"Sir Thomas Urquhart?" said Arthur. "Oh, yes, the translator. I'm beginning to hate the sound of his name."
"If you know Urky, you get a good deal of Sir Thomas," I said. Then I added, spitefully I admit but Urky maddened me: "If you look him up in the dictionary of biography, you will find that it is widely agreed that Sir Thomas was crazy with conceit."
Arthur said nothing, but he winked. Then he too moved off to take leave of the Warden, and I remembered that as Sub-Warden I ought to call a taxi for Mrs. Skeldergate. And when that had been done I hurried up to my rooms over the gate, to note down, in The New Aubrey, what I had heard during the evening. How they chirped over their cups.
3
I was beginning to dread The New Aubrey. What I had begun as a portrait of the University, drawn from the life, was becoming altogether too much like a personal diary, and a confessional diary of the embarrassing sort. Not nearly enough about other people; far too much about Simon Darcourt.
I don't drink much, and what I drink doesn't affect me, but I had a feeling after our Guest Night that I wasn't myself in a way that a few glasses of wine, taken between six o'clock and ten, could hardly explain. I had finished a day that ought to have been enjoyable; some good work done in the morning, the completion of the Cornish business in the afternoon, and the acquisition of two first-rate Beerbohms that had never been published, and thus were very much my own and a sop to that desire for solitary possession which collectors know so well; Guest Night, which had gone well, and the Cornish executors entertained at my own expense. But I was melancholy.
A man with a theological training ought to know how to deal with that. A little probing brought the cause to light. It was Maria.
She was a first-rate student, and she was a girl of great personal charm. Nothing unusual there. But she played far too large a part in my thoughts. As I looked at her, and listened to her in class, I was troubled by what I knew about her and Clement Hollier; the fact that he had once had her on his wretched old sofa was not pleasing, but it was the kind of thing that happens and there is no use making a fuss over it – especially as Hollier had seemed to be in the state of lowered perception at the time that Roberta Burns had so briskly described. But Hollier thought she was in love with him, and that troubled me. Whatever for? Of course he was a fine scholar, but surely she wasn't such a pinhead as to fall for an attribute of a man who was in so many other ways wholly unsuitable. He was handsome, if you like craggy, gloomy men who look as if they were haunted, or perhaps prey to acid indigestion. But, apart from his scholarship, Hollier was manifestly an ass.
No, Darcourt, that is unjust. He is a man of deep feeling; look how loyal he is to that miserable no-hoper John Parlabane. Damn Parlabane! He had been prattling to McVarish about Maria, and when Urky said "reading between the lines" it was obvious that they had both been speculating in the wholly unjustified way men of unpleasant character speculate about women.
Fond of Arthur Cornish, indeed! No, "Very fond" had been his expression. More exaggeration. But was it? Why had she dragged Arthur Cornish into her conversation with me, when we were talking about medieval musical notation? Something about his uncle's collection, but had that been relevant? I know well enough how people in love drag the name of the loved one into every conversation, simply to utter that magical word, to savour it on the tongue.
The trouble with you, Darcourt, is that you are allowing this girl to obsess you.
More inner tumult, upon which I tried to impose some of the theological stricture I had learned as a method of examining conscience.
The trouble with you, Darcourt, is that you are falling in love with Maria Magdalena Theotoky. What a name! Mary Magdalene, the woman with seven devils; and Theotoky, the divine motherhood of Mary. Of course people do carry the most extraordinary names, but what a contradiction! It was the contradiction that would not give me any peace.
Oh, fathead! Oh, jackass! Oh, triple-turned goof!
How far can absurdity carry a supposedly sane man? You, a stoutish, middle-aged priest… but not a priest of a church that denies marriage to its priests, remember that… shut up, who said anything about marriage?… it was in your mind and the link between love and marriage marks you forever as a bourgeois and a creature from the past, as well… get back to your point. How far can absurdity carry a supposedly sane man? You have a successful career, and your way of life is comfortable… but lonely… who will smooth the pillow when you lie at the hour of death?… are you seriously expecting that superb creature to slide you into the grave? How far can absurdity carry a supposedly sane man? What have you to offer her? Devotion. Pooh, she can expect devotion from scores of men – handsome, young rich men, like Arthur Cornish. He must love her; remember the way he resented Urky's references to her this afternoon, and again not an hour ago? What chance have you against him? Or Handsome Clem? You are a fool, Darcourt.
Of course I could love her hopelessly. There has been a good deal of that sort of thing throughout the ages. Since the time Roberta Burns speaks of, when our hairy ancestors gave up biting their women and throwing them the bones after they had finished their uncooked feast. A good deal of hopeless love has saddened mankind since the Idealist and the Sex-Hobbyist became different aspects of the same, infatuated human creature.
An Idealist I certainly was. But a Sex-Hobbyist? I am not a wholly inexperienced creature but it has been some little time… and I can't really say I've missed it much. But Maria is young and in the flower of her beauty. Adoration and amusing talk wouldn't be enough for her.
Oh, God, how did I ever get into this?
4
That was where I was, however. Deep in love with one of my students, a situation in which a professor must appear as either a knave or a fool. For the weeks to come I did the best I could: I never addressed Maria except in class; I was over-scrupulous in valuing her work, but as it was admirable that didn't make much difference. I was determined to keep my folly bottled up.
It was a blow to my resolve, but a mighty fire in my heart, therefore, when she lingered after the last lecture before Christmas, and said, shyly: "Professor Darcourt, is there any chance that you could come to my Mother's house for dinner on Boxing Day? We'd be so happy if you could."
Happy! Happy!! Happy!!!
Second Paradise V
1
Parlabane had become a fixture in my life and I had accepted him, without joy but with philosophy, if I may be allowed to use that word. I cannot be sure, because deeper acquaintance with Parlabane made it clear that philosophy was not a word to be used loosely. It was his academic discipline; he was a professional philosopher, in comparison with whom most people were ill-disciplined muddlers as soon as they turned their minds to large questions. But if I may be allowed to use "philosophy" merely to mean rueful resignation in the face of the inevitable, I accepted his presence in Hollier's rooms, almost every day for the space of an hour or two, with philosophy.
He had dropped the manner, half-obsequious and half-contemptuous, which went with his monk's robe. He was no longer the begging friar who secretly scorned those from whom he asked alms. He had his knitting with him, however; he carried it in a brown-paper shopping-bag with a few books, and what looked like a dirty towel. As I remember what he said, I hear the click of the needles as an accompaniment to every word. He was now teaching philosophy in what used to be called Extension Courses, now Continuing Studies, lecturing at night to people who were doing their work for a degree slowly, and in bits. What he was teaching them I fear to think, because what he said to me from time to time almost froze the marrow in my bones.