The Cunning Man

by Robertson Davies

“I’ll be gone for a couple of months. I have to look into a few things in some European branches and then the bank has very decently given me leave to spend a month in Spain.”

  “And you fear something decisive may happen in that time?” said Hugh.

  “I know it. Archdeacon Allchin not only snoops; he is snooped upon.”

  “Run up the storm signals,” said Daubigny.

  (24)

  Dwyer was right. The Archdeacon moved swiftly and decisively. Under his urging, I suppose, the police found that Prudence Vizard was transgressing some city regulation about the assemblage of crowds numbering more than twenty-five people, without a licence, and police appeared at her Angelus services for several days in succession and dispersed them.

  When that fateful diocesan meeting occurred, as autumn began, when the Bishop announced changes in parish appointments, the Reverend Charles Iredale was transferred to a charge in the northernmost part of the diocese, a wretched post where he would be expected to serve six small country churches, the total number of parishioners numbering less than a hundred and fifty. Such charges were generally given to suckling parsons for a year or two, to give them breadth of experience; this was episcopal discipline on an unprecedented scale. The Bishop cast down his eyes as he pronounced this doom, but Archdeacon Allchin looked with perfect serenity at Charlie, who turned white but did not otherwise betray his desolation. The new incumbent at St. Aidan’s was the Reverend Canon Clement Carter, a man in whom ritual enthusiasm and evangelical zeal were neatly balanced, supported by a wife admired for her adroitness in managing disparate elements in a parish. Mrs. Carter was also known to have money, which gives a parson’s wife a special status.

  So there were great changes at the Church House, and Mrs. Carter was exemplary in finding nice lodgings for Father Whimble with a widow who lived not too far from the church. Mrs. Carter thought it might be well to have the house fumigated before redecoration. These old homes do become rather rundown, as everybody knows, and for some months really undesirable people kept hanging around instead of going to the church’s undercroft, as they ought. But after months of work, Church House was a handsome, clean, well-furnished (but no ostentation—oh dear, no) clergyman’s residence. Hand-painted pictures, the work of Mrs. Carter, who was “talented,” adorned the walls. Most of these were views of the Muskoka lakes, usually when the autumn colours were richest. Very choice.

  Mrs. Carter’s only failure was in making a happy contact with her nearest neighbours the Misses Raven-Hart and Todhunter, who were not responsive to her approaches (though perfectly civil) and never suggested that she and the Canon might drop in on one of their Sunday afternoon belles assemblées where there were some people (the Neil Gows, for instance—was he not said now to have a truly international reputation?) that the Carters would have been delighted to meet. Nor were relations really cordial with Dr. DeCourcy Parry, who seemed to think the organist in a church had an authority which was quite out of proportion to his real importance, significant though the Ministry of Music (the Canon’s happy phrase) must always be. But the Canon felt that rather less ceremonial and rather more preaching of moderate doctrine was what was wanted. Was it not a pity, really, that Glebe House should be almost on top of the church, and yet not a part of it? Not under its influence, so to speak? But some very important people were seen to visit Miss Raven-Hart’s studio, and that was a change from the people of the parish, who were dears, of course, and maintaining themselves in really humble positions, some of them.

  Nor was Mrs. Carter any more successful in getting on close terms with that doctor who occupied what used to be the stables behind Glebe House, and who had a peculiar reputation—peculiar at least in so far as some of his diagnostic practices went. Mrs. Carter decided not to take the Canon’s weak chest to Dr. Hullah, even though she had heard that the baths his nurse—formidable-looking woman—administered were effective for asthmatics. But the Canon was a shy man, and the Dragon nurse might ask him to strip, as Scandinavians are known to do, quite casually.

  All of this I heard, from one source or another, but most often from Mr. Russell, who did all the printing for St. Aidan’s. Mr. Russell developed quite a turn for irony when speaking of Mrs. Carter; not a word of criticism, but all the comment seemed to tell of an east wind.

  Canon Carter made short work of the plans to set up a monument to Father Hobbes. Admirable though the idea was, and a fine testimony to the devotion and kindly spirit of the people of St. Aidan’s, it was quite out of the question in terms of the church’s finances. Charlie had, as might be expected, made a mess of the arrangements and, in consequence, there was a big bill for marble, which had been delivered and was indeed stored in a room adjacent to the studio in Glebe House. Who was to pay? The marble had been delivered to Miss Raven-Hart and the marble company assumed that she would pay, and was prepared to take its claim to law. In the end, I weak-mindedly undertook to settle the bill, with a vague understanding that I would be repaid by The Ladies whenever they could manage it. What happened to the marble was that Emily Raven-Hart used it for portrait busts of a variety of presidents, chairmen, deans, bishops and similar dignitaries whose admirers wished to memorialize them in this handsome fashion, and Emily Raven-Hart gained quite a reputation for her work. She was said by discerning critics in banks, boardrooms, universities, and synods, to be marvellous at “catching” a likeness, though occasionally the truly critical—often the wives of the subjects—felt that “there was something not quite right about the mouth.”

  Dwyer had been prescient; he saw none of this. The report of his death in Gibraltar was brief and uncommunicative, but McWearie told me that he had heard that Darcy had got himself into some sort of mess with a soldier, and had been stabbed, but it was impossible to identify his murderer.

  “And I suppose if you live that sort of life you must be prepared to take the rough with the smooth,” said Hugh. “It is a great loss to St. Aidan’s.”

  In a way, I suppose it was. Not quite a year after the appointment of Canon Carter, Dr. DeCourcy Parry decided that the time had come for him to retire and the Canon was loud in his regret, but of course understood all too well the workings of the artistic temperament. (His wife, you know: she paints.) Dr. Parry was already far beyond the usual age of retirement, and he wanted to give his last years to composition. So the two strong men of the church’s music were gone, and the music was continued on a much less ambitious and artistically demanding level.

  I became an infrequent attendant, as did The Ladies. I wrote to Charlie, at his new address, and so did The Ladies, but we received brief and chilly replies.

  Of what follows I have no evidence but my own observation, for there are no more letters from Chips to her friend, and Emily Raven-Hart’s inspiration, Dame Barbara Hepworth, for Dame Barbara died in a fire in her studio at this time, and the correspondence ended.

  But the story does not end. It has rather more than ten years to go. And only during the last three of those years did Esme begin her inquiry, making me take my memory for what had really happened and decide how much I was prepared to tell.

  IV

  It was on a beautiful September day—my birthday, indeed—that I began to suspect that I was at last an old man. A few years earlier my Government had made me an Old Age Pensioner—gave me a pension which it immediately grabbed back in taxes—but otherwise I had not heeded the passing of time.

  When Christofferson made her second appearance of the morning in my consulting-room, at eleven o’clock, she brought my usual cup of coffee, and also a slice of a fine cake—not a creamy, iced cake but a butter-cake with a dusting of powdered sugar on the top

  “How kind of you to make me a cake, Chris,” said I, “but however am I going to eat it all?”

  “You won’t,” said she in her usual clipped tone. Chris had learned her English in school in Denmark and still spoke a beautiful Received Pronunciation version of the old tongue. She scorned what she called “the Toronto patois
.” “Half of it will go to Penley, who has children, as you know, and another third goes to The Ladies at Glebe House. So by the time I have had a slice for myself there will not be enough left to embarrass you.”

  Penley was my assistant. Harry Hutchins had long gone to practise for himself, and was doing very well. Aikens had succeeded him, a dull fellow. Now Penley, a fussy little man, a born pharmaceutical chemist, had taken his place. The only human thing about Penley was that his wife had a child every year, like a repeating-gun. Chris was always diverting food from my kitchen to the Penley nursery. I didn’t mind, but I rather resented being the excuse for a cake of which I would get only one slice.

  “I want to talk to you,” said Chris.

  “What is on your mind?”

  “Several things, but you are chief among them. You have no appointments after four o’clock. Shall I come then?”

  That was how my sixty-fifth birthday was signalized. One slice of cake, no gifts, no telephone calls or messages of greeting. I had hoped Nuala might call, but she didn’t. McWearie knows nothing of such niceties. I thought that St. Aidan’s, into which I have poured money in one way and another, might have sent me a card, but under Canon Carter its chief concern was the poor and needy, a group to which I could not claim to belong. My patients would not, of course, know when my birthday was. It was all perfectly reasonable and justifiable, but nevertheless with the perversity of the human creature I felt a little neglected, somewhat overlooked, and was vaguely sorry for myself. A little self-pity, I have always found, is very agreeable, so long as one keeps it to oneself. Who would pity me, if I didn’t? An old man, and apparently without a friend in the world. I was cheered after a consultation with a patient who complained of constant and medically inexplicable indigestion. I did not tell him that I was certain he was married to the cause of his indigestion, but I took some comfort in the fact that I had at least escaped the wretchedness of a bad marriage, patiently endured.

  At four o’clock, when a Bell’s Palsy had been shown to the door after receiving some reassurance, Christofferson presented herself. She was, as always, dressed from head to foot in white, with finely pressed white trousers; her only divergence from the dress of the ideal modern nurse was the cap she wore as evidence of her qualification in a Danish hospital. She always wore it to services at St. Aidan’s, so that everyone would know that Sygeplejerske Fru Christofferson (for such was her resounding professional title) was in their midst, and a marvel of pleating and goffering it was.

  “I want to talk to you about the future,” said she.

  “Your future?”

  “Mine and yours. They are linked perhaps more than you think. You have today entered on official old age. I am several years younger, but it is time to talk.”

  “Well, if you want to talk about retirement, save your breath. I shall go on practising for at least another ten years. You are another matter. Do you want to give up?”

  “No, no; I can take care of myself. But you will understand me when I say that I want to take care of you, as well.”

  “But you do. All the office work as well as your special duties fall on you. You are irreplaceable. What more could you do to take care of me?”

  “I could marry you.”

  “But—but—”

  “Don’t worry. I have no intention of doing so. But it is certainly one of the solutions. Let us dismiss it and talk of other things.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t for a moment suggest that marriage with you is a repugnant idea, but—”

  “Now it is your turn to save your breath, Doctor. Do not feel obliged to be gallant. Of course you wouldn’t marry me. And for that matter, I wouldn’t marry you. We are neither of us the marrying kind. It was my little joke. You have never understood my sense of humour. But about taking care of you: there I am very serious. You need to change your way of life.”

  “How?”

  “You are getting out of condition. You take no exercise. You eat and drink and smoke too much.”

  “Now, Chris, I’m not going to be dieted and exercised. My constitution is strong. I shall go on as I am.”

  “All doctors neglect their health. I don’t expect you to do anything unpleasant. But I suggest very strongly that you allow me to give you a complete massage twice a week. You know my work. I can take care of you.”

  “Ah, well—that’s a different thing. We must talk about it.”

  “No, there is no need for talk. I have put your name down for appointments, beginning tomorrow. Steam bath, massage, oatmeal bath and needle shower, then half an hour’s rest. To be continued until you need something more specific.”

  “You seem to have thought of everything.”

  “More than you suppose. You must take your own medicine, Doctor. What do you tell your patients? You must have an occupation. Something to exercise and stretch the mind, otherwise you will become mentally flabby. The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live. Isn’t that what you say? And isn’t that what has helped so many of them, and made your reputation? You must have something other than your practice, and drinking with McWearie. You have come to the time of life when much happens and you must be ready for change. How are you going to meet that?”

  “There I am ahead of you, Chris. I have my great work already formed as an idea. The next thing is to make a plan. Then comes the research, which will take a very long time. Oh, with the job I have before me I see myself toiling on well up into the nineties, when you will be long past your work as a masseuse.”

  “That will never be.”

  “That was my kind of joke. Do you want to hear what I have in mind?”

  “I am very glad you have something planned. If you wish to tell me about it, very well.”

  “You promise not to breathe a word to a soul?”

  “Doctor, when have I ever revealed anything you told me in confidence? You offend me.”

  “Sorry, Chris. I know you’re no chatterbox. But this notion is so extraordinary, so far-reaching, so stupendous that I know that if it got about, somebody would steal it. It’s nothing less than the next great forward step in literary criticism.”

  “Don’t worry about your secret. I know nothing of literary criticism.”

  “Oh, but you must. It’s in all the papers and magazines—popularizations of the newest great idea, that’s to say. Surely you’ve heard of Deconstructionism?”

  “Not a breath. What does Miss Todhunter say?—Not a peep.”

  “I really don’t understand how people can live in such isolation. Well, anyhow—Deconstruction is a new way of looking at books. It comes from France, as so many brilliant, short-lived notions do. It’s like this, you see: you take a book, and you read it, and what does it mean to you?”

  “It means what it says, I suppose.”

  “Quite wrong. It isn’t what the book says, it’s what you say about what the book says that’s important.”

  “But suppose I’m a fool and don’t understand the book?”

  “Doesn’t matter in the least. The Deconstruction theory says that there is no meaning to be found in the actual text of a book, but only in the various ‘virtual texts’ constructed by readers in their search for meaning, even if they are mutually irreconcilable. Anyhow, you and ordinary readers don’t come into it. This is for the elite, the critical bon ton. When a Deconstructionist says ‘reader’ he means somebody of his own stripe. The ordinary reader is irrelevant.”

  “You have lost me, Doctor.”

  “That’s part of what I’m talking about. Deconstruction offers a refreshing lack of certainty about virtually everything. Let me try again to explain. This method of criticism rejects everything that traditional criticism thought important—biography, literary history, philology—they must all give place to a very close formal examination and exegetical evaluation of the texts of books themselves, exploring meanings in every mode of literary expression as they are directly a
pprehended by the informed modern reader. Get it?”

  “No. Is this what you are intending to take up?”

  “Oh, great heavens, no! Mine is an entirely different notion but no less revolutionary. It will change literature forever, and make necessary new developments and commentaries on the literature of the past. It will keep the whole critical trade hard at work for at least a couple of centuries.”

  “Aha.—Yes, yes. I think I see.”

  “How can you see when I haven’t told you anything?—Oh, I understand; I read your look, my old friend. You think I’ve gone mad.”

  “Well—”

  “Delusions of grandeur? Inflation of the ego? Something like that?”

  “I would have expected that any big idea you had would relate somehow to your life’s work. But you seem to have deserted that for vapouring about literature.”

  “But my idea is linked to my life’s work. Springs directly out of it. You’d better let me tell you in the roughest terms what it is.”

  “I think that would be best.”

  “You once told me you read a lot of history?”

  “For years I have been studying Spengler. He suits my temperament exactly. Of course, sometimes—on summer vacations when I want something light—I read Toynbee; he is very good and his bias toward religion is fruitful.”

  “As you read the unfolding tale of man’s fate, do you never wish you had more information about the medical history of those who have profoundly affected that fate?”

  “No. That sounds too romantic for me.”

  “Oh, come on; man’s fate is directly related to the ailments and disorders of those who carry it out. Don’t you wish you knew more about Napoleon’s haemorrhoids?”

  “No. He died, as you surely know, of cancer of the pylorus.”

  “Of course. But it was the thrombosed haemorrhoids that cost him Waterloo. A commander who has to go on the field in a carriage, accompanied by his doctor, pausing frequently to lie down, is not at the top of his form. Don’t you want to know about Washington’s broncho-pneumonia—quinsy, they called it? What was it really? And Queen Anne’s ‘flying gout’—hopping all over her body—what do you suppose it can have been?”