XVI
Next morning Carston was by no means in the same mind, and hardly in the same body. It occurred to him, as he looked out on to a village square full of bellying sea fog, that sleeping above him was an impeccable old gentleman of considerable resource and command, tracing a son who had robbed him. At the same time that the old man would be making an early start, or might be watching him from his sleep. That in going back he would be taking sides in a peculiarly unpleasant family row. If there had been a train before midday, he would have taken it. Instead, he took exaggerated precautions, sure of only one thing that he did not want to meet the old man again: told the boots he was driving to a farther village to see the church: hoped he bribed the driver of the car to silence.
Not until he was on the down-track again, by the foxglove patch, did any of last night’s elation return. He yielded to the idea that he was on a pilgrimage, dismissed the car, left his suitcase under a wall and walked the last mile. Over dew, through gauze and long sun-shafts down to the house.
Seven-thirty o’clock. The old nurse in an older dressing-gown was waking up the kitchen life. He asked for Scylla, the easiest and the hardest person to see, and waited for her below. She came down, heavenly sleepy. He told her that he was sorry, and what had happened at Starn.
“That’s all right,” she said, “everyone gets worked at times. I only wish you had not sprung it on Clarence—I’d like you to be sorry for that—no, not because it was bad manners but because it was cruel and damned silly—” That punished him, though he did not understand her aversion to cruelty, that kind. She went on—“But a worse thing has happened, it may be for the best. It usually is—” Suddenly, the complications of the story came over her, and he heard a sort of cry: “What is it all about—I don’t like this,” and he saw that he meant to stay if he had to sleep out on the earth and gnaw grass to help her. Then she told him to go down and bathe before breakfast, while she told the rest, and gave his case to the old nurse.
“Take it up to Mr. Carston’s room. He did good work for us last night at Starn.”
A little breakfast with the Borgia’s. Poison anyhow, hurrying up over the hills. No woodpecker, no appetites. Clarence handing back with interest his insolence of the day before.
Scylla said:
“Clarence, we must be practical. Go and find out what Picus has tried to do.” And Carston could have kicked the man when he assured her that it was now her business.
“It’s not become that,” she answered, steadily—“go you and manage him, as you have always done.”
No, Clarence would not. Waited to be entreated to have more fun in refusing.
“Are we going to lie, or aren’t we?” said Felix.
“That depends on Picus.” It did.
“Whatever we do, he’ll do the opposite.” Felix got up and put the cup in a drawer.
“The book goes on the fire.”
It is not easy to burn a book. He was banging it down on the kitchen fire when Mr. Tracy walked into the house. Carston retreated backwards through the kitchen, where Felix pushed him into a cupboard, and kindly got him out again, and up the backstairs to the attic and left him alone with the bees. There he meditated on what was going on below, whether the bees would attack him, and what it would be like if they brought the old man up there.
Below, Scylla thought: Keep things amiable: keep things casual: pay out what rope we have. She constrained Picus’s father to breakfast, because his son was unwell, and noticed how Clarence slipped away to warn him, now that the worst had come to the worst.
“It was nice of you to come,” she said—“just as the place is at its loveliest.” Ross despised her for that, and Felix admired, while her spirit was falling away into pockets of pain like dropped heartbeats, because in everything Picus was a lie. Excepting under Gault Cliff, and they would never go there again. Never again. That brought up bubble upon bubble of agony each time they rose, with attention to the unpleasant details of his father’s visit. That sinister antique was saying:
“Call that old nurse of yours. I want to ask her a question.” And she did not dare to be anything but unspeakably civil, while he said:
“Did you unpack for Mr. Tracy, and if so did you find a green bowl in his case, or a book that wasn’t a novel?”
Trust Nanna. She almost put Mr. Picus’s father in his place. Felix’s business to have done that. Felix had gone out. Oh, God! to collect more fish?
Ross helped: “Picus is pretty unwell. Shall I take you up?”
And she managed to say, coolly: “I don’t see why a book not a novel or even a cup should be out of order in anyone’s luggage. I could have asked Nanna that myself.”
That bothered the old man’s exit. Ross went too, and she sat alone, wondering where Carston had got to. “He’s up with the bees, honey,” said her nurse. Tell the bees. Nanna did that when one of them died. Which of them was going to die first?
Picus had taken his father’s cup.
Picus had stunted its origin.
Picus had had an idea, or why the book?
Picus had run into small mystifications.
Picus had made love to her.
Picus would not make love again, because they had been found out.
Picus led Clarence a hard life.
No one could go to Picus and say: “So much for your silly devilries. Turn ye to me.” And I even thought of marrying him because of his beauty. I did not catch the joy as it flew. Damn female instincts. Picus should not have pretended it was the cup of the Sanc-Grail. That will do in weaker minds and more violent imaginations than mine and Ross’s.
Meanwhile, Carston had discovered a dormer in the attic roof, and saw her walking the lawns. He stuck his head out, powdered with the shells of dead bees, and called. She ran in and up to the attic door.
“Couldn’t you,” he whispered, “get him over to Tollerdown to look for himself? Get Clarence to take him. That will give us time.”
“Good,” she said, “I’ll go down and try it.” They both saw that the real need was to get rid of the old man. But as she opened Picus’s door, she heard:
“Go over to Tollerdown to satisfy myself. Why? You’ve got it and you can keep it. Would you like to know its history? In India it was the poison-cup of a small rajah I knew. He was poisoned, all the same, drinking out of it. I saw him with a yard of froth bubble coming out of his mouth. Burnt up inside, I believe. I brought it away and gave it to a lady, who was frequently at Tambourne when you were at school. When she contracted tuberculosis she had a fancy for it as a spitting-cup. That is, so far as I know, any interest that attaches to the thing.”
“Your mother drowned herself, didn’t she, Picus?” said Ross, with that impersonal interest in the event which was sometimes too strong an antiseptic, never a poison.
“Yes,” said Clarence.
“You see,” said the old man to his son—“since that is your selection from my collection you may as well know your choice. You know now, and that your efforts to identify it as a mass-cup will hardly succeed.”
“Picus,” said Felix, “it is up to you to tell us if you have this thing.”
“You fool,” said the old man, “I saw him take it, when he thought I was asleep before the fire.”
“What does it matter if he did, when we have none of us seen the thing?”
Picus raised his shoulders out of the sheets:
“Oh, cut that, Felix, when it’s where you put it, downstairs in the bureau drawer.” They noticed the father in the son. Then Scylla’s turn came—“From the bridegroom to the bride. Hardly as propitious as one would like.”
“That is superstitious,” said Ross—“Scylla’s no bride for any son of yours, and the cup’s bitter history concerns no one but the dead.”
“Why did he pretend it was the cup of the Sanc-Grail?” said the old man.
“How did you pretend he did?” said Ross.
“A snip of an American called Carston told me last night at Starn. Another candidate for your rather secondhand beauties, Scylla—”
“Felix, will you fetch him?” said Ross.
Upstairs, through the bee-roar, Carston heard the boy say:
“So you did give us away last night at Starn!”
“I’m damned if I did. That’s his bluff.” He thought: I knew I’d have to go down. I’m in this. How life arranges itself without our tugging and kicking. “Give me a run-over what’s been said.”
“He wants us to have it,” said Felix. “It was a rajah’s poison cup. Jade is supposed to show poison. Of course, it doesn’t, and the man died. I shouldn’t be surprised if old Tracy hadn’t a hand in it. He brought it back and gave it to a female tart. That was a bad story, because Picus’s mother pined about it, till they found her in the stream beneath old Tracy’s house. Picus was a kid at the time, and he adored her, and the old man had the woman to live with him at Tambourne till she died of T.B., and the cup was one of her belongings. Sort of thing which wouldn’t work out so badly today with divorces and fresh air. The old man’s loving it; spotted that Picus has given Scylla the cup.”
“Then why on earth the stunt about the spear and the well?”
“I don’t know—He’s the old man’s son. Come down.”
Carston felt his position false again. Somehow he had given a clue to this hag-driven ancient: he was a little in alliance with him: he protested. Picus’s father said:
“Quite enough, my dear boy, quite enough. You were obviously startled, and I had my theory of what startled you. I’m sure Scylla will forgive you in time, and I must be off now. I’ll leave you your treasure, but I should like my book on the mass-cups back. You see now that it will be quite useless to try and identify it from that.”
“Ask Felix,” said Picus. No one knew whether to help him out or not. Carston thought of its boards smouldering on the kitchen fire, making it, as Nanna had pointed out, unfit for proper use.
Scylla said, coolly: “I can’t part with the other half of my wedding-present.”
And this infuriated the old man. It was evident, even to their over-hurried perceptions, that he was more than insulting and exultant, he was in earnest. He began to frighten them. They could not decide whether to economise the truth or not. The old man seemed in need of exorcism. A bib. Altogether too gothic now.
Then Felix cried out: “I burnt the damned thing when Carston told me that you and Picus were playing us up.”
The old man began to laugh. “That’ll do,” he repeated. And quite soon after he was gone, and they dragged out chairs and lay on the lawn at different angles, no one wishing to speak.