VII
They dined without Picus or Scylla. He saw Clarence, uneasy, and heard that Picus had gone out alone because the doctor had told him to take walks. The earth was now closed in a hot, purple air-ball, the lightning flicking on and off. Without any regard for the weather, Ross arranged their chairs in the verandah while the storm banged about. Carston was silent. He was not accustomed to invite the lightning to visit him under trees. And Clarence seemed fatuous to him when he turned on the gramophone to play against the sky. They were not disturbed about Scylla, who might be out walking alone in the livid night. Apparently the farmer had an old father who gave her beer and told her ghost stories. It was Clarence who swung up and down, turning disks, and saying teasings that were brittle and raw, in his rich, sad voice, tortured and made petulant by the uproar through which his friend’s feet could not be heard coming through the wood.
Carston thought that it was like the place to leap up from its equivocal quiet into an orgy of cracking and banging. He wanted to go and meet Scylla. To see her safely home. Why were they so careless of their women? She had told him that love had left them. Had courtesy? She might come a hundred ways. It was the same as on the night when the men had been lost. They had come back safe from adventure. He wanted her to enter with him. He was an American gentleman in an uneasy place. Yes, he would go at once and fetch his young hostess. A proper thing to do. He felt at ease for the first time.
Ross advised not: “She knows her way. You’d never find it. It will rain in a minute. You’ll see tomorrow morning the freshest earth there is.”
“Prepare for life,
The last twist of the knife.”
For the freshest earth there is. Phat went a raindrop on a flag, and a double uproar began. For an hour it rained, through sheet lightning, and thunder like a departing train, the hills calling to one another. The gutters of the roof rushed and sang and leaked, single notes from which the ear eventually picked out a tune. Syncopation, magic, nature imitating Mozart? Carston came to hear it as an overture, for some private earth-life, mercifully and tiresomely apart from his.
Things going on singing, not to him. Escaping also, not finishing, or finishing somewhere else. Beginning again, to enchant him with fragments. He admitted that he was enchanted—When would Scylla wind up the charm by coming through the wood?
The storm tuned up again, the rain striking in rods, filling the air with fine spray. The others were enjoying it, the first row of the stalls for a nature-play. Discussing other spectacles. Then he saw Scylla and Picus run out of the wood and across the lawn, laughing, wet as dogs. He heard Clarence order Picus upstairs to change, to be ignored, while Scylla squeezed out her hair.
“We ran back together. It was too good to miss. Tell me, Carston, does the lightning get you when you’re under a tree, or when you’re not? We tried both.”
That was all there was to it. But how had they met? All prearranged he supposed. No, Picus had done it. Loped off another way to meet her at the farm. She was saying: “You’re lucky that you didn’t come with me. Admit you’d have hated it?” Was that flirting with him? He asked her what she meant. “Storms aren’t in your schedule.” So wet they both seemed naked. They all went in. He made hot grog for her over the wood fire, the acid smoke bringing water to his eyes. They looked like real tears to Ross, who wondered. Scylla came down in blue, her hair tied up in a gold cloth, unable to stop laughing. Clarence followed her. Ross said: “Got Picus to bed?”
“No: insists on shaving, and to spite me stands about in his skin.” There was more behind what he said than self-pity, yet Carston felt that Clarence had better have hit them in his exasperation than have pitied himself. Why, he wondered? Scylla had said that goodwill had left the earth, but he had noticed that they were compassionate. Perhaps it was that they knew pity’s value and feared a sudden demand. At the same time he had no sympathy for Clarence, and they had, who were looking askance at him as though he had said a tactless obscenity. Scylla was saying:
“Warm inside and out. Carston, you’re sound on grog.”
Picus came down, flushed and transparent, and asked him for some. He found that he could not say “Help yourself,” forced to wait on him.
“Let’s dance,” said Scylla; and they danced together, the six of them, but Picus infinitely the best. One of the little things he could do, but not one with Scylla, who moved about with her brother, limbs of the same tree.
There were only five glasses when they all wanted drinks—Picus came over with the cup for Clarence to fill with whiskey and soda. “I don’t mind using the ashtray,” he said; and Carston heard through the jazz and the slackening rain a voice which might have been a woman’s or a man’s: “He doesn’t mind using the cup of the Sanc-Grail for whiskey and soda,” and another voice, which might have been a man’s or a woman’s: “He doesn’t mind using for a whisky and soda, the cup we use for an ashtray, the cup of the Sanc-Grail.”
The last of the lightning winked at them, the rain turned to a sweet shower, an afterthought.
What’ll I do, what’ll I do? the gramophone was saying: What’ll I do, what’ll I do? Make love to Scylla, thought Carston. Hadn’t they ever thought of that? Show then that they had among them a living cup. He remembered the new records he had brought them from London, and went upstairs to fetch them. Outside Picus’s door he remembered. They were making a noise downstairs. He could look in. More Scylla. A whip-up for senses which were, perhaps, older than theirs. Not refreshed—he thought of it with a sneer—by memories and the past. They should create his memories for him.
He fetched the records, and, a little elated by drink, opened the door of Picus’s room. The draught from the window made his candle stream. He saved it and looked. There was no statuette. Even the broken pieces had been cleared away. His light under control, he looked round. Clothes in exquisite order, chaste, ivory dressing things in rows. Scent bottles with a silver strainer, a hollowed bunch of grapes. Nothing to read. Like Ross there. The other went about weighted with books. Something to read. Somebody’s book on early church vessels. So Picus had a rationalist mind? Not much read. Time to go.
Below, he was greeted with cheers.
Airs went to his head.
Waiting for the moon to rise and show me the way
To get you to say
I love you.
“Will there be a moon, soon?” he asked Ross—“after the storm, I mean?”
“Sorry; she’s over. To do her tricks, I mean. Aldebaran’s very bright just now.”
Damn the stars. I know starlight. And the penalty. Leave the stars to them. Carston turned a disk: “I think you’ll like this. Not come to London yet.”
They did. Incarnated him responsible for O Lady be good, as for everything else in America. Scylla, dancing with him, smiled as he sang I’ve been so awfully misunderstood, with candour, with friendship, with something spilt over from a reserve of joy. He derided the men because not one of them knew what she was, because an American would discover a treasure worth a hundred Sanc-Grails. There was Picus dancing about like a marsh-bird courting, with an old cup on his head. Up and down and sideways, and never a drop spilt. Tilted his head sideways and caught it as it fell, and it was empty all the time. “Now I call that cheating.” In a moment it was back again and full, and never a drop was spilt.
Then Carston showed them the Charleston, and tumbled with them up to bed, shaking hands at doors, easy at last, and full of goodwill.
The air that filled his room was moist and strong, preparation for the freshest earth there is. The elation went out of him and left content. The visit had given him wonder. That was good, because one got brittle and lonely travelling round, and quick to mistrust. How simple it had been to win on these lordly young men. Love their women. Their place was his now. And the wood. It stood like something punished under the rain. He blew out his candle, and lay down in bed.
A minute later the tail of the lightning winked. The rain quickened. The door next his opened. The gutter outside began to run fast again. Through the finale of the storm, he heard a gull crying. Then, outside his door he heard a whistle like a glass flute. How loud, how long he could not judge, startled by it, teased by it. It was outside the door where Scylla slept. All he could do was repeat the words of the call, as it poured out, with grace notes and repeats:
Oh, sweet and lovely lady be good,
Oh, lady, be good to me.
I’ve been so awfully misunderstood,
So, lady, be good to me.
Oh, lady, please have pity,
I’m all alone in this great city,
I’m just a lonely babe in the wood,
So, lady, be good to me.
Scylla’s door opened, neither noisily nor stealthily. Carston was out of bed, his ear to a split panel. He heard her laugh, her stage notion of an American accent. “I should worry.” Her door shut. He felt like a weight on his body, the three feet of stone between them. On the other side of that they were lying together, in the quiet of the wood. After a time, he went to the window to listen. But only the casement farthest from him was open, and there was no light. Shocked, almost whimpering, he went back to bed, falling, thanks to the strong air, very quickly asleep. Outside, the night cleared. Over the wood Orion hung up his belt and sword. In the pommel, Aldebaran shook; the star some time before Ross had offered to his attention.