But if the Barley brothers felt from afar the warmth of Ashlyme’s disapproval, they did not show it. They continued to grin and snigger nightly in the queue outside Agden Fincher’s pie shop; they continued to hunt rats with their cudgels and Dandy Dinmont dogs among the derelict suburbs of the plague zone, taking huge hauls of these vermin from the boarded-up warehouses and empty cellars and trying to sell them for a shilling a time to astonished restauranteurs on the Margarethestrasse. Their imagination, complained Ashlyme, is vile and wayward. And as if in response to this, they invented donkey jackets, Wellington boots, and small white plastic trays covered in congealed food with which they littered the streets and gutters of Mynned.
The High City, which had recovered its heart, followed these adventures with an indulgent eye, “Besotted,” as Ashlyme expressed it one day to the Marchioness “L,” “by a vitality it admires but dare not emulate.”
The Marchioness gave him a vague, propitiatory smile.
“I’m sure we none of us begrudge them their youth,” she said. “And they do take our minds wonderfully off our present troubles!” She leaned forward. “Master Ashlyme, I fear that Paulinus Rack will have to abandon The Dreaming Boys. ” She waved her hand in the general direction of the Low City. “In the present situation we all feel very strongly that we should have something less gloomy in the theatre. Of course, it is a pity that we shall not now see Audsley King’s marvellous stage sets…” Here, she left an expectant pause, and when Ashlyme failed to respond, reminded him gently, “Master Ashlyme, we do so rely on you for our news of Audsley King.”
“Audsley King is near to death,” he answered. “She will not rest but she cannot paint. She has lost faith in her art, herself, everything. Every time I go there she has allowed herself closer to the brink.” He paced agitatedly up and down the studio. “Even now she might be saved. But I will not force her to leave that place. I find that for me to act, the decision must be hers.” He bit his lip. To his horror he found himself admitting, “Marchioness, I am in despair. Can you believe she wishes to die?”
This question seemed to take the Marchioness by surprise. She stared at him thoughtfully for some time, as if trying to assess his sincerity (or perhaps her own). Then she said meditatively:
“Did you know that Audsley King was once married to Paulinus Rack?”
Ashlyme looked at her in astonishment.
“It was a long time ago. You are certainly too young to remember. The marriage ended when Rack first made his name in the High City, with those sentimental watercolours of life in the Artists’ Quarter. He called them ‘Bohemian days.’ At the Bistro Californium and the Luitpold Cafe they never forgave him for that. He had been a leading light in their ‘new movement,’ you see. They were all supposed to be above money and that sort of thing. They held a funeral, complete with an ornate coffin, which they said was ‘the funeral of Art in Viriconium.’ Audsley King was the first to throw earth on the coffin when they buried it on Allman’s Heath. Later she claimed that her husband had died of syphilis: a symbolic punishment.”
The Marchioness thought for a moment. “Of course,” she went on, “Rack’s later behaviour rather tended to confirm their opinion of him.”
She got up to leave. Pulling on her gloves, she said, “You are very fond of her, Master Ashlyme. You must not allow her to bully you because of that.”
She paused at Ashlyme’s front door to admire the city. Sunshine and showers had filled the streets of Mynned with a slanting watercolourist’s light; a bank of cloud was advancing from the west, edged at its summit with silver and tinged beneath with the soft purplish grey of pigeon feathers. “What a delightful afternoon it is!” she exclaimed. “I shall walk.” But she lingered on the pavement as if trying to decide whether to add something to what she had already said. “Audsley King, you know, was a spoilt child. She has never made up her mind between public acclaim-which she sees, rightly or wrongly, as destructive of the true artistic impulse-and obscurity, for which she is not temperamentally fitted.”
Ashlyme said neutrally, “She doesn’t respect the judgement of the High City.”
“Just so,” said the Marchioness, looking out across the jumbled roofs of the Quarter. “I expect you are right.” She smiled sadly. “We must hope she has more faith in yours.”
When she had gone, Ashlyme sat in the studio like a stone. “Married to Paulinus Rack!” he said to himself, and, “ ‘Something less gloomy in the theatre’! Has no one told them up here that the world is coming to an end?” He got up suddenly and hurried out. The Marchioness had convinced him, as she had perhaps intended, that action was still possible.
THE FIFTH CARD
A legacy will come to you from a far-off country. Light, truth, the unravelling of involved matters. In this card everything is revealed. If it comes next to No. 4 it predicts you will fall in the sea.
“I believe that the ‘Waste Land’ is really the very heart of our problem; a rightful appreciation of its position and significance will place us in possession of the clue which will lead us safely through the most bewildering mazes.”
Afternoon was slipping away into evening as he made his way up the long hill to Alves. He saw immediately that there was something wrong. A strange flat light hung round the old towers, so that he seemed to be looking at them through dirty glass; the cries of the jackdaws as they wheeled round the dome of the derelict palace had a remote and uninflected note, as if they came from much further away; the peeling middle-class villas on the slopes below had aged since his last visit, and their overgrown gardens were full of household rubbish and decaying bricks. A dog trotted aimlessly about in the road ahead of him, sniffing the dust as it whirled round in cold circles. The hill seemed endless. Halfway up it he broke into a run. He could not have explained why.
Emmet Buffo’s door was open and the damp had blown into his rooms. A stale smell came from the alcove where he did his cooking. He lay under a cheap coloured blanket in the low iron bed by the washstand. He was dead. On the floor beside him were scattered the remains of two or three meals and-as if he had dropped them and never found the strength to pick them up again-a few small ground-glass lenses of different colours. Beneath the blanket his body had assumed an awkward posture, twisted partly on its side: it was as if it had contracted unevenly after death, curling up like an insect. One thin arm was bent behind his head, while the other hung over the side of the bed, its long, clumsily knuckled hand touching the floor. Perhaps he had been trying to turn over. He looked old. He looked, with his intelligent, tired eyes, his worn, unshaven face, and big raw ears, as defenceless, honest, and undemanding as he had ever done.
On a table by the bed were some sheets of paper which he had covered with numbered notes in a spiky, erratic hand. Though the notes were unrelated, the numbers gave them a mad air of continuity, as if they were intended as steps in a logical argument. No one has come to visit me in my illness, read one. Hindering the scientist is a crime, it is murdering knowledgein the bud! claimed another. Why have I never received sufficient finance? he asked himself, and answered: Because I have never convinced them of the significance of the stars, among which mankind once flew.
How long had he lain there, writing when he could, staring at the mouldy shapes on the wall when fatigue overcame him and sleep evaded him, unable to prevent himself from speculating, formulating, rationalising? I must always remember that Art is as important as Science, and containmy impatience!
Poor Emmet Buffo!-The world had puzzled him by its indifference, but he blamed no one.