A Mixture of Frailties tst-3

by Robertson Davies

  He wept, and Monica wept with him, but it cannot be pretended that they understood each other. Two puritanisms were in conflict, and could not meet. But under that, in a realm below the morality which was bred in the bone, they wept for the sadness of all unrequited love, all ill-matched passion, and the prancing rhythm of The Veleta mounted to them like the indifference of a world where all loves were happy.

  The door of the box opened a crack, and someone peeped in; then it opened fully, and admitted a short figure in a purple domino and a mask. Outside the mask it wore a gleaming pair of steel-rimmed spectacles.

  “Get up outa that, Murt, and come on home,” said the figure.

  Molloy started. “Norah!” said he.

  “Myself,” said the purple domino. “Did you think you’d given me the slip, my fine wee fella? Come on now, and don’t trouble Miss Gall anymore.”

  Molloy got unsteadily to his feet, helped by Monica. The purple domino, hands on hips, offered no assistance. He was a sorry figure, for one side of his moustache was gone, and the paint on his eyebrows had run down his face in streaks. Without a word to Monica he went through the door.

  “You’d better not come for any more lessons till you hear from me,” said the purple domino. “He won’t be himself for a few days. Och, these artists! You’d better be married to a barometer; up and down, up and down all the time.”

  “Are you Mrs Molloy?”

  “I am. And I’ve no word of blame for you, my girl, though I advise you to watch your step in future with himself. He can’t resist a good pupil; wants to run away with ‘em all. But I’ve always kept him respectable, and please God I always will. Which isn’t light work, in the line we’re all in. But it’s lose that, and lose all.”

  And such is the power of anything which is said with a sufficient show of certainty that Monica, who was robbing her benefactors to maintain her lover, nodded solemnly in agreement as the door of the box closed behind the purple domino.

  Eight

  1

  “I am entirely agreed that Miss Gall should come home if this family crisis demands it,” said Miss Pottinger, “but you have not yet fully convinced me that it is the duty of the Bridgetower Trust to pay her expenses.”

  The other trustees groaned in spirit. During the three years of the Trust’s existence Miss Puss, contentious by nature, had grown even more insupportable. She fancied herself in the role of a keen woman of business, husbanding money which these foolish men would have squandered; she demanded elaborate and repetitive explanations of the obvious; she made notes in a little book while the others were speaking, thereby missing much of the point of what was said; she pawed through all the bills and lawyer’s statements, demanding explanations and comparing costs with some standard of expenditure adopted by herself in her youth, and now invalid. Although she was believed to be nearly eighty, she had an appetite for committee-work which exhausted Solly, the Dean and Mr Snelgrove. They all, in their various ways, hated her.

  It was half-past ten, and the Bridgetower house, now so meagrely heated by Solly, was growing colder; since half-past eight they had been chewing away at a single decision. Mr Snelgrove decided to allow himself the luxury of a calculated loss of temper.

  “Let me repeat once more that I fully realize that I am merely the solicitor and legal adviser of this Trust,” said he, “but I urge you with all the force at my command to seize this opportunity of spending some of the Trust money. If it is not done willingly, you may find yourselves compelled to do it unwillingly. I have told you repeatedly that the Public Trustee is disturbed by the way in which your funds are accumulating. Unless you want an investigation, and all the disagreeable circumstances which will come with it, you had better snatch at this chance to spend two or three thousand dollars. Miss Gall’s mother is reported to be seriously ill; she fears that she may die, and she wants to see her daughter. If she dies, and it comes out that you have denied her daughter the means of visiting her, you will not like what people will say. You will not like it at all.”

  “Has Miss Gall no funds in hand?” demanded Miss Puss. “She has received a very substantial allowance, and of late her expenditures have been remarkably heavy—far heavier than can be justified by a student life. I have said that she may come home for a time, so far as I am concerned. But we are empowered under the will of the late Louisa Hansen Bridgetower—whose memory seems to be growing very misty in your minds—only to spend money on her artistic education. Can this jaunt be justified on those grounds? That is what I want to know.”

  “Personally I do not care the toss of a button whether the journey is educational or not,” said Srielgrove. “But you had better understand this: Mrs Bridgetower left, when all charges were paid, rather more than a million dollars to this Trust. As invested, that brings in roughly $31,000 a year to be spent on this wretched girl, after all taxes on income and property are paid; spend as she will, and reckoning my own expenses and those of my London colleagues, and the money for travel abroad, and the fees of the teachers, there is still about $45,000 of unspent money in our funds, to which we have no right. The Public Trustee wants to know when we are going to spend it, and he wants it spent as soon as possible.”

  “Whose money is it?” asked Solly, a light in his eye.

  “It is Monica Gall’s money,” said Snelgrove, “and the sooner we get it off our hands the better I shall like it.”

  “You are surely not suggesting that we give it to her in a lump sum,” said Miss Pottinger. “We are instructed to educate the girl, not to debauch her.”

  “Must we suppose that she would use the money foolishly?” said Dean Knapp. “I have seen little of her, but what I saw, and the reports from Sir Benedict, certainly do not suggest that she is an imprudent girl. With some guidance by us such a sum might be put aside by her for future expenses incidental to her career. Everyone knows of cases in which a little money in hand has tided people over difficult times, and greatly smoothed their way.”

  “It is not a little money,” said Miss Puss. “It is a great deal of money. Certainly it would never occur to me to call it a small sum. Of course, I have always had to manage rather carefully.”

  This was a hint at the $3,500 a year which the Dean’s wife received from her father’s estate, a sum which, added to the Dean’s stipend, was supposed to make the Knapps unbecomingly worldly. Miss Pottinger, who had lived on inherited money all her life, was a positive socialist about the inherited money of other people.

  “Big or little, I wish I had it,” said Solly. He looked shabby and sharp; his hair wanted cutting, and his grey flannel trousers wanted pressing. He could have afforded to make himself tidy, but tidiness did not accord with the character of Wronged Son which he now played regularly at the meetings of the Trustees. “Still, I agree that it is quite a lump to throw into her lap all at once. Surely this could have been foreseen? Why haven’t we made it over to her, or banked it for her, every quarter? Isn’t this rather late in the day to tell us about it?”

  Mr Snelgrove looked at Solly for a little time before he spoke, choosing his words.

  “The delay was my fault, Solomon,” said he. “I had some hopes, as you had yourself, that this Trust would not be of long duration. When we all heard the good news that you and Veronica were expecting a child, I said nothing about the matter, because I thought it might all be adjusted more agreeably when that child was born, and the Trust perhaps ended by that event. I accept any blame there may be. My intention was of the best.”

  The Dean, always tactful, struck in.

  “I suggest that we wire Miss Gall to come home at once, to relieve her mother’s mind. When she is here we can talk to her and make some arrangement which will satisfy the Public Trustee. And of course the Trust should bear all expenses.”

  Thus it was decided, for even Miss Puss quaked at the bogy of the Public Trustee.

  2

  Through the long night which divided Canada from England, Monica was carried fifteen thousan
d feet above the ocean in the humming Limbo of a luxury aircraft. Mr Boykin had brought the word to Courtfield Gardens: “Your mother is seriously ill, and the Bridgetower Trustees think you had better go home for a time. I’ve made all arrangements, and everything is in this envelope. Can you be at the terminus tonight at six-thirty? Good. Now, you really mustn’t distress yourself.” Mrs Merry, whom Mr Boykin had fearfully enlisted as his ally in delivering this news, also urged Monica not to distress herself. As they seemed to expect it, she did her best to be somewhat distressed, and the thought of leaving Revelstoke gave her the necessary fuel for a show of concern. But she had no feeling of reality concerning the news about her mother. None of the Galls ever thought seriously about sickness or health, and death was a theological, rather than a physical, fact to them. Ma was ill. Well, Ma was always up and down but the strength of her spirit, in elation or depression, remained constant. She would find Ma depressed, no doubt, and in bed, but she would persuade Ma to feel better again, as she had done so often before. What might seem to be serious illness to outsiders was a different thing when you knew Ma.

  But to return to Canada! As the plane sped on through the darkness it was as though a limb, long numbed, regained its feeling. She had had so much to do since Revelstoke began his work on The Golden Asse that even her perfunctory letter-writing had fallen far behind. She had so little time to write, she told herself; in her more honest moments she recognized that she had so little to write that would have made any sense to her readers at home. That had always been the trouble about letters—finding things that her family would be interested in, and of which they could approve. She was no writer. How could she make what she was doing real to her parents? How much could she reveal without bringing, in return, their mockery or a scolding?

  The visit to Neuadd Goch, for instance, which was now more than a year behind her. She had told Ma something of it—a very little, really—about the beauty of the countryside, the charm of the house, and the kindness of the Hopkin-Griffiths. Ma’s reply had been sharp enough about “your swell new friends” and strongly disapproving of the news that Monica had been to a Christmas service as offered by the Church of England—”Does this mean you are changing your religion? What do you expect to get from that?” On the whole, it had been politic not to mention her small part in the Matthew Passion, or the perplexities and anguish which it had brought. That was the trouble; you couldn’t tell Ma anything really important without running a risk of hurting her. And it went without saying that her sharpness arose from hurt feelings; question that, and you might find yourself thinking that it sprang from ignorance, jealousy and meanness, which was inadmissible; loyalty could not permit such thoughts.

  Loyalty! Monica had not forgotten her protestation of loyalty when George Medwall hinted that she might want to abandon some of the beliefs and attitudes of her family. She had meant it then, and she still meant it. But she had not realized how costly such loyalty might be. She had not foreseen that it could mean keeping two sets of mental and moral books—one for inspection in the light of home, and another to contain her life with Revelstoke, and all the new loyalties and attitudes which had come with Molloy, and particularly with Domdaniel. To close either set of books forever would be a kind of suicide, and yet to keep them both was hypocrisy. As Monica pondered her problem she felt that she was perplexed and tormented unendurably; but anyone looking at her on the plane might well have thought that she looked uncommonly animated and happy.

  Letters were no good as a means of communication. She had written as faithfully and as fully as she could, but there were things which did not belong in letters, and which she would now have a chance to tell her mother face to face. And if her letters were poor and thin, what about the ones she received? Ma’s letters were a record of small facts…”thought I’d go to church this morning but did not feel I could tackle the stairs… your Dad is patching the linoleum in the upstairs hall, but it don’t hold the tacks like it used & guess will have to think of new… Donny is growing like a weed & is cute as a fox & says Ganny plain as plain.” And food, always food! Mrs Gall was a Sunday afternoon letter-writer, and every week contained a description of the Sunday menu … “Guess you don’t get eats like that over there Eh Monny?”

  More informative were the letters of her sister Alice, now Mrs Charles Proby. Chuck Proby was getting on faster in the service of his bank than he had expected, and he had taken Alice to wife, and abandoned his idea that religion was a lot of crap at the same time. Religion had an important place in a young man’s progress. The Probys, however, had taken a long upward step in the religious world, for they had left the Thirteener fold and associated themselves with the United Church, where a vastly superior group of people were to be met. Their union had been blessed with a son, Donald, and snapshots and detailed accounts of the progress of this wondrous child made up the bulk of Alice’s letters. There was still room, however, for a general, nagging discontent to assert itself. Alice had Chuck and Donny; Chuck had a safe job and prospects; but life did not move quickly enough for Alice, who felt the need for a bigger house and a more important husband and an apparently endless list of labour-saving household devices. She frankly envied Monica, whose luck had been so good, and who had no problems, and nobody to consider but herself.

  George Medwall wrote now and then, but less frequently as the months went by. He was getting on. He was saving money. He was sick of boarding-houses. He hoped she was keeping well. He had seen her father, who looked okay. Far, far better were the very rare epistles which Kevin and Alex wrote together, and illustrated with funny pictures. But they were tactful, and urged her not to think it necessary to write in return, though she did so.

  Worst of all, when it came to answering them, were the letters from Aunt Ellen, so long, so kind, so loaded with a tremulous curiosity about the richly musical world in which Monica was now living. Aunt Ellen was dying to know all about it and to share it as far as possible. But everything she said made it so plain that Aunt Ellen had hold of the wrong end of the stick, and that the musical world she imagined was that intense, genteely romantic world of The First Violin. And she wanted Monica’s life to be cast in that mould, wanted it so badly that it would have been inexcusable cruelty to disillusion her. There was the danger, too, that nothing must be told to Aunt Ellen which had not also been told to Ma, for Ma was sure to find out, and make trouble. Thus Monica was forced to deny Aunt Ellen the romantic crumbs which she might otherwise have afforded her. If Aunt Ellen knew that Monica was in daily association with a man who was writing an opera, she would be transported; it would give her a real and abiding joy. But if Ma knew, Ma would simply want to know why she saw him every day, and if he slept at the same place that he worked. It was bitter hard work writing to Aunt Ellen.

  As Canada drew nearer, however, all of these considerations gave way to excitement and anticipation. Coming down at Gander—wonderful! The coffee was not what the McCorkills would have called “real Canadian coffee”, being that characterless grey drink common to lunch counters in all countries; the Quebec carved figures, and the factory-made beaded moccasins, spoke of no Canada which Monica had ever known; but the genuine uncivil Canadian fat woman behind the counter, and the excellent quality of toilet paper in the Ladies were home-like indeed. And the air, the cool, clear air, which had not been breathed and re-breathed by everybody since the time of Alfred the Great—that was best of all.

  On to Montreal and Dorval airport. On to Montreal’s Windsor Station, that massive witness to the love-affair between Canada and its railways. Thence to a train which would carry her to Salterton—a real Canadian train, smelling of carpets and stale cigar-smoke, which toiled and rumbled through the country-side whistling, and ringing its bell, and puffing defiance at anyone who might dare to suggest that it was not really going very fast. Monica rode in the parlour-car, gazing rapturously at the snowy landscape, even while eating her luncheon of leathery omelet and cardboard pie. Yet to her it was the food o
f the gods, for this was an omelet of Canadian leatheriness, a pie of real Canadian cardboard!

  Salterton! But nobody at the station to greet her. Well, of course telegrams which you sent to announce your arrival did have a way of appearing, with every show of smart efficiency, after you had well and truly arrived. She took a taxi to her home.

  Dad answered her ring at the bell. He looked older, thinner and very weary.

  “Oh God, Monny, it’s good to have you here,” he said. And then, breaking into the tears which he had so long held back—”It looks like we’re goin’ to lose your Ma!”

  3

  If it were still the fashion to see ghosts (and it may be asked if such revelations are not a matter of fashion or, if a more pretentious phrase is demanded, of intellectual climate) Veronica Bridgetower would very often have seen the ghost of her mother-in-law, Louisa Hansen Bridgetower. While she had lived, Mrs Bridgetower had worn her large, ugly house close about her, like a cloak. Her spirit was in every room; her will in some way influenced every thought and action on her premises. In his bachelor days Solly had tried to escape her by making an eyrie for himself in the attic; there his bedroom and his workroom and a little washroom had provided him with a complete kingdom; he had but to close the door at the foot of the stair and his mother could not pursue him; her ailing heart had prevented her from mounting those stairs for ten years before she died. But she was there, none the less, and he had always known that every creak of a bedspring and every scrape of a chair was heard and considered by her sharp ears. When he had married, he had brought Veronica to this house. Mrs Bridgetower had pleaded, with the sweet self-abasement possible only to those who are completely sure of their power, that her son and his wife should make their home with her—for if they were to leave her, might she not be frightened in that large house, alone except for her two old servants?