The Lyre of Orpheus tct-3

by Robertson Davies

  “The Doctor is heroic in her application to the bottle. But somehow I don’t think she has what Americans call a Drinking Problem. She likes it and she holds a lot. Simple.”

  “You won’t join me?”

  “I’m afraid I’m drinking too much, and I haven’t got the splendid head of you and the Doctor. I’ll just have some bubbly water.”

  “Are things getting to be too much for you, Simon?”

  “This opera is worrying me, in a way that is quite absurd, because it’s really none of my business. If you and Arthur want to spend hundreds of thousands on it, the money is yours. You’re doing it for Powell, of course?”

  “No, not of course, though it must look like that. He has certainly rushed us into the whole thing. I mean, we simply thought we would put up some money so that Schnak could do a job on the Hoffmann manuscripts, in so far as they exist. But Powell suggested that the opera might be presented, and was so full of enthusiasm and Welsh rhetoric that he infected Arthur, and you remember how Arthur went overboard about the whole idea. So here we are, up to our necks in something we don’t understand.”

  “I suppose Powell understands it.”

  “Yes, but the mixture of Arthur’s idealism and Powell’s opportunism doesn’t please me at all. The person who is going to come out on top of the heap, if the thing isn’t a horrible failure, is Geraint Powell. I suppose Schnak might benefit, though how I can’t pretend to see; but Powell, as the force behind the whole affair, is bound to get a lot of attention, which is what he wants.”

  “Why are you willing that Schnak should benefit, and so hostile to Powell?”

  “He’s using Arthur, and consequently he’s using me. He’s a climber. He’s been a pretty successful actor, but he understands the limitations of that, so he wants to be a director. Because he’s really very good at music, he wants to be a director of opera, and on the highest level. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. He talks as if Arthur rushed everybody into this affair, but it’s the other way around. He’s the whirlwind. I feel he really looks on Arthur and me simply as a ladder toward his own success.”

  “Maria, you’d better get things straight in your head about what a patron is. I know a lot about patronage because I’ve seen it in the university. Either you exploit, or you are exploited. Either you demand the biggest slice of the pie for yourself, and get a gallery, or a theatre, or whatever it may be, named after you, and insist that people put up your portrait in the foyer, and toady to you, and listen to whatever you have to say with bated breath, or else you are simply the moneybags. And when you’re dealing with artists of any kind you are dealing with the people who have the most gall and the most outrageous self-esteem in the world. So you’ve got to be tough, and insist on being first in everything, or you’ve got to do it for the love of the art. Don’t complain about being used. Got to be magnanimous, in fact. Magnanimity, I needn’t remind you, is as rare as it is splendid.”

  “I’m perfectly willing to be magnanimous, but I’m jealous for Arthur—Simon, I hate, and detest, and loathe and abhor the alternative title of this God-damned opera: The Magnanimous Cuckold. I feel that Arthur is being screwed.”

  “Cuckolds aren’t screwed; they are deceived.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Arthur is most at fault, if that’s what’s happening to him.”

  “Simon, I wouldn’t say this to anybody in the world but you. You understand what I mean when I say that Arthur has a truly noble nature. But noble isn’t a word that’s used any more. Elitist, I suppose. But there’s no other word for Arthur. He’s generous and open in a way that is marvellous. But it also exposes him to terrible abuse.”

  “He’s very fond of Powell. He asked him to be best man at your wedding, as I needn’t remind you.”

  “Yes, and I’d never heard of Powell till he turned up then, all elegance and eloquence—full of piss and vinegar like a barber’s cat, to use the old expression.”

  “You’re getting heated, and your heat makes me thirsty. I will have that drink, after all.”

  “Do. I want your best advice, Simon. I’m worried, and I don’t know why I’m worried.”

  “Yes you do. You think Arthur is too fond of Powell. Isn’t that it?”

  “Not in the way you mean.”

  “Tell me what I mean.”

  “I think you mean some homosexual thing. Not a bit of that in Arthur.”

  “Maria, for a very brilliant woman you are surprisingly naive. If you think homosexuality means no more than rough stuff in Turkish baths, and what Hamlet calls a pair of reechy kisses and paddling in necks with damned fingers in some seedy motel bedroom, you are right off your trolley. As you say, and as I believe, Arthur has a noble nature, and that isn’t his style at all. Nor, to be just, do I think it’s Powell’s. But an obsessive admiration for a man who has qualities he envies, and for whom he is ready to give great gifts and take great risks, without grudging—that’s homosexuality too, when the wind is right. Nobility isn’t cautious, you know. Arthur is really Arthurian: he seeks something extraordinary—a Quest, a great adventure—and Powell seems to offer it and is, therefore, irresistible.”

  “Powell is a self-seeking bastard.”

  “And just possibly a great man—or a great artist, which is by no means the same thing. Like Richard Wagner, another self-seeking bastard. Remember how he exploited and horn-swoggled poor King Ludwig?”

  “Ludwig was a crazy weakling.”

  “And his craziness has endowed us all with some magnificent opera. Not to speak of that totally insane fairy-tale castle of Neuschwanstein, which cost the people of Bavaria what was literally a king’s ransom, and has recovered them the money a dozen times over, simply as a tourist sight.”

  “You’re appealing to a piece of dead history, and a messy scandal, which has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.”

  “History is never dead, because it keeps on repeating itself, though never in quite the same words or on quite the same scale. Remember what we said the other night at that Arthurian dinner, about the wax and the stamp? The wax of human experience is always the same. It is we who put our own stamp on it. These shared obsessions between patron and artist are as old as the hills, and I don’t think you are going to be able to change that. Have you talked to Arthur?”

  “You don’t know Arthur. When I bring it up he just tells me to be patient, and that omelettes aren’t made without breaking eggs, and all that sort of calm, uncomprehending thing.”

  “Have you told him he’s in love with Powell?”

  “Simon! What do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re a jealous woman, among other things.”

  “Jealous of Powell? I hate Powell!”

  “Oh, Maria, haven’t you learned anything in your university years?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that hatred is notoriously near to love, and both are obsessions. Passions when they are pushed too far sometimes flop over into their opposites.”

  “What I feel about Arthur isn’t going to flop over into its opposite.”

  “Bravely said. And what is it you feel about Arthur?”

  “Doesn’t it show? Devotion.”

  “An expensive devotion. As devotion always is, of course.”

  “A devotion that has enlarged my life more than I can say.”

  “A devotion that seems to have cost you what meant most to you in the world before you married.”

  “So?”

  “Yes, so. How much work have you done on your edition of that unpublished Rabelais manuscript that was found in Francis Cornish’s papers? I remember your raptures when it was turned up—thanks to that monster Parlabane—and how Hollier said it would make your reputation as a scholar. Well—that’s something like eighteen months ago. How’s it getting on? Arthur gave it to you as a wedding present, as I recall. Now there’s something significant: bridegroom gives bride a gift that will demand the best of her energies and u
nderstanding. Something that might mean more to her than her marriage. That would almost certainly mean reputation and scholarly fame of a special kind. A dangerous gift, certainly, but Arthur risked it. So what have you been doing?”

  “I’ve been getting used to living with a man, and running this house, which is the exact opposite of the Gypsy tsera where I lived with my mother and uncle, and all the hair-raising crookedness of the bomari and the wursitorea that hung over that awful place. I only go there when you insist on it, Simon—”

  “Don’t forget it was Arthur who settled what was left of all that Gypsy mess in the basement of this very building where you are playing the fine lady, Maria.”

  “Don’t be so disgusting, Simon! I’m not playing the fine lady—My God, you sound like my mother!—I’m trying to work my way finally and utterly into modern civilization, and put all that past behind me.”

  “It sounds as if modern civilization, which is largely rooted in Arthur, so far as you are concerned, had cut you off from what was best in you. I don’t mean the Gypsy connection; forget that for the moment; but from what made you a scholar. From what drew you to Rabelais—the great humane spirit and the great humour that saves us in a rough world. I remember when you first got that manuscript; you wouldn’t have called Professor M. A. Screech your uncle, and he’s a mitred abbot among you Rabelaisians, I understand. And now—well, now—”

  “I have by degrees dwindled into a wife?”

  “You still have a nice touch with a quotation. That’s something saved out of the wreck.”

  “I won’t be called a wreck, Simon.”

  “All right. And I don’t knock wives. But surely a woman of your qualities can be both scholar and wife? And the one all the better for the other?”

  “Arthur takes a lot of looking after.”

  “Well—don’t let him eat you. That’s what I’m saying. Why do you look after him so much? He seemed to be getting on pretty well before he married you.”

  “He had needs that weren’t being gratified.”

  “Aha.”

  “Don’t say ‘Aha!’ like Mervyn Gwilt! You think I mean sex.”

  “Well—don’t you?”

  “Now you are the one who is being naive. Celibate priest that you are.”

  “And whose fault is that, may I ask? I gave you your chance to enlighten me.”

  “No use crying over spilt milk.”

  “I don’t recall that we spilled any milk.”

  “You know perfectly well it wouldn’t have done. You’d have been a worse husband than Arthur.”

  “Aha! Now I can say it—Aha!”

  “I’m tired and you’re bullying me.”

  “That’s what women always say when they are getting the worst of things. Now come on, Maria: I’m your old friend, old tutor, old suitor. What’s wrong between you and Arthur?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Then perhaps too much is right.”

  “Perhaps. It’s not that I’m panting for continual excitement and passion and all that kid stuff. But the stew could do with a little more salt.”

  “How about the organism?”

  “In that department I suppose I rank somewhere between Mrs. Carver and the Roman candle Elsie Whistlecraft. It takes two to make an organism, you know.—We’d better stop using that word as a joke, or we’ll use it seriously, and disgrace ourselves in the eyes of all right-thinking people.”

  “It isn’t a word I find coming up much in conversation, but I suppose you’re right.—So you find marriage quieter than you expected?”

  “I don’t know what I expected.”

  “Maybe you expected to see more of Arthur. Where is now?”

  “In Montreal. Comes back tomorrow. He’s always dashing off on business. The Cornish Trust is very big business, you know.”

  “Well—I wish I had some good advice to give you, Maria, but I haven’t. Every marriage is different and you have to find your own solutions. Apart from saying that I think you ought to get back to work, and have some business of your own—scholarly business—I haven’t a thing to suggest.”

  “You don’t have to give advice, Simon. I’m grateful to you for listening. We’ve had a real, proper divano. That’s what Gypsies call it—a divano.”

  “A lovely word.”

  “Sorry if I’ve been a bore.”

  “You could never be a bore, Maria. Not yet. But unless you recover your fine Rabelaisian spirit it just might happen, and that would be dreadful.”

  “Fair’s fair. Bore me with your own problems.”

  “I’ve said what they were. Or I’ve said what I feel about the opera. And of course there’s the book. It never stops nagging.”

  “Aha!”

  “Now who’s being Mervyn Gwilt?”

  “I am. I have something for you. Something about Uncle Frank that I bet you didn’t know. Wait a minute.”

  Maria went to her study, and Darcourt seized the opportunity to—no, not to pour himself another drink, but to refresh the drink he had. With a generous hand.

  Maria returned with a letter.

  “Read this, and rejoice,” she said.

  It was a letter in a square envelope, of the sort English people use for personal correspondence. A substantial letter, making quite a wad of paper, each sheet bearing the heading West Country Pony Club, and covered with that large, bold handwriting characteristic of people who write little, and squander their paper in a way that immediately sets the scholar on his guard. The letter itself was wholly in accord with its appearance. It said:

  Dear cousin Arthur:

  Yes, it’s cousin, right enough, because you are the nephew of my father, the late Francis Cornish, and so we are from the same stable, if I may speak professionally. I should have written to you months ago but—pressure of business, and all that, and I’m sure you know what pressure of business means. But I only got wind of you last spring, when a Canadian colleague asked if I knew you, and it seems you are quite a nob in your own country. Of course I knew there were Canadians hanging somewhere on the family tree, because my grandfather—he was a Francis Cornish too—and the father of your uncle, who was my father—Oh dear, this is getting very mixed-up! Anyhow he married a Canadian, but we never knew him, because he was in some very hush-hush stuff which I don’t pretend to understand. My father, too. The family were always very close-mouthed about him for a variety of reasons, and one of them was that he was very hush-hush too. But anyhoo (as they say) he was my father and as far as he went a very good father, because he looked after me very generously, so far as money goes, but I never saw him after I was too small to really know him, if you understand me. He married his cousin Ismay Glasson—rather a dark horse, I understand—and I was brought up on the family place—not Chegwidden Hall, but at St. Columb’s because my grandmother was his cousin Prudence and that was where she lived with granddaddy, who was Roderick Glasson. Oh, crumbs, what have I said! Of course she lived with him because she was his wife—nothing in the least funny there, I assure you! St. Columb’s had to be sold up, in the end, and the poor old place is a battery-hen place now, but I managed to buy the dower-house and it is from there that I run my little stable and am rather the High Mucky Muck of the West Country Pony Club, as you see from this paper. The only paper I have, I’m afraid, because I’m up to my ample hips in the pony biz, and it’s a handful—you’d never believe! But to come to the point, I’m coming to Canada in November, because I’m to be a judge at your Royal Winter Fair in the pony division—jumping and all that—and I understand you have some wonderfully keen kiddies showing and I can’t wait to see them! And I’d love to see you! So may I give you a tinkle when I can get away from pony business, and perhaps we could tear a herring together and exchange family news! I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of me, unless somebody mentioned Little Charlie—that’s me! And not so little now, let me say! So here’s hoping to see you, and tons of family affection, though sight unseen!

  Love—
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  Charlotte Cornish

  “Did you know Uncle Frank had a child?” said Maria.

  “I knew there was somebody called Charlotte Cornish to whom he left a quarterly allowance for life, because Arthur told me so,” said Darcourt. “But I didn’t know she was a daughter. Could have been any sort of old relation. The parish register recorded the marriage of Francis and his cousin Ismay Glasson, but there was no word of a child. Fool that I was, when I was snooping around in Cornwall I discovered that Francis had been married to Ismay Glasson, but when I made inquiries about her everybody shut up and knew nothing. And nobody said a word about Little Charlie or the Pony Club. Just shows that I am not much of a detective. Of course, all the Glassons had vanished, and when I got in touch with Sir Roderick in London he couldn’t have been less forthcoming, and was too busy to see me. Well, well! Little Charlie is certainly no great letter-writer, is she?”

  “But she’s a reality. She must have heard something about Uncle Frank, even if she can’t remember him. So you may have struck gold for the book, Simon.”

  “I’m too cautious to expect any such thing. This letter puffs and blows and giggles a bit, doesn’t it? But it’s a ray of light in the very dark centre of Francis Cornish’s life.”

  “So we’ve both got something—not much, but something—out of the divano, Simon.”

  2

  When Darcourt had gone, Maria went to bed, leaving a note for Arthur, saying that he was to wake her when he came in from the airport. This was something she always did, and a request that Arthur always ignored—part of his extraordinary consideration, and his refusal to understand that she wanted to be wakened, wanted to see him, wanted to talk with him.

  She did not read herself to sleep. Maria was not a reader-in-bed. Instead she set her mind to work on something that would bring sleep at last. Something substantial, some old friendly theme, but not so demanding as to keep her awake.

  What should it be tonight? Darcourt had told her not to subdue her Rabelaisian nature; not to starve the full Rabelaisian humour that had been hers when she first met Arthur; not to dwindle into a wife, lest she cease to be a real wife. A good, sleepy theme might be the Seven Laughters of God. Of the angers, the vengeances, the punishments, the manifold Bellyaches of God the modern world seemed to know enough, even when it was most eager to banish God from all serious consideration. Let’s have the Laughters.