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.”