Leaven of Malice

by Robertson Davies

  Man is a pipe that life doth smoke

  As saunters it the earth about;

  And when ’tis wearied of the joke,

  Death comes and knocks the ashes out.

  Can we hear that unmoved?”

  “I can hear it totally unmoved,” said Cobbler.

  “Then you have no soul, and do not deserve the intellectual feast that I am spreading before you,” said Solly. “But there, in a nutshell, is Heavysege. I spare you his other play, his two long poems and his newspaper writings, which it will be my duty to find and sift. There, my friends, is the ash-heap upon which I must lavish my efforts and thought, in order that I may loom large in the firmament of Amcan. It’s devilish cold.”

  “Poor Solly, you look miserable,” said Molly Cobbler. “You’d better get in with us.”

  Solly looked at the bed dubiously. “But how?” said he.

  “Give us all nice hot drinks again. Then loosen the covers at the foot, take off your shoes and hop in. You can put your legs up between us. We’ll warm you. And I’ll spare you one of my pillows.”

  Solly did as he was bidden, and a few minutes later was surprised to find himself snugly tucked in, facing the Cobblers, and with his feet in the remarkable warmth which they had created.

  “I feel like the sword which Launcelot laid between him and whoever it was,” said he. Molly Cobbler said nothing, but laughed and tickled one of his feet, which made him blush.

  “You know, you tell a very pathetic story,” said Cobbler, who had been blowing his nose and pondering, “but it doesn’t hold water. You want us to be sorry for you because you’re tied to Heavysege and teaching people who don’t want to learn. But you’re not tied, you know. Nobody has to teach if they don’t want to. I remember my own fiasco as a teacher of music appreciation at Waverley. That repulsive Tessie Forgie came to me one day and said, ‘Mr. Cobbler, do I understand that I am responsible for all the operas of Mozart?’ I said, ‘Miss Forgie, if you were responsible even for one of Mozart’s overtures I should clasp you to my bosom, but you aren’t; if you mean, do you need to have a knowledge of Mozart’s work to appreciate music, the answer is yes.’ That finished me as a teacher. I expected my students to know something, instead of being examination passers. That’s why I only see a few of the university brats privately now, as on that memorable Hallowe’en. If you don’t like teaching, get out of it.”

  “But what else can I do?”

  “How do I know? But you won’t find out while you are hugging your miserable job. And why do you bother with Heavysege? Why don’t you write something yourself?”

  “Me? What could I write?”

  “How should I know? Write a novel.”

  “There’s no money in novels.”

  “Is there any money in Heavysege?”

  “No, but there are jobs in Heavysege. Get a solid piece of scholarship under your belt and some diploma-mill will always want you. Don’t think I haven’t considered writing something original. But what? Everything’s been written. There aren’t any plots that haven’t been worked to death.”

  “You’ve read too much, that’s what ails you. All the originality has been educated out of you. The world is full of plots. I’ll give you one. In a town like Salterton lives a wealthy, talented and physically beautiful couple who have two beautiful and talented children. Arthur is a boy of twenty-one and Alice is a girl of eighteen. Although they live in wealthy seclusion the news leaks out that Alice has had a child, and that Arthur is the father. There is a scandal, but nobody can do anything because no charge has been laid. Then Alice and Arthur enter their child in an international baby contest sponsored by UN, and it sweeps off all the first prizes. They explain that this is because incest strengthens the predominating strains in stock, and as their physical and mental predominating strains are all good, they have produced a model child. Their parents reveal that they also are brother and sister, and that the family has six generations of calculated incest, practised on the highest moral and eugenic grounds, behind it. UN takes up the scheme and the free world has a race with Russia as to which can produce the most superior beings in the shortest time. Amusingly written, it would sell like hotcakes.”

  “You don’t think it a little lacking in love-interest, do you?” said Molly.

  “Oh, that could be taken care of, somehow. What I am saying is that it is an original plot. If every story has to be a love-story, you’ll never have any originality, for a less original creature than a human being in love cannot be found. But I get sick of hearing people crying for originality, and rejecting it when it turns up.”

  “Your plot is utterly impossible,” said Solly, “it would offend against the high moral tone of Canadian letters, for it is at once frivolous and indecent.”

  “Oh, very well,” said Cobbler. “Go on ransacking the cupboards of oblivion for such musty leftovers as Heavysege; that is all you are good for. I have a horrible feeling that in two or three more years I shall despise you. Quite without prejudice, mind.”

  The hot toddy and the bed were working strongly upon Solly’s spirit. “I have a strong sense of being ill-used,” said he murmurously. “I am in seven kinds of a mess. I am trapped in a profession I hate, and I am saddled with a professional task I hate. I am the victim of a practical joke which puts me into a very delicate relationship with a girl I hardly know and whom I don’t think I like. I ask advice of the one man I know who seems to be free of petty considerations, and all he does is mock me. Very well. Loaded as I am with indignity I can bear this also.”

  “Hogwash!” said Cobbler, groping under his pillow for his piece of bedsheet. “Don’t come the noble sufferer over me, Bridgetower. You are in a richly varied mess, true enough. But, much as I like you, I am clear-eyed enough to see that it is the outward and visible reflection of the inward and invisible mess which is your soul. You think life has trapped you, do you? Well, my friend, everybody is trapped, more or less. The best thing you can hope for is to understand your trap and make terms with it, tooth by tooth. If this seems hard, reflect that I speak from what may well be my deathbed.” He blew his nose resoundingly. “B natural,” said he, “my cold drops more than a full tone every hour. Obviously I am dying. Well, accept these hard words as a parting gift. You are the prisoner of circumstance, Bridgetower, and it is my considered view that you are not one of the tiny minority of mankind that can grapple with circumstance and give it a fall.”

  Solly pondered. “We’ll see about that,” he said, after a time, but his host and hostess were both asleep.

  MUCH LATER Solly woke, and found that Molly Cobbler was kicking him, gently but persistently. “It’s time you went home, ducks,” said she. “It’s long after three.”

  “Good God,” cried Solly, sitting up. “What’ll Mother say?”

  “Tell her you were in bed with a married woman, and didn’t think it polite to hurry away,” said Molly. And then, surprisingly, she kissed him. “Don’t pay any attention to what Humphrey said; he was ill and cross. You’ll find a way out.”

  Her kindness went right to Solly’s heart, and he felt a sudden warmth there.

  “Thanks,” he said, and kissed her in return. “I know I will.”

  From force of habit he began to tiptoe down the stairs, then, re-collecting where he was, he clumped noisily to the bottom, and thence out into the cool night. At least his mind was made up about one thing: he should have tried to protect Pearl from her father.

  Five

  Gloster Ridley sat at his breakfast. From the kitchen came the voice of Mrs. Edith Little, his housekeeper, raised in song. It was a high voice, wiry, small and tremulous, a carefully modulated snarl. When she had finished Just A-Wearyin’ For You she addressed her son Earl.

  “Like that, lover?”

  “Goog.”

  “Good? Aw, you’re a flatterer. Are you going to be a flatterer when you grow up?”

  “Blub.”

  “You going to be a flatterer like Ugga Bev?”
<
br />   “Ugga Bev.”

  “Aw, you’re crazy about Ugga Bev, aren’t you? Eh? You’re just crazy about him.”

  “Gaw.”

  “Well, you just grow up half as smooth as Ugga Bev and you’ll be all right. Ugga Bev is certainly a smoothie. You going to be a smoothie, lover?”

  “Smoo.”

  “You are? Say, you’re just too smart, that’s what you are. Just too smart for your old Mommie. But you’ll always be Mommie’s fella, won’t you?”

  “Blub.”

  “Yes, sir. Mommie’ll always be your best girl, eh? Tell Mommie she’ll always be your best girl.”

  “Blaw.”

  “Aw, you’re a flatterer.”

  Ridley sighed as he spooned up the last juice from his grapefruit. This was, he knew, a carefully staged scene, intended to impress him with the beauty of mother love, and the delightful cleverness of little Earl. He was not a vain man, and it had never occurred to him that his housekeeper sought to ensnare him with her charms, but he knew that she was, for some mysterious purpose, intent upon calling his attention to her son. She frequently told him stories of the child’s brilliance and whimsical humour, and she had once asked him if he had never longed for a child of his own? He was both too weak and too kind to tell her the truth, which was that he feared and mistrusted virtually all children, and he had temporized somehow. But when Christmas came, a few weeks later, he had bought a large and expensive toy panda for Earl, and after that Mrs. Little had begun to bring the child to work with her occasionally, and to stage these dialogues within his hearing. And he had, though somewhat ashamed of the emotion, begun to hate Earl intently.

  Was it ever permissible, he wondered, to describe a child as a slob? Surely slob was the only accurate word for little Earl. Though the child was not much more than three, he already had a hulking, stooping walk, his round abdomen suggested the prolapsed belly of middle age, and in the corner of his mouth was a damp hole, as though provided by nature for the soggy butt of a cigar. If ever a child were a slob, Earl was a slob. Not that he thought of him as Earl; he had some weeks ago christened the child Blubadub in the secret baptistery of his mind. The name had come out of the deep past, when, as a child, he had seen a picture in a bound volume of some English magazine (was it Punch?) of a pretty young mother talking with just such a surly brat: “And what does Mama call her darling?” “Blub-a-dub,” the brat replied. “That’s right,” said Mama, “Beloved Dove!” Blubadub, the son of Constant Reader.

  Mrs. Little brought him his egg and a rack of toast. “I hope I don’t bother you with my singing,” said she.

  “Not at all,” said Ridley. It would have been true, but churlish, to say that he would prefer silence; bachelors pay a high price for any sort of female care.

  “I’m a regular lark these days,” said Mrs. Little, “singing all the time. I’m taking voice.”

  “Indeed.”

  “From the gentleman who boards at our place. Mr. Bevill Higgin. He’s a wonderful teacher; he just seems to get it out of you, kind of. I often tell him he could get music out of anything. We’re all taking, me and my sister and her husband and even Earl.”

  “The little boy too?”

  “Oh yes. Mr. Higgin says you can’t start a kiddy too young. He could sing himself before he could talk. Would you like to hear Earl?”

  “Some day, yes.”

  “Oh, but he’s right here. I sometimes bring him with me, while I’m working here mornings. He just sits as good as gold, while I’m working. I’ll bring him in.”

  Ridley felt a wave of despondency sweep over him, as she hurried to the kitchen. I should be a happy man, thought he. The sun is shining on my breakfast table; I have a very nice apartment; my housekeeper is clean and capable. But I feel wretched, and now I shall have to listen to Blubadub sing. Well, I’m not going to let my egg get cold anyhow.

  Mrs. Little returned, leading Earl by the hand. The child was nicely dressed in a yellow jumper and brown corduroy overalls, but in Ridley’s eye he was a slob. He hulked, and in his dimple a ghostly cigar butt seemed to nestle.

  “Now, lover,” said Mrs. Little, kneeling, “sing for Mr. Ridley. Just like you sing for Ugga Bev. That’s what he calls Mr. Higgin. He means Uncle Bev, of course. Come on, lover—Jack and Jill went up the hill—”

  “Faw down, bo cown,” mumbled Blubadub.

  “Aw now, lover, you know that comes later,” said Mrs. Little, playing the loving mother with many an arch glance toward her employer and quarry. “Come on, lover; Jack and Jill,” she prompted in her own tiny, wiry voice.

  “He got baw head,” said Earl, fixing Ridley with a surly stare.

  “Now, lover, that’s bold,” said Mrs. Little, blushing very much. “You sing for nice Mr. Ridley.”

  “Not nice,” said Earl, and struck at the air in Ridley’s direction. “Stinky. Got baw head.”

  Ridley saw no reason why he should help Mrs. Little out of her difficulty, and went on eating his egg, after casting a malevolent look at Blubadub. The child well understood its meaning, and stamped and struck at the air again. Mrs. Little thought that the time had come to show that she could be firm, as well as sweet, in the motherly role, so she took Earl’s fat fist in her hands and shook it mildly.

  “Now, lover, Mommy wants you to sing for Mr. Ridley just like you sing for Ugga Bev. Now, come on.”

  “Ugga Bev bastard!” said Earl, with greater clarity than he had given to any previous speech. “Baw head bastard!”

  With a smothered cry Mrs. Little seized her child in her arms and fled to the kitchen.

  Ridley was much cheered. He hoped that Earl was in serious trouble. He ate his egg with better appetite, and positively enjoyed his toast and coffee. After all, he thought, the day which lay before him might not be so painful as he feared. He had slept badly. The thought of a difficult day to come always gave him a restless night. But looking out of the window at the autumn sunshine it seemed that things might not be quite so laborious as he supposed. He must see Balmer this morning. He must see Mr. Warboys, and in all likelihood his enemy Mrs. Warboys, late in the afternoon. Well, it must be lived through, somehow.

  Fighting down anxiety he changed from his dressing-gown into his jacket, gave a final brush to what remained of his hair, collected some papers into his briefcase and sought out his hat and coat. As he was about to leave the apartment, Mrs. Little appeared again from the kitchen, with swollen eyes, from which tears still welled.

  “I just don’t know what to say,” she said. “What you must think of Earl’s language I don’t know. I don’t know where he picks up that kind of talk.”

  “Don’t give it a thought,” said Ridley, seeking to make his escape.

  “Oh, but I do! I never think of anything else. That child’s all I’ve got, and really, well—I guess I just live for him. You’ll never know what it is to try to bring up a boy single-handed. Sometimes it just gets to be too much.” And Mrs. Little wept again.

  “Please don’t distress yourself. He’ll probably be much like other boys.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. I just dread that he’ll end up just such another as his father was before him. In front of you, of all people! And when you’re so worried about the paper and everything.”

  “Eh?” said Ridley, who thought, like many another worrier, that he showed no outward sign of his distress.

  “Of course you’re worried. I can tell. I guess I see you the way nobody else sees you. It’s that piece about Professor Bridgetower and Professor Vambrace’s daughter, isn’t it?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “There’s a lot of talk about it, and I hear a good deal. Of course everybody knows I’m connected with The Bellman, sort of. I know how you’ve been worrying. I can see how your bed is all screwed up these mornings, and how you’ve been taking soda, and everything. Oh, I wish there was something I could do!”

  This was a cry from the heart, and though she stood perfectly still befor
e him, Ridley had a dreadful sense that in a moment Constant Reader might throw herself into his arms. He was alarmed, and without a word he rushed out of his apartment and down the stairs. He had a sense that even his home had become menacing.

  Mrs. Little, overwhelmed by the thought that she had been bold, sat down in Ridley’s armchair and wept.

  “THE ROOT of the matter is the malice of X, and the party to the action which can find X first will win it,” said Gordon Balmer.

  “I see,” said Ridley.

  “The whole business is ridiculous,” Balmer continued, “but it would make a very pretty case, for all that.”

  “I don’t see that it’s ridiculous,” said Ridley. “You tell me that it could cost The Bellman a heavy sum in damages. That wouldn’t be ridiculous.”

  “It depends what you call a heavy sum. The Bellman could stand a few thousands. But what the judge would advise a jury to grant the other side, if you lost, mightn’t amount to very much, especially if Vambrace and Snelgrove asked for something very big. A judge often takes a poor view of a big claim. No, it’s precedent you have to avoid. If they got a judgment, even for a thousand dollars, on a thing of this kind, people all over the country would be trying to shake down newspapers because of all kinds of trivial errors, and getting settlements out of court. That’s where it could cost you a lot of money. Anyhow, I said it could cost you money; I didn’t say it would. It’s my job to see that it doesn’t. That’s why I want to get my hands on X.”

  Mr. Balmer poured a glass of water out of a vacuum jug on his side-table and drank it with relish. His office was very different in atmosphere from that of Snelgrove, Martin and Fitzalan; indeed, it could hardly be said to have anything so needless as an atmosphere at all. Mr. Balmer sat behind a steel desk, in a scientifically-sprung chair; Ridley sat in a chair which matched it exactly. There was nothing on the desk but a blotter, nothing on the floor but expensive linoleum, and nothing on the walls save some framed evidences that Mr. Balmer was a lawyer, and a QC. Mr. Balmer himself, though a stout, bald man, managed to suggest that his flesh was merely some scientific modern substance, as it might be foam rubber, over a steel frame. The glass of water set some lawyer-like and explanatory machinery at work inside him, and he continued.