There was one large brown envelope that Darcourt opened last, because he had a sense that it could contain what he was looking for. He wanted to tease himself, to work up an expectation that amounted almost to a fever, like a child that saves one parcel of its Christmas horde in vehement hope that it contains the gift most eagerly desired. Unlike the others, it was sealed; the gummed flap had been stuck down, instead of being merely tucked in, as was the case with all the others. It was labelled, not “Old Master Drawings”, but “My Drawings in Old Master style, for the National Gallery”. The Gallery authorities would probably not have allowed him to open it, or not without some Gallery representative being at his elbow as he did so, but Darcourt, who now regarded himself as a thorough-going crook, managed to sneak into the little kitchen where Gallery workers made their tea and coffee and secreted their biscuits, and quickly and efficiently steamed it open. And there it all was. If he had been a fainting man, he would have fainted.
Here were preliminary sketches for The Marriage at Cana; several plans for the groupings of the figures, and quick studies for heads, arms, clothes, and armour for the figures—and every head was a likeness, though not always a wholly faithful likeness, of somebody in the Sun Pictures taken by Grandfather James Ignatius McRory. No, not quite every head; the woman who stood in the centre panel was unknown to Grandfather, but she was very well known to Darcourt. She was Ismay Glasson, wife of Francis Cornish and mother of Little Charlie. Nor was there any source in the Sun Pictures for the figure of Judas; but he was Tancred Saraceni, caricatured in several of Francis’s notebooks and plainly labelled. And the dwarf, so vaunting in The Marriage, so self-doubting in the photography; F.X. Bouchard, beyond a doubt. And the huissier; Zadok Hoyle, Grandfather’s coachman. Why was he important enough to be included in the composition? Darcourt hoped that somehow he might find out, but it was not vital that he do so.
Most mysterious were the studies of that angel, who flew so confidently above the centre panel—so confidently that his influence extended over the whole three panels of the work. But here he was, and one of those drawings was identified as F.C., and although those were Cornish’s own initials, this angel was certainly not Francis Cornish. —Was the drawing merely signed, in an idle moment? Or was this crazed, yet inexorably compelling and potent figure—this spook, this grotesque—some notion Francis cherished of his inner self? Had he thought so strangely of himself? Another puzzle, and Darcourt hoped he might solve it, but knew that he had no need to do so. Here were the originals of the people in The Marriage, and if not all of them could be equated with people Francis and Grandfather McRory had known, that did nothing to lessen the importance of his discovery. It was with a light heart that Darcourt carefully resealed the envelope, and left the Gallery, with much affability toward those who had permitted him to seek for material which they assumed, and quite rightly, was for information that would flesh out his biography of their dead benefactor.
Darcourt wanted time to come to terms with his discovery, surely the most extraordinary piece of luck that had ever come his way, so he travelled back to Toronto by train, and the journey, which would have taken just under an hour by air, filled the greater part of a day. It was just what he needed. The train was not crowded, and its alternation of simoom-like heat and bitter November draughts was vastly preferable to the “pressurized” atmosphere of a plane. What the train lacked in food—there were sandwiches of the usual railway variety—he made good with a large bar of chocolate and nuts. He had a book in his lap, for he was the kind of man who must always have a book near as a protective talisman, but did not look at it. He thought about his find. He gloated. He looked out at the sere, desolate landscape of Eastern Ontario in November, and the bleak towns, so charmless, so humble; to his gaze it might have been the Garden of Eden and all the chilled passers-by so many Adams and Eves. Sentences formed in his mind; he fastidiously chose adjectives; he rejected tempting flights into literary extravagance; he thought of several modest ways of presenting his great discovery, which wholly changed the idea the world was to receive of the late Francis Cornish. His journey passed in something as near to bliss as he had ever known.
Bliss ended with the journey. When he arrived back at his college the porter gave him a telephone message; he was to call Arthur as soon as possible.
“Simon, I’ve rather an important favour to ask. I know you’re busy, but will you drop everything and go to Stratford at once? To see Powell.”
“What about?”
“Don’t you know? Don’t you read the papers? He’s in hospital, rather badly banged up.”
“What happened?”
“Car accident last night. Apparently he was driving recklessly. In fact he was driving through the park, next to the Festival Theatre, at great speed, and ran into a tree.”
“Skidded off the road?”
“He wasn’t on the road. He was in the park itself, zigzagging among the trees and yelling like a wild man. Very drunk, they say. He’s all smashed up. We’re terribly worried about him.”
“Naturally. But why don’t you go yourself?”
“Bit delicate. Complications. Apparently he raved a lot under anaesthetic, and the surgeon called me to explain—and see if I had anything to say. He babbled a lot about Maria and me, and if we rush down there to see him it lends colour to a lot of speculation among the theatre people. You know what they are. But somebody must go. Indecent not to. Will you? Hire a car, of course, it’s Foundation business as much as it’s anything. Do go, Simon. Please.”
“Of course I’ll go if it’s necessary. But do you mean he’s spilled the beans?”
“Quite a few beans. The surgeon said that of course people fantasize under anaesthetic, and nobody takes it seriously.”
“Except that he took it seriously enough to tip you off.”
“There were assistants and nurses around when he was patching Geraint up—and you know how hospital people talk.”
“I know how all people talk, when they think they’ve got hold of a juicy morsel.”
“So you’ll go? Simon, you are a good friend! And you’ll call us as soon as you get back?”
“Is Maria worried?”
“We’re both worried.”
That was a good thing, thought Darcourt, as he sped toward Stratford in his hired limousine. If they were both worried about the same thing, and that thing was the mess they were in with Powell, it might bring them together, and put an end to all that polite conversation about nothing. Darcourt was in a somewhat cynical frame of mind, for he had gobbled a snack while waiting for the car, and it was not sitting well with all the chocolate he had eaten in the train. Indigestion is a great begetter of cynicism. In the back seat of the car, dashing through the November darkness, he had lost the happy mood of the daytime; here he was again, good old Simon, the abbé at the court of the Cornish Foundation, the reliable old fire-engine sent off to quench a blaze of gossip that Arthur and Maria took seriously.
We live in an age of sexual liberation, he thought, when people are not supposed to take marital fidelity seriously, and when adultery, and fornication, and all uncleanness are perfectly okay—except when they come near home. When that happens, there may be uproars that awaken the gossip columnists, alert the divorce lawyers, and sometimes end in the criminal courts. Especially so among prominent people, and Arthur, and Maria, and Geraint Powell were all, in their various ways, prominent, and just as touchy as everybody else. Darcourt was of Old Ontario stock, descendant of United Empire Loyalists, and from time to time an Old Ontario saw seemed to him to sum up a situation: “It all depends whose ox is gored”. The Cornish ox had been gored, and it was probably impossible to conceal the wound. Still, he must rush to stick a Band-Aid on the bleeding place.
Powell was in one of those hospital rooms which are described as “semi-private”; this meant that he lay in the part of the room nearest the door, and on the other side of the white curtain that split the room down the middle lay somebody w
ho had hired one of the hospital television sets; he was listening to a hockey game, apparently of the first importance, with the volume turned well up. The commentators were describing the play and discussing its significance, in a high state of excitement.
“Oh, Sim bach, you darling man! How good of you to come! Would you ask that bugger to turn down his bloody machine?”
Geraint’s head was heavily bandaged, though his face could be seen; it was bruised, but no wounds were visible. One arm was in plaster, and his left leg, swathed in some medical wrapping, was hoisted upward in a sling that hung from a metal brace attached to the bed.
“Would you please turn down the volume of your set? My friend is very ill and we want to talk.”
“Hey? What did you say? You’ll have to speak up; I’m a bit deaf. Great game, eh? The Hatters have got the Soviet team on the run. My pet team. The Medicine Hatters. Best in the League. If they win this one, we might get the Cup yet. Big night, eh?”
“Yes, but could you turn it down a bit? My friend is very ill.”
“Is he? This’ll cheer him up. Would you like to pull back the curtain so he can see?”
“Thank you, a very kind offer. But he really is suffering.”
“This’ll fix him. Hey—did you see that? Just missed it! Donniker is in great shape tonight. He’s showing those Russkies what defence work is. Hey—look at that! Wowie!”
It appeared that nothing could be done. The man in the other bed was gripped by the ruling passion, and it was hopeless to talk to him.
“Well, old man, how are you?” said Darcourt.
“I am at the head of the Valley of Grief in the Uplands of Hell,” Geraint replied.
He’s had that one ready, thought Darcourt. This may be heavy going.
“I came as soon as I knew. What on earth has happened to you?”
“Retribution, Sim bach. I have made an utter balls of everything! My life is in tatters and I have nobody to blame but myself. This is punishment for sin, and I have nothing to do but accept it, swallow it, suffer it, take up my cross, prostrate myself before the Throne, and die! It runs in my family; my great-grandfather and my Uncle David both died of disgrace and despair. Turned their faces to the wall. I am trying to die. It’s the least I can do under the circumstances. Oh God, my head!”
Darcourt sought out a nurse; she was down the hall at the nursingstation, where she and a clutch of nurses and interns were huddled around a tiny television screen, watching the great game. But she came long enough to go to the other side of the white curtain and turn down the set of the enthusiast who shared the semi-private, who protested that his deafness required greater volume. She also, at his urgent request, brought Darcourt a glass of Alka-Seltzer to assuage his raging stomach. In the somewhat less uproarious atmosphere, he tried to soothe Powell.
“Now Geraint, don’t talk like that. They tell me you are doing nicely, considering everything. You are not going to die, so put that idea right out of your head. You will be up and around in about three weeks, they say, and must be quiet and help the medical people all you can.”
“A positive attitude! That’s what they keep telling me. ‘You must take a positive attitude, because it helps greatly with the healing, and in a few weeks you’ll be right as rain.’ But I don’t want to be right as rain! I don’t deserve it. Let the tempest rage!”
“Oh, come on, Geraint! Don’t carry on like that!”
“Carry on? Carry on? Sim bach, that is a bruising expression. Oh, how my head hurts!”
“Of course your head hurts when you shout like that. Just whisper. I can hear you if I come really close. Now tell me what happened.”
“Malory, Sim bach. Malory is what happened. The night before last I was reading Malory; it quiets the mind, and it brings me very near to Arthur—King Arthur, I mean—and his court and his great schemes and his afflictions. My book fell open at the Madness of Lancelot. You know it? You must; everybody does.”
“I remember it.”
“Then you know what it says: ‘he lepte oute at a bay-wyndow into a gardyne, and there wyth thornys he was all to-cracched of hys vysage and hys body, and so he ranne furth he knew not whothir, and was as wylde as ever man was. And so he ran two yere, and never man had grace to know him.’ ”
“And that is what you did?”
“In modern terms, that is what I did. I had been having a few, naturally, and reflecting on my outcast state, and the more I thought, the more of a miserable wretch I knew I was, and suddenly I couldn’t hold in any longer. I leapt out of my window—not a bay—and on the ground floor by the mercy of God. I got into my car, and drove like hell, I don’t remember where, but I ended up in that park and you know how spooky woods are at night, and as I drove the feeling became more and more Arthurian and Maloryesque, and there I was, roaring around among the trees, making sharp turns and narrow circles—all at incredible speed, boy; a great racing driver has been lost in me—and I became conscious that courtly pavilions were appearing out of the woods to the right and left—”
“The public conveniences, I understand. You very nearly smashed into them.”
“That be damned! It was a great pavilion, a mighty tent, with flags floating.”
“That must have been the Festival Theatre.”
“Armed men and peasantry were skipping about among the trees, marvelling at me.”
“The police certainly. I don’t know about the peasantry, but there were plenty of witnesses. That’s a very easily identified car you drive.”
“Don’t belittle my agony, Sim bach; don’t reduce it to mere everyday. This was an Arthurian madness—the madness of Lancelot. Then everything went black.”
“You hit a tree. You were crazy-drunk and driving very much to the public danger in a public park, and you hit a tree. I’ve been reading the papers on my way here. Now look, Geraint: I don’t underestimate your temperament, or your involvement with Malory, but facts are facts.”
“Yes, but what are the facts? I am not talking about police-court facts, or newspaper lies, but psychological facts. I was in the grip of a great archetypal experience, and what it looked like to outsiders doesn’t count. Listen; listen to me.”
“I’m listening, but you mustn’t expect me to rush off into the moonshine with you, Geraint. Understand that.”
“Sim—Sim, my dear old friend. Sim, who out of all mankind I look to for sympathetic understanding, hear me. You are very harsh, boy. Your tongue is so sharp it would draw blood from the wind. Sim, you don’t know what I am. I am the son of a man of God. My father, now singing a rich bass in the Choir Invisible, was a very well known Calvinistic Methodist minister in Wales. He brought me up in the knowledge and fear of God. You know what that means. You are a man of God yourself, though of the episcopal, ritualist sort, for which
I forgive you, but you must have the true knowledge in you someplace.”
“I hope so.”
“Sim—I have never forgotten or really forsaken my early doctrine, though my life has taken me into the world of art, which is God’s world too, though horribly flawed in many of its aspects. I have sinned greatly, but never against art. You know what has been my downfall?”
“Yes. Booze.”
“Oh, Sim, that is unworthy! A drop now and then to ease deep inner pain, but never my downfall. No, no; my downfall was the flesh.”
“Woman, you mean?”
“Not woman, Sim. I have never been dissolute. No, not woman, but Woman, that highest embodiment of God’s glory and goodness, with whom I have tried to enlarge myself and raise myself. But, wretch that I am, I took the wrong path. The flesh, Sim, the flesh!”
“Your best friend’s wife?”
“The last—and undoubtedly the greatest—of many. You see, Sim, God tempts us. Oh yes, He does. Don’t let us pretend otherwise. Why do we pray not to be led into temptation?”
“We pray not to be put to the test.”
“All right, but we are put to the test, and for some of us
the test is a right bugger, let me tell you, Sim bach. Look here: why did God endow me with a Byronic temperament, Byronic beauty of face, a Byronic irresistibility?”
“I have no idea.”
“No, you haven’t. You are a great soul, Sim; a great, calm soul, but nothing to speak of in the way of physical attraction, if I may be allowed the frankness of a friend. So you don’t know what it’s like to see some marvellous woman and think, ‘That’s mine, if I choose to put out my hand and take it.’ You’ve never felt that?”
“No, I haven’t, really.”
“There you are, you see. But that has been my life. Oh, the flesh! the flesh!”
The man on the other side of the white curtain was pushing it as hard as he could with his hand. “Hey, knock it off, you guys, will you? How do you expect me to hear the game if you yell like that?”
“Shhh! Keep your voice down, Sim, like a good man. This is confidential. Call it a confession, if you like. Where was I? Yes, the flesh; that was it.
Love not as do the flesh-imprisoned men
Whose dreams are of a bitter bought caress,
Or even of a maiden’s tenderness
Whom they love only that she loves again,
For it is but thyself thou lovest then—
You know that? Santayana—and there are people who say he wasn’t a fine poet! That was me; my love was all self-love and I have been a flesh-imprisoned man.”
Geraint’s face was wet with tears. Darcourt, who felt that this interview was going all wrong, but who had not a hard heart, wiped them away with his own handkerchief. But somehow he had to reduce this outpouring to order.
“Are you telling me that you seduced Maria just to test your power? Geraint, this two-bit Byronic act of yours has brought great unhappiness into the life of Arthur, whom you insist is your friend.”
“It’s this opera. Sim. You can’t pretend a thing like that is just a stage-piece. It’s a huge influence, if it’s any good at all, and this thing is going to be good. I know it. This opera has brought me back to Malory, and Maria—whom I truly love as a friend and not as a man desires a woman—is none the less a real Malory-woman. So free, so direct, so simple, and yet so great in spirit and so enchanting. You must feel that?”