The energy that had got him away must get him back, and damned early. He arranged to be called, arranged for a car, without question that the morning would find him in the same mind.
Next morning Carston was by no means in the same mind, and hardly in the same body. It occurred to him, as he looked out on to a village square full of bellying sea fog, that sleeping above him was an impeccable old gentleman of considerable resource and command, tracing a son who had robbed him. At the same time that the old man would be making an early start, or might be watching him from his sleep. That in going back he would be taking sides in a peculiarly unpleasant family row. If there had been a train before mid-day, he would have taken it. Instead, he took exaggerated precautions, sure of only one thing that he did not want to meet the old man again: told the boots he was driving to a farther village to see the church: hoped he bribed the driver of the car to silence.
Not until he was on the down-track again, by the foxglove patch, did any of last night’s elation return. He yielded to the idea that he was on a pilgrimage, dismissed the car, left his suit-case under a wall and walked the last mile. Over dew, through gauze and long sun-shafts down to the house.
Seven-thirty o’clock. The old nurse in an older dressing-gown was waking up the kitchen life. He asked for Scylla, the easiest and the hardest person to see, and waited for her below. She came down, heavenly sleepy. He told her that he was sorry, and what had happened at Starn.
“That’s all right,” she said, “everyone gets worked at times. I only wish you had not sprung it on Clarence—I’d like you to be sorry for that—no,
“Take it up to Mr. Carston’s room. He did good work for us last night at Starn.”
A little breakfast with the Borgia’s. Poison anyhow, hurrying up over the hills. No woodpecker, no appetites. Clarence handing back with interest his insolence of the day before.
Scylla said:
“Clarence, we must be practical. Go and find out what Picus has tried to do.” And Carston could have kicked the man when he assured her that it was now her business.
“It’s not become that,” she answered, steadily—“go you and manage him, as you have always done.”
No, Clarence would not. Waited to be entreated to have more fun in refusing.
“Are we going to lie, or aren’t we?” said Felix.
“That depends on Picus.” It did.
“Whatever we do, he’ll do the opposite.” Felix got up and put the cup in a drawer.
“The book goes on the fire.”
It is not easy to burn a book. He was banging it down on the kitchen fire when Mr. Tracy walked into the house. Carston retreated backwards through the kitchen, where Felix pushed him into a cupboard, and kindly got him out again, and up the backstairs to the attic and left him alone with the bees. There he meditated on what was going on below, whether the bees would attack him, and what it would be like if they brought the old man up there.
Below, Scylla thought: ‘Keep things amiable: keep things casual: pay out what rope we have.’ She constrained Picus’s father to breakfast, because his son was unwell, and noticed how Clarence slipped away to warn him, now that the worst had come to the worst.
“It was nice of you to come,” she said—“just as the place is at its loveliest.” Ross despised her for that, and Felix admired, while her spirit was falling away into pockets of pain like dropped heart-beats, because in everything Picus was a lie. Excepting under Gault Cliff, and they would never go there again. Never again. That brought up bubble upon bubble of agony each time they rose, with attention to the unpleasant details of his father’s visit. That sinister antique was saying:
“Call that old nurse of yours. I want to ask her a question.” And she did not dare to be anything but unspeakably civil, while he said:
“Did you unpack for Mr. Tracy, and if so did you find a green bowl in his case, or a book that wasn’t a novel?”
Trust Nanna. She almost put Mr. Picus’s father in his place. Felix’s business to have done that. Felix had gone out. Oh, God! to collect more fish?
Ross helped: “Picus is pretty unwell. Shall I take you up?”
And she managed to say, coolly: “I don’t see why a book not a novel or even a cup should be out of order in anyone’s luggage. I could have asked Nanna that myself.”
