In another room, in another hotel, in a chaos of elegant poverty, Scylla answered the telephone bell. Philip’s voice said:
“What made you let on you were engaged to Clarence the other night? He doesn’t seem to think so. Like to hear his letter?”
She was ready for that, through the occasional sense that one has lived through an event before it arrives.
“What’s that? I said nothing of the sort. If Lydia likes to think such rubbish. She must have written him one of her letters.”
The voice changed:
“I wish you hadn’t told her whatever you meant like that. She’s been upset.”
“Well, she might have married him herself once,” and rang off and sat still. This would not do. If their alliance was not to break up, she must get the idea out of Clarence’s head. Played into Clarence’s hands, she had: to finish her with Picus: give Clarence the game. Subtle-minded, he would know how to bitch things more than they were already bitched. All to bitch Lydia for bitching her. God, what a world! So much for Sanc-Grail cups and maidens. She felt positively superstitious over her own experiences. Then suffered under what seemed, after all, an unfair lack of grace. Then saw the cottage on Tollerdown, a desolation with something in it that raved. Translated it into possibility of annoyance, petty insult, even tragedy. Playing the Freud game, the name rose “Philoctetes.” Just the sort of rôle Clarence would pick and play badly. Did Philoctetes play well before he found his Sophocles? Oh! damn analogies. Better go down at once, make at worst an armed peace, and give him something else to think about.
A telegram:
“Arriving shortly with Russian ill to live with us.”
Nothing like Felix for letting you know. And Carston had gone to Tambourne with a plan. Picus might be there. Felix was coming back. All roads lay south again. Sleep at Starn that night and go over to Tollerdown in he morning. Have it out with Clarence. Might seduce Clarence and shut his mouth that way. Then to Tambourne and Carston’s news.
With serene courage, for she was uneasy, she made her preparations.
Picus introduced Carston to english ecclesiastical life. At last there would be something that he had been led to expect. The old man in his library looked and spoke right.
Picus said:
“I’ve told him all about it. He’s had the devil in his parish.”
“Well,” said the vicar, “I’ll go so far as to say that during the course of our long association, your father has illustrated my picture of hell. And, as usual, any heavenly landscape has been all around and so unobserved.” He examined the cup.
“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
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.”
