What about Arthur Cornish, who is helping himself to currant jelly across the table? He belongs to a Birth Elite of a kind; of a Canadian kind, which thinks three generations of money are enough in themselves to make a man significant, do what he will. But Arthur wants to be an intellectual, and to advance civilization by the use of his power, which is his money; or rather, the money of the late Francis Cornish, the mysterious fortune which nobody can quite explain. Surely that is an attempt, and a very respectable attempt, to advance into an Elite of Achievement? Arthur Cornish probably commands more hard cash and more power than Arthur of Britain ever dreamed of.
Queen Guenevere lives in legend as a partner in an adulterous love that brought great grief to King Arthur. Not all the legends present her as a woman troubled by love alone; sometimes she is a discontented wife, an ambitious woman of a fretful spirit, a figure more solid and varied than Tennyson draws her.
Certainly Maria fills the bill. She had told Darcourt, not so very long ago, before she married Arthur, that she had fallen in love with him because of his frankness, his largeness of spirit, and also his attractive freedom from the academic world to which her own ambitions were confined. Arthur had offered her love, but also friendship, and she had found it irresistible. Yet a woman cannot live solely in the realm of her love; she must have a life of her own; she must shed light, as well as reflecting it. It looked as if Maria’s light, since her marriage, had been somewhat under a cloud. She had tried too hard to be Arthur’s wife, first, last, and all the time, and her spirit was in rebellion. How long had they been married? Twenty months, was it? Twenty months of forsaking all others and cleaving only unto him? It simply won’t work. No woman worth marrying is nothing but a wife, if the man is something better than a roaring egotist, which Arthur certainly is not, for all his peremptory, rich man’s ways in certain matters. Darcourt, himself unmarried, had seen many marriages, and united more couples, he thought in his Old Ontario way, than he could shake a stick at. The marriages that worked best were those in which the unity still permitted of some separateness—not a ranting independence, but a firm possession by both man and woman of their own souls.
Was it any use talking to Arthur and Maria about souls? Probably not. Souls are not fashionable, at present. People will listen with wondering acquiescence to scientific talk of such invisible entities as are said to be everywhere and very important, but they shy away from talk of souls. Souls have a bad name in the world of atomic energy.
Souls were a reality to Darcourt, however. Souls, not as gassy aspiration and unreal nobility, but as the force that divides the living human creature from the raw material for the mortician’s craft. Souls as a totality of consciousness, what man knows of himself and also that hidden vast part of himself which knows and impels him, used and abused by everybody, called upon or rejected, but inescapable.
What about Powell? Now there was a man who would assert, with passionate eloquence, that he had a soul, but who was clearly driven by that portion of his soul that was not within the range of his direct knowledge, that part of the spirit that some people—Mamusia, for instance—would call his fate. But a man’s fate is his own, more than he knows. We attract what we are. And it was Powell’s fate that had drawn him to seduce his friend’s wife, probably—no, Darcourt was sure, undoubtedly—with the complicity of Maria’s fate, just as Lancelot had seduced, or been seduced by, Guenevere.
“Do you want more dressing on your salad, Simon?” said Maria. She and Arthur and Powell had been talking while Darcourt mused.
Yes, he would like more dressing on his salad. He really must not drift off into unheeding speculation while the others were talking. And what had they been talking about?
About the impending child, of course. They talked about it a good deal, and with a frankness Darcourt found astonishing. It was five months on its way, and Maria wore becoming gowns in which she did not look pregnant, like the women Darcourt saw in the streets who wore slacks in which their distended bellies were forced upon the world, but clever gowns that enhanced, without concealing, her increasing girth.
Arthur and Geraint were rivals in solicitude. Neither had been a father before, they said, sometimes as a joke but always with an undercurrent of concern. They fussed over Maria, urging her to sit when she was perfectly comfortable standing, and rushing to fetch her things that she did not greatly want. They urged her not to drive her car, to put her feet on a stool when she sat, to get plenty of rest, to drink milk (which her doctor told her not to do), to eat heartily, to eat wisely, to drink very little wine and no spirits, to put aside the more inflammatory parts of the newspapers. They were a little disappointed that she exhibited no irrational cravings for peculiar foods; they would have been overjoyed if she had made eerie demands for pickles drenched in ice cream. These were old wives’ tales, said Maria, laughing at them. But, like prospective fathers from an earlier day, they were pestilent old wives, and they grew together in old-wifery. They were better friends than ever.
Had Arthur and Lancelot, in the mythical long ago, fretted and fussed so? Of course not; they had no ambiguous baby.
“The meeting with Schnak’s parents went very well,” said Powell.
“Who met them? Sorry, I haven’t been attending,” said Darcourt.
“Nilla insisted that Schnak ask them in. Nilla is very strict with Schnak and is teaching her manners. Won’t listen to Schnak’s fits of bad-mouthing her old folks. You must ask them here, Hulda dearest, she said, and we must be very, very sweet to them. And that’s what they did.”
“Were you there?” said Maria.
“Indeed I was. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. If I may say so, I was the star turn, the cherry on the cake. I got on with the elder Schnaks brilliantly.”
“Tell all,” said Maria.
“Well, they turned up, in answer to a telephone call from Schnak, which she made while Nilla stood over her with a whip, if I’m not mistaken. You’ve seen them. Not what I would call clubbable people, and they were all set to resent Nilla and lecture Schnak. But not a bit of it. Nilla was charming, and there was enough high-bred European atmosphere floating around for the elder Schnaks to recognize Nilla as a genuine grandee. Not just rich people, like you Cornishes, but a person of aristocratic quality. You’d be amazed how powerful that still is. She spoke to them quite a lot of the time in German, and that kept Schnak out of things, because although she understands pretty well, she can’t say much in the old tongue. I don’t know any more German than I need to follow a Wagner libretto, but I could tell that Nilla was being really gracious. Not patronizing, but speaking to them as equals, and as an older person like themselves, deeply concerned about Schnak. She talked about art, and music, and they softened up a bit under that and the rich cakes and the coffee with lots of whipped cream. They didn’t soften much, although they were impressed by the huge heap of musical manuscript Schnak had piled up. Obviously the girl was working. What was sticking in their gullets was Schnak’s rebellion against what they think of as religion. That was where I came in very strong.”
“You, Geraint? You agreed with those bitter Puritans about religion?”
“Of course I did, Arthur, bach. Don’t forget I grew up a Calvinistic Methodist, with a father who was a mighty shaman in the faith. I let them know that, of course. But, said I, look at me, deep into the world of art, and theatre and music, and the fatherhood and splendour of God is present to me every hour of my life, and infuses everything I do. Does God speak only with a single tongue? I asked them. Does His mighty love not reach out to those who have not yet come to the full belief, to the life of total faith? May He not speak even in the theatre, in the opera house, to those who have fled from Him into a world they think frivolous and abandoned to pleasure? Oh, my friends, you are blessed in knowing the fullness of God’s revealed Word. You have not encountered, as I have, the God who knows how to speak to the fallen and the reprobate through the language of art; you have not met with the Cunning of God, by which He reaches out to His children who shut their ears to His true voice. Our God is stern with those like yourselves whom He has marked from birth as His own, but He is gentle and subtle with those who have strayed into worldly paths. He speaks with many voices, and one of the most winning is the voice of music. Your daughter has been greatly gifted in music and dare you say that she is not marked by God as one of His own, to be His instrument, His harp of Zion, to draw His erring children to Him? Do you, Elias Schnakenburg, say that your child may not be speaking—I say this with humility—through her music with the voice of God Himself? Do you? Can you presume so far? Oh, Elias Schnakenburg, I urge you, I beg you, to reflect deeply upon these mysteries, and then reject your daughter’s vocation if you dare!”