What's Bred in the Bone

by Robertson Davies

  “Thank God, Anna can’t get her murderer’s hands on this,” he said, pouring out two large glasses. “This house is sinking into the earth, Francis, as you well can see.”

  “I’m worried, Uncle Doctor. Nothing seems to be right here. Not just the food, but the whole feel of the place.”

  “Francis, it’s stinginess. Senile parsimony is what ails Mary-Ben. She’s rolling in money, but she thinks she’s poor and won’t hire a decent cook. Your grandmother can’t eat the stuff, and Mary-Ben just eats this garbage to prove she’s right.”

  “Uncle Doctor, tell me honestly—is Grand’mère going to die?”

  “Oh yes, eventually. We all are. But when I couldn’t say. She hasn’t got cancer, if that’s what you’re worried about. Just a totally ruined digestion and gallstones like baseballs. But she and Mary-Ben carry on as if the retribution of a lifetime of overeating the richest possible foods was something unique in the annals of medicine. B’God they make it almost religious. ‘Behold and see, if there be any acidity like unto my acidity.’ The oddity is that Mary-Ben’s eaten the same stuff, chew for chew, as her sister-in-law, and she’s still at it—a mighty little knife-and-fork is Mary-Ben. D’you know she visits old Madame Thibodeau every day for tea? Christian charity? Get away! It’s because Madame Thibodeau gets all her cakes and tartlets from the infidel Victoria Cameron, that’s why! That’s female logic for you, Francis.”

  “Then Grand’mère is not as bad as she looks?”

  “No, she’s just as bad as she looks, but if she keeps on bread-and-milk and my peppermint mixture she could last a good long time. But Mary-Ben’s the one to last. The McRory strain is a very strong strain, Francis. So look after it in yourself. It’s a golden inheritance.”

  “Is it all good?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “No madness? No oddity? I know about the fellow that was upstairs; what explains him?”

  “That’s not for me to tell you, Francis. That may have been a matter of chance—what they call a sport. Or it may be something that is bred in the bone.”

  “Well—it’s very important to me. If I married, and had children, how great is the danger—?”

  “On chance, perhaps not very great. Look at you, and look at your brother Arthur; both perfectly sound. Or it could happen again. But let me give you some advice—”

  “Yes?”

  “Go ahead. Keep on with your life. If you want to have children, take the risk. Don’t stay single or childless on some sort of principle. Obey instinct; it’s always right. Look at me and Mary-Ben. There’s a lesson for you! Yes, Francis, I’ve come to the time of life when I’m less of a teacher or adviser than I’m an object lesson:

  The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

  Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin—

  D’you know any Browning?”

  “Not really.”

  “Mary-Ben and I used to read him together, long ago. Very clever fellow. Away ahead of all these so-called psychologists you hear about nowadays.”

  WHEN THE LONG, tedious bout of euchre was completed in Grand’mère’s room, Aunt Mary-Ben insisted that Francis should come into her sitting-room for a last chat. He was leaving early in the morning. The room was almost unchanged, only somewhat shabby from use and the passing of time.

  “Aunt, why is Grand-père so seldom here now?”

  “Who’s to say, Francis? He has so much business to attend to. And I dare say he finds it dull here.”

  “It wouldn’t have anything to do with the food, would it?”

  “Oh, Francis! What a thing to say!”

  “Well, you heard what Uncle Doctor said. It’ll kill you.”

  “No, no it won’t; Dr. J.A. must have his joke. But the truth is, Frank, I can’t hurt Anna Lemenchick. She’s the last of the old servants, and the only one who has never cost me a moment’s uneasiness. Old Billy, you remember, drank so terribly, and Bella-Mae has given herself up totally to that Salvation Army, and do you know sometimes they have the neck to play right outside the church, just before High Mass! And Zadok—well you know I never really trusted him; there was a look in his eye, as if he were thinking impermissible thoughts when he was driving the carriage. D’you know I once caught him imitating Father Devlin? Yes, right in the kitchen! He had a tablecloth over his shoulders, and was bowing up and down with his hands clasped, and moaning, ‘We can beat the Jews at do-min-oes!’, pretending he was singing Mass, you see. And Victoria Cameron was laughing, with her hand over her mouth! I don’t care what your grandfather and Uncle Doctor say, Francis, that woman was evil at heart!”

  On the subject of Victoria Cameron, Aunt was implacable, and declared furthermore that with the wages servants wanted nowadays—forty dollars a month had been heard of!—you had to look out that you weren’t simply made use of. So Francis led the conversation to his future, in which Aunt was passionately—the word is not too strong—passionately interested.

  “To be a painter! Oh, Frankie, my dear boy, if ever there was a dream come true, that’s it, for me! When you were so ill as a child, and used to sit in this room and look at the pictures, and draw pictures of your own, I used to pray that it might flower into something wonderful like this!”

  “Don’t say wonderful, Aunt. I don’t know even if I have any talent, yet. Facility—probably. But talent’s something very much beyond that.”

  “Don’t doubt yourself, dear. Pray that God will help you, and He will. What God has begun, He will not desert. Painting is the most wonderful thing—of course, after a life in the Church—that any man can aspire to.”

  “You’ve always said that, Aunt. But I’ve wondered why you say it. I mean—why painting, rather than music, for instance, or writing books?”

  “Oh, music’s all very well. You know I love it. And anybody can write; it just takes industry. But painting—it makes people see. It makes them see God’s work truly.

  … we’re made so that we love

  First, when we see them painted, things we have passed

  Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see:

  And so they are better, painted.

  That’s Browning—Fra Lippo Lippi. I used to read a lot of Browning once, with a great friend, and that always made me cry Yes, yes, it’s true! The painter is a great moral force, Frankie. It’s truly a gift of God.”

  “Well—I hope so.”

  “Don’t hope. Trust. And pray. You still pray, don’t you, Francis?”

  “Sometimes. When things are bad.”

  “Oh my dear, pray when they are good, too. And don’t just ask. Give! Give God thanks and praise! So many people treat Him like a banker, you know. It’s give, give, give, and they can’t see that it’s really lend, lend, lend. Frankie—you’ve never forgotten what happened when you were so sick that time?”

  “Well—wasn’t that just a bit of panic?”

  “Oh, Frank! Shame on you! That was when Father Devlin baptized you. You’re a Catholic forever, my dear. It’s not something you can shrug off at a fashionable school, or among unthinking people, like your father, though I’m sure he’s a good man so far as he understands goodness. Frank—you still have your rosary?”

  “It’s somewhere, I suppose.”

  “Dear boy, don’t talk like that! Now look, Frankie; you always liked my rosary, and it’s a fine one. I want you to have it—no, no, I have others—and I want you to take it with you everywhere, and use it. Promise, Frank!”

  “Aunt, how can I promise?”

  “By doing so now. A solemn promise, made in love. A promise made to me. Because you know, I’m sure, that at least in part you are my child, and the only one I’ll ever have.”

  So, after some further weak demurrers, Frank took the rosary, and gave the promise, and the next morning he left Blairlogie, as he then thought, forever.

  SO THAT POOR WRETCH THE LOONER was the outcome of a chance meeting between the romantic Mary-Jacobine and the destroyed soldier Zadok? said the Lesser Zadkie
l.

  —If you wish to talk of Chance, said the Daimon Maimas. But you and I know how deceptive the concept of Chance—the wholly random, inexplicable happening—is as a final explanation of anything.

  —Of course. But I am keeping in mind how dear the notion of Chance is to the people on Earth. Theirs is the short view. Rob them of Chance and you strike at their cherished idea of Free Will. They are not granted the time to see that Chance may have its limitations, just as Free Will has its limitations. Odd, isn’t it, that they are glad enough to have their scientists show them evidence of pattern in the rest of Nature, hut they don’t want to recognize themselves as part of Nature. They seem persuaded that they, alone of all Creation, so far as they know it, are uninfluenced by the Anima Mundi.

  —Well, we see that they have some choice within the pattern, but the pattern is strong, and now and then it shows itself nakedly. Then something like this happens: Mary-Jacobine chooses Zadok—against probability, but because she has a crush on an actor; Zadok begets a child in a single coupling with a virgin—again against probability, but because he is a compassionate, unhappy man. Do we call that chance? But then, she does not recognize her chance lover when he appears and he does not recognize her because they are in a world they think of as the New World. Then—Marie-Louise destroys a child in the womb, which is very probable considering who and what she was. Zadok does not know his own son—how would he? Just Chance and Likelihood in their old familiar muddle, said the Daimon.

  —I suppose they would call it coincidence.

  —A useful, dismissive word for people who cannot bear the idea of pattern shaping their own lives.

  —Coincidence is what they call pattern in which they cannot discern something they are prepared to accept as meaning, said the Lesser Zadkiel.

  —But we see the meaning, do we not, brother? Of course we do. The Looner brought love back into the life of Zadok, for only love can explain his behaviour toward him. The Looner brought motherhood into the life of Victoria Cameron, who did not choose—probably feared—to seek it in the usual way.

  —And for your man Francis, my dear colleague?

  —Ah—for Francis the Looner was a lifelong reminder of the inadmissible primitive in the most cultivated life, a lifelong adjuration to pity, a sign that disorder and abjection stand less than a hair’s breadth away from every human creature. A continual counsel to make the best of whatever fortune had given him.

  —But surely, also, a constant pointer to humility? said the Angel.

  —Very much so. And I think that although I had nothing to do with the begetting of the Looner, I made good use of him in the shaping of Francis. So the Looner did not live in vain.

  —Yes, you did well there, brother. And where is the helm set for now?

  —For Oxford.

  —Oxford certainly won’t strengthen the Blairlogie strain, said the Angel.

  —Oxford will strengthen whatever is bred in the bone. And I have already made sure that the Looner, in every aspect, is bred in the bone of Francis. Francis will need all his wits and all his pity at Oxford, said the Daimon.

  Four

  What would not Out of the Flesh?

  “Everybody agrees that your first year at Oxford was a triumph,” said Basil Buys-Bozzaris.

  “That’s very kind of everybody,” said Francis. He was being patronized by the fat slob Buys-Bozzaris and he was beginning to wonder how much longer he would put up with it.

  “Now, now; let’s have no false modesty. You have made a nice little name as a speaker in the Union; you have gained a place on the committee of the O.U.D.S.; your sketches of Oxford Notables in the Isis are admitted to be the best things of their kind since Max Beerbohm. You are known as one of the aesthetes, but you are not a posturing fool. You must admit that’s very good.”

  “Those are pastimes; I came to Oxford to work.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, there’s a widely accepted notion that one comes here to learn.”

  “To learn what?”

  “The foundation for whatever one means to do with one’s life.”

  “Which is—?”

  “I haven’t really decided.”

  “Oh, God be praised! For a few moments I feared you might be one of those earnest Americans with a career before you. Too middle-class! But Roskalns says you told him you meant to be a painter.”

  Roskalns? Who was he? Oh yes; that grubby chap who hung about the edges of the O.U.D.S. and was a private coach in modern languages. Had Francis confided in him? Possibly he had said something to somebody else when Roskalns was listening—as Roskalns always seemed to be doing. Francis decided he had had quite enough of Buys-Bozzaris.

  “I think I’d better be going,” he said. “Thanks for the tea.”

  “Don’t hurry. I’d like to talk a little more. I know some people you might like to meet. You’re fond of cards, I hear.”

  “I play a little.”

  “For pretty high stakes?”

  “Enough to make it interesting.”

  “And you win pretty consistently?”

  “About enough to come out even.”

  “Oh, better than that. Your modesty is charming.”

  “I really must go.”

  “Of course. But just one moment; I know some people who play regularly—really good players—and I thought you might care to join us. We don’t play for pennies.”

  “Are you asking me to join some sort of club?”

  “Nothing so formal. And we don’t just play; we talk, as well. I hear you like to talk.”

  “What do you talk about?”

  “Oh, politics. World affairs. These are lively times.”

  “Several people have gone to Spain, to see what they can do there. Even more say they would be in Spain in a moment, if they could see their way clear. Is that the sort of talk?”

  “No, that is youthful romanticism. We are much more serious.”

  “Perhaps I could look in once or twice?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Admirable. Any time after nine.”

  A FEW DAYS LATER Francis wrote one of his letters to Colonel Copplestone:

  Dear Uncle Jack:

  Second year at Oxford is a great improvement. One knows where the things are that one is likely to want and where the people are one is certain not to want. The nice thing about being at Corpus is that it is so small. But that means that only first-year men and a few specials can live in college, so I am in digs, and have secured a very nice set of rooms virtually on the college doorstep. Canterbury House the place is called, because it’s by the Canterbury Gate of Christ Church. I have the top floor; big living room and small bedroom; superb view down Merton Street, which must be the prettiest street in Oxford, and the only drawback is that when Great Tom gets off his 101 peal at 9 P.M. it is almost as if he were in my bedroom. I am thinking of writing to the Dean and suggesting that this ancient custom be discontinued. Do you suppose he would listen?

  Have met a few new people. The ground-floor set of rooms here—most expensive, worst view—is occupied by a man called Basil Buys-Bozzaris, which is a name to conjure with, don’t you think? He conjures a bit; a few days ago as I was running up the stairs beside his door he popped his head out and said, “A Virgo; I know him by his tread!” which was arresting enough to make me stop and chat, and he waffled a bit about astrology; rather interestingly, as a matter of fact. I don’t go for astrology by any means, but I have found that sometimes it provides useful broad clues about people. Anyhow, he wanted me to come to tea with him, and yesterday I did.

  In the interim I made a few inquiries about BBB. Our landlord was very forthcoming: rich, he said, and a count, and a Bulgarian. He entertains a lot, and whenever he is having people to lunch, he has the same lunch served to himself the day before, wines and all, and then edits it for errors of cooking or choice! This impresses the landlord no end, as well it might.

  Somebody else wh
o knew a bit about him said he was an oddity. Probably thirty-five, and is here ostensibly studying international law; I am sure you know what a vague area that can be, if somebody wants to hang around a university. BBB seems to be interested in Conflict of Laws, which is of course an even more tangled briar-patch. My informant says he is one of those hangers-on all universities attract. As for being a count, I don’t know whether Bulgaria has them or has ever had them, but it is a vague title roughly indicative of some distance from the peasant class. So I knew a bit about him before going to tea.

  Usual polite questions, to establish the ground. What was I studying? Flattery about some sketches I did last spring for the Isis of Oxford people who are in the eye of the University. Velvety request for my birth date and hour, as he would be delighted to cast my horoscope. I yielded; no reason not to, and I cannot resist horoscopes. And what are you interested in, I said. I am a connoisseur, said he, and this surprised me, because the room was not that of a connoisseur; just the landlord’s perfectly good, dull furniture, and a few photographs framed in silver of Middle-European-looking people—choker collars and fancy whiskers on the men, and the women with an awful lot of hair and that kind of fat that is kindly referred to as “opulence”. Not a good object anywhere, and across one corner an ikon of the Virgin in the most offensively sweet nineteenth-century taste, with a riza in decidedly not sterling silver covering all but the face and hands. BBB smiled, for he must have seen my surprise. Not a connoisseur of art, he said, but of ideas, of attitudes, of politics in the broad sense. Then he talked a bit about the present European situation, about this man Hitler in Germany, about the misery in Spain, all in a distant, removed fashion, as if only ideas and not people were involved. Asked me to come back, to play cards, and I said I would, not because I like him but because I didn’t.

  The card-playing, when I went back, was interesting enough to repay me for an evening I would not ordinarily have chosen to spend in such uncomfortable circumstances. Lots to drink and expensive cigars for the grabbing, but the concentration was on two tables of bridge—all the room would comfortably hold. The atmosphere was very serious for a friendly game. BBB was the leader at one and a rather scruffy fellow called Roskalns, who coaches first-year men in Latin and does a variety of languages for others who want them (not employed by the University, an independent coach), took care of the other. The rest of us changed tables from time to time but these two remained where they were. Brisk play, and the stakes were substantially above what is usual here, where anybody who loses a pound in an evening feels he has been living dangerously. I was particularly interested in another man—in his second year at Christ Church—named Fremantle, because he is a Canadian though he has lived a good deal in England.