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.