The Winged Bull

by Dion Fortune

  She was turning all this over in her mind, when suddenly, dark against the light, a man stood in front of her, having approached noiselessly over the loose sand. She could not see his face, and because he was tall she jumped to the conclusion that he must be Fouldes, and, screaming aloud, scrambled to her feet, standing at bay in the corner of the barn, her face lived with terror.

  ‘Good Lord, what’s the matter?’ exclaimed the man, coming into the barn, and she saw that it was Murchison.

  ‘I thought you were Frank,’ she said, feeling weak and shaken and very foolish, for she saw at once that Murchison was not moved to sympathy on this occasion by her display of weakness.

  She dropped down on the cushioned car-seat again, and drew the rug over her lap.

  ‘No,’ said the man, ‘I’m afraid I’m not Frank. Sorry, but it can’t be helped.’

  She was not sure whether he was making one of his rough jokes, or whether he was being nasty.

  He, too, dropped down on the sand.

  ‘I have been thinking things out,’ he said. ‘And I have got a proposition to put before you.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Ursula tentatively, wondering what in the world was coming.

  ‘If I have got the hang of the job right, your brother wants me to marry you in order to cut out Fouldes, on the principle that one nail drives out another. Is that so?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ursula faintly. ‘But there is more to it than that.’

  He ignored the latter part of her remark and went on.

  ‘I told him that I would do anything I could for you, but I definitely would not marry you. Did he tell you that?’

  ‘No,’ said Ursula, still more faintly.

  ‘He seems to think, however, that the proposition is not a practicable one without marriage? Is that so?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ursula miserably.

  ‘Well, he seemed to think so. Now the proposition I have to put up is this. I am not willing to marry you for keeps, because I honestly don’t think it would work. But I will marry you and live with you for a year if you like, provided the arrangement is subject to three months’ notice on either side. I will do this on condition that you or your brother, it doesn’t matter to me which, will put me through a university course in civil engineering, and give me a start overseas.’

  He looked at Ursula, and saw that she had gone as white as a sheet, and a pang of compunction shot through him. But her next words removed it.

  ‘I suppose that is a reasonable proposition,’ she said, ‘I know my brother intended to make some sort of financial arrangement with you.’ Her head was held very high, but he saw that her mouth was quivering.

  ‘We’ll take that as settled, shall we?’ he said, and rose to his feet. He wanted to get away from her; having shot his bolt, the sight of her was unbearable to him.

  She rose, too, and they stood facing each other. He would not have believed that it was possible for him to desire to hurt and humiliate any living being as he desired to hurt and humiliate her as she stood there, looking white and frightened, in her mink coat, with her gold net purse lying at her feet, where she had dropped it in her agitation, spilling out its valuable contents on to the sand.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘as we are now formally engaged, I think that “a kiss or two is justly due, as, from, and between us both,” ‘and he took her in his arms.

  The moment he felt the touch of her soft lips on his, his evil enchantment left him. He held her from him at arm’s length, and stared in horror at her white face.

  ‘My God!’ he said, ‘what have I been doing?’ and he turned on his heel and walked hastily out of the barn, to come face to face with the breakdown gang that had arrived unheard over the sandy road.

  It did not take the powerful derrick long to get Brangwyn’s car out of the ditch; but when they did so, they found that the steering-gear had been wrenched and the car was practically uncontrollable.

  ‘We will put her on the tow-rope to steady her,’ said the foreman of the gang. ‘I think the lady had better come on the van with us in case you run into the ditch again.’

  So on the journey back to civilization Murchison had the companionship of a chatty youth in greasy overalls, and there was no opportunity to say any word of explanation or apology to Ursula.

  At Llandudno Junction, to which the breakdown van towed them, they went into a little hotel to have tea while the car retired in disgrace to the garage.

  ‘Is there any way of letting your brother know what has happened to us?’ said Murchison. ‘We shall be pretty late getting in.’

  ‘You can get at the farm quite easily,’ said Ursula. ‘Phone the hotel at the top of the pass, and they will send a boy up to the farm with a message.’

  Murchison turned into the office to do his phoning, and when he came out the Boots informed him that the lady had taken a bedroom and gone to lie down, as she did not feel very well.

  Murchison ordered tea for one sulkily. He could hardly blame Ursula for not desiring his company after the way he had behaved towards her.

  Ursula, for her part, lay on an ice-cold bed under a clammy eiderdown, trying to console herself with hot tea, and thinking that she had never felt so miserable in her life.

  The cold-blooded cynicism of his proposition had been a terrible shock to her. And yet, could she justly deny that the proposition which had been put before him was just as coldblooded? She was surprised to find how greatly Murchison’s defection had shaken her; for she had come to rely on him far more than she had realized.

  But the thing that amazed her most was her reaction in the face of Murchison’s treatment of her. She ought to have snubbed him soundly and told her brother that he must choose between them. If Murchison stayed, she went. And yet here she was, meekly accepting his insults and wondering what she could do to propitiate him and put things right.

  Outwardly, of course, she had been civil enough, except for that terrible faux pas, which had been quite unintentional, and which was not really nearly as bad as it must have sounded in Murchison’s ears. But on the inner planes she knew that she had committed magical sin in taking all that Murchison had to give and giving nothing back to him. That was just plain vampirism, and nothing else.

  She felt sure that the upheaval in Murchison was due to some check in the workings of the mysterious power that they had set in motion when she had played the part of the earth in spring and he had played the part of the life-giving sun. The old rites were potent, whether the forces they stirred were cosmic or subconscious. She herself had felt new life and hope flow into her, but there had been no return flow on the circuit; there had been no new hope for Murchison in his thwarted life. In spite of all that her brother kept on telling her, she had felt in her heart that there would be no building of the uncouth Murchison into the fabric of her sophisticated existence; there was no place in it for him. She had agreed in her heart when he had said that he would be used as scaffolding, and pulled down and carted away when he had served his purpose. She admitted frankly to herself that if she had really believed what her brother had told her concerning the relationship that would build up between them if the magic worked, she would never have permitted the attempt to be made.

  It had never occurred to her before to consider what would be the effect of all these experiments on Murchison, till his words gave her the key. ‘You are a very attractive woman, and I am a very lonely man.’ What must it have meant to that man to have heard her words, ‘I shall have to take Murchison, Alick’?

  How far were his reactions to be attributed to hurt vanity, and how far to a much deeper wound? It was difficult to think of pique and petty spite in connection with Murchison. She did not think she had been far out when she had flung at him the taunt of an inferiority complex. How could a man of his calibre, placed in his circumstances, have escaped it? She thought of the Oxen of the Sun bowing their mighty necks to the peasant’s yoke. Murchison was a tremendous force. She realized that more clearly at each conta
ct she had with him.

  And she had also begun to realize and appreciate another characteristic that distinguished Murchison — he was extraordinarily unselfish. There were few men who could or would have done what Murchison had done. And because she had not met him half-way and taken up her share of the task to which they had set their hands, it had proved too much for him, and he had gone down under it. If there had been a return flow of magnetism from her to him, how wonderful would have been their relationship by now. She sat up miserably, hugging her knees and thinking of it. Her brother was right, this could be a very big thing; but was it spoilt beyond repair by her snobbery and folly? She made up her mind that next time Murchison approached her he should have no cause to complain of her lack of response. The kiss in the barn had taken her by surprise and she had been too startled and upset for any response to be possible; but next time he kissed her she determined there should be a flow and return that should seal their union, and the Mass of the Winged Bull would begin.

  She wondered whether the hotel people would tolerate it if she sent for him to come up to her room and talk to her, and concluded that as they were highly respectable, chapel-going Welsh they probably wouldn’t. She snuggled down under the eiderdown that the warmth of her body was gradually airing, and had almost dropped off to sleep, when a knock at the door announced the chambermaid with a note. She tore it open, wondering who in the world was writing to her. It was on the hotel stationery, and addressed her as dear Miss Brangwyn, and was written in a sprawling schoolboy hand that exactly matched Murchison’s whole personality.

  ‘Your brother has just been through on the phone to me in answer to my message. I told him of the trouble we had with Fouldes following us around and he says that we are not to return to the farm, but to wait here for him, and he will bring your things down by car from the farm, and we are to return to London by the night mail.’

  Ursula was very much relieved. She had dreaded the return to the farm under Mrs Davies’ sharp eyes. The farm, too, was full of painful memories now. She would far sooner be back with Murchison in the flat. She decided that the best way to handle Murchison in his upheaved condition was to leave him till he cooled down, and then ask her brother to stage another rite of the earth in spring, and she would send across to Murchison such a return flow of magnetism that all barriers would go down between them. Meanwhile, her attitude should just be quietly friendly, refusing to take offence.

  She decided that it might be as well to give Murchison an opportunity to apologize if he wanted to, for she had judged from his expression of horror after he had kissed her that he had wakened up to the enormity of his behaviour, so she arose and put on her frock and went down to the lounge of the little hotel. Murchison was not there, but through a half-open door she caught a glimpse of him playing a game of billiards with a stranger, so her scheme went astray, and she had no word with Murchison till her brother appeared in a hired car loaded up with luggage which Mrs Davies must have done wonders to get packed in so short a time. Murchison, summoned from his game by the sound of his employer’s voice in the hall, presented a wooden countenance and refused to meet Ursula’s eyes.

  They got a first-class carriage to themselves on the Holy-head express. Ursula, who had a very genuine headache by now, refused dinner, and they left her lying at full length on a seat, with a pillow under her head and a rug over her and her face to the wall.

  ‘There is something you should know,’ said Murchison as soon as he was seated in the dining-car with his employer. ‘We’ve had a hell of a row, Miss Brangwyn and I.’

  Brangwyn raised his eyebrows. ‘What about?’

  ‘I suddenly exploded, without any provocation whatever. In fact, she had the patience of Job with me. I think I’ve put my foot in it properly.’

  Brangwyn smiled. ‘It won’t do my lady sister any harm to have a good row occasionally. In fact it is what she needs.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. What I did was pretty unpardonable.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ursula had had some sleep on the train, thanks to the liberal use of aspirin, but she had no more sleep after they got back to the flat towards midnight. And as she sat up in her rose-pink bed to look at the clock, she wondered whether Murchison, up in his flat, were sleeping any better than she was.

  As soon as it began to get light Ursula got up, had a bath, and went out. To her surprise, she found Monks taking down the shutters of the second-hand book-shop. She knew him well, and greeted him cordially, glad of the sight of a familiar face.

  ‘Good gracious, Mr Monks!’ she said. ‘Whatever time do you open shop?’

  ‘‘Tain’t so early as all that, miss,’ he replied. ‘It’s gettin’ on towards seven.’

  He did not tell her that news of her precipitate return had been telephoned from Wales the night before.

  ‘You’re up early, miss. Never known you do this before.’

  ‘I slept on the train, and then couldn’t sleep again when I got to bed.’

  ‘Would you like a cup o’ tea, miss? I got the kettle on the gas-ring, just goin’ to make one for mesell.’

  She followed him into the shop, where the sound of a kettle singing vouched for the truth of his words.

  ‘I’ll just put through a phone call while we’re waitin’. I’m afraid I may miss the feller if I leave it too late.’

  All unsuspicious, Ursula Brangwyn sat down and heard him dial a number.

  ‘This is Monks. Will you tell the boss right now that the goods ‘as arrived and I ‘ave ‘em in the shop.’

  A simple message, but efficacious, for Ursula had hardly finished drinking her cup of tea when a taxi drew up outside the shop, and in walked Astley.

  She rose to her feet, startled, wondering what extraordinary coincidence it was that brought him there; but quite unsuspicious of Monks, who had been with her brother some years and was deeply in debt to him for many kindnesses.

  ‘Yessir?’ said Monks briskly, as if Astley were a complete stranger.

  ‘All right, my man, all right,’ said Astley, brushing him aside as if he had never set eyes on him before. ‘I wish to speak to the lady.’

  ‘Yessir,’ said Monks, and vanished into the little cubbyhole where he had made the tea, leaving Ursula alone with Astley.

  ‘Well, Ursula, what about it?’ said Astley.

  ‘There is nothing about anything, Mr Astley. Good morning,’ said Ursula, and rose to depart. Astley shut the door, turned the key, and dropped it into his pocket. The heavy shutters were still up, the streets deserted at that hour, and Ursula Brangwyn was most effectually a prisoner.

  ‘Mr Monks!’ she called out, but there was no reply, and the significance of the telephone call she had heard suddenly dawned on her.

  She turned at bay. ‘Will you kindly unlock that door?’ she said.

  ‘No, my dear girl, not till I’ve had a talk with you. Won’t you sit down?’

  ‘I prefer to stand. This interview cannot be very prolonged, for I shall start screaming as soon as I hear a passer-by.’

  ‘I think you would be wise to hear what I have to say before you make any decision. You might regret it afterwards if you didn’t. Am I right in thinking that you and Murchison are proposing to work the Mass of the Bull?’

  ‘No, we are proposing to work the Mass of the Winged Bull, which is a very different matter.’

  ‘A distinction without a difference, so far as I can see,’ said Astley. ‘Well, my dear child, whatever you are proposing to work, it won’t come off. Murchison is a cock that won’t fight.’

  ‘My affairs are none of your business,’ said Ursula.

  ‘But your affairs are my business, my dear child, because you and Frank are already pretty deeply committed to me in the matter of the Mass of the Bull. Now listen, Ursula, and be sensible. You are in a very bad nervous condition, and you cannot get right, as you very well know, until what you have begun is finished off. You think you can do it with Murchison, but I know that you
cannot, because Murchison has other fish to fry, and he won’t polarize with you. In other words, my dear child, you have a rival.’

  The explanation fitted the circumstances so exactly that Ursula felt her heart turn to stone within her. Astley saw his advantage, and followed it up.

  ‘Read this,’ he said, and handed her Murchison’s letter.

  She read it in silence, and stood with it in her hand for several minutes without speaking, staring into space. Astley did not break in upon her thoughts, but stood concentrating upon her with the intent gaze of the hypnotist.

  At length she raised her eyes and said, ‘Yes, I see your point. What do you suggest?’

  ‘I suggest that you and Frank take your lives into your own hands and do the thing that it is in your hearts to do. He is your real mate, Ursula, and you know it. This oaf of Brangwyn’s is no possible mate for you, even if he were willing, and he quite obviously is not. You would have been happily married by now if your brother had not started poking sticks into the wheels.

  ‘You come back to me, Ursula, and you will feel the power beginning to flow again. It will bring life to you, Ursula. See, it is beginning to flow now. You feel the power flowing into you, Ursula. You cannot resist it. There is no resistance in you.’

  He made the hypnotist’s passes over her, unlocked the door, beckoned her to follow him, and winked over her shoulder at Monks. He put her into the taxi and they drove away. Monks hastily relocked the door, and decided that he would not open shop early that morning, and then he could not be questioned as to whether he had seen Miss Brangwyn go out.