Armed With Madness полностью

Bear your burden in the heat of the day, he sang, who had been in great request at parties for his bawdy repertory. His track ran through five barrows. By one was a crook-backed angry thorn. A bad patch. He passed it, glad to have left them behind, keeping his face towards the sea. Interlude this day alone, in a train. On a hill. Find a cottage on a shelf. Console its inhabitant. Bring him a cup to pop down a well. Fetch him away. You could make a ballad about it. About a mile more to go. One more river to cross. The turf turned over in what was almost a cliff. He was not on Tollerdown. Picus and the man in the car had said two hills. This one dropped into a narrow neck. The great bank he could now see rising on the other side, that was Tollerdown. He cursed, slid down the break-neck path, over a wall of unmortared stone bound with bramble that ripped his clothes; across a field, ploughed and deserted, its furrows baked to iron. Over a gate crested with barbed wire, whose rusty thorns drew blood from his knee. Sprinted down a sparkling grit road, met cattle and an angry dog. Hurry, hurry, he did not know why. Get this over. Hanging about an eternity he’d been, up in the air. Now for people and the end of the cup. A baker’s cart passed him on the road, directed him, and he found himself mounting again by the way Scylla had come. Stopped at the open cottage door, knocked, waited, went in. He saw the bird. The torn papers. He went through.

He saw Clarence, slowly and awkwardly trying to restring the bow, and the lovely nightmare, Scylla hanging bound to the stake of her love. His reason had vanished. Returned, abnormally clear. A madman and the girl probably dead. No gun. Behind them a gulf to the sea. Was I made a man for this? Lighten our darkness.

Play-act. He pulled out the cup. It had kept its jade-coolness. He shewed it to Clarence.

“Just got here. Picus wants it put back in the well, and you to come to Tambourne. See? Sent me.” He took his arm: “Put it in yourself. He said you were to. Drop it in. Feel how cool it is. Wants to get back to where it came—into water. He’ll be wretched if you don’t.”

Clarence staggered a little, moving towards the well.

“My head’s not cool,” he said. “Hurts like hell. The boy wants it dropped in. I can’t see why I should attend to all his fancies.”

Carston tried not to look at Scylla, not let him turn. Clarence’s step shambled a little, his head dropped.

“I’m not to do it. Only you.”

“All right. Here goes.” Plop went a noise a very long way below them. Clarence covered his eyes with his hands.

“Dear man, it was decent of you to come. Such a way and the country strange to you. Hope you had a car. D’you mind if I go in for a bit and fix you up some tea?” Carston guided him carefully, back turned from what was out there in the sun, into the house-shadow, into the studio.

“I’ll make tea. You lie down a bit.” He was thinking how to lock him in, when the young man dropped, moaning that his head hurt, and that something was trying to get out through his eyes. Carston hoped it might be the tears he’d cry when he knew what he’d done. He had always liked Clarence, disliked that his affection should have turned to horror. He even put a cushion under his head. Then snatched up a knife in the kitchen, rushed out and cut Scylla free, and carried her on to the sitting-room couch. Then followed a time when time indefinitely suspended and extended itself. Attempts to withdraw the wood that pierced her, to stop the blood, to revive her, sustain her, dreading her consciousness and her unconsciousness alike. Listen to Clarence moaning, listen for him moving. He had not found a key to lock him in. Try to find a revolver without leaving Scylla, and later not to fall over the gun he had laid across the table at full cock. At one time he wondered if he should pitch Clarence over the cliff while he went for a doctor, and went nearly mad as the light failed, for he saw her coming back to her right mind alone, and the ghost of the man who had injured her crawling up the cliff-face to go on with his dream out of the flesh, and two ghosts, not one, would carry on, the torturing and the tortured.

An immensely long shadow flung back was travelling the hills. As the sun slipped incandescent into a crescent of far cliff, Carston heard outside whistling, liquid notes of everything that has wings. He remembered, ‘Like Mozart.’ Thought it might be death, coming sweetly for Scylla, as Picus walked into the house.

He saw Carston glaring, feeling for the gun, heard him say:

“You sent her to this. You laid this trap for her. You drove him mad—”

He answered:

“If that were so, should I have sent you? Should I have come myself? Whisht man, let’s look.” Passing, he put the gun at safe, and Carston saw him lay Scylla’s body across his knees, open the chemise he had slit up and re-tied with a scarf.