The Treasure of Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  “Would you agree?” she asked.

  “About what?”

  “Writing . . . history writing being different from other kinds, requiring less inquiry.”

  “Less inquiry, Miss Edwards? Heavens no! Good history requires more inquiry than any other kind of writing.”

  “Is history the only writing you’ve ever done?” she asked.

  Again, the question seemed to throw him momentarily.

  “Why . . . yes . . . er, history is, of course . . . it’s my field.”

  “So you’ve never thought of trying your hand at something else, a contemporary article . . . the here and now, rather than ancient Greece?”

  “No . . . that is to say, I’m not sure I quite understand you. As I said, my field is history, and that is what I write about.”

  Hilary let the subject drop. It was leading her nowhere, although Jameson did seem flustered by her questions. There was more to him than met the eye, and she was determined to uncover it. He too, like the viscount, was full of questions.

  “But, Miss Edwards,” he went on before Hilary could decide what tack to take next, “I find myself puzzled by one thing. If this Lady Joanna—Macintyre’s mother-in-law, I believe it was—if she came to you, identified herself as your grandmother, gave you her family locket, entrusted you with her precious journal, apparently had documents to show the legal connection . . . in the face of all that, why is there this apparent doubt in the minds of the Macintyres as to the veracity of your position?”

  “You know about the locket?” Hilary’s tone was sharp, and she looked intently into Jameson’s face.

  “It must have been Macintyre who told me about it, and the journal.”

  “Then he must also have told you that the locket has apparently been lost . . .”

  A grave look passed over Jameson’s face.

  “ . . . or if not lost, then misplaced. In any case, it’s not in my room. And Lady Joanna’s dead, so no one knows of the ‘legal connections,’ as you put it. There were no documents. Yes, there is the journal, but the ending pages of it are missing. If they reveal anything about the search she made and her reasons for undertaking it after Jo had already arrived, that knowledge is lost to the rest of us.”

  “Has there been a search initiated for the locket or the missing pages?”

  “Not a formal one, to my knowledge,” replied Hilary. For a moment she considered bringing up the late visitor to her wing of the house the previous night, but then thought better of it. “As to the missing pages,” she went on, “no one’s ever seen them. There’s no evidence to suggest that there are pages definitely missing. When I said that, I was perhaps saying more than I should have. I only assume she must have written more than she sent me.”

  Jameson nodded, in apparent thought. “That is interesting,” he mused. “If we could just find that part of the journal,” he added in a mumbling tone almost to himself.

  “Now you seem the one with the over-inquisitive mind,” said Hilary playfully, but with design behind her light tone. “Are you sure you only write history? If I didn’t know better, I might think you were a mystery buff.”

  “What’s that! A mystery buff? Ridiculous!” replied Jameson, flustered. “I tell you I’m nothing but a dull Greek historian.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute! There is more to you than you want to let on, Mr. Jameson. Or perhaps I should call you Dr. Jameson! Is that what your colleagues call you?”

  “No, no, please. Mr. will be fine.”

  “Then you must call me Hilary. No offense to history as a field of study, but I loathe the archaic modes of expression.”

  “I take it you must be quite the progressive woman, then . . . Hilary.”

  “Progressive? Perhaps. I don’t think of myself as a modernist, but on the other hand I don’t think my Creator expects me to wear black and walk dutifully ten paces behind a man, demurring to his every whim.”

  “God, you say?” said Jameson thoughtfully. “What is it you think God does expect from you?”

  “He gave me a good head on my shoulders, and some wits, and I think He expects me to use them,” she answered firmly. “Which is what I am trying to do as, if you’ll pardon the expression, a career woman. Beyond that, I think His highest expectation is that I love and serve Him without getting so muddled with the inconsequential.”

  “You sound like someone whose faith means a great deal to you.”

  “That’s because it does.”

  He gave her a quick, sidelong glance, which she pretended not to notice. However, she could not help but wonder at the cause for his apparent astonishment.

  “That’s very interesting,” he said, after pausing to give the statement deeper consideration. “A rare enough thing in today’s world.”

  They walked for a few paces in silence.

  “Look!” said Hilary suddenly, pointing ahead. “Isn’t that a wheatear?”

  All Jameson could see besides snow and shrubbery was a small bird perched upon a low branch sticking up out of the snow.

  “That bird over there?” he asked.

  “Yes. It’s really rather late in the year for it—most of the others must surely have migrated by now.”

  “I see you are an ornithologist as well,” commented Jameson.

  “Not really. I once covered an ornithology convention. Not very stimulating, I must admit, but I learned a few things in spite of myself.”

  They had stopped in their walking and Hilary continued to gaze at the little bird with interest. “There’s nothing like an outdoor hike on a cold day for invigorating the senses and making fascinating discoveries,” she said.

  “Walking is the one form of exercise I highly endorse,” agreed Jameson. “I try to walk several miles a day.”

  “Even at night?” The words escaped Hilary’s lips before she even knew it, though the question sounded casual.

  “If I find no other time,” he replied, faltering ever so slightly—as if he had sensed her motive in the question, or as if he was thinking of hiding something.

  “I saw you out last night,” said Hilary, plunging ahead.

  “It is—walking, you know—an excellent antidote to insomnia.” There was a trace of something in his tone, Hilary thought, a slight inflection that sounded too glib for truth.

  “You have trouble sleeping?”

  “Occasionally. And so must you if you were also up at that hour.”

  “I have ever since I arrived here. Does prowling through the hallways cure insomnia just like the outside air?”

  “My, but you are suspicious!” he replied with a laugh. Was it a nervous laugh or an innocent one? Hilary couldn’t tell. “Prowling, Hilary? Come now, I was merely walking off the effects of my journey, hoping not to disturb anyone. So I purposely avoided any contact with those who were trying to sleep.”

  A very plausible explanation, thought Hilary to herself. Who can tell, maybe it is even the truth. They began walking again.

  It was the professor who first spoke.

  “Logan tells me you were reluctant to come in the first place, even after speaking with Lady Joanna?”

  Hilary looked askance at Jameson. Everyone around here seemed filled with questions!

  “Lady Joanna’s revelations came as a great shock to me,” she replied finally. “I simply could not imagine myself part of such a—well, this kind of family.”

  “This kind of family . . . ?”

  “Aristocrats, you know. I had the commonest of upbringings.”

  “Rags to riches—what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, I suppose, for fairy tales. But I happen to think the nobility is archaic. There’s my two pence worth of your history! Perhaps a noble institution for two hundred years ago. Outmoded and even dangerous today.”

  “Pretty strong words.”

  “I believe them.”

  “So you couldn’t face the fact that maybe you were an aristocrat yourself?”

  “Imagine th
e shock.”

  “I get your point,” he replied, an amused smile hidden from view.

  “And not just plain aristocrats, mind you. This family lives in a 400-year-old castle, entertains the Queen Mother, and occupies a seat in the Shadow Cabinet!”

  “But as I understand it, Logan is the one member of the family who is of common stock.” He cleared his throat dryly, as if he had made a point. “So if you turn out to be a member of this family, you will be only half an aristocrat.”

  “That’s quite enough, thank you.”

  “You do have a serious problem about this, don’t you? For a seemingly open, Christian, modern young woman, I must admit that surprises me. I admittedly do not know you very well, Hilary, but it smacks of prejudice.”

  “A class-conscious society, my dear Mr. Jameson, is doomed to extinction in this age. And Britain is one of the great class-bound societies of the world, though we refuse to admit it.”

  “That almost hints of Marxism.” His tone was not argumentative, at least much less so than Hilary’s. But he sounded as if he enjoyed the prospect of a debate.

  “I would never go that far,” replied Hilary. “But you must admit that when the masses are repressed, it’s only a matter of time before the fabric of society bursts apart at the seams.”

  “We have survived as a nation longer than just about any other on earth.”

  “Yes, but just look at Victorian England,” said Hilary, “when British power was at its apex throughout the world. The squalor of the majority of the population was reprehensible—all while the nobility amassed huge wealth.”

  “But when did British world dominance begin to collapse?” he asked, then went on to answer his own question, still in a casual tone. This was no argument to him, merely an exercise in logic. “In the twentieth century, coming on the heels of sweeping social reform, enfranchisement, and the welfare state.”

  “You blame that on the lower classes!”

  “Not at all.” He smiled. “But I think you would blame the nobility for just the opposite reaction.”

  “Whose fault is it, then?”

  “Must blame be apportioned at all?” queried Jameson rhetorically. “If so, perhaps it ought to be taken to a higher plane—that of spiritual need, of the depravity of man.”

  “Spoken like one who also possesses spiritual convictions. But even accepting what you say, there is still something intrinsically wrong with a system that says one person is higher than another on some arbitrary scale of worth simply by chance of birth.”

  “Nam genus et proavose et quæ non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco,” was Ashley’s reply.

  “I don’t understand a word of Latin,” groaned Hilary ruefully, “but I have the feeling my argument has just been doomed.”

  “Hardly,” chuckled Jameson. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying Hilary’s discomfiture. “You see, even Ovid agreed with you: ‘Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own.’ And I wouldn’t say that I don’t agree also. But it would be a mistake to thoughtlessly throw it out altogether. They tried that in France, and the Reign of Terror was the answer. The nobility may have been corrupt, but Robespierre was nothing but a terrorist. It has nothing to do with class, Hilary. It has instead to do with the state of a man’s heart.”

  “I see your point,” she answered reluctantly. “But what benefit then does the aristocracy have at all?”

  “Perhaps it has more to do with aesthetics than politics. Think of the nobility as a thread in the larger fabric of society. Don’t judge right or wrong, but rather consider what would happen if you pulled out that thread suddenly. The warp and woof of the cloth itself would be noticeably weakened, as it would if any other thread were removed. What would happen to society if suddenly there were no laborers, or if you took away the educational system, or if Parliament suddenly ceased to exist? The nobility is the same—it’s an intrinsic part of what makes society function—with its good points and its bad points, like every other aspect of civilization.”

  “You seem to have thought this through very carefully.”

  “History does have its contemporary application. But in another way, it’s all just a matter of simple logic.”

  “I don’t know—you sound like something more than an impartial proponent of the aristocratic order.”

  “Perhaps I am a bit of a traditionalist. I suppose I have even been accused of being stuffy by some. That’s what comes of being hidden away in a place like Oxford.”

  Something in his tone seemed to indicate this admission of stuffiness was a smoke screen. That there was more to this man, there could be no doubt. Hilary hated to admit it, but she rather liked his style. He was so confident and self-assured, but with such an absence of pretense, that he could not help but be intriguing. Still, she reminded herself, she could not drop her guard.

  Hilary’s reverie was interrupted as Jameson spoke again, maneuvering the conversation back to its original point.

  “I think I now begin to understand the answer to my original question about your reluctance in coming to Stonewycke,” he said. “But then, what did finally change your mind?”

  Hilary thought for a moment. That was not easy to say. She still wasn’t sure herself. “I suppose,” she answered at length, “that I found myself having to confront my own prejudice, as you so pointedly put it. Part of me still feels as I always have about the nobility. But then another piece of me way down inside, the part of me that does want to be open, says, ‘Maybe you haven’t thought through the whole story yet, Hilary!’ Perhaps it’s my conscience. But whatever it is, that little voice has been growing stronger recently. And one day, as I was wrestling with what Lady Joanna said, and with what I knew of Logan Macintyre from my professional dealings with him, that little voice stood up and shouted, ‘Go to Scotland!’”

  “I see . . . very interesting.”

  They had by now come back to the castle grounds and were just approaching the little footbridge.

  They walked back toward the front door to the house. Theirs were still the only footprints across the snow on the lawn. After a few more moments of light conversation, they opened the door.

  38

  A Visit to Town

  “Ah, Jameson . . . Fraulein Edwards!” exclaimed von Burchardt as they walked in. “We were hoping to meet up with you!”

  Behind him stood Logan and Jo, bundling up with overcoats and scarves. “We were just heading out,” said Logan. “If the two of you are game, we thought we’d drive to town and have a look at Emil’s yacht.”

  “Sounds like an interesting proposal,” replied Jameson, “although I must admit my feet are nearly frozen. We’ve just been out for a tromp through the fields to the east of the castle—beautiful enough, but covered with snow!”

  “Yes, please,” shivered Hilary, hardly noticing the cold until she was now back inside. “Do let us warm up a few minutes first!”

  “I’ll go and tell Flora to have some hot tea waiting for us when we return,” said Logan. He left while the others continued with readying and warming. In a few moments he returned from the direction of the kitchen.

  “And Mrs. Macintyre?” asked Jameson. “Will she be joining us?”

  “I’m afraid not. She went back to her room to lie down. Well . . . shall we?” he said, indicating the door with his hand.

  Five minutes later the five were seated in Logan’s gray Mercedes, Jameson, his long legs pulled up in front of him, seated between Hilary and Jo in the backseat, von Burchardt keeping Logan company in the front. Snow still covered the estate driveway, broken only by the tracks made earlier by the viscount as he walked up the hill from town, and Logan inched along carefully. When they reached the highway, however, the road was clear down into the village. Logan parked in front of the Bluster ’N Blow, and the small party made their way toward the harbor. It was obvious immediately which boat was von Burchardt’s.

  Pure white, sleek, some eighty feet i
n length, the yacht boasted the daintiest of little portholes just above the level of the water indicating cabins below, and an upper deck, mostly open, around which a three-foot high rope railing stretched. About two-thirds of the way toward the bow rose the enclosed control room, surrounded on all sides by spacious windows from which the crew could maintain a 360-degree lookout.

  “I say, Burchardt!” exclaimed Logan. “Good show! She’s positively stunning—easily the most magnificent craft ever to grace our little harbor!”

  “Coming from you, sir, I take that as the profoundest of compliments!” replied the viscount graciously. “Come, I’ll take you all aboard.”

  He led the way, offering Hilary his hand, which she took to step up onto the deck. Jo followed, assisted by Jameson, and finally Logan stepped aboard.

  “Oh!” squealed Jo with delight, “it’s a shame we can’t take her out!”

  “What kind of repairs are you making?” asked Logan.

  “Oh, nothing much really,” replied von Burchardt. “In fact, the crew is mostly finished, and I gave them the day off.”

  “It looks shipshape enough,” said Jameson. “Why, I don’t see any evidence of work at all.”

  “Tut, tut, Professor,” said the viscount. “Merely internal difficulties. Nothing visible to the novice.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I have a look around?”

  “Not at all! Make yourself at home!”

  Meanwhile, Logan had wandered toward the control room, while Hilary peered down the narrow stairs which led below deck.

  “Would you like to see the cabins?” asked von Burchardt, offering Hilary his hand. “But hold on tightly, these steps are steep.”

  They made their way slowly downstairs, followed by Jo. Jameson, in the meantime, meandered toward the stern of the craft, then made his way to the back railing and stooped down and peered over the edge. Walking toward it from the dock he had noted the yacht’s registration sticker and identifying numbers. Now he examined them more closely. When he stood up a moment later, ruminating to himself, he mumbled something inaudible and rubbed his hand across his face in puzzlement. Spying Logan fore, he walked briskly toward him, but was interrupted by the three others as they emerged from below.