Murchison could not imagine where he was when he was aroused by Mrs Davies' entry with a broom next morning.
‘Ach, Mr. Murchison!’ she exclaimed. ‘I would haf gifen you a bed at the farm if I had known! Haf you been there all night?’
‘I think I must have been, Mrs Davies. I've no recollection of going to sleep. I must have just dropped off, and they left me here.’
‘Dear to goodness now, you could not haf been very comfortable.’
‘I slept too soundly to know whether I was comfortable or not. All I want is a jug of hot water and somewhere to have a wash and a shave.’
Mrs Davies led him into the lean-to, which was fitted up as a little kitchen, boiled him some water on an oil stove and left him to get on with his ablutions at the sink.
‘I say, Mrs Davies?’ he said, coming out with a shining morning face. ‘Do you think you could give me something to eat? I am ravenous, and I don't suppose the Brangwyns will be down yet awhile. I missed my supper last night, you know.’
‘Yess, indeed!’ exclaimed the hospitable Mrs Davies, bustling about with a frying-pan while he helped her by blowing the embers of the wood fire into flame with the bellows. ‘Miss Ursula, she will not be down yet awhile; she iss a naughty young lady, she will not get up in the morning. But then she iss not like us working folk.’
(‘No, damn her!’ thought Murchison. ‘She certainly isn't.’)
All his resentment against the unfortunate Ursula returned with a rush. Why should she skim the cream off life without effort? Take all and give nothing? He did not choose to remember that life was not being particularly creamy for Ursula at the moment; that it was, in fact, a pretty bitter draught.
He disposed of three eggs, half a dozen rashers of bacon, the best part of a home-baked loaf, and a large pot of black tea in a manner that completely won Mrs Davies' heart. Then he went out into the spring sunshine to escape from her broomings and brushings, and there Brangwyn presently joined him, and they strolled together up the steep couloir, in the mouth of which the cottage stood.
It had evidently been the bed of an ancient glacier, for the marks of the grinding ice could be clearly seen on the cliffs that bounded it. A breadth of turf, smooth as a lawn, and dotted here and there with boulders left behind by the ice, clothed what had once been the bed of a prehistoric river. The high rock walls sheltered them from the wind, the sun blazed down out of a cloudless sky, and the mountain air was magnificent.
‘Tradition has it,’ said Brangwyn, ‘that it was up here that Keridwen minded her cauldron.’
‘Who might Keridwen be?’ enquired Murchison.
‘She is the Keltic Ceres, and her cauldron is the prototype of the Graal. Ursula, in her better moments, likes to identify herself with Keridwen; but I tell her she is not an Earth-mother.’
‘No, more like a moon-goddess,’ said Murchison, forgetting his resentment against her for a moment. ‘I didn't think the part of the earth in spring quite suited her.’
Brangwyn glanced at him covertly, and wondered how much he had guessed of the significance of that rite. They walked on up the path in silence for a time until it came out on to the steep slope of the mountain-side.
‘Hullo? Look at that!’ exclaimed Murchison, pointing to a trampled patch of ground, with some shreds of woollen material lying about on it. ‘This must have been where they had the row yesterday. What a swine the chap is! Could you possibly imagine a more isolated place to attack a girl?’
‘A swine the lad is now, right enough, but he was by no means a swine when I first knew him, Murchison. This piece of work lies at the door of Astley rather than Fouldes.’
‘“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,”’ said Murchison sulkily, staring across to the far horizon, where a line of silver marked the sea. It annoyed him that his feeling for Ursula Brangwyn would not change over into hatred and contempt as it rightly should, but kept on surging up in great waves of sweetness and bitterness.
‘It is curious that you should have likened Ursula to a moon goddess,’ said Brangwyn conversationally. ‘For that is the symbolism we have been working with in the winged bull formula.’
‘You told me she was,’ said Murchison irritably, still staring out at the horizon. ‘You said she was Isis, and Isis is the same as Luna, isn't she?’
‘Yes,’ said Brangwyn. ‘And that's curious, for Luna is also the same as Diana, and you remember how the dogs made it hot for Acteon when he annoyed Diana? These symbolisms work out in a very odd way, though nobody has ever been able to explain how it comes about. You meditate on the set of symbols which make up a formula and soon they begin to express themselves in your life. I have seen it happen over and over again. Have you ever noticed how meditation on the black Calvary cross of sacrifice always brings suffering and renunciation?’
‘Can't say I have. Never having done any,’ said Murchison, with his back still to his companion. Brangwyn stared at the broad back, wondering what on earth had upset Murchison, for upset he obviously was.
Suddenly he turned round with a short laugh, and the expression of his face was not pleasant. ‘If I remember aright, from the scanty remains of my classical education, Diana was given to blood sacrifices.’
‘So she was,’ said Brangwyn, wondering what all this was leading up to. ‘But we are not in Aulis these days. Diana, I trust, is a reformed character.’
‘The symbols never change, Brangwyn. If you start on them at all you have got to see them through.’
Brangwyn looked at him, wondering where this knowledge came from.
Murchison laughed again his harsh, barking laugh, that Brangwyn had never heard before, and that he did not particularly care about.
‘Is it part of my job to murder my predecessor?’ he asked.
‘What in the world do you mean, Murchison?’
‘Well, you remember the priest of Diana in the Arician Grove? He always held his job by virtue of having murdered his predecessor, didn't he? And that was the only qualification required of him.’
‘It will not be necessary for you to murder Fouldes,’ said Brangwyn quietly. ‘It will be quite enough if you put his nose out of joint. Shall we go back to breakfast?’
‘I believe the priest of Diana in the Arician Grove was always a runaway slave, or some other scallywag,’ said Murchison pleasantly. ‘So the symbolism fits me just nicely.’
(‘Ursula must have trodden on his corns particularly badly,’ thought Brangwyn to himself. ‘It is going to be a pretty kettle of fish if these two start quarrelling.’)
They strolled back down the couloir to find that Ursula had at last put in an appearance. Her brother thought that she looked remarkably fresh and radiant, considering the experience she had been through the previous day, but Murchison paid no attention to her. His dark mood did not seem to affect his appetite, however, for he did ample justice to a second breakfast.
‘I wonder if you would take the car and run over to Llandudno, Murchison, and see what you can do in the way of shirts,’ said Brangwyn. ‘I feel as grimy as a collier after our run yesterday. What would you like to do, Ursula? Would you like to go with him for the run?’
Murchison expected her to decline, but to his surprise she accepted, alleging that she would be glad of the opportunity for a little shopping herself. They started off in the brilliant mountain sunshine, dropping down the steep pass to the plain, and making their way through wide valleys to the coast.
It was not until they went to have a cup of coffee in a cafe, at the girl's suggestion, that there was any conversation between them.
‘I want to talk to you,’ said the girl abruptly.
‘Yes?’ said Murchison, raising his eyebrows enquiringly.
She lifted her eyes from her cup, where she had been prodding the sugar with an absorbed preoccupation, and for a moment she hated him. He was so terribly heavy and unresponsive and slow in the uptake; and she disliked blue eyes, anyway, they were so insipid. But there was no backing out now; he was sitting looking at her with a questioning air, and looked as if he would continue to sit till the day of judgment. She felt that no help would be forthcoming from him, and that she must take the initiative and make use of him if he were to be any help to her at all.
She returned to the consideration of her coffee to get away from his unblinking gaze. At length she managed to speak, though she could not look up.
‘I had a pretty bad fright yesterday.’
‘So I gathered. It was a good job for you the dog was handy.’
‘It wasn't so much that. I don't suppose he would have done me any real injury. It was myself I was scared at - the extent I am under his influence.’
‘I think he would have done you a pretty real injury if you had held out,’ said Murchison.
‘What makes you say that?’ Ursula looked up, surprised.
‘Astley said he would use violence if necessary.’ He thought it well for her to know that, so that she should not take risks, strong in her own conceit. It would do her all the good in the world to have a bit of her self-sufficiency taken out of her. She needed to know what it would be like to be up against even a man as slightly built as Fouldes if the gloves were off.
‘To me.’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Where?’
‘In a pub.?’
‘What were you doing with him in a pub?’
‘Making him tight.’
‘Why?’
‘So's he'd talk.’
Ursula returned gaze for gaze with Murchison.
‘Will you tell me frankly why you are doing all this?’
‘Because your brother pays me to, Miss Brangwyn.’
Ursula blushed crimson and dropped her eyes to her cup again.
‘Did you think I was doing it for you?’
The girl looked up, speechless and white with anger.
‘No, I'm not doing it for you. I'm not such a fool as all that,’ said Murchison.
‘It seems to me,’ said Ursula, speaking with difficulty, ‘that you and I might as well give up the idea of trying to work together.’
‘Well, what is it you want from me?’
Ursula was speechless. She knew what her brother's ideas were, and she gathered that Murchison also knew now.
‘Do you know what you'd say of me if I were a woman? You'd say I was a prostitute.’
Ursula half rose from her chair, but the man's eyes held her. She did not think that blue eyes were insipid now. They were terrible. She thought they were the cruellest eyes she had ever seen.
‘I know your brother picked me out of the gutter. I know I'm well paid. But there are some things I draw the line at, and you're one of them. I don't like you any better than you like me, Miss Brangwyn, but I'll do my job of work with you because your brother wants me to, and because you need it, but there it begins and ends. As long as you understand that, it's all right, and if you'll tell me what you want, I'll do my best to carry it out.’
‘I don't want anything!’ cried Ursula furiously. ‘It's an utterly impossible situation. I have told my brother so all along.’
‘I think so, too,’ said Murchison sulkily. ‘I'll cash in my checks when we get back.’
‘I shan't go back with you. I absolutely refuse to drive back with you. I shall stop at an hotel for the night, and my brother can fetch me in the morning.’
‘All right. Which hotel would you like to stop at?’
‘That is my business.’
‘No it isn't, it's mine also. It is up to me to see that you don't fall into Fouldes' hands. That's what I'm paid for.’
A shadow fell across the table.
‘If you don't like your escort, Ursula, perhaps you would care to accept mine?’ They looked up, startled, to see Fouldes standing over them smiling. He drew up a chair and sat down at their table, still smiling.
‘I gather, Mr. Murchison, that your attitude is not altogether acceptable to Miss Brangwyn, which is hardly to be wondered at, and I am going to give myself the pleasure of asking you to mind your manners.’
Everything disappeared before Murchison in a blaze of wrath. He knew that he was at a disadvantage with the subtler man, for he could not very well use force in the restaurant. He also knew that he had quarrelled with Ursula without provocation, and been insultingly rude to her, and that she was very angry, and justifiably so. And in addition to all this he had let his employer down very badly. Why had he suddenly rounded on the unfortunate Ursula for a question that intended no offence? He didn't know himself. She had only asked him why he was putting his heart and soul into the job of rescuing her from Fouldes, and had got insulted for her pains. It was the very thing to fling her into Fouldes' arms. Fouldes knew it, too. He had evidently heard their angry tones, if not what was actually said, and was quite alive to his advantage. Ursula Brangwyn, as proud as Lucifer, would go over to his side simply to spite Murchison. He saw that she was gathering her furs about her. Fouldes, smiling maliciously, drew back her chair as she rose. She turned her back on Murchison, and Fouldes put her furs around her shoulders.
Murchison got to his feet. The other's smile began to fade. All the cards were in his hands, but he did not like the look on the Yorkshireman's face.
Murchison was a slow mover till he got going, and none of the other occupants of the cafe guessed that there was a row in progress. He lurched clumsily forward, and Fouldes, light as a stag, gave back.
‘Don't let us have a scene in public,’ he said.
‘You'll have what you make,’ said Murchison.
Fouldes gave back again. ‘Go out and get into my car, Kitten,’ he said. ‘There is no need for you to be involved in this. I will get the management to deal with him.’
Murchison felt himself to be battling at a disadvantage with quicker wits than his. Moreover, he had lost his self-control and could not trust himself. The old berserker rage that had so often betrayed him was rising within him, and he knew that once that broke bounds every man's hand would be against him. If he took the law into his own hands the management would send for the police; if he did not, Ursula Brangwyn would walk out with Fouldes, betrayed by his own savage temper.
He felt like a baited bull fuming frantically on his elusive tormentors. The image of the bull brought back to him all the scheme of things that Brangwyn had half hinted and half explained, and it seemed to him as if everything worth having in life were collapsing about his ears. It was not his job he thought of; to do him justice, that never entered his head. It was the down-rushing power of that marvellous ritual of the earth in spring. He would lose all that; he would lose all the possibilities it opened up, dimly though he guessed them. Ursula and he were bound together by that ritual. However much he hated her, or she hated him, that experience shared had established a bond between them. And Fouldes was taking her from him. Taking her to unspeakable degradation. The blind fury of the wild beast in defence of its mate surged up within him, and the berserker rage burst bounds.
He caught Ursula round the waist.
‘You're coming with me,’ he said, and before anyone could interfere he swept her out of the shop, pushed her into the car, sprang in himself, and was flying down the wide street at sixty miles an hour.