departed.
Where was the long shelf gone: the long worn dusty shelf, festooned with hart’s tongue? It had disappeared, and what stood in its place had never felt the impress of a wild cat’s body.
In its place were towering shapes, impossible to understand. As their courage strengthened, the wild cats began to run hither and thither with excitement, yet never losing their poise as they ran, their heads held high in the air in such a sentient and lordly way as to suggest a kind of vibrant wisdom.
What were these great swags of material? What was this intricate canopy of bone-white branches that hung from the roof and over their heads? Was it the ribs of a great whale?
The two cats growing bolder began to behave in a very peculiar way, not only leaping from vantage-point to vantage-point in a weird game of follow-my-leader, but wriggling their ductile bodies into every conceivable position. Sometimes they ran alone along an aisle of hoary carpet: sometimes they clung to one another and fought as though in earnest, only to break off suddenly, as though by common assent, so that one or other might scratch its ear with a hind foot.
And still there was no movement from the ring of watching creatures, until, without warning, a fox suddenly trotted out of the periphery, leapt through a window in one of the walls, and running to the centre of the Black House sat down on an expensive rug, lifted his sharp yellow face, and barked.
This acted like a tocsin, and hundreds of woodland creatures rose to their feet, and a minute later were down in the arena.
But they were not there for long, for immediately after the two cats had arched their backs and snarled at the fox and all the other invaders, something else occurred which sent the birds and beasts back into their hiding places.
The sky above the Black House was, of a sudden, filled with coloured lights. The vanguard of the airborne flotilla was dropping earthwards.
NINETY- EIGHT
Delicately stepping from their various machines, the glittering beauties and the glittering horrors, arrayed like humming birds, passed in and out of the shadows with their escorts, their tongues flickering, their eyes dilated with conjecture, for this was something never known before … the flight by night. The overhanging forests; the sense of exquisite fear; the suspense and the thrill of the unknown; the pools of dark; the pools of brilliance; the fluttering breath drawn in and exhaled with a shudder of relief; relief in every breast that it was not alone, though the stars shone down out of the cold and the small snakes lurked among the ruins.
As each dazzling influx tip-toed through the mouldering doorways of the Black House, their heads involuntarily turned to the central fire; a careful structure composed of juniper branches which when alight, as now, threw up a scented smoke.
‘Oh my darling,’ said a voice out of the darkness.
‘What is it?’ said a voice out of the light.
‘This is the throb of it. Where are you?’
‘Here, at your dappled side.’
‘O Ursula!’
‘What is it?’
‘To think it is all for that boy!’
‘O no! It is for us. It is for our delectation. It is for the green light on your bosom … and the diamonds in my ears. It is bloom. It is brilliance.’
‘It is primal, darling. Primal.’
Another voice broke in …
‘It is a place for frogs.’
‘Yes, yes, but we’re ahead.’
‘Ahead of what?’
‘The avant-garde. Look at us. If we are not the soul of chic, who is?’
Another voice, a man’s; a poor affair. ‘This is double pneumonia,’ it wheezed.
‘For heaven’s sake be careful of that carpet. It sucked my shoe off,’ said his friend.
With every moment that passed, the crowd thickened. For the most part guests made for the juniper fire. Their scores of faces flickered and leapt to the whim of the flames.
Were it not Cheeta’s party there would undoubtedly have been many more than ready to criticize the lavish display … the heterodoxy of the whole affair would have rankled. As it was, the discomfort of the Black House was more than made up for by the occasion. For that is what it was.
The babble of voices rose, as the guests multiplied. Yet there were many young adventurers who, tired of staring into the flames almost as much as having to listen to the shrill tongues of their partners, had begun to leave the warmth in order to explore the outer reaches of the ruin. There they came across bizarre formations reaching high into the night.
Here, as they moved, and there, as they moved, they came upon peculiar structures hard to understand. But there was nothing hard to fathom about the dusky table, dim-lit by candles, where a great ice-cake glimmered, with ‘Titus, Farewell’ sculpted in its flanks. Behind the cake, there arose tier upon tier, the Banquet, in half-light. A hundred goblets twinkled, and the napkins rose as though in flight.
Six mirrors reflecting one another across the sullen reaches of the Black House focused their light upon something which appeared to contradict itself, for, looked at from
Whatever it might be, there was no doubt that it was of some importance, for posted at its corners were four flunkeys who were almost abnormally zealous in keeping any odd guest who had strayed that far, from coming too
