Leaven of Malice

by Robertson Davies

  “It looked to me as though he were doing the entertaining.”

  “Yes, dear, but suppose he had wanted to wash his hands? Who would have taken him?”

  “If he needs to wash his hands in the course of an hour’s visit he ought to stay at home. Or wear one of those things.”

  “What things do you mean, dearie?”

  “Those things soldiers wear when they’re on sentry duty.”

  “Don’t be coarse, dear. I can’t bear it.”

  “Sorry, Mother.”

  “So nice to have someone sing at one’s Afternoon. It’s been years since it happened. Such nice songs, too. Your father loved Because—

  Because God made thee mine

  I’ll cherish thee—

  I was terribly moved. Lovey—”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “I think I could take a glass of sherry. Perhaps with a little something in it.”

  Solly obediently brought a tray and gave his mother a glass of dry sherry, in which he had put a generous dollop of gin.

  “Thank you, dear. It takes away the taste of that horrid medicine.”

  “Mother, how did that fellow Higgins get here?”

  “Higgin, dear. No ‘s’. Maude Shillito brought him.”

  “Do you think he is the sort of person you ought to have in the house?”

  “Whatever do you mean, dearie? Maude Shillito brought him.”

  “I know, but the Shillitos know all kinds of terrible people. I’ve met Higgin before, and I thought he was an awful little squirt.”

  “Please, lovey; you know how I dislike rough talk. Where did you meet him?”

  “He hunted me up at the University. Wanted me to let him talk to my classes about how to speak English.”

  “Well, lovey, from what you tell me about them, I think your classes might well have some instruction in how to speak.”

  “That’s not what the classes are for. And I can’t bring in odd visitors just as I please. Anyway, he was terribly patronizing about it, and obviously thought I’d jump at the chance. I was a bit short with him.”

  “Really, dear? Was that wise?”

  “He rubbed me the wrong way. Talked as if we were a lot of barbarians out here.”

  “We must learn all that we can from Older Civilizations, lovey.”

  “Just what Older Civilization does Higgin represent? Secondrateness comes out of his pores like a fog. There’s something disgusting about him.”

  “Dearie, you are speaking of a gentleman who was introduced into our home by an old and valued friend. I don’t know why you are so severe on English people, dear.”

  “I’m not severe on English people, Mother, but I hate fourflushers, wherever they come from, and if Higgin isn’t a four-flusher, I don’t know one.”

  “Let us not discuss it, dearie. When you are vehement you weary me, and I can’t stand much more today. I think I could take another glass of sherry.”

  STRENGTHENED BY TWO heavily spiked sherries, Mrs. Bridgetower was able to go upstairs—“to tackle the stairs” as she gamely put it—moving upward very slowly, with Solly half-boosting, half-pulling, and with a rest at the landing. When at last they reached her room, he helped her to undress, for it was understood that the elderly maid had all she could do to clear up after the At Home.

  There was no unseemliness in this assistance. Seated on her bed, Mrs. Bridgetower undid various mysterious fastenings through her gown, and Solly was able to pull off her stockings and put on her bedsocks. Then she toiled to a hiding-place behind a screen, and herself struggled out of the remainder of her garments, returning at last in a voluminous bedgown. Solly gently boosted her into bed, in which he had already put a hot-water bottle, and propped her up on her pillows. When he had picked up the discarded clothing from behind the screen and put it away, Mrs. Bridgetower was ready for her tray.

  It was understood that there could be no proper dinner on First Thursdays, as the servant had burnt herself out in preparing dainties for tea. But from the kitchen Solly fetched two trays, upon which suppers consisting chiefly of tea debris had been arranged, and he sat in a chair with one, while his mother took the other in bed. With the sherry and two kinds of medicine mingling uneasily inside her, her appetite was capricious, and to use her own expression, she picked at her food. But her spirit appeared to be refreshed, for she attacked Solly on the subject which had been uppermost in her mind for three days.

  “We must make some decision, dearie, about what we are going to do.”

  “I suppose all those women talked about it all afternoon.”

  “It is no good being resentful and childish. This is a serious matter, and we cannot dilly-dally any longer.”

  “I think the best thing is to ignore it.”

  “Your father certainly would not have thought so.”

  “How can we tell what Father would have thought?”

  “The enmity between us and Professor Vambrace was not of your father’s choosing, but he never permitted Vambrace to get the better of him. We owe something to your father’s memory.”

  “Oh, Mother, let’s talk sense. About three years ago I took Pearl Vambrace to the Military Ball. You had her here to dinner beforehand. You were very decent to her.”

  “There was a very good reason why you took her. I don’t entirely recall what it was, but there was something to do with that play—that one in which the Webster girl showed so much of her legs. I have no quarrel with Pearl Vambrace, poor creature. But her father is a very different matter. I will not have people thinking that we have knuckled under in that affair.”

  “Oh, Mother, we can’t go on fighting forever.”

  “Who said anything about fighting? It has been publicly announced that you are engaged to Pearl Vambrace. You are nothing of the kind. Someone has done this for spite. And I think I know who it was.”

  “Who?”

  “Professor Vambrace himself. It’s just the kind of crazy thing he would do. To make us look ridiculous.”

  “You can’t be serious. He couldn’t do that to his own daughter.”

  “Pooh, he could. She’s completely under his thumb. And that poor Elizabeth Fitzalan that married him—utterly crushed. The man’s insane. He did it. Within six months they’ll have to put him away, you mark my words.”

  “Mother, do you realize that Vambrace is threatening to sue The Bellman? He’s telling it all over the campus, as a great secret. Everybody’s talking about it. He says it’s a plot to bring him into disrepute by associating his name with ours.”

  “More madness! A great many people are very peculiar. Puss Pottinger is absolutely insane about that organist at the Cathedral—what’s-his-name. She won’t rest until she has taken his position from him. She thinks he put that piece in the paper.”

  “Good God! Cobbler! What makes her think that?”

  “Because there was some skylarking in the Cathedral on Hallowe’en and she is sure Cobbler was at the bottom of it. And if he was at the bottom of that, why shouldn’t he have made other mischief the same day?”

  “And does she call that logic?”

  “Puss Pottinger doesn’t know what logic is. But that’s the kind of thinking that gets big rewards for detectives, whatever the mystery-writers may say about clues and deduction and all that rubbish. But I think she’s wrong. Vambrace did it. I have more insight in my little finger than Puss Pottinger has in her whole body.”

  Solly chewed wretchedly on a dry sandwich. He was thinking, as he had been thinking all day, of Pearl Vambrace running into her house, pursued by her father.

  “Well, what do you think we ought to do?” he said at last.

  “The dignified and sensible thing is for you to go to The Bellman and see this man Ridley. You must give him an announcement which he will insert, denying the report of the engagement and apologizing for having printed it. You must speak to him very firmly.”

  “No good. Vambrace did that on Tuesday and Ridley flatly refused. So there’s go
ing to be a court action. That’s the talk on the campus.”

  “And what are the grounds of this court action to be?”

  “Libel.”

  “Libel? And where does the libel lie?”

  “In suggesting that I am going to marry his daughter. Now, Mother, there’s no use looking like that. That’s what he says.”

  “Libel! Libellous to suggest that you—”

  Solly was very much alarmed, for it seemed that his mother might have a seizure. But anger is a powerful stimulant, and Mrs. Bridgetower’s wrath did her good. She seemed to drop twenty years before his eyes, and for ten minutes she called up the past iniquities of Professor Vambrace and uttered violent judgments on his present conduct. Her peroration was delivered in trumpet tones.

  “Let him bring such a suit if he dare! We’ll bring a counter-action! Libellous to suggest that you should marry his daughter! Calculated to bring him into shame and disrepute? We’ll fight! We’ll spend money like water! We’ll break him, the old hound! Libellous to suggest that a Bridgetower would so lower himself! If there is any libel it is against us! But we’ll fight, my boy, we’ll fight!”

  “Mother, please be calm. What’s the good of saying we’ll fight? We’ll all look like fools, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “How can you talk so? Puss Pottinger was right. You haven’t any gimp!”

  “All right, then, I haven’t any gimp. But it seems to me that you and Vambrace have no thought for Pearl or me; you’d make us look like a couple of children in leading-strings.”

  “You have a lot of consideration for Pearl Vambrace, I must say. More than you have for me, it seems. Nasty, scheming little thing!”

  “Very well, then, leave Pearl out of it. What will I look like if you go to court to fight a counter-action against Vambrace’s libel suit?”

  “No, we will not leave Pearl out of it. It seems to me that you are very ready to fly to Pearl’s rescue. Solly, tell me honestly, is there any crumb of truth in this report about you and Pearl?”

  “If you aren’t going to listen to my advice I don’t think you can expect me to answer that question,” said Solly, and was quite as surprised as his mother to hear himself say so.

  The dispute went on, without anything new being added to it, for another half-hour. It ended with Solly fetching five volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to his mother’s bedroom, so that she might read all that pertained to the law of libel. He also gave her her pink medicine, and arranged her reading light. Later details of washing and removing her teeth would be attended to by the elderly maid. In spite of these filial acts there was a barrier between them, for Solly had created an uncertainty, and an uncertainty about Solly was something which his mother found frightening and intolerable. But she was so stimulated by hatred and the love of combat that she was able to retain some composure, and contented herself by saying that she hoped that in the morning he would be in a more reasonable frame of mind, and see things as she saw them. Thus he left her, and went upstairs to his attic study.

  SOLLY’S FIRST ACT when he was in his own room was to take down Bacon’s Works in order that he might refresh himself with a look at his photograph of Griselda Webster. It was not a particularly good photograph, but the eye of adoration could see much in it, and it had been his solace in every dark hour since Griselda herself, several months before, had gone to Europe to travel for an indefinite period. In the picture she appeared as Ariel, in The Tempest, an unquestionably beautiful girl, even in the tabby-cat greys of a poor photograph. He had other photographs of the Salterton Little Theatre’s grand assault upon Shakespeare, hidden in other chapters of Bacon, but he did not look at them often, for his interest was in Griselda alone. But tonight he hunted them down in the large folio, supposing that in this way he was putting off the moment when he must settle down to his work. They looked like the photographs of almost any Little Theatre production; the cast had been taken in groups, some of the players self-conscious in costume and grinning at the camera, others keeping “in character” with great ferocity, and acting very hard, though without movement. Griselda was in two or three of these, and the one for which he was looking showed her standing on a grassy mound, obedient to the command of Prospero, who was Professor Vambrace. At Prospero’s side, but apparently unconscious of Ariel, stood Pearl Vambrace as Miranda.

  She had looked well as Miranda, thought Solly. He had to give her that. She stood well, and had dignity, and the dark stillness of her face suited the part. She was not to be compared with the wonderful Griselda, of course, for Griselda was a goddess. But as mortal women went, Pearl had good gifts. A pity they didn’t show more in the costume of every day. And when he had last seen her, white with anger and nervous irritability, at the Yarrows, and then stumbling toward the Vambrace house, she had looked awful. As he thought about it, the sound of her miserable cries came into his ears again, and to rid himself of that memory he closed Bacon, and went to his desk to work.

  A pile of fifty-two essays lay before him, in which First Year Science men had expressed their opinions on “The Canterbury Pilgrims and their Modern Counterparts” or “The Allegory of the Faerie Queene in Terms of Today”. Imposing as these titles were, and productive of large and learned books as they might be, First Year Science was expected to say what it had to say in not more than a thousand words, and to base its opinions on a small red book called Magic Casements, Vol. I: Beowulf to the Elizabethans; nobody supposed for a moment that Science students had time or inclination to read and ponder Chaucer and Spenser at first hand: indeed, it went against the grain with Science students to bother with English at all.

  Solly picked up the first essay, which was by Igor Kaczabowski, and read the first sentence: “The poems of Geoffrey Chaucer are among the richest jewels of our British heritage. He was called the Father of English Poetry because everybody who came after him sprang from him. In an age of unbridled licence he was an honest civil servant and wrote many poems in his spare time of which the best known are The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde and The Treatise on the Astrolabe. Couched as they are in what is to the modern reader virtually a foreign tongue we will go a long ways before we improve on his ability to size up our fellow man.”

  Sighing, Solly tucked Kaczabowski into the middle of the pile, to come upon him as a surprise later on. Picking up another, from Jean Thorsen, he found another reference in the first paragraph to our British heritage, and a further hunt revealed that two more Scandinavians, a Pole and three Russian Jews had claimed Chaucer as their own. He was annoyed; lifting from Magic Casements was legitimate enough, all things considered, but he wished that they would read what they lifted with greater care and introduce a little artistry, some hint of individuality, into it. Nobody seemed to have tackled the problem of allegory in modern life, and he didn’t blame them; The Faerie Queene had little to say to First Year Science.

  He had lost the battle, he knew, the minute that he faltered with Kaczabowski; in marking essays the great thing is to go straight ahead, without deviation or consideration of personal taste. To admit that one paper might be more pleasing than another was to allow his critical powers to work on the wrong level; his job was to correct the grammar of First Year Science, and to untangle the more baffling syntactical messes; to begin thinking about Chaucer, or even common sense, was fatal. He pushed the heap of essays aside; if the worst came to the worst he could always award marks between B minus and C plus arbitrarily, and not give back the papers at all.

  Our British heritage; what a lot was said about it in Canada, one way and another, and it always meant people like Chaucer and Spenser; it never seemed to mean people like Bevill Higgin who were, after all, more frequent ambassadors from the Old Country. He wished that he had not mentioned Higgin to his mother. But to find the little pipsqueak in the house, mooing Tennyson to all those old trouts in the drawing-room! He had thought himself rid of Higgin.

  It was—how long?—three weeks at least since last he had seen him.
Solly had been having a difficult morning; he had talked to First Year Science at eight o’clock, and at ten o’clock he had met another group who were getting a quick run through Our British Heritage; these were students of mature years, who had already taught in primary schools for some time and were getting university degrees in order that they might teach in high schools, and most of them were older than Solly. After his lecture one of these men, who was perhaps thirty-five, and had glasses and a bald spot, had approached him and said: “Professor Bridgetower, I’m not getting anything out of your course; I don’t mean anything personal, you understand, but frankly I don’t think you have any pedagogical method; in our work, you know, pedagogical method is everything, and if you’d give me a little extra time on some of this Milton, why I’d be glad to give you some pointers on pedagogical method; as you explained to me, I could point out to you where you weren’t doing it right, do you see?” Solly had rejected this kindly offer with abruptness, and had told the well-meaning fellow that a university was not an infant class, and that he was welcome to exercise his pedagogical method upon himself. But the student’s words had hurt him; he knew that he was a bad teacher; he hated teaching; he shrank from eager minds, and was repelled by dull ones. It was with a sharp increase in his haunting sense of failure that he mounted the stairs to his office.

  And there, in his office, where he had hoped to sit down and mope quietly about his failure, had been Bevill Higgin, who had introduced himself with the most ridiculous affectation of what he considered to be a university manner, and who had proposed that he, Solly, should permit Higgin to give readings from English poetry to his classes, in order, as Higgin put it, to give them the sonorous roll of the verse and to illuminate what had, it was implied, been presented to them in a dull and lifeless manner. To make his meaning perfectly clear he had declaimed a few lines of Satan’s Address to the Sun, in an embarrassing, elocutionary manner, like a man trying out his voice in a bathroom.