Robertson Davies - The Rebel Angels

I was not in the mood to be teased, but I was very much in a mood to be fed. I had not dared to eat in a restaurant since the trouble began, and I was sick of Mamusia's grim meals. He took me to a very good place, sat in a dark corner, and ordered a very good meal. It was deeply soothing to the spirit – a far cry from The Rude Plenty in the company of Parlabane. Of course we talked about the murder, the excitement, and the trouble I had been having. There was no pretence of rising above the most interesting thing either of us knew about at the moment, but it was possible, in these circumstances, to see it in a different light.

"So Hollier has taken to his bed and left you holding the bag?"

"The loss of the Gryphius Portfolio was the last straw. He simply couldn't believe Darcourt would take it. Where is it now?"

"I have it. Darcourt was evasive about how he came by it, but I gathered it had something to do with McVarish."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"I'd rather thought of giving it as a wedding present."

"Who to?"

"Why, to you and Hollier, of course. You are marrying him, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not."

"Then I am mistaken."

"You never thought any such thing."

"But you and he were so absorbed in your work. You were so very much his disciple. What did the murderer-monk call you – his sorer mystica."

"You're being very objectionable."

"Not intentionally; I only want to get things straight."

"I wouldn't marry him even if he asked me. Which he won't. His mother wouldn't let him."

"Really? Is he under her thumb, then?"

"That's not fair. He lives for his work. People do, you know, in the University. But when I saw him in his mother's house, I knew that was where his emotions live still. His mother is on to me."

"Meaning?"

"When she looks at me I see a balloon coming out of her head with Gypsy Bitch written in it, like somebody in the comics."

"Not Bitch, surely."

"To people like her all Gypsy girls are bitches."

"That's a shame. I looked forward to giving you that Portfolio as a wedding present. Well, when you decide to marry somebody else, it's yours."

"Oh, please don't say that. Please give it to the University library, because Hollier wants it more than you can guess."

"You forget that it is mine. It was not included in the gifts to the University, and in fact I paid the bill for it less than a month ago; those dealers in rare manuscripts are slow with their bills, you know. Perhaps because they are ashamed of the prices they ask. I feel no yearning to oblige Professor Hollier; I once told you I'm a man of remarkable taste; I don't like a man who doesn't know a good thing when he sees it."

"Meaning -?"

"Meaning you. I think he's treated you shabbily."

"But you wouldn't expect him to marry me just to get the Gryphius, would you? Do you think I'd say yes to such a proposal?"

"Don't tempt me to give you an answer to either of those questions."

"You think very poorly of me, I see."

"I think the world of you, Maria. So let's stop this foolishness and talk to the point. Will you marry me?"

"Why should I marry you?"

"That would take a long time to answer, but I'll give you the best reason: because I think we have become very good friends, and could go on to be splendid friends, and would be very likely to be wonderful friends forever."

"Friends?"

"What's wrong with being friends?"

"When people talk about marriage, they generally use stronger words than that."

"Do they? I don't know. I've never asked anyone to marry me before."

"You mean you've never been in love?"

"Certainly I've been in love. More times than I can count. I've had two or three affairs with girls I loved. But I knew very well that they weren't friends."

"You put friendship above love?"

"Doesn't everybody? No, that's a foolish question; of course they don't. They talk about love to people with whom they are infatuated, and sometimes involved to the point of devotion. I've nothing against love. Most enjoyable. But I'm talking to you about marriage."

"Marriage. But you don't love me?"

"Of course I love you, fathead, but I'm serious about marriage, and marriage with anyone whom I do not think the most splendid friend I've ever had doesn't interest me. Love and sex are very fine but they won't last. Friendship – the kind of friendship I am talking about – is charity and loving-kindness more than it's sex and it lasts as long as life. What's more, it grows, and sex dwindles: has to. So – will you marry me and be friends? We'll have love and we'll have sex, but we won't build on those alone. You don't have to answer now. But I wish you'd think very seriously about it, because if you say no -"

"You'll go to Africa and shoot lions."

"No; I'll think you've made a terrible mistake."

"You think well of yourself, don't you?"

"Yes, and I think well of you – better of you than of anybody. These are liberated days, Maria; I don't have to crawl and whine and pretend I can't live without you. I can, and if I must, I'll do it. But I can live so much better with you, and you can live so much better with me, that it's stupid to play games about it."

"You're a very cool customer, Arthur."

"Yes."

"You don't know much about me."

"Yes, I do."

"You don't know my mother, or my Uncle Yerko."

"Give me a chance to meet them."

"My mother is a shop-lifter."

"Why? She's got lots of money."

"How do you know?"

"In a business like mine there are ways of finding out. You aren't badly off yourself. But your mother is something more than a shop-lifter; you see, I know that, too. She's by way of being famous among my musical friends. In such a person the shop-lifting is an eccentricity, like the collections of pornography some famous conductors are known to possess. Call it a hobby. But must I point out that I'm not proposing to marry your mother?"

"Arthur, you're very cool, but there are things you don't know. Comes of having no family, I suppose."

"Where did you get the idea I have no family?"

"You told me yourself."

"I told you I had no parents I could remember clearly. But family – I have platoons of family, and though most of them are dead, yet in me they are alive."

"Do you really think that?"

"Indeed I do, and I find it very satisfying. You told me you hadn't much use for heredity, though how you reconcile that with rummaging around in the past, as you do with Clement Hollier, I can't imagine. If the past doesn't count, why bother with it?"

"Well – I think I said more than I meant."

"That's what I suspected. You wanted to brush aside your Gypsy past."

"I've thought more carefully about that."

"So you should. You can't get rid of it, and if you deny it, you must expect it to revenge itself on you."

"My God, Arthur, you talk exactly like my mother!"

"Glad to hear it."

"Then don't be, because what sounds all right from her sounds ridiculous from you. Arthur, did anybody ever tell you that you have a pronounced didactic streak?"

"Bossy, would you call it?"

"Yes."

"A touch of the know-it-all?"

"Yes."

"No. Nobody's ever hinted at any such thing. Decisive and strongly intuitive, are the expressions they use, when they are choosing their words carefully."

"I wonder what my mother would say about you?"

"Generous recognition of a fellow-spirit, I should guess."

"I wouldn't count on it. But about this heredity business – have you thought about it seriously? Girls grow to be very like their mothers, you know."

"What better could a man ask than to be married to a phuri dai; now, how long do you suppose it might take you to make up your mind?"