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 ash-tray,” 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 ash-tray, the cup of the Sanc-Grail.”
The last of the lightning winked at them, the rain turned to a sweet shower, an after-thought.
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.
“Will there be a moon, soon?” he asked Ross—“after the storm, I mean?”
