“Don’t preach at me, Simon. And I wish you wouldn’t drag God into it.”
“Booby! Do you suppose I have the power to drag Him out of it? Or out of anything? Very well, simpleton, don’t call it God. That’s only a shorthand term anyhow. Call it Fate or Destiny or Kismet or the Life Force or the It or any damned name you like but don’t pretend it doesn’t exist! And don’t pretend that Whatever-You-Call-It doesn’t live out a portion—a tiny portion—of its purpose through you, and that your pretensions to live your own life by the dictates of your intelligence are just so much nonsense, flattering to fools.”
“No Free Will, then?”
“Oh yes. Freedom to do as you are told, by Whatever-You-Call-It, and freedom to make a good job of it or a mess, according to your inclination. Freedom to play the hand you’re dealt, in fact.”
“Preach, preach, preach!”
“I damned well will preach! Don’t imagine you can escape. If you don’t ask God, which is my word—my professional word—for what we are talking about, what He wants of you, God will certainly tell you, and in no unmistakable terms, and if you don’t heed, you’ll be so miserable your present grief will look like a child’s tantrum. You liked orthodoxy when it seemed to be picturesque. It isn’t picturesque now, and I advise you to think of yourself as a man, and a very fine man, and not as a competitor with Little Charlie’s stallion, or some snuffling wild boar that will eventually end up in a Bavarian restaurant as the speciality of the day.”
“So what do I do?”
“You make peace with your grief and take a long, thoughtful look at your luck.”
“Swallow this insult, this infidelity? Maria, the person I love more than myself?”
“Bullshit! People say that, but it’s bullshit. The person you love best is Arthur Cornish, because he’s the one God has given you to make the best of. Unless you love him truly and deeply you are not fit to have Maria as your wife. She’s a soul, too, you know, and not just a branch-soul of your own, like one of the branches of your Cornish Trust. Maybe she has a destiny that needs this fact that you call an infidelity. Ever thought of that? I mean it, Arthur. Your business is with Arthur Cornish, first and foremost, and your value to Maria and the rest of the world depends on how you treat Arthur.”
“Maria has made Arthur Cornish a cuckold.”
“Then you’d better make up your mind to one of two courses. One: You beat up Powell, or perhaps kill him, and create misery that will last for several generations. Two: You take a hint from this opera that has brought about the whole thing, and decide to be the Magnanimous Cuckold. And what that may lead to, God only knows, but in the tale of Great Arthur of Britain it has led to something that has fed the best of mankind for centuries.”
Arthur was silent, and Darcourt went again to the window and looked out at weather that had turned to dismal autumn rain. Such silences seem long to those who keep them, but in reality it could have not been more than four or five minutes.
“Why did she smile in that peculiar way?” said Arthur at last.
“Take heed when women smile like that,” said Darcourt. “It means they have sunk very deep into themselves, far below the mind of everyday, into Nature’s ruthless mind, which sees the truth and may decide not to tell what it sees.”
“And what does she see?”
“I imagine she sees that she is going to bear this child, whatever you may think about it, and care for the child, even if it means parting with you, because that’s the job Whatever-It-Is has given her and she knows that there is no denying those orders. She knows that for the next five or six years it will be her child, as it can never be any man’s. After that men may put some superficial stamp on it, but she will have made the wax that takes the seal. Maria smiles because she knows what she is going to do, and she smiles at you because you don’t.
“So what do I do about her?” said Arthur.
“Behave as if you really loved her. What was she doing when last you saw her?”
“She didn’t look much like an independent soul, to be frank. She was throwing up her breakfast in the John.”
“Very right and proper, for a healthy young mother. Well, my advice is, love her and leave her alone.”
“You don’t think I should suggest she come to you?”
“Don’t you dare! But Maria will either come to me, or she’ll go to her mother, and my bet is she’ll come to me. Her mother and I are roughly in the same line of work, but I look more civilized, and Maria still yearns powerfully for civilization.”
3
Darcourt was not accustomed to being entertained by women; not, that is to say, entertained in restaurants by women who paid the bill. It was a ridiculous attitude, he knew, as certainly Dr. Gunilla Dahl-Soot would be charging this excellent dinner to the Cornish Trust. But, even though she was a fast, efficient gobbler, whereas he was a patient muncher, the Doctor was a different person as a hostess from the obstreperous guest at Maria’s Arthurian dinner. She was considerate, kindly, charming, but not particularly feminine—in a word, thought Darcourt, she is very much man-to-man. Her notion of conversation, however, was unconventional.
“What sins would you have liked to commit?” she asked.
“Why do you ask that?”
“It is a key to character, and I want to know you. Of course, you are a parson, so I suppose you press down very hard on any sinful ideas you have, but I am sure you have them. Everybody does. What sins? What about sex? You have no wife. Is it men?”
“No indeed. I am extremely fond of women, and I have many women friends; but I am not tormented by sexual desire, if that is what you mean. Or not often. Too busy. If Don Juan had been a professor, and Vice-Warden of his college, a secretary to a large philanthropic trust, and a biographer, we should never have heard of him as a great seducer. It calls for a lot of leisure, does seduction. And a one-track mind. I imagine Don Juan must have been rather a dull dog when he wasn’t on the prowl.”
“The Freudians think Don Juan really hated women.”
“He had a funny way of showing it. I can’t imagine sex with somebody I hated.”
“You don’t always know you hate them till push comes to shove. I speak idiomatically, you understand. I am not talking smuttily.”
“Oh, quite.”
“I was married once, you know. Less than a week. Ugh!”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Why? We all have to learn. I was a quick learner. It is not my destiny to be Fru Berggrav, I decided. So—divorce, and back to my own life and my own name. Of which I am very proud, let me tell you.”
“I’m sure.”
“A lot of people here laugh when they hear it.”
“Not all names travel well.”
“Soot is an honoured name in Norway, where my Soots came from. There was a very good painter in the last century who was a Soot.”
“I didn’t know.”
“The people who laugh at my name have limited social experience.”
“Yes, yes.
“Like Professor Raven. Is she a great friend of yours?”
“I know her well.”
“A stupid woman. Do you know she has been on the telephone to me?”
“About the libretto?”
“No. About Hulda Schnakenburg. She made an awful muddle of it, but it was clear she thinks I am being very naughty with that child.”
“I know. And are you?”
“Certainly not! But I am coaxing her into life. She has lived a life very much—how do I say it?”
“Very much denied?”
“Yes, that’s the word. No kindness. No affection. I do not say love. Horrible parents.”
“I’ve met them.”
“True followers of Kater Murr.”
“Hadn’t thought of him as a religious teacher.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have heard of him. He was a creation of our E. T. A. Hoffmann. A tom-cat. His philosophy was, ‘Can anything be cosier than having a nice, secure place in the world?’ It is the religion of millions.”