Leaven of Malice

by Robertson Davies

  “They will charge libel. Snelgrove was in to see me yesterday, and that is what they have in mind. It will be a difficult charge to prove, but it could be done. However, it is one thing to prove libel, and another to get anything substantial in the way of damages for it. The judge might very well take the line that the libel didn’t amount to much. Still, you published the libel, and you’re guilty. If the judge didn’t like newspapers—and judges don’t, as a usual thing—he could be ugly about it. Now, our defence should be that you are a victim of malice. Malice is a vague term in law, but though it’s hard to define it isn’t hard to understand. You are the victim, along with Miss Vambrace and Mr. Bridgetower, of the malice of X. Give me X, and I’ll put him in the stand and pretty soon the whole issue will be fogged over, because you, and Vambrace, will both be anxious to get at him. The judge probably won’t be able to do anything to X, unless a charge is brought against him—a charge of malice. Whether that could amount to anything will depend on who he is. I wouldn’t advise such a charge, unless the circumstances are exceptional; malice is even slipperier than libel.”

  “And what happens if they get X?” asked Ridley.

  “Ah, then they would probably keep him under wraps until they had got what they could out of you, and bring another case against him. Or they might even bring him in late in the case, as a surprise, and question him in such a way as to further discredit you. X is the key to the case. Give me X, and the whole thing will be sewed up.”

  “But I can’t give you X. I’m trying to find him; Marryat’s trying to find him; Weir is looking for him. But we haven’t a thing to go on. We’ll never find him.”

  “Don’t say that. Snelgrove is looking for him, and so is Ronny Fitzalan. Vambrace is hunting him, and I hear some very queer rumours about that. When a lot of people are looking for a thing, it usually turns up. Not many people can cover their tracks, and even fewer can keep from telling a secret if they know one. I’m sure X will be found. I just want our side to find him first.”

  “I suppose compromise is quite out of the question?” said Ridley.

  “No, not by any means. Ronny Fitzalan has been to see me, without Snelgrove knowing. He’s a cousin of the Vambrace girl, and he wants to keep the thing quiet for her sake. But to shut Vambrace up you’ll have to eat a lot of dirt and do it in public, what’s more. I’d advise against it. Technically, you’re in the wrong; morally, you’re in the clear. Give in on this, and God knows what demands you won’t face next. You’ve got a good case, and I think you should fight it. Next time you might not have such a good case; the time for a show of strength is when you’re strong.”

  “I see. Well, can you suggest anything? Should we hire detectives, or anything?”

  “I’ve been in the law for twenty-five years, and I’ve yet to see a detective who could work effectively in anything except a very big city. In a place like this you can smell ’em. Anyway, they do a lot of their work through the underworld, and the underworld of Salterton is just one man, Pimples Buckle. He controls everything crooked in a fifty-mile radius. Leave it to me. I’ll establish diplomatic contact with Pimples. Meanwhile keep up the search.”

  And with this Ridley had to be content.

  IT WAS ON MONDAY morning, at the same hour when Gloster Ridley was in consultation with The Bellman’s solicitor, that Solly at last found Pearl in the music room of the Waverley Library. Since the previous Friday, following his visit to the Cobblers, he had been in search of her, for he was now convinced that if they could talk over their difficulty they could find a way out of it. At least, that is what he told himself when he sought Pearl at the Library on Friday morning, and that was his certainty when he sought her again on Friday afternoon. At both times she had been busy and he felt a shyness about asking for her at the main desk, so he had mooned about the reading room hoping that she might come into view and, unsuspected by himself, attracting a good deal of attention among the other librarians, who assumed that he had come for a sight of his fiancée, or a word with her. By Friday night his need to talk to Pearl had become a source of discomfort to him, but he dared not call her on the telephone, and he knew of no place where he might find her.

  On Saturday morning he had visited the Library again, but without better success. The Library closed at one o’clock, and he had hung about in the street outside, thinking that he might see her as she left to go home. Had he known it, Pearl was watching him from a window, and did not leave until he had gone. Lunchtime in the Bridgetower house was a fixed appointment; the Vambraces did not care when they ate. Pearl told herself that she could not imagine what he wanted to say to her; by a not uncommon trick of the mind she resented and even hated Solly because he had been a witness to the disgraceful scene between herself and her father. If he chose to hang about on a wet day, hoping to speak to her, he was free to do so. She rather wished he might catch cold.

  This was a harsh thought, and harsh thoughts were a new and luxurious experience for Pearl. Since that dreadful Wednesday night, when she had lain awake weeping for the loss of her father, she had thought many harsh things about a wide variety of people. And although uncharitableness is widely believed to be an enemy of beauty, and may be so if continued for many years, a few days of it improved Pearl’s appearance remarkably. Feeling herself now to be alone in the world, she stood straighter, her eyes were brighter, and she moved with brisk determination. As she was no longer burdened by a sense of family, and felt free for the first time in her life from the Vambrace tradition of despising all worldly things which cost money, she drew a substantial sum from her savings account and bought herself two new outfits, smarter than she had thought proper before. She went farther. She had grown up under the shadow of her father’s belief that short hair for women was a fad, which would quickly pass, and her own black hair was long and indifferently dressed. But on Saturday afternoon she went to a hairdresser and had her hair cut to within three inches of her head, and curled. It was an act of defiance, and at the evening meal that night, as her parents consumed a trifle composed of left-over blancmange and jelly-roll, she was powerfully conscious of their eyes upon her. But they said not a word.

  The fact was that Professor Vambrace was cowed, for the first time in his relationship with his daughter. He was bitterly ashamed of the scene that he had made in the street, ashamed because he had behaved in an undignified fashion in front of young Bridgetower, ashamed because he had clouted his daughter over the ear, like some peasant and not like a cousin of Mourne and Derry, ashamed because he had allowed his daughter to see how deeply he was hurt by the failure of his attempts as a detective. His mind refused to admit that he was ashamed to have hurt the feelings of his child, who had worshipped him; but his heart’s pain was the worse for this refusal. Yet it was not in the Professor to ask forgiveness, to explain, to make any move toward reconciliation with his daughter; he desperately desired to be forgiven, but in his hard way of thinking it was out of the question for a parent to ask forgiveness of a child. A child was, through the very fact of being a child, always in the wrong in any dispute. He told himself that he would wait until Pearl was in a proper frame of mind, and then he would allow her to creep back into his good graces. This was his attitude until Saturday morning, and Thursday and Friday were dark days in the Vambrace home.

  THE PROFESSOR had no lecture to deliver on Saturday morning, but he went to the University all the same, and he was sitting in his office, reading a quarterly devoted to classical studies, when there was a knock on the door and a tall, heavily good-looking young man entered without waiting for an invitation.

  “Professor Vambrace,” said he, “I’m Norm Yarrow.”

  “Indeed?” said the Professor, without expression.

  “We haven’t met, but I’m a new boy on the student guidance staff. A friend of Pearlie’s.”

  “Of—?”

  “Pearlie. Your daughter.”

  “So? I am not accustomed to hear her called that. Hypocorisms are not employ
ed in my household.” The Professor was very much the cousin of Mourne and Derry that morning.

  “Professor, let’s get down to brass tacks. I’m only here because I want to help. I want you to understand right now that my job is simply to understand, not to accuse. Now, you’re an intelligent man, so I don’t have to beat about the bush with you. We can take the gloves off right at the start. I take it that you’ve heard of the Oedipus Complex?”

  “I am familiar with all forms of the Oedipus legend.”

  “Yes, but have you understood it? I mean, as we moderns understand it? Have you got the psychological slant on it?”

  “Mr. Yarrow, I should hardly be head of the department of Classics at this University if I were not thoroughly acquainted with all that concerns Oedipus.”

  “But the Complex? You know about the Complex?”

  “What Complex are you talking about? All art is complex.”

  “No, no; I mean do you recognize what the story of Oedipus really is? I mean about every man’s childhood desire to kill his father and marry his mother? You’ve heard about that?”

  “I have naturally heard something of such trash. Now may I ask the purpose of your visit, Mr. Yarrow? I am engaged, as you see, in reading.”

  “I’ll put it in a nutshell. Has it ever struck you that there’s a kind of an Oedipus thing between you and Pearlie?”

  Professor Vambrace was not a merry man, but he was not without his own sort of humour. After a long look at Norm, he replied.

  “An extremely interesting suggestion, my dear sir. Perhaps you would like to expand it?”

  Norm beamed. As he always said to Dutchy, they were easier to deal with when they had some brains, and didn’t weep, or shout at you.

  “I’m glad you’re taking it like that, Professor. Now about Pearlie; there’s been talk. And particularly about that scene in the street a night or two ago. They say you were walloping her with a pretty big stick—”

  “They say? Yes, much has been said about me, Mr. Yarrow. I can guess who your informants were. They have been saying such things for many years. And now they say that I have been chastising my daughter in public, do they? With a stick? I am not in the least surprised. And how does the legend of Oedipus bear upon this accusation?”

  “Professor, you love Pearlie.”

  “Do I, Mr. Yarrow? An extraordinary idea. That a man should love his daughter is understandable, but surely my detractors deny me any such natural feeling?”

  “I mean, you love Pearlie too much.”

  “And so I chastise her in public with a stick?”

  “Exactly. You’re jealous, you see. You’re jealous of her normal love-object, young Solly Bridgetower.”

  “Oh, you believe her to be in love with Bridgetower, do you?”

  “Well, isn’t she engaged to him?”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Well—wasn’t it in the paper?”

  “Aha, so you believe what you see in the papers? A strange confession for a psychologist. No, Mr. Yarrow, she is not engaged to him, nor has the idea of being engaged to him ever entered her head. Now, to return to your opinions about Oedipus, which I find refreshingly novel, what has Oedipus to do with all this?”

  Norm had a feeling that he had lost the upper hand in this interview; it was not normal for the interviewee to be so icy calm, so impersonal, as this.

  “From the piece in the paper it was natural to assume that she was engaged to him. You’ll admit that. Now Oedipus is a kind of symbol of a particular kind of love, you see, and …”

  “Oedipus might be taken as a symbol of many things. In accordance with a prophecy, he slew his father Laius, and married Epikaste, the widow of Laius, to discover later that she was his mother. A strange love, certainly. But my dear mother died when I was a child of two, Mr. Yarrow, and I have no recollection of her. I fail to see the resemblance between Oedipus and myself.”

  “Perhaps you don’t know yourself as thoroughly as you should. Not that I mean to blame you, of course. It takes training to know yourself in the way I am talking about. But if you turn the Oedipus legend around, you get a daughter who kills her mother and is in love with her father. Do you follow me?”

  “Inverted legends are no novelty to a classicist, my dear sir. Let me help you out; it is your idea that my daughter loves me to excess, and that in order to correct this undesirable condition I beat her publicly with a stick? Is that it?”

  “No, not exactly. You’re being too literal. What I’m trying to get at is that your desire to keep Pearlie from her natural love-object, to keep her all to yourself, is—well, let’s not say unnatural; let’s just say it isn’t usual. Go on that way, and you may be headed for a crack-up. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought Oedipus into this. All that Freudian stuff is pretty complicated, and anyway I’m sure things haven’t got that far yet with you and Pearlie—if I make myself clear.”

  “But you do not make yourself clear. And I am anxious that you should do so before you leave this room. After all, it is not every day that a man of my age, and of my quiet and retired mode of life, is confronted with a stranger who suggests that he lives in an unnatural relationship with his daughter. I should like to hear more.”

  “Now, Professor, let’s not get extreme. When I was talking about Oedipus I was talking symbolically, you understand.”

  “I do not profess to understand psychological symbolism, Mr. Yarrow, but it does not require much training to realize that Oedipus is a symbol for incest. Isn’t that what you imply?”

  “Oh, now just a minute. That’s pretty rough talk. Not incest, of course. Just a kind of mental incest, maybe. Nothing really serious.”

  “Fool!” said the Professor, who had been growing very hot, and was now at the boil. “Do you imply that the sins of the mind are trivial and the sins of the flesh important? What kind of an idiot are you?”

  “Now, Professor, let’s keep this objective. You must understand that I’m talking on the guidance level, not personally at all. I just want to help you to self-understanding. If you understand yourself, you can meet your problem, you see, and I’m here, in all friendliness, to try to help you to understand yourself, and to help Pearlie, and so forth, do you see?”

  “But you have not yet told me what all this has to do with Oedipus.”

  Norm was by this time sick of the name of Oedipus. A horrible suspicion was rising in his mind that the Oedipus Complex, which he had for some time used as a convenient and limitless bin into which he dumped any problem involving possessive parents and dependent children, was a somewhat more restricted term than he had imagined. The chapter on Freudian psychology in his general textbook had not, after all, equipped him to deal with a tiresomely literal professor of classics who knew Oedipus at first hand, so to speak. Norm had received his training chiefly through general courses and for some interesting work which proved fairly conclusively that rats were unable to distinguish between squares, circles and triangles.

  “Let’s forget about Oedipus,” he said, and smiled a smile which had never failed him in all his career in social work.

  “Not at all,” said the Professor, grinning wolfishly. “I am increasingly reminded of Oedipus. Do you not recall that in that tragic history, Oedipus met a Sphinx? The Sphinx spoke in riddles—very terrible riddles, for those who could not guess them died. But Oedipus guessed the riddle, and the chagrin of the Sphinx was so great that it destroyed itself. I am but a poor shadow of Oedipus, I fear, and you, Mr. Yarrow, but a puny kitten of a Sphinx. But you are, like many another Sphinx of our modern world, an undereducated, brassy young pup, who thinks that gall can take the place of the authority of wisdom, and that a professional lingo can disguise his lack of thought. You aspire to be a Sphinx, without first putting yourself to the labour of acquiring a secret.”

  “Aw, now, Professor, let’s not be bitter—”

  “Bitter? Have I not a right to be bitter? You intrude upon me with your obscene accusation, and your muddle
of old wives’ tales about me beating my daughter in the streets, and you tell me not to be bitter! No, you listen to me: I shall inform your superior of this, and if you dare to repeat any of this filthy nonsense to anyone else, I shall not only drive you out of this University in disgrace, but I shall take you to court and strip you of everything you possess. Get out of here! Get out! Get out!”

  The Professor had worked himself up into a rage by this time; flecks of white bubbled from his lips, and his eyes rolled horribly. He seized his walking stick—not a blackthorn, for that was broken, but a knobbly ashplant—and he might have struck Norm with it if the expert in guidance had not darted into the corridor, to escape down the iron staircase so rapidly that it rumbled like thunder.

  But when he was in safety he felt a certain comfort coursing warmly through him. The Professor’s rage, though alarming, was the normal response to what Norm had said; when a man was shown to himself he invariably wept or raged. It had been the Professor’s period of quiet, controlled watchfulness which had worried Norm. That was definitely abnormal, and hard to figure out. In fact, the more he thought about it, the less he understood it. And all that talk about Sphinxes—that didn’t sound too good. Simply made no sense at all. The Professor would bear watching.

  The more Norm reflected on the interview, the more he was convinced that he had understood it all thoroughly. Which, as he was the expert on human behaviour, was perfectly normal.

  ALTHOUGH NOTHING WOULD have made him admit it, Norm’s visit had had some effect on the Professor; it made him yearn toward his daughter more painfully than at any time since that Wednesday night when he had wept alone in his study. But this also he could not admit. If only she would show signs of wishing forgiveness, how quickly, how magnanimously he would forgive her! But there she sat across the table from him, in clothes which he had not seen before, and which even his unpractised eye could recognize as better than her usual garb, and with her hair cut short and dressed in a strange new fashion. His spirit was nearly broken, and he decided to make the first move toward reconciliation.