There was an arrow through his throat, and his head had not fallen forward.
“You’re going down the well, where the cup came—”
“Why, Clarence?”
“Best place for you, my fancy-girl. If there’s enough water, you’ll drown. If there isn’t, and I don’t think there is, you’ll break every bone in your body.”
She could run like a lapwing, but he could run fast. She was strong as a tree-cat, but he could tear her in two.
“I came to bring you to Picus. He does not want you to be alone on Tollerdown. He is at Tambourne. Lydia sent you a silly letter because” (get his vanity if you can) “she is so in love with you that she’s mad.”
“And so are you, it seems. Gods! I’m a lucky chap. Unfortunately, Picus doesn’t join the harem. He doesn’t like me any more.
“Going to marry me, are you? You shall in a way. I mean to follow you down the well.”
“Picus is at Tambourne, waiting for you.”
“In time he will be here again. My body will fetch him.”
“You are the most beautiful man in the world, but you won’t be when they get you up out of the well.”
He took her other shoulder in his fingers, thrusting them into the muscle-hollow under her neck, hurting her. She forgot him exacting, petulant; remembered him long before, beautiful, merry, inventive, good. And cruel now. Stupid cruelty. Cruelty frightened her. She lied:
“Clarence, I am going to marry Carston—I teased Lydia—” He turned her towards the well.
“There will be one less of you bitches to come into our lives.”
“We bear you, and I am no stronger in your hands than that bird. Why did you shoot a gull? It isn’t done.” Time seemed very precious. Only a thimbleful left. The well very near. The sun turning a little away from them.
“Woodpecker,” she shrieked, and flung Clarence off, and ran to the statue. She had been so careful not to say that name, and now saw Clarence hurrying to her, the mournful crazy mask splitting, the mouth turning up, the eyes shooting death at her. And Picus, pierced with arrows, smiled down his sweet equivocation. She heard: “That’ll do better.” He had a cord round his waist. He had cattle-ranched once: that was his lariat. She ran once round the statue. A second later he had thrown her, picked her up half-stunned and tied her against Picus. A black flint had cut her head, a patch of blood began to soak through the moon-fair hair.
Clarence walked back and stood by the kitchen door, fitting an arrow to the string. It ripped the skin on her shoulder and entered the clay. She saw another fly towards her and notch her forearm. Another, and there was a tearing pain below her left breast.
Three instants of pain, set in one of fear. Like a great jewel. Clarence stood by the kitchen door, sharpening an indifferent arrow. She made a supreme effort: not to scream much: not to betray herself. Then a moment of absolute contempt of Clarence. Then of pain. Then, as if she were looking out of a window, into a state, a
Carston’s day had been a penance. A train had landed him some time in mid-morning at a place called Chard. Picus had said that it was nearer Tollerdown than Starn, but no one there had heard of the place. The station lay in no immediate relation to the village. The inn was fusty and unsympathetic. The heat atrocious. A day for no sane man to tramp while the sun was high. Miles across another bend of the heath where Picus had lost him, the down-banks rose, aery turf walls, solid as flesh and blood. One of them was Tollerdown. He held up a passing motorist, who was kind. He gave him a lift down a white road sprung like an arrow across the moor that filled the lowlands like a dark dragon’s wing.
At the foot of the turf, he set Carston down. “Go up the track,” he said, “and make towards the sea. If it’s not this shoulder, it’s the one that follows it.” Carston mounted, into silence, on to height. He had never been so well in his life, could not have stood that if he had not been so well. Never had his heart been so touched. Could he stand that?
He mounted, past the trees, the copses, the gorse patches, on to the last crest of raw grass. The earth and the sea extended in a perfect circle round him. He had only to follow the hill’s spine, and drop half-way into the valley to strike the cottage before he walked over into the sea. Like a man who has been given a heavy treasure that he has not looked at and must carry home, he walked on.
