“Power is turning a key in a lock?” Daniel asked, fuddled and fascinated in equal measure.
“It is to feel the consequences of one’s actions spread through the world. There is a picture downstairs — you may have noted it: Napoleon Musing at St. Helena, by Benjamin Haydon. He stands on a cliff, facing a garish sunset, and his shadow is thrown behind him, a huge shadow. Two seabirds circle in the void before him. And that is all. But it says everything, to me.” He fell into a considering silence, and then resumed: “It is an illusion, I suppose. All pleasures are, in the end, and all visions too. But it’s a powerful illusion, and it is what I offer you.”
“Thank you,” said Daniel.
Grandison Whiting lifted a questioning eyebrow.
Daniel smiled, by way of explanation. “Thank you. I can’t see any reason to go on being coy. I’m gratefuclass="underline" I accept. That is, if Boa will have me.”
“Done,” said Whiting, and held out his hand.
“Assuming,” he was careful to add, even as they shook on it, “that there are no strings attached.”
“I can’t promise that. But where there is agreement as to principle, a contract can always be negotiated. Shall we invite Bobo to join us now?”
“Sure. Though she can be a bit grouchy when she just wakes up.”
“Oh, I doubt she would have gone to sleep. After he’d accompanied you here, Roberts brought Bobo to my secretary’s office, where she has been able to observe our entire tête-a-tête over the closed circuit tv.” He looked over his shoulder and addressed the hidden camera (which must have been trained on Daniel all this while): “Your ordeal is over now, Bobo dear, so why don’t you join us?”
Daniel thought back over what he’d said to Whiting and decided that none of it was incriminating.
“I hope you don’t mind?” Whiting added, turning back to Daniel.
“Mind? It’s Boa who’ll mind. Me, I’m past being shocked. After all I’ve lived at Spirit Lake. The walls have ears there too. You haven’t bugged my room at home, have you?”
“No. Though my security officer advised me to.”
“I don’t suppose you’d tell me if you had.”
“Of course not.” He smiled, and there were those bony teeth again. “But you can take my word for it.”
When Boa arrived upon the scene, she was, as Daniel had predicted, in a temper over her father’s meddling (over, at least, the manner of it), but she was also pleased to be all at once engaged with a whole new set of destinies and decisions. Planning was Boa’s forte. Even as the champagne bubbled in her glass, she’d begun to consider the question of a date, and before the bottle was empty they’d settled on October 31. They both loved Halloween, and a Halloween wedding it was to be, with jack-o-lanterns everywhere, and the bride and groom in black and orange, and the wedding cake itself an orange cake, which was her favorite kind anyhow. Also (this was Grandison’s contribution) the wedding guests would be able to stay on for a fox hunt. It had been years since there had been a proper hunt at Worry, and nothing was so sure to bring Alethea round to a cheerful sense of the occasion.
“And then, after the wedding?” Grandison Whiting asked, as he untwisted the wire fixed to the cork of the second bottle.
“After the wedding Daniel shall carry me off whithersoever he will for our honeymoon. Isn’t that lovely: whithersoever?”
“And then?” he insisted, thumbing the cork.
“Then, after a suitable interval, we shall be fruitful and multiply. Starting off this early, we should be able to produce litters and litters of little Weinrebs. But you mean, don’t you, what will we do?”
The cork popped, and Whiting refilled the three glasses.
“It does occur to me that you’ll have rather a gap to fill before the next academic year begins.”
“That assumes, Father, that our years will continue to be of the academic variety.”
“Oh, you must both get your degrees. That goes without saying. You’ve already settled on Harvard — wisely — and I’m sure room can be found there for Daniel too. So you needn’t alter your plans in that respect. Only defer them.”
“Have you asked Daniel if he wants to go to Harvard?”
“Daniel, do you want to go to Harvard?”
“I know I ought to. But where I really did want to go was the Boston Conservatory of Music. But they turned me down.”
“Fairly, do you think?”
“Sure, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. I just wasn’t ‘accomplished’ enough.”
“Yes, that was my sister-in-law’s opinion, too. She said you’d done wonders for the short time you’d studied, and in view of the fact that you evidenced no innate talent for music.”
“Oof,” said Daniel.
“Did you think we never spoke of you?”
“No. But that’s a pretty deflating opinion. The more so because it’s very close to what someone else once said, someone who was also… knowledgeable.”
“On the whole, Harriet thought very highly of you. But she didn’t think you were cut out for a career in music. Not a very satisfying career at any rate.”
“She never said that to me,” Boa objected.
“Surely because she knew you’d have passed it on to Daniel. She had no wish to wound his feelings gratuitously.”
“Then why are you telling him, Father?”
“To persuade him to make other plans. Don’t suppose, Daniel, that I’d have you give up music. You couldn’t, I’m sure. It is a passion, perhaps a ruling passion. But you needn’t become a professional musician to be serious about music. Witness Miss Marspan. Or if she seems too dessicated to serve as a model to you, consider Moussorgsky, who was a civil servant, or Charles Ives, an insurance executive. The music of the nineteenth century, which remains our greatest music, was written for the discerning delectation of a vast audience of musical amateurs.”
“Mr. Whiting, you don’t need to go on. I’ve said the same thing to myself many times. I wasn’t suggesting that it’s the Boston Conservatory or nothing. Or that I have to go to a music school at all. I would like to take some private lessons with someone good—”
“Naturally,” said Whiting.
“As for the rest of what I ought to do, you seem to have it all laid out. Why not just say what you have in mind, and I’ll tell you how it strikes me?”
“Fair enough. To begin with the immediate future, I’d like you to go to work for me here at Worry. At a salary, shall we say, of forty thousand a year, paid quarterly, in advance. That should be enough to set you up. You’ll have to spend it, you know, as fast as it comes in. It will be expected that you flaunt your conquest. To do less would show a lack of appreciation. You’ll become, for a time, the hero of Amesville.”
“Our picture will be in all the papers,” Boa put in. “And the wedding will probably be on the tv news.”
“Necessarily,” Whiting agreed. “We can’t afford to neglect such an opportunity for public relations. Daniel will be another Horatio Alger.”
“Tell me more.” Daniel was grinning. “What do I have to do to earn my preposterous salary.”
“You’ll work for it, believe me. Essentially it will be the same job you did for Robert Lundgren. You’ll manage the crews of seasonal workers.”
“That’s Carl Mueller’s job.”
“Carl Mueller is getting the sack. That is another aspect of your triumph. I hope you have nothing against revenge?”
“Sweet Jesus.”
“Well, I have something against revenge, Father, though I won’t enter into an argument on theoretical grounds. But won’t other people whom Daniel has to work with resent him if he takes Carl’s job away?”