“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 second-hand 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 shew 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 to-day 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.
Chapter XVII
Clarence figured it out. Picus had done this to get away from him, falsifying the devotion of years, flaunt a pretty cousin, marry a pretty cousin: because she had some money: because she was a bird and bee woman: because Carston was after her, must be after her, or he would not have come back from Starn. Or why should any man run back after such an exit, to help a woman, a mime, a baggage, a bag of excrement? There is a great difference between a sportsman, a painter, a man that feels the earth, between Ross and Scylla and his terrible green Sdi creature, and Clarence’s feeling for decoration best served by cities, a blasted heath no more than a site for his palace. He was on Carston and Felix’s side, never satisfied with the earth sacrifice the others munched, wanting décor as Carston a stage. Picus was his set-piece, his jewel. His jewel had lied, his palace was unsound, the beautiful basket in which he had put all his eggs was broken. He had no more eggs to lay. A very serious man unable to exercise his sobriety, because he had made fausse route with his friend, because his education was insufficient for his abilities. Not for the first time he did not try to correct himself, thought about his wounds and his wishes until they took phantom shape and he slipped off uneasily with his gun down the wood. Scylla made a face after him. Ross shook his head. Carston had an impulse to follow.
“Gone off to invent excuses for Picus,” said Felix, “for you to listen to— It’s the occupation down here.”
“Come and pose,” said Ross. “I want a model.”
Carston was alone with Scylla. He said:
“I think I’ve an excuse now to say ‘explain a bit’.” It was parching hot, gritty as if a storm of microscopic dust had filled up the holes in the leaves, in the grass-blades, in the skin.
“Reassure me, at least,” he said, “that this would have happened without me.”
“Of course. Much worse if it hadn’t been for you.” They stopped talking.
“I tried to help you,” he said, “it is your turn.” Saw the effort she made, thought how easy these people were to spur.
“Let’s go up and tackle Picus,” she said—“there is one thing about staying in bed, it runs to earth.”
“No,” said Carston, “you must excuse me. I’ve had about enough of that chap.”
“So,” said Scylla, “for the moment, have I.”
“Seems to me he played a mean trick on you all— What I don’t see is why. Or why it should have got you.”
The other side of the house Ross was seeing Felix flung in a chair, hearing the nervous sobbing his own cool voice could not control. Nor could he control in himself his aversion to speak or to help.
“What in hell do we come here for? I told Scylla to sell those shares and we’d have been at Biarritz.”
“It would have been the same at Biarritz.”
“You might be. I should be different there. You’re looking for something. I’m not. And I hope when you get it you’ll like it. Looking for the Sanc-Grail. It’s always the same story. The Golden Fleece or the philosopher’s stone, or perpetual motion, or Atlantis or the lost tribes or God. All ways of walking into the same trap. And Scylla gets into bed with old Tracy’s son.”