“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!
Love—
“Did you know Uncle Frank had a child?” said Maria.
“I knew there was somebody called Charlotte Cornish to whom he left a quarterly allowance for life, because Arthur told me so,” said Darcourt. “But I didn’t know she was a daughter. Could have been any sort of old relation. The parish register recorded the marriage of Francis and his cousin Ismay Glasson, but there was no word of a child. Fool that I was, when I was snooping around in Cornwall I discovered that Francis had been married to Ismay Glasson, but when I made inquiries about her everybody shut up and knew nothing. And nobody said a word about Little Charlie or the Pony Club. Just shows that I am not much of a detective. Of course, all the Glassons had vanished, and when I got in touch with Sir Roderick in London he couldn’t have been less forthcoming, and was too busy to see me. Well, well! Little Charlie is certainly no great letter-writer, is she?”
“But she’s a reality. She must have heard something about Uncle Frank, even if she can’t remember him. So you may have struck gold for the book, Simon.”
“I’m too cautious to expect any such thing. This letter puffs and blows and giggles a bit, doesn’t it? But it’s a ray of light in the very dark centre of Francis Cornish’s life.”
“So we’ve both got something—not much, but something—out of the divano, Simon.”
2
When Darcourt had gone, Maria went to bed, leaving a note for Arthur, saying that he was to wake her when he came in from the airport. This was something she always did, and a request that Arthur always ignored—part of his extraordinary consideration, and his refusal to understand that she wanted to be wakened, wanted to see him, wanted to talk with him.
She did not read herself to sleep. Maria was not a reader-in-bed. Instead she set her mind to work on something that would bring sleep at last. Something substantial, some old friendly theme, but not so demanding as to keep her awake.
What should it be tonight? Darcourt had told her not to subdue her Rabelaisian nature; not to starve the full Rabelaisian humour that had been hers when she first met Arthur; not to dwindle into a wife, lest she cease to be a real wife. A good, sleepy theme might be the Seven Laughters of God. Of the angers, the vengeances, the punishments, the manifold Bellyaches of God the modern world seemed to know enough, even when it was most eager to banish God from all serious consideration. Let’s have the Laughters.
The idea of the Seven Laughters was such an odd one, in the light of modern religion. Gnostic, and of course heretical. Christianity could not countenance a merry God. That God should have rejoiced, and taken delight in what He was making, and that the whole Universe sprang from delight—how foreign to a world obsessed by solemnity, which so quickly became despair. What were the Seven Laughters?