“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!