“I saw no tracks in the sand,” said Carston.
“I supposed you knew the way.” He heard them screaming like gulls over dead fish and would have preferred the birds’ company. Abusing each other for what they would forgive in two minutes. Consider rather a joke. Forget. They none of them saw that Picus had done it on purpose. Then Carston admitted that he might not have thought of it himself if the night before Picus had not slept with the woman he wanted. Why had he done it? He had separated himself from the woman, to mislead them.
They were lurching back through the sand the way they had come. But they had forgotten where they had entered the sunk road that led nowhere in particular; followed it as it wound into exactly the middle of everywhere, and looking over its bank found the airy roofs of Starn lost behind a line of high black trees.
Forgiveness woke in them and fatigue. Picus had been mocked for vanity, had mocked back, and set them off laughing. They were nervous, sweating, flushed. Felix shrieked when a snake flicked across his shoe. But it was all part of a game. Hardly able to see more than the sky, they trudged the road the sun had made into Danae’s chimney, down which God came in a shower of gold. Clarence led them. Picus followed. He had deprecated Carston’s suggestion that they should try and cut across the creek and make for the farm. “Bad bog,” he said. “Marsh-king’s sons,” said Felix, “that would be the end of us,” and Clarence that he had seen a pony lost there. At this choice of pleasures, Carston had followed them; and the sunk road, having come to the middle, stopped in a circular sand-bank round a foul pond bordered with marsh-grass where there was no way out. They flung themselves down.
It occurred to Carston that it was all nonsense. They had only a few miles to go. Keeping towards the long hills, they must strike a road and eventually, Starn. At Starn there was water, tea, lime-juice, gin, champagne. The liverish grass and thick water displeased him. “We can’t stay for ever in this cup,” he said.
Picus was asleep, Clarence bending over him. An odd sort of pietà. Felix was sinking in the mud, collecting a plant he said was for Ross. All careful of each other’s needs and pleasures. He heard Clarence call softly: “Wet a handkerchief, Felix, I want it for his head.” Saw it brought over, and Picus jump up in a flash. “None of that sort of water for me, thanks.” To spite the men who took care of him? Probably. Carston felt that he was being given an opportunity to hate and that was good. “Hadn’t you better try and get us out of this?” The tall creature looked at him, sadly. “I’ll try; but you’ll have to leave it to me again, you know.” He sprang up the hollowed bank, kicking mouthfuls of sand into Carston’s face, and vanished. Carston crawled up to watch, hiding behind the heather rim. He saw Picus run a few yards and fling himself down on his face. He waited and saw him get up, heard him call “It’s this way,” saw him glance round and make off. Carston called back to the other three, heaved himself over, and they set off on a slight track towards the belt of wood.
They went in. Pine-needles are not easy to walk on, like a floor of red glass. It is not cool under them, a black scented life, full of ants, who work furiously and make no sound. Something ached in Carston, a regret for the cool brilliance of the wood they had left, the other side of the hills, on the edge of the sea. This one was full of harp-noises from a wind when there was none outside. He saw Picus ahead, a shadow shifting between trunk and trunk. Some kind of woodcraft he supposed, and said so to Felix who said sleepily: “Somebody’s blunt-faced bees, dipping under the thyme-spray”; a sentence which made things start living again. Would they never have enough of what they called life? There was no kind of a track over the split vegetable glass. A place that made you wonder what sort of nothing went on there, year in year out.
The end of the wood was a little cliff, pitted with rabbit holes; and where the hills opened, Starn towering, not too far.
“We get down here,” said Carston, trying the loose lip of the cliff.
“Into what?” said Felix. Then they saw that the wood was surrounded again by marsh, the end of the creek which had separated them from Ross and Scylla, curled round on itself. Cutting them off from Starn this time. Clarence said: “Where’s Picus?” and Carston hoped that young man was about to get what was coming to him. Only he had gone. They began to think of their sins. Except Carston, who did not think of sins at all. There was raw heath on the other side, but the marsh was wide, and Carston was assured deadly. They left the little cliff’s edge, and re-entered the wood. He heard Felix saying: “Where has Picus gone?” Gone to find Scylla? Carston wondered. By a quick turn which would bring him suddenly face to face. And at the folly of three strong young men, tramping about, lost and sapped.
“Call for him,” he said. “He’d not answer,” said Clarence—“he may have had one of his bad pains again.” Carston wished one on him, making an image of him in his anger, until he thought he saw him, walking towards them, transparent and powerful, malicious and shy; his hat perched, to remind them of hooded birds. Remembered his magic, and forgave him. Grew angry again and dazed. Envious also, because he had no part in Picus’s dance. “Leave him alone,” he said, “he’s gone to find a way.” Clarence put a hand on his shoulder; thanks, he supposed, for taking it like that.
At last, from the extreme end of the wood, in the least propitious place, they saw across the marsh a clear causeway of stone.
They scrambled down, crossed it, found a path which led them under the hills by a white road into Starn.
About the end of the walk, the less said the better, until at the inn the landlord answered their faint cries for drink. He wanted to know why they had left six and come back three.
“Lost ’em,” said Felix.
“You should have stuck to Mr. Tracy. He’s the one for the heath. Knows all the paths, and the people who bide out there.”
The talk petered out. The evening marched gravely down. The two undoubtable shops put up shutters. The tourists had gone. A man came through with a bunch of sheep. The bar of the labourer’s inn turned on a gramophone. From time to time, a huge man came in from the fields, making for his beer. The cries of children stopped. Mothers came out. A fast touring-car shot across the square. A mist rose, an intangible gauze, refreshing them. They dined in the inn garden. When Carston saw in the west a large star watching, he though of the lights on Broadway. Felix saluted the star. Clarence worried, but without, for once, worrying them.
They set out to watch the square again.
Then Scylla appeared, and Picus and Ross.
“We found him, sitting on a stone, saying he had lost you: that you ran away from him on Hangar’s ridge.”
“He lost you first,” said Ross. “I don’t blame you.”
“He did,” said Felix, “and cleared off when he’d made a final mess of it. I know his ways. Have you got the mead?”
“Bottles,” said Scylla.
They were surprised when Picus, who had thrown himself into a chair, got up and said: “That’s how you take it. It was not my fault.”
Clarence sprang beside him.
As he went out, Scylla touched his sleeve with her fingers. He took no notice, but Clarence did.
Carston’s fatigue had passed into charity. They were all over-tired, of course. The developments of over-fatigue were caprice and anger. What had Picus been up to? Helping himself with accidents, of course. But exasperating himself.
“There were no bones broken,” he said, “you’ve got the mead, and we’ve all got back.” He was furious when Clarence ignored him, and went out into the half-light after the man who seemed to combine all the elements of a family curse. Felix began: