Leaven of Malice tst-2

by Robertson Davies

  “I refuse to continue any such discussion as this at the table,” said he. As a cousin of Mourne and Derry he kept up a strong pretence that there are certain things which cannot be discussed while eating. As he was an inveterate quarreller-at-the-table himself it was never easy for his family to know what these things were.

  The Professor and his wife went into the living-room and sat in their accustomed chairs on either side of the fireplace. Pearl gathered up the dirty dishes, took them to the kitchen, held them briefly under the cold water tap and stacked them up, to be washed at some indefinite future time. It was a received belief of Vambrace housewifery that dishes might be left thus if they had been rinsed. She then went and stood between her parents, waiting to be recognized, but as neither of them would look at her she screwed up her courage and spoke.

  “Father, please don’t have a lawsuit.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Please don’t have a lawsuit.”

  “I shall do what I think best.”

  “Yes, but think what it will mean for me.”

  “And what, precisely, will it mean for you?”

  “I’ll have to go into court and say it was all a mistake, or a joke, or whatever it was. They’ll ask me questions. I’ll be a laughing stock.”

  “Your honour will be vindicated.”

  “It’ll make me look silly.”

  “And how, pray, do you suppose you will look if this foul lie is not exposed for what it is?”

  “But what’s foul about it?”

  “What? How can you ask such a question? Haven’t you realized that this is a blow at me? A public statement that my daughter is to marry the son of a family which has always sought to push me aside and belittle me—is that nothing at all?”

  “I thought you had given up all that about the Bridgetowers?”

  “And what made you think that, may I ask?”

  “You’ve been in the Little Theatre with Solly for quite a while.”

  “Solly? I had not known that you were on terms of familiarity with him.”

  “Everybody calls him Solly.”

  “Do you do so to his face?”

  “No. Not exactly. But I don’t see him often.”

  “That is as well.”

  “But Father—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well—”

  “Yes, yes, yes. If you have something to say, say it.”

  “I—well, I—”

  “Come along, Pearl. What is it?”

  “It’s hard to put it in words.”

  “Then you are not ready to speak. What is clearly apprehended is capable of being clearly expressed. Think again. And I venture to say that when you have thought this matter over you will be in agreement with me.”

  Pearl went to her bedroom, changed into a better frock, and made herself tidy. She was not skilled in presenting herself, and when she had made her best efforts she still looked somewhat tousled and distracted in her dress. As she dabbed at her face in front of her small mirror (which had a whorl in it) she worried about her failure to impress her father. How could she possibly tell him what she really felt? How could she tell him that such a lawsuit as he contemplated would harm, and perhaps ruin, her chances of ever marrying?

  Because she had never been able to look at her parents from any distance, Pearl was unable to guess why they were as they were, but she knew that they would take in very bad part any suggestion from her that she was interested in marriage, or regarded her chances of marriage as an important factor in her life. She was certainly not clear on the subject herself. She had done nothing to attract any man, and men had shown little enough interest in her. She had no clear notion of what marriage would be like, or the kind of husband she wanted. But she had, deeply rooted in her nature, a feeling that she wanted a husband, and that if she did not get one, of some kind, at some time, her life would be incomplete. She was humble. She did not expect a Prince Charming, and she did not think that it would be easy to marry anybody. But she did not see any reason why, when girls no more attractive than herself were able to marry, she should not manage to do so.

  She also knew that if there were a lawsuit, and her father said that she must appear in court, and look like a fool, that she would do so. She would protest, of course, but it was unthinkable that he should be disobeyed.

  She would dearly have liked to go out without saying anything to her parents, but she knew that such a course was quite impossible. So when she had put on her coat she went to them.

  “I don’t expect to be very late.”

  “You are not going out?” The Professor looked at her with histrionic amazement.

  “The Yarrows are having a party. They’ve asked me.”

  “When did they ask you?”

  “At least a week ago.”

  “And, in the light of what has happened, you are going?”

  “Well—why not, Father?”

  “Why not? Pearl, are you utterly out of your mind? Here we are, facing a law action because your name has been publicly linked with that of the one man in Salterton, above all others, whom you should avoid, and you ask me why you should not appear in society! Have you no sense of fitness?”

  “But Father, are we to keep ourselves locked up until the case is over? It will be months, probably.”

  “Surely, the very night after this false notice appeared, you wish to keep out of sight?”

  “Well, it isn’t my fault, really.”

  “Has anyone questioned you about this matter?”

  “Some of the girls at the Library congratulated me today.”

  “And you told them the truth?”

  “I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to do. I thought I should wait until you had thought it over. Father—”

  “Well?”

  “Couldn’t the newspaper just publish a retraction, or an apology, or something?”

  “They utterly refuse to do so.”

  “You asked them?”

  “I gave them a written form of apology. They refused it. With insolence.”

  “I think I’ll have to go. It will look awfully funny if I don’t.”

  “You are determined?”

  “Well—you see how it is, Father.”

  “I see that you are determined not to be guided by me in this matter. You are your own mistress, I suppose.”

  “Please don’t feel badly.”

  “You are over twenty-one.”

  “I really think I ought to go. I promised.”

  “This is the spirit of the age, and of the New World, I suppose. I had hoped that as a family we would see one another through this.”

  “Well, of course I’ll stay at home if you feel like that, Father.”

  “No, no. Go. You want to go. Don’t stay at home and look at me reproachfully all night.”

  And so, after a few more interchanges, Pearl went, feeling thoroughly ashamed of herself.

  Waverley was a staid university. The establishment of a School of Journalism was being undertaken only after long debate and a considerable measure of opposition; as Professor Vambrace complained, there was still a Professor of Natural Philosophy attached to the Faculty of Arts who was also, in effect, the Dean of Science. But the University had a very active Chaplain, and as his work had become so heavy that he needed an assistant, his department had been enlarged in September by the inclusion of Norman Yarrow, PhD, whose first academic appointment it was.

  Norman Yarrow was in his early thirties, and for two years after receiving his doctorate he had worked in the social service department of a large Canadian city. When he was invited to join the staff at Waverley he had been able to marry Yolande Spreewald, a young woman who was also in social service, as an assistant director of recreation.

  It was agreed in the circle in which they moved that Norm Yarrow and Dutchy Spreewald were made for each other, and that they would be an invincible team. Norm was not, the social workers agreed, one of those nut psychologists. H
e did not appear to belong to any special school of psychology. He frankly admitted that he relied upon his own commonsense, rather than theory, to guide him in dealing with people who seemed to need psychological assistance. Confronted with somebody whose mental hygiene appeared to be defective, he first asked himself, “How does this guy deviate from what’s normal?” Having found that out, he knew how to proceed. He just had to jolly the fellow into a normal attitude, and that was that.

  If anyone asked him how he knew what was normal, he would smile his slow, boyish smile, and explain that he was pretty normal himself—just an ordinary guy, really—and he took that as his guide. He was tall and well-built, and if his eyes were small, they were kindly and bright. If his hair had not become thin in his twenties, he might have been considered handsome. Worried women, and boys in their ‘teens, were attracted by him and found him reassuring. He put great faith in what he called The Personal Influence in Guidance. He was very popular with his colleagues on his own level, and it was unfortunate that he had attracted the jealousy of his immediate superior. It must have been jealousy, for why else would his superior have suggested that he seek another position? Jealousy of that kind is not normal, and Norm had lost no time in handing in his resignation and seeking an academic post at Waverley. After some sifting of applicants, and some disappointments, the Chaplain had given Norm a contract for a probationary year. Whereupon Norm had married Dutchy.

  Dutchy was every bit as normal as he. She was a girl of abounding and restless energy, physically attractive in a muscular way, of whom it was said that “she made things go”. She was well suited to her work as a recreation director, for she was convinced that any sort of inactivity was evil, and that people who had worked all day needed to be guided into some sort of activity at night. She was immensely popular with people who agreed with this belief, and who acknowledged her superiority as a leader. She worked wonders with most children, and with amiable and submissive adults. Like everyone in her line of work she met with the occasional screwball who refused to be assimilated into the group; she directed such screwballs at once to Norm, who did what he could to jolly them into a more normal attitude. But her failures were few. Her work lay chiefly among people who were poor, without being in poverty, and among such people resistance to recreational programming and creative activities can usually be overcome.

  She loved Norm in a normal, healthy way. That is to say, she was determined to do everything that lay in her power to advance him in the world, without herself being swallowed up in marriage. For marriage, as she told a great many people, was an equal partnership, with nobody on top.

  Norm loved her, as was to be expected, normally. Which meant, as he explained to Dutchy while their romance was ripening, that as long as their marriage proceeded in a perfectly normal way, he was for her one hundred per cent.

  Their many friends said, many times, that they made a swell couple. They received many wedding presents, including a set of twelve table mats, of spongeable glacé leather, made and given by the Sixth Ward Women’s Leatherworking Class, which was Dutchy’s first achievement in organized recreation. And after their wedding they had a wonderful party, which Dutchy had organized, at which, for once, everybody knew all the figures of every square-dance that was performed.

  The party for which Pearl was bound was the first that Norm and Dutchy had given in Salterton; indeed, their wedding party was the only one that they had given before it. But they had made friends quickly. Norm was a success with the students, with some of the younger faculty members, with the administrative and Library staff, and he was already on terms of apparent intimacy with a great many people. There was something about him which attracted confidence. Perhaps it was the frankness and ease of his manner; perhaps it was his title of Doctor, which is enough in itself to break down the reserve of many people; perhaps it was the widespread notion that a psychologist is a fountain of good counsel. Whatever it was, Norm had managed in six weeks to become the confessor of a surprising number of people who had never felt moved to confide in any of the members of the official staff of the Psychology Department. He wanted to entertain these trusting souls, and some others who, for one reason or another, might repay cultivation. And Dutchy was only too happy to organize a party; after all, that was her business. Though she told Norm several times that she was scared to death to make her first appearance at a party as a prof’s wife.

  “I mean,” she said, as they were cleaning their teeth together in the small bathroom of their apartment one night, “in the ordinary way in a new town you’d get things rolling even before they came in the door by hanging up a sign ‘Please Remove Your Shoes Before Entering’. Get people with their shoes off right away, and the ice is broken. But at a university—Gee, I don’t know how far this dignity stuff has to go.”

  “Just carry on as you would anywhere, Dutchy,” advised her husband. “These people are all regular. All nice and normal, really. Some of them have talked to me pretty freely, and I think they could do with some shaking up. They need what you’ve got to give.”

  “OK,” said Dutchy, and later, as they lay together in bed, she told Norm that the wonderful thing about him was his insight, and the way he sensed that practically everybody is really a great big kid at heart.

  Pearl was one of those who had succumbed to Norman Yarrow’s charm. She had first met him in the stacks at the Library, when she was checking a reference for Dr Forgie in Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding.

  “Can I help you?” the strange man had said.

  “I doubt it; I’m looking for Understanding,” she had replied.

  Norman Yarrow was not a man to miss such an opening; “Aren’t we all?” he said, and when Pearl blushed he did not laugh or pursue the conversation. But two days later he had appeared in Dr Forgie’s outer office with some questions about books for his students, and since then they had had two or three conversations in which Pearl, who was not used to a sympathetic male listener, had said a good deal more than she meant to say about her life. And thus the invitation for this evening came about.

  When Pearl heard the rumble of a party through the apartment door she realized that she had not expected a big gathering, and had been secretly hoping for a very small one, perhaps a simple evening with understanding Dr Yarrow and his wife, who was certain to be equally understanding. But she had already rung the bell, and when the door opened the noise of the party seemed to jump out at her, like a big dog. And there was a young woman who must be Mrs Yarrow, radiating vitality like an electric heater, who seized her hand in a painfully muscular grasp.

  “You’re Pearl,” she shouted, in a voice pitched for the noise within; “I’m Dutchy. Come on in, we’re just warming up and you’re a couple of drinks behind. Here’s the bedroom, throw your coat on the bed. Yeah, it’s a double bed and it’s legal; ain’t that wonderful!” Dutchy laughed the loud and shameless laugh of the enthusiastic bride. “The John’s in there; if you don’t want it now, you sure will later. Now don’t waste time primping, kid; they’re waiting for you inside.”

  Dutchy had lost any misgivings she might have had about being a prof’s wife. Gin had banished it. Neither she nor Norman had been what they called “drinkers” when in social service work. But as people rise in the world their social habits change. Dutchy knew that as a prof’s wife she ought to make some advances in what she was unselfconscious enough to call “gracious living” and Alcohol, though bad for the poor, was probably expected in academic life. Norm was, after all, a PhD and she herself was a trained social worker, and had written an unusually good thesis, at the age of nineteen, on Preparing the Parent for the Profession of Parenthood; they were not the kind of people who were brought to ruin by drink, and so they had made a few experiments.

  Gin had come to Dutchy like fire from heaven. At the first swallow she was conscious of that shock of recognition with which psychologists and literary critics are so familiar. It was as though, all her life, she had been dimly aware of the e
xistence of some miraculous essence, some powerful liberating force, some enlightening catalyst, and here it was! It was gin! Why be nervous about being a prof’s wife, why worry about a party going well, when gin could make the crooked straight and the rough places plain? Dutchy, as Norm laughingly said, had taken to gin as a duck takes to water.

  Pearl was hauled into the combined living and dining-room of the apartment by the hand, while Dutchy cried, “Gangway! Here’s a poor erring sister who’s a couple of drinks behind!” She was conscious of some familiar faces, but she saw no people whom she knew well. On the dining-table was a large glass jug, containing a purple liquid, and from this Dutchy poured a tumblerful, slopping a good deal on the table, and forced it upon her. “Drink up!” she ordered. Pearl sipped suspiciously. It was gin; unquestionably it was a great deal of gin, to which some grape juice and ice water had been added.

  Dutchy subdued the conversation by shouting “Hold it! Hold it!” and when she had comparative silence she harangued her guests thus: “Now, gals and guys, we’ve come to the second part of the party. Maybe you didn’t know a party had a second part? Sure it has. There’s the Hello; that’s the beginning, when you meet everybody. You’ve had that. The second part’s the What Now? That’s where we’ve got to. This is the crossroads of a party. You can either go on to the Ho Hum, when everybody wishes it was time to go home, or you can go on to the Whee! What’s it to be? The Ho Hum, or the Whee?”

  The guests, who were unfamiliar with up-to-date techniques of recreational programming, looked somewhat astonished, and made no reply. But Dutchy was used to carrying crowds on her own enthusiasm, and she immediately made enough noise for all.

  “The Whee! The Whee! Come on, let’s hear it! Whee!”

  A few guests politely said Whee, in rather low voices.

  “OKAY!” shouted Dwtchy, in a clarion voice, and in no time at all the Whee was in progress.

  Pearl was not quite able to see how the Whee worked, it was so rapid and so noisy. A bowl containing scraps of paper was shaken under her nose, and she chose one. All the people in the room seemed to be engaged in some very rough game. In her surprise and dismay she hastily gulped some of the sickly gin drink, and as someone jostled her she spilled it on her front. She was dabbing at herself with her handkerchief when a man seized her slip of paper, gave a yell, and darted away, to return at once dragging a protesting young man who had been lurking at the far end of the room. Before Pearl knew what was happening another man pressed a large piece of adhesive plaster over her lips, she was forced back to back with the protesting young man, who was similarly gagged, and they were tied, by the wrists and ankles with grocer’s string. This had been happening all over the room, and only Dutchy and two or three of her muscular lieutenants were free. Dutchy addressed her trussed-up guests.