The Eternal Wonder

  “AND SO WHERE WILL YOU BE GOING in England?” she inquired abruptly.

  It was the last day on the ship. Next morning, before noon, they would be landing at Southampton. There he would take the train to London. His grandfather had given him specific directions.

  “To London. My grandfather gave me the name of a place—a small hotel, very clean,” he told her now.

  “It’s odd, your being alone,” she said.

  “My father and mother were coming too,” he told her, “but he died. Then she thought he’d have wanted me to come anyway. I’m—rather young for college, you see.”

  “How old are you?” she asked in her pretty, silvery English voice.

  “Sixteen,” he said reluctantly, half-ashamed to be so young.

  “Sixteen! Oh, I say—not really!” she cried. He nodded and she stared at him.

  “But you’re so—enormously tall! I’d have said twenty, at least. American men look so young anyway—yes, twenty—maybe twenty-two. Good Heavens, you child! Why, you can’t go wandering about alone! Where are you bound for?”

  “China,” he said simply.

  She gasped and then broke into bright laughter. “China! Oh, nonsense! Why ever China?”

  “My grandfather lived there for seven years and he says they’re the wisest, most civilized people on Earth.”

  “But you don’t speak Chinese, surely?”

  “I can learn languages very easily.”

  “What do you speak now?” she demanded.

  “English, French, German, Italian—some Spanish. I was going to take it this year. I would have before, but my father thought the literatures in the other languages were more important. Besides, I might go to Spain. There it would be very easy for me to pick it up. Of course, I don’t count Latin—it’s basic anyway.”

  She looked at him with a curious, penetrating gaze, her eyes very dark.

  “Look here,” she said decisively. “You are not going to London to some small hotel alone. You are coming home with me. I’ve a place outside of London and you’ll learn about England from there.”

  “But—”

  “No buts—you’ll do what I say! I live quite alone since my husband was killed in the war—Sir Moresby Seaton. It will cheer me up to have someone young in the house. I can’t bear relatives. Who knows? I might even go to China with you. I went to America, and that’s almost as odd. I went quite alone, too—and had a marvelous time. Americans are such talkers, aren’t they—not you, though! You’re a silent lad.”

  “I like listening,” he said, “and watching.”

  “But it is a very old castle,” she continued, “and it has quite a history in my husband’s family. He was the last male, and we had no children, alas. His fault or mine, who knows—or cares? And he was rather old-fashioned—‘traditional’ would be a better word, perhaps, for he loved sports—hunting and all that sort of thing, but he believed if one had no children, well, one hadn’t them. And so when I die the castle will go to a nephew—a nice chap, older than you by twenty years, married and with three sons, so there’ll always be a Seaton in the castle, and that’s all that matters. Curiously enough, I’m glad now that I have no children. I can be myself—not divided. Children do divide a woman, in an odd sort of way. One’s never quite whole after the division. There’s always something gone. And I shan’t marry again—ever! I’ve made up my mind on that. Not sentimentally, either—but because I find I like being alone. I don’t believe in a one-and-only—though I was frightfully in love with my husband. Oh, yes—I was happily married—happily enough, that is.”

  “Then why—,” he began, but she interrupted him in her gently­ ruthless way.

  “Why ask you to the castle? It’s a question I can’t answer. You’re someone in yourself—though you’re only a boy, yet. I don’t know who you are. You’re not very American. You’re someone quite apart. I shan’t bother about you, you know. You’ll be free to come and go. And I’ll be free, too. You’ll understand that. I’ve a curious feeling that you understand everything. There’s something about you … I don’t know … something old and wise … and quiet—very strange! I suppose you’re what the people of India would call ‘an old soul.’ We went to India once, my husband and I. Actually, it was on our honeymoon. We wanted to see the Taj Mahal by moonlight together—banal, wasn’t it? But I’m glad we did. I’ll never forget. And then we got really interested in India. There’s no other country, I’m sure, where one feels the people are born old and wise and—knowing. You have that same knowing.”

  He laughed. “And yet I don’t even know what you mean by that word!”

  “You’re young, too,” she retorted. “And you weren’t born in India. You were born in a very new, brash young country—which was a great mistake, I fear!”

  She laughed, and then they were silent again and for a very long time, but quite at ease, in spite of silence. That was what puzzled him. He was at ease with her, as though he had known her always. And yet she was a stranger, living a life entirely unlike his own. He felt excitement, more than the excitement of being in a new country.

  IT WAS DUSK WHEN THEY DROVE through a small village and he saw, a few miles beyond, in the open countryside, softly rolling hills, the outline of a crenellated wall, and above it the turreted roofs of the castle.

  “William the Conqueror built it,” she explained, “and for five hundred years it was a royal seat. Then it was given to an ancestor of my husband as a reward for some feat of honor in war. And Seatons have been there ever since, until now, and I suppose it’s only by the generosity of the nephew—no, my husband insisted I was to have the right to live here for my life, if I wished. I daresay someday I shall want to live somewhere else—perhaps even with someone though not married—or alone, if I still like being alone.”

  They were drawing near now, and suddenly all the lights of the castle flashed on, and it stood brightly outlined against the darkening sky.

  “It is beautiful,” she murmured, half to herself. “I always forget how beautiful it is until I’ve been away and then come back to it. I’ve always come back alone until now. It’s rather nice having someone with me—which surprises me, somehow, since I’ve always wanted to come back alone after Moresby died—Morey, I called him.”

  “It’s great luck for me,” he said. “Much better than wandering about London by myself—though I’m used to being alone too, being an only child at home and always too young for my schoolmates.”

  “What did they do with you in school?” she asked curiously. “You must have been a brilliant little pigmy among big, stupid giants!”

  He thought a moment, remembering. “I think they didn’t like me,” he said at last.

  She laughed. “How could they? They hated you! Ordinary people always hate the rare few who have brains! Did you mind?”

  “I didn’t have time to think of it,” he said. “I was always too busy—making something, reading about something—talking with my father—”

  “Your father meant everything to you, didn’t he—”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he died.”

  “Yes.”

  “And there’s been no one else?”

  He hesitated, then replied. “Yes … a professor—a very brilliant man—but—”

  “You’re not friends anymore?”

  She had a soft, persistent way with her. He wanted to tell her about Donald Sharpe and did not. He had resolutely tried to forget, and now to put that experience into words would make it all real again. That friendship, that affection—call it what he might—had gone very deep. There had been so much, so very much, about Donald Sharpe to like, even to love. There had been understanding such as he had not found since. It must not be recalled.

  “No, we are not friends anymore,” he said abruptly.

  And before she could ask why, they were cro
ssing the bridge over the moat, gates were thrown open, and they were at the castle itself.

  “Welcome to my home,” Lady Mary said.

  THEY WERE IN THE GARDEN in the morning of this his first day in England. The previous night, after an early dinner, she had bade him good night almost coldly, and he had been shown to his room by a manservant, who drew his bath, turned down the bed covers, and laid out his pajamas. His suitcases had already been unpacked and his three suits hung in the closet of a dressing room. This he discovered when the man had left him after asking when he would like to be waked.

  “What time is breakfast?” he had asked.

  “Her Ladyship takes breakfast in her own rooms, sir,” the man had replied.

  He was a short young man of perhaps twenty, round-faced and pug-nosed, his hair blond and stubbly. There was something humorous about his solemnity, and Rann had smiled.

  “What would you advise?” he asked. “Remember, I’m only an American.”

  The young man hid his own smile behind his hand and coughed slightly.

  “As to that, sir, breakfast will be ready anytime after half past eight, sir, in the breakfast room just off the east terrace.”

  “I’ll be there,” he had replied, “at half past eight.”

  He had slept without waking until eight o’clock, and then was attacked by a monstrous hunger for food and, looking out the window, saw the morning sunny and warm in spite of the season. And after a breakfast vast enough, what with bacon and eggs and broiled kidneys, and much toast and marmalade and cups of coffee with thick cream, he saw Lady Mary in the garden, her slim figure very smart in a blue pantsuit, and her hair bright in the morning sun.

  He left the table immediately and joined her, and without preliminaries she said, “Look at this exquisite piece of workmanship!”

  She carried a thin bamboo walking stick with a carved ivory handle, and with it she pointed now at a spider’s web, the largest he had ever seen. The spider had caught branches of a holly tree in its spinning, and dew hung in silver drops upon the delicate threads.

  “Beautiful,” he said, “and see how the drops of dew change their size—large on the periphery and infinitesimally small toward the center.”

  The spider was in the exact center and at rest, a small black spider, motionless and watchful.

  “But how,” she asked, “how does that bit of a creature know how to spin its web in mathematical perfection, the widening circles, the exact angles—”

  “It’s all built into his nervous system,” he replied, “a sort of living computer.”

  She laughed, and looking down into those laughing dark eyes, he saw admiration.

  “Now, how do you know that?” she demanded.

  “Koestler,” he replied simply. “Page thirty-eight, as I remember. Act of Creation—marvelous book.”

  “Is there anything you haven’t read, you young monster?”

  “I hope so—I’m longing now to get into the castle library.”

  “Oh, those old books—nobody’s read them for generations! Morey’s books are all upstairs in his rooms. Go on about the spider. He looks wicked indeed, in my opinion, sitting there pretending he’s asleep while he waits for some poor harmless fly!”

  “Well, I suppose it’s wicked in a way,” he agreed. “But then again it’s his nature. And he’s done his job perfectly. He’s attached his web to twelve points—see? It’s not always so many—depends on what he thinks necessary. But the pattern is always the same. The center of the web is always the center of gravity from the spider’s point of view and the intersection of the threads always make the same angles and—”

  “Oh, stop,” she cried, “there’s an insect caught there in the far corner. Oh, get it out, Rannie!”

  He broke off a twig and tried delicately to free the struggling insect without breaking the web—a tiny film of a moth it was—but it was too distracted.

  “I can’t,” he said, “I’ll break the web.”

  “Break it then,” she cried. “Oh, look at that nasty spider! He’s rushed straight to the poor thing—he’s wrapping his beastly little arms about it. Oh, I can’t look!”

  She lifted her cane suddenly and struck at the web and ruined it. Spider and moth dropped into the leaves of the shrub and she walked away.

  “I won’t let it spoil my morning,” she said with resolution.

  “Of course not,” he agreed. “The spider was only acting according to its own built-in rules. Koestler points out that there is a ‘fixed code of rules, which may be innate or learned,’ though its functioning depends on the environment.”

  “Oh, be quiet!” she cried, flashing her eyes at him. “I don’t want to hear any more of your old Koestler! Who is he, anyway?”

  He was confounded, almost wounded, but he refused to yield to her. “A very great writer,” he said quietly, and was silent for so long that suddenly she smiled at him coaxingly.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I know you can’t help it.”

  “Help what?” he inquired.

  “Oh—being what you are—a brain, and all that. But you are so—so beautiful, too. Yes, you are, Rann—don’t blush! Why can’t I say you’re beautiful to look at? Why must you be handsome as well as everything else? If I weren’t such a kind, good-natured human being myself, I’d hate you for having everything—that curly hair, too! And blond! Why should you have exactly the color of hair I’ve always wanted—and blue eyes—not watery blue, but ocean blue? I think I do hate you!”

  They were both laughing now, and suddenly she threw away her little cane and seized his hand.

  “Let’s run!” she cried. “I love to run in the morning!”

  And to his astonishment he found himself running across the lawn, her hand in his, and they were laughing—laughing—as they ran.

  HE WAS LINGERING FAR TOO LONG in England and he knew it. After a week—or was it two?—when he spoke of going on to France, she had protested.

  “But you haven’t seen anything! You sit here in this old library, reading these old books. You don’t even go upstairs to Morey’s library.”

  It was true. He had gone upstairs once, her leading the way, to a suite of rooms quite modern in their decor, and then in her abrupt fashion she had left him. He had stayed to read the titles of shelves of books about ships and guns and the history of wars and travels, and then had stood for a while before the portrait of a young man. It was life-size, painted by a modern artist as he could see from the technique, and it was set in a flat frame of gold—Sir Moresby Seaton, a man still young, very powerful in build, dark and strong and smiling, the cheeks ruddy, the eyes alive. Indeed, the portrait was so vivid that, gazing at it, he felt a presence in the room and was made uncomfortable by it. The eyes were insistent, demanding. “Why are you here?” He seemed almost to hear the question hanging in the air. Why, indeed? He had left the room without answer and, going down the great curving stairway, he returned to the old library, where there was no presence except his own and there he evoked life from the books.

  “You can’t see England just from books,” Lady Mary was saying, “and so I shall drag you right away. We’ll go to Scotland before it snows, and to the Cotswolds—such charming stone houses in the Cotswolds—and perhaps get into Ireland for a day or two … green Ireland, where I’m always more myself than anywhere else in the world. I’ve a bit of Ireland in me through my grandmother. The O’Hares have a castle or two of their own in Ireland.”

  And obedient always to her demanding, willful, pretty ways, they had made their journey, Coates driving them, and he drank in the scenery and the change, marveling at so much variety in so small a space, always engirdled by the sea. But for him there was wonder everywhere, and he spent hours engrossed in accumulating impressions of faces and places, villages and towns and the rare city of Dublin, and she accused him of forgetting that she was
even with him.

  “I might as well have stayed home,” she cried one day, petulant and laughing.

  “Oh, no indeed, Lady Mary,” he had protested. They were in some ancient cathedral, and he had been absorbed in a small book the vendor handed him, giving the story of a knight encased in a coffin of brass, in a crypt there, his image also of brass lying upon the coffin. He put the book down on the image.

  “No, indeed, Lady Mary,” he had protested again, and had been about to explain when she broke in.

  “And don’t you think you might call me Mary, after all this time of knowing me?”

  “I always think of you as Lady Mary,” he replied in all innocence, in such innocence indeed that she had gone into a fit of laughter.

  “Why are you laughing?” he inquired gravely.

  She had only laughed the more and he was puzzled, but he wanted to know the end of the dead knight’s story too, and so he had taken up the book again and she wandered away.

  So had passed one lovely day after another until they came back to the castle, just escaping the first snowstorm. And still he marveled how much green there was in the gardens, the late chrysanthemums still blooming, too, though near their end, and sank back into the old life easily and yet uneasily, because he knew he should be moving on his way, for there was a dangerous charm in the ancient and idyllic setting.

  Now here she stood before him in the old library on this day in early December. It was twilight and a coal fire was burning in the grate. She had changed for the evening and wore a long skirt of black velvet with a scarlet bodice and pearls about her neck.

  “And still you are reading,” she scolded, “and even without turning on the lights! What is the book now?”