“Why shouldn’t they know that Picus and I have an amourette and have magic between us?”
“There’s something wrong to-day with Carston.”
“At worst he’ll leave and blast my reputation for a bit. What of that? And, anyhow, how did you find out, a floor up with Felix and Clarence?”
“Felix and Clarence snoring. Carston quiet, Picus whistling.”
“Ross, why have that tall bird and I become lovers? I want to know that. I think it is the kind of thing we shall find out about when it’s over, and wonder at.” Ross said:
“There is trouble about. The kind that comes with brightness. Can you see that?”
“I can,” she said. “Do you mean that Picus is up to no good? I rather agree.”
“The first rule,” said Ross, “is that Picus is never up to any good.”
“Allow me a little fantasy about him.”
“Remember that I told you.”
“You are being one of the enemies of the rose. Why should you? You always do what you like. Leave that to Clarence.”
“I’m telling you to be careful.”
“Are we never to have any peace, only adventure and pain? And you, Ross, have a sacred peace.”
“So have you. It’s the others. That’s why they had better not know.”
“Perhaps not Felix. Brothers will be brothers.”
“Carston’s bored. To-day he’s upset. Satan’s looking for a job for him. I think you were to have been the job.”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“We didn’t tell him how long he was to stay.”
“You mean that our ‘come down and see us’ is going to add an episode to what Felix calls the family horror?”
“I mean that anything that’s going to happen that shouldn’t will find him useful to happen through. Also, a thing you will be too vain to see. This is a move against Clarence by your fancy-boy.”
She looked across the purple land to where it ended in the waters of an estuary, more transparent than the sky. “Remember what has to be remembered, too—that Picus and I are young and handsome, rather in love. That he is full of fun and dancing, and bird-calls. Like I am. These things count as well.”
“You’ll see.”
“You are not counting on me?”
“If you can keep things steady, you’d better.”
“Perhaps I’m tired of keeping things steady for you. This is my pleasure and my game. And Clarence is unreasonable. Think of it another way, Ross: that Picus is giving us an excuse for the sacred game.”
He answered sullenly: “Americans are bad players. At bridge or gardening, or life; especially when it is life as the sacred game. And it isn’t his game here, anyhow.”
Scylla said: “I’ll tell you something. Picus doesn’t want Clarence to know. He’s afraid of that.”
“So he should be. Where would he be without him?”
“Dead, perhaps. That’s why I’ll do my best to be decent. And now, I want you to tell me what you think about the cup?” He turned away and beat the heather with his stick.
“It’s too late, Ross, to be petulant, because you know too much or too little. When you said there was trouble about like brightness, you spoke of things which are nefas, and you’ve got to go on. Remember Freud.”
“We aren’t worthy,” he cried.
“Worthy? What’s worthy? Was anyone? And you’ve forgotten Gawaine, the knight of the world and of courtesy.”
“I didn’t know he came into it.”
“That comes of never opening a book.”
“I detest women.”
“Never mind detesting me, which is what you mean. If that cup is anything at all, if it was once an old cup of the sacrament people called ‘big magic,’ if it’s anything or nothing, we can’t hurt it, and it can’t hurt us. We have our courage and our imagination. We have to be as subtle as our memories. That’s all. And but one thing: Picus has given the cup to me.”
“Considering your relations, I suppose he had to.”
“Then forward, damsel of the Sanc-Grail.”
“How dare you!” said Ross, “how dare you!”
She looked at him stoically, “I thought better of you, Ross. Thought there was something hard and great in you. I’m tired of being disappointed. Hear the words of the lover of a bird. He is light and winged and holy. And I mean by holy all there can be in the word; I mean, tabu. You are heavy, wingless, and sacred. And you are a very sensual man. You should understand.”
“I understand that you’re up in risky air, because you’ve got off with the worst of the lot of us.”
“I can fly.” She waited a moment and then spoke cheerfully: “The first thing I understand is that you and I are being unpleasant to each other. The difficulty in this business will be to see the obvious. If Picus is up to his tricks, he’s won the first round. And I’ve tried to pretend that Picus means less than he does to me. To please you, and because it sounds chic. I take that back. And we shall all see.”
Ross stood still, his face wrinkled like a pony, sniffing.
“Where are they?” he said. They looked back over magenta risings, yellow sand-holes, black bunches of trees. Quite different from the ravishing gauze seen from Starn on its hill. They waited, but neither one body nor four could be seen moving out of a pocket or over a ridge of the huge, broken honeycomb. Scylla said:
“Has Carston got lost?”
Ross did not suppress a laugh. “He’s got three of us with him.”
“We’re not heath-people.”
“Picus knows it. Spends days prowling about here.” That subject, delicately picked up, was dropped. “Let’s get on.”
“No, let’s wait.”
“Why should we?”
“Because of the mead. Think of us, sweating back with a dozen between us.”
Bing. A large black bee slapped Ross’s cheek and swung out along the ribbon of sand-path across which the heather stalks whipped their ankles.
“Follow the bee,” he said, “it won’t be the last walk we shall take together.”
“Good!” she said—“at worst they will only be lost. Who minds being lost when there is so much to see? They can steer by Starn. We’ll collect what we can, and get home with some martyrdom in hand.”
For the last time she looked back over the blazing plain from which an army might pop out. Ross did not look back. He stood with his head flung up, his mouth stretching into its wild-animal smile. With violent, silent amusement, he said:
“It’s beginning.”
Chapter IX
At a choice of tracks apparently parallel and similar, Picus had led them to the left. He had trooped them through a wood and sweated them over a crest, to drop them again in a sunk road, made for running contraband a century before. He was asking: “Where are the others?”
“I want my mead,” said Felix. “The farm’s ahead on the water’s edge, where the heath runs out in a point.”
Sunk roads are filled with loose sand. They go from nowhere to nowhere now. They trap the sun and keep out air. Their banks curl over in a fringe of heather wire. Adders bask on their striped sides. From this one Starn was invisible, and the eventual blue water bright as dew.
Carston plodded beside Clarence, his feet chafing with sand. They left the wood and crossed another ridge, and saw on their right a creek of yellow grass running inland behind them. They walked another mile till they came to the base of the point, and saw cottages under a crest of dark land. Felix cried out: “We were wrong. Look over there!” They looked across the creek, now filled with water, and only bordered with its grass. Two miles on the farther side, on a patch of green land reclaimed from the heath, was a noble group of trees round a white farm.
“We should have gone there,” said Felix—“this comes of Picus’s swank about knowing the heath. This leads only to a place we called Misery, because they starved their dogs.”