“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:
“God! I’m sick of this. Why can’t we be at Biarritz leading a reasonable life?”
A negro song came into Carston’s head:
Clarence came in again. “I’ve ordered the car. We ought to get back. I’ll tell the others.” Carston saw him go into the dining-room and heard Scylla call:
“Well, we want to eat. Tell it to wait.”
“We must go home.”
“Take it home then, and send it back for us.”
Silence again. Question of expense.
Carston saw Picus come into the dining-room from the garden and sit down at a table by himself. He heard Scylla call:
“Clarence, leave your fancy-boy alone.”
That had done it.
Picus was eating alone. Anything might happen, only it was time for sleep. Half an hour later they had packed into the car and shot away, up into the hills the night wind had now made exquisite, to a different wood from the one in whose red-glass darkness Picus had lost them, moist and shimmering, a repetition of the tremblings of the stars.
The next morning the sky was white round a blue zenith. Carston came down, not pleased, because through every discomfort of soul he was feeling well, his body content with itself, a steady animal health. He should have been all of a tremble, and he was hoping that there would be fish for breakfast, lots of fish. There was fish, and after it the toast came up, hot and hot. He remembered again to make opportunity serve him. Health would give him power. Also he would desire Scylla more. Desiring her more, and not wholly as panache he might get her. Picus was bound to let her down. He was saying: “I’m sorry I lost my temper. It was trying to lose you three like that. You know how one is.” Scylla said:
“Served you right, when you’d lost them.”
“How did you do it?” said Ross.
There was no answer. Picus was giving the impression that he was about to flirt his tail and vanish. Carston was irritated again. There came droning into his mind an ugly sentence, a haunting from barren New England:
It was not on the card-table, folded over in a half-moon. It was not on the chimney-piece, or on the sideboard among the candlesticks, whose silver had worn down to the copper and polished rose.
They passed the morning entering and leaving rooms where the cup was not. Not in the kitchen, the lavatory, or the library. In twos and threes and singly, getting more silent as they passed each other. Up and down the curved stairs whose banister was a rope run through rings. Carston saw a good deal in that journey. Scylla’s room which had its objects of luxury, where the first time he stared at the bed, he suffered and desired to throw himself on to it. In and out of the room several times, he became indifferent, content with repeating to himself: “I shall sleep there.” Picus’s room, non-committal, in exquisite order like a manly woman’s and Clarence’s, full of frivolities. Then he remembered something he had read about an Emperor’s collection of hats and wigs ‘which sometimes solace the leisure of a military man.’ There were no wigs and no hats. But no memory in that place ever had a straight point. Only his room was a sad, gay, desperate display of something like toys. He pitied, without humour, having no humour; slightly wanting for himself a glass orange, each of whose fingers came out and held a different kind of scent.
All their things for art or sport were cared for like tools or choice animals. In Felix’s room there were leopard skins; in Ross’s a Buddha in a red lacquer shrine held a crystal, a reflection for their mutual contempt.
