Lyre of Orpheus

THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS

ROBERTSON DAVIES

Rosetta Books New York, 2019

The Lyre of Orpheus

Copyright © Robertson Davies, 1988

Cover art and Electronic Edition © 2019 by RosettaBooks LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cover jacket design by Lon Kirschner

ISBN e-Pub edition: 978-0-7953-5236-2

ISBN POD edition: 978-0-7953-5252-2

The lyre of Orpheus opens the door of the underworld

E. T. A. HOFFMANN

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR

The Lyre of Orpheus

A novel to relax by the fireside with, to chuckle over, and to read aloud

—The Boston Globe

"The Lyre of Orpheus resonates with the exceptional gifts of Davies’s mature storytelling mastery."

—Vogue

You don’t need to know the earlier books to follow this one; in fact, this delightful novel is a good place to start.

—USA Today

A biting satire on the artistic muse … just what one would expect from Canada’s leading man of letters and literary virtuoso … this wonderful, witty novel should speak to a worldwide audience.

—Chicago Tribune Books

He is funny and profound. … A robust and full-blooded delight

—The Seattle Times

If his vision is comic rather than tragic, he takes brilliant advantage of the resources he has chosen. No tragic writer can do more. He is Mozart rather than Beethoven.

—The Milwaukee Journal

Davies the scholar brings in facts from his vast learning that glow like little points of light on the page. His readers know how funny he can be.

—San Francisco Chronicle

The novel is crammed with funny renditions of wheezy professorial badinage and flamboyant dramatic monologues. But it is Davies’s own voice that seems most memorable: confident, unhurried, interested, and amused.

—Time

Like his character Francis Cornish, an artist who ‘dared to be of a time not his own,’ Davies is an artful master in the old, and best, sense of the word.

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Let’s hope that the urge to summation is vastly premature, and that Mr. Davies goes on to give us three-times-three more novels that amaze, delight, instruct, and infuriate.

—The New York Times Book Review

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

I

Arthur, who had a masterly way with meetings, was gathering this one together for a conclusion.

Are we agreed that the proposal is crack-brained, absurd, could prove incalculably expensive, and violates every dictate of financial prudence? We have all said in our different ways that nobody in his right mind would want anything to do with it. Considering the principles to which the Cornish Foundation is committed, are these not all excellent reasons why we should accept the proposal, and the extension of it we have been discussing, and go ahead?

He really has musical flair, thought Darcourt. He treats every meeting symphonically. The theme is announced, developed in major and minor, pulled about, teased, chased up and down dark alleys, and then, when we are getting tired of it, he whips us up into a lively finale and with a few crashing chords brings us to a vote.

There are people who cannot bear to come to an end. Hollier wanted more discussion.

Even if, by a wild chance, it succeeded, what would be the good of it? he said.

You have missed my point, said Arthur.

I am simply speaking as a responsible member of the Cornish Foundation.

But my dear Clem, I am urging you to speak as a member of a special sort of foundation with unusual aims. I am asking you to use your imagination, which is not what foundations like to do. I am asking you to take a flyer at an extreme outside chance, with the possibility of unusual gains. You don’t have to pretend to be a business man. Be what you are—a daring professor of history.

I suppose if you put it like that—

I do put it like that.

But I still think my question is a good one. Why should we present the world with another opera? There are lots of operas already, and people busily writing them in every square mile of the civilized world.

Because this would be a very special opera.

Why? Because the composer died before he had gone very far with it? Because this girl Schnak-whatever-it-is wants to get a doctorate in music by completing it? I don’t see what’s special about that.

That’s reducing the whole plan to the obvious.

That’s leaving out the heart of it. That’s forgetting our proposal to mount the finished opera and offer it to the public, said Geraint Powell, a theatre man with a career to make, who already looked on himself as the person to get the opera on the stage.

I think we should bear in mind the very high opinion of Miss Schnakenburg that is expressed by all her supporters. They hint at genius and we are looking for genius, aren’t we? said Darcourt.

Yes, but do we want to get into show business? said Hollier.

Why not? said Arthur. Let me say it again: we have set up the Cornish Foundation with money left by a man who was a great connoisseur, who took all kinds of chances, and we have to decide what sort of foundation it is to be. And we’ve done that. It’s a foundation for the promotion of the arts and humane scholarship, and this plan is both art and scholarship. But haven’t we agreed that we don’t want another foundation that gives money to good, safe projects, and then stands aside, hoping for good, safe results? Caution and non-intervention are the arthritis of patronage. Let’s back our choices and stir the pot and raise some hell. We’ve already made our obeisance to safety; we’ve established our good, dull credentials by getting Simon here to write a biography of our founder and benefactor—

Thank you, Arthur. Oh, many, many thanks. This estimate of my work is more encouragement than I can accept without blushes. Simon Darcourt knew too well that the biographical job was not as easy as Arthur seemed to think, and strongly aware also that he had not so far asked for or received a penny for the work he had done. Simon, like many literary men, was no stranger to feelings of grievance.

Sorry, Simon, but you know what I mean.

I know what you think you mean, said Darcourt, but the book may not be quite such a dud as you imagine.

I hope not. But what I am getting at is that the book may cost a few thousands, and, without being by any means the richest foundation in the country, we have quite a lot of money to dispose of. I want to do something with a bit of flash.

It’s your money, said Hollier, still determined to be the voice of caution, and I suppose you can do as you please.

No, no, no, and again no. It isn’t my money; it’s Foundation money and we are all directors of the Foundation—you Clem, and you Simon, and you Geraint, and, of course, Maria. I am simply the chairman, first among equals, because we have to have a chairman. Can’t I persuade you? Do you really want to be safe and dull? Who votes for safety and dullness? Let’s have a show of hands.

There were no votes for safety and dullness. But Hollier had a sense of having been pushed aside by totally unfair rhetoric. Geraint Powell didn’t like meetings and wished this one to be over. Darcourt felt he had been snubbed. Maria knew well how right Hollier was and that the money was really Arthur’s money, in spite of all legal fictions. She knew that it most certainly wasn’t her money, even though, as Arthur’s wife, she might be supposed to have some extra pull. She had not been married very long, and she loved Arthur dearly, but she knew that Arthur could be a great bully when he wanted something, and he wanted passionately to be a vaunting, imaginative, daring patron. He is a bully just as I suppose King Arthur was a bully when he insisted to the Knights of the Round Table that he was no more than the first among equals, she thought.

Are we agreed, then? said Arthur. Simon, would you draw up a resolution? It doesn’t have to be in final form; we can tidy it up later. Have you all got drinks? Isn’t anybody going to eat anything? Help yourselves from the Platter of Plenty.

The Platter of Plenty was a joke, and, as jokes will, it had become a little too familiar. It was a large silver epergne that stood in the middle of the round table at which they sat. From a central, richly ornamented pedestal it extended curving arms at the end of which were little plates of dried fruits and nuts and sweets. A hideous object, thought Maria, unjustly, for it was a fine thing of its kind. It had been a wedding gift to Arthur and herself from Darcourt and Hollier and she hated it because she knew it must have cost them a great deal more than she supposed they could afford. She hated it because it seemed to her to embody much of what she disliked about her marriage—needless luxury, an assumption of a superiority based on wealth, a sort of grandiose uselessness. Her passionate desire, after making Arthur happy, was to gain a reputation for herself as a scholar, and big money and big scholarship still seemed to her to be irreconcilable. But she was Arthur’s wife, and as nobody else took anything from the epergne she took a couple of nuts, for the look of the thing.

As Darcourt worked over the resolution, the directors chatted, not altogether amicably. Arthur was flushed, and Maria was aware that he was speaking rather thickly. It couldn’t be that he had drunk too much. He never did that. He had taken a chocolate from the Platter of Plenty, but it seemed to have a bad taste, and he spat it into his handkerchief.

Will this do? said Darcourt. " ‘It was resolved that the meeting should comply with the request made jointly by the Graduate Department of the Faculty of Music and Miss Hulda Schnakenburg for support to enable Miss Schnakenburg to flesh out and complete the manuscript notes now reposing in the Graduate Library (among the musical MSS left in the bequest of the late Francis Cornish) of an opera left incomplete at his death in 1822 by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, the work to be done in a manner congruous with the operatic conventions of Hoffmann’s day and for such an orchestra as he would have known; this to be done as a musicological exercise in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Miss Schnakenburg’s attainment of the degree of Doctor of Music. It was further resolved that if the work proved satisfactory the opera should be mounted and presented in public performance under Hoffmann’s title of Arthur of Britain. This part of the proposal has not yet been communicated to the Faculty of Music or Miss Schnakenburg.’ "

It’ll be a nice surprise for them, said Arthur, who took a sip of his drink, and then set it down, as if it were disagreeable.

A surprise, no doubt, said Darcourt. Whether a nice surprise is open to doubt. By the way, don’t you think we ought to give the work its full title in the minutes?

"Is there more than Arthur of Britain?" said Geraint.

Yes. In the fashion of his day Hoffmann suggested a double title.

I know the kind of thing, said Geraint; "Arthur of Britain, or—something. What?"

Arthur of Britain, or The Magnanimous Cuckold, said Darcourt.

Indeed? said Arthur. The bitterness in his mouth seemed to be troubling him. Well, I don’t suppose we need to use the full title if we don’t need it.

Again he spat into his handkerchief, as unobtrusively as he could. But he need not have troubled, because at the announcement of the full title of the opera nobody was looking at him.

The three other directors of the Foundation were looking at Maria.

(2)

The day after the meeting, Simon Darcourt was interrupted, just as he sat down to his day’s work, by a telephone call from Maria; Arthur was in hospital with mumps, which the doctors called parotitis. They had not told Maria what Darcourt knew: mumps in the adult male is not trivial, because it causes painful swelling of the testicles, and can do permanent damage. Arthur would be out of commission for some weeks, but he had mumbled to Maria through his swollen jaws that he wanted the work of the Foundation to go on as fast as possible, and she and Darcourt were to take care of it.

How like Arthur! He had in the highest degree the superior business man’s ability to delegate responsibility without relinquishing significant power. Darcourt had known him since the death of his friend Francis Cornish; Francis’s will had made Darcourt one of his executors, to act beneath the overriding authority of Francis’s nephew Arthur, and it had been apparent at once that Arthur was a born leader. Like many leaders he was rough at times, because he never thought about anyone’s feelings, but there was nothing personal in it. He was Chairman of the Board of the huge Cornish Trust, and was admired and trusted by people who dealt in big money. But, apart from his business life, he was cultivated in a way not common among bankers; genuinely cultivated, that is to say, and not simply benevolent toward the arts as a corporation duty.

His rapid establishment of the Cornish Foundation, using his Uncle Frank’s large fortune to do it, was proof of his intention. Arthur wanted to be a patron on a grand scale, for the fun and adventure. There could be no doubt that the Foundation was his. For the look of the thing he had set up a board to administer it, but whom had he invited to join it? Clement Hollier, because Maria had been his student and had a special affection for him. And what had Hollier proved to be? A great objector, a determined looker-on-the-other-hand whose reputation as a scholar in the realm of medieval history did little to mitigate his gloomy insufficiency as a human being. Geraint Powell was Arthur’s own choice, reputedly a rising man in the theatre, with all the exuberance and charm of the breed, who backed up Arthur’s most extravagant ideas with his Welsh superficiality. And Maria, Arthur’s wife; dear Maria, whom Darcourt had loved, and loved still, perhaps the more poignantly because there was no longer the least danger that he would ever have to play the full role of a lover, but could slave for his lady in a condition of mild romantic dejection.

These were Darcourt’s estimates of his colleagues on the Foundation. What did he think about himself?

To the world he knew he was the Reverend Simon Darcourt, a professor of Greek, much respected as a scholar and teacher; he was the Vice-Warden of Ploughwright College, an institution for advanced studies within the university; there were people who thought him a wise and genial companion. But Arthur called him the Abbé Darcourt.

What is an abbé? Was it not a title used for several centuries to describe a clergyman who was really an educated upper servant? Your abbé ate at your table, but had a small room off your palace library where he slaved away as a confidential secretary, intermediary, and fixer. Abbés on the stage or in novels were great fellows for intrigue and amusing the ladies. It is a category of society that has disappeared from the modern world under that name, but the world is still in need of abbés, and Darcourt felt himself to be one of them, but was not pleased that Arthur had put his finger on the matter so plainly.

It is to be presumed that abbés in an earlier day had salaries. Darcourt’s canker was that he received no salary from the Foundation, although he was its secretary and, as he put it to himself, worked like a dog on its behalf. Nevertheless, as he received no salary, he felt that his independence was secure. Independent as a hog on ice, he thought, in one of the Old Loyalist Ontario expressions which popped up, unbidden, in his mind when least expected. But if his university work were not to suffer, he had to slave away day and night, and he was a man to whom a certain amount of ease and creative lassitude is a necessity.

Creative lassitude, not to doze and dream but to get matters arranged in his head in the best order. This life of Francis Cornish, for instance; it was enough to drive a man mad. He had accumulated a mass of detail; he had passed an expensive summer in Europe, finding out what he could about Francis Cornish’s life in England, where it appeared he had been something-or-other in the Secret Service, about which the Secret Service maintained a blandly closed mouth. Francis had, of course, played an important part in the work of restoring looted works of art to their original owners, in so far as that could be done. But there had been something else, and Darcourt could not find out what it was. Before the Second World War Francis had been up to something in Bavaria which sounded fishier and fishier the more Darcourt dug into it, but the fish could not be hooked. There was a huge hole, amounting to about ten years, in the life of Francis Cornish, and somehow Darcourt had to fill that hole. There was a lead, possibly a valuable one, in New York, but when was he to find time to go there, and who would foot the bill? He was tired of spending what were to him large sums of money to get material for a book that Arthur treated as a matter of small consequence. Darcourt was determined that the book should be as good and as full as it was in his power to make it, but after a year of investigation he felt thoroughly ill-used.

Why did he not simply state his case and say that he had to be paid for his services, and that the writing of the book was costing him more money than he could ever expect to recover from it? Because that was not the light in which he wished to appear to Maria.

He was a fool, he knew, and rather a feeble fool, at that. It is no comfort to a man to think of himself as a feeble fool, secretary to a dummy board of directors, and burdened with an exhausting task.

And now Arthur had mumps, had he? Christian charity required that Darcourt should be properly regretful, but the Old Harry, never totally subdued in him, made him smile as he thought that Arthur’s balls were going to swell to the size of grapefruit, and hurt like the devil.

The day’s work called imperiously. After he had done some college administration, interviewed a student who had personal problems (about a girl, of course), taken a seminar in New Testament Greek, and eaten a sufficient but uninteresting college lunch, Darcourt made his way to the building where the Graduate Faculty of Music existed in what looked, to the rest of the university, like unseemly luxury.

The Dean’s office was handsome, in the modern manner. It was on a corner of the building and two walls were entirely of glass, which the architect had meant to give the Dean a refreshing prospect of the park outside, but, as it also gave passing students a splendid view of the Dean at work, or perhaps in creative lassitude, he had found it necessary to curtain the windows with heavy net so that the office was rather dim. It was a large room, and the decanal desk was diminished by the piano and the harpsichord—the Dean was an expert on baroque music—and the engravings of eighteenth-century musicians that hung on the walls.

Dean Wintersen was pleased that money would be forthcoming to support the research work and reasonable living expenses of Miss Hulda Schnakenburg. He became confidential.

I hope this solves more than one problem, said he. This girl—I’d better call her Schnak because everybody does and it’s what she seems to like—is greatly gifted. The most gifted student, I would say, that we’ve ever had in my time or in the memory of anybody in the faculty. We get lots of people here who will do very well as performers, and a few of them may go to the top. Schnak is something rarer; she may be a composer of real gift. But the way she is going now could land her in a mess, and perhaps finish her!

Eccentricity of genius? said Darcourt.

Not if you’re thinking of picturesque behaviour and great spillings of soul. There is nothing picturesque about Schnak. She is the squalidest, rudest, most offensive little brat I have ever met as Dean, and I’ve dealt with some lulus, let me tell you. As for soul, I think she would strike you if you used the word.

What ails her?

I don’t know. Whoever does know? Background the essence of mediocrity. Parents utterly commonplace. Father a watch-repairer for one of the big jewellery stores. A dull, grey fellow who seems to have been born with a magnifying-glass in his eye. Mother a sad zero. The only thing that singles them out at all is that they are members of some ultra-conservative Lutheran group, and they never stop saying that they have given the girl a good, Christian upbringing. And what have they brought up? A failed anorexic who never washes her hair or anything else, snarls at her teachers, and habitually bites the hand that feeds her. But she has talent, and we think it is the real, big, enduring thing. Just now she’s on the uttermost extreme thrust of all the new movements. The computer stuff and the aleatory stuff is old hat to Schnak.

Then why does she want to do this work on the Hoffmann notes? That sounds like antiquarian stuff.

That’s what we all want to know. What makes Schnak want to fling herself back more than a hundred and fifty years to complete an unfinished work by a man we generally write off as a gifted amateur? Oh, Hoffmann had a few operas performed in his lifetime, but I’m told they are run-of-the-mill. In music he has a reputation as a critic; he praised Beethoven intelligently when nobody else did. Schumann thought a lot of him, and Berlioz despised him, which was a kind of inverted praise. He inspired a lot of far better talents. A literary man, I suppose one would say.

"Is that a bad thing to be? Mind you, I only know him through that opera—you know, Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann. It’s a Frenchified version of three of his stories."

Odd that it’s another unfinished work; Guiraud pulled Offenbach’s score together after his death. Not a favourite of mine.

You’re the expert, of course. As a mere happy opera-goer I like it very much, though it’s not often intelligently done; there’s more in it than meets the eye of most opera directors.

Well, the puzzle of why Schnak wants to take on this job can only be solved by her. But we on the faculty are pleased, because it fits nicely into musicological research and we’ll be able to give her a doctorate for it. She’ll need that. With her personality she needs every solid qualification she can get.

Are you trying to coax her away from her ultra-modernity?

No, no; that’s fine. But for a doctoral exercise something more readily measurable is better. This may steady her, and make her more human.

Darcourt thought this was the moment to tell the Dean about the Cornish Foundation’s plan to present the revived and refreshed opera as a stage piece.

Oh, my God! Do they really mean that?

They do.

Have they any idea what it might mean? It could be such a flop as operatic history has never known—and that’s saying a lot, as you probably know. I know she’ll do a good job, but only so far as the material permits. I mean—cosmetic work on the orchestration, and reorganization and pulling-together and general surgery can only go so far. The Foundation, the Hoffmann basis, may not support anything the public could possibly want to see.

The Foundation has voted to do it. I don’t have to tell you that eccentricity isn’t confined to artists; patrons can suffer from it too.

You mean it’s a bee in the bonnet.

I’ve said nothing. As secretary of the Foundation I am just telling you what they intend. They know the risks, and they are still prepared to put a good deal of money into the project.

They’ll have to. Have they any idea what mounting a full-scale new opera, that nobody knows or has studied, could run to?

They’re game for it. They leave it to you, of course, to see that Schnak delivers the goods—in so far as there are any goods to deliver.

They’re mad! But don’t think I’m quarrelling with anybody’s generosity. If this is what’s in the cards, Schnak will need supervision on the highest level we can manage. A musicologist of great reputation. A composer of some distinction. A conductor who has wide experience of opera.

Three supervisors?

Just one, if I can get the one I want. But with a lot of money I think I can coax her.

The Dean did not say who he meant.

(3)

The week after Arthur fell ill, Maria could do no work at all.

Ordinarily she had much to keep her busy. Her marriage had temporarily interrupted her academic career, but she had once again taken up her thesis on Rabelais, though marriage made it seem less pressing—she would not say less important—than before. And she had a great deal to do on behalf of the Cornish Foundation. Darcourt thought he was overworked, but Maria had her own burden. It was she who first read all the applications for assistance, and it was tedious work. The applicants seemed to want to do the same few things—write a book, publish a book, edit a manuscript, show their paintings, give a concert of music, or simply to have money to, as they always put it, buy time to do any of these things. Probably many of these requests were worthy, but they did not fit into Arthur’s notion of the Cornish Foundation, and it was Maria who wrote polite personal notes advising the applicants to look elsewhere. Of course there were the visionaries, who wanted to dam and dredge the Thames to discover the foundations of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre; or who wanted to establish a full-scale carillon de Flandres in every provincial capital in Canada and endow the post of carillonneur; or who wanted to be supported while they painted a vast series of historical pictures showing that all the great military commanders had been men of less than average stature; or who yearned to release some dubiously identified wreck from the Arctic ice. These had to be discouraged firmly. Borderline cases, and they were many, she discussed with Darcourt. The few proposals that might appeal to Arthur were sifted from the mass, and circulated to all the members of the Round Table.

The Round Table was a joke Maria did not like. Of course the Foundation met at a circular table which was a handsome antique and had perhaps, two or three centuries ago, served as a rent-table in the workroom of some aristocrat’s agent; it was the most convenient table for their purpose in the Cornishes’ apartment. Geraint Powell insisted that, as Arthur presided over this table, it had some jokey association with the great British hero. Geraint knew a lot about the Arthurian legend, though Maria suspected that it was coloured by Geraint’s lively fancy. It was he who insisted that Arthur’s determination that the Foundation should take an unusual and intuitive path was truly Arthurian. He urged his fellow directors to press into the forest wherever we saw it to be thickest and would emphasize it by repeating, in what he said was Old French, là où ils la voient plus expresse. Maria did not like Geraint’s theatrical exuberance. She was in flight from exuberance of another sort, and, like a real academic, she was wary of people outside the academic world—laymen they called them—who seemed to know a lot. Knowledge was for professionals of knowledge.

Sometimes Maria wondered if this administrative work was what she had married Arthur to do, but she dismissed the question as foolish. This was what came immediately to hand, and she would do it as what marriage seemed to require of her. Marriage is a game for adult players, and the rules in every marriage are different.

As the wife of a very rich man, she could have become a society woman—but what does that mean in a country like Canada? Social life in the old sense of calls, teas, dinners, weekends, or fancy-dress parties was utterly gone. The woman who has no gainful job devotes herself to good causes. There are plenty of dogsbody jobs associated with art and music which wealthy volunteers are graciously permitted to do by the professionals. There is the great Ladder of Compassion, on which the community arranges a variety of diseases in order of the social prestige they carry. The society woman slaves on behalf of the lame, the halt, and the blind, the cancerous, the paraplegic, those variously handicapped, and, of course, the great new enthusiasm, AIDS. There are also the sociologically pitiable: the battered wives, battered children, and the raped girls, who seem to be more numerous than ever before, or else their plight is more often revealed. The society woman shows herself concerned with society’s problems, and patiently fights her way up the Ladder of Compassion through a net of committees, convenorships, vicepresidencies, presidencies, past presidencies, and government investigatory bodies. For some there waits, after years of work, a decoration in the Order of Canada. Now and again she and her husband eat an absurdly expensive dinner in the company of their peers, but not for pleasure; no, no, it is to raise money for some worthy cause, or for research, which has the prestige that belonged, a century ago, to foreign missions. The possession of wealth brings responsibilities; woe to the wealthy who seek to avoid them. It is all immensely worthy, but it is not much fun.

Maria had an honourable escape from this charitable treadmill. She was a scholar, engaged in research of her own, and thus she justified her seat in the social lifeboat. But with Arthur seriously ill she knew precisely what she had to do: she had to sustain Arthur in every way she could.

She visited Arthur as often and as long as the hospital would permit, chatting to a silent husband. He was very miserable, for the swelling was not only of his jaws; the doctors called it orchitis, and every day Maria lifted his sheets when the nurse was elsewhere, and grieved over the miserable swelling of his testicles, which gave him wretched pain in all the abdominal area. She had never seen him ill before, and his suffering made him dear to her in a new way. When she was not with him she thought about him too much to be able to do any other work.

The world is no respecter of such feelings, and one day she had a visit that troubled her greatly. As she sat in her handsome study—it was the first workroom she had ever had that was entirely her own, and she had made it perhaps a little too fine—her Portuguese housekeeper came to tell her that a man was anxious to speak with her.

What about?

He won’t say. He says you know him.

Who is he, Nina?

The night porter. The one who sits in the lobby from five till midnight.

If it’s anything to do with the building, he should talk to Mr. Calder at the Cornish Trust offices.

He says it’s private.

Damn. Well, show him in.

Maria did not know him when he appeared. Out of his porter’s uniform he might have been anybody. He was a small, not very engaging person, with a shrinking air, and Maria disliked him on sight.

Good of you to see me, Mrs. Cornish.

I don’t think I know your name.

Wally. I’m Wally the night man.

Wally what?

Crottel. Wally Crottel. The name won’t mean anything to you.

What did you want to see me about?

Well, I’ll come right to it. You see, it’s about m’dad’s book.

Has your father made an application to the Foundation about his book?

No. M’dad’s dead. You knew him. You know the book. M’dad was John Parlabane.

John Parlabane, who had committed suicide more than a year ago, and had thereby hastened the courtship and marriage of Arthur Cornish. But when Maria looked at Crottel she could see nothing whatever of the stocky frame, the big head, the compelling look of malicious intelligence that had distinguished the late John Parlabane. Maria had known Parlabane far too well for her own comfort. Parlabane the runaway Anglican monk, the police spy, the drug-pusher, and parasite to the most disagreeable man she had ever known. Parlabane, who had intruded himself into her relations with her academic adviser and, as she had once hoped, lover, Clement Hollier. When Parlabane committed suicide, after having murdered his nasty master, Maria had thought she was rid of him forever, forgetting Hollier’s repeated warning that nothing is finished until all is finished. Parlabane’s book! This called for deep cunning, and Maria was not sure she had cunning of the right kind.

I never heard that John Parlabane had any children.

It’s not widely known. Because of my ma, you see. For my ma’s sake it was kept dark.

Your mother was a Mrs. Crottel?

No, she was a Mrs. Whistlecraft. Wife of Ogden Whistlecraft, the great poet. You’ll know the name. He’s been dead for quite a while. I must say he was nice to me, considering he was not my real dad. But he didn’t want me to have his name, you see. He didn’t want any Whistlecrafts hanging around that weren’t the genuine article. Not of the true seed, he used to say. So I was raised under my ma’s maiden name, which was Crottel. I was supposed to be their nephew. An orphan nephew.

And you think your father was Parlabane.

Oh, I know that. My ma leaked it out. Before she passed away she told me Parlabane was the only man she’d ever had a first-class organism with. I hope you’ll excuse me mentioning it but that’s what she said. She became very liberated, you see, and talked a lot about the organism. Whistlecraft didn’t seem to have the knack of the organism. Too much the poet, I guess.

Yes, I see. But what was it you wanted to talk to me about?

The book. M’dad’s book. The big important book he wrote that he left in your care when he passed away.

John Parlabane left a mass of material to me and Professor Hollier. He left it with a letter when he killed himself.

Yeah, but when he passed away he probably didn’t know he had a natural heir. Me, you see.

I’d better tell you at once, Mr. Crottel, that the typescript John Parlabane left was a very long, somewhat incoherent philosophical work which he had tried to give special interest by including some disguised biographical material. But he had no skill with fiction. Several people who would know about such things read it, or as much of it as they could, and said it was unpublishable.

Because it was too raw, wasn’t that it?

I don’t think so. It was just incoherent and dull.

Aw, now, lookit, Mrs. Cornish, m’dad was a very intelligent man. You’re not going to tell me anything he wrote was dull.

That’s exactly what I am telling you.

I heard there was some stuff in it about people high up—government people, some of them—in their youths, that they wouldn’t want the public to know about.

I don’t remember anything like that.

That’s what you say. I don’t want to be nasty, but maybe this is a cover-up. I heard a lot of publishers wanted it.

Several publishers saw it, and decided they didn’t want it.

Too hot for them to handle, eh?

No. They simply didn’t see any way of making a book of it.

You got letters saying that?

Mr. Crottel, you are becoming very pressing. Now listen: the typescript of the book by the man you tell me, without showing me any evidence, was your father was left outright to Professor Hollier and me. And I have the letter that says so. We were to deal with it as we saw fit, and that is what we have done. That’s all there is to it.

I’d like to see that book.

Impossible.

Well then, I guess I’ll have to take steps.

What steps?

Legal. I’ve been mixed up with the law, you know, and I know my rights. I’m an heir. Your right may not be as strong as you think.

Take it to law, then, if you feel you must. But if you hope to get anything out of that book, I can tell you you’re in for a disappointment. I don’t think we have anything more to say.

Okay. Be like that if you want. But you’ll be hearing from my legal man, Mrs. Cornish.

It looked as if Maria had won. Arthur always said that if someone threatened legal action the thing to do was to tell them to see what it would get them. Such talk, he said, was probably bluff.

But Maria was unhappy. When Simon Darcourt came to see her that evening she greeted him in a familiar phrase:

Parlabane is back.

It was an echo of what a lot of people had said, with varying degrees of dismay, two years earlier, when John Parlabane, garbed in the robes of a monk, had returned to the university. Many people remembered him and many more were aware of his legend, as a brilliant student of philosophy who had, years ago, left the university under a cloud—the usual cloud, that old, familiar cloud—and had banged about the world making trouble of several ingenious kinds. He turned up at the College of St. John and the Holy Ghost (familiarly Spook) as a runaway and renegade from the Society of the Sacred Mission, in England, and the Society showed no sign of wanting to get him back. Maria, Darcourt, and Hollier, and many others, hoped that his suicide about a year later—and the suicide note in which he confessed with glee to the murder of Professor Urquhart McVarish (monster of vanity and sexual weirdo)—had closed the chapter of Parlabane. Maria could not help reopening it with this theatrical flourish.

Darcourt was satisfactorily astonished and dismayed. When Maria explained, he looked a good deal better.

The solution is simple, he said. Give him the typescript of the book. You don’t want it. Let him see what he can do with it.

Can’t be done.

Why not?

I haven’t got it.

What did you do with it?

Threw it away.

Now Darcourt was really horrified.

"You what?" he roared.

I thought it was done with. I put it down the garbage chute.

"Maria! And you call yourself a scholar! Haven’t you learned rule number one of scholarship: never, under any circumstances, throw anything away?"

What was the use of it?

"You know the use of it now! You’ve delivered yourself, bound and gagged, into this man’s hands. How can you prove the book was worthless?

If he goes to court, you mean? We can call some of those publishers who turned it down. They’ll say what it was.

"Oh, yes; I can hear it now. ‘Tell me, Mr. Ballantyne, when did you read the book?’ ‘Mmm? Oh, I don’t read books myself. I turned it over to one of my editors.’ ‘Yes, and did your editor present you with a written report?’ ‘That wasn’t necessary. She took a look and said it was hopeless. Just what I suspected. I took a quick peep into it myself, of course.’ ‘Very well, Mr. Ballantyne, you may stand down. You see, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there is no evidence that the book was given serious professional attention. Are masterpieces of what is called le roman philosophe to be assessed in this casual way?’—That’s the kind of thing, Maria, that you’ll hear until every one of your publisher witnesses has trotted in and out of the witness-box. Crottel’s lawyer can assert anything he likes about this book—a philosophical masterwork, a sulphurous exposure of sexual corruption in high places—anything at all. He will say that you and Clem Hollier were professionally jealous of Parlabane, and depreciated his talent for the trivial reason that he was a self-confessed murderer. The lawyer will positively sing to the harp about Genêt, the criminal genius, and tie him up in pink string with Parlabane. Maria, you have put your foot in it right up to the hip."

You’re not being very helpful, Simon. What do we do next?—Can’t we get rid of Crottel? Fire him, perhaps?

Maria, you numbskull! Haven’t you understood that under our splendidly comprehensive Charter of Rights it is practically impossible to fire anybody—particularly not if they are making your life a misery? Crottel’s lawyers would crucify you.—Look, child, you need the best legal advice, and at once.

Well, where do we get it?

Please don’t talk about ‘we’ as if I were somehow involved in this mess.

Aren’t you my friend?

Being your friend is a very taxing experience.

I see. A fair-weather friend.

Stop being feminine. Of course I’m with you. But you must let me have my grievance. Do you think I haven’t enough trouble with this bloody opera scheme of Arthur’s? It’s enough to drive me mad! Do you know what?

No. What?

We’ve gone ahead much too fast. We’ve undertaken to back Schnak—I haven’t met Schnak but I hear ominous things about her—in putting this sketch for an opera together, and naturally I wanted to see what these Hoffmann papers consist of. It should have been done earlier, but Arthur has rushed ahead. So I had a look. And do you know what?

I wish you’d stop asking me if I know what. It’s illiterate and unworthy of you, Simon. Oh, don’t sulk, sweetie.—Well, what?

Only this. There’s no libretto. Only a few words to suggest what ought to go with the music. That’s what.

So—?

So a libretto has to be found, or else provided. A libretto in the early-nineteenth-century manner. And where is that to come from?

It seemed to Maria that the time had come to get out the whisky. She and Darcourt rolled and wallowed in their problems till after midnight, and although Maria had only one drink, Simon had several, and she had to push him into a taxi. Fortunately it was after midnight, and the night porter had gone off duty.

(4)

Simon Darcourt had a bad night, and in the morning he had a hangover. He endured something more than the layman’s self-reproach. He was drinking too much, no doubt about it. He refused to think of it in the modern sociological term as a drinking problem; he told himself that he was becoming a boozer, and of all boozers the clerical boozer was the most contemptible.

Excuses? Yes, plenty of them. Wouldn’t the Cornish Foundation drive a