Pearl Buck - Death in the Castle

EVERY BOOK TELLS TWO stories: one concerns the characters, the other the author, and how he happened to write such a book. Death in the Castle began some years ago in England. With Tad Danielewski, my partner in Stratton Productions, I visited a beautiful ancient castle. Out of its hoary shadows and castellated towers the characters emerged, fictitious and yet so strangely vivid that their story unfolded in my mind in an instant

Since Tad Danielewski is a stage and screen director, we immediately fell into a discussion of how their story was to be presented. He thought in film, I thought in novel. We decided upon a cooperative effort. I wrote the novel, he wrote the screenplay. The work went on almost simultaneously.

Perhaps the reader will find the same enchantment that I experienced when the story took shape, as if in double exposure one faithfully echoing the other, promising a new kind of excitement generated by the magic of the screen and the participating audience.

The purpose of art is communication, but in the arts each uses its own means, and each gains its own response. In the novel the reader is required to exert his creative imagination in order to participate. In the film participation is more direct and less subjective, for the viewer feels that he is actively transported into the scene itself.

We bring you both: now the novel, a little later the film, of Death in the Castle.

PEARL S. BUCK

THE DELICATE SUNSHINE OF an English spring shone through the tall and mullioned windows of the castle. He had been up since dawn, on horseback as he was every morning, riding about the farm while she slept. By the time he had cantered home it was half past nine and he was hungry. He had tramped into the dining hall where they had all their meals, except tea. She talked sometimes of a breakfast room, but he was accustomed from his earliest memory to this enormous room and the long table beneath the chandelier where they now sat, he at the north end and she at the south.

This morning, however, she had been up earlier than usual. How else could the bowl of daffodils on the table be explained? They lifted their yellow trumpets, three or four dozen of them, in a big silver bowl on the lace mat. Unless Kate had got into the garden? Years ago they had decided not to talk at breakfast, though the decision had been forgotten more often than not. She had even complained because he expected her, a young bride, to eat breakfast with him. He could see her yet, a slip of a girl, an English beauty, blue eyes under honey-colored hair, facing him across the distance. He could hear her high sweet voice, complaining and willful.

Its such a beastly time of day, Richard! My parents never wanted to see each other so early.

My dear, he had retorted, laughing. If I had been compelled to face your mother every morning I might have felt the same. She is a Gorgon but youre not. Youve a face like a rose, Mary, and I want to see it across my breakfast kidney and bacon. Its my prerogative.

All the same, I shant talk, she had threatened while her eyes smiled.

You neednt, he had said, and through the thirty-five years of their happy marriage she had been very nearly silent in the morning, though faithfully breakfasting with him. Stubborn little thing!

He looked at the rose of a face now, across the table. It was still pretty, a slightly faded rose, perhaps, but worth looking at, and not at all what her mothers had been more like her fathers perhaps, a gentle peer retiring too early to a crumbling Cornwall fortress of a castle. He had merely brought her from one castle to another, except that he had not allowed this castle to crumble and never would, in spite of these preposterous times when one was to be penalized, it seemed, for having been born in ones family seat.

She caught his half-frowning glance over the daffodils and lifted her eyebrows to inquire.

Nothing, he said abruptly, just remembering an odd moment.

Wells, who was both cook and butler in these lean days, had been standing with his back to them, facing the buffet; he now broke an egg into hot water. She liked her egg poached, with a side serving of kippered herring. Wells, tall and erect in a worn gray uniform, was bone thin with age; his white hair was brushed carefully, his hands were still steady. He had been footman when Sir Richard was a boy and Lady Mary a small fair-haired girl in short white frocks. They were enchanted enemies in those days, he and she, their families distant neighbors, and Mary had pretended not to see Richard when he came with his mother to tea and showed off with handsprings and gymnastics when the two of them were sent out to play on the lawn.

Wells turned to reveal a long and melancholy face. Will you have an egg this morning, Sir Richard? With your kidney and bacon?

I will, thanks, he replied. I daresay Ill need it. Is Kate gone to the station yet?

Its a bit early, sir. Shes just dusting the great hall, preparatory to the American, sir.

Go and tell her shell be late.

Yes, Sir Richard.

The old man left the room, coping bravely with a slight limp. Silence fell. Lady Mary drank her tea, gazing reflectively at the daffodils. Sir Richard buttered his toast and glanced at her.

I say, my dear, youll meet with us, you know.

For a moment he thought she would not break her silence. Then she spoke, her voice still high and sweet and oddly youthful with the hair now white.

I hadnt thought I should. Must I?

I shant want to meet him alone, he said.

Did you telephone Philip Webster?

By Jove, I forgot! He leapt to his feet and was halfway to the door when she spoke again.

I telephoned him.

He paused. What? I say, that was good of you! I dont know why I forgot

You wont need me if hes here.

Yes, I shall. Moral support. Websters such a pessimist convinced the worst will happen, and I am too easily convinced.

He sat down again. Somehow once the conversation was begun, he wanted to keep it going. It was Webster who thought of this business with the American. Hell push me. Hell tell me the country is doomed and the castle with it and all that rot.

She poured a second cup of tea. Why he should have found the American, of all people! Perhaps it was because your father sold the two paintings from the ballroom to an American the year we were married. But that was so long ago! Remember? To pay for our honeymoon tour, Im afraid, poor dear!

I paid for the honeymoon, Sir Richard said flatly. It was the ballrooms he paid for. Everything for the land, in those days, he went on, grumbling. He scrimped me to the bone at Oxford. A lot of good it did! The land was never better, but its still not enough, unless we modernize. And taxes! I thought when we let the damned public come in we might be saved. Nothing is enough, it seems. Government wants everything.

She spread marmalade on a bit of toast. Yes, it was the paintings reminded Philip. Fancy his resorting to an American otherwise!

He was suddenly irritable. The pounding headache, to which he had become liable in the last year, had attacked him again. Stop complaining about what I cannot help, he said sharply.

Out in the hall Wells stood in disapproval of his granddaughter. Kate, youre wanted. They think youll be late.

Yes, Granddad, just one more minute, please.

She was dusting the cabinet of heavy oak, English oak, carved with the royal arms. Five hundred years the castle had been the home of royalty and then it had been given to the Sedgeley family, and another five hundred years had passed. Kate dreamed through the centuries while she worked day after day, remembering the books she had pored over in the library during the years she had been growing up in the castle. They had spoiled her, Sir Richard and Lady Mary, making a pet of her and then sending her to school in London, when her grandfather was only the butler. They had spoiled her as they had her father, Colin, who had grown up in the castle too. He had refused to go properly into service as footman under his father; instead he had run off to London, had been an artist for awhile, then when the war came along joined the Air Force and got himself trained as a pilot