“Because of this opera business Powell comes and goes quite a lot, and if he stays late he uses our guest room. I didn’t know he used it when I was away.”

“Powell is a very using kind of man.”

“So it seems.”

“Have you told Maria now? About being infertile, I mean?”

“I told her after she told me she was pregnant. I didn’t think she was as happy about a child as I would have expected, but I put it down to shyness. And I suppose I looked astonished—that’s a poor word for it—and I couldn’t say a word. She asked me what was wrong. I told her.”

“Yes?”

“It took a few minutes, and all the time I was talking that hint from Crottel kept swelling in my mind, and at last I came out with it. Was it Powell? I said. She wouldn’t say a word.”

“Very unlike Maria to have nothing to say.”

“She simply closed her mouth and looked as I’ve never seen her look before. Very big-eyed and tight-lipped. But smiling. It was enough to drive me mad.”

“What did you expect? That she should fall at your feet and bathe them in her tears, and then wipe away the tears from your custom-made brogues with her hair? You don’t know your own wife, my boy.”

“You’re damned right I don’t. But it drove me crazy, and as I got hotter and hotter she just smiled that bloody smile and refused to say anything. So at last I said that her silence was answer enough. And she said, ‘If that’s what you think.’ And that was all.”

“And you haven’t spoken a word to each other since?”

“We’re not savages, Simon. Of course we speak. Very politely about commonplaces. But it’s hell, and I don’t know what to do.”

“So you have come to me for advice. Sensibly, I may say.”

“Oh don’t be so bloody smug.”

“Not smug. Don’t forget I’m an old hand at this sort of thing. So shall we get down to it?”

“If you like.”

“No, no; it’s got to be if you like.”

“All right.”

“Well, for a starter, don’t imagine I underestimate your hurt. It can’t be any fun being told that you’re not fully a man. But it’s happened before. George Washington, for instance. Another mumps casualty, it seems. No children, though he was quite a man for the ladies. But he didn’t do too badly. The Father of His Country, we are told.”

“Don’t be facetious.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. But I refuse to take the great tragic line, either. This business of begetting children is important as one of the biological qualities of a man, but as civilization moves on, other qualities look at least equally important. You’re not some wandering nomad or medieval peasant who has to have children because they are a primitive kind of insurance. This begetting business is terribly overrated. All nature does it and Man is far from the champion. If you hadn’t had mumps you would probably be able to squirt out a few million live sperm at a go, and one of them might make a lucky hit. Your cousin Little Charlie’s favourite stallion has you backed right off the map; he probably averages ten billion possible little stallions every time Little Charlie collects her stud fee; that’s what he’s for. The boar is the real champ: eighty-five billions—and then he trots away looking for acorns, and never gives a thought to his sow, who turns again to her wallowing in the mire. But Man—proud Man—is something very different. Even the least of his kind has a soul—that’s to say a lively consciousness of individuality and Self—and you are rather a superior man, Arthur. Unfortunately Man is the only creature to have made a hobby and a fetish of Sex, and the bed is the great play-pen of the world. Now you listen to me—”

“I’m listening.”

“You come to me as a priest, don’t you? You’ve made rather a joke of that, and call me the Abbé Darcourt—the tame cleric. The learned man on your staff. I’m an Anglican priest, and even the Church of Rome has at last had to admit that my priesthood is as valid as any. When I married you and Maria you had quite a strong fit of orthodoxy, and wanted the whole thing to be on the most orthodox lines. Well—be orthodox now. God may want you for something more important than begetting children. God has lots of sexual journeymen who can attend to that. So you’d better ask God what He wants of you.”

“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.