id:9936172
Maggie Peters's Journal
January 5, 2009 (cont.)
Dinner was a formal affair. Renfield (that was the name of the hooked nose man) appeared to be the only person in Grayson's service. We were served an excellent roast chicken, with some cheese and salad. Grayson opened the sherry and when none of the rest of us would take any poured himself a glass. My friends and I drank what my grandmother would call 'bubbly water', also known as carbonated water. I didn't have a taste for the stuff, and was left feeling quite thirsty.
The dimensions of the dining hall were tiresome. The walls were barely far enough from the table to get into one's chair.
The decor was similar to that of the house - antiquated. The mahogany table held delicate china plates and a wide array of utensils and other such dinner wares. They were unmarred by use, though they were clearly quite old. Apparently Mr. Grayson rarely had visitors. I ran finger discreetly over the table top. Dust coated the skin of my forefinger.
Alton noticed as I wiped my hands on the satin napkins. Simultaneously, he good-naturedly whispered "The plot thickens", and I threw the napkin back onto the table in surprise at the texture.
"Problem?" Mr. Grayson asked from his place at the head of the table. Annie sat to his immediate right, Conner next to her, Alton to Grayson's left, and me opposite Conner, closest to the exit.
"Miss Peters dislikes satin." Alton said for me.
"Dislikes is a mild way to describe it." Annie scoffed. She turned to Mr. Grayson. "She loathes satin. It's personality quirk."
Conner's phone went off in his pocket, thankfully averting advancement into the subject. He pulled it out with mumbled apologies. "Huh."
"What is it?" Annie asked.
Conner poked his tongue in his cheek. The phone still rang. "It's dad. Do you mind?" He gestured the phone at Mr. Grayson.
"By all means." Grayson smiled. Conner stood and walked to the corner of the room.
"Hello? Dad. No, no we're not at Alton's. Yes, we made it safely. We're having dinner. No, dinner, Dad. Mr. Grayson." He lowered his voice. "Yes, the billionaire Grayson. No. Yes. No. Okay, I will. What's up?" Annie and Alton turned in their chairs to watch him.
Grayson took the opportunity to study me. I drew myself up straighter under his discriminating gaze. The rim of the glass rested a breath away from his lips in a tantalizing fashion. My heart pounded violently against my rib cage. Grayson's smile deepened as though he could hear it.
"Everything alright DeLeroy?" His eyes never left mine.
I heard the swish as Conner ended his phone call and shuffled back to his seat. "I'm not sure." Conner turned to Alton. "Dad said there was a huge storm headed our way. Some kind of hurricane."
"It's not the season!" protested Annie. "And it's too far north."
"Climate change," Alton reminded her.
"Liberal conspiracy. Global warming," Conner muttered.
Annie rolled her eyes. "Careful, Conner. Your Southern is showing."
Alton pulled out his own phone and pressed the weather app. "Prevailing winds at 60 mph., heavy rains at ninety percent chance, flood warning along the coast posted indefinitely," he read aloud.
Imperceptibly, Grayson raised his glass to me, took the sip, and returned his attention to the others.
"The house Alton. It's so low. We'll be swamped," Conner groaned.
Goose-bumps rose up on my skin.
I turned in a fright to Alton. "We should - "
"Stay. You should stay the night. An excellent idea Miss Peters." Panic set in. "You may stay the night here, if you'd like," he continued. "I have ample room for each of you. We're up on higher ground, so you will be safer. In fact, I insist you stay. Your parents would never forgive me if I let their children go home to such a potentially dangerous situation."
I closed my eyes trying to fend off the alarm. With my world black it was easier to believe that Mr. Grayson was just an eccentric man. He couldn't control the weather any more than Alton could predict the lottery. He was being hospitable and a good neighbor. We were the ones who had called on him originally, after all.
"I'm not so sure about staying with a man with barred windows." Annie was poking fun, but there was a challenge in voice.
"I see," Mr. Grayson said, sounding somewhat embarrassed. An awkward silence fell over our entourage.
Annie cleared her throat. "I'm sorry Mr. Grayson, I -"
"No, no it's quite alright Miss Sterling." He sighed. "You want to know my secrets."
My eyes reopened, keenly anticipating Mr. Grayson's next words.
He stood and faced the wall, hands clasped behind his back. I noticed he had excellent posture, the like of which was not to be found in our generation.
"Hm." His head cocked to the side, contemplating. "I have many homes, but this is the one I am most fond of. You see, I choose my homes based on the richness of their history. The air you currently breathe was once breathed by the affluent,clinically insane nearly seventy years ago. I've had the place renovated to suit my needs, but the windows and window treatments I have preserved in honor of the memory of what it once was. There it is Miss Sterling, I am a hopeless romantic." He turned back to us looking astoundingly beside himself with discomfort. He ran a hand through his hair.
"Shall I give you further proof of my unfortunate temperament? The third story of my home is dedicated entirely to a modest library. Each shelf is packed with books, which I read every day. Renfield can attest to this. I shy away from my peers because I find them to be excessively uninteresting compared to the company of Twain, Dickens, and Poe. I am unmarried, and without a lover, because my late wife died of an unfortunate accident, and I am still in mourning." Here Annie gasped. Her hand flew to her heart. "My considerable wealth comes from my stock in the British Petroleum, my investment in Nissan, and a variety of patents. I am older than I look, and I feel older still. Why did I invite you into my home, in spite of knowing your reasons for coming to see me - to look upon the elusive billionaire? I'm not sure."
Conner was red in the face, Annie had tears in her eyes, and Alton stared blankly into his lap.
"I suppose I should have listened to the Poe adage, 'Leave my loneliness unbroken.'" His hand went out to the wall, as if he were in need of its support. Twice he had brought up Poe. I thought how this was ironic considering Annie had noted that his house was like something out of a Poe novel. It wasn't until after that when I saw the cleverness of his hand.
I found the performance melodramatic, but it was masterfully done. He had Conner and Annie, hook and sinker. Alton was my last remaining lifeline, but I could tell that he was not wholly unaffected by Grayson's words either.
"No!" Annie cried standing to her feet in a flash. Her chair made an awful noise as it scratched at the finish on the floors. "Mr. Grayson, we have behaved shamelessly. You have been a kind host and it is now clear to us that you are an honorable man. Please, forgive me. Forgive us." Conner stood with her, nodding. Alton followed in turn, seeming a bit put out. But I remained sitting. Watching.
She flung out her hand to us. "We were insensitive. I am sorry. We're sorry. We want to be your friends. Isn't there something we can do to prove it?" She took a tentative step closer to him.
Grayson took his hand away from the wall. He twisted his body to face her. His face utterly calm, he strode over to her, grabbed her hand gently and kissed it ever so softly.
"Miss Sterling, I would consider it an affront to my character if you had to strive to prove your friendship. All is forgiven."
Annie drew back her hand with a slight blush on her cheeks. "You will stay with me until the storm is over," Grayson told Alton.
Alton shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Thank you Mr. Grayson. We are indebted," was all he could say.
"Let us retreat to the parlor while Renfield cleans up and prepares your rooms." Renfield appeared in the doorway. "I am in such good spirits, I may treat you young gentlemen to some cigars." Grayson clapped Conner on the shoulder and drew him out of the room. Annie brightened up immediately and followed after them.
"An insane asylum!" She winked at me on her way out. "Of all the things."
Alton sighed deeply and trudged out of the room looking altogether defeated.
My gaze flicked toward Renfield who had started cleaning up. "Let me help you." I started to pick up a plate, but Renfield grabbed it with surprising deftness for an old man.
"I can manage." Renfield said.
"Please. Where I'm from if you help eat the meal, you help clean it."
Renfield paused mid-reach for a dish. "I think it would be best if you joined the others in the parlor."
The rebuff stung. With my head drooping low, I stood up and walked out of the room.
The hallway was poorly lit. There were no overhead lights, a sign of the age of the house. The gas lights that lined the walls. There were few landscape paintings and no photographs. The hallways ran tight and long.
Uncertain which way they went, I walked in the general direction we'd come in. The dining hall was on the second story. I stopped about halfway down the hall in front of massive glass window - the largest and most detailed I'd seen. Rain had started coming down. It splattered the glass noisily from outside.
The glass depicted a scene of a turret of a castle looking out over a vast green moor. A girl, raven haired dressed in an elegant white dress leaned out of the one window at the top of the tower as though searching the lands below.
"Miss Peters."
I jumped back and muffled a gasp. "Mr. Grayson. You startled me." The yellow light made him look ghoulish.
He looked at the glass. "May I tell you something?"
I bit my lower lip. "If you must."
His lips quirked upward. "This is the true reason I bought the house. This glass."
"It's beautiful." I conceded. I perused him. "The true reason implying that what you said at dinner was a lie?"
He pursed his lips, but offered nothing to the contrary.
"All good lies are ninety percent truth and ten percent falsity." I quoted as I reached out to run the back of my fingers over the cool of the glass. "Does she remind you of your wife?"
The change that came over him was evident. His manner had been beguiling. Suddenly he became cold.
"Do you ever consider the rain Miss Peters?"
"What of it?"
He stuck out his finger and traced the path of a water drop as it slid down the back of the pane.
"Thirst can be measured. There is a spectrum in which your level of thirst falls, from somewhat thirsty to parched. When the ground is thirsty it waits for rain. Sometimes it waits and waits, but the rain never comes. The nutrients in the ground will die from lack of water. Is the rain cruel?"
"The rain isn't sentient."
"Then the thirst of the ground is irrelevant?"
"It's neither here nor there. Nature isn't inherently good or evil."
"So nature is amoral?" He stopped tracing the water droplet. His smirk caused me to shiver. "Man is a part of nature is he not? If nature is amoral, then so is man."
"You're twisting my words. Man is a sentient being. He can understand the difference between right and wrong."
"The best lies are ninety percent truth and ten percent falsehood," he mocked me. "What does the ground need?"
"Water."
"If the rain does not come how will the ground get the water?"
"It won't."
"Wrong." Grayson's eyes were alight with a passionate fire. A fire which drew me in and repulsed me all the same. "Man will till the earth, and bring water from his reservoirs to the ground that the ground may be fruitful."
I thought this over. "But because his reservoirs are limited man will only bring water to the land that he needs to survive."
"And there in lies the truth you've been searching for." Grayson squinted at the glass. "Take her to her room for the night please, Renfield."
I was hardly stunned by the sudden appearance of Renfield behind me.
"Yes, sir."
Grayson turned his back on me, the words, "Good night, Miss Peters. Sleep well," issuing from him as he disappeared down the hall.