Robertson Davies - The Rebel Angels

"I've made it up. I'll marry you."

Some confusion and kissing. After a while -

"I like a woman who can make quick decisions."

"It was when you called me fathead. I've never been called that before. Flattering things like Sophia, and unflattering things like irreverent cunt, but never fathead."

"That was friendly talk."

"Then what you said about being friends settled it. I've never had a real friend. Rebel Angels, and such like, but nobody ever offered me friendship. That's irresistible."

I will not marry couples with whom I have had no previous discussion; I insist on finding out what they think marriage is, and what they suppose they are doing. In part this is self-preservative caution; I will not become involved with people who want to write their own wedding service, devising fancy vows for their own use, and substituting hogwash from Kahlil Gibran or some trendy shaman for the words of the Prayer Book. On the other hand, I am ready to make excisions for people who find the wording of the marriage service a little too rugged for their modern concepts. I am fussy about music and will permit no "O Promise Me" or "Because God Made Thee Mine"; I discourage the wedding march by Mendelssohn, which is theatre music, and the other one from Lohengrin, which was a prelude to a notably unsuccessful marriage. I do not regard myself as a picturesque adjunct to a folk ceremony performed by people who have no scrap of religious belief, though I do not require orthodoxy, because I have unorthodox reservations of my own.

I was startled, therefore, by the orthodoxy insisted on by Arthur Cornish and Maria. Startled, and somewhat alarmed, for in my experience too much orthodoxy can lead to trouble; a decent measure of come-and-go is more enduring.

My interview with Arthur and Maria took place in my rooms in Ploughwright before dinner on the Monday preceding their wedding. Maria arrived early, which pleased me, because I wanted some private talk with her.

"Does Arthur know about you and Hollier?"

"Oh yes, I told him all about that, and we've agreed it doesn't count."

"What do you mean by count?"

"It means that as far as we are concerned I'm still a virgin."

"But Maria, it isn't usual nowadays for the virginity of the bride to be an important issue. Love, trust, and seriousness of intention are what really count."

"Don't forget that I am part Gypsy, Simon, and it counts for Gypsies. The value of virginity depends on whose it is; for trivial people, it is no doubt trivial."

"Then what have you told him? That you had your fingers crossed?"

"I hadn't expected you to be frivolous, Simon."

"I'm not frivolous. I just want to be sure you aren't kidding yourselves. It doesn't matter to me, but if it matters to you, I'd like to be sure you know what you are doing. What really matters is whether you have got Hollier completely out of your system."

"Not completely. Of course I love him still, and as Arthur is giving me the Gryphius Portfolio for a wedding present I'll certainly be working on it with Hollier. But he's a Rebel Angel, like you, and I love him as I love you, Simon dear, though of course you're a priest and he's a sort of wizard, which makes all the difference."

"How?"

"Wizards don't count. Merlin, and Klingsor and all those were incapable of human love and usually impotent as well."

"What a pity Abelard and Heloise didn't know that."

"Yes. They got themselves into a terrible muddle. If Heloise had been more clear-headed she'd have seen that Abelard was a frightful nerd in human relationships. Of course, she was only seventeen. Those letters! But let's forget about them: Hollier has led me to some recognition of what wisdom and scholarship are, and that's what matters, not a tiny stumble on the path. You've shown me as much as I am able to understand at present about the generosity and pleasure of scholarship. So I love you both. But Arthur is different, and what I bring to Arthur is untouched by any other man."

"Good."

"Arthur says the physical act of love is a metaphor for a spiritual encounter. That certainly was so with Hollier. Whatever I felt about it, he was ashamed of himself right away."

"I hadn't realized Arthur was such a philosopher about these things."

"Arthur has some amazing ideas."

"So have you. I thought you were in flight from all the Gypsy part of your heritage."

"So I was till I met Parlabane, but his talk about the need to recognize your root and your crown as of equal importance has made me understand that my Gypsy part is inescapable. It has to be recognized, because if it isn't it will plague me all my life as a canker at the root. We're doing a lot of Gypsy things -"

"Maria, be careful; I want to be the priest at your wedding, but I'll have nothing to do with cutting wrists and mingling blood, or waving bloody napkins to show that you have been deflowered, or anything of that sort. I thought you wanted a Christian marriage."

"Don't worry, there'll be none of that. But Yerko is taking himself very seriously as a substitute for my Father; as my Mother's brother he's far more important, really, in Gypsy life. Yerko has demanded, and received, a purchase-price from Arthur, in gold. And Yerko has ceremonially accepted Arthur as a "phral" – you know, a gadjo who has married a Gypsy, and who is regarded as a brother, though of course not as a Gypsy. And Mamusia has given us the bread and salt; she breaks a nice crusty roll and salts it and gives us each half and we eat it while she says that we shall be faithful until we tire of bread and salt."

"Well, you seem to be going the whole Romany hog. Are you certain you need a marriage ceremony after all that?"

"Simon, how can you ask such a thing! Yes, we want our marriage to be blessed. We're serious people. I am much more serious, much more real, for having accepted my Gypsy root."

"I see. What about Arthur's root?"

"Very extensive, apparently. He says he has a cellar full of dried roots."

When Arthur came he didn't want to talk about his root; he seemed more inclined to lecture me about orthodoxy, of which he had an unexpectedly high opinion. The reason so many modern marriages break down, he informed me, was because people did not dare to set themselves a high enough standard; they went into marriage with one eye on all the escape-hatches, instead of accepting it as an advance from which there was no retreat.

I think he expected me to agree enthusiastically, but I didn't. Nor did I contradict him; I have had too much experience of life to attempt to tell a really rich person anything. They are as bad as the young; they know it all. Arthur and Maria had agreed that they wanted no revised service as it appears in modern Prayer Books, and he brought along a handsome old volume dated 1706 with a portrait of Queen Anne, of all people, as a frontispiece, which was obviously from the possessions of the late Francis Cornish. I knew the form, of course, but felt I should take them through it, to make sure they knew what they were letting themselves in for, and sure enough they insisted on the inclusion of the passage in the Preamble which debars those who marry "to satisfie mens carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts, that have no understanding". They wanted to be enjoined publicly "to avoid fornication" and Maria wanted to vow to "obey, serve, love, honour and keep" her husband; indeed in the order of service they wanted she would use the word "obey" – so hateful to the liberal young – twice, and when I questioned it she said that it seemed to her to be like the oath of loyalty to the monarch – which is another vow that most people are too modern to take seriously.

I would have resisted all this antiquarianism if they had not both been so touching in their delight that marriage "was ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other". This was plainly what they were looking for, and Arthur was eloquent about it. "People don't talk to one another nearly enough," he said. "The sex-hobbyists go on tediously about their preoccupation without ever admitting that it is bound to diminish as time passes. There are people who say that the altar of marriage is not the bed, but the kitchen stove, thereby turning it into a celebration of gluttony. But who ever talks about a lifelong, intimate friendship expressing itself in the broadest possible range of conversation? If people are really alive and alert it ought to go on and on, prolonging life because there is always something more to be said."