“I cannot tell you anything. A piece of worn jade, this time, for the question mark to the question we can none of us answer.”
“What is the question?” said Carston.
“Our old friend. Whether a true picture of the real is shewn by our senses alone.”
“Can’t we leave it that we don’t know?”
“Then the picture we have becomes more and more unintelligible.”
“I don’t know. All I can say is that I’ve never been so bothered, never behaved so like a skunk, never so nearly fell dead in my tracks till I got down here and began to think about such things. It’s unfashionable now, you know—”
“Naturally,” said the second old man, so peaceful, so cordially, with such disinterestedness, with such interest. It was going to be a singular ecclesiastic this time. Old Mr. Tracy turned saint. Carston gave up trying to cut providence.
“Can you give us your professional view?” he said.
“My dear man, Picus comes here to be consoled for a grievance because he has given his heart away twice, and doesn’t know from which victim to ask it back. You ask my professional advice about this business of the cup; not only for its history, but on the spiritual upsets following its arrival. Here it is: say the seven penitential psalms: go carefully through your failings before man and God: communicate to-morrow at eight: come to matins and sing: attend to my sermon. In the evening sing the Magnificat and remember that when I dismiss you with the prayer Lighten our Darkness, I am saying the last word I know. (I suggest a day’s devotions because I am sure you have not done any for a long time.) Add to them the lovely sobriety of our church and our liturgy, the splendour of midsummer filtered through old glass on cold stone. That is as far as I can go in my profession, which, like the ancient mysteries, depends largely on what you bring to it. My hope is that some day somebody will bring something. In your case, Mr. Carston, clean hands and a pure heart I’ll be bound. I administer formulæ and recall memories—that work and still live. In what lies the scientific triumph but that its formulæ work?”
No one on earth before had told Carston that he had a pure heart and clean hands. He was startled, touched, nearly cried, and said:
“But we’re both in love with Scylla Taverner.”
The second old man said:
“Well, I dare say she can do with two fine young men in love with her. She’s had no soft life, with her batch of demons.”
“He means,” said Picus, “that I got off with her and he didn’t.”
“I hope,” said the second old man, “that I’m being asked for my unprofessional opinion.”
“We’re telling you,” said Picus. Carston’s courage jumped. He’d been told he had clean hands and a pure heart. Now that it had been pointed out, he saw that it was true.
“Why are you so spiteful about me, Tracy? How do you think you’ll get the best out of a man if you fool him, and show you despise him and give your sweetheart away before him?”
“Everyone goes to bed with me,” said Picus—“always.”
“Now that’s a new thing to sulk about,” said the vicar. “I am very useless. I cannot tell you about the cup. I cannot judge which of you does or should or could love Picus best. Or Clarence. Or you. His father will probably tell us as much truth as he finds convenient. But when I think of that sensitive, frustrated, pain-racked man who has given his life for you, Picus, alone on Tollerdown, in the fairy-house he made for you—I judge no man. And I do not think it just for you, with your temperament to have the responsibility.”
“Nor,” said Picus, passionately, “do I.”
“Nor,” said the second old man, “why Scylla should be your leader and your neglected toy. Nor why you who all wish Felix well should have become his poison. In this business there are no easy answers, and we are left with our honour to lighten us.”
Picus said: “Lighten what?”
“This story as I see it,” said the second old man, “is true Sanc-Grail. The cup may have been an ash-tray in a Cairo club. But it seems to me that you are having something like a ritual. A find, illumination, doubt, and division, collective and then dispersed. A land enchanted and disenchanted with the rapidity of a cinema. Adventures. Danger and awe and love. What has Felix found in Paris that brings him home so quick? Our virtues we keep to serve these emergencies. Our virtue to induce them.”
“M’yes,” said Picus,—“but there ought to be sharper detail. It was Clarence’s spear that started me.”
Carston said: “It is true. It has happened like that.” He was in a state of consciousness unique to him. Not vision, but wonder become a state, an impregnation of being: that excited and held him in absolute rest. An expectancy more real than the old furniture, the two men with him, the shallow stream that tore past the window, water whistling to itself, a running trap for light.
More than an approach to wonder. Wonder was the answer, and familiar objects out of their categories. He also saw Picus without prejudice, and loved him.
A flock of telegrams was brought in. Carston opened his, brought in from the Star.
“Going to Tollerdown then home come along Felix arriving sick Russian live with us.”
“Whoops, my dear,” said Picus.
The vicar opened two:
“Coming south take care of us Scylla.”
“Is Picus with you? Clarence.”
“The grail knights are gathering, it seems. This only I see clearly. Either this is a curiously coincidental hash, or we are taking part in events, only part of which are happening on the earth we see. Meanwhile, I approve the spacious dust-bin into which you throw most things, and have seen everything thrown.”
“Then you believe there is a moral search?” said Carston, ignoring what paralleled with his wonder.
“I do. Even unprofessionally. As valid and as open to revision as research in the electromagnetic field. Practically I advise you to stick to your tastes as gentlemen and your love of art. You’re so damnably proud and fastidious you’ll do that anyhow.”
“Felix,” said Carston, eloquently, “I really couldn’t do justice to the way that boy behaved. The way he treated his sister; has and will again.”
“He seems to be arriving from Paris on an orgy of tending the sick.”
“Feeding the hungry,” said Picus. “I know Russians. I wonder what we’re in for?”
The second old man said:
“I’ll take him off your hands if he is any good. The young are getting worth watching again.”
Carston said:
“I wish the cup could be disposed of.”
“I’ll go over to the Star,” said Picus, “and wait for my father’s idea of convincing you. I’ve a lech on the boots.”
When they were alone, Carston said with an effort:
“My intentions are very sincere towards Scylla Taverner.”
“I think they are. So are his. I’ll marry her to either of you with a psalm of joy if it works out that way. But you do realise that your relation with her will not be the same as hers with Picus? Young men think sex is all the same, or at best a sacred or profane love, when it’s as varied as art.”
They chatted. Picus brought back a letter with a black seal.
Cup found in the vestry in the church of St. Hilary-under-Llyn sometime in July 1881. Given me by the rector, the rev. John Norris, as it could not be identified as church property. Believed by me, on the authority of (a string of names followed), to be a cup of the rare but occasionally found chalices of the Keltic church.
“The Llyn is on the Welsh marches,” said the vicar, “and the man’s dead.”
Carston said: