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?”