate!”

Kate had been looking from one face to the other, her eyes questioning, her lips parted, and she gave a start at the sound of his voice. “I am gone, sir,” she breathed and was gone.

They were silent again until Wells, faltering at the buffet and clattering nervously the silver dishes, turned to them, trembling with emotion, which he knew they would not allow him to reveal.

“If that’s all, sir, I’d better be getting into the kitchen. The butcher boy will be wanting me. A small roast for tonight, my lady?”

Lady Mary nodded indifferently, and he went away. They had finished eating. Sir Richard lit his pipe and she watched him, meditating, her silvery head held a little to the left. It was she who broke the silence, her voice plaintively firm.

“We haven’t tried everything, you know, Richard — not really, I mean.”

He puffed twice. “Can you think of something? I can’t. Lucky that Webster found those letters in the files! The Blaynes are enormously wealthy. Oil, I believe, or it may be steel, but Americans are full of oil.”

“Hateful stuff! Black smoke in all their cities, I’m told. No wonder they want to hang their paintings here. Will they bring back the two they took away?”

“My dear, they’ll do whatever they like with the two paintings — they paid for them. Otherwise we’d have no bathrooms in the castle. Besides, that was so long ago.”

“Five bathrooms for twenty-seven bedrooms!”

“Better than the maids with rubber tubs and jugs of hot water, as it was when I was a lad. Gad, I’ll never forget the way those rubber tubs could sag and spill the water through the ceiling! I let it happen the morning the Prince of Wales was here and the water came through on this table. I was only seventeen and I very nearly died of shame — wouldn’t come down to breakfast and my father—”

She interrupted with gentle laughter. “Richard, really! You told me about it the first day we met — and how many times since!”

“It’s a good story, however often I tell it,” he retorted.

They heard the honking of a horn as he spoke. Together they rose and went out into the courtyard. The old Rolls Royce stood there bravely, trembling under the throbbing engine. At the wheel, all the windows down, Kate sat enthroned, her dark hair flying in short curls about her face.

“I’m off,” she cried.

Standing side by side, very straight and gallant, they nodded and waved, looking after her as she drove away.

… The darlings, she thought, as she sped through the summer green along the drive, the brave old darlings, giving up their treasure, their heritage, their home, their castle! My home, too, she reminded herself, though her claim was far different from theirs. If the American wasn’t moved at the sight of them, if he didn’t say at once that he simply couldn’t bear to put them out, if he destroyed her dream of their living on exactly as they always had, only with the paintings on the walls if the castle was to be a museum, but everything else just as it was, and she looking after it all as she did now, if he didn’t see how impossible, how cruel, any change would be, then she would — she would simply hate him, that was all. She would hate him with all her heart and she would manage somehow to spoil everything, she would indeed.

She looked back before the next rise of land should take the castle from her view; she leaned out of the window dangerously far for that last glimpse she always sought. How beautiful the castle was in the sunlight! Sir Richard and Lady Mary were still standing just where they had been when she left them. The sun was shining on their white heads and she felt a surge of love for them to whom the castle belonged and to whom she belonged, too, in a way. She saw them look up, as if at something high above them, then the rising turn of the road took them from her sight.

Lady Mary’s eyes had gone first to the window under the high overhanging roof.

“Richard, do you see something up there?”

“Where?”

“The lost window. Someone’s there—”

“How can it be lost if someone’s there?”

“It might be they.”

“Oh, come now, my dear!”

“Ah, but you never say whether you really believe or don’t believe.”

“What is there to believe?”

“You know quite well.”

“What?”

“Richard, you’re being stupid. It’s naughty of you!”

“To tell you the truth, then — I don’t see anything at the window — I never do.”

She stamped her foot at this and stooped to a bed of the daffodils, yellow against the gray stone of the castle. He gazed down, tender-eyed, at her slight figure and the silvery hair. His headache was gone as suddenly as it had come and he felt immense relief.

“Am I being stupid, my love? Perhaps! But who knows anything these days? I’d sooner believe you than anyone else.”

She reached for his hand at that, and they walked to the great yews, clipped in the shape of elephants. There they paused in mutual gloom for the yews had been planted two hundred years ago and clipped a hundred years later by a Sedgeley who had seen service in India.

“He’ll chop down the elephants, that American,” she said.

“Nonsense. Americans aren’t savages nowadays.”

“You talk sometimes as though they were.”

“That’s because I don’t relish having them in my castle or cutting down my yews.”

They walked on to the rose garden. Impatient bees were fretting over the buds not yet ready to bloom.

She was brooding over the roses. “He won’t know about roses, I daresay. I’ve never heard of American roses.”

“Nor I. I daresay they can’t grow roses in their beastly climate.”

“Will he chew gum?”

“Spare me these clichés, my dear. He’s probably a decent sort, in which case he’ll not chew gum. At least he knows paintings.”

“Where’ll he have his meals? I shan’t be able to talk if he’s at table with us.”

“Wells can take him a tray.”

As though at the mention of his name. Wells appeared. “A man has arrived, Sir Richard, in a motorcar,” he announced in a sepulchral voice.

Sir Richard looked at him with irritation. “But the castle is closed today. It’s only Tuesday.”

“I told him so, sir,” Wells said.

“Very well — then tell him again. It doesn’t pay to have fewer than ten people on a tour through the castle. Tell him so.”

“He’s the persistent sort, sir,” Wells said doubtfully.

Sir Richard rubbed his nose. “Then tell him to come on Thursday with the rest of the public.”

“It’s an American motorcar, sir.”

Lady Mary entered the conversation with an air of solving the problem. “Ask his chauffeur who he is.”

“He’s driving himself, my lady.”

“Ah, well then,” she said decisively. “He’s a tourist or he’s selling something. If the former, tell him he can’t see the castle today and we make no exceptions. If the latter, tell him to apply at the service door and then meet him there and send him away.”

“Yes, my lady.” Wells bowed slightly and left them.

They watched him sadly. “One of these days,” Sir Richard began—

She cut him off. “Don’t say it, Richard. I can’t think what we’ll do without Wells. He’s like the castle. I’ve thought of things, of coarse, finding a husband for Kate, for example — someone who could help Wells, you know, until — and perhaps be a sort of chef man while—”

She was surprised at Sir Richard’s look of horror.

“Impossible!”

“What do you mean, Richard?”

“A husband for Kate — someone like—Wells?”

“I don’t see why not—”

“Kate married to a butler sort of — cook?”

“Really, Richard, she’s only a maid — a very wonderful one and so on, but — why do you look at me like that?”

“I don’t think of her as a maid—”

“Richard, you’re being very odd—”

“I’m not being odd, my dear. It’s just that I can’t bear to think of life’s being different than it’s always been for us. We’re not getting younger and it’ll be difficult, at best—”

He turned away abruptly. She went to his side and laid her cheek against his sleeve.

“Ah, Richard, don’t grieve! Do you know what I’m thinking of? The first day you kissed me — remember? In spring — a day like this — and the daffodils blooming, too. And your mother came out—”

Sir Richard put his arm about her shoulders. “By Jove, I’d forgotten! She said, ‘You did that rather nicely, my son.’ ”

“I could have wept, I was so shy!”

“And I said—”

She interrupted. “Richard, there must be something we can do to save the castle! Life’s gone on here for a thousand years — how can it stop with us? What have we done?”

“What haven’t we done?” he said sadly. “It’s nothing we can help. It’s the end of an age, my love, and we end with it, that’s all. Someone has to, I suppose — someone had to even when Rome fell. Our castle is built on Roman ruins, you know. There’s no alternative now, I’m afraid—”

“Are you sure Webster has done all he can?”

“He showed me the letters he’d had — two possibilities, that’s all. Government would buy the castle for a prison, that’s bad enough but the other is worse — the atomic people want to pull it down and build a plant here. They need a bit of a desert, and our five thousand acres of forest and farm would do nicely.”

She shuddered and sat down on a low rock wall. “Oh no—”

He felt for his pipe and tobacco pouch, filled the pipe, lit it and drew hard. “Well, my dear, all that’s left is to keep on with the farm, and that we can’t, it seems, without selling the castle. The tenants complain about leaking roofs and no modern improvements and I don’t know where to look for the money for that sort of thing. No, the museum’s best. We’ll turn it over to the American and retire to the gatehouse. It will be comfortable enough, I daresay. And the money he gives us will pay for the farm improvements and perhaps we can make do in our time, God willing. At least the castle won’t be a prison for criminals — or be demolished.”

She pushed back her short white hair.

“I wish you wouldn’t mention God. … If we’d had a son—”

“We haven’t,” he said shortly.

“But if we had, could he—”

“My dear, why do you speak of him when he was never born or even conceived, for that matter? We settled that long ago.”

“You still think it was my fault!”

He knocked the ash out of his pipe. “Damn this thing — it won’t draw.”

She continued, her voice slightly belligerent. “You know, Richard, it was never settled that I was the one at fault. It was very unkind of you not to be willing to go and have yourself examined.”

He turned on her. “Now why do you bring that up again? It’s absurd — at our age. And I — there was no reason to think that I — besides, I suggested that we adopt a child.”

She moved away from him. “You know very well that adopted children can’t inherit. It has to be your issue.”

“Male issue,” he retorted. “It could have been an adopted daughter. Fact is”—he was working at his pipe again, cleaning it with a bit of stick he plucked from a shrub—“fact is, I’ve thought once or twice of adopting Kate.”

“Kate? Ah, that’s why you say she’s not like a maid!”

“It’s too late now, I suppose.”

“Much too late,” she said with decision.

They heard at this moment the halting clatter of the old car. Kate was coming back. The car turned into the gate at the end of the driveway and stopped.

“The damned thing has stalled,” Sir Richard said anxiously. He waited, watching while Kate stepped down from the high old vehicle. Four men followed her, all in dark suits and carrying briefcases.

“Good God,” Sir Richard muttered.

“Richard,” Lady Mary said under her breath. “I feel faint—”

“Nonsense! Keep a stiff upper lip, my dear. The American has brought his minions. But I wish Webster were here.”

He went forward, his tall lean frame erect. “Good morning, which one of you is Mr. John Blayne?”

“None of them, Sir Richard,” Kate said. The wind was blowing her curly hair about her face and she looked vexed. “He’s coming by motorcar.”

The men came forward one by one and Sir Richard felt his hand wrenched four times. Lady Mary stood behind him, her hands safely clasped. The youngest one spoke brightly, a trim fellow with sandy hair in a crew cut.

“Mr. Blayne left London right after breakfast, sir. He’s driving himself.”

“He’ll probably lose his way, which he does at the drop of a hat,” a second young man said briskly.

Sir Richard looked from one to the other. They were all alike, all clean and dapper with hair in crew cuts, all alarmingly healthy and efficient-looking.

“Mr. Blayne,” said the third quietly, “is always stopping to look at cathedrals and such. Probably he’ll get here tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Shall we get started?” the fourth asked Sir Richard.

“Started?” Sir Richard repeated.

“Yes, on the castle. That’s why we’re here. Mr. Blayne doesn’t like us to waste any time.”

They were interrupted by Wells, jogging in a trot from behind the yews and gasping for breath. “He’s lost, sir!” he cried in a thin shriek.

“Control yourself, Wells,” Sir Richard said sternly. “Stop running. Breathe deeply twice and then speak like a rational creature.”

“Really, Wells,” Lady Mary supplemented. “You’ll have an apoplexy and then what’ll we do? So inconsiderate of you!”

“Grandfather, how can you?” Kate said reproachfully. She went to him and reaching him, she brushed back a stray wisp of his white hair. “Stop now — there’s a dear! Do what Sir Richard says. Breathe — that’s right — once again … Now — tell us who’s lost?”

“His car’s — still here — he’s gone,” Wells gasped.

“Whose car?”

“The American.”

The young men exchanged looks. “Is the car a dark green?” one of them inquired.

“It is,” Wells said.

The young man turned to his comrades. “It’s him.”

“Think of him getting here like that, ahead of the train! And over these winding roads.”

“He drives like crazy, if he doesn’t see a cathedral.”

Sir Richard held up his hand for silence. Instinctively they obeyed. “Do you mean to say,” he inquired slowly, “do you mean to say that the — the fellow who arrived here ahead of the lot of you is Mr. John P. Blayne?”

“Who else?” one of the young men replied.

“But he’s lost,” Lady Mary put in.

“Nonsense,” Sir Richard said with decision. “We must find him. We’ll all scatter. At the end of half an hour we’ll meet in the great hall and compare notes if we haven’t found him.”

“But what does he look like?” Kate demanded.

“Like nobody I have ever seen before,” Wells groaned.

“Oh, come now,” a young man objected. “He’s a typical American — tall, brown hair, blue eyes—”

“Brown eyes,” a second young man said.

“Well, eyes, anyway — wearing a gray suit — wasn’t it gray, fellows? No? Well, anyway a suit. Probably a red tie.”

“And I told him to stay at the service door,” Wells moaned. “ ‘Can’t I get out and look about a bit?’ he asks. ‘No!’ I tell him. ‘You stay where you are, if you please, young chap, until I get my orders!’ When I went back, he’d gone, clean as a whistle. I shouted for him and heard nothing but the bird in the big oak tree that mocks me when I call the kitchen cat.”

Kate turned to Sir Richard with an air of pretty authority. “Sir Richard, dear, you and Lady Mary must go and sit down in the hall and wait for us. Grandfather, you make them a cup of tea and drink one yourself in the pantry. The rest of us—” her dark eyes swept over the four young men—“the rest of us will find him. And mind you don’t trample the flower beds, you young chaps, and don’t break the yew branches to look through. The great hall’s inside the great door here when you return, and stay there, if you please. Don’t go wandering about inside the castle until I come back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” a young man said.

“Yes, ma’am—yes, ma’am — just as you say, ma’am.”

They filed away making great pretense of obedience and Wells turned unsteadily and disappeared into the great door.

Lady Mary went to Kate and touched her cheek with a light kiss. “Thank you, my dear!”

“Ah, what would we do without you?” Sir Richard muttered. His head was pounding again in beats of pain.

“Come with me, my dears,” Kate said in her richly comforting voice.

She stepped between them, and with an arm of each she led them toward the hall, talking all the while.

“I’m very cross, you know — this American, how dare he make such a disturbance? I asked the other chaps why he hadn’t come on the train with them properly as he said he would and they just shrugged their shoulders.”

She shrugged her shoulders elaborately to illustrate, glancing up to Sir Richard on her right then to Lady Mary on her left. They were not smiling as she meant them to, so she went on with determined cheerfulness.

“The stories they told me about him! He drives a motor like a devil, won’t have a chauffeur, they said — but he’ll stop for hours in some old cathedral and they don’t know where he is.” Kate tossed her head. “And to think that I got up an hour earlier than I needed to this morning to have the castle looking nice! All that cleaning and dusting, though why I want to make a good impression on him when it’s to sell the castle—” Suddenly she had lost her tone of gay defiance. “Oh dear, oh dear, I do love this old place!” she said wistfully.

They were in the great hall now. She walked them straight through it into their own sitting room beyond and there she settled them in their chairs. Once she could get behind their backs she wiped her eyes hastily with her handkerchief and tidied the books on the table as she talked.

“I can’t bear for strangers to see the castle except when it’s at its best — it’s what he is, that American, only a stranger — and I wish he’d stayed at home. Ah well, I shan’t hurry myself for him anymore, wherever he’s wandering.”

“Stop worrying yourself, Kate,” Lady Mary said mildly, “and tell Wells to bring us some tea. I feel quite faint.”

“He’ll bring it, my lady, and if you’ll excuse me, I will go about the grounds and see that the men aren’t tearing everything to bits.”

She left them, stopping in the hall to look at herself in the mirror, for after all she’d been through she had no doubt that she wanted tidying herself. The image in the mirror was on the whole satisfactory however, her cheeks pink from being angry and her hair curling with the damp morning air. Feeling better after what she saw, she went out into the grounds again, down the gravel walk toward the yews.

He’d be there, perhaps, for they were famous, those great yews carved and trimmed in the shape of marching elephants. She looked down the long vista, the gigantic shrubs towering above her head, but no one was there. … He’d be in the rose garden, maybe, and thither she went but he was not there nor in the spinney beyond the kitchen gardens and the henhouses. She decided to go to the lake and see if he might be wandering in the forest beyond, calculating on the value of the trees and adding up his profits for cutting them down. That indeed she felt she could not bear, for the oaks were huge and worth a fortune, only not enough, Sir Richard had often said, to save the situation.

Suddenly she saw him. He was walking toward the lake, not from the wood, but down the slope of the lawn. Yes, it could be none but the American, a tall, lean man in a dark gray suit, but much younger than she had thought he would be. His step was easy and carefree as though he already owned the land upon which he walked. Sure of him self, was he? Kate asked herself as she followed him silently, staying near enough to a tree here and there so that she could slip behind it if he turned. She’d follow and see what he did and where he went when he thought nobody was watching him.

To her surprise, he went nowhere. He stood at the lake’s edge for minutes and then sat himself down on the grass comfortably as though he meant to spend the day. He was staring at something in the lake but what? Suddenly he threw back his head and gave a shout of laughter. She was mystified. Why was he laughing all by himself? Drunk, maybe, perhaps not quite right in the head? She tiptoed over the grass until she stood almost behind him. He was actually talking to himself!

“That’s it, fella! Be careful now — you’ll choke — a spider is a mean thing to swallow!”

No — yes! He was talking to a frog! There on a lily pad a huge green bullfrog sat in the sun, its red thread of a tongue flicking in and out.

“Whatever are you doing?” she asked severely.

He gave a start and leaped to his feet.

“Trespassing, that’s what,” she went on, looking him over from head to foot. He was even taller than she thought and she tilted her head at an absurd angle to meet his eyes — blue eyes, they were, but on the gray side; he had a good mouth, it was firm and yet — pleasant was the word.

He was the American, of course, and she could have wished he weren’t so handsome. He had a nice smile, too — shy and friendly at the same time and good white teeth showing through it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Though I am here on business of a sort, so perhaps you’ll forgive me,”

She tried to look prim. “It’s not for me to forgive or not. The castle belongs to Sir Richard and Lady Mary.”

“I hope the frog goes with the castle. He has such a proprietary air.”

He was making jokes, was he? Well, she would have back at him by pretending she didn’t know who he was, though there was no mistaking him with that dark gray suit and red tie.

“If you’ve come to sell something,” she said unsmiling, “then take yourself off. We never buy anything here at the castle. Just keep straight up the path and you’ll come to the gate and beyond that the highway direct to London.” She walked away and stopped. She’d been a bit too harsh, perhaps? “You may have the frog if you like,” she called to him over her shoulder. “I hate frogs,” she added.

He was after her at once. “May I come with you? I’ve lost my way, I’m afraid, and I left my car somewhere.”

She had to down him. “You shouldn’t have come into the grounds without permission.”

“Well, you see—”

“I don’t see! I still say it’s trespassing!”

They faced each other, eyes gazing into eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said and turned away.

She let him walk twenty yards or so and then she called again. Oh, she could be wicked, too, a cat playing with a mouse! “Did you happen by any chance to see an old man wandering about? We’ve lost him.”

He walked halfway back. “Lost him?”

“Yes.”

“How does he look?”

“I’ve never seen him to know who he was.”

“Then how can you say you’ve lost him?”

“Not I, exactly! He came to see Sir Richard — about the castle. We’re rather glad he’s lost.”

“Glad?”

“Yes, but I suppose he must be found.” She walked toward him. “Come along — you may as well join in the search now that you’re here. He’s a sort of monster, you know.”

“Monster?”

“Yes, with money,” and in the way she said “money” was all her passionate defense of the castle.

They were walking side by side. Accidentally, of course, she was not looking at him, but he stealing looks at her; she continued absently, as if it did not matter what she said to a transient, a wanderer, who had no business here and could not be concerned.

“He wants to buy the castle.”

“Really?”

“Yes, for a museum. We love the castle and we loathe him.”

“Then why do you sell the castle?”

“It’s not mine. It belongs to the family. But I’ve lived here all my life. My father was born here. So was my grandfather.”

She stopped and sighed. “But why should we bother to find him? I’ve looked everywhere. Perhaps he’s gone away. I hope he has. And I’ll take you to the service entrance.”

“Thank you.”

They walked in silence for a moment until she saw the car. Yes, it was a green car.

“This is your motorcar?”

“Yes.”

“Nice—”

She looked at it carelessly and turned away, “Well — good-bye.”

“Would you—”

“Yes?”

“I shouldn’t ask but — now that I’m here—”

“What?”

“I do want to see the inside of the castle. I’ve heard about it. An ancient man was here but he couldn’t let me go in.”

“That was my grandfather.”

“You don’t look a bit like him!”

“How could I?”

“Then will you—”

He smiled at her and she tried not to smile back. “Will you go away at once if I let you see the castle?”

“If you want me to—”

“I won’t take you to the part where the family lives, you know.”

“Of course not.”

“Very well, then — but only for a bit.”

With elaborate deceit she began the tour she knew so well. There was no one in the kitchens, no one in the pantry. She led him up a small winding staircase to a narrow passage, and then up still another staircase to small old rooms above, talking as she went.

“This is the original part of the castle. Queen Elizabeth was the one who built it bigger. Shakespeare was here, they say, and here he showed the Queen his Midsummer Night’s Dream. And quite recently, Charles Dickens was here.”

“Recently?”

“Only a century ago — that’s nothing—”

“How does this part connect with the rest?”

“There’s a passage here. Be careful! That’s a trapdoor.”

She drew him aside hastily. He looked down and saw at his feet a heavy iron ring in a rotting floor.

“Trapdoors everywhere,” she explained. “They lead straight down to the dungeons.”

“Dungeons?”

“The castle was a royal seat for five hundred years, and kings and queens are always putting people in dungeons, it seems — or used to. You could have fallen for miles, you know.”

“Not really miles?”

“I daresay you would think it miles if you were falling.”

They laughed together unexpectedly and something warm was in the laughter. Now it was she who stumbled suddenly on a warped board and he caught her.

“Careful there—”

She drew away from him. “I’m quite all right, thank you. I know the castle, probably better than anyone. I used to explore it as a child.”

“Weren’t you ever frightened?”

“Not really — I felt safe here. I was accustomed to being alone. And they were always kind to me.”

“They?”

“Sir Richard and Lady Mary.”

Why was she telling him all this? Like as not he was laughing at her. She glanced at him and saw no difference in the smiling eyes. But the joke was ended for her. She put out her hand frankly.

“Of course I know who you are, Mr. Blayne. I can’t think why I’ve been — mischievous!”

His mouth twitched — ah, it was a good mouth, sensitive and warm.

“I haven’t been quite honest, either, I’m afraid,” he said.

“But you couldn’t know me,” she exclaimed.

“No, but I’ve had a hunch—”

“Hunch?”

“An idea — a conviction — all along, that you knew who I was and why I was here.”

“Oh—”

“So now that we’ve both confessed and are honest again, will you tell me who you really are?”

She looked him straight in the eyes. “I’m Kate.”

“Kate? Kate who?”

“Kate Wells, the maid.”

“Miss Kate Wells,” he said slowly, looking down into her flushed face.

“Just Kate.” She drew back and then stepped ahead of him. “This way, please, Mr. Blayne. They are waiting for you in the great hall.”

She went ahead of him through passages so narrow that there was no possibility of their walking side by side until she came to the small door which led into the great hall. There she was delayed for a moment because the latch was rusty and would not turn. He caught up with her.

“Please—”

She refused to yield. “You don’t know the latch as well as I do. It’ll give in a minute.”

He waited for the minute and then took her by the shoulders and set her firmly aside. She caught her breath in surprise and said nothing. Let him! He wouldn’t be able to move the latch, but he’d have to find out for himself, cocksure as he was. To her chagrin the willful latch yielded at once and the door swung open. Inside the hall the four young men, who had long since given up their search, were sitting in the carved oaken chairs. At sight of him they made cries more of welcome than surprise.

“Here’s John Preston Blayne at last!”

“And we thought you were lost!”

Kate broke across their exclamations. “I don’t think you’ve been looking for him at all.”

The youngest one grinned clean across his face. “We didn’t need to, did we? He always turns up, and in the best of company.”

John Blayne laughed.

“We’ve brought the blueprints and are ready to get to work, John, just as soon as you say the word.” To prove it, the young man unrolled a set of papers he had been holding and spread them out flat on the table.

“Work!” Kate exclaimed. “Whatever do they mean?” Startled, she looked from the sheets of blue paper to Mr. Blayne, then to each of the four young men in turn, all of them looking so out of place in the great hall of the castle.

“Lay off, fellows,” John Blayne said good-naturedly. “I don’t blame Miss Wells for being shocked. You’re premature. Things aren’t settled yet, not by a long shot. Fold up your tents now and steal away until tomorrow. You have rooms at the village inn.”

Levity was blown away like mist before a gale. In spite of his casual air, John Blayne’s voice held authority. The young men looked at one another. The eldest coughed and cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, John, it’s lucky you turned up at this moment. I’m glad nothing is settled. The job is impossible.”

John Blayne looked from one of his men to another and Kate saw his face harden. Tough, was he? Or just used to getting his own way?

“Impossible?” he said quietly. “I don’t recognize the word.”

“The beams are too weak,” one young man urged.

Kate burst into the argument. “Weak, are they? You’d be weak, if you’d been put up a thousand years ago. Weak! They’re as solid as the Bank of England.”

John Blayne threw her a look, amused again and gay. “Thank you, Miss Wells. And you, fellows — I know the castle isn’t Buckingham or Windsor, it’s too old. That’s the beauty of it, and that’s why we must take it down, stone by stone—”

They went into chorus again. “Part of it is brick”—“Those bricks will crumble to dust”—“We’re lucky if we can transport half of them.”

He cut them short. “You underestimate English workmanship!”

The argument grew hot. The nameless young men — and Kate was sure they were nameless because they looked so much alike, with their short noses and strong chins and similar haircuts — rushed into the deepening fray.

“You’ve done a lot of crazy things, John, but this is the craziest.”

“Remember that Japanese temple you bought and took to New York? Still lying in the warehouse — even the Met wouldn’t have it — nobody dares to tackle putting it together again. Why don’t you use that for a museum?”

“And that painting you said had to be restored—”

John Blayne stood rock firm, smiling, enjoying the onslaught, waiting until they were out of breath.

“Now,” he said. “Have you got everything off your chests? Yes, I’m crazy — but I get what I want in the end, remember that! Why don’t I put up the Japanese temple? Some day, at the right time in the right place, I will, and I’ll dare you chaps to tackle the job and you’ll take the dare. I don’t want a temple for a museum, the ghosts of Buddhist monks meditating among fat Rubens women and Roman gods and goddesses! A castle is exactly what I want and exactly what I’ll have. And I was right about the painting, wasn’t I? Under that hodgepodge of oils there was a Raphael. I could smell it. I shall hang it right there, above the chimney piece.”

Grim silence fell. The eldest young man sighed and took a notebook and pencil from his pocket “All right, but it will cost a small fortune — every brick to be wrapped in tissue paper—”

“Remind me to order a hundred tons of tissue paper.”

“And ships to transport the bricks and stone—”

“Remind me to order ten ships instead of the two we have.”

The young man turned to his fellows and shrugged, his eyebrows arched in dismay.

“All right, men, let’s take his dare and tear down the castle!”

Kate could bear no more. She stood listening to the arguments in progressive horror. She looked now at the blueprints outspread upon the table and saw the castle standing not on this green English hill, but in a rugged landscape somewhere far away, and surrounded not by English meadows and by calm brooks, but by wooded mountains and a rocky seacoast. Comprehension flashed upon her mind.

“You’re not — you’re not going to take the castle to America? But that’s insane, Mr. Blayne! It can’t be done, besides Sir Richard won’t allow it. I’m sure he thought the museum was to be here! Wait — I’ll fetch him and Lady Mary. No — no — they’ll never be able to bear the shock. Oh, how to tell them …”

She hesitated and wrung her hands. The door behind her opened. Wells looked in and turned to announce what he saw.

“The gentleman’s been found. Sir Richard, and my lady!”

They were there before she could speak, the two of them coming in together, bravely smiling. Sir Richard put out his hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Blayne? You gave us quite a start, not knowing who you were exactly nor where you’d gone. It’s shockingly easy to be lost in the grounds hereabout. I’m sorry — do forgive us!”

John Blayne accepted the hearty handshake and controlled his instinctive wince. What a grip these old Englishmen had! “My fault entirely, Sir Richard. I shouldn’t have been so unceremonious in my arrival.”

He turned to Lady Mary. “My apologies to you, too, Lady Mary.”

She was pink with effort, Kate observed. Ah, the sweet darling, trying so hard not to mind! Kate glanced at Mr. Blayne, then looked quickly away. She would not help him one bit in his predicament. Let him struggle his way through the mess he’d made, not telling the truth to poor Sir Richard, who’d never have consented had he known — but Lady Mary was talking in her high fluting voice, her public voice, with which she opened bazaars and spoke at charity teas.

“Mr. Blade—”

“Blayne, my dear,” Sir Richard put in.

“Ah yes — I’m sorry — American names are so difficult! I do assure you, now that we’re used to the idea, we’re almost quite reconciled, you know — it’s a rather lovely idea to think of treasures of art hanging on our old walls — I daresay from our little nook in the gatehouse we’ll come here often, as tourists, you know, and all that — Shan’t we, Kate?”

She turned to Kate, but that stubborn young woman, her eyes brimming with tears, merely nodded. Lady Mary, seeing the tears, stared at her in amazement.

“Kate, whatever’s wrong with you? Look, Richard, Kate’s crying!”

“I’m not crying,” Kate said passionately. “It’s just that I’m trying not to — to — to — sneeze.”

She turned her back and made a fine mock sneeze.

Lady Mary appealed prettily to John Blayne. “Oh dear, these old castles are damp, you know, Mr. Blayne. I hope you’ll be prepared. I hope you aren’t thinking of central heating and all that — bad for paintings, I’m sure. We’ve never considered it for ourselves, in spite of being quite miserably cold sometimes, especially if it’s a gray winter without proper sun.”

“You are very kind, Lady Mary,” he said gently. He glanced at Kate’s back.

“So surprising for an American,” Sir Richard was saying, “this love of the past and your wanting an old castle—”

John Blayne glanced about the hall. He was facing his predicament alone. The four young men had taken his suggestion and removed themselves and the blueprints to the village inn. Kate stood at a window, her back obdurate. He rushed into hasty speech.

“Surprising, perhaps, Sir Richard, but I inherit my love of art from my mother. She loved old paintings and my father bought them for her — as an indulgence, I’m afraid. He hasn’t the same taste. As it is, they’ve turned out to be his best investment now. I say now, because when my mother began collecting pictures before she died, about fifteen years ago, and it was apparent that I was to be the only child — which has nothing to do with anything, exactly, except that she wanted something to take up her mind when I was sent to Groton — my father thought it was an absurd obsession. But she went ahead and became really a connoisseur of twelfth- and thirteenth-century art which she afterwards extended to include as late as the seventeenth, particularly English.”

“Interesting,” said Sir Richard.

“My father adored her, and let her have her way. But when she died and her estate was assessed he was amazed — not to say floored — when our lawyers told him the collection was a very fine one, worth something over a hundred million dollars, and likely to triple that amount in his lifetime. He decided immediately that he would build a vaultlike sort of place in which to store the collection, a sort of private Fort Knox.”

“Very interesting,” said Sir Richard.

“But that seemed to me to be nothing short of a crime, because paintings are meant to be seen, you know, and so I protested. I must confess I could never have won against my father, if our lawyers had not had the bright idea of a Foundation.”

“But, surely,” Lady Mary observed, “the building would have had a foundation in any case.”

John Blayne stared, then smiled. “No, no, Lady Mary — a ‘foundation’ in America means a fund set aside for a non-profit purpose, a public service of some sort. As our lawyers have pointed out to my father, if he builds a museum which would be open to the public, he will be able to finance it from this Foundation, which would be tax-deductible.”

Lady Mary turned to Sir Richard. “Do you understand what he’s saying?”

“Not yet, my dear,” Sir Richard replied. “But I daresay I shall, in time.”

“Do stay for luncheon with us so we can go on talking, Mr. …” Lady Mary paused.

“Blayne,” Sir Richard supplied.

“I’d be delighted,” John Blayne said, smiling down at the pair of them. “I wonder if you know how perfect you are in this setting — it’s a way you English have, I think, of looking as though you’ve built your backgrounds to suit.”

“They’ve built us, I fear,” Sir Richard said, returning the smile but dimly.

Kate could bear no more. She turned on them in a fury. “Lady Mary, my dear, and Sir Richard, I assure you, neither of you has the faintest idea — I hadn’t myself until—”

John Blayne threw her a desperate glance. “Miss Wells, please, I beg you. We have a lot to talk about of course, and I—”

“You’re very right,” Kate said hotly, “but it had better be said now. Sir Richard, I think you should know you and my lady—”

John Blayne was suddenly as angry as she. “Really, Miss Wells, this is entirely between Sir Richard and me. I don’t see why you — Sir Richard, there has been a misunderstanding, which certainly can be set straight. On second thought, I’m not sure it is even a misunderstanding — perhaps only on the part of Miss Wells. Of course, she has not seen our correspondence.”

“They’d have told me,” Kate put in.

“Kate dear,” Lady Mary said, wondering. “I can’t think why you keep interrupting Mr. Blade.”

“Blayne, my dear,” Sir Richard said, but was ignored.

“It’s he who is interrupting me, my lady,” Kate said with passion.

“I think,” Sir Richard suggested judiciously, “that we’d better let them have turns, my dear. Shall we say ladies first, Mr. Blayne? Or Kate, shall we give him the courtesy as our guest?”

They faced one another, John Blayne and Kate, neither willing to yield, both knowing that yielding there must be.

“Come, come,” Sir Richard said gently.

John Blayne shrugged his shoulders. “I yield. Sir Richard — as an American, I’m trained to chivalry. Ladies first.”

Sir Richard laughed. He was enjoying the contest. “Very nicely put, I must say! Did you hear that, my dear? Trained to chivalry he says — very nice, for an American, eh?”

Lady Mary met smile with smile. “He’s much better than expected.”

“Thank you,” John Blayne said. “And now, if I may confess it, I’m delighted to accept your invitation to luncheon, Lady Mary.”

She inclined her head and nodded to Wells. “Lay another place, Wells, and use the silver soup tureen.” She glanced at the waiting men. “And in the small dining hall, just the three of us.”

“Very good, my lady.” Wells disappeared.

Through all this, Kate had waited in stiff patience. Lady Mary, it seemed, had forgotten the controversy and perhaps Sir Richard wanted it forgotten. Well, she insisted upon it. She turned to face them and spoke with firmness. “Mr. Blayne, pray proceed.”

He answered with a sort of desperate gaiety.

“You have the floor, I believe, Miss Wells. No? Very well, then. Sir Richard, she’s right — I’m planning a great piece of folly — quite terrible, in fact. I do plan to take it away.”

Kate ignored the gaiety. “Sir Richard, it’s the castle he’s taking away.”

Silence fell. Lady Mary broke it faintly, “Did you say away, Kate?”

“To America, my lady.”

“To America?” Lady Mary echoed in a whisper. Then the monstrous meaning crept into her understanding. “Richard — he’s taking the castle to America!”

Sir Richard went white, then the red came flashing up from his neck. He was suddenly half blind with pain stabbing at his temples. “Mr. Blayne, I don’t understand.”

“I can’t blame you, Sir Richard,” John Blayne said gently. “It’s my fault. We should have had our lawyers handle the transaction — I’m always too informal — too impetuous — but I thought my letter would explain everything — would be enough …”

He reached into his pocket for a piece of paper which he unfolded and laid on the table. “Here’s what I had in mind.” It was a sketch of the castle, not in English meadows but against wooded hills.

Lady Mary fumbled for her spectacles, put them on and stared at the few words in the lower left corner. “Conn-Conn-”

“Connecticut,” he said.

“What an odd name,” she observed. “Is it the name of the artist?”

Sir Richard looked at it with detached interest. Nothing could matter until this hammer in his head ceased to pound. He forced himself to speak.

“Rather a nice drawing, my dear. It looks like the castle right enough — though the east tower is too short. The two towers should be the same height, Mr. Blayne.”

Kate stepped forward, she put her hand on John Blayne’s arm and spoke softly. “They still don’t comprehend — they simply can’t. You must help them — indeed you must.”

He looked down at the small hand on his arm and then into her earnest eyes. He nodded, and she let her hand slip to her side.

“Sir Richard,” he said, “let me remind you.” He took a letter from his breast pocket and unfolded it. “I brought a copy of my letter to you, luckily. Perhaps you will recall — and Lady Mary, Connecticut is the name of a state, not of an artist. Let me read just this paragraph, Sir Richard. ‘I intend to use this castle as the most beautiful museum ever conceived in Connecticut. The cost will be immense, but I am prepared to spend any amount in order that my mother’s priceless collection of art can be properly housed for the public to enjoy.’ … Doesn’t this mean Connecticut, USA? I don’t know of any other.”

They were stricken, he could see that. Sir Richard sat down in a huge oak armchair. “I thought—conceived in Connecticut — I supposed it meant merely that you were speaking of the — the idea, you know.”

“It’s an invasion — that’s what it is,” Lady Mary cried, her soft voice suddenly shrill. “It’s the Spanish Armada all over again, Richard.”

Very straight and dignified, Sir Richard put up his hand for silence. He sat motionless, attentive only to the thunder in his skull. His gaze was fixed on some point in the distant end of the great hall and when at last he spoke it was as if he spoke to someone there, his voice low and unsteady. “I inherited Starborough Castle and the estate entire, including one thousand acres of forest and three thousand acres of farmlands, from my ancestors. It has belonged to my family for five hundred years. It was given to my ancestor, William Sedgeley, for extraordinary bravery in defending the King during a plot to assassinate. In each generation we have … done our best to care for castle and farm and forest. In my time, unfortunately, the world has changed so that a heritage such as mine has become an intolerable burden, far beyond the power of one man to bear. I am responsible for seventy families who live and work upon my land. … I … I … I …”

His voice failed. Kate ran to his side, Lady Mary sat down suddenly in a high-back chair. Her delicate face was white.

“Oh, my God,” she murmured.

John Blayne went to her side but she pushed his hand away.

“Please,” she murmured.

Kate looked earnestly at the American. “Mr. Blayne, I know what to do for them both, may I ask you to do something for me?”

“Yes indeed, Miss Wells, anything, anything at all. I had not intended to cause them such distress. I am sorry, believe me.”

“Then”—she managed to smile in spite of her own inner heaviness—“will you join your men at the inn and come back instead for dinner? It will give Sir Richard and Lady Mary a little time to accustom themselves to — to this strange situation.”

“Gladly, Miss Wells, but perhaps it would be better if I did not return until tomorrow?”

“Come back this evening,” Sir Richard said in an unexpectedly firm tone. “We have not done talking, nor shall we until we understand each other.”

Lady Mary lifted her head, proudly now, and as the lady of the castle she spoke. “And, of course, you will spend the night, Mr. Blayne.”

“You’re very kind, Lady Mary, but I don’t want to put you to all that trouble. I shall get a room at the inn,”

Wells, who had entered the room to announce luncheon, stood unobtrusively in the doorway. “Pardon me, my lady, but I understood that the gentleman from America was to stay in the castle. I have already removed his suitcase from his motorcar and unpacked it.”

“Thank you, Wells. What room have you put him in?”

“The Duke’s room, my lady.”

“Take him to King John’s room,” Sir Richard said sternly.

“Not King John’s room, Richard,” Lady Mary replied in a low voice, looking earnestly at her husband. “The damp, you know, and besides they’ve been very noisy in that room lately. Haven’t they, Kate?”

But Kate, engaged in another conversation, did not hear the question.

“I believe they’ve been taking heed of what’s been going on. They’re always ahead of us in these matters, you know.”

Sir Richard smiled indulgently at his wife and the strain that had come over them both was momentarily eased. He turned to Wells. “The Duke’s room it shall be, Wells.”

“Very good, my lord.”

While they were settling the matter of the room, Kate and John Blayne had been settling the matter of his return to the castle.

“…yes, dinner is at eight, here in the great hall, and, please, Mr. Blayne, black tie.”

“Oh, but of course!” He smiled his understanding of all she had been saying, nodded briskly to Sir Richard and Lady Mary, then walked toward the door that led out to the garden. He would not let himself look back, even before he went out the door. He felt that he could not bear it if Kate had turned away.

Only after the door closed behind him did Kate direct herself to her two charges. “And now, my two dears,” she said with a lightness she had not thought she could muster, “won’t you go in to your luncheon?”

Promptly at eight o’clock they sat down to dinner — Lady Mary and Sir Richard at either end of the long narrow table, John Blayne between them and on Lady Mary’s right. Wells stood by the buffet, ready to serve. Kate, in black dress, small white apron and neat little cap perched on her brown curls, stood behind Lady Mary’s chair. To John Blayne she looked like an actress, oddly charming in the part she now had to play; to the master and mistress of the castle she was only doing what she had done since she had been old enough to take her place in service.

As if a truce had been called, the conversation at dinner ranged from art to politics, from medieval history to contemporary drama, from the status of farming on both sides of the Atlantic to the importance of blood lines in breeding stock. The small roast was delicious, the wine was vintage; the dessert fruit was damsons bottled the previous summer from an ancient tree in the kitchen garden. The cheese was Stilton.

Only over their coffee cups in the small sitting room off the great hall was mention made of the business at hand. Kate had brought in the coffee tray and set it on a low table before Lady Mary. The American noticed that there were four cups on the tray and that Kate had left cap and apron in the kitchen.

“Black or white, Mr. Blayne?” Lady Mary asked as she poured.

“Black, please, Lady Mary.”

The two men stood with their backs to the fire. Kate stood beside Lady Mary on a low couch.

“Tomorrow morning, Mr. Blayne,” Sir Richard said casually, “I have asked my solicitor, Philip Webster, to join us for our discussion of this matter of the castle.”

“I shall be happy to meet him.”

“It is possible,” Sir Richard hesitated, “that you might have liked to have your legal representative present, too. But I daresay you could not get him over from America in time for our meeting tomorrow.” Sir Richard chuckled slightly.

“My lawyer, David Holt, of the New York firm of Haynes, Holt, Bagley and Spence, accompanied me to England, Sir Richard. He has been staying in London, but I made a telephone call to him this afternoon. He was due to arrive at the inn in the village this evening.”

“Then we shall both have our advisers. Capital!” Sir Richard exclaimed. “Capital, indeed. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning in the great hall. Perhaps you would like to have a ride before breakfast? Wells could find you something to wear. My horse is spirited, but quite reliable. However, you might prefer her ladyship’s, an older mount but strong in wind and limb.”

“Thanks, Sir Richard, I should enjoy nothing more than an early-morning ride.” He turned to Kate. “Would you join me, Miss Wells, and show me something of the countryside?”

She smiled up at him like a radiantly happy child, then shook her head. “I have duties in the morning, Mr. Blayne.”

“I understand,” he said quietly, then he turned back to Sir Richard. “Perhaps it would be well for me to retire now, Sir Richard, with all that is before us tomorrow.”

“Quite so.” Sir Richard moved toward a bell pull on the wall and the sound of a distant ringing could be heard. When Wells appeared in the doorway, Sir Richard spoke. “Take Mr. Blayne to the Duke’s room, Wells.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I’d better just go along with them and see that everything is right,” Kate said. She took the coffee tray and went toward the door.

“How kind you are,” John Blayne murmured.

He said good night and was halfway across the room when Lady Mary remarked, “Oh, I hope they won’t bother you tonight.”

“Careful, my dear. You must not mystify or frighten our guest out of his night’s sleep.”

“Don’t worry about me, Sir Richard, I’m a good sleeper. I assure you, Lady Mary, that I shall be quite all right. Until the morning, then!” He stood in the doorway and lifted his hand in a gesture of farewell.

Sir Richard and Lady Mary were sitting together now on the low couch. They looked regal, and yet tender at the same time, and thoroughly in command while the truce held. Swords would be drawn in earnest in the morning.

After the door had closed, Lady Mary sighed and laid her hand lightly on her husband’s. “He’s rather nice, Richard, don’t you think, in spite of his being an—”

“Very nice,” Sir Richard agreed, “surprising, as a matter of fact. One never knows Americans.”

Wells opened the door to the Duke’s room. “Here you are, sir. I hope you’ll find everything to your satisfaction.”

The bed had been turned down and John Blayne saw that his pajamas and robe had been laid on the faded coverlet; his slippers were neatly arranged on the floor. The light on the table by the bed gave a warmth which the room had lacked when he had gone to it before dinner to dress; a small fire in the grate had done its best to counteract the dampness.

“The candle, sir, is near the lamp, and there’s a box of matches.”

“Whatever do I need a candle for?”

“The electricity has a way of failing, sir, and some of the passages have no light in any case.”

“But, Wells, I really don’t expect to go wandering around the castle during the night.”

“Very good, sir, but then you never know. Best be prepared is what I always say. If that is all, sir, I’ll wish you a very good night.”

“Thank you, Wells.”

The old man turned and left. Kate busied herself about the room, testing the windowsills with her forefinger for dust, arranging the long satin curtains. It was an immense room, and the windows reached from floor to ceiling. The crimson satin curtains were shredding and she was trying to hide the rents. She caught his glance and dropped the curtain.

“You’ve a cut on your forehead,” she said sharply and came to him to inspect.

He put his hand to his head. “I gave myself a blow this morning on that low door when we were going into the great hall.”

“And you never said a word!” she cried.

“So much began to happen all at once.”

“I must wash it immediately.”

She went to a stand and poured water from a large porcelain pitcher into a basin and opened a drawer for a clean towel.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“There’s blood dried on it, under your hair,” she retorted. “Stoop down, please — otherwise I’ll have to fetch a step ladder.”

He laughed and stooped down, and felt her light touch on his bead as she washed the slight cut. A faint clean fragrance came from her. Her skin was very blue, her eyes more blue than any he had ever seen, a deep violet blue — very rare! One saw it in the paintings of the early madonnas. Her dark eyelashes were set thickly together and curled upward softly.

“You don’t seem like an American,” she was saying, as she kept at her self-appointed task. “Does that hurt?”

“Not in the least.”

“Will you bend a little lower still, please? You’re really shockingly tall, aren’t you?”

“Depends on the girl I’m standing beside.”

For the first time he heard her laughter, a lovely sound, free and warm.

“The inside of your mouth is pretty, too,” he added.

She put her hand over her mouth. “I daresay you’re looking straight down my throat — I forgot I was so close.”

“I didn’t.”

She stepped back at that. “Now, really, Mr. Blayne—”

“Couldn’t you call me John, as long as I’m in the castle?”

“I only know King John,” she said, trying not to laugh.

“Ah, but he’s dead!”

“I’ve started the bleeding, I’m afraid!” She came close again to wipe the blood away. “And King John isn’t dead — altogether. He still has his room here — the one we didn’t put you in. An old castle like this is always alive. At least it’s — inhabited.”

“Do you mean haunted?”

The lovely mouth was very near now, and he held himself taut. In the absorption in her task he saw her lips parted, the tip of her tongue between white teeth.

“No,” she said, “not haunted. How can you be haunted by people you love? They are people — in different forms and shapes, perhaps, but alive.”

She stepped back with a gesture encircling the room. “To this room, you may be waked in the morning by bells from the royal chapel below. It’s the ballroom now, but it was once the place where Queen Elizabeth knelt at dawn to pray. She prayed often — did you know that? People don’t think of it, but she was religious. I daresay she was lonely and couldn’t trust anyone — not even Essex whom she loved — perhaps especially Essex, because she’d told him she loved him, and so he had advantage.”

“How do you know she told him?”

“She couldn’t help it. Queen though she was, she fell in love like any woman. I daresay she fought her own heart, knowing she couldn’t — mustn’t — give herself into any man’s power. But her heart won. It makes me glad I’m nobody.”

“A beautiful little nobody!”

She laughed again. “I laid myself open, didn’t I — but you needn’t have taken notice!”

“I can’t help noticing.”

She pretended annoyance. “I shall have to stop talking altogether! There — it’s only a scratch, after all.” She walked away from him to the basin.

“No — no, please!” he said, following.

“If you keep teasing—” She was at the door now.

“Let’s get back to the subject of the castle,” he said. “Tell me more about it.”

She considered, lingering on the threshold. “The reason I went with you in the passages is because they’re quite dangerous, really—”

“Haunted, too?”

“No, but they lead to dungeons, I told you — and an underground river.”

“Oh, come now — that’s too perfect! It’s what castles dream of having — dungeons and underground rivers.”

“It’s quite true. I could show you—”

“I want to be shown, I warn you!”

“And there’s one window in the east tower that no one’s ever been able to find the room to—”

“How do you know there’s a room if no one’s been able to find it?”

He was teasing again, but she was serious. She forgot herself, she walked toward him and came close, half whispering, her eyes enormous. “There was a big party here once, in King John’s time, and they hung ribbons from every room, but there was one window with no ribbon to it — there’s always been that one window!”

“Oh, come now!”

“It’s true,” she insisted. “There was a book in the library about the castle that told everything.”

“I must see that book.”

“Ah, it’s been lost this long time — no one knows how. But my grandfather’s seen it.”

“If we take the castle apart, we’ll discover its secrets.”

“No — no, oh please, no! I don’t want to know its secrets.”

He was surprised to see her little face suddenly so troubled. “Tell me,” he was serious now, “are the they that Lady Mary talks about part of the secrets?”

Kate did not look troubled now so much as she looked frightened. “That’s not for me to say, Mr. Blayne.” Then she had command of herself. Lifting her head, she gave him a formal little smile as though determined not to allow friendship. “I must get back to Lady Mary,” she exclaimed. “She’ll be wondering what’s become of me.”

She left him, standing alone in the Duke’s room, and walked quickly along the winding stone-floored passage. In spite of her moment of panic, she felt inexplicably cheerful. She began singing under her breath. How wonderful life was, first frightening people to death and then making them feel that somehow things would be all right.

“Please do forgive me,” she said, as she all but ran into the small sitting room.

“You’ve been a long time,” Lady Mary remarked.

“It was the American, my lady. He asked ever so many questions about the castle.”

“Questions, Kate, are to be answered tomorrow in the presence of our solicitors,” Sir Richard reminded her gently.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Now, go with her ladyship to her room. She should have been in bed an hour ago. It’s been a wearying day.”

“Yes, Sir Richard.”

By ten o’clock the next morning they had gathered in the great hall, Sir Richard and Lady Mary, John Blayne and his lawyer David Holt, a smooth-shaven middle-aged man, slim and self-contained. Philip Webster was the last to arrive, but his presence was immediately felt. He was a short, stoutish man wearing no hat, a shaggy figure in wrinkled brown tweeds with a pipe in his mouth.

The moment he entered, Lady Mary turned to him and clasped her hands in piteous appeal. “Thank God, you’ve come, Philip.”

Sir Richard turned to John Blayne. “My solicitor, Mr. Philip Webster of London. Webster, this is the — the American gentleman with whom you have had correspondence, I believe,”

“And my lawyer, David Holt of Haynes, Holt, Bagley and Spence,” John Blayne supplied.

Philip Webster removed his pipe, shook hands with John Blayne, and bowed without speaking to David Holt. Then he exploded to Sir Richard. “I say, Richard, what the devil is that gang of young men doing out by the gate? They drove in in a sort of shooting brake kind of thing just after I arrived. I asked them what they were about and they said they’d come to take measurements of the castle preparatory to removing it — as if it were a hen house or something!” He paused, then aware of the silence around him, exclaimed, “I say, what’s wrong?”

Sir Richard did not reply for an instant. Pain had begun stabbing at his temples and he waited for it to abate. When he spoke, it was with his usual calm, but his manner was remote, as though be were not a part of what was taking place around him. “We’re in a predicament, Philip, a sorry sort of business, and I don’t quite see — I’m sure you didn’t mean to deceive me, Philip, but the thing is very—” He looked at Lady Mary.

She was shaking her head.

“I’m afraid the sale can’t go through, Philip, but what we shall do—”

“It’s quite impossible,” Lady Mary said. She was trembling slightly as she clasped her hands together. “But then, everything’s impossible these days.”

“What is impossible, Lady Mary?”

“They want to take the castle away and to a place I cannot even pronounce. Really, that’s the most impossible thing I’ve ever heard of, and I shall never understand how you could think it possible. Philip, I simply cannot—”

“By Jove,” Webster exclaimed, “the men were right then! But it’s incredible. And, of course, I agreed to no such thing. How could I imagine anyone’s taking the castle to America? What next! It’s mad, quite, quite mad—”

John Blayne came forward, his hand outstretched and holding the letter.

“It’s not mad, really. We’re quite accustomed to moving large buildings to where we want them.” With quiet precision he placed the letter flat on the table for anyone to read.

No one made a move to look at it. No one spoke.

“I’m very sorry for all this, Mr. Webster,” John Blayne went on. “It’s simply one of those misunderstandings that seem to arise between continents these days. Please read this. It’s my letter. You should have had a copy, but I supposed that of course Sir Richard would have shown it to you.”

Mr. Holt spoke. “I was afraid of this, Blayne. I distrust informality.”

“Very dangerous,” Webster added.

John Blayne gave him a quick glance, half impatient, half humorous. He was about to speak, but Mr. Holt prevented him by speaking first. “Mr. Webster is right, the situation calls for negotiation.”

“Very dangerous otherwise,” Philip Webster remarked, pleased that his point had been made.

John Blayne turned to Philip Webster and waited while the letter in question was carefully read.

“It’s really not the sort of thing that ordinary individuals should undertake, you know,” Webster said, pursing his lips and shaking his head. “Only lawyers should handle this sort of thing. Of course, my clients are quite right, too. It’s impossible. We English don’t export our castles, you know.” He turned to Sir Richard. “There’ll be litigation, I’m afraid. It may be very nasty. One never knows. But we’ll have to go through with it.”

Lady Mary, who had sat nervously twisting her fingers, rose with a sudden graceful movement from her chair. “I think at this moment, gentlemen, we could all do with a cup of tea.” She went to the bell pull on the wall and jerked it vigorously. Down through distant corridors the jangling could be heard.

When Wells appeared, she asked him to send Kate with tea for them all. “We are five, Wells,” she announced, as if she could not trust the old man’s eyesight.

“Very good, my lady.” He turned quickly and left the room. Aware of what the meeting was about, he was not willing to have them see the tears he could not control and that were already finding their way down his time-worn face.

During the interlude the two lawyers remained silent and watchful.

“There won’t be any litigation,” John Blayne said. “I certainly shan’t force Sir Richard against his will. However, — well, here’s the check for the agreed sum — one million dollars, just to prove that I came in good faith.”

There was a small gasp from Lady Mary. Kate, coming in with the tray of steaming teacups, looked up at John Blayne. Their eyes caught each other’s for an instant of time.

“The letter is a commitment, Mr. Blayne.” David Holt’s words were measured. “And I must remind you also that you have already spent fifty thousand dollars, that you have engaged two ships, that you—”

Webster interrupted bluntly. “The letter wouldn’t stand up in an English court of law, sir.”

“We are Americans and deal in American law, sir,” Holt retorted.

“My client is an Englishman, sir!” Webster rejoined.

“Being an Englishman doesn’t excuse him from what a letter says in plain English,” Mr. Holt declared, “especially since I have a letter in our files accepting our proposition.”

“And I maintain he can’t accept what he doesn’t understand,” Webster insisted.

The American lawyer persisted. “We have already brought over a group of architectural experts. Our technicians will soon follow. Vast plans have been made and contracts assigned. This was done following your letter of acceptance. The damages will be costly if everything must be canceled.”

Webster dashed his pipe on the floor and ran his stubby hands through his reddish-gray hair until it stood in a curly tangle. “Try it, sir, just you try it! It’ll be Agincourt again, I daresay, but remember who won! The castle’s on English soil.”

“Stop this!” The imperious voice was John Blayne’s.

They stopped. Before their eyes he tore the check into small pieces and let the pieces flutter to the floor. Then he took the letter from the table, folded it into its envelope and handed it to Sir Richard.

“This is yours, Sir Richard. Do with it as you will. I didn’t come here to bargain. I came with one simple purpose — to find a beautiful way to show great paintings by great artists. I wanted them to hang where people could see them — yes, my people — Americans — I wanted to share the paintings with them instead of having them locked away in a vault like so much gold bullion. I suppose you wonder why—”

“Please, gentlemen,” interrupted Kate, “your tea!”

“Yes, yes,” Lady Mary exclaimed, her voice shrill with excitement. “Draw your chairs up to the table and let us partake of — of—”

“One of the most civilized of all pursuits,” David Holt said gallantly, raising his cup toward her as he would have raised a glass of champagne in toast.

They drew their chairs up to the table. Kate moved around, offering them milk and sugar.

“Yes,” Sir Richard said, stirring the sugar in his cup but looking at John Blayne, “I think you have made us wonder why.”

John looked around the great hall — first at the tapestried walls, then at the faces of the people drawn up to the table. “Perhaps it’s because I feel some sort of guilt, though I do not expect you to understand what I mean. My father is a wealthy man. His fortune was made in ways that — well, that seemed best to him. My mother was a different sort of person altogether …” He hesitated.

“A charming woman,” David Holt said reminiscently.

“I think,” John Blayne went on, “that I want to make a return of some sort for all that he …”

“Does your father know about this idea of yours?” Sir Richard asked.

“Of course, Sir Richard, and he thinks it sheer folly. But, to be quite honest with you, my father and I have rarely agreed on anything. We quarrel at least every other day.”

“There!” Philip Webster spluttered.

“But, when I reminded him that since I was administering the Foundation — and he had asked me to, mind you — I must do things my own way.”

“But why this way, pray?” Sir Richard demanded. “To spite your father, perhaps — because he wants to build something of his own?”

John Blayne got up from the table, walked away restlessly and as restlessly back again. “I don’t want to spite my father — I’m fond of him, and we both loved my mother in our different ways. No, I want the castle because it’s the right idea. Great paintings can only live in an harmonious atmosphere. Our museums are crowded. I want my museum — well, harmonious. There’s an old Chinese saying — Lao-tse, I think. Someone asked him if a certain task was being done properly and he said, ‘The way is a way, but it is not the eternal way.’ This castle — it’s stood in England for a thousand years. It’ll stand there in Connecticut for thousands more when we are all dead — the paintings safe forever and living for the joy of the generations we’ll never see. Can you understand how deeply I feel about buying something as beautiful as this castle, this bit of England? I’m English myself, by ancestry.”

Lady Mary nodded as if, against her will, she understood. Kate, too, nodded but the men remained grim-faced.

“I remember how my mother bought the paintings. She didn’t know about art at first — she could only feel it. Then as she grew to love it, she began to understand and to know. One day she bought a Fra Angelico from an old Italian in Venice — he was using it as a board to display his fish. She didn’t know it was valuable — only that it was beautiful. She never did care about the money value — that was one of those things my father couldn’t possibly understand. She told me — it was one of the last things she ever said—‘John, take care of my treasures.’ And I will take care of them, I want them to be—not only for the sake of my mother, but for the sake of the artists who created them. My mother understood those artists — she knew what they wanted to say. She’d sit hours before a painting, drinking it in. There’s little enough left of that sort of pure love in the world today — or of any sort, maybe. I shan’t give up my idea, Sir Richard! If I can’t have this castle I’ll find one somewhere in England!”

He turned to Philip Webster. “Sorry, sir, the deal is off.”

“I can’t approve, John,” Mr. Holt said.

John Blayne smiled. “I’ll meet you at the inn before we go back to London.”

David Holt nodded around the table, picked up his briefcase and quietly left the room. John made as if to follow, then paused, bit his lip and put out his hand to Webster. “Good-bye! You’d have put up a good fight — but there won’t be a fight. You’ve won without it.”

“I’m very happy if it is so, Mr. Blayne. You’re a rarely generous opponent — rare, indeed.”

“Not at all — not a fighter, perhaps. My father’s the fighter. One’s enough in a family, I daresay. But I won’t have a beautiful plan spoiled by quarreling. Good-bye, Sir Richard — Lady Mary! You belong here, both of you. You’re part of the castle and all it means to England — and to the rest of us in the world. … Miss Wells—”

He did not put out his hand for Kate and she noticed. Not for anything would she put out hers to him, then. She lifted her head and met his eyes straight. A glint of a smile came into his frank eyes. “Your frog will be safe, now. He can sit on his lily pad for the rest of his life.”

He was loath to go, and he lingered, smiling at them with unconscious wistfulness. He liked them. They were people whom he could trust, people secure enough in themselves, even though they belonged to another age, not to fear wealth and its power. He was drawn to Sir Richard and Lady Mary with an affection which surprised him and warmed him. And Kate — he called her that to himself — she somehow belonged to these two in a way he did not yet understand, and he wanted to understand. She had a sturdy grace, a healthy beauty of her own. He could not explain her. Nor, for that matter, could he explain his own curiosity. There was something appealing in her smallness, perhaps, a delicacy that made her air of self-reliance and competence amusing. She was an unselfish little creature, her hair a tumble of natural curls, and her face without makeup, a refreshing contrast to the young women who populated his environment somewhat too thickly. He felt that even his father might agree with him about Kate if he could ever meet her; agree with him, for once, and be willing to put Louise aside.

Lady Mary rose from the table. “Surely we have not finished talking?” She looked from one to the other questioningly. “There must be a great deal more to be said. We can do it over luncheon. Mr. Blade must be starving.”

Sir Richard rose to stand beside her. It was sweet, John Blayne thought, watching them, how when one took a stand the other came to the same spot. He would always remember them, side by side in ancient splendor. It was an achievement to grow old with splendor.

“If you will excuse me, Lady Mary, I think that I must join my men and Mr. Holt at the inn. The shift of events may have made them a little uncertain.”

“But you will return for dinner? And surely you will spend the night again?”

“Yes, indeed,” Sir Richard added, “you must stay the night, Mr. Blayne.” Then he bent toward Lady Mary. “Not Blade, my dear.”

John Blayne hesitated and in the hesitation Wells entered.

“Your car, Mr. Blayne, shall I bring it around?”

“Yes, if you will, Wells, but—” He looked from one to the other while avoiding even so much as a glance at Kate. How far did he dare to allow himself the luxury of enjoying this English warmth? It occurred to him, as he stood in the vast old hall with the sunlight shining through the high mullioned windows set deep in the thick stone walls, that it had been a long time; not since his mother died had he been aware of simple human warmth. “I will return,” he said, smiling at them all.

Philip Webster enjoyed his luncheon as only a victor can. “Well, we won,” he exclaimed for the third time, “and no one can say that it wasn’t a dangerous situation. They could have sued us for breach of promise, Richard, though I’d have fought to the end for your sake.”

Sir Richard turned on him, his heavy eyebrows bristling. “Are you telling me that I broke my word? I never break my word.”

“No, no,” Webster said hastily. “Good God, it’ll never do to get you into a point of honor, Richard! There’d be no end to that. I’m only thinking of the future. What shall we do next? We’re exactly where we were before all this began.”

Lady Mary sighed. “A prison or an atomic plant — that’s the choice, isn’t it? It does seem a castle that’s been the very root of England could be used for something in between, don’t you think? But there’s not to be any betweens nowadays, somehow. I can’t think why. Isn’t there someone you could telephone to in London, Philip? The Prime Minister or Chancellor of the Exchequer or someone—”

“I might try the National Trust again. One never knows when there’ll be a change of heart,” Webster suggested.

“By all means,” Sir Richard said. “You should call them every day, twice, at least. Those fine arts chaps are always tea-drinking and forgetting what’s practical.”

“I’ll try again,” Webster said, “and I’ll do it now.”

He ambled out of the room.

Sir Richard looked after him gloomily. “I must tell you, my dear, that I question whether Philip can handle the matter. I believe he quite regrets there being no lawsuit. It would have given him a chance to write endless papers no one could understand and brief barristers in front of everybody in the court, you know, and spout the stuff that lawyers can spew out on a moment’s notice. They’re all actors, in my opinion, and no more reliable when it comes to facts. They’re always harking back to precedents that other lawyers have made for centuries past.”

“I’m sure he could never find a precedent for selling a castle to — What’s that place, Richard?”

“I can’t pronounce it.”

Lady Mary sighed. “ ‘Connect-i-cut,’ I think? Fancy having one’s castle moved to a place one can’t pronounce!”

“Well, but Webster’s right on one count, you know, my dear. Our difficulties are profound. You know the only private offers we’ve had in spite of all the advertising — a boys’ school and an insane asylum. I simply won’t mention the prison, or the atomic plant. They wouldn’t use the castle for those, they’d raze it to the ground. All those scientist chaps want is empty space — a bit of a desert, as I told you. Our English scientists dream of equaling the Americans — those splendid deserts! Fancy a thousand acres of desert here in England!”

She heard this with horror, her fascinated eyes, still childishly blue, upon his face. “You could put in the bill of sale that they musn’t,” she suggested. “You know you’ve always said that the castle wasn’t to be changed. That’s why that American millionaire from Hollywood wouldn’t buy it. He said he’d put in central heating and American plumbing and you said—”

“Never mind, my dear. Americans always want to change things. At least there’s this to be said for this Blayne chap—”

“John—”

“Ah, yes, yes — John, you know — he wants to put the castle up exactly as it is. Has he said anything about central heating?”

“No, he hasn’t. Nor plumbing.”

“As to plumbing, one wouldn’t want baths in a museum though Americans seem to want them everywhere. But the idea of moving the castle? I agree with his father, it would be sheer folly — Why doesn’t he move Connecticut here?”

Kate entered the room with a bowl of tulips which she placed on the table. “Lovely, aren’t they, my lady? And they’ve come so fast on the daffodils, as if everything about the castle wanted to look its best this spring.”

“You sound quite pleased,” Sir Richard said.

“And why not? You did manage well, Sir Richard dear! When the American saw how you felt about the castle, he knew he was honor bound to yield. He is honorable, don’t you think?”

Only when she saw that her gaiety did not serve to cheer them did she realize their state of mind. They were sitting quietly, Lady Mary with her hands folded in her lap, and Sir Richard with his knees crossed. Their faces were grave, their eyes far away, looking as though they were not even listening to her.

“Whatever is the matter, my own dears?” she inquired tenderly.

She knelt impulsively before Lady Mary and chafed her narrow old hands, thin little hands, Kate always thought, like small plucked birds.

“We are very badly off, Kate,” Sir Richard said. “Nothing is any better, really.”

“How would you like to see the castle made into a prison?” Lady Mary asked mournfully.

“Ah, but it can’t be that bad,” Kate said. “You’re just tired, the two of you, and I can’t blame you. I’m exhausted myself.”

“I shall have to keep my word to this American,” Sir Richard went on. “Even if I broke it — which I am not willing to do, mind you — I’d have to be talking to someone else in a week from now, and about something else.”

She rose to go to him, but he would not be comforted.

“No, no, Kate,” he groaned, pushing her away. “You don’t understand. No one does. I must be by myself for a bit.”

And he lifted himself out of the deep armchair and went from the room.

She returned then to Lady Mary, and drawing up a footstool, she sat down at her side. A dying fire burned under the chimney piece but in spite of it the room seemed chill.

“Is it really so desperate, my lady?” she asked.

“It is,” Lady Mary said and sighed. “And what worries me most, Kate, is what they will say.”

“I’ve thought of that, too.”

Sometimes when they were alone, Kate leaned her head against Lady Mary’s knee, as though she were a child again. She did so now and felt Lady Mary’s hand smoothing her hair. She took the gentle hand and laid her cheek against it. “We’ve always respected them,” Lady Mary went on. “We let them move about at night, even when it keeps us awake. And nothing can stop those bells! If we worry about them so much, one would think they could do a little worrying about us, now wouldn’t one?”

“If they know,” Kate said. “Yet how can they help us even if they do know? They may be far more helpless than we think, poor things! It’s all a matter of waves, I sometimes fancy!”

“Waves?” Lady Mary repeated vaguely.

“Like the wireless, you know, my lady. No wires, nothing one can see, but the voices come in. Only we don’t have something in ourselves that we can turn on. Perhaps they try all sorts of ways to break through to us and can’t.”

Lady Mary seemed not to be listening. “If only they could help us to find a treasure hidden somewhere,” she mused. “Of course Richard says it’s nonsense because all castles are supposed to have treasures hidden in them by ancestors, but if it’s always supposed to be so, perhaps sometimes it is so.”

“Maybe King John would tell us, if I got up early when the bell rings.”

She spoke half playfully and Lady Mary did not answer for a moment. When she did her voice was grave.

“Kate, are we mad, do you think?”

Kate kissed the hand she held. “Certainly not. Did you ever make anything up out of your head, my lady?”

“Never,” Lady Mary said fervently. “Never, never! One of them always told me.”

“Then they do get through sometimes and we must simply try our best to get help from them,” Kate said.

She rose to mend the fire and put on a log. When she spoke again her voice was carefully indifferent. “Too bad the American came here with such a stupid idea! He’s rather nice — and not at all stupid, really.”

She broke off with a laugh. “That frog — so amusing!”

Lady Mary stared at her open-mouthed. She was about to inquire why the laughter and what about the frog, pray tell, but the look on Kate’s face silenced her. What was happening? There was more than amusement in that look. There was tenderness.

… Sir Richard reined in his horse and gazed over his fields. A faint mist had all but obscured the sun since noon, but as the afternoon hours lengthened, the mist had burned away, and the sun shone full upon the enlivened landscape. It was a fair sight, the fields green with early corn and his good Guernsey cows grazing the rolling meadows. In the distance a cluster of roofs showed the village, and here and there a few trees sheltered a cottage for a farm family.

How eternal the landscape! Fields, meadows and forests were his by the divine right of ancient kings long dead, but who before they died had bequeathed this part of their realm to William Sedgeley, his ancestor. He was proud of the fact that he looked like William. Even as a boy his mother had said, “Richard looks so much like Sir William. I wish we’d named him William.” The portrait of William hung over the chimney piece in the ballroom, a tall slim man on horseback, his head held high. There was royal blood somewhere in the Sedgeleys — hidden, of course. A rumor, spoken only between the generations, hinted that William had been the lover of a queen and had taken their son secretly at birth to be reared among his own children, an eagle among pigeons. The story must be true, else why would the castle, a royal seat, have been given to the Sedgeleys?

And above all, how explain himself? He had known long ago that he was no common man even among his peers. Proud he had been called, even arrogant, “that haughty young chap,” they had said of him at Oxford, and the phrase had stung until he had told his father.

“And quite right,” his father had said complacently. “You’ve every right to hold up your head. You’re Sedgeley of Starborough Castle, and the rest of them are upstarts by comparison.”

And yet, with all his pride, he was not free. He had the tenants — they had him! They were like their kind everywhere in the world, asserting not their independence but their dependence. The power of the weak! They were children, who demanded without thought of giving. Kings were their slaves as all rulers were slaves of the ruled. The people were the tyrants, the discontented, dissatisfied, greedy, stupid people. If he had been an ordinary man, earning his living, even someone like Webster, would he be harried and oppressed as he was now, his conscience a burning coal in his breast because he felt responsible for his tenants as a king for his subjects? He groaned aloud. Intolerable burden laid upon him because he was born in a castle, the son of his father, heir to all the responsibilities of a kingdom! Well, it was a sort of kingdom — bigger than Monaco!

Musing thus as he did so often, Sir Richard now heard shouts. At the end of the winding road ahead he saw a ragged cluster of farmers waiting for him. There they were, wanting something again, he thought with deepening gloom, without the sense to know that the world as they knew it, and as their fathers before them had known it, was about to come to an end.

He quickened his horse to a trot and drew up before them, very straight and brusque. “Well, men? What do you want now?”

A rough fellow with a brush of tawny hair stepped forward and he recognized Banks, the troublemaker. “Please, Sir Richard, we’ve heard the castle’s to be sold.”

Sir Richard looked down at him from his seat on the great gray stallion. “Well?” he inquired coldly.

Banks looked back at him sturdily. “What’s to become of us, sir?”

The question released the tongues of the others.

“Yes, Sir Richard — that’s wot we wants to know — It’s our bread, you know, sir — we’ve children to think of—”

Children! They had nothing but children swarming into the world for him to feed! The bitter injustice of it, that these British men could beget their British sons while he was childless — had always been childless, in reality, for how could a man in his position acknowledge a moment’s madness when he was a mere boy — sixteen, to be exact. He stopped the memory, but not before a face appeared in his mind, a pretty, face, a simple girlish face. He dismissed it instantly as he always did, angry that memory could be so relentless. His wife was his love, his only love, and yet when they argued as they had only the other morning, as to which was responsible for their childlessness, he saw that face, Elsie’s face, and he sent it away. No, he could never reveal his secret. He could never retort to his wife, “I know I could have begotten a son—” Nor had Elsie herself ever made a sign to anyone, even to him, that there was a secret, nor had Wells reminded him in all these years, though he must know — everything. Wells had been young then — older than himself by twenty years, at that. Wells had simply announced one day that he and Elsie had been married the day before.

“At my request and for adequate compensation,” his father had said sternly and refusing further explanation, had sent Richard off to Oxford.

“You have far too many children,” he told Banks now.

The men burst into angry clamor. He lifted his hand to silence them and they stepped back.

“We have decided nothing,” he said curtly.

He stared at them an instant, recognizing them one by one. James Dunn, whom he had hunted ferrets with as a boy, old Bumsley who had to be watched against poaching, Lester and Hunt and Frame, three of his best stalwart workers. His voice softened somewhat as he went on. “There’s a great deal to be considered. We are mindful of you and your families. Lady Mary is as attached to the place as you could be. We know our position and you may be assured that we will look after your welfare. We are aware of your troubles. Banks, we know your roof wants thatching—”

There was an outcry.

“ ’Tain’t Banks alone, Sir Richard—”

“We’ve not had a new thatch since my grandfather’s time.”

“Thatch — who wants thatch nowadays? A good slate roof on every cottage, I say—”

“And septic tanks—”

The horse, startled at the noise, danced left and right and rose to its hind legs. Sir Richard reined it in sternly.

“We are aware of all these matters. We have large plans for the future. You will know of them in due time.”

The men fell back as they always fell back when he wore his kingly air.

“Thank you. Sir Richard — we know your hardships, sir. Times is bad for us all. But with our families and all — the women complaining about the leaks when it rains — the children’s beds have to be moved — damp runnin’ down the walls.”

The broken chorus went on again until he stopped it.

“We know,” he repeated grimly.

Banks put out his right hand.

“No ’ard feelin’s!”

Sir Richard put out his left hand. Upon the forefinger was his great seal ring. He did not wear it always, but sometimes, as today, when he rode over his lands, he put it on. The sight of it on his well-shaped hand was a secret comfort, an invitation to dream. Nothing, no hardship or confusion, could change the fact that he was born Sir Richard Sedgeley of Starborough Castle.

Banks held the hand a moment. “A fine ring, Sir Richard!”

“It was given to my ancestor, William Sedgeley, by the king, five hundred years ago, when Starborough Castle became ours. Castle and ring have belonged by right to every Sedgeley heir since that time.”

There was a moment’s silence. He knew what they were thinking. To whom would the castle go, and the ring, when there was no heir? Banks bent his head as though he were about to kiss the ring, and then dropped Sir Richard’s hand. Did they know the secret? He’d wager they did. They knew everything, with their low cunning. It was part of their power over their rulers, to find out the secrets, the weaknesses, the youthful sins, the private follies, and use them when the time came.

He pressed his horse into a gallop and left the men staring after him. When he was out of their sight he pulled the ring from his forefinger and put it into the pocket of his coat. Then he reined his horse into a quiet trot again, and felt his lips tremble. Where could he find strength to sustain him, where gain wisdom to guide him? He was alone and lonely as only the rulers can be — must be, for how could he demean himself to ask from anyone the help he needed? There was no one his equal or, for that matter, his superior — no one living. Only his ancestors could give him courage, and to them he now turned.

He followed the road to Starborough village and to the church that had been built long ago for the devotions of a sovereign and his court. In it lay the dust of all the Sedgeleys since the day they had been given the right to lie there. He knew already where his own dust would lie — in that far corner to the east, where a shaft of sun fell through the prism of the rose window.

He dismounted, tied his horse to the hitching post and walked into the shadowy quiet of the church. It was empty and he strode up the aisle. Then he saw that it was not empty. The old vicar was standing before the altar, working at one of the tall silver candlesticks. He turned, startled, and put out his hand.

“Sir Richard, this is unexpected, but pleasant. I am just mending a bit of the candle here. One of the choirboys knocked it off during choir practice last night, but the candle’s quite good if I can just … they are shockingly dear, these large altar candles …”

“Let me help you,” Sir Richard said.

“Ah, don’t trouble yourself,” the vicar said. “Though I could do with a bit of help if you would just hold the candlestick … while I …”

Sir Richard grasped the heavy candlestick with both hands while the vicar lit a taper and held it to the candle to melt the wax enough to insert the broken bit. Sir Richard looked at the kind old face so near his own. He could remember the days when he was a boy and the vicar had come as a young man to Starborough village.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I came here hoping for help for myself — not expecting you, of course — but just to — perhaps meditate a bit, near the graves of my ancestors. I am in great trouble.”

The vicar did not look up. “Are you? I’m sorry to hear that, Sir Richard. Somehow I don’t associate you with trouble. You’ve always been a good man.”

“It’s not that kind of trouble,” Sir Richard said. “Nothing I’ve made for myself.”

Nothing he had made for himself? Yes, it was hardly fair to call that brief episode on a languid summer’s day, when he had met Elsie in the forest gathering wild strawberries, that hasty moment of physical excitement in a boy’s body, a trouble that he had made for himself.

“Your seed is valuable — don’t waste it,” his father had said bluntly. “You’re not only my son and heir. You’re the son and heir of a noble line.”

If his father had not been so crippled by war wounds, if he had been able to have other sons, how differently might he have spoken! But there was only himself, precious as the crown prince, his father’s one hope of immortality. And had his father not pressed his ambition so heavily upon him, might not he, Richard, have been a different youth, less rebellious in heart, his repressed emotions less violent?

“Whatever your trouble is,” the vicar was saying, “if I can help I’ll be glad … There — I think that’ll hold. Set it down carefully, if you please, and we’ll let the wax harden. Sit here in the choir stalls, Sir Richard, and tell me …”

But Sir Richard had wandered to the alcove where the Sedgeley tombs were placed. He was looking at the stone profile of William, in effigy on the central tomb, wearing his knight’s armor. His stone hands were folded together in prayer, though he had been a warrior and not a praying man and there was little doubt, if the family records could be trusted, that it was true he had been the lover of a queen.

“I feel responsible for the castle,” Sir Richard said slowly, gazing at the stone face, an arrogant face, even in death. “I am responsible,” he went on resolutely, “for the castle and for the land that belongs to it and for the people upon the land. They look to me as their ancestors looked to mine. Yet I fear I can no longer hold my realm.”

The vicar had followed and now stood with his hands folded under his robe. “I’ve heard a bit about that, Sir Richard. I’d hoped it was gossip.”

“I wish it were. Unfortunately it is not. I shall have to sell the castle in order to save the land. There’s no way out of it. An American is thinking of buying it, but …”

He paused and the vicar shook his head. “Oh dear, an American? Can’t government—”

“Government’s offered me a prison or an atomic plant — equally impossible! The castle is a treasure, committed to me. I can’t save it. If I had an heir — but I don’t. I’m a failure, I fear, as a ruler over my hereditary kingdom, if I may express it so. My people put their faith in me but I’ve not been able to — It’s a strange story in its way, as strange as any of the tales of the castle in the old days.”

“Tell it to me, Sir Richard. It will do you good.”

“There was a king who took refuge in my castle — Charles the First. He’d lost London, he’d lost Sussex and he faced the loss of the throne,” Sir Richard began. It was a story known to them both but always worth telling. “His people turned against him because he had failed them. People don’t forgive a king. I lost London, too, you know — my own fault! My wife’s often told me, ‘You should have taken your rightful place in London’—that’s what she’s said how many times — and now it seems I’ve lost my Sussex, as well — and my own people. …” He kept staring down at the stone face as he talked. “I don’t think it’s ever been proved how Sir William died — some say he took poison. It doesn’t matter. Let us say he took poison when it was discovered that he—’ He put out his hand and touched the folded stone hands. “Damp,” he muttered, “always damp. I remember when I was a boy. They were cold and wet.”

“The church gets no sun,” the vicar said.

Sir Richard seemed not to hear. He was muttering, half to himself. “He was betrayed by his own followers — betrayed to the King by someone who knew the story — his prime minister, I believe, a man whom he trusted. The prime minister knew about the child — a son, secret, of course.”

The vicar looked at Sir Richard and put a hand on his arm. “Are you sure you’re quite all right?”

Sir Richard shook the hand away impatiently. “Of course I am — why, shouldn’t I be? … It’s all true. His wife never had a child. She blamed him. She insisted it was not her fault that they were childless. But he knew he could have a child—”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Sir Richard,” the Vicar said, bewildered. “How did he know he could have a child — whoever he is?”

Sir Richard turned to the vicar. His eyes were narrowed, his voice a whisper. “Because he’d had a child — by the queen! That’s proof, isn’t it?”

He gave a sudden shout of laughter, and then was as suddenly grave again. He moved abruptly away from the tomb and to the altar. He stood before it, staring up at the rose window, his back to the vicar.

“Tell me one thing — is there such a place as a home for souls?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” the vicar said gently. “Will you explain what you mean?”

“Well, you know — what if they really live there in the castle?”

“They?”

“My wife swears she hears them. And if they do, you know, what will they do if we take the castle down? Won’t there be retribution — or some such thing — a disaster perhaps — for which again I’d be responsible, wouldn’t I?”

The vicar stared at him. “Really, Sir Richard, you’d better have a cup of tea, and a bit of rest. Come to the vicarage and—”

Sir Richard did not hear him. “What would you do, for example, if this church were destroyed — through some failure of your own, say, which you did not intend, of course?”

“I would pray to be forgiven,” the vicar said quietly, “and then I would continue my work under the open sky.”

Sir Richard said no more. He left the vicar staring after him, and strode from the church, mounted his impatient horse and galloped away. Suddenly he felt the stab of fluttering pains inside his skull, now at his crown, then settling to throb dully behind his eye-balls. He would stop at the village inn and have a glass of ale.

… The long shadows of late afternoon fell across the stones when he approached the inn. The door was open and as he dismounted he heard loud voices, interrupted by derisive laughter. Some sort of argument was going on. He heard his name. He stopped by the hitching post and listened. The innkeeper — ah, yes, that was George Bowen’s hoarse voice.

“I don’t care what Sir Richard says! Get the hell out of here is what I say. Take it or leave it! Go home, you American chaps — we’ve had enough of you here — you and your kind! Fed up, that’s wot we are! It’s a sin and a shame to have to hear such talk — takin’ the castle away from us! The Queen will never allow it, trust her!”

A friendly American voice made careless retort. “Don’t get all steamed up, man! It’s not up to us. We’re hired to do the work, that’s all. Anyway, the whole deal is off. Your precious Sir Richard threw us out.”

“Thank God for Sir Richard, says I!” George bawled back at them. “He won’t let us down, he won’t! We’ll have no tourists comin’—English kiddies wouldn’t have no place to learn their own history if it wasn’t for him and the castle. They come by the ’undreds — those London brats—”

The American voice broke in. “That’s right — and you couldn’t keep your inn open if they didn’t.”

Sir Richard could bear no more. He pulled the ring from his pocket, put it on his forefinger, and strode into the inn.

The innkeeper gave a shout of welcome. “Here he is, hisself, in the nick of time! Wot’ll you ’ave, Sir Richard?”

“A glass of ale, thanks,” he said coldly. He let his eyes move slowly from face to face. A few of his farmers were here, too, and they looked properly down when his eyes fell on them. Not so the Americans! They met his gaze with such smiling familiarity that he turned his back on them as he stood at the bar.

“Brazen and brass,” George mattered. “I’d throw them out if they wasn’t such good drinkers. I would that, Sir Richard, with all their talk of buyin’ the castle and takin’ it off to their own country! Invaders, I calls ’em—”

He was immensely fat and each year the space behind the counter grew more narrow for his spreading frame. He reached now to take a bottle from a special cupboard and gave a great gasp. “It’s me or the counter — I can see that I’ll have to move it out or shrink myself down somehow.”

“Hey, George,” one of the young Americans shouted brashly, “what’s that you’re bringing out of hiding?”

George turned with difficulty but maintained his dignity. He opened the bottle and poured a glass of pale golden ale into a tall glass and set it before Sir Richard before replying.

“I’ll thank Americans not to bandy my private name about,” he said in a lofty voice. “Please to remember this is England and the gentleman sittin’ here is Sir Richard Sedgeley, who owns the village and the land it stands on. In a manner of speakin’, he owns us all. We look to him to defend us, like he always has and his ancestors before him. My family has lived here hundreds of years under the Sedgeleys and will live for hundreds more as I tells young George. … We thank you, Sir Richard.”

Sir Richard inclined his head but did not speak. He lifted the glass of ale with his left hand, and the great ring shone upon his forefinger.

“Go to hell, Georgie,” the American said, with a crass good humor. “I was here in the war but we weren’t fighting you then and we aren’t now. I even went with an English girl once — not steady, of course — too long in the tooth she was.” He paused and inquired of his fellow Americans, “J’ever think she’d do anything about those teeth of hers? Have ’em out, I said, and I’ll pay for the convenience. Get some store teeth that’ll set back in your mouth, honey, out of my way. Do you think she would? No! And I bet she hasn’t yet, though she could have ’em out now for free. Damned stubborn English — I sure was glad to go home.”

“You couldn’t be gladder than we were,” George retorted. “And I’ll thank you to be on your way home again — and the sooner the better. I want to get my place cleaned up, which I can’t do until you’re gone.”

The American lifted his glass and downed its content. “Come on, fellows — there’s nothing doing here. The loser is you, Georgie, when we’re gone. Mr. John P. Blayne will simply put his money someplace else. … Good-bye, Mr. Sir Richard Sedgeley! Sorry we couldn’t do business.”

Sir Richard had stood by the counter all the while, drinking his ale slowly, giving no sign that he heard what was going on. Now he looked at the young American.

“It is not I who am dismissing you,” he said coldly. “You work for Mr. Blayne, I believe. Did we not meet yesterday morning at the castle? I am not aware of—”

“There’s a lot you aren’t aware of,” the man interrupted cheerfully as he sauntered toward the door. “So long, Georgie — good-bye, England!”

“Gangsters — that’s what they are,” the innkeeper declared when they were gone. “Good riddance, I say. Take your time, Sir Richard.”

“I must be getting back to the castle,” he said but he did not move.

The farmers lingering about the inn, some of them throwing darts now and again in a desultory fashion, began to wander toward the door. They had taken no part in the argument and as they passed Sir Richard they said nothing beyond muttered words.

“Evenin’, Sir Richard—”

“We’ll be on our way, sir—”

“My old woman will be hot to know what’s become of me—”

“Our bit of supper will he waitin’—”

To each he gave a nod of recognition. Yes, he knew these, too, he knew their families, and had known them from his earliest memory when as a small boy he had ridden about the land with his father. He had his first horse, a black mare, he remembered, and it had given him a flash of pleasure when grown men stood as he passed and pulled their forelocks. The older ones still did so and he felt the same pleasure, deepened by the years of his responsibility — his reign, as he liked to think of it.

“Fill your glass again, Sir Richard?” George inquired.

“No, thanks, it is getting late.” He paid for his ale and at the door looked back. “The Americans are right, you know, George,” he said. “We are the losers nowadays, however we look at it. If the castle goes, would you rather have a prison or an atomic plant?”

George stared. “What’s that, sir?”

Sir Richard tried to smile. “Tourists keep your inn going, but a castle — that’s another matter. It takes more than tourists. … Mind how you behave with the Americans, George, when they come back. I fear that the deal, as they call it, is far from over.”

He left then and George stood staring after him, his round eyes looking rounder than ever. His wife, a small thin woman with a long nose and scanty gray hair, came to the inner door.

“Supper’s ready, George! What was all that rowin’? George, do you hear me? You look daft, standin’ there!”

“It’s him that’s daft, I’m thinkin’,” George said. “Sir Richard has gone clean out of his mind, ravin’ about prisons and atomics.”

“You’ve been drinkin’ all day,” his wife said acidly. “Give over, do, and come and get something besides ale into that big belly of yours, where all the profit goes, I’m thinking!”

She disappeared and after a dazed moment, he followed. And beyond the village Sir Richard rode slowly homeward. He let the reins lie slack as he went and his eyes roved over the mellow landscape of field and forest. The afternoon light lengthened the shadows and deepened the gold of the willows and the green of growing wheat. In the distance the castle stood against the sunset in all its stately beauty. It was his home, his inheritance, and how could he give it up?

He tried to imagine the castle gone and over the low hills and broad valleys a magnificent modern farm with new machinery and farmhouses, his land tilled and productive, his barns rebuilt, a dream of a farm. In the distance he heard voices singing. The farmers were walking home by a nearby road. They had seen him riding along the road to the castle and too distant for greeting, they were singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow …”

He felt tears come into his eyes. They loved him. He raised his hand in acknowledgement as they went their way and echoes fell into silence. Yes, he could see the farm, the new beautiful farm made upon his ancient land, forests kempt and rich fields stretching into the horizon, and all his people happy again. But he — where would he be? How could he be happy, his castle gone? A king without a castle was no longer king.

His head throbbed in waves of piercing agony and he gave his horse a command. All that mattered now was to get back to his castle. The sun had dropped beneath the horizon and in the twilight the castle stood lonely and forlorn against the evening sky.

… “I’m sorry, Mr. Blayne,” Kate said. “I shouldn’t have called you to the telephone, but it was your father — from New York. At least it sounded like him.”

He had been outside alone, watching the sun move slowly down the sky behind the towers, when he saw her standing in the open door of the great hall, her small figure distinct in a light dress the color of daffodils.

“How did it sound?” he asked, smiling.

“If I must speak the truth — like the bull of Bashan, roaring across the ocean!”

He shouted laughter as he followed her into the library. “That’s my father.” He took the receiver, “Hello! Hello?” No one answered. “He’s hung up — probably sulking now because I wasn’t here waiting for his call.”

“Ah no, perhaps it’s only a storm at sea.” She took the receiver from his hand. “Operator, will you please get New York again? I have my party here waiting. … Very well, I’ll keep him waiting.”

She hung up and turned to him, her eyes dancing blue light. “She said she’d connect us again as soon as possible, but she has orders not to do so unless his blasted son was on. … Is your father always like this?”

“Always has been, always will be, bless him!”

“However did your mother—” She broke off and bit her lip. Impudence — what right had she to inquire?

“Stand it?” he finished for her. “She adored him and laughed at him and wasn’t in the least afraid of him. Consequently he was utterly mad about her. When she died I thought he’d go insane. Everything she had owned became sacred. Nobody was to touch anything she’d touched. The paintings, for example, he wanted to lock them up.”

“I like to hear about two people loving each other like that,” she said quietly when he paused.

She stood leaning against the heavy mahogany desk, watching him. He took a small ivory elephant from the desk and when he did not speak she went on in the same quiet dreaming voice, her eyes on his hands — good hands, thin and strong and clean.

“Not that I know anything about such things, except what I’ve heard of my parents. My mother loved my father, or she’d never have married him. He was beneath her station.” She hesitated, and then said shyly, “She was a lady, but I don’t know why I keep telling you things.”

He looked at her quickly. “Why shouldn’t you tell me? I knew you weren’t — what you’ve tried to make me believe you are.”

“Oh, but I am,” she insisted. “My father was the son of the butler here in the castle, remember?”

“Wells?” His voice was incredulous.

She nodded. “He is my grandfather.”

They exchanged a long look and John Blayne turned away. “What does it matter?” he asked impatiently.

“I think it matters here in the castle,” she said softly, “but not to me.”

John Blayne began to pace the floor, acutely aware for the first time of why he was allowing himself to stay on in the castle. He wished she had not told him about her parents, and then he found himself wishing she would tell him more.

“What were they like, really?”

“From what I’ve been told,” she began slowly, “my father was tall and handsome and very proud. I’ve seen ever so many pictures of him — as a boy — then after he grew up — then in his Air Force uniform. He never wanted to be a servant, so he ran away to London when he was twenty. He wanted to be an artist, and he even had an exhibition once in London. Most of his pictures were of the castle.”

“Have you seen them?”

“No, they were destroyed in the blitz. Then he married and …” Her voice suddenly halted.

“And?”

“That’s almost all there is to the story, except me.”

“What was your mother like?”

“Her name was Diana Knowles. She was a lady, my grandfather always said, but I’ve never seen a picture of her and I gave up asking about her as my grandfather would tell me nothing. I think she was small and dark and slender and — distant-like.”

“Why?”

“Because, for one thing, my grandfather told me her people were offish and that they didn’t approve her connection with Colin Wells.”

She had been looking anywhere but at him while she spoke, now she lifted her gaze and sought his. He smiled, then moved across the room to glance out of the window. Kate followed him with thoughtful eyes.

He was almost too handsome, she decided, as she watched him. One must be careful when one was a woman, especially a woman such as she, in a strange and anomalous position such as hers in the castle — at times almost a daughter, yet always the maid and grandchild of the butler.

Ah well, she thought wistfully, she had told him the truth. He had asked for it. Now that he knew it he could think what he liked. While she drove the sword thus into her heart she kept looking at him as he stood by the window against the background of the castle and the green lawns, a tall slender figure, elegant even in his casual gray slacks and jacket and his shirt open at the throat.

“You look like an Englishman,” she said softly. “You could belong to the castle, standing there.”

“I’ve been off and on in England all my life,” he said. “My mother and I came in the summers quite often — we had a place in the Cotswolds — my father sold it when she died. He couldn’t bear to see it again without her. They met in the Cotswolds, it seems — her family was English originally and came from that region.”

“That explains you.”

“It doesn’t, as a matter of fact. I’m American — fundamentally and by choice.”

“Now why do you insist upon that?” she demanded. “Is it a disgrace to be English?”

“Of course not, but I like American ways — the directness, the simplicity, even the selfishness, if you want to put it that way, an innocent sort of selfishness, I often think — like a child’s. My father—” he broke off to laugh with a reluctant tenderness—“he knows what he wants and he sees to it that everyone else knows, too.”

“Ah, but you’re like that, you know,” she said eagerly.

“I? Like my father? Come, now—”

“Yes, you are. You’re well-spoken, and all that, but you’ve let us know what you want and I don’t put it above you to get what you want in the end.”

He had turned when she spoke and they were gazing sidewise into each other’s eyes, half laughing. What a pretty thing she was, the way her dark hair curled about her head, the depths of the blue of her eyes, an English beauty, sprung from what contradictory roots! It would be difficult not to grow up beautiful here and yet not even the castle could have shaped the delicacy of her lips, the small straight nose, the finely etched brows.

He felt a dangerous pull at his heart, a rise in the temperature of his blood, and was alarmed. As if he had not complication enough now without allowing himself a romantic attachment, however temporary! He had long ago discovered that he was attractive to women and after an experience or two in college had developed a wary half-humorous technique for self-defense. Alas, the difficulty now was not to ward her off. He saw no sign of her approach to him. On the contrary, she had taken great care to insist that she was only the maid here in the castle, a notion which he was alarmed to discover was increasingly repulsive to him. He was disgustingly pleased to know that whatever her father had been, her mother — he checked himself. As if such distinction mattered in his own country!

No, what he must remember was Louise; and what he must ask himself was whether he had an obligation to her which he was honor bound to fulfill. His father and Louise’s father were lifelong friends and business enemies. It had been taken for granted that the one’s son and the other’s daughter, who had played together as children, would some time be married. “A merger,” the elder Blayne had called it.

Thinking about Louise, John realized that though he had often kissed her formally he had never kissed her spontaneously or uncontrollably as now, damn him, he could imagine himself kissing Kate!

He turned to her. “Was your mother a princess, by any chance?” he inquired with a desperate attempt at playfulness.

She sat down on the ottoman in front of the fireplace. “Perhaps …” She was about to say “entirely possible, one never knows about princesses,” and then she checked the involuntary gaiety in her heart. “We began by talking about you,” she reminded him, “not me. I was saying you are like your father.”

“And I tell you I am not. Although …” He forgot her for a moment at this mention of his formidable father and stood looking down at her, hands in his pockets and frowning to remember. “I wanted to be like him when I was growing up. I tried to he interested in business, competition — all that — even football. I felt I was odd because I simply couldn’t be interested in winning games. He always has to win, you know. Well, wanting to be like him, I had to resist him or he’d have ruled me like a slave. I have had to grow stubborn and argumentative in my own fashion—”

He broke off and looked down at her as though he had never seen her before.

“You’re very clever,” he said slowly. “Because you’re right. In my own way I am like my father. Is that repulsive to you?”

She looked up at him, immensely tall above her, and was shocked to discover that she longed suddenly for — what? For his touch, for his hands to reach for hers to pull her gently to her feet, to … to …

“Oh no,” she said quickly. “Not repulsive — of course not. I’d never have such a — a thought.”

And what if he knew indeed what she was thinking? How could she save herself the shame if he knew that she dared not move lest she put out her hands to touch his?

“Irrelevant,” he was saying, “but I never saw such eyes as yours. They’re as deep as the sea, and darker.”

She was silent, motionless, half hypnotized, and was delivered by the sudden sharp ring of the telephone.

“Oh,” she gasped. “It’ll be your father.”

She slipped past him with profound relief, escaping the dangerous moment. How could I, she was thinking, how could I, when I’d never even seen him until yesterday!

“Yes,” she said aloud. “Yes, he’s here. Indeed yes, Mr. Blayne. … Louise? No, I’m not Louise. … Yes, yes, he’s been here this long while, waiting—”

She gave the receiver to him and tiptoed to the door, her heart suddenly cold. Louise? Who was Louise? Had he a sister? Or — she stopped, startled by a roar from the telephone.

“Johnny! Where in the devil are you? I’ve been trying to get you for the last six hours!”

The masterful voice bellowed its way under the Atlantic Ocean and shattered the peace of England. Wincing, he held the receiver as far from his ear as his arm could stretch.

“Yes, Father — yes. I’ve been waiting for hours, too.”

He caught Kate at the door and frowned to her to come back. She stood waiting, in obedience.

“Who was that girl who answered?” the big voice shouted.

“She’s somebody here at the castle,” he said mildly. “Nobody you know—”

“Well, just don’t forget Louise. I know a good merger when I see one. Holt called me that the old man doesn’t want the castle moved and the deal’s off. Crackpot idea from the first! Give my regards to Sir Richard and tell him I congratulate him on his good sense.”

John Blayne’s jaw set and his eyes flashed a pure steel. “The deal is not off. Holt has no business to say so! I don’t give up — you ought to know that by now! If I don’t get this castle I get another.”

“And what about Louise? When I was young I didn’t play ducks and drakes with a girl the way you are.”

“Tell her—”

“Monday of next week is the day I’ve set for the merger to go through! Her father is coming from Pittsburgh with his lawyers. It’s an occasion for the two firms as well as for the two families. I want you to be here, that’s all — just be here!”

John Blayne exploded. “Listen, Dad, I take my job seriously! You made me responsible for the Foundation. If you don’t like the way I’m running it, find someone else, but don’t act as if it wasn’t a job and as if you could send for me to come home any time you please — because you can’t! The Foundation isn’t a tax evasion scheme, so far as I’m concerned — it’s a commitment to my mother’s memory but even more than that, to the great works of art she left behind. You attend to your merger and I’ll attend to my Foundation.”

He was interrupted by an outburst of passion which, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, found vent in the crackling instrument in his hand. “Johnny, I’ve got a lot of money tied up in those”—the voice halted and went on—“in your mother’s paintings! By the time you get your castles and whatnots, I can have a modern building put up and safe as Fort Knox—”

John stopped the loud voice by hanging up. His handsome face was crimson with rage. “Damn the old—. I can always stay here in England, mind you! I swear I’ll bring all the paintings here — and I will, if—”

Then he remembered Kate. “Sorry — excuse me—”

She was gazing at him with admiration. “You’re as fine a man as your father,” she said softly. “It would be hard to choose which has the bigger voice and the hotter temper. It was a real show!”

He gave a snort of laughter, short and grim. “I mean what I said, I’m not giving up. I’ll go to France or Germany or anywhere, if it takes me years. … Monday in New York — to meet Louise and witness the merger! Merger — hah!”

Kate smoothed her skirt nicely over her knees.

“Who is Louise?” she asked in a voice so carefully casual that it was like the chance but piercing sting of a bee.

He was walking about the room and stopped by the chimney piece.

“Louise?” he repeated blankly.

“Yes, Louise,” she repeated firmly.

“Louise … well …” he said slowly. “Louise is the daughter of a Pittsburgh coal millionaire and my father’s best friend. For years they’ve planned to merge their companies. And our families have always wanted us to — merge, too. Coal, Louise; steel, me!”

He shrugged his shoulders elaborately and examined the painting above the chimney piece, a Romney duchess. “She’s a very wonderful girl and beautiful, et cetera — handsome is the word, I suppose — good clothes, always well turned out …”

He was thinking what to say, she could see that. And she could imagine Louise, one those thin smart American girls — and what, pray, was this sudden ache under her breastbone, why was it so hard to breathe while she waited for him to speak? Oh Kate — you’re a silly—

She spoke first, her voice small and strange. “You said you might stay in England — then why don’t you leave the castle here where it was meant to be? You could have the museum here, which is what we thought you meant in the first place. Then we wouldn’t all be torn to pieces.”

He strolled to the window again and stood there, his back to her, and gazed out over the rolling hills and shallow valleys. A ray of the setting sun caught the spire of the church in the village and flashed it into a silver cross against the darkening sky.

“Plenty of reasons against it,” he said impatiently. “Bring millions of dollars of paintings across the sea? Every crook in two continents would be on the alert… probably regulations between two countries about releasing works of art, besides. … There must be a solution, though, if I could only …”

He turned and sat down on a huge chest against the wall facing her and got up immediately.

“Handsome carving, but not to sit upon!”

She laughed suddenly at his rueful face. “King John’s chest. He kept his valuables in it — a crown given him by the Scots and a gem-encrusted scepter.”

He tried the lid. “It’s locked — are they still there?”

“I don’t know! The keys have been lost this long while. … What were you saying about a solution?”

He walked to the window once more and sat on the sill, his back to the landscape. “I was thinking aloud. … You know, I may be a silly idealist, but I really want the American people to see something beautiful and not in a building on Fifth Avenue that looks like a washing machine. I want the paintings to hang in their authentic setting — a castle. We don’t have a castle in New England — not a real one like this. It’s an art treasure in itself. We Americans need this sort of thing … we’ve no sense of history. … Can you understand me, Kate?”

“This sort of thing,” she knew meant the oak paneled walls, the huge chimney piece of stone built to burn eight-foot logs, the high, groined ceilings, the air of nobility, the atmosphere of ages.

“Please,” she said softly, and all the time she was thinking how sweet it was to hear him call her Kate, “please never do anything you do not wish to do.”

“That’s easy. What’s hard is to know what I do want to do.”

The telephone rang before she could answer. She took up the receiver, listened, and handed it to him.

“For you — from the inn.”

He heard a distant clamor of voices resolving into the voice of his lawyer.

“Yes, Holt,” he said in reply, “Yes, I’m here at the castle. Everyone is to stay at the inn until I … Yes, I have talked with my father. You should have waited for my instructions before — Yes, I know I must make up my mind. … I tell you, I don’t care if there are thirty-five more people coming tomorrow! They can just wait, too. … I know you only want to be helpful — you’re very efficient and I appreciate it, but efficiency must wait for something more important. … I don’t know, I tell you. I’ll have to think. … Yes, it’ll cost a lot of money to wait, but … All right, call it foolish, but foolishness in the beginning may lead to wisdom in the end — There is a solution, but I haven’t quite — No, I don’t know what we’ll do — not yet! When I know, I’ll tell you.”

He hung up and turned to Kate. “Damned efficient idiot—”

She was not there. She had slipped away into the twilight as though she were made of mist. He strode from the room through the door where she had stood and went down a wide stone corridor into the far end of a passageway. The place was empty and his footsteps echoed as though he were alone in the castle. He looked about the vast spaces now sinking into the shadows of approaching night. By what outer door had she escaped and how could she have gone so far? He listened and imagined that he heard voices too distant to be recognized, a man’s voice and then a soft answering voice. He went to the far end of the hall and opened a small wooden door bound in iron. It gave onto a short passage and there another door stood open, this one wide and heavy, and facing a wall. He went out and found himself in a dim street of cobblestone, stretching in both directions. At one end he saw a winding staircase of huge blocks of wood leading to an upper floor in one of the towers. Near the foot of the staircase two figures were silhouetted against the light of an old iron lantern swaying from a beam, the thin bent figure of Wells and near him Kate, leaning against a gnarled oak tree, her arms folded across her breast.

He stood for a moment, seeing them like ghosts in the setting of history. This narrow cobbled street between low stone buildings — here, he supposed, the servants of kings had lived, the maids surrounding queens and carrying on their secret hidden life in the vicinity of the great. Wells could have lived in any age, a thousand years ago as today, and Kate, who so short a time ago in the library had seemed miraculously near and real — it took no reach of the imagination to see her long ago in this very spot. He felt suddenly chilled and alien and was about to return to the great hall when she saw him. She nodded to Wells, who left her and went up the stairs while she walked surefooted on the cobbles now growing damp with dew.

“Can I help you, Mr. Blayne?” she inquired as she drew near.

“No, thank you, Miss Wells,” he replied.

“Then we had better go in. There’s rain in the air.”

She led the way and he could only follow until in the great hall they hesitated, she not knowing what to say, he determined not to speak. She moved to light the tall candles on the table. Her face was lovely in the flaring candlelight, a girl’s face, very young and intent. … Twenty-four candles in all, he counted, and she was now on the fourth.

“And do you love Louise?” she asked, in a cool voice as controlled as the hand that held the long wax taper.

“That, Miss Wells, is not for me to say now, but what I shall say is that I am just beginning to know something about the difference between a merger and a marriage.”

“I don’t know what a merger is, at all,” Kate said honestly.

Thirteen more candles to go. … She was lighting them slowly, taking pains to see that the wicks were cleaned of ash and that the flames burned bright.

“A merger,” he said absently, his eyes upon the slender white hand that tended the candle, “a merger is the union of two firms. It has nothing to do with marriage, except in such cases as my own, where it happens there is a son in one firm and a daughter in the other. My father has the biggest steel company in — oh, hell, never mind. Her father has the biggest coal company. I told you all this, didn’t I? And coal and steel — they go together like — love and marriage, as the song goes. Now you know what a merger is. Understand it?”

She lit the eighteenth candle. “Yes.”

He stood up and leaned both hands on the table. “I’m glad you understand, for suddenly I don’t. None of it makes any sense to me at this moment. Does it to you, really?”

She answered gravely, intent upon her task. “Yes, of course it does. … In England the prince marries the princess. Only it’s not called a merger — it’s called a marriage of convenience. Oh yes, we’re quite accustomed to that sort of thing.”

She lit the last candle as she spoke. He did not hear her. He was gazing at the lighted candles, her face glowing between them.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, and lingered upon the question.

He sighed and straightened himself and stood for a moment, half-bewildered. How could he keep her here? How could he explain — but what had he to explain? His glance fell upon his briefcase, dropped when he came in and forgotten. He crossed the room and, hesitating, opened it.

“I have some photographs I brought to show Sir Richard,” he murmured. “You might like to see them, too.”

He came to the table where she stood watching him. He spread them before her. “They’re Connecticut. The landscape isn’t too different from England, as you see — a bit more rugged, perhaps — rocks and stone walls. The castle was to stand on this low hill above the river, the forest in the background. … There’s the sketch. I made it myself, imaginary, of course.”

He shuffled several sketches. “Here it is, the great hall. … Pretty good since I hadn’t seen it, don’t you think? Even to the chandelier—”

She saw the castle there in Connecticut as though it were a dream in a far country. The great hall was full of strangers, Americans, gazing up at the beamed ceiling. They were sketched in, tiny figures, blank faces.

“That chandelier,” she said suddenly, “it isn’t just a chandelier. You’ll have to be careful about people standing under it. It makes me shiver to think of it.”

“Why?” he asked.

“It’s dangerous,” she said in a half whisper. “It has a voice, Lady Mary says. ‘I’ll drop it — I’ll drop it.” She imitated a faint far-off voice with a Scottish accent.

“Ah, don’t laugh,” she cried, when she saw him smile. “Lady Mary insists she’s heard it.”

At this he laughed aloud, diverted. “What an attraction for the tourists! And have you heard this voice?”

“No, but I’ve seen the chandelier shiver and shake until the crystals sing!”

“You’re not serious!”

“Perhaps I am—”

“Come now — look into my eyes and tell me the truth!”

He seized her by the shoulders, still laughing. She was half laughing, by now, but before she could reply they heard the strong steps of booted feet and Sir Richard stopped in the doorway and stared at them. John Blayne dropped his hands and Kate stepped back.

“I’ve just put an idea to Mr. Blayne,” she said.

“Indeed!” Sir Richard did not change his expression.

It was not enough to placate him, she could see, and she hurried on. “I suggested that he consider again the idea we had at first — to make the museum here, you know, Sir Richard.”

Sir Richard lifted his heavy eyebrows, came in and stood beside them. “And what did he say this time?”

She glanced at John Blayne. “He refused again — not yet, anyway.”

Before John Blayne could speak, Lady Mary entered. She had changed her tweed suit to a long gown of pale gray satin with a ruff of white lace and had touched her cheeks with rouge, a lovely, fading rose.

“Wherever have you been, Richard?” she inquired in her sweet childlike voice. “I’ve been fearfully worried about you. And what are you doing here? And in your riding things at this late hour? It’s nearly time for dinner and Wells will be cross if we’re late. We’re dining in the small hall, Richard.”

Sir Richard went to her and lifting her hand he kissed it gallantly. “I was about to look for you, my dear, to tell you I was home. Meanwhile, it seems, Kate has been bravely taking care of Mr. Blayne while you and I deserted the field. They’ve lighted all the candles because it’s grown so dark they couldn’t see each other. And Kate has made a proposal to him.”

Lady Mary screamed delicately. “What? You’re mad, Richard!”

Sir Richard put up his hand. “No, no — don’t jump to conclusions! She proposed merely that he accept our original idea and bring the paintings here. The castle would become the museum where it stands, as we understood from the first.”

“A splendid idea,” Lady Mary said. “It always was. I can’t think why you gave it up, Mr. Blayne.”

John Blayne looked from one to the other of these three. Fantasy, he thought, dream people living in another age! How to bring them into reality! He began to speak slowly and clearly.

“Lady Mary, Sir Richard … and …” He looked at Kate and away again. “I wish I could agree that the idea is a good one, Lady Mary … it isn’t, I’m afraid. The castle is too out-of-the-way here. It’s not even on the tourist route from London.” He hesitated a trifle awkwardly. Kate had turned away but Sir Richard and Lady Mary were looking at him with painful intensity. He must not hurt them! He went on, haltingly.

“Castles belong to a certain era, I suppose. They were necessary once, when a man had to build his own fortress. Today — well, fortresses don’t protect any longer. They’re rather like the Great Wall of China, where the people feared the enemy from the north. Now the enemy comes from the sky or the earth or the sea. We’re surrounded! So the castle becomes a museum piece in itself, wherever it stands, in the old world or the new. The new world needs it more, perhaps — lacking a history of its own. Anyway, in this curious compressed world today, history belongs to everyone, everywhere.”

Sir Richard rejected all this with a wave of the hand. “Socialism! My castle belongs to me, Mr. Blayne. Let us stay by the facts, if you please.”

John Blayne turned to face him. “Very well — you shall have the facts, Sir Richard. My lawyers have investigated. Even with the castle open to the public for a year, one day of every week, you have cleared two hundred dollars or thereabouts. Let’s see — that’s about eighty-seven pounds. How many people? A few hundreds — enough to support an inn, I suppose, but not a castle. I’ll be honest with all of you. It would be wrong, wouldn’t it, to bring great works of art here, at immense cost, where no one would come to see them? … It wouldn’t be fair — now would it? — to rob a new country like mine, whose people are hungry for art and beautiful things, by taking its treasures away and putting them where they couldn’t be enjoyed by everybody.”

He gazed at their faces and saw only uncommunicating gravity.

“Or am I wrong?” he inquired.

Lady Mary replied brightly to this. “What’s wrong, pray, with an exclusive museum? It would be nice to have only people with clean boots. Put the idea to your father.”

Sir Richard drew off his riding gloves. He was smiling now but vaguely, as though he were not listening, his eyes glazed and remote. He had withdrawn himself from them all. “Quite — quite,” he murmured. His eyes fell on Lady Mary. “I see you’re ready for dinner, my dear. You look very pretty. I expect Philip will soon be down. We’ll join you in a few minutes. … Mr. Blayne, it’s time to dress for dinner.”

He left the room with dignity and after a moment John Blayne followed. He felt helpless. What could he do except leave them to their fate? And so he might have done, he realized, had it not been for Kate, so young and beautiful a creature whose fate and future were involved somehow with this ancient castle and the three dreamlike old creatures who inhabited it and would not leave it. As it was, what would become of her?

“Sit down, Kate,” Lady Mary commanded when they were alone.

She sat down as she spoke in the great carved oak chair beside the chimney piece and folded her hands in her lap. She felt lost and alone. She, the mistress of Starborough Castle, was not being told what was really going on. Where had Richard gone riding for hours? Why had Kate been talking alone with the American? Who was plotting what, and she not told anything? The afternoon had been torturously long while she sat crocheting and in unbearable, tedious anxiety. Wells had been too agitated and irritable to question because of a guest for dinner and at last she had dressed half an hour too early, on the pretext that this gown, which she had not worn since she had been unable to afford her own maid, was difficult to get into alone.

“Now, Kate,” she began. “What have you been saying to this young man?”

Kate sank on the hassock at Lady Mary’s side. “I really said nothing, my lady, except that I do wish he’d just have the museum here as we wanted from the first.”

“Quite absurd to think of it, as I now see him,” Lady Mary said impatiently. “He’s not the sort of person who could be at all happy here.”

“Why not, please?”

“An American? Besides, Kate, I don’t think they would like it, you know — it would he so restricting to them to have an American about all the time, not to mention other Americans coming here, even in small numbers. They’d be quite put out. I shouldn’t like to answer for the consequences. After all, they’ve been here much longer than we have, and they can’t be ignored.”

Kate reached for Lady Mary’s hand, a slender nervous hand, delicately veined, restlessly moving. “Dear,” she said, “are you quite sure you do hear them? It isn’t just — dreaming? I sometimes think you live too solitary a life here, shutting yourself away even from the tourists.”

Lady Mary withdrew the hand. “Certainly I hear them! And it’s not only I, Kate. You remember what I told you about Richard’s mother. She came here as a bride and the very first night in the castle, although simply nobody had told her about them, when she came downstairs to dinner she asked Richard’s father who the lovely lady was at the top of the stairs. And old Sir Richard answered quite calmly, ‘Ah, you’ve seen her! She was lady-in-waiting to a queen, and she was murdered by a groom who fell in love with her.’ Certainly I don’t dream, Kate, and it hurts me very much to have you doubt me.”

“I don’t doubt you, my lady. It’s just that I myself can’t see them—or hear them.” She rose and stood beside Lady Mary.

“That means you do doubt them,” Lady Mary retorted, “for if you believe in them you see them, or at least hear them. I do assure you, when I’m alone they make themselves known to me — put it that way.”

“You don’t actually see them?”

“I do see them, as clearly as those candles burn there on the table. Yet if you blow the candles out, quite possibly you might think they were never lighted, mightn’t you? Or couldn’t be lighted? They look dead until someone lights the flame. Well, that’s how it is. When I’m alone, I concentrate for a moment, sometimes for half an hour, and I think about them and they feel me thinking and then they come out of the shadows. They’re there all the time, but they must be felt before they can be seen or heard.”

She looked down at Kate wistfully. “Does that seem impossible to you?”

“Nothing seems impossible,” Kate said softly. “I believe you. Have you ever talked to Sir Richard about them?”

“Of course,” Lady Mary said. “Many times.”

“And does he believe in them?”

“It’s not a matter of belief with him,” Lady Mary said. “It’s a matter of seeing.”

“If he sees them, why doesn’t he speak of them as you do?” Kate asked.

“Perhaps we don’t see the same ones,” Lady Mary leaned to whisper. “What if he sees only bad ones?”

She looked over her shoulder and Kate saw a strange look of terror on her gentle face.

“Lady Mary, what’s the matter, my dear?”

She seized Lady Mary’s hands and held them in her own. They felt cold and limp and she chafed them. Lady Mary looked at her vaguely and answered, still whispering.

“I told Richard only yesterday that I thought there was a king in the castle, because the voice in the chandelier sounds as if it might be dear King John’s voice. It’s said he had a very strange high voice. And Richard said, yes, there was a king in the castle, but he looked at me so… so … darkly, somehow, that it couldn’t have been the same king. … Perhaps he even saw one of the headless ones. I don’t know. … I’m glad I see only the good ones. They’re the ones that stay near me and want to help us.”

“What did you say then, my lady?”

“I said, ‘Richard, you do see them after all!’ And he said — and this was odd, Kate — very odd! He said, ‘How would you like to be a queen?’ ”

“What did he mean?”

“Just that be didn’t want to talk about it, I suppose. Whenever I want really to talk about them, he always talks about something else, to put me off. Oh dear — he can be very tiresome!”

She freed her hands gently from Kate’s clasp and was silent for a moment before she began again. “Kate, I know that they can help us if they will.”

“How?” Kate asked.

She was troubled by the conversation. All her life she had known that Lady Mary believed in these others who had lived in the castle and until now she had accepted the possibility of the persistence of the dead beyond life. England was an old country, crowded with history, and the castle was a symbol of the past. The bridge across the moat had been drawn up in many a fierce battle against Dane and Norman, and kings had found refuge here, princes been murdered, and queens taken to bed by their secret lovers. The castle was a storehouse of passion and revenge and ambition, retreat and inspiration. Whatever men and women had needed, they had created in their time. Only now, when the world had somehow got mixed into one great bewildering confusion, had the castle ceased to have meaning except for the handful of people who lived in it, of whom she was one.

And did she really live here? That telephone this afternoon from another world, that loud, commanding, arrogant voice of an American, how like the voice of an enemy it had seemed in the silent library, enclosed in book-lined walls — books that nobody read! Then was it the voice of life and today and a world from which she was hiding? No, not hiding! They needed her here in the castle, those two old dreamers whom she loved. Oh, if only she had been a man, she could have really helped them! Instead, being a woman, she did not know what she believed. Perhaps she had avoided knowing. She had neither seen nor heard the dead but then she was busy and young and strong. Lady Mary was often ill and spent hours alone or with Sir Richard, and he could alternate between calm good spirits, subdued and but a ghost of what in his youth must have been a charming gaiety, to moods of deep gloom, when he withdrew into himself or even disappeared for hours together. At such times Lady Mary was haunted with vague distress until he returned again. It had been a long time since there had been guests at the castle and it was true that when the public came, Lady Mary shut herself away from them in her private rooms to wait until they were gone.

“There must he treasure in the castle,” Lady Mary was saying. “In all these centuries someone must have hidden jewels or silver and gold. Those kings and queens! They know where it is. They will guide us to it, if we only believe they will.”

What could she say? She rose and stood looking at Lady Mary and smiled half sadly. Then she put out her hand. “Come, dear,” she said tenderly, “it must be nearly time for your dinner. The gentlemen will be waiting, and I must change my clothes. My grandfather does not like me to be late.”

They walked arm in arm to the door. There Lady Mary paused and turned to look back. “Put out the candles, Kate. They cost two shillings apiece — those great wax candles!”

She went on her way while Kate, obeying, took up the heavy silver snuffer and snuffed out the candles, one by one. The great hall sank into darkness and she stood lost in its shadows, listening, feeling. The wind had risen after sunset, the wind that had rain in it, and now it moaned as it circled the towers and swept through the keep. There was no sound of human voice or footstep. Believe, Lady Mary had said, believe and help will come. But how does one compel belief and if compelled, is it true? She bent her head and clasped her hands together tightly under her chin and stared into the darkness.

“Help us,” she whispered. “Please, all of you, any of you, someone!”

She waited a full minute and longer until she could not bear the sound of the lonely wind. There was no answer. Her hands dropped and she walked through the darkness toward the door that led upstairs to her room.

… In the small dining hall the three then waited for Lady Mary. It was a pleasant room at night, the crimson curtains drawn, a fire in the chimney piece, and the table lit for dinner. A silver bowl of rose-red tulips stood between tall silver candlesticks, and the tablecloth of Irish damask gleamed. Wells was serving sherry, and the men sipped their wine as they stood about the fire.

John Blayne held his glass to the light. “Liquid gold! How long have you had this, Sir Richard?”

“I haven’t replenished the cellars since the war,” Sir Richard replied.

“If the cellars are full of this sort of thing, you needn’t sell the castle,” Philip Webster said, and smacked his lips.

“Ah, but they’re not full,” Sir Richard retorted. “They’re all but empty, like everything else.”

“I suppose you haven’t thought of selling the other treasures,” Webster went on.

“No,” Sir Richard said shortly. “I haven’t the right.”

“Who but you has the right?” Webster countered.

“There are other inhabitants,” Sir Richard replied.

John Blayne lifted his handsome brows. “You mean—”

“I mean the figures of history,” Sir Richard said.

“Not ghosts?” Webster asked, half teasing.

“The great dead,” Sir Richard said gravely.

Lady Mary stood at the door, a graceful slender figure in her silver-gray gown. “Have I kept you waiting?”

“No, my dear,” Sir Richard went forward and took her hand with old-fashioned grace. “We’re having a drop of sherry and making idle talk.”

He pulled out her chair for her and took his own place at the head of the table.

“You’re at Lady Mary’s right, Mr. Blayne — Philip at her left.”

They sat down and Wells served the soup from a tureen on the buffet. John Blayne looked about the room.

“Where’s Kate?”

The silence was broken by Wells saying apologetically, “She will be here presently. Something made her late this evening. I am sorry, my lady.”

Webster tasted the soup, then tucked his large linen napkin into his collar and said briskly, “Excellent soup, Lady Mary.”

“Yes, Wells does nicely with his soups. I believe he uses bones,” Lady Mary said. She supped her soup daintily, barely touching the old silver spoon to her lips. In the glow of the candlelight her pale face was faintly pink and her eyes were mystic.

John Blayne pursued the subject of Kate with dogged determination. “Kate is a sort of secretary, isn’t she?”

“Quite indispensable whatever she is,” Lady Mary said gently.

“Also quite beautiful,” John Blayne suggested.

Wells turned to face the table. Without looking at any of them, as remotely as though he were introducing a stranger, he spoke.

“My granddaughter is the maid, sir.” And with the announcement, he left the room.

“I am glad you two gentlemen are to stay the night,” Sir Richard remarked as though he had not been listening. “I never like to discuss business after dinner. It will be much better in the morning — especially as the day has been somewhat exhausting.”

“Always a pleasure,” Philip Webster said.

“Thank you, Sir Richard,” John Blayne said. “You know, I haven’t had a look at the castle yet. I’d like to have a real tour — not for any business reasons but simply because it’s the most enchanting place I’ve ever seen — enchanting and enchanted, I’m sure that anything could happen here.”

Lady Mary leaned forward, her face alight. “Do you really think so? Then it can. It’s all a matter of belief — what the good book calls faith. I assure you, I have myself seen—”

“Please, Sir Richard.”

Kate was at the door. She had changed into her black dress, with trim little apron and cap. She had brushed her hair freshly and washed her face in cold water. John Blayne saw her standing in the dark doorway and could not take his eyes from her. Last night he had accepted her attire as that of someone playing a part; tonight it annoyed him. He found himself in rebellion against the indulgence of class distinction. In America, Kate would have made her own way whatever her family connections might have been.

“There’s a call from New York,” she was saying. “I think it’s Mr. Blayne’s father again, sir.”

He got to his feet and dropped his napkin on the table. “My father? I can’t imagine what more he has to say to me — he said everything an hour ago. Do excuse me, Lady Mary.”

Lady Mary looked startled. “Oh, of course — but fancy hearing someone speak across the sea!” She watched the two young people disappear into the dark passage, then continued. “Richard, I can’t think why you feel it’s strange I hear them speak, from beyond, especially when someone far away can speak to us here in the castle, no wires or anything connecting — and he a perfect stranger and an American, at that!”

“I don’t think anything is strange, these days,” Sir Richard said absently.

Wells entered with roasted grouse on a silver platter.

“Delicious!” Webster exclaimed. “My favorite game. But it’s not in season.”

“If you please, sir,” Wells said firmly. He served the small birds and dipped bread sauce on each.

Webster laughed. “Very well — I won’t ask. A man has a right to his own grouse.”

“I won’t have poaching, Wells!” Sir Richard exclaimed.

“No, sir,” Wells said. “That’s what I told the poacher when I took the birds away from him.”

“You should have given them over to the game warden, Wells,” Lady Mary said reproachfully.

“We may as well eat them as the game warden, I daresay,” Webster said cheerfully. “At least now that they’re here.”

“Yes, sir,” Wells said and left the room again. They ate in silence for a moment. Webster took a delicate bone in his fingers and nibbled the meat with relish and put the bone down again and wiped his fingers on his napkin. “I must tell you, while our guest is out of the room,” he said, “that I have made one more desperate effort for the castle as a national treasure. Castles are aplenty — did you see the advertisement last week in the Times? A castle with two hundred and fifty rooms and ten baths to let for a shilling a year — and upkeep, of course, which is twenty thousand pounds. True, there aren’t many castles a thousand years old. I haven’t much hope, yet there’s a straw of a chance, I’m glad you asked Blayne to stay over, Richard.”

“I feel sure something will happen,” Lady Mary said. Webster picked the tiny bird clean and now sat back to wait for the joint. “What, Lady Mary, can possibly happen?”

“Something will happen,” Lady Mary repeated. Her gentle blue eyes were remote, a faint smile moved her lips. She had only toyed with the bird on her plate and now she gave up pretense of eating. The diamond rings on her restless hands glittered in the candlelight as she put knife and fork together on the plate. “I have faith that it will,” she said.

“It may, indeed,” Sir Richard said absently. “It is quite possible — the divine right of kings.”

Webster looked from one old face to the other in amazement. “Is there something here that I don’t understand?”

Neither of them replied and Wells entered with the joint, set the tray on the buffet and began delicately to carve large, thin slices.

“Mr. Webster likes his beef rare, Wells,” Lady Mary said.

“Yes, my lady,” Wells replied. “I know, my lady.”

“Oh, you always know everything, Wells,” Lady Mary complained.

… In the library, John Blayne held the receiver as far as possible from his ear and Kate stood in the doorway, laughing softly to herself.

“Listen to him,” he muttered catching her eye.

“I can’t help hearing him,” Kate replied. “You should have said nothing to him about putting the museum here. He’ll have an apoplexy. It was naughty of you when you don’t really want it here yourself.”

John Blayne bit his lip and winced as the relentless voice roared on.

“What do you mean by hanging up on me, damn you? I haven’t been able to get you back to tell you. You’re out of your mind. You oughtn’t to be allowed to go around alone, Johnny! I wouldn’t let those paintings out of the country — not for nothing! I shan’t give them to anybody, either, not even to the Metropolitan — I paid good money for them! I’ll cancel the Foundation first.”

John Blayne glanced at Kate again and swung his arm round and round, windmill fashion, pretending to wind up his courage. Then he bellowed into the telephone.

“My turn, Dad! Hear this — I’m talking! I agree with you! … How’s that? Yes, I said I agree with you. Ah—”

He gave a gust of a sigh as silence fell and went on again. “Yes, I know you don’t know what to make of it … I agree with you, but for different reasons. Not because you paid good money for them, though money is always good. Not because it’s wicked to give anything away because it isn’t … Yes, I’m saying I agree with you! … Yes, and I agree with you because I want people to see the pictures every day and all day long, including Sundays and holidays, and that’s why I want them kept in Connecticut, as near as possible to several great cities, and with good roads coming and going, and comfortable chairs to sit on where people can rest and look at the same time. And people can’t come here, so we won’t bring the paintings here — What’s that? Are you having a thunderstorm there in New York? … Oh, you’re just telling me to shut up! … All right, sir. Good-bye — but with love. … Hear that, Dad? I’m signing off — with love, Johnny!”

He hung up and burst into loud laughter. “Oh God, what a parent — what an irrepressible, inextinguishable, lovable old devil of a parent!”

His eye caught the picture of her again standing there in her incredible costume. He put his hands in his pockets to keep them safe and sauntered toward her. “I have an idea. You can help me!”

She looked up at him, her face shining with laughter. “Can I isn’t the question. It’s will I—”

“Ah, but you will — you must!”

“If I must, I must, I suppose — but still only if I wish!”

“Then persuade Sir Richard to let me have the castle, Kate — and you with it!”

“Me — like a piece of furniture?” She had stopped laughing.

“I could never get the castle together again without you,” he said. He saw the look on her face, doubting, puzzled — wounded? — and went on hastily. “You can be a special consultant or something — anything you like.” She drew back a step.

“I’ll pay you,” he said, following her. “I’ll pay you anything you want.”

“Pay me?” she repeated. “You couldn’t pay me … I’m not for sale … any more than the castle is. Oh no, you don’t know me at all… I’m not in the least… what you think I am.”

She walked away from him across the dim room to the window and he stood staring after her and saw for the first time the smooth white nape of her neck, under the feathery dark curls. But what had he said to make her angry? The moon had risen, an early moon, doing its best to show through the low scudding clouds; its pale light fell upon her in the huge dimly lit room. She turned to face him.

“You have no conception of the castle and what it means,” she said earnestly. “This is a world, this castle! It’s not stones and furniture — it’s history, lived by people. You can’t buy history or move it to a new country. You can’t buy the people who have lived in it nor can you move them. … You’re a merchant after all, Mr. Blayne. You have no feelings. Lady Mary is right. One has to feel before one can know. You only know what you can count and see, but she knows much, much more. She has an influence here. And there must be another way.”

He kept his distance, watching her. How strange she was! Who was she? Not the English girl he had been with an hour ago, not the girl laughing at him even a few minutes ago! How had he lost her?

She turned away again to the window and looked at the moon. He came to her side and saw her face pale and beautiful and remote. Whoever she was, he could never forget her now. He was half afraid of her, drawn to her, yearning to touch her, to have her back again, and yet he knew he could not unless and except by her own wish. Did she herself know who she was? A foundling perhaps, a child of royal blood left here somehow, not belonging to Wells — oh, certainly never belonging to Wells. There was not the slightest resemblance to him in this pure profile, this slender grace of her small head held so proudly.

“Please go away,” she was saying. “Go away and leave us to our castle and to our times. Leave us above all to ourselves! We have lived here a long time in peace and loneliness. Go to your own new country where you belong and let us stay here in our old country where we belong.”

“Kate,” he said, “Kate, are you dreaming too?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I never dream.”

She would not turn to look at him. He waited and still she refused herself to him and he left her, after a moment, there by the window in the moonlight.

… He was glad, somehow, to return to the warm fire-lit room, where Sir Richard and Lady Mary and Webster were eating roast beef and potatoes and boiled cabbage.

Philip Webster was reading a telegram. He looked up as John Blayne took his seat.

“I’m afraid there’s no hope, Sir Richard,” he was saying. “It seems they can’t consider adding the expense of another castle just now. Three million unemployed, et cetera — some eight thousand more elementary schools needed and so on—” He broke off.

“Am I interrupting something?” John Blayne inquired.

“Not at all,” Sir Richard said. “We’ve no secrets at this late stage… Go on, Webster! Government considers everything more important these days than castles a thousand years old.”

Lady Mary gave up eating roast beef and put her knife and fork neatly together on her plate. “There is another way, Philip.”

“Surely you don’t mean ghosts again, Lady Mary,” John Blayne said cheerfully.

Wells put hot roast beef before him, served potatoes and cabbage and went out again.

“Never,” Lady Mary said. Her delicate face went pink. “I hate that word! They’re spirits, more real than we are here. Don’t call them ghosts — not in my presence, if you please! They’re alive. This is their home and it can’t be taken away from them. They do exist. Richard, speak up for once! They exist … you know they do, don’t you? Don’t they? Answer yes or no!”

Sir Richard sipped his red wine and wiped his lips carefully. “Well, my dear, I can only say that in any case I am not responsible for them. I’m only responsible for you and me and the land and my tenants. I must make my decisions on tangible things.”

“Very well!” Lady Mary retorted. “Give me a few days, all of you. There are a hundred and fifty rooms in this castle, places we’ve never seen — hidden treasures, perhaps!”

John Blayne laughed, relieved at the vigor in the air. He’d bait her a bit more, just to enliven the meal. “Oh, come now, Lady Mary! You can’t be serious. Every castle has these treasure stories.”

Lady Mary looked at him with her calm gaze. “I’m not sure it’s worthwhile, but I will explain. Whether you can understand is another matter. One has to be — I don’t know how to put it except to say ‘pure in heart,’ if one is to see them—the good ones, I mean, the ones who will help. Otherwise the bad ones can take one over completely — use one, you know.”

“Lady Mary,” John Blayne said, “you mystify me. In everyday words, I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about.”

“Ah, you aren’t trying,” she said. “You must be willing to learn how to feel beyond yourself. You must give yourself up. Then you will hear sounds you have not heard before — perhaps just one sound, a clear high note of unchanging music. You will see — I don’t know how to put it, but it’s like looking through a long tunnel and seeing at the far end a small shining light. Concentrate on the light with all your being — and then ask for what you need. You may see someone — or not see — but you will get an answer — or perhaps just a feeling of peace and relief. But if you don’t see or hear, then wait. In a few days, perhaps—”

She met his unbelieving eyes and she smiled faintly. “You don’t understand, poor man, do you? But it’s true for all that. In countries older than ours, in Asia, it’s well known. It’s called prana and there’ve been many books written about it. It’s not ghosts or any of that nonsense, it’s simply learning how to enter another level of being. You must want to learn how, of course — and for that, one must long for something — have a need before one can ask that it be fulfilled. And then — Ah well, we each have to do our own asking.”

She spoke with such simplicity, such conviction, that he was unwillingly moved and reminded, to his surprise, of a conversation he had had with the aged minister who had officiated at his mother’s funeral.

“She was a good woman,” the old man had said, that quiet autumn evening beside the newly made grave, when all others save himself and the minister were gone. “But what interested me was her delicately perceptive mind. She was universal in life and she will be eternal in death.”

“What do you mean?” he had begged, longing at that moment of fresh bereavement to believe that his mother was not beyond his reach. Did the dead still live? At that moment in the silent churchyard he could almost believe.

The minister had hesitated, his thin face flushing. “I can only say that by faith I arrive at possibilities that I believe scientists will one day confirm. In short, my dear boy, I have faith that death concerns only the body. Your mother pursues her way with her usual gaiety, but on a wave length of her own, if I may pretend to scientific knowledge I don’t actually possess.”

John Blayne turned now to Sir Richard, who had sat listening, sipping his wine, his expression remote.

“Sir Richard, do you believe as your wife does?”

Sir Richard put down his glass and touched his moustache with his napkin. “Well, there’ve been twenty generations of kings in the castle and a couple of queens, not to mention five centuries of my own family. Who am I to say that my wife is wrong? Only last year I found a ruby in the tennis court. I certainly didn’t put it there. I’d never seen it before. We’ve never looked for treasure.”

“Or asked for it,” Lady Mary put in.

“Or asked for it,” Sir Richard agreed. “But stay a few days, and you’ll see for yourself.”

“Thank you,” John Blayne said. He felt suddenly confused, yet unwilling to yield to a vague but mounting uneasiness. He had long ago given up his secret half-shamed attempts at communication with his mother. He had accepted, as he would have put it, the fact of death, perhaps total. Here the line between life and death was not so clear, but he did not propose to be drawn into that morass again. “I will stay,” he said briskly, “if you’ll let me proceed with the survey. … I don’t believe you’ll find the treasure — not in the way you’re looking for it, although it’s quite possible that if we take the castle apart, stone by stone—”

Lady Mary rose abruptly. “Pray excuse me,” she said and left the room.

The three men sat in silence for a long moment. It became unendurable and John Blayne broke it.

“Lady Mary is charming in her earnestness. Sir Richard — but these old fancies—”

He paused and Sir Richard did not look up. He had taken his wineglass again and was twisting it slowly in his fingers, gazing into its deep color, blood-red against the candlelight.

“You don’t believe in them,” he said at last.

“Do you?” John Blayne countered.

Sir Richard shrugged slightly and lifted the decanter. “A little more port? No? … Webster?”

“No, thanks,” Webster said. “And if you’ll excuse me I’ll go to bed. It’s been a long day.”

“For all of us,” John Blayne agreed. He felt stopped, as though suddenly a door had closed against him.

They rose and Sir Richard pulled the bell rope for Wells.

“Take the gentlemen to their rooms,” he ordered.

“Not me,” Webster said. “I know my own way about. Good night, Richard.”

“I’ll say good night, too, Sir Richard,” John Blayne added.

He was not sure that Sir Richard heard. Webster was gone and he stood by the dying fire, abstracted, his head bent.

“This way, please, Mr. Blayne,” Wells said.

He could only follow. The passages were no longer quite new to him now, particularly those that led away from the great hall and the front of the castle toward the east wing; but he felt that he could easily become lost. The floors were of gray stone, uncarpeted, and the windows were narrow and deep-set. The walls, he reflected, must be three feet thick. He caught up with Wells.

“Do you believe in these ghost stories. Wells?”

Wells did not turn his head or slacken his pace. “I never listen to what’s said at table, sir.”

“Even though you’re in the room?”

“No, Mr. Blayne.”

“And how long have you lived here?”

“All my life, sir.” He paused at an oaken table at the foot of a stairway and lit a candle which was standing there.

“We go up two flights, if you please, sir, to reach the Duke’s room from this side of the castle.”

“The Duke of what, by the way?”

“The Duke of Starborough, sir. He was a protégé of Richard the Second, I believe. His room is not so damp as some on the lower floors. And I expect you have enjoyed the view of the river and the village when you look out in the morning.”

“Indeed, I have.”

They were climbing a short flight of worn stone steps and now stopped before the familiar door. Wells twisted the brass knob. The door creaked but did not yield. The flame of the candle fluttered in a sudden gust of wind.

“The windows must be open,” John said.

“Indeed, no, sir,” Wells said. “There’s always a gust of wind when one comes to this room at night.”

“Why is that?”

“I can’t say, sir. It’s always been so — There, the candle’s gone out. Stand still, if you please, sir. I always carry matches.”

John Blayne stopped in the darkness. He heard a howl of wind under the door and the scratch of the match. The candle flamed again. Wells was standing with his back to the door, shielding the candle.

“Hold the candle for me, please, sir,” Wells said under his breath. “I’ll back in and then I’ll have to keep the door from slamming on us. Hold the candle close to me, sir, and don’t make a noise.”

John Blayne laughed somewhat unsteadily as he took the candle. “Are you playing some sort of game, Wells?”

They were in the room now. The door slammed and the candle went out again as though fingers had pinched it. In the darkness he heard Wells muttering. “Oh, you tiresome creatures! … Let’s have no more of this nonsense. … Here, sir, give me the candle, if you please. I’ll set it to the table.”

He felt Wells’ fingers, cold and damp, fumbling at his own hands and he yielded the candle hastily and stood in the darkness waiting. The air was still and whatever the wind was, it had ceased. He heard the scratch of the match and once more the candle flared. This time it burned.

“There,” Wells said in triumph. “You’ll have no more trouble now, sir. They know when I mean what I say. …”

“They?”

“Yes, sir. Them, you know. They won’t bother a stranger, sir. It’s only us whom they know that they tease — maybe it’s only the children, at that. A lot of children died young in the early days, I daresay — here in the castle, too.”

Children? What was the old man saying?

“If the candle gives you any trouble, sir, there is the electric light by your bed. There now,” he chatted amiably as he moved about the room, “I’ve turned down the bed, sir, and I put in a hot-water bottle against the sheets being damp — a stone pig, we call it. It’ll keep warm all night. There’s no bath here in the east wing, I’m sorry to say, sir, but I’ll fetch a portable tub in the morning and a tin of hot water, when Kate brings in your tea and toast … Good night, sir.”

He was at the door and he paused to look back. There was no wind now and the candle burned steadily, its glow aided by that of the shaded lamp by the bed.

“I hope the chapel bells won’t wake you, sir. They often sound at four o’clock.”

“Chapel? Ah yes, she told me — your—” He broke off, not knowing how to speak of Kate, but Wells went on smoothly.

“The big ballroom, sir, just under this room, was the chapel when the castle was a royal seat. Some people can hear the bells — I often do, myself. So does Lady Mary. Sir Richard does too, I think, but he’ll never say. Good night again, Mr. Blayne.”

The heavy door swung shut with a screeching creak and silence fell, the deepest silence that John Blayne thought he had ever known — felt, rather, for he could imagine it almost solid about him. What was it Lady Mary had said? Feel, she had said, and then concentrate on the light at the end of the tunnel, the distant small light, and ask for what was needed. Nonsense, as if he needed anything that he did not have! And yet — and yet — he was beginning to feel that there was something he very much wanted, something that money could not purchase.

He undressed and went to the old-fashioned stand. The huge silver jug standing in the big porcelain basin was full of hot water. He filled the basin, wrung out the steaming washcloth and washed himself all over before he put on his pajamas. It was the sort of thing, he supposed, half humorously, that even kings and queens had done once upon a time, not to mention dukes.

“Not bad, Duke, old boy,” he said aloud and suddenly was in such good humor that he began to whistle softly. He blew out the candle but placed it carefully on the stand by his bed in case the electricity should fail.

“For he’s a jolly good fellow—” He climbed into an enormous bed, raised under a canopy of crimson satin, and then remembered he had left the matches on the table. He’d better have the matches, just in case.

“In case you show up, Duke,” he said conversationally, “and try your tricks again.”

Once more in bed he settled himself deep into the soft mattress and the, enormous down-filled pillows. A faint smell of mildew reminded him of an ancient odor he had smelled elsewhere. He sniffed, trying to remember. Ah yes, Cambodia and the ruins of Angkor! The hotel bed there had had the same faint reek of time and decay. And he had imagined those ruins haunted, too, not by anything as preposterous as ghosts, yet by something as vague, a presence accumulated through centuries of compressed human life. Was it not possible, even inevitable, that the material of the human body, the mass, must leave behind a transmigrating energy?

He felt now as he mused, an uncomfortable awareness, a pressure almost physical, which chilled him, and with something like panic he laughed aloud at himself and ceased his imagining. Let him think of something pleasant at the end of this second curious day! Too much had happened to him in too few hours and what was the most pleasant sight he had seen? Unbidden, he saw Kate smiling at him out of the darkness — a pretty face, sweet and unspoiled, the blue eyes honest and warm. A talisman, proof against dead kings and queens and whimsical dukes, he told himself, and fell asleep upon the comforting thought.