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EIGHTY-FOUR

When Cheeta and Titus came abreast, they stopped dead, for the idea of cutting one another would have been ludicrously dramatic. In any event, as far as Cheeta was concerned, there was never any question of letting the young man go by like a cloud, never to return. She was not finished with him. She had hardly started. She recognized in the sliding moments, a quality that set this day apart from others. It was a febrile day, not to be gainsaid; a day, perhaps of insight and heightened apprehension.

And yet at the same time there was, in spite of the tension, a feeling in both of them that there was nothing new in what was happening; that they had shared in years gone by, an identical situation, and that there was no escape from the fate that overhung them.

‘Thank you for stopping,’ said Cheeta, in her slow and listless way. (Titus was always reminded when she spoke of dry leaves rustling.)

‘What else could I do?’ said Titus. ‘After all, we know each other.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Cheeta. ‘Perhaps that would be a good reason to avoid one another.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Titus. The avenue hummed with silence.

‘Who were they?’ said Cheeta at last. The three short syllables of her question drifted away one by one.

‘Who do you mean?’ said Titus. ‘I’m in no mood for riddles.’

‘The three beggars.’

‘Oh them! Old friends of mine.’

‘Friends?’ whispered Cheeta, as though to herself. ‘What are they doing in Father’s grounds?’

‘They came to save me,’ said Titus.

‘From what?’

‘From myself I suppose. And from women. They are wise. Wise men are the beggars. They think you are too luscious for me. Ha, ha, ha, ha! But I told them not to worry. I told them you were frozen at the very tap-root. That your sex is bolted from the inside; that you are as prim as the mantis, that gobbles up the heads of her admirers. Love’s so disgusting, isn’t it?’

Had Titus not been ranting with his head thrown back, he might for a split second have seen, between the narrowing eyelids of the scientist’s daughter, a fleck of terrible light.

But he did not see it. All he saw when he looked down at her was something rare and flawless, as a rose or a bird.

The eyes that had blazed for a moment were now as luminous with love as the eyes of a monkey-eating eagle.

‘And yet you said you loved me. That is the spice of it.’

‘Of course I love you,’ said Cheeta, throwing the words away like dead petals. ‘Of course I do, and I always will. That is why you must go.’ She drew her pencilled eyebrows together, and at once became another creature, a creature in every way as unique and bizarre as before. She turned her head away, and there she was again, or was she someone else?

‘Because I love you, Titus; so much, I can hardly bear it.’

‘Then tell me something,’ said Titus in so casual a voice that it was all that Cheeta could do to control a spurt of rage, which, had she given vent to it, might have ruined her carefully laid plans. For above all Titus must not be allowed to leave as he intended on the evening of this very day.

‘What is it you want to ask me?’ She drew herself close to him.

‘Your father …’

‘What about him?’

‘Why does he dress like a mute? Why is he so dreary? What’s in his factory? Why is his brow like a melon? Are you sure he is your father? Whose are those faces that I saw? Thousands of them, and all of them the same, staring like waxworks? What was that stink that crept across the lake? What is it he’s making there? For, by God, the very look of the place turns me up. Why is it surrounded by guards?’

‘I never asked him. Why should I?’ said Cheeta.

‘Has he not told you anything at all? And what about your mother?’

‘She’s … What’s that?’

There was a faint sound of footsteps, and they drew into the hem of the woods together, and were only just in time, for as they moved, two figures lifted their heads in perfect yet unaffected unison, and slid over the soft turf. On their heads they wore helmets that smouldered in the low rays of the sun.

As they passed, there was yet another sound, apart from the whisper of their feet on