Moon-like, a large, snub-featured face appeared at the car window, smiling round the chewed butt of a cigar.
“Oh, it’s you, Clancy,” said Mr. Stoyte. “Why didn’t they tell me you were here?” he went on. His face had flushed darkly; he was frowning and a muscle in his cheek had begun to twitch. “I don’t like having strange cars around. Do you hear, Peters?” he almost screamed at his chauffeur—not because it was the man’s business, of course; simply because he happened to be there, available. “Do you hear, I say?” Then, suddenly, he remembered what Dr. Obispo had said to him that time he had lost his temper with the fellow. “Do you really want to shorten your life, Mr. Stoyte?” The doctor’s tone had been one of cool amusement; he had smiled with an expression of politely sarcastic indulgence. “Are you absolutely bent on having a stroke? A second stroke, remember; and you won’t get off so lightly next time. Well, if so, then go on behaving as you’re doing now. Go on.” With an enormous effort of will, Mr. Stoyte swallowed his anger. “God is love,” he said to himself. “There is no death.” The late Prudence McGladdery Stoyte had been a Christian Scientist. “God is love,” he said again, and reflected that, if people would only stop being so exasperating, he would never have to lose his temper. “God is love.” It was all their fault.
Clancy, meanwhile, had left his car and, grotesquely pot-bellied over spindly legs, was coming up the steps, mysteriously smiling and winking, as he approached.
“What is it?” Mr. Stoyte inquired, and wished to God the man wouldn’t make those faces. “Oh, by the way,” he added, “this is Mr. . . . Mr. . . .”
“Pordage,” said Jeremy.
Clancy was pleased to meet him. The hand he gave to Jeremy was disagreeably sweaty.
“I got some news for you,” said Clancy in a hoarse conspiratorial whisper; and, speaking behind his hand, so that his words and the smell of cigar should be for Mr. Stoyte alone, “You remember Tittelbaum?” he added.
“That chap in the City Engineer’s Department?”
Clancy nodded. “One of the boys,” he affirmed enigmatically, and again winked.
“Well, what about him?” asked Mr. Stoyte; and in spite of God’s being love, there was a note in his voice of renascent exasperation.
Clancy shot a glance at Jeremy Pordage; then, with the elaborate by-play of Guy Fawkes talking to Catesby on the stage of a provincial theatre, he took Mr. Stoyte by the arm and led him a few feet away, up the steps. “Do you know what Tittelbaum told me today?” he asked rhetorically.
“How the devil should I know?” (But no, no. God is love. There is no death.)
Undeterred by the signs of Mr. Stoyte’s irritation, Clancy went on with his performance. “He told me what they’ve decided about . . .” he lowered his voice still further, “about the San Felipe Valley.”
“Well, what have they decided?” Once more Mr. Stoyte was at the limits of his patience.
Before answering, Clancy removed the cigar butt from his mouth, threw it away, produced another cigar out of his waistcoat pocket, tore off the cellophane wrapping and stuck it, unlighted, in the place occupied by the old one.
“They’ve decided,” he said very slowly, so as to give each word its full dramatic effect, “they’ve decided to pipe the water into it.”
Mr. Stoyte’s expression of exasperation gave place at last to one of interest. “Enough to irrigate the whole valley?” he asked.
“Enough to irrigate the whole valley,” Clancy repeated with solemnity.
Mr. Stoyte was silent for a moment. “How much time have we got?” he asked at last.
“Tittelbaum thought the news wouldn’t break for another six weeks.”
“Six weeks?” Mr. Stoyte hesitated for a moment; then made his decision. “All right. Get busy at once,” he said with the peremptory manners of one accustomed to command. “Go down yourself and take a few of the other boys along with you. Independent purchasers—interested in cattle raising; want to start a Dude Ranch. Buy all you can. What’s the price, by the way?”
“Averages twelve dollars an acre.”
“Twelve,” Mr. Stoyte repeated, and reflected that it would go to a hundred as soon as they started laying the pipe. “How many acres do you figure you can get?” he asked.
“Maybe thirty thousand.”
Mr. Stoyte’s face beamed with satisfaction. “Good,” he said briskly. “Very good. No mention of my name, of course,” he added, and then, without pause or transition: “What’s Tittelbaum going to cost?”
Clancy smiled contemptuously. “Oh, I’ll give him four or five hundred bucks.”
“That all?”
The other nodded. “Tittelbaum’s in the bargain basement,” he said. “Can’t afford to ask any fancy prices. He needs the money—needs it awful bad,”
“What for?” asked Mr. Stoyte, who had a professional interest in human nature. “Gambling? Women?”
Clancy shook his head. “Doctors” he explained. “He’s got a kid that’s paralysed.”
“Paralysed?” Mr. Stoyte echoed in a tone of genuine sympathy. “That’s too bad.” He hesitated for a moment; then, in a sudden burst of generosity, “Tell him to send the kid here,” he went on, making a large gesture towards the hospital. “Best place in the State for infantile paralysis, and it won’t cost him anything. Not a red cent.”
“Hell, that’s kind of you, Mr. Stoyte,” said Clancy admiringly. “That’s real kind.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Mr. Stoyte, as he moved towards his car. “I’m glad to be able to do it. Remember what it says in the Bible about children. You know,” he added, “I get a real kick out of being with those poor kids in there. Makes you feel kind of warm inside.” He patted the barrel of his chest. “Tell Tittelbaum to send in an application for the kid. Send it to me personally. I’ll see that it goes through at once.” He climbed into the car and shut the door after him; then, catching sight of Jeremy, opened it again without a word. Mumbling apologetically, Jeremy scrambled in. Mr. Stoyte slammed the door once more, lowered the glass and looked out.
“So long,” he said. “And don’t lose any time about that San Felipe business. Make a good job of it, Clancy, and I’ll let you have ten per cent of all the acreage over twenty thousand.” He raised the window and signalled to the chauffeur to start. The car swung out of the drive and headed towards the castle. Leaning back in his seat, Mr. Stoyte thought of those poor kids and the money he would make out of the San Felipe business. “God is love,” he said yet once more, with momentary conviction and again, in a whisper that was audible to his companion. “God is love.” Jeremy felt more uncomfortable than ever.
The drawbridge came down as the blue Cadillac approached, the chromium portcullis went up, the gates of the inner rampart rolled back to let it pass. On the concrete tennis court, the seven children of the Chinese cook were roller-skating. Below, in the sacred grotto, a group of masons were at work. At the sight of them, Mr. Stoyte shouted to the chauffeur to stop.
“They’re putting up a tomb for some nuns,” he said to Jeremy as they got out of the car.
“Some nuns?” Jeremy echoed in surprise.
Mr. Stoyte nodded and explained that his Spanish agents had bought some sculpture and iron work from the chapel of a convent that had been wrecked by the anarchists at the beginning of the civil war. “They sent some nuns along too,” he added. “Embalmed, I guess. Or maybe just sun-dried. I don’t know. Anyhow, there they are. Luckily I happened to have something nice to put them in.” He pointed to the monument which the masons were in process of fixing to the south wall of the grotto. On a marble shelf above a large Roman sarcophagus were the statues by some nameless Jacobean stonemason of a gentleman and lady, both in ruffs, kneeling, and behind them in three rows of three, nine daughters diminishing from adolescence to infancy. “Hie jacet Carolus Franciscus Beals, Armiger . . .” Jeremy began to read.
“Bought it in England, two years ago,” said Mr. Stoyte, interrupting him. Then, turning to the workmen, “When will you boys be through?” he asked.
“Tomorrow noon. Maybe tonight.”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” said Mr. Stoyte, and turned away. “I must have those nuns taken out of storage,” he said, as they walked back to the car.
They drove on. Poised on the almost invisible vibration of its wings, a humming bird was drinking at the jet that spouted from the left nipple of Giambologna’s nymph. From the enclosure of the baboons came the shrill noise of battle and copulation. Mr. Stoyte shut his eyes. “God is love,” he repeated, trying deliberately to prolong the delightful condition of euphoria into which those poor kids and Clancy’s good news had plunged him. “God is love. There is no death.” He waited to feel that sense of inward warmth, like the after-effect of whisky, which had followed his previous utterance of the words. Instead, as though some immanent fiend were playing a practical joke on him, he found himself thinking of the shrunken leathery corpses of those nuns, and of his own corpse, and of judgment and the flames. Prudence McGladdery Stoyte had been a Christian Scientist; but Joseph Budge Stoyte, his father, had been a Sandemanian; and Letitia Morgan, his maternal grandmother, had lived and died a Plymouth Sister. Over his cot in the attic room of the little frame house in Nashville, Tennessee, had hung the text, in
