Read Online Mrs. God by Peter Straub - Free Book Online Page B

try to get to know them even better while they’re with us. We want to be well matched with our guests. It won’t work as well as it should if it isn’t a proper mating. The people who come here must love Esswood.”
    Standish nodded.
    â€œBut you see, I’m an advanced case. I love it so much I’ve never left.”
    â€œYou’re a lucky man.”
    â€œI agree. It’s better never to leave Esswood.”
    Never to leave Esswood . Standish heard some unspoken message, a kind of silent resonance, in Wall’s last words. Even Wall’s posture, his head tipped back and his fingers wrapped around his glass, seemed to communicate the aura of an unspoken meaning. Then Standish realized at least one of the things Wall must have meant: he had been something like ten in 1914, and therefore must now be over eighty years old. The man looked to be somewhere in his fifties.
    â€œEsswood has been good to you,” he said.
    Wall smiled slowly, and nodded in agreement. “Esswood and I try to be good to each other. I think it will be good to you too, Mr. Standish. We were all very happy when we received your application. Until then it looked as though there might not be an Esswood Fellow this year.”
    â€œI couldn’t have been the only applicant!”
    â€œNo, we had about the usual number of applicants.”
    Standish raised his eyebrows in curiosity, and Wall indulged him. “Something over six hundred. Six hundred and thirty-nine, to be exact.”
    â€œAnd mine was the only one you considered?”
    â€œOh, you had some competition,” Wall said. “There is always a period of several months while things sort themselves out. We do take what we consider to be more than usual care.” He smiled with the same slow ease, and looked nothing like the son of a gamekeeper. “If you’re finished, we could peek in at the library. Then I’ll let you get the rest I’m sure you need. Unless you have some questions?”
    Standish looked down at his plate. Most of the wonderful meal seemed to have consumed itself. “I guess I can’t help wondering when I’ll have the chance to meet the Seneschals.”
    Wall stood up. “They’re not in the best of health.”
    â€œThe woman who greeted me said that Mrs. Seneschal—”
    Again Wall stopped him with a look that told him not to trespass.
    â€œLet us try that troublesome door, shall we?”
    Standish stood up. For a moment his head swam and he had to steady himself on the back of his chair. Some words that Robert Wall said to him vanished like everything else into gray fuzz, and then his head cleared and his vision returned. “Sorry.”
    â€œDo you feel all right?”
    â€œJust a little spell. I missed what you said, I’m sorry.”
    Wall opened the door through which Standish had entered the dining room. “All I said was, you must have heard this mysterious person incorrectly. There is no Mrs. Seneschal.”
    Standish passed by Wall, and the deep grooves like scars in his face came into focus.
    â€œIt’s Miss Seneschal. She and Mr. Seneschal are brother and sister. Edith’s two surviving children.”
    â€œOh, I was sure—”
    â€œSimple mistake for a weary man.”
    Wall gestured down the length of the flagged corridor. “Unlike most of our guests on the first night, you already know this way quite well, don’t you?” He set off in the direction by which Standish had come. “Yet another sign of our good judgment in selecting you.”
    They walked on a few paces, Wall striding like a youthful and well-exercised man.
    â€œYou’re married, aren’t you, Mr. Standish?”
    They turned right at the statue of the woman shrinking back.
    â€œYes, I am.”
    â€œChildren?”
    â€œNot yet,” Standish said, the skin at the back of his neck prickling. He thrust away from him the vision of a