Pearl Buck - Death in the Castle

Kate reached for her rose-colored dressing gown. She smoothed back her tumbled hair and tried not to shiver. Lady Mary did look strange — resolute, grave, but remote, especially her eyes—

“Shouldn’t we take someone with us, my lady?” Kate asked. “I’ll call Grandfather, shan’t I?”

“Certainly not,” Lady Mary said. “He’s much too old. We don’t know where we’ll be led — perhaps into the dungeons. He might slip on those wet stones and then we’d have to try to carry him.”

“I could call Sir Richard — or even Mr. Webster or — or the American—”

“Unbelievers,” Lady Mary declared. “They’d only send out negative impulses and then we couldn’t make contact at all. No — no — just you and I, Kate — and hurry, there’s a good girl. Carry the candle — bring your matches—”

She could only obey and she put on her little white fur slippers and followed Lady Mary into the passage, through the great hall and down then into the cellars. There Lady Mary paused to open a high old wooden cabinet in which hung hundreds of keys. She chose a huge key of bronze, green with age, and with it opened a narrow door that led into a winding corridor.

“My lady,” Kate, silent until now, spoke anxiously. “Are you sure you won’t catch cold? It’s been ages since anybody was down here — the air is like death itself.”

“There’s no such thing as death, not really,” Lady Mary said. “It’s just a change to something — I’ve told you — another level of whatever it is that we call life. It’s only a transfer of energy. Can you understand? Please try, Kate! It would mean so much to me if someone did.”

Lady Mary paused in the dim corridor. Her face was beautifully alive now, her eyes tender, her voice warm. Kate felt a deep longing to believe in her, and at the same time an impulse to run away, to fly back to the great hall, to find someone young and untouched by strangeness, someone like herself. Yet who was young in the castle except John Blayne? And he was still a stranger, someone from a new world.

“It’s like the wireless, I tell you,” Lady Mary was saying. “There’s an instrument of transmission in us, but not everyone understands how to use it. Some day we’ll know quite easily and then nobody will think it strange or talk about ghosts. It’s only because we don’t quite know yet — or so few of us do—”

The dreadful thought crossed Kate’s mind now that Lady Mary might be going mad. She lifted the candle involuntarily so that the light fell on her face. Lady Mary stepped back. “Don’t do that,” she cried. “It hurts me.”

She is going mad, Kate thought desperately, and tears came welling into her eyes. Through their shimmering she saw, or thought she saw, a nimbus about Lady Mary’s head, like that of madonnas in old paintings.

She set the candle on a deep windowsill and put her arms about Lady Mary. “You aren’t well, dear,” she said. “You look so strangely at me. Perhaps you’re only tired with all the anxiety — it would be natural.”

Lady Mary drew back gently but firmly. “Stop shivering, child. I am not going mad and I feel quite clearly what you’re thinking. There’s nothing strange — it’s all quite common sense, but I won’t go into it now. Remember what we’re here for — it’s to ask them to show us treasure, if there is any.”

She turned away from Kate and walked ahead of her down a long winding passage that descended almost imperceptibly as they went. She walked as if she were asleep, purposefully, familiarly, her step sure, her bearing confident. She was talking, not to herself exactly, Kate thought, and certainly not to her, but as if to someone who was walking just ahead. “We need a million dollars. That’s what the American offers us. How much is that in pounds? Yes, it’s a great many pounds — at any rate, more than we could possibly get together, and Government won’t do anything. And not just rubies in the tennis court, please — this is serious. It’s the castle now, the whole castle, and where are we to go if it’s taken from us? Where are you to go?”

Kate was melted into pity and fresh alarm. “Ah now, Lady Mary dear, let’s go back and find somebody!”

“Nonsense,” Lady Mary said firmly. “We’re going straight ahead. They’ll speak when they can.”

And she led the way down to the dungeons.

… Sir Richard opened his eyes and stared about the room. It was still dark, the intense darkness before dawn. A voice echoed in his ears, a woman’s voice.

“Who’s there?” he shouted.

No one answered. He thought nevertheless that he heard breathing, a fluttering sort of breath, a rustle somewhere near the northern window. He fumbled on the table for his matches and knocked the box to the floor.

“Damn,” he said in a loud voice. He switched on the bedside lamp, knowing he must find the matches in case he had need of the candle. He got out of bed and knelt on the stone floor in his old-fashioned nightshirt, his bare knees chilled, and felt as far as he could reach. No matchbox!

“Damn, damn,” he muttered between clenched teeth. He got to his feet stiffly and kicked about until he found his slippers, then shuffled over to the window, knocking his leg on a corner of his desk. The shuttered window was open and the light of a sinking moon shone palely over the yew walk and the lawn. The elephants loomed monstrously large, their shadows black. He could see nothing else and he leaned out and called.

“You there — speak up!”

No one spoke, but a flock of birds sleeping in the ivy flew out in alarm. He chuckled.

“It was you then, you rascals!” For a moment he stood by the window breathing in the good air that had been so recently washed with rain, then he yawned and shuffled back to the bed, stumbling over the elusive matchbox on the way. He got in, pulled the covers about him, and tried to sleep again. It was impossible. The events of the past two days came alive in his mind and he lived over each detail. This American! He envied the youth, the gaiety, the confident power of the man. A foreboding fell upon him. Again and again England had been revived by youth of other lands. Here in his own castle, built upon Roman foundations, young Danes, coming from France as conquerors, had created a strong new life. He switched on the lamp by his bed and reached for a book he had been reading.

“Oh France,” the ancient chronicler declared, “Thou layest stricken and low upon the ground … But, behold, from Denmark came forth a new race … Compact was made, between her and thee. This race will lift up thy name and dominion to the skies.”

“And how great the blend had been,” the book said, “old Roman order with youthful human energy!”

He sighed, and knew he could not sleep. Was he not now of the old order? And did John Blayne indeed bring in the new? He laid the book away and put out the light. Shivering, he drew up the covers and fell into a troubled sleep, distressed by clouded dreams.

Hours later, or perhaps only minutes, he was wakened, or dreamed he was wakened, by the deep vague melancholy that he had come to know so well, preceding always the restless, throbbing pain inside his skull. Here it was again — and how to escape it? He dreaded the darkness that fell upon his mind. Light! He must find light. Where was the light? He could not breathe, he struggled to open his eyes, and then as if he were in heavy chains, he got slowly out of bed, fumbling for the light and unable to find it, then fumbling for the matches but he could not put his hand on the box.

He remembered that behind the swinging pane he kept matches and a candle, and he groped his way to the wall. He felt for the particular spot, the center of a star in the carving of the panel. He pressed it. The wall, which no one knew was a door except himself and Wells, swung creaking away from him. He went through it and closed it again carefully. Then he felt along the wall and found the alcove and the matchbox. The first three matches would not strike for dampness but he fumbled for the bottom match and then the flame held. He lit the candle and, blind with pain, he walked down the passage to the winding stair at its end and still with a strange purposefulness, as though he were deep in sleep, he climbed to the top, two flights up to the east tower. There the passage narrowed until it barely admitted his lean figure. At the end a door filled its width, an arched door, very low. He opened it and entered an octagonal room.