“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 com
pany. 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.
Death in the Castle Page 8