They laughed together. Carston began to think backwards. The eighteenth century had produced this type, had set him in culture and conviction that Nature had appointed certain old men to approve and modestly direct her arrangements of air and fire. The Renaissance had kicked off that ball, now frozen into the marble and stucco that he was sure adorned his park somewhere. Behind that there was the matrix; the Middle Ages, feudalism, Christendom. Faith in a childishly planned universe as one thing.
“I detest impertinence,” the old man said—“I don’t think it will be necessary to go into that; but other people have found my son difficult. Was it anything to do with him?”
Carston thought: ‘Picus again. In for some more. No good pretending.’ He said:
“I reckon. Perhaps I didn’t catch on—that he was fooling me.”
‘Like talking to an old stone idol; live stone idol; stone idol that walks: after something. I ate their bread, and I was rude to them. Be careful, be very careful, indeed. . . .’
“People, I hear, have left the house before, after what I could only wish was my son’s sense of humour had come into play.”
Carston saw that it was a question which was going to lure the other on. And he longed to tell someone something.
“Who are down there now?”
He gave the names. No harm in that.
The old man meditated: “Ah! the heart of the band?”
Why a band? More news.
“My son has a bad habit. He is fond of other people’s property which may never be his. In this instance I am speaking for myself. He has a book of mine that I want. Also, it interests me to know why he should want it. And I may say that your quarrel interests me, whatever it was.”
“Don’t call it a quarrel. I just didn’t like his way of going about things.”
“And the rest of my family? We are all more or less related.”
“I was to blame in part. Lost my temper and said more than I should, and they let me go.”
“Very characteristic; of England, I mean. I am sorry. I suppose, by the way, you didn’t see about the house a book on early Church vessels? If you had, it would be easier for me to call my son to order.”
‘Say no; say no; say no. A fool I shall look. He’s seen I hesitated. What in hell does it matter?’
“I sort of remember a book like that in the library.”
“Not in my son’s room?”
“No, I was never there.”
The old man did not seem pleasant; silent after he had been told a lie. Then he began to speak fast.
“As you have acknowledged a difficulty, I feel that I might as well tell you why I have come down—at least to find out whether that book is there or not. Why should he want it? He’s quite illiterate. Only if he has it, I shall be on the track of what may be cropping up again. You know what I mean—romantic ideas, now that we know they are lies, which are liable to fall into very silly and very evil practices. Excuses for perversions.”
Carston thought: ‘It’s coming out. The old man has a drink in him.
“There was nothing like that down there.”
The old man said: “My book’s gone—and if he has taken that he may have taken something else. There’s his cousin, Scylla, there—”
“She is beautiful—”
“I am glad to hear she is up to your new-world standards. But an affair with her mixed up with superstition and theft.”
“What is superstition over here?”
“A disgusting relic of non-understood natural law.”
“I’m at sea.”
“Of course, you are, and I’m glad to hear it, and that you saw nothing objectionable. In spite of your little difficulty, whatever it was.”
“Tell me,” said Carston, “what do you expect me to have seen?”
The old man considered: “A strained, shall we say, morbid situation between my son and Scylla Taverner. Repetition in another key with Clarence Lake. Remember, the idea of the first comes from you. The latter, I have frequently observed with disgust. So long as there has been no mention of a cup—”
‘Cup. My God! And I’m half in mine.’ Carston heard a noise like bells he distinguished for the blood in his ears. Then there rang over Starn a variation on three notes, flood-tide pouring into the hill circle, passing out down the valleys, striking and hushed at once on the grass cloth of the hills.
“Don’t tell,” said Starn bells. “Don’t tell. Don’t tell!”
He thought: ‘I must tell something, I need to. There must be something I can tell. Not tell on them.’
The old man was talking with something in his voice of a stallion’s scream:
“My son’s after Scylla Taverner with a piece out of my collection. As if I didn’t know where I got it, and all about it. And what put him up to it? And what’ll that neurotic hussy make of it? But if he did it, I’ve got a surprise for them. Its story’ll be the surprise, if he doesn’t mind being turned out with his fancy girl—”
Not tell on them.
