Death in the Castle

by Pearl S. Buck

  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 al
l, 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 do
n’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.”