Outside in the yard the oyster shells had been ground as fine as flour. They caressed Ronny’s bare feet, softer than sand, as soft as silk. Jeremy was washing his car, using a brush and liquid soap with a pleasant smell. He paid no attention to Ronny nor Ronny to him, but they were a comfort to each other. Ronny was reluctant to leave the yard for the stable where all was quiet and a sort of waiting hush was over everything. The chaff hung in the air disturbed by every breath and a musty beam of light fell across Shalimar’s stall with its wooden block. The bird could not see this beam of light; its head was covered by the hood and it perched quietly with puffed feathers. Ronny held the falcon hooded while he snapped the ankle ring on its leg. Then he unhooded it and watched the eye on his side of the beak come to life. At first the pupil covered everything, but gradually as Ronny watched, the black lens contracted, the cruel gold of the iris took possession like a consuming flame.

Ronny drew in his breath. He no longer dared address his bird directly, so now he spoke of him, softly in the chanting voice children sometimes use when they are alone with animals. “Shalimar is so beautiful!” he murmured, stroking the ruffled feathers. “Soon he will fly away and live alone on the top of mountains. He will not mind his ring. Sometimes he will sharpen his beak on it and remember that we knew each other.”

There was no answer in the stable. The falcon’s iris grew larger as the bird glared into the sunlight. Ronny brought it almost to the back door of the stable before it opened its powerful wings and flew away. For a while Ronny watched it mounting into the sky, circling above the peninsula and the morning sea.

Ronny entered the stable once more and spoke boldly to Gambol over the break in his voice: “I suppose you are hungry.” He took a pitchfork and began to clean the stall. The sharp smell of ammonia breathed into his fasting body made Ronny dizzy. The blood receded from his temples and he felt that instead of going back into his cardiac veins it ran into his tattooed heart like a traitor.

“Oh Gambol, did you ever speak?” he cried.

The horse munched at his grain contentedly and tore it sideways as though his teeth were a mill stone.

Now the false heart throbbed on Ronny’s breast. He really had to put down his head between his knees to keep from fainting.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Morning on the Greys’ hilltop was a king ascending his throne; a king surrounded by minions. First, in lieu of trumpets, the dawn breeze blew. Then a mist slowly permeated the air until the dusk gleamed like lead. Afterwards, crying harshly, a horde of crows flew over the peninsula, pursuing an owl. The owl flew slowly, hindered by his torn and bloody feathers and by the dawn which blinded his soft eyes. Other birds now broke into song and a heavy, red sun fought sluggishly up the sky.

June woke up reluctantly. Although she could not recall doing anything really foolish the night before, a guilt as though of some awkward memory sullied the new day. Dressed, she went down to her grandmother’s room. Mrs. Grey had her cap awry on her wispy gray head and June repressed a laugh.

“Good morning, my dear,” said Mrs. Grey, quite aware of this, but speaking blandly. She was laying out the cards on a tray in front of her and her fingers were glassy at the ends from constant use of a nail buffer. “Did you have a nice time last night?” she asked. “And is Mrs. Villars a pleasant woman?”

“Not very nice,” replied June, “and I don’t really like Mrs. Villars. She’s just a little, blond, made-up lady.” June as she said this was surprised. It was as though her grandmother’s presence put everything in another perspective.

“Well, well, it’s not everybody that can get along with young people or enjoy talking to them.” Mrs. Grey spoke in a calm, almost self-satisfied way, but this might have been because she was pouncing on a card.

“Mrs. Villars doesn’t consider me a very young person,” said June.

Mrs. Grey put down her glasses onto the bridge of her nose and looked at her granddaughter over the rims. “I don’t think one should go into things too deeply,” she remarked.

This theory, so different from that of social workers, psychologists and doctors, had served the old woman all her life. June, who was at the self-probing age, turned restlessly towards the dresser.

“Well, look who’s preening in front of the mirror,” said Catherine, entering the room with a crackle of starch. It was as though only the stiffness of her skirts gave her body shape and substance. “It’s last night you should have been preening,” she continued severely, “instead of going out to dinner in your shorts.”

“Well she was in shorts, too,” retorted June, who had spent some time regretting her costume. “Besides, I hate all my clothes. Grandmother, how do you think up answers and comebacks and remarks?”

“I believe,” said Mrs. Grey, “that if one reflects on the words of other people, one would just as soon not have said them.”

“But then the other people get the upper hand.”

“In that case you’d better consult Catherine,” said Mrs. Grey. “She is never at a loss.”

When June left her grandmother’s room, she felt better, more as though it were possible after all to communicate with others. However, by the time she reached the kitchen her own isolation returned to her. The lower part of her body ached and a dark pulse dragged at her entrails. Opening the icebox door she was at once revolted by the smell of the new milk which had been set in pans. She shut the door again and looked in the cake box. But she had no sooner begun to eat a slice of cake than the thought of its ingredients disturbed her: butter from the cream in the icebox pans, and lard, like the greasy sweat of pigs. She put it down at once and taking a glass filled it partly with water. Then she poured in the same amount of vinegar and drank the mixture down in a gulp. She waited to feel the slight nausea before the liquid descended and became a part of her.

Stevens was waiting for her when June came into the library. “Good morning,” he said, still sitting at the desk and looking out at the moss-starred lawn.

June replied apathetically to his greeting, yet inside her mind a whole silent controversy, as of puppets, was being enacted.

“Why don’t you stand up for a lady?” asked the small puppet June.

And the puppet Stevens retorted: “If you acted like a lady I might.”

Then the puppet June, made sharp by vinegar, had the last word: “And if you acted like a man instead of like a gray lily I might act like a lady.”—No, it would never do after all; the school girl was in it thick as syrup. June sat down wearily at the desk.

Stevens bent his pale eyes upon her. He had expected her to look embarrassed or at least ill after last night. Because she must acknowledge that at one moment in the evening she had been really drunk. He noticed with irritation that June showed symptoms of neither. “June, I think you should know,” he said in the authoritative voice which he had once found it so hard to acquire, “that your conduct is most immoral.”

“Conduct?” muttered June sullenly. “But it was Mrs. Villars who gave me all that brandy——”

He cut her off. “I’m not talking about your lack of self-control in drinking. That is nothing to do with me. I’m talking about dragging a little boy into the underworld.”

“Dragging a little boy into the underworld,” repeated June without inflection, and then she understood that he was talking about Eddie and Flo. “You’re just angry,” she cried, “because—” It was no use. Her tongue was ignorant of all the things her mind knew. It lacked the knowledge and the art to utter them.

“Because?” Stevens urged with a slight smile. June’s eyes were opened upon his. In their depths, palpitating and opaque, one could almost see the pulse of her heart. Then, throwing down her books, she ran out of the room.

Outside, June could hardly recall a word of the quarrel. The morning mist had gone except for a faint haze around the sun and it was very hot. A sultry wind blew across the hilltop, burned by the glittering surface of the water. She saw McGreggor trudging towards the back door with a basket of vegetables. They passed quite close, but June could not bring herself to greet him. Apparently McGreggor had the same difficulty, or else he did not see her. His narrow eyes, pushed close to his nose and half hidden by his cheek bones, looked straight ahead and did not waver. June stole a quick glance his way. What were the thoughts of such a man? What if she were to ask him:

“Is it true that you are in love with Catherine?”

She would never dare of course. He would probably rend her with his stiff, hard, small glance. Yet McGreggor must have a soul, or have had one once. She thought of the bagpipes which he had ceased to play. What had once made him bring them out at dusk and skirl their notes into the wood? And even more important, what had made him cease to do so? To cease to do a thing or to feel it; to have a thing be over, there was the mystery. Looking around, June saw that the leaves had a golden tinge and that their first, fresh green was gone, lost forever. Then from the far woods she saw a small figure advancing towards her. It was Ronny, on foot. June ran quickly forwards.

“Where’s Gambol?” she cried.

“Oh I didn’t ride him today,” said Ronny, offhand. “He’s just a horse, you know.”

June was stopped in her tracks. Here was an example of her very thoughts. “Why do you say that now?” she asked, trying to sound as casual as he, although apprehension made her voice uncertain.

Ronny, if he knew, would not tell her. “Shall we go to the bluffs?” he asked. As of old he took her hand, and this act, always surprising to June because it was so unlike her brothers, now made her throat ache.

The bluffs when they arrived were also an ending, an edge to the world, as if the sound below were that river which only the dead may cross. It was easy to believe that there was no land beyond; only the whirling planets, the stars and the sun’s roll. The morning mist still clung to the horizon and the sea was smooth as glass. It lapped quietly at the moist yellow sand of the beach below the bluffs.

“Let’s run down,” said Ronny. “We never have.”

“Oh I’ve done it often,” protested June. Once she would have devoured the steep sands like a tiger. Now, either because of her dream or because of a reluctance for feats performed in childhood, the idea displeased her. “It’s awfully hard to get up again,” she argued reasonably.

“We’ll go around,” said Ronny. “Besides there’s a little path up the edge. Come on, June!” His high, clear, insistent tones, like a bird or like some rustic flute, now pierced June’s ears.

“Don’t you see,” she cried, “that we aren’t going to meet anymore?”

His eyes turned for an instant into hers. “What’s that got to do with sliding down the bluffs? Anyway you’re supposed to come to the party tomorrow night. Mother said so.”

“What party?” asked June, but Ronny was off already, his brown legs making strange angles as he leapt down the bluff. He took big leaps, his teeth bared, his hair standing from his head and he gave yells of excitement at the speed and length of his stride.

A sense of loneliness, of desolation too great to be borne, made June follow him. Despite her distaste, the swift descent and its dreamlike ease exhilarated her and they arrived on the beach panting and almost side by side.

“Now which is beating the fastest,” she asked to punish Ronny, “the real or the fake?”

“Eddie is going to bring me some mother’s milk to take it away,” he cried lightly, “and then I’ll be just like before and when it’s gone I’ll never think of you.”

June started to walk away along the beach, but Ronny followed her at once. “Wait!” he called frantically. “Wait, June!” He ran ahead of her and stopped her with his body. “Bend your head,” he begged in an anguished voice. “Don’t you see you’re too tall?”