A Mixture of Frailties
Mrs. Merry insisted on a long heart-to-heart with Monica, wearing an exaggerated version of her usual expression of anguished distinction. “Her haemorrhoidal rictus,” Giles had called it, and the phrase recurred to Monica again and again, spoken in Giles’ voice, as the landlady talked.
“I shall never forget the night that he and Sir Benedict played for me,” said Mrs. Merry; “a moment to be cherished in memory, now alas, in sorrow. It was his kindness which won one.” She talked for a satisfactory hour, revising her memory of the past in the light of the present.
Monica found that she had to give Bun Eccles a scratch dinner in her flat. He clung to her, and he would talk of nothing but Giles. He had brought a bottle of whisky, of which he drank all but one tot, and it was only by showing great firmness that she kept him from passing out.
“What stonkers me, Monny, is that it was gas.” This was the burden of his cry. “Poor old Giles, to go by the gas route. Because I’d hocussed his meter, you see, Monny. Made it give more than it wanted to for a bob. And if I hadn’t done that, there mightn’t have been enough to do for him, see? Maybe if it had conked as little as five minutes sooner—Jesus God, drowning in his own puke like that, poor old chap! I killed him, Monny. No, it’s no use saying I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t in law, but I did in fact, and I’ll always have to live with that. God knows what it’ll do to me. It’s not so tough for you, Monny—no, no, I don’t mean you’re not hurt like us all, and worse than anybody. But you’ve nothing to reproach yourself with. You were always wonderful to him. Yes, yes, you were the only one. Old Perse was bellowing like a heifer in court today, because her old Dad had been giving her the gears. She gave Giles that piece of old Aspinwall’s; shouldn’t have done it, of course, but who was to know? Now she’s saying she killed the only man she loved, or who really loved her. Aw, but—Perse was just a recreation to Giles; he knew what she was. Anybody could butter Perse’s bun, and he knew it. But you were true to him, so you haven’t anything to regret. And you’re game, Monny. Game as Ned Kelly, and you’ll get on your feet again. Wish I thought I’d do the same. You brought him life, Monny, and me, with my meddling, I greased the skids for him. How am I going to face that, every morning of my life? Poor old Giles. The best of chaps.”
At last she got rid of Bun, and when he was gone she wished him back. For what was she to do now? She had not opened her letters for several days, and she turned to them to avoid the horror of thought.
Only three were other than bills and circulars. The McCorkills, in the kindest terms, offered her the refuge of Beaver Lodge, if she wanted it; if she wanted to be alone, said Meg McCorkill, that was how it would be; they hadn’t seen anything of her for a long time, but if she needed them, she had only to say the word.
The second letter was from Humphrey Cobbler. Had anybody troubled to tell her, he asked, that Veronica Bridgetower was pregnant? The child was expected late in December or early in January. He was sure she did not know, and it was none of his business, but if the Bridgetower Trust did not see fit to warn her that, in a few months, she might be displaced as beneficiary of that money, he thought it pretty shabby. And where could he get copies of some of Giles Revelstoke’s songs? Was there a chance that he could get his hands on a score of The Discoverie of Witchcraft? He had been asked, out of the blue, to do something for a special program of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and he wanted to make their eyes pop. Or ears pop. Or whatever popped when you got a musical surprise. Any use writing direct to Revelstoke himself? He wished her well in Venice and was hers with love.
The third letter was the one from George Medwall which had been waiting for her when she returned from Venice. It read:
Dear Monica;
This is not an easy letter to write, because I am not sure there was ever anything definite between us. Still and all, I had definite ideas that I wanted to marry you, and maybe you got some idea of that kind from something I said. But we have not had a chance to talk for a long time what with your mother’s death when you were last home and being very busy with the concert. The fact is if there was ever anything like an engagement between us or even a firm understanding I am asking you now to release me from it as if you do I am going to ask another girl as I am in a position to do so now. You know her. She is Teresa Rook whom you will remember as Mr. Holterman’s secretary and a cracker-jack in her job. It is plain now and has been for quite a while that our paths have separated, but there is no reason why we can not be friends. I am not saying a word to Tessie till I hear from you which I hope will be as soon as convenient.
Your sincere friend
GEORGE MEDWALL
Her first feeling was one of surprise that George should ever have thought it possible that she might marry him. This gave way at once to shame at such snobbery, and a recollection that she had once had fuzzy, but real, designs on George. But it did seem queer now, and there was no use pretending. Had not George said to her many times, during the period of their intimacy, “Get wise to yourself, Monny; you have to get wise to yourself, or you’re everybody’s stooge.” Since those days she had been trying to get wise to herself.
Of course she remembered Tessie Rook; she was just made for George; together they would go far, and George would probably end up as president of the C.A.A., a towering figure in the allied worlds of sandpaper and glue. She sat down to write a generous reply at once, and tears which she had not been able to weep in the coroner’s court poured out now, pretending to be tears of happiness, as she thought of good old George and that sweet Tessie.
But in the end this diversion was at an end, and Monica was left with no course but to face the fact that Giles Revelstoke had not been dead when she took her letter from his hand, and that if she had thought more of him and less of herself he need not have died at all. By her selfishness and littleness of spirit she had killed him.
(9)
In describing Domdaniel as Giles Revelstoke’s musical and literary executor the Coroner was premature; but it was Sir Benedict’s desire to act in that capacity, and he lost no time in showing his fitness for it. Giles left no will. When Griffith Hopkin-Griffiths arrived at the Tite Street flat, late on the day that the body was discovered, it was to find Sir Benedict virtually in charge; with great tact he undertook to have Giles’ belongings packed and sent to Wales; from that it was no great step to secure permission to take care of his manuscripts until their fate was decided. It was not many days until a great music publishing house showed interest in acquiring at least some of them.
In the period immediately following Giles’ death it might have appeared that Sir Benedict used Monica without proper regard for her feelings. He insisted that she pack all the dead man’s clothing and books and arrange for their removal; she found that she had to sell the furniture, which was of small value, to a dealer in the King’s Road; she had to arrange for the removal of all the rubbish which comprised the files and business apparatus of Lantern. Mrs. Klein needed her flat, and it had to be cleared. Tuke and Tooley had nowhere to house the wreckage of the magazine; Raikes Brothers certainly did not want it. As Monica could not bring herself to get rid of it, she put it in storage, in her own name.
Thus she was in and out of the flat a dozen times a day, arranging for the sale of things which had grown dear to her, including the very bed in which she had so often lain with him. But nothing was worse than the making of a rough catalogue of his music, which she prepared under Domdaniel’s direction. Thin, pale and silent, she did as she was bidden.
When the great house of Bachofen began to show interest in the music, it took Mrs. Hopkin-Griffiths surprisingly little time to arrange for Sir Benedict to have full power to deal with them. The daily papers had taken small interest in Giles’ death, but the important Sunday papers carried long articles and many letters about him, and within three weeks England was given to understand that she had lost a man of consequence. The first person to see the possibility of this situation was Phanuel Tuke, who arranged with a
publisher to bring out a collection of Giles’ Lantern articles, prefaced with an appreciative essay by himself; for this purpose he wanted the Lantern files, and was greatly vexed with Monica because they were already in storage, and Miss Tooley was put to the trouble of doing her master’s drudgery in the British Museum.
It was a shrewd move on the part of the music publishers to put themselves behind the promotion of a Commemorative Concert of Giles’ work; it would serve as a test of his possible popularity. Sir Benedict was holding out against their offer to buy some of the publication rights; he wanted them to buy all. They were willing to bide their time. Meanwhile they were ready to spend something to see how much Giles was potentially worth.
The announcement of the concert, to take place in late November, was productive of more interest than the publishers had thought possible in their most sanguine dreams. Among musical people there was a sudden vogue for Giles Revelstoke, much of it attributable to Stanhope Aspinwall, whose two commemorative articles, published on successive Sundays in the Argus, set off the enthusiasm of lesser men. Not that Aspinwall was wholly commendatory; the faults which he had found in Giles’ work while he was alive were still censured—but his virtues were praised much more generously. The change in emphasis, though carefully engineered, was noteworthy and effective.
“Believe me, Monny, if you want to attract real, serious attention to your work, you can’t beat being dead,” said Bun Eccles. He had several sketches of Giles and reproduction rights were selling well. “I’ve half a mind to try it myself, one of these days. Let ’em think they drove me to it by neglect. Trouble is, how are you going to cash in when you’re dead?”
Sir Benedict was organizing the concert, and the first artist he secured for it was Monica. Speaking for the publishers, he was able to propose the highest fee she had ever been offered in her brief career.
“But am I the right person?” she asked. “My name won’t draw anybody into the hall. Why not Evelyn Burnaby?”
“She’ll be there, as well,” said Domdaniel. “A good deal of Giles’ latest and best stuff was written for you, and that’s very good publicity, discreetly used.”
Monica did not like that suggestion, and said so.
“We’ll have lots of time for fine feelings afterward,” said he. “Our job right now is to get the best and showiest hearing possible for Giles’ work. He taught you some of the things you’ll sing; they’re built into your voice, precisely as he wanted them. Don’t fuss.”
“I hate to have my personal relationship with him exploited.”
“It’s your artistic relationship with him that’s being exploited—if that’s what you want to call it. Years after Trafalgar, Lady Hamilton used to go to concerts where Braham was billed to sing The Death of Nelson, and at a telling moment in the song she would faint noisily and have to be carried out. I’m not asking you to do anything like that. I’m asking you to make known the authentic voice of Giles Revelstoke—because that’s what you are—and to begin the establishment of an unquestioned tradition about the performance of some of his best work. You ought to be damned thankful you’re in a position to do it. The fact that you were his mistress is trivial. If that’s what’s troubling you, for God’s sake go back to Pumpkin Centre or wherever it is you came from, and set up shop as a teacher. Now, make up your mind, and don’t waste my time.”
Monica had never known Sir Benedict in this mood, and it did not take her long to decide that she would do as she was told. Amy Neilson had been right; she was not a big person; she must be obedient to her betters.
Still, the idea was hateful to her, and when she told Sir Benedict of her decision he knew it, and softened a little.
“There’s a necessary element of showmanship in every performing artist, however great or however sensitive,” said he, “and without it they’re not worth a damn. As long as you have it under control, it’s quite all right. Don’t fuss; I’ll see you through.”
Don’t fuss. But it wasn’t fussing; it was terror barely kept under control. Terror that, while cataloguing Giles’ music, she might throw herself on the floor and howl like a dog. Terror that, when she haggled with a secondhand dealer about Giles’ bed-clothes, she might wrap the counterpane about her and rush shrieking into the King’s Road, like widowed Hecuba. Terror that, when she saw a policeman, she might cry, “I killed him,” and put out her wrists for the handcuffs.
She knew very well that she would not do any of these things. They were not things she would do but rather things which, from time to time she wanted to do. She was astonished at her own capacity to suffer inwardly, to give way to excesses of grief and panic, and at the same time to present a stoical front to the world. Three times she dreamed that Giles came to her, his eyes ablaze, his mouth distorted with rage, and menaced her with a bloody knife. But although this dream paralyzed her with terror, its after-effect was life-enhancing, and she woke moist, panting and stirred to the depths of her being. Her mirror told her the strange news that such dreams were becoming. “Get wise to yourself, Monny,” said George Medwall; she felt that she had never been farther from self-knowledge in her life, though self-possession never deserted her.
Nevertheless, her nervous exhaustion could not be wholly concealed. Molloy was well aware of it, for she worked with him every day, in preparation for the concert, and he was unsparing. Since the incident of the Vic-Wells ball his attitude toward her had changed; he was less eager to impress, he was more diffident and yet more intimate; he demanded more and hectored less. She had quite lost her fear of him, and they were good friends.
“You’re riding for a fall,” said he, one October day after a particularly rigorous hour. “You want a vacation the worst way. Mind, you’ll be all right for the concert; I guarantee’t. But after that, I wouldn’t want to be answerable. Get away t’hell out o’ this for a while. Go back to Canada, why don’t you? Then come back and start afresh. You’re on the quicks of your nerves now, and that can’t last. Sit down for a while and I’ll get Norah to give us all some tea.”
A few days later it was Sir Benedict who suggested a holiday. “I’d thought about Canada for Christmas,” she said. “Some friends of mine are having a crisis in their lives, and I’d like to be there.” And then, greatly to his astonishment, she told him about Solly and Veronica Bridgetower, and the curious condition which governed the existence of the Bridgetower Trust. “So you see how it is,” she concluded; “if they have a son—and I truly hope they will—it will be the end of all this for me. My good luck has depended on their bad luck, and ever since I found out about it, I’ve felt like the most horrible kind of gold-digger. If it hadn’t been for The Golden Asse I couldn’t have gone on. I’m glad I did, but that’s all over now, and I want to behave decently, if there’s any way of doing so.”
Thus it was that, with Sir Benedict’s permission, and some arrangements with Boykin, she found herself in Cockspur Street a few days later, booking a steamship passage for the last week in November. As she filled out applications, her gaze travelled upward to a poster which urged settlers to come to Canada at once. Radiating health and goodwill like a red-hot stove, a young man in shirt-sleeves stood in a field of wheat, his bronzed face split with a dazzling grin. I suppose he represents my country, thought Monica, though I’ve never met anybody like that in my life. Odd that he should be so young, and that I feel so old.
Before the week of the concert, there was a duty which could not be shirked; she must go to Neuadd Goch, and present an account of what she had been doing to Giles’ mother. She longed to get out of it. She would have done anything to avoid it. But Domdaniel could not go, and there was no one else. So, in a dreary wet week she went, and found herself once again in the familiar house though not, she thanked Heaven, in the bedroom she had occupied before.
Mrs. Hopkin-Griffiths was more business-like than Monica had expected. She understood everything; she accepted the few pounds which had been realized by the sale of Giles’ odds and ends without
shame; she signed the papers which needed signing. It took about an hour.
“Thank you, my dear,” she said when it was all done. “I’m sure you know how grateful Griff and I are for all of this. I’m sure it must have been hateful—all the selling and arranging and ridding-out. I couldn’t have faced it, and Griff hates London so much. You and Sir Benedict have been perfectly wonderful. Funny—I’ve always been the kind of person that people do things for. I wonder why? I wish there were something we could do for you. Of course, it was always so extraordinary about you being Giles’ pupil; he never had any others, you know; and turning up like that at Christmas. It seemed a sort of fated thing—but I suppose that’s silly, really.”
“You will be coming to London for the concert, won’t you?”
“Dear, will you think me utterly dreadful if I say that I won’t be? I honestly don’t think I could face it. No, I shall stay right here. The funeral was too awful. I don’t know how I got through it.”
“Certainly for those who knew him, a concert of his music, at this time, may be very moving.”
“Do you think so? Perhaps. I couldn’t say. You see, I don’t really know anything about Giles’ music. I really knew nothing of that side of him. Was his opera really terribly good?”
“Stanhope Aspinwall keeps relating it to The Magic Flute.”
“Really? Is that very good? Griff and I never saw it, you know. Is it likely to be done again, ever? When it was on in London Griff was seedy and we simply didn’t feel up to the journey at that time. And then when it was done in Venice, we had already been to Baden, where we’ve gone for years—really I don’t think I could face the winter without it—and what with the extra expense, and the time it was done, and everything, we simply didn’t make it. Of course I reproach myself now. But what’s done’s done, eh?—Would you like to see his grave?”
Monica had determined that she would not go back to London without visiting Giles’ grave, but she did not want to do so with Dolly Hopkin-Griffiths. But there was nothing for it but to do as she was asked, and so they set off on foot.