“What do you want to meet the chap for?” he had inquired of Michael.
Michael had replied, “I’ve a fancy to see him, that’s all. My uncle went to school with him — my mother’s brother. He’s told me rather grim tales. He’s quite proud now of having gone to school with him, though in the old days they all made fun of him. It seems he used to stalk about the school grounds rather like a silent and haughty young Hamlet.”
On this Sunday afternoon, beneath a sky of milky November blue, the Englishman saw William leaning lonely against a stone wall, gazing across the lawns to the valley beyond. He went to him with the bold and entirely natural charm which was both assured and youthful.
“I say, sir, I hope you won’t mind if I butt in?”
“Not at all,” William said. He smiled slightly. “Our World War seems to have left its effect at least upon the English language.”
“Not so much as your wonderful papers, sir. I wonder if you know how much they’re admired? I’ve heard that Northcliffe himself has taken a point or two.”
William felt the soft warmth of young flattery steal about his heart. He was flattered often enough, but this English flattery was sweet, and he did not discard it with his usual cynicism.
“I wonder if you could by any chance have had a relative once at an English school in China? I don’t believe in coincidence. But you look alike.”
“Not coincidence, sir. Many of our family have been in China or India. It’s a family tradition. It was my uncle, I think. He’s often spoken of you and been quite proud about it.”
Ancient wounds began to heal in William’s heart, but he maintained his dignity and only slightly smiled. “I remember him as an autocratic young man, quite beyond noticing a mere American.”
“He knows better than that now, sir.”
Michael waited and when nothing more followed, he began again with imperturbable chatty briskness. “I wish you’d come and have a week with us, Mr. Lane. My father and mother would be enormously pleased, and I’d be honored.”
“I’m here on a holiday,” William replied. “That perhaps will excuse my ready acceptance of a kindly invitation. I should like to come and call upon your father, if I may. If you are there, it is all the better.”
“Then will you consider it an invitation, sir? If so, you’ll have a note from my father. What week, sir?”
“Week after next?”
“Splendid! Shall you be in England for Christmas?”
“No, I must get home before then. My sons will be coming home from college.”
“Splendid! Where are you stopping?”
“I am at the Savoy.”
“Good! Then you’ll hear from us. Hulme Castle, near Kerrington Downs.”
“Thank you.”
The two words were so spoken that they seemed dismissal but Michael refused to accept them. He divined in the American a diffidence so combined with pride that it had become arrogance, a knowledge of superiority augmented by the fear of an incomprehensible inferiority. This American had all the kingdoms of the earth, a handsome body, a shrewd mind, wealth that had become a fable about which people guessed and gossiped on two sides of the ocean, and from all this a power was emerging which Michael knew was viewed with gravity even in the Foreign Office.
An immense curiosity sprang up in his somewhat light and inquisitive mind, and he imagined himself talking William over with his sister, Emory.
“He’s not a proper American at all. With just a little changing, he could make a fair stab at being an Englishman, if he wanted to. And the odd thing is that he would and he wouldn’t want to—”
To bring his mind back from such words, he began to describe to William the recent hunting he had shared with his uncle in Scotland. Then a bell rang suddenly from the house and broke across Michael’s endeavors to amuse.
“That’s tea, I’m afraid,” he said cheerfully, and thankful to be relieved of the conversation, he was liberal enough to wonder if William felt a like relief and daresayed to himself that he did.
Hulme Castle, William discovered, was one of the relics of the time of William the Conqueror and since it was near Hulme Forest, it had often been the hunting box of kings. In the fifteenth century it fell into disrepair, its last use being to shelter a mistress of the then ruling king. In the early sixteenth century it was given to a newly created earl, who rebuilt the castle but not the keep, rebuilt also the Great Hall, and discovered among old ruins a chest left by King Edward III. In the seventeenth century King James visited the castle while hunting and in the eighteenth century the then existing earl finished the rebuilding of the whole castle, remodeling the kitchens entirely and adding a handsome picture gallery. No building had been done since. The present occupants were the Earl, his wife, his son Michael, and his daughter Emory. On the third Sunday of every month the castle was open to the public except for the rooms occupied by the family.
So much William discovered from a small book he found in the British Museum. He had taken time to find out all he could about Hulme Castle. It was a small estate but an ancient one.
From the main highway through the Downs William, seated in the heavy motorcar he had bought for his stay in England, saw Hulme Castle on a low and pleasant hill. Twin towers of Norman architecture guarded the entrance through which, on a soft gray English day, he approached his destination. The chauffeur pulled a huge knocker and the door was opened by a man in some sort of informal livery.
“Hulme Castle?” the chauffeur inquired, knowing well enough that it was.
“Hulme Castle,” the manservant replied.
William got out, properly dignified, and mounted the shallow stone steps.
The manservant took his things. “Mr. Lane?”
“Yes.”
“Come in, please, sir. We were expecting you. I will show you your room, sir. This way, please, sir.”
A huge table stood in the middle of the entrance hall and behind it double stairs wound upward to right and left. Upstairs William went down a long and wide hall into a large room, quite modern in its decoration. A small coal fire burned in a polished grate under a carved mantelpiece, upon which the only ornament was a silver bowl of ash-pink roses.
“Tea is being served in the Panel Room, sir, to the left at the bottom of the stair,” the man said and disappeared.
William went to the wide leaded window. The sill was deep in the thick stone wall and he looked down over the tops of oaks still green. The hill declined sharply beneath this western wall and on the horizon the sun was setting, pink among the gray clouds. The castle was filled with silence and with peace, and he saw no human being. A feeling of rest and remoteness stole upon him and he sighed.
He stepped into the same stillness a few moments later when, having washed his hands and face, he went downstairs. The door of the Panel Room was open and he heard someone playing the piano. Of music he knew nothing and he had not missed it, but he was intelligent enough to know that the person now playing was a musician. He crossed the hall, entered the door, and saw something that he might have imagined. A long, beautifully shaped room, paneled in oak, spread before him. At the far end was a large fireplace, and above it the coat of arms of Hulme. Before the fire a tea table was set and an old man, the Earl himself doubtless, sat in an easy chair of faded red leather. Across the fireplace sat Lady Hulme, unmistakable, tall, thin, weathered, and wearing an old tweed suit. She was knitting something brown. Michael leaned against the mantle, his hands in his pockets, gazing at the fire, and at the piano sat a woman in a long crimson dress.
She lifted her head and smiled, a gesture of invitation, while she went on playing softly and firmly the closing chords. The Earl saw him and then Michael, and with the same smile and gesture they waited, Michael halfway across the room, the Earl standing. Lady Hulme lifted her large pale blue eyes, dropped them again, and continued her knitting.