“Nobody can say that this opera lacks for incident,” said Maria.
“Operas devour incident,” said the Doctor. “Nobody wants to listen to people going into musical ecstasies about love for two hours and a half. Go on, Powell. What next? You have killed Arthur. That is bad. The character who gives the name to the opera should not peg out until the end. Look at Lucia di Lammermoor; the last act is tedious. No Lucia. You’ll have to arrange something different.”
“No I won’t,” said Powell. “The next and final Act is in the Great Hall of Arthur’s palace in Camelot, and Arthur returns triumphant, though wounded. He tells of the battle in which he has been engaged, and how a Knight in black armour appeared who challenged him to single combat. But when he seemed to be overcome, and fell from his horse, he drew his shield before him just as the Black Knight was about to give him the coup de grâce–”
“The what?” said Hollier.
Penny flew at him. “The coup de grâce, Clem. You know: the knockout. Do pay attention. You keep nodding off.”
“I do nothing of the sort.”
“Yes you do. Sit up straight and listen.”
“As I was saying,” said Powell, “the Black Knight was about to give Arthur the coup de grâce when he saw on the shield the painting of Our Lady, whereupon he turned and fled, and Arthur, though wounded, was spared. Arthur sings in praise of Our Lady, who saved him at need. The Eternal Feminine, you see.”
“Das Ewig-Weibliche,” said the Doctor. “That ought to teach the masculine idiot. Go on.”
“Everybody is immensely chuffed that Arthur has returned. But Arthur is uneasy. He knows he has an inveterate enemy. And this is where several Knights appear, bringing in Modred, the Black Knight, and Arthur is stricken that his nephew and the child of his dear sister should have sought his life. Modred mocks him as an idealistic fool, who holds honour greater than power, and displays the scabbard of Caliburn, without which he says honour is powerless, and the sword must settle everything. He challenges the wounded King to fight, and though Guenevere, who has seized the scabbard, begs him to sheathe Caliburn, the King will not hear of it. He and Modred fight, and once again the King is wounded. As he lies dying, Guenevere and Lancelot confess their guilty love. Now—this is the culmination of the whole affair—Arthur shows himself greatly magnanimous, and declares that the greatest love is summed up in Charity, and not in sexual fidelity alone; his love for both Guenevere and Lancelot is greater than the wound they have given him. He dies, and at once the scene changes to the Magic Mere, where we see Arthur floating out into the mists in a barge, attended only by Merlin, who sheathes Caliburn for the last time and casts it back into the water from which it first came, as Arthur nears the Isle of Sleep. Curtain.”
There was applause from Darcourt and Maria. But Hollier was not content. “You drop too many people along the way,” he said. “What happens to Elaine? What about her baby? We know that baby was Galahad, the Pure Knight who saw the Grail. You can’t just dump all that after Act Two.”
“Oh yes I can,” said Powell. “This is an opera, not a Ring Cycle. We’ve got to get the curtain down around eleven.”
“You’ve said nothing about Modred being the incestuous child of Arthur and Morgan Le Fay.”
“No time for incest,” said Powell. “The plot is complicated enough as it stands. Incest would just mess things up.”
“I will have no part of any opera that includes a baby,” said the Doctor. “Horses are bad enough on the stage, but children are hell.”
“People will feel cheated,” said Hollier. “Anybody who knows Malory will know that it was Sir Bedevere, not Merlin, who threw Caliburn back into the water. And it was three Queens who bore Arthur away. It’s all so untrue to the original.”
“Let ‘em write to the papers,” said Powell. “Let the musicologists paw it over for the next twenty years. We must have a coherent plot and we must wind it up before the stagehands go on overtime. How many people in an opera audience will know Malory, do you suppose?”
“I have always said the theatre was a coarse art,” said Hollier, with tipsy dignity.
“That is why it is a live art,” said the Doctor. “That is why it has vitality. Out of the ragbag about Arthur we have to find a straight story, and Powell has done so. For myself, I am very well pleased with his schema for the opera. I drink to you, Powell. You are what I call a real pro.”
“Thank you, Nilla,” said Powell. “I can’t think of a compliment that would please me better.”
“What’s a real pro?” whispered Hollier to Penny.
“Somebody who really knows his job.”
“Somebody who doesn’t know Malory, it seems to me.”
“I like it tremendously,” said Arthur; “and I am glad you agree, Doctor. Whatever you say, Clem, it’s miles ahead of that rubbish about Nob and Tit we were listening to when Penny discovered Planches stuff. At last I feel as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I was terribly worried.”
“Your worries have only begun, boy,” said Powell. “But we’ll meet ‘em as they come. Won’t we, Nilla fach?”
“Powell, you go beyond what is decent,” said the Doctor. “How dare you speak to me in that way!”
“You misunderstand. The word is a Welsh endearment.”
“You are gross. Do not attempt to explain.”
“Fach is the feminine of bach. I say ‘Sim bach’ and it is as if I said dear old Sim.”
“I want nothing to do with old dears,” said the Doctor, who was again becoming belligerent. “I am a free spirit, not the scabbard of any man’s sword. My world is a world of infinite choice.”
“I’ll bet,” said Penny.
“You will oblige me by confining yourself to the libretto, which is your business, Professor Raven,” said the Doctor. “Have you comprehended the symbolismus? This will be wonderfully modern. The true union of man and woman to save and enlarge mankind.”
“But how can it be wonderfully modern if it is true to Hoffmann and the early nineteenth century?” said Hollier. “You forget that we are to restore and complete a work of art from a day long past.”
“Professor Hollier, you are wonderfully obtuse, as only a very learned man can be, and I forgive you. But for the love of Almighty God, and for Our Lady whom Arthur bore on his shield, I beg you to shut up and leave the artists’ work to the artists, and stop all this scholarly bleating. Real art is all one, and speaks of the great things of life, whenever it is created. Get that through your great, thick, brilliantly furnished head and shut up, shut up, shut up.” The Doctor was roaring, in a rich contralto that might have done very well for Morgan Le Fay.
“All right,” said Hollier. “I am not insulted. I am above the ravings of a drunken termagant. Go ahead, the whole pack of you, and make asses of yourselves. I withdraw.”