“I suppose the alliance between Miss Taverner and Mr. Tracy explains it.”
“What alliance explains what?”
Carston looked at the brother; felt like a man pulling up blinds.
“Love made them mischievous, I suppose.”
“What love?”
Warm, sunburnt, they came in. They were in the room, leaning on their ashplants, serene, apart. After a silence, “What’s wrong?” said Scylla.
“The cup’s turned up,” said Ross, “in Carston’s bedroom. Did either of you put it there?”
Knowing Picus behind her, she laughed. Lovers’ jokes are sacred, pleasantries of a man who discovers the sea-wood, the rock soft with birds, the meeting of pure water and salt. Come down out of that to enchant and rule her equals.
“Count us out,” she said. “What’s biting you, Carston?”
If she had shown a little decent concern it might have recalled him. But he went on:
“Then I suppose your friend did it. Not content with keeping me awake all night.”
They stared at him. Clarence was practically invisible with frightful emotion.
“Put what where?” said Picus, laughing.
“Four mysteries,” said Carston, “since I got here. First, you found that thing. Then Tracy vanished, after leading us a dance in an infernal prairie. Then the thing vanished. Then it’s found in my room. I’m waiting your explanations. I’ve gotten my own.”
“Let’s hear ’em,” said Ross.
Scylla spoke: “It is my cup. My lover who gave it me. We who have enjoyed it. Carston can think what he likes. I did not put it in his room. It is he who will not play. If he wants to find out what has happened, he will find out. We will tell him when we know. Which we don’t at present. Don’t be a fool, man. No one has tried to trick you here.”
All fairly true, but Picus had done something. Just a little devilry. Her heart caught at a beat, she tasted something in her mouth, salt like pain. Pain so soon after. Other side of the halfpenny. She sneered and sat down, tapping the bright boards with her stick.
Carston felt disintegrating, sticky, a loser, afraid. Still standing, he stared out at the wood, at the ilex-limb, each leaf a white-fire flame. He became aware of all the noises of the wood, that it was cackling all the time, a frightful old long gossip about dirt and the dead ends of lies. His subtle brain raced on, took a glorious chance. He said:
“I can tell you something then. Tracy has a book up in his room. On somebody’s collection of early church ornaments. He brought the cup down from London to work this off on you all. You remember how he stunted his ignorance? Just a little game to make you think something of yourselves and let you down. You may like being kidded. I don’t. I reckon I’ve done you a service—”
“Bright idea,” said Felix. “True, Picus?” He flew at them, with the menaces of a bird.
“What d’you mean? Scylla’s been talking. You are all a pack of old women intriguing against me. Making my life hell. Like Carston, I’m sick of your hospitality. Especially when it includes him.”
“Our hospitality,” said Felix. Quotation wasted on Picus, caught Carston.
“Yes, a decent vendetta would be better than your poisoned fun.”
“We don’t seem to have cleaned up anything,” said Clarence.
“Cleaned up,” said Picus, chattering at them. “Accusing me. Boring me. Interfering with me.” In this there was something that was not comic, in the dis‑ease he imparted.
“An aborted thunderstorm,” said Scylla. “I’m going up to change.”
Five left, hating each other. Then Felix modestly, like the youngest: “I’ll go down the wood, and see about the dinner fish.” Four left. “Work to do,” said Ross. Three left. “Have you a time table?” said Carston. Clarence said: “Hadn’t you better stay till we know the truth?” Carston turned his back on him, and went out neatly through the library door. Two left.
“What is this about you and Scylla?”
“I suppose I am free to sleep with whom I like?”
“Why her?”
“Why not? You don’t want her.”
“God, no. But you might have told me.”
“I thought I heard her tell you.”
“So you and Scylla are one voice then?”
Picus laughed again. “She shouldn’t have told.” Clarence smiled back at him faintly, as if he had to smile under pain, his own, anyone’s. And Picus chattered on, all of him dancing together, subtle, venomous, absurd.
Clarence listened, till the time came when he could listen no longer, and hid his face, the awful pain rising in him, drowning Picus’s presence. And he was thankful for it. Escape into infinite suffering, a deadly grey land, and he was thankful for it. Away from Picus forever. Not even to meet the true Picus, but to the country where there was no Picus. When that had gone away forever. That nerve dead. Free among the dead. He raced away on that black heath. Of course, the place where Picus had lost them the day before. But that country had been sapphire and purple, wild with bees. He was out there now in December.
The North cannot undo them.
With a sleepy whistle through them.
True for trees, but what about the “gentle girl and boy”? He had hidden himself a long time in the pain.
When he took his hands away from his face, Picus had gone.
XIII
Scylla went upstairs, and lying on her bed in her shift felt her elation and clean fatigue replaced by shabby weariness and fear.
Picus had played that trick on Carston. Picus had spoiled her pride in him. Why had he played a spiteful joke? She had not begun to think it possible that he had arranged the story of the cup. Only the trick on Carston was ill-mannered, a little cruel. Also irrelevant. It had made the business seem empty, like the effect got at séances where the interesting, the decisive, the clear is always on the point of arrival, and invariably fades out before the point is reached.
Like the mass of keltic art. Like, now she
