What's Bred in the Bone

Who Asked the Question?

“The book must be dropped.”

“No, Arthur!”

“Perhaps only for a time. But for the present, it must be dropped. I need time to think.”

The three trustees in the big penthouse drawing-room were beginning to shout, which destroyed all atmosphere of a business meeting—not that such an atmosphere had ever been strong. Yet this was a business meeting, and these three were the sole members of the newly founded Cornish Foundation for Promotion of the Arts and Humane Scholarship. Arthur Cornish, who was pacing up and down the room, was unquestionably a business man; a Chairman of the Board to his business associates, but a man with interests that might have surprised them if he had not kept his life in tidy compartments. The Reverend Simon Darcourt, pink, plump, and a little drunk, looked precisely what he was: a priest-academic pushed into a tight corner. But the figure least like a trustee of anything was Arthur’s wife Maria, barefoot in gypsy style, and dressed in a housecoat that would have been gaudy if it had not been made by the best couturier of the best materials.

There is an ill-justified notion that women are peacemakers. Maria tried that role now.

“What about all the work Simon’s done?”

“We acted too quickly. Commissioning the book, I mean. We should have waited to see what would turn up.”

“What’s turned up may not be as bad as you think. Need it, Simon?”

“I haven’t any idea. It would take experts to decide, and they could be years doing it. All I have is suspicions. I’m sorry I ever mentioned them.”

“But you suspect Uncle Frank faked some Old Master drawings he left to the National Gallery. Isn’t that bad enough?”

“It could be embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing! I admire your coolness. A member of a leading Canadian financial family may be a picture-faker!”

“You’re neurotic about the business, Arthur.”

“Yes, Maria, I am, and for the best of reasons. There is no business so neurotic, fanciful, scared of its own shadow, and downright loony as the money business. If one member of the Cornish family is shown to be a crook, the financial world will be sure that the whole Cornish family is shady. There’ll be cartoons of me in the papers: ‘Would You Buy an Old Master from This Man?’ That kind of thing.”

“But Uncle Frank was never associated with the business.”

“Doesn’t matter. He was a Cornish.”

“The best of the lot.”

“Perhaps. But if he’s a crook, all his banking relations will suffer for it. Sorry: no book.”

“Arthur, you’re being tyrannous.”

“All right; I’m being tyrannous.”

“Because you’re scared.”

“I have good reason to be scared. Haven’t you been listening? Haven’t you heard what Simon has been telling us?”

“I’m afraid I’ve been clumsy about this whole thing,” said Simon Darcourt. He looked miserable; his face was almost as white as his clerical collar. “I shouldn’t have told you my suspicions—because that’s all they are, you know—the very first thing. Will you listen while I tell you what is really bothering me? It isn’t just your Uncle Frank’s cleverness with his pencil. It’s the whole book.

“I’m a disciplined worker. I don’t mess about, waiting for inspiration, and all that nonsense. I sit down at my desk and wire in and make prose out of my copious notes. But this book has twisted and turned under my hands like a dowser’s hazel twig. Does the spirit of Francis Cornish not want his life to be written? He was the most private man I’ve ever known. Nobody ever got much out of him that was personal—except two or three, of whom Aylwin Ross was the last. You know, of course, that Francis and Ross were thought to be homosexual lovers?”

“Oh my God!” said Arthur Cornish. “First you suspect he was a picture-faker and now you tell me he was a poofter. Any other little surprises, Simon?”

“Arthur, don’t be silly and coarse,” said Maria; “you know that homosexuality is an O.K. kink nowadays.”

“Not in the money-market.”

“Oh, to hell with the money-market.”

“Please, my dears,” said Darcourt. “Don’t quarrel, and if I may say so, don’t quarrel foolishly about trivialities. I’ve been busy on this biography for eighteen months and I’m not getting anywhere. You don’t frighten me by threatening to quash it, Arthur. I’ve a good mind to quash it myself. I tell you I can’t go on. I simply can’t get enough facts.”

Arthur Cornish had his full share of the human instinct to urge people to do what they do not want to do. Now he said, “That’s not like you, Simon; you’re not a man to throw in the towel.”

“No, please don’t think of it, Simon,” said Maria. “Waste eighteen months of research? You’re just depressed. Have a drink and let us cheer you up.”

“I’ll gladly have a drink, but I want to tell you what my position is. It’s more than just author’s cold feet. Please listen to my problem. It’s serious.”

Arthur was already getting drinks for the three of them. He set a glass that was chiefly Scotch with a mere breathing of soda in front of Darcourt, and sat down on the sofa beside his wife.

“Shoot,” he said.

Darcourt took a long and encouraging swig.

“You two married about six months after Francis Cornish died,” said he. “When at last his estate was settled, it became apparent that he had a lot more money than anybody had supposed—”

“Well, of course,” said Arthur. “We didn’t think he had anything but his chunk of his grandfather’s estate, and what his father left, which could have been considerable. He was never interested in the family business; most of us thought of him as an eccentric—a man who would rather mess around with his collections of art than be a banker. I was the only member of the family who had an inkling of what made him feel that way. Banking isn’t much of a life if you have no enthusiasm for it—which fortunately I have, which is why I’m now Chairman of the Board. He had a comfortable amount of money; a few millions. But ever since he died, money has been turning up in substantial chunks from unexpected places. Three really big wads in numbered accounts in Switzerland, for instance. Where did he get it? We know he got big fees for authenticating Old Masters for dealers and private collectors, but even big fees don’t add up to additional millions. What was he up to?”

“Arthur, shut up,” said Maria. “You promised to let Simon tell us his problem.”

“Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Simon. Do you know where the extra money came from?”

“No, but that’s not the most important thing I don’t know. I simply don’t know who he was.”

“But you must. I mean, there are verifiable facts.”

“Indeed, there are, but they don’t add up to the man we knew.”

“I never knew him at all. Never saw him,” said Maria.

“I didn’t really know him,” said Arthur. ‘’I saw him a few times when I was a boy, at family affairs. He didn’t usually come to those, and didn’t seem at ease with the family. He always gave me money. Not like an uncle tipping a nephew, with a ten-dollar bill; he would slip me an envelope on the sly, often with as much as a hundred dollars in it. A fortune to a schoolboy, who was being brought up to respect money and look at both sides of a dollar bill. And I remember another thing; he never shook hands.”

“I knew him much better than either of you, and he never shook hands with me,” said Darcourt. “We became friends because we shared some artistic enthusiasms—music, and manuscripts, and calligraphy, and that sort of thing—and of course he made me one of his executors. But as for shaking hands—not Frank. He did once tell me that he hated shaking hands. Said he could smell mortality on his hand when it had touched somebody’s else’s. When he absolutely had to shake hands with some fellow who didn’t get his clear signals, he would shoot off to the washroom as soon as he could and wash his hands. Compulsive behaviour.”

“That’s odd,” said Arthur. “He always looked rather dirty to me.”

“He didn’t bathe much. When we cleared out his stuff he had three apartments, with six bathrooms among them, and every bathtub was piled high with bundles of pictures and sketches and books and manuscripts and whatnot. After so many years of disuse I wonder if the taps worked. But he had preserved one tiny washroom—just a cupboard off an entry—and there he did his endless hand-washing. His hands were always snowy white, though otherwise he smelled a bit.”

“Are you going to put that in?”

“Of course. He hadn’t a bad smell. He smelled like an old, leather-bound book.”

“He sounds rather a dear,” said Maria; “a crook who smells like an old book. A Renaissance man, without all the boozing and sword-fighting.”

“Certainly no boozing,” said Darcourt. “He didn’t drink—at lease not in his own place. He would take a drink, and even several drinks, if somebody else was paying. He was a miser, you know.”

“This is getting better and better,” said Maria. “A booky-smelling, tight-fisted crook. You can surely make a wonderful biography, Simon.”

“Shut up, Maria; control your romantic passion for crooks. It’s her gypsy background coming out,” said Arthur to Darcourt.

“Would you two both shut up and let me get on with what I have to say?” said Darcourt. “I am not trying to write a sensational book; I am trying to do what you asked me to do nearly two years ago, which is to prepare a solid, scholarly, preferably not deadly-dull biography of the late Francis Cornish, as the first act of the newly founded Cornish Foundation for Promotion of the Arts and Humane Scholarship, of which you two and I are at present the sole directors. And don’t say you ‘commissioned’ it, Arthur. Not a penny changed hands and not a word was written in agreement. It was a friendly thing, not a money thing. You thought a nice book about Uncle Frank would be a nice thing with which to lead off a laudable Foundation devoted to the nice things that you thought Uncle Frank stood for. This was a typically Canadian act of smiling niceness. But I can’t get the facts I want for my book, and some of the things I have not quite uncovered would make a book which—as Arthur so justifiably fears—would cause a scandal.”

“And make the Foundation and the Cornish name stink,” said Arthur.

“I don’t know about the Cornish name, but if the Foundation had money to give away I don’t think you’d find artists or scholars fussing about where it came from,” said Darcourt. “Scholars and artists have no morals whatever about grants of money. They’d take it from a house of child prostitution, as you two innocents will discover.”

“Simon, that must have been an awfully strong drink,” said Maria. “You’re beginning to bully us. That’s good.”

“It was a strong drink, and I’d like another just like it, and I’d like to have the talk to myself to tell you what I know and what I don’t know.”

“One strong Scotch for the Reverend Professor,” said Arthur, moving to prepare it. “Go on, Simon. What have you actually got?”

“We might as well begin with the obituary that appeared in the London Times, on the Monday after Francis died. It’s a pretty good summing up of what the world thinks, up to now, about your deceased relative, and the source is above suspicion.”

“Is it?” said Maria.

“For a Canadian to be guaranteed dead by The Times shows that he was really somebody who could cut the mustard. Important on a world level.”

“You talk as if the obituary columns of the London Times were the Court Circular of the Kingdom of Heaven, prepared by the Recording Angel.”

“Well, that’s not a bad way of putting it. The New York Times had a much longer piece, but it isn’t really the same thing. The British have some odd talents, and writing obituaries is one of them. Brief, stylish, no punches pulled—so far as they possessed punches. But either they didn’t know or didn’t choose to say a few things that are public knowledge. Now listen: I’ll assume a Times voice:

MR. FRANCIS CHEGWIDDEN CORNISH

On Sunday, September 12, his seventy-second birthday, Francis Chegwidden Cornish, internationally known art expert and collector, died at his home in Toronto, Canada. He was alone at the time of his death.

Francis Cornish, whose career as an art expert, especially in the realms of sixteenth-century and Mannerist paining, extended over forty years and was marked by a series of discoveries, reversals of previously held opinions, and quarrels, was known as a dissenter and frequently a scoffer in matters of taste. His authority was rooted in an uncommon knowledge of painting techniques and a mastery of the comparatively recent critical approach called iconology. He seemed also to owe much to a remarkable intuition, which he displayed without modesty, to the chagrin of a number of celebrated experts, with whom he disputed tirelessly.

Born in 1909 in Blairlogie, a remote Ontario settlement, he enjoyed all his life the freedom which comes with ample means. His father came of an old and distinguished family in Cornwall; his mother (née McRory) came of a Canadian family that acquired substantial wealth first in timber, and later in finance. Cornish never engaged in the family business, but derived a fortune from it, and he was able to back his intuitions with a long purse. The disposition of his remarkable collections is as yet unknown.

He received his schooling in Canada and was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, after which he travelled extensively, and was for many years a colleague and pupil of Tancred Saraceni of Rome, some of whose eccentricities he was thought to have incorporated in his own rebarbative personality. But in spite of his eccentricities it might always have been said of Francis Cornish that for him art possessed all the wisdom of poetry.

During and after the 1939–45 war he was a valuable member of the group of Allied experts who traced and recovered works of art which had been displaced during the hostilities.

In his later years he made generous gifts of pictures to the National Gallery of Canada.

He never married and leaves no direct heirs. It is authoritatively stated that there was no foul play in the manner of his death.

“I’M NOT MAD about that,” said Maria. “It has a snotty undertone.”

“You don’t know how snotty a Times obit can be. I suspect most of that piece was written by Aylwin Ross, who thought he would outlive Francis, and have a chuckle over the last sentence. In fact, that obit is Ross’s patronizing estimate of a man who was greatly his superior. There’s a question in it that is almost Ross’s trade mark. It’s quite decent, really, all things considered.”

“What things considered?” said Arthur. “What do they mean, ‘no foul play’? Did anybody suggest there was?”

“Not here,” said Darcourt, “but some of the people on the Continent who knew him might have wondered. Don’t find fault with it; obviously Ross chose to suppress a few things the Times certainly has in its files.”

“Like—?”

“Well, not a word about the stinking scandal that killed Jean-Paul Letztpfennig, and made Francis notorious in the art world. Reputations fell all over the place. Even Berenson was just the teeniest bit diminished.”

“Obviously you know all about it, though,” said Arthur, “and if Uncle Frank came out on top, that’s all to the good. Who was Tancred Saraceni?”

“Queer fish. A collector, but known chiefly as a magnificent restorer of Old Masters; all the big galleries used him, or consulted him, at one time or another. But some very rum things went through his hands to other collectors. Like your Uncle Frank, he was rumoured to be altogether too clever with his paintbox; Ross hated him.”

“And that Times piece is the best that was said about Francis?” said Maria.

“Do you notice they say he went to school in Canada but was educated at Oxford?” said Arthur. “God, the English!”

“The Times was generous in its own terms,” said Darcourt. “They printed the piece I sent to them as soon as I saw their obit. Listen to this: published in their issue of September 26:

FRANCIS CORNISH

Professor the Rev. Simon Darcourt writes:

Your obituary of my friend Francis Cornish (Sept. 13) is correct in all its facts, but gives a dour impression of a man who was sometimes crusty and difficult, but also generous and kind in countless personal relationships. I have met no one who knew him who thought for an instant that his death might have been from other than natural causes.

Many leading figures in the art world regarded him as a knowledgeable and co-operative colleague. His work with Saraceni may have gained him the mistrust of some who had felt the scorn of that ambiguous figure, but his authority, based on unquestioned scholarship, was all his own, and it is known that on several occasions his opinion was sought by the late Lord Clark. In a quarrel it was rarely Cornish who struck the first blow, although he was not quick to resolve a dispute or forget an injury.

His fame as an authority on painting overshadowed his substantial achievements in the study and scientific examination of illumination and calligraphy, an area not much favoured by critics of painting and sculpture, but which seemed to him to be significant, as providing clues to work on a larger scale. He was also a discriminating collector of music MSS.

During his years in Canada after 1957 he did much to encourage Canadian painters, though his scorn for what he regarded as psychological fakery in certain modern movements generated a good deal of heat. His own aesthetic approach was carefully considered and philosophically founded.

An eccentric, undoubtedly, but a man of remarkable gifts who shunned publicity. When his collections have been examined it may emerge that he was a more significant figure in the art world of his time than is at present understood.

“THAT’S A LOT BETTER, Simon,” said Maria, “but it’s still a long way from being a rave.”

“It’s not my business to write raves, but to speak the truth, as a friend who is also a scholar and a man with his eyes open.”

“Well, can’t you do that in the biography?”

“Not if it means exposing Uncle Frank as a picture-faker,” said Arthur.

“Listen, Arthur, you’re going too far. The most you can say is that my book won’t have any Cornish money behind it unless it presents a whitewashed portrait of Francis. You forget that I could find a commercial publisher. I don’t write bad books, and a book you would think scandalous might appeal to them as a good commercial proposition.”

“Simon—you wouldn’t!”

“If you bully me, I might.”

“I don’t mean to bully you.”

“But that’s what you’re doing. You rich people think you have unlimited power. If I decided to write this book entirely on my own responsibility you couldn’t do a thing to stop me.”

“We could withhold information.”

“You could if you had any, but you haven’t and you know it.”

“We could sue you for defamation.”

“I’d take care not to defame the living Cornishes, and surely you know the law doesn’t care about defamation of the dead.”

“Please, will you men stop being silly and threatening one another,” said Maria. “If I understand Simon rightly, it’s this very lack of information and creeping suspicion that’s holding him up. But you must have some stuff, Simon. Anybody’s life can be dug up to some extent.”

“Yes, and used by cheap writers with lots of spicy innuendo to make a trumpery book. But I’m not that kind of writer. I have my pride; I even have my tiny reputation. If I can’t do a first-rate job on old Frank I won’t do anything.”

“But all this stuff about Saraceni, and what The Times doesn’t say about this other fellow—the one who died or was killed or whatever happened—surely can be cracked down, and fleshed out. Though if it means a book that suggests Francis Cornish was a crook, I hope you’ll do what you can about that.” Arthur seemed to be climbing down.

“Oh, that—I can get that right enough. But what I want is what lies behind it. How did Francis get into such company? What was it in his character that disposed him to that part of the art world, instead of keeping his skirts clear like Berenson, or Clark? How did a rich amateur—which is what he was, to begin with—get mixed up with such shabby types?”

“Just luck, probably,” said Arthur. “What happens to people is so often nothing but the luck of the game.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Darcourt. “What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us. I know that sounds horrible and cruel, considering what happens to a lot of people, and it can’t be the whole explanation. But it’s a considerable part of it.”

“How can you say that?” said Arthur. “We are all dealt a hand of cards at birth; if somebody gets a rotten hand, full of twos and threes and nothing above a five, what chance has he against the fellow with a full flush? And don’t tell me it’s how he plays the game. You’re not a poker-player or a bridge-player, Simon, and you just don’t know.”

“Not a card-player, I admit, but I am a theologian, and rather a good one. Consequently I have a difference idea of the stakes that are being played for than you have, you banker. Of course everybody is dealt a hand, but now and then he has a chance to draw another card, and it’s the card he draws when the chance comes that can make all the difference. And what decides the card he draws? Francis was given a good, safe hand at birth, but two or three times he had a chance to draw, and every time he seems to have drawn the joker. Do you know why?”

“No, and neither do you.”

“I think I do. Among your uncle’s papers I found a little sheaf of horoscopes he had prepared for him at various points in his life. He was superstitious, you know, if you call astrology superstition.”

“Don’t you?”

“I reserve judgement. What is important is that he obviously believed in it to some extent. Now—your uncle’s birthday fell at a moment when Mercury was the ruling sign of his chart, and Mercury at the uttermost of his power.”

“So?”

“Well? Maria understands. Isn’t her mother a gifted card-reader? Mercury: patron of crooks, the joker, the highest of whatever is trumps, the mischief-maker, who upsets all calculations.”

“Not just that, Simon,” said Maria; “he is also Hermes, the reconciler of opposites—something out of the scope of conventional morality.”

“Just so. And if ever there was a true son of Hermes, it was Francis Cornish.”

“When you begin to talk like that, I must leave you,” said Arthur. “Not in disgust, but in bafflement. Life with Maria has given me a hint of what you are talking about, but just at this moment I can’t continue with you. I have to catch a plane at seven tomorrow, and that means getting up at five and being at the airport not much after six—such is the amenity and charm of modern travel. So I’ll give you another drink, Simon, and bid you good-night.”

Which Arthur did, kissing his wife affectionately and telling her not to dare to wake early to see him off.

“Arthur pours a very heavy drink,” said Darcourt.

“Only because he thinks you need it,” said Maria. “He’s wonderfully kind and observant, even if he does make noises like a banker about this book. You know why, don’t you? Anything that challenges the perfect respectability of the Cornishes stirs him up, because he has secret doubts of his own. Oh, they’re unimpeachable so far as money-dealers go, but banking is like religion: you have to accept certain rather dicey things simply on faith, and then everything else follows in marvellous logic. If Francis was a bit of a crook, he was the shadow of a great banking family, and they aren’t supposed to cast shadows. But was Francis a crook? Come on, Simon, what’s really troubling you?”

“The early years. Blairlogie.”

“Where exactly is Blairlogie?”

“Now you’re beginning to sound like The Times. I can tell you a little about the place as it is now. Like a good biographer I’ve made my pilgrimage there. It’s in the Ottawa Valley, about sixty miles or so north-west of Ottawa. Rough country. Perfectly accessible by car now, but when Francis was born it was thought by a lot of people to be the Jumping-Off Place, because you couldn’t get there except by a rather primitive train. It was a town of about five thousand people, predominantly Scots.

“But as I stood on the main street, looking for evidence and hoping for intuitions, I knew I wasn’t seeing anything at all like what little Francis saw at the beginning of the century. His grandfather’s house, St. Kilda, is cut up into apartments. His parents’ house, Chegwidden Lodge, is now the Devine Funeral Parlours—yes, Devine, and nobody thinks it funny. All the timber business that was the foundation of the Cornish money is totally changed. The McRory Opera House is gone, and nothing remains of the McRorys except some unilluminating scuff in local histories written by untalented amateurs. Nobody in modern Blairlogie has any recollection of Francis, and they weren’t impressed when I said he had become quite famous. There were some pictures that had come from his grandfather’s house that had passed into the possession of the public library, but they had stored them in the cellar, and they were perished almost beyond recognition. Just tenth-rate Victorian junk. I drew almost a total blank.”

“But are the childhood years so important?”

“Maria, you astonish me! Weren’t your childhood years important? They are the matrix from which a life grows.”

“And that’s all gone?”

“Gone beyond recovery.”

“Unless you can wangle a chat with the Recording Angel.”

“I don’t think I believe in a Recording Angel. We are all our own Recording Angels.”

“Then I am more orthodox than you. I believe in a Recording Angel. I even know his name.”

“Pooh, you medievalists have a name for everything. Just somebody’s invention.”

“Why not somebody’s revelation? Don’t be so hidebound, Simon. The name of the Recording Angel was Radueriel, and he wasn’t just a book-keeper; he was the Angel of Poetry, and Master of the Muses. He also had a staff.”

“Wound with serpents, like the caduceus of Hermes, I suppose.”

“Not that kind of staff; a civil service staff. One of its important members was the Angel of Biography, and his name was the Lesser Zadkiel. He was the angel who interfered when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, so he is an angel of mercy, though a lot of biographers aren’t. The Lesser Zadkiel could give you the lowdown on Francis Cornish.”

Darcourt by now was unquestionably drunk. He became lyrical.

“Maria—dear Maria—forgive me for being stupid about the Recording Angel. Of course he exists—exists as a metaphor for all that illimitable history of humanity and inhumanity and inanimate life and everything that has ever been, which must exist some place or else the whole of life is reduced to a stupid file with no beginning and no possible ending. It’s wonderful to talk to you, my dearest, because you think medievally. You have a personification or a symbol for everything. You don’t talk about ethics: you talk about saints and their protective spheres and their influences. You don’t use lettuce-juice words like ‘extra-terrestrial’; you talk frankly about Heaven and Hell. You don’t blether about neuroses; you just say demons.”

“Certainly I haven’t a scientific vocabulary,” said Maria.

“Well, science is the theology of our time, and like the old theology it’s a muddle of conflicting assertions. What gripes my gut is that it has such a miserable vocabulary and such a pallid pack of images to offer to us—to the humble laity—for our edification and our faith. The old priest in his black robe gave us things that seemed to have concrete existence; you prayed to the Mother of God and somebody had given you an image that looked just right for the Mother of God. The new priest in his whitish lab-coat gives you nothing at all except a constantly changing vocabulary which he—because he usually doesn’t know any Greek—can’t pronounce, and you are expected to trust him implicitly because he knows what you are too dumb to comprehend. It’s the most overweening, pompous priesthood mankind has ever endured in all its recorded history, and its lack of symbol and metaphor and its zeal for abstraction drive mankind to a barren land of starved imagination. But you, Maria, speak the old language that strikes upon the heart. You talk about the Recording Angel and you talk about his lesser angels, and we both know exactly what you mean. You give comprehensible and attractive names to psychological facts, and God—another effectively named psychological fact—bless you for it.”

“You’re raving ever so slightly, darling, and it’s time you went home.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Of course. This instant. Can I stand up? Ooooh!”

“No, wait a minute, I’ll see you out. But before you go, tell me what it is about Francis you want and can’t discover?”

“Childhood! That’s the key. Not the only key, but the first key to the mystery of a human creature. Who brought him up, and what were they and what did they believe that stamped the child so that chose beliefs stuck in his mind long after he thought he had rejected them? Schools—schools, Maria! Look what Colborne has done to Arthur! Not bad—or not all of it—but it clings to him still, in the way he ties his tie, and polishes his shoes, and writes amusing little thankees to people who have had him to dinner. And a thousand things that lurk below the surface, like the conventionality he showed when he heard Francis might be rather a crook. Well—what were the schools of Blairlogie? Francis was never out of the place until he was fifteen. Those were the schools that marked him. Of course, I could fake it. Oh, I wish I had the indecency of so many biographers and dared to fake it! Not crude faking, of course, but a kind of fiction, the sort of fiction that rises to the level of art! And it would be true, you know, in its way. You remember what Browning says:

… Art remains the one way possible

Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.

I could serve Francis so much better if I had the freedom of fiction.”

“Oh, Simon, you don’t have to tell me that you are an artist at heart.”

“But an artist chained to biography, which ought to bear some resemblance to fact.”

“A matter of moral conscience.”

“And a matter of social conscience, as well. But what about artistic conscience, which people don’t usually pay much attention to? I want to write a really good book. Not just a trustworthy book, but a book people will like to read. Everybody has a dominant kind of conscience, and in me the artistic conscience seems to be pushing the other two aside. Do you know what I really think?”

“No, but you obviously want to tell me.”

“I think that probably Francis had a daimon. As a man so much under the influence of Mercury, or Hermes, it would be quite likely. You know what a daimon is?”

“Yes, but go on.”

“Oh, of course you’d know. I keep forgetting what a knowing girl you are. Since you became the wife of a very rich man, it somehow seems unlikely that you should know anything really interesting. But of course you’re your mother’s child, splendid old crook and sibyl that she is! Of course you know what Hesiod calls daimons: spirits of the Golden Age, who act as guardians to mortals. Not tedious manifestations of the moral conscience, like Guardian Angels, always pulling for Sunday-school rightness and goodness. No, manifestations of the artistic conscience, who supply you with extra energy when it is needed, and tip you off when things aren’t going as they should. Not wedded to what Christians think of as what is right, but to what is your destiny. Your joker in the pack. Your Top Trump that subdues all others!”

“You could call that intuition.”

“Bugger intuition! That’s a psychological word, grey and dowdy. I prefer the notion of a daimon. Know the names of any good daimons, Maria?”

“I’ve only come across the name of one, engraved on an old gem. It was Maimas. D’you know, Simon, I think I’m getting a little drunk too. Now, if you could just get the ear of the Lesser Zadkiel and—well, call him Maimas—you’d have all you want about Francis Cornish.”

“Wouldn’t I, by God! I’d have what I want. I’d know what was bred in the bone of old Francis. Because what’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh, and we should never forget it.—Oh, I really must go.”

Darcourt gulped the remainder of his drink, kissed Maria impressionistically—in the region of the nose—and stumbled toward the door.

Not too steadily, Maria rose and took him by the arm. Should she offer to drive him home? No, that might make things worse than if he made it himself, refreshed by the cool night air. But she went with him to the hallway of the penthouse on top of the condominium where she and Arthur lived, and steered him toward the elevator.

The doors closed, but as he descended, she could hear him shouting, “What’s bred in the bone! Oh, what was bred in bone?”

THE LESSER ZADKIEL and the Daimon Maimas, who had been drawn by the sound of their own names to listen to what was going on, found it diverting.

—Poor Darcourt, said the Angel of Biography. Of course he’ll never know the whole truth about Francis Cornish.

—Even we do not know the entire truth, brother, said the Daimon Maimas. Indeed, I’ve already forgotten much of what I did know when Francis was my entire concern.

—Would it amuse you to be reminded of the story, so far as you and I can know it? said the Angel.

—Indeed it would. Very generous of you, brother. You have the record, or the film, or the tape or whatever it must be called. Could you be bothered to set it going?

—Nothing simpler, said the Angel.

What was Bred in the Bone?

To begin, when Francis was born there, Blairlogie was not the Jumping-Off Place, and would have strongly resented any such suggestion. It thought of itself as a thriving town, and for its inhabitants the navel of the universe. It knew itself to be moving forward confidently into the twentieth century, which Canada’s great Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, had declared to be peculiarly Canada’s. What might have appeared to an outsider to be flaws or restrictions were seen by Blairlogie as advantages. The roads around it were certainly bad, but they had always been bad so long as they had been roads, and the people who used them accepted them as facts of their existence. If the greater world wished to approach Blairlogie, it could very well do so by the train which made the sixty-mile journey from Ottawa over a rough line, much of it cut through the hardest granite of the Laurentian Shield, a land mass of mythic antiquity. Blairlogie saw no reason to be easily accessible.

The best of the town’s money and business was firmly in the hands of the Scots, as was right and proper. Below the Scots, in a ranking that was decreed by money, came a larger population of Canadians of French descent, some of whom were substantial merchants. At the bottom of the financial and social heap were the Poles, a body of labourers and small farmers from which the upper ranks drew their domestic servants. Altogether the town numbered about five thousand carefully differentiated souls.

The Scots were Presbyterian, and as this was Canada at the turn of the century their religious belief and their political loyalty were the important conditioning factors in their lives. These Presbyterians might have had some trouble in formulating the doctrine of predestination or foreordination which lay deep in their belief, but they had no practical difficulty in knowing who was of the elect, and who belonged to a creation with a less certain future in Eternity.

The French and the Poles were Roman Catholics, and they too knew precisely where they stood in relation to God, and were by no means displeased with their situation. There were a few Irish, also Catholics, and some odds and ends of other racial strains—mongrels of one sort and another—who had mean churches suited to their eccentricities, dwindling toward a vacant-store temple that changed hands from one rampaging evangelist to another, in whose windows hung gaudy banners displaying the Beasts of the Apocalypse, in horrendous detail. There were no Jews, blacks, or other incalculable elements.

The town could have been represented as a wedding-cake, with the Poles as the large foundation layer, bearing the heaviest weight; the French, the middle layer, were smaller but central; the Scots were the topmost, smallest, most richly ornamented layer of all.

No town is simple in every respect. People who liked perfection and tidiness of structure were puzzled by the quirk of fate which decreed that the Senator, by far the richest and most influential man in Blairlogie, cut right across accepted ideas: though a Scot, he was an R.C., and though rich he was a Liberal, and his wife was French.

The Senator was the person to begin with, for he was Francis Chegwidden Cornish’s grandfather, and the origin of the wealth that supported Francis’s life until he gained a mysterious fortune of his own.

The Senator was the Honourable James Ignatius McRory, born on the Isle of Barra in the Hebrides in 1855, who had been brought to Canada in 1857 by parents who were, like so many of their kind, starving in their beautiful homeland. They never succeeded in getting the ache of starvation and bitter poverty out of their bones, though they did better in the New World than they could have done at home. But their son James—called Hamish by them, because that was his name in the Gaelic they customarily spoke between themselves—hated starvation and resolved as a child to put poverty well behind him, and did so. Necessity sent him early to work in the forests which were a part of the wealth of Canada, and ambition and daring, combined with an inborn long-headedness (to say nothing of his skill with his fists, and his feet when fists were not enough), made him a forest boss very young, and a contractor for lumber companies shortly after, and the owner of a lumber company of his own before he was thirty, by which time he was already a rich man.

A common enough story, but, like everything else connected with Hamish, not without its individual touches. He did not marry into a lumbering family, to advance himself, but made a love-match with Marie-Louise Thibodeau when he was twenty-seven and she was twenty, and he never desired any other woman afterward. Nor did the life in the camps make him hard and remorseless; he created his men fairly when he was an employer, and when he came to have money he gave generously to charity and to the Liberal Party.

Indeed, the Liberal Party was, after Marie-Louise and one other, the great love of his life. He never stood for Parliament, but he supported and financed men who did so; in so far as there was a party machine in Blairlogie, where he settled as soon as he no longer had to live near the forests, Hamish McRory was the brains behind the machine; thus nobody was surprised when Sir Wilfrid Laurier appointed him to the Senate when he was not yet forty-five, making him the youngest man, and demonstrably one of the ablest, in the Upper House.

A Canadian senator was, in those days, appointed for life, and some senators were known to give up all political effort once they felt their feet on the red carpet of the Upper Chamber. But Hamish had no intention of relaxing his party zeal because of his new honour, and as a senator he was more Sir Wilfrid’s man in an important area of the Ottawa Valley than ever before.

WHEN ARE WE GOING to get to my man? said the Daimon Maimas, who was eager to make his contribution to the story.

—In due season, said the Lesser Zadkiel. Francis must be seen against his background, and if we are not to start at the very beginning of all things, we must not neglect the Senator. That’s the biographical way.

—I see, you want to do it on the nature and nurture principle, said Maimas, and the Senator is both.

—Nature and nurture are inextricable; only scientists and psychologists could think otherwise, and we know all about them, don’t we?

—We should. We’ve watched them since they were tribal wizards, yelping around the campfire. Go on. But I’m waiting for my chance.

—Be patient, Maimas. Time is for those who exist within its yoke. We are not time-bound, you and I.

—I know, but I like to talk.

APART FROM MARIE-LOUISE, and of a different order, the Senator’s deep love was his elder daughter, Mary-Jacobine. Why so named? Because Marie-Louise had hoped for a son, and Jacobine was a fancy derivation from Jacobus, which is James, which is also Hamish. It suggested also a devotion to the Stuart cause, and called up that sad prince James II and his even sadder son, Bonnie Prince Charlie. The name was suggested with implacable modesty by the Senator’s sister, Miss Mary-Benedetta McRory, who lived with him and his wife. Miss McRory, known always as Mary-Ben, was a formidable spirit concealed in a little, wincing spinster. It was her romantic notion that her forebears, as Highland Scots, must necessarily have been supporters of the Stuarts, and none of the books she read on that subject suggested that James II and his son, as well as being handsome and romantic, were a couple of pig-headed losers. So Mary-Jacobine it was, affectionately shortened to Mary-Jim.

There was a second daughter, Mary-Teresa—Mary-Tess inevitably—but Mary-Jim was first by birth and first in her father’s heart, and she lived the life of a small-town princess, without too much harm to her character. She was taught at home by a governess of unimpeachable Catholicism and gentility, and by Miss McRory; when she was old enough she went to a first-rate convent school in Montreal, the Superior of which was yet another McRory, Mother Mary-Basil. The McRorys were strong for education; Aunt Mary-Ben had gone to the same convent school as the one over which Mother Mary-Basil now ruled. Education and gentility must go hand in hand with money, and even the Senator, whose schooling had been brief, read consistently and well all his life.

The McRorys had offered their full due to the church, for as well as Mother Mary-Basil there was an uncle, Michael McRory, a certainty for a bishopric, probably in the West, as soon as some veteran vacated a likely see. The other men of the family had not done so well; the whereabouts of Alphonsus were unknown since last he had been heard of in San Francisco, Lewis was a drunk, somewhere in the Northern Territories, and Paul had died, in no distinguished way, in the Boer War. It was in the Senator’s daughters that the future of the family resided, and Mary-Jim could not help knowing it.

If she thought about the matter at all, it caused her no misgiving, for she was clever at school, possessed some measure of charm, and, because she was prettier than most girls, was thought of—by herself as well as by the rest of the family—as a beauty. Oh, it is a fine thing to be a beauty!

The Senator had great plans for Mary-Jim. Not for her the life of Blairlogie. She must marry well, and marry a Catholic, so she must know a wider circle of suitable young men than Blairlogie could ever afford.

Money makes the mill turn. With his money behind her, Mary-Jim could certainly marry not merely well, but brilliantly.

On January 22, 1901, when Mary-Jim was sixteen, Queen Victoria died, and King Edward VII ascended the throne. This pleasure-loving prince made no secret of his intention to change the social structure of the Court, decreeing that in future young ladies of good family should be presented to their Sovereign not at subdued afternoon receptions, as in his mother’s day, but at evening Courts, which were in effect balls, and that the doors of the Court should open to people who were not of the old, assured aristocracy, but who had some “go” in them, as His Majesty phrased it. Even the daughters of magnates from the Dominions, if possessed of sufficient “go”, might aspire to this honour.

The Senator had made his fortune by seizing opportunities while lesser people failed to see what was before their eyes. Mary-Jim should be presented at Court. Gently, methodically, and implacably, the Senator set to work.

In the beginning, luck was with him. The King-Emperor’s Coronation had to wait until a year of mourning for the Old Queen had been observed; a royal illness intervened, so there were no Courts until the royal household moved into Buckingham Palace in the spring of 1903, and initiated a splendid season of Court Balls. Mary-Jim was presented then, but it was a close thing, and it took the Senator all the time at his disposal to manage it.

He began, logically, by writing to the secretary of the Governor-General of Canada, Lord Minto, asking for advice and, if possible, help. The answer, when it came, said that the matter was a delicate one, and the secretary would put it before His Excellency when a propitious moment turned up. The moment must have been elusive, and several weeks later the Senator wrote again. It had not been possible to put the matter before His Excellency, who was understandably much involved in the ceremonies preceding and following the Coronation. By this time it was August. The secretary suggested that the matter was not one of great urgency, as the young lady was still of an age to wait. The Senator began to wonder if Government House was still shy of the McRorys, remembering that awkward affair of more than twenty years ago. He also came to understand the nature of courtiers in some degree. He decided to go elsewhere. He asked for a few minutes of the Prime Minister’s time, on a personal matter.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier was always ready to make time to see Hamish McRory, and when he heard that the personal matter was a request that he should politely speed up affairs at Government House, he was all smiles. The two men spoke together in French, for the Senator had always spoken in Canada’s other tongue with his wife. The two men were staunch Catholics, and, without putting too much stress on it, felt themselves other than the very English group at Government House, and were determined not to be slighted. Sir Wilfrid, like many men who have no children, dearly loved a family, and was warmed by a father’s desire to launch his daughter into the world with every advantage.

“Be sure that I shall do my very best, my dear old friend,” said he, and his leave-taking of Hamish was in his most gracious style.

It was less than a week later that Hamish received a message that he should call again on Sir Wilfrid. The great man’s advice was brief.

“I don’t think we shall get far with His Excellency,” said he. “You should write to our representative in London, and tell him what you want. I shall write also; I shall write today. If the presentation can be managed, it will certainly be done.”

It was done, but not quickly or easily.

The representative in London was the resoundingly titled Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, but the Senator’s letter began “Dear Donald”, because they knew each other well through the Bank of Montreal, of which the Baron, as plain Donald Smith, was president. He was well aware of Hamish McRory through the freemasonry of the rich, which overrides even politics. A letter from the Baron came as soon as a mail-boat could carry it; the thing would be done, and his wife would be pleased to present Mary-Jim at Court. But he warned that it would take time and diplomacy, and possibly even a little arm-twisting, for the desire to appear at Court was by no means confined to the McRorys.

Reports followed over several months. Things were going well; the Baron had dropped a word to a Secretary. Things were hanging fire: the Baron hoped to meet the Secretary at his club, and would jog his memory. Things were rather clouded, for the Secretary said there were people with prior claims, and the list of debutantes must not be too long. A stroke of luck: a New Zealand magnate had choked to death on a fishbone and his daughter had reluctantly been forced into mourning. The thing was virtually assured, but it would be premature to make any moves until official invitations had been received; meanwhile Lady Strathcona was doing some backstairs haggling, for which, as the daughter of a former Hudson’s Bay official, she had an inherited aptitude.

At last, in December of 1902, the impressive cards arrived, and the Senator, who had bottled the matter up inside himself for more than a year, was able to reveal his triumph to Marie-Louise and Mary-Jim. Their response was not entirely what he had foreseen. Marie-Louise was in an immediate fuss about clothes, and Mary-Jim thought it nice, but did not seem greatly impressed. Neither understood the immensity of his triumph.

As letters began to arrive from Lady Strathcona, they learned better. The matter of clothes was carefully explained, and as these included garments not only for the Court Ball, but for the London Season it initiated, mother and daughter should lose no time in getting to London and into the dressmakers’ salons. A suitable place to live would have to be found, and already the rentable houses in appropriate parts of London were being snapped up. What jewels had Marie-Louise? Mary-Jacobine must undergo a rigorous training in Court etiquette, and Lady Strathcona had booked her into a class being conducted by a decayed Countess who would, for a substantial fee, explain these rites. The curtsy was all-important. There must be no toppling.

Lord Strathcona was even more direct. Bring a large cheque-book and get here in time to have some knee-breeches made, were his principal pieces of advice to the Senator.

The McRorys did as they were bid, and set out for London early in January with a mass of luggage, including two of those huge trunks with rounded lids that used to be called Noah’s Arks.

It had been impossible to get them a London house of the right kind, and a house outside the West End was unthinkable, so Lord Strathcona had booked them into the best suite at the Cecil Hotel, in the Strand. If the Court were grander than the Cecil, the McRorys wondered if they would be worthy of it. At the time the hotel outfitted its male staff with three liveries: sleeve-waistcoats and white stocks for morning, blue liveries with brass buttons and white ties for afternoon, and in the evening the full grandeur of plush breeches, plum-coloured coats with cut-steel buttons, and powdered wigs. It was sumptuous in a manner undreamed of in Blairlogie, where a housemaid marked the pinnacle of domestic service; but the McRorys, being naturally thrivers and intelligent, determined not to play the farcical role of colonial cousins any more than they could help, and behaved themselves unassumingly, until they got the hang of things.

The sessions with the decayed Countess presented some difficulty at the beginning, for she showed a tendency to behave as if Mary-Jim’s inelegant Canadian speech gave her pain. Snotty old bitch, thought Mary-Jim, who was a convent girl and knew how to deal with tedious instructresses. “Would you prefer that I speak in French, Your Grace?” she asked, and continued for some time, very rapidly, in that language, which the decayed Countess spoke slowly and indifferently. The decayed Countess understood that she had a Tartar in the McRory child, and mended her ways. When she had recovered herself she dropped a remark about the difficulty of understanding a patois, but nobody was deceived.

At last, in May of 1903, the great night came. Marie-Louise, still a pretty woman, was resplendent in pale-blue chiffon and cloth of silver, embroidered with stripes of brilliants, the swathed bodice (over a repressive new corset) fastened with diamonds, which had been hired from a discreet jeweller, who did a large trade in such rentals. Mary-Jim was modestly done up in tulle and mousseline-de-soie. The Senator wore his accustomed tailcoat and white waistcoat above, and his unaccustomed corded-silk knee-breeches and double black-silk stockings below. They were photographed in the drawing-room of their suite at four o’clock in the afternoon, in their grandeur; the ladies had been put to rights by the hairdresser between one and half past two, and had then been forced to bathe with the uttermost care, so as not to wet or tumble their careful head-arrangements. An expert maid from the hotel had encased them in their splendid gowns. After the photographer had gone they ate a light meal in their suite, and then had nothing to do but sit and fret inwardly until half past nine, when the carriage arrived to take them to the Palace. They could have walked there in fifteen minutes, but with the crush of people going to Court, it took a full three-quarters of an hour to make the journey, during which they were inspected, at every stop, by crowds who had gathered to have a look at the toffs.

They had been fretting because they were sure they would know no one at Court—how could they? They would hang dejectedly around the walls, pretending that they were solitary from choice. In their panicky moments they were sure they would bump into things, break ornaments, spill food. The Lord Chamberlain would strike the floor with his wand, crying, “Throw those colonial rubes out!” But that was not the way the King-Emperor entertained.

As soon as they had arrived, and given up their cloaks, a smiling aide swooped upon them, saying, “Ah, there you are, Senator! Madame! Mademoiselle! The High Commissioner and Lady Strathcona are upstairs; I’ll take you to them at once. Awful crush, isn’t it”—and much more genial, meaningless, but reassuring chatter until they were safe under the wing of the Strathconas, and Mary-Jim had been hived off into a group, not too obviously defined, of the girls who were to be presented.

There were thrones on a dais at the end of the room but—what, no trumpets? No, just a quiet entry—or as quiet as a royal entry can ever be—of a very stout, shortish man in uniform and a blaze of orders, and a lady of great beauty, wearing enough jewels, thought the Senator, to finance a railway. Ladies curtsied; gentlemen bowed. The King and Queen were seated.

Without preamble the ladies in the special group began to lead forward their protégées. An aide with a list in his hand murmured to the blue-eyed man and the smiling, beautiful, deaf woman. The moment came: taking Mary-Jim’s hand, Lady Strathcona led her forward to the steps of the dais, and together they curtsied; the aide murmured, “Miss Mary-Jacobine McRory.” It was over. The campaign which had taken twenty-two months was complete.

The Senator, from the crowd, had watched intently. Had the royal eyes lightened at Mary-Jim’s beauty? This was a king who admired beauty—had he been impressed? Impossible to tell, but at least the prominent blue eyes had not been veiled. The child looked so lovely it gripped his heart. Dark, high-coloured from her Highland ancestry, Mary-Jim was unquestionably a beauty.

The presentations were quickly over, and the royal couple left their thrones. The aide swooped upon the McRorys again.

“Must introduce you to some people. May I present Major Francis Cornish? He’s going to help me in seeing that you get everything you want.”

Major Francis Cornish was not very young, not very old. Not very handsome, but not precisely plain. If he were called distinguished, it would be because of the eyeglass he wore in his right eye, and his fine moustache, which defied all laws of facial hair by growing sidewise instead of straight down, and turning up at the ends. He wore the dress uniform of an excellent regiment, but not a Guards regiment. He bowed to the ladies, extended the forefinger of his right hand to the Senator, and said, almost inaudibly, “Howjahdo”? But he stayed with the McRorys, whereas the other aide, murmuring that he had some people to see to, vanished.

The music began: a Guards band, but with string players turning it into a splendid orchestra. Dancing, and Major Cornish saw that Mary-Jacobine had as many suitable partners as she needed. He himself waltzed with her, and with Marie-Louise. Time passed without the McRorys ever feeling out of things or overlooked. And, astonishingly soon to Mary-Jacobine, it was time for supper.

Royalty was supping in an inner room with a few personal friends, but something of their magic lingered in the large supper-room, where Marie-Louise exclaimed over Blanchailles à la Diable, Poulardes à la Norvégienne, Jambon d’Espagne à la Basque, Ortolans rôtis sur Canapés, and ate them all, following with a great many patisseries and two ices. The splendour of the meal quite overcame any lingering coldness she, as a French Canadian, might feel about British royalty. They knew what food was, these people! As she ate, and under the influence of an 1837 sherry, an 1892 champagne, an 1874 Château Langoa, and—“Oh, I shouldn’t, Major, but this is my weakness, you know?”—some 1800 brandy, she confided to the Major more than once that his Sovereign really knew how to do things properly. She ate until the new corset began to take its vengeance, for Marie-Louise had not the fashionable lady’s art of picking at the splendid supper.

Mary-Jacobine ate very little; she had suddenly become aware of what being presented at Court meant; until then she had only known that it was another step in her life, with lessons to be learned, that meant a great deal to her father. But here she was, suddenly awakened in a real palace, among such people as she had never seen, dancing to such a band as she had never heard. That lady with the splendid diamonds, making her way to the inner room, was the Marchioness of Lansdowne. The lady in black satin? The Countess of Dundonald. That was the Countess of Powis in blue satin, diamond-embroidered; one of the great Fox beauties; known to be a daring gambler. Major Cornish was ready with all information, and when she became accustomed to his murmuring manner of speech she engaged him in what might almost pass as conversation, though on her side it was almost entirely questions, and on his almost telegraphic answers. But he was unquestionably attentive, securing more and more food for the mother, and showing the most respectful, but never slavish, admiration for the daughter.

A stir in the room. The King and Queen were withdrawing. More bowing and curtsying. “Shall I see you to your carriage?” That must be the way courtiers got rid of guests. Marie-Louise, a little overcome with food and wine, pats the front of her bodice indulgently, and her daughter wishes she might sink through the floor. Could any of the countesses have noticed? At last, after some waiting that the aides make as agreeable as possible, the carriage comes and the Senator’s name is shouted very loudly by a footman. The Major hands them into the carriage. He leans toward Marie-Louise when she is safely seated and murmurs something that sounds like “Permission to call?” Sure, Major, whatever you please. Then back to the Cecil Hotel.

Marie-Louise kicks off her tight shoes. The maid comes and delivers her from the cruel constriction of her corset. The Senator is melancholy, but exalted. His darling is launched into the world where she truly belongs. In future he will cut his beard in the fashion of the King-Emperor, though the Senator’s beard is black, and his physique, developed in his youth in the forests where he had plied the axe and the saw, would make two of the King-Emperor, fat though that monarch undoubtedly is. He kissed his daughter an affectionate good-night.

She retired to her room. Like her father she was melancholy, but exalted, but she was also very young. A Court Ball, her presentation, countesses, splendidly uniformed young men—and now it was over, forever! The maid appeared. “Shall I help you to undress, miss?”

“Yes. Then tell somebody to bring me a bottle of champagne.”

OF COURSE, it was the mother stuffing herself that did the mischief, said the Daimon Maimas.

—I fear so, said the Lesser Zadkiel. The McRorys held up very well, otherwise. They were not less accustomed to court than many other people who were there. They had a certain native gumption that kept them in good order, except for the eating and drinking. Do you think it is time now for us to take a look at Major Francis Cornish?

FRANCIS CORNISH was a man of fashion, in terms of his era, and within the rules governing an officer of a good regiment. In consequence he was something outside the experience of the McRorys, who found his quiet, drawling voice, his reticence, his eyeglass, and his air of not being wholly alive quite unlike anything they had met with. He was a man with his way to make, for he was a younger son of a good family, without much money except his Army pay, and that would shortly cease. The Major had served well, but not conspicuously, in the Boer War, and had been wounded seriously enough to cause him to be invalided back to England, and he knew that the Army had not much in store for him in the future. He had decided to retire from his regiment, therefore, and he must do something, must find his place in the world, for the next portion of his life. It took him no time at all to decide that marriage was his aim and his hope.

Marriage could be a career for a man like the Major. Englishmen without money had for some time been establishing themselves in the world by marrying rich American girls, and everybody knew about the most significant marriages that had taken place. It was not unknown for fortunes of two million pounds, and even more, to cross the Atlantic through such matches, where the daughter of an American railway king or steel monarch was united with an English nobleman. It was a fair enough exchange, in the eyes of the great world: aristocracy on the one hand, and great wealth on the other, seemed to have been ordained for each other in Heaven. There are Heavens for all kinds of people, including those who think chiefly in terms of aristocracy and wealth. Major Cornish thought there might be a modest place in the world of wealth for himself.

The Major was no fool. He knew what he had to offer: unimpeachable family descent, but without title; a good Army career and the knowledge of how to behave in the world of fashion as well as when confronting Boers who had no notion of how to fight like gentlemen; a reasonable person, though not much in the way of wit or learning, beyond what it took to be a decent chap and an efficient soldier. Therefore, it would be foolish for him to aspire to one of the great American fortunes. But a lesser fortune, though still a substantial one, might be discovered among the young ladies from the Colonies. He had friends at Court, brother officers who would let him know what was coming up, so to speak. The McRory girl, with a large, though not clearly estimated, timber fortune behind her, and herself a beauty—though not yet in the duchess category—would do him nicely. It was as simple as that.

The Court had, of course, its aides, its gentlemen-in-waiting, its special group who might be called upon to look after guests when the Court entertained; it was known as “doing the agreeable”. But there was always room for another presentable man who knew the ropes and would do his duty by some of the waifs and strays who always had to be looked after on great occasions. The Major spoke to a friend who was an aide; the aide spoke to a chamberlain; the Major was given the nod for the right Court occasion and gained his introduction to the McRorys. The Senator was not the only man who knew how to plan and contrive.

The London Season that followed the McRorys’ appearance at Court was brilliant as no season had been for decades, and although they certainly were not in the thick of it, they managed to appear, somehow, at the principal events. Lady Strathcona was helpful; guided by her husband, who knew which English magnates might like to meet a Canadian magnate who was knowledgeable about investments in that rich colony, they were invited here and there, spent weekends at country houses, and managed to get themselves to Henley and Ascot under good auspices. Marie-Louise’s talent for bridge gained her a place in a world that was mad for bridge, and the French-Canadian intonation of her speech, so embarrassing to her daughter, seemed to her hostesses provincial but not disagreeable. The Senator could talk to anybody about money in any of its multifarious aspects without sounding too much like a banker, and his fine looks and Highland gallantry made him acceptable to the ladies. They did not move in the very highest society, but they did pretty well.

As for Mary-Jacobine, her prettiness became something very like beauty in the sunshine of this unfamiliar world. She gained a new bloom. Impressionable as the young are, she moderated her own speech considerably to meet English expectations, and learned to call pleasing things “deevie” and unpleasing things “diskie” like the girls she met. Doubtless it was the unaccustomed rich food and unaccustomed wine that disturbed her convent-bred digestion, for sometimes she was unwell in the mornings, but she learned how to be a delightful companion (it is not a natural accomplishment) and she was a very good dancer. She acquired admirers.

Of these Major Francis Cornish was the most persistent, though he was far from being her favourite. She made fun of him to some of her more lively dancing partners, and they, with the disloyalty of flirtatious young men, took up her name for him, which was the Wooden Soldier. He did not manage to appear everywhere the McRorys went, and that did not trouble him, for to be too pervasive would not have suited his plan of campaign. But he had what was needed to be a man modestly in the fashion: he had a small flat near Jermyn Street, and he was a member of three good clubs, to which he was able to introduce the Senator. It was in one of these, after luncheon, that he asked the Senator for permission to put the decisive question to Mary-Jacobine.

The Senator was surprised, and demurred, and said he would like to think about it. That meant talking with Marie-Louise, who thought her daughter might do much, much better. He mentioned the matter to Mary-Jacobine, who laughed, and said she would marry for love, and did Papa really suppose anybody could love the Wooden Soldier? Papa thought it unlikely, and told Major Cornish that the time was not yet ripe for his daughter to marry, and perhaps they should defer the question for a while. His daughter, in spite of her blooming appearance, was not as well as he wished her to be. Could they talk of it later?

August came, and of course it was out of the question for the fashionable world to remain in London. It dispersed toward Scotland, and the McRorys went with it to two or three northern estates. But they were back in London, at the Cecil, by the end of September, and Major Cornish happened to be in town as well, and as attentive as good manners permitted.

So frequent had Mary-Jim’s digestive difficulties become that Marie-Louise thought they had gone beyond what Blairlogie called “bilious attacks” and the simple remedies Blairlogie used in such cases, so she summoned a doctor. A fashionable one, of course. His examination was swift and decisive, and his diagnosis was the worst possible.

Marie-Louise broke the news to her husband in bed, which was their accustomed place for conferences on the highest level. She spoke in French, which was another indication of high seriousness.

“Hamish, I have something awful to tell you. Now don’t shout, or do anything stupid. Just listen.”

Some hired jewels lost, thought the Senator. Insurance would take care of it. Marie-Louise had never understood insurance.

“Mary-Jim is pregnant.”

The Senator turned cold, then heaved himself up on his elbow and looked at his wife in horror.

“She can’t be.”

“She is. The doctor says so.”

“Who was it?”

“She vows she doesn’t know.”

“That’s ridiculous! She must know.”

“Well then, you talk to her. I can’t get any sense out of her.”

“I’ll talk to her right now!”

“Hamish, don’t you dare. She’s miserable. She is an innocent, sweet girl. She knows nothing about such things. You would put shame on her.”

“What has she put on us?”

“Calm down. Leave things to me. Now go to sleep.”

The Senator could as well have slept on hot ploughshares, but though he tossed and turned and gave his wife a night like nothing she had experienced except at sea, he said no more.

After breakfast the next morning his wife left him with Mary-Jacobine. The Senator made the worst possible beginning.

“What’s this your mother tells me?” he said.

Tears. The more he demanded that she dry her eyes and speak up, the harder they flowed. So there had to be a great deal of paternal petting and plying of the handkerchief (for Mary-Jim had not so far left the convent that she could be depended on to have one with her) and at last something like a story emerged.

After the Presentation at Court she had felt both elevated and depressed. The Senator understood that, for he had felt precisely the same. Never before in her life had she drunk champagne, and she had fallen in love with it. Understandable, thought the Senator, if dangerous. She felt very flat, going to bed after all the gaiety, the splendour of Court, the attention of the aides, the presence of high-born beauties, and so—she had told the maid to get her some champagne. But when it arrived, it was not the maid but one of the splendidly liveried footmen of the Cecil Hotel. He seemed a nice fellow, and she was so lonely that she asked him to take a glass himself. One thing led to another, and—more tears.

The Senator was reassured, if not comforted. His daughter was not a wanton, but a child who had got herself into a situation that was beyond her. He had been sure that Mary-Jacobine was the wronged party, and now he was in a position to do something about it. He went to the manager of the hotel, told him that on the night of the Ball his daughter had suffered grave affront from one of the hotel’s employees, and demanded to see the man. What sort of place was it that sent a footman, late at night, to a young lady’s room? And much more, in a high strain. The manager promised to look into the matter at once.

It was not until late in the afternoon that the manager had anything to report. It was a most unfortunate business, said he, but the man could not be found. It was the custom of the hotel on particularly busy evenings—and the occasion of a Court Ball meant a very busy evening with people who were attending and the much greater number who were not but who wished somehow to have a special celebration—to engage extra men, usually soldiers who were supplied by a Regimental Sergeant-Major who had a sideline in such things, to wear livery and adorn the corridors and public rooms, but not to perform any duty as servants. Through some inexplicable muddle—the Senator could not believe how difficult it was to keep perfect discipline everywhere on a great night—one of these had been charged to take the champagne to Mary-Jacobine, and as the men had been paid off when they left the hotel at three o’clock, it was now impossible to trace the culprit. Precisely what was it he had said or done which had given such offence? If the manager had known earlier he might have traced the man, but now, three months later, he greatly feared it was out of the question. He did not know what to suggest in the way of amends, but he would certainly apologize to the young lady on behalf of his hotel. He had indeed already ventured to send some flowers to her room.

The Senator did not wish to be explicit about the insult. He had been defeated, and as men who are defeated often do, he made a great tale about it to his wife.

Marie-Louise was not a weeper, but a woman of sterling common sense, so far as her beliefs and experience allowed.

“We mustn’t lose our heads,” said she. “Perhaps nothing will come of it after all.”

She set to work to see what could be done to secure a satisfactory outcome. The notion of abortion never entered her head, for it was utterly repugnant to her faith, but in rural Quebec it was not unknown for a pregnancy to fail to reach its term. In any case, a pregnant girl should be in robust health. She adjusted her mind accordingly. Her daughter had been suffering from digestive troubles, and obviously it was too rich a diet that had disturbed her. A good dose of castor oil would put that right. She gave the protesting Mary-Jacobine, who was not now in a position to make too much trouble about anything, a dose that would have astonished a lumberjack. It took the girl a week to recover, but the only effect was to leave her with a look resembling that favourite picture of the period called The Soul’s Awakening, in which a pale maiden gazes to Heaven with glowing eyes.

Very well. A stubborn case. Next, for her own good, Marie-Louise demanded that her daughter jump to the floor from a table, several times. The only result was exhaustion and despair in the victim. But Marie-Louise had not finished her schemes to give nature a necessary nudge. This time it was not champagne, but a substantial glass of gin—as much as the mother considered to be safe—and a very hot bath.

Mary-Jacobine was even more unwell than after the castor oil, but the tedious little intruder did not budge. All the natural aids Marie-Louise knew were now exhausted, and she confessed to her husband that she was beaten, and something would have to be done.

For a miserable week, the parents argued about the possibilities. They could take their daughter to the Continent, wait out the pregnancy, and put the infant in a foundling hospital. They did not like the idea, and after talking with Mary-Jacobine they liked it even less. Everything that lay deep in their composition—the convent, the brother and sister in religious orders, a simple sense of decency—spoke powerfully against it.

There was, of course, marriage.

They thought highly of marriage and it was the only means possible of salvaging morality as they understood it. Could a marriage be achieved?

The Senator was a man for direct action and he knew something of how the world wagged. This time it was he who asked Major Cornish to luncheon, at the Savoy.

Luncheon in a fashionable dining-room, even outside the Season, when really there is not a soul in London, is not the best place for such delicate negotiations, but the Senator said what he had to say, and asked Major Cornish if, under the circumstances, he was still of the same mind? The Major, coolly eating an ice, said that he would like to think about it, and arranged another luncheon with the Senator for a week from that day.

When the meeting came, the Major looked as if he had grown a few inches. He said that yes, he was prepared to maintain his offer of marriage, but the Senator would understand that things were not altogether as they had been. It was distasteful to talk of one’s people, said he, but the Senator should be aware that the Cornishes were an old county family of, understandably, Cornwall. The family seat, Chegwidden (he pronounced it Cheggin, and explained that it meant, in the old Cornish tongue, the White House), was close to Tintagel, the birthplace of King Arthur, and Cornishes had lived there (the memory of man going not to the contrary) so long that they had probably counted King Arthur as a neighbour. When Cornwall had become a royal duchy, several Cornishes at various times served the Dukes of Cornwall as Vice-Warden of the Stannaries. It was a proud record, and an association with such a family might be accounted an honour.

The Major was, however, a younger son, and the family was not a rich one, so it was unlikely that he would ever live at Chegwidden himself, as its master. But he was a Cornish of Chegwidden, all the same. He had served his country honourably as a soldier, but now that he was about to leave the Army, he was undeniably hard up.

The Senator was not utterly unprepared for this, and hastened to say that an alliance with his daughter would certainly include a settlement that would put her husband’s mind at ease about the future.

Very generously put, said the Major, but he wanted it to be clear that his suit to Mary-Jacobine was not prompted by any mercenary motive. The Senator would understand that the personal detail he had confided when last they talked could not be a matter of total indifference. Nevertheless he loved her dearly, and over the week past he had come to love her even more, because she had suffered the gravest misfortune that could befall an innocent girl. The Major touched lightly and tactfully upon Our Lord’s behaviour toward the woman taken in adultery, and the Senator could not repress a tear or two at this show of fine religious feeling, though he had never thought of Christ as an Englishman with a monocle and an improbable moustache. Here was chivalry, and from the Wooden Soldier! Oh, God be praised!

It would be as well, said the Major, for them to understand one another thoroughly. This surprised the Senator, who thought an understanding had been reached. But at this point the Major drew from an inner pocket two pieces of paper which he handed across the table, saying: “These few matters should be understood between us, and if you will be good enough to sign both copies of this agreement I shall ask Mary-Jacobine to marry me tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. Take your time in reading it over. It is not complicated, but I assure you I have thought carefully about what would best work toward our married happiness, and I should not like to abridge that memorandum in any way.”

He’s as cool as a cucumber, thought the Senator, but he did not find himself particularly cool after he had read what was written, in a very fine hand, on the document—for it could not be otherwise described.

(1) It will be clear that I do not wish to enter upon marriage burdened with debt, and I have some outstanding obligations of the sort that accrue to my position in the Army and in Society. Therefore immediately upon my acceptance by Mary-Jacobine, I should be obliged to receive a draft for ten thousand pounds (£10,000).

(2) I estimate that the expenses of marriage, wedding-tour, and subsequent travel to Canada will not be less than twenty-five thousand pounds (£25,000) for which I should be pleased to accept a draft before the wedding ceremony.

(3) My experience with men, and also with finance, as Adjutant of my regiment, appears to me to fit me for a position in industry in the New World, to which I propose that my wife and myself should emigrate after our wedding tour and the birth of the first child. As we must live in a manner congruous with your position and my own, and not below that to which Mary-Jacobine has been accustomed, I propose a settlement upon her of one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds (£125,000) to be invested or otherwise disposed on my sole authority. In addition, we shall require a dwelling suitable for your daughter and son-in-law and any family we may have, and I think it best that this be a newly-built house, the construction and planning of which I shall be glad to oversee, submitting all bills for building and furnishing to you for settlement. I shall be ready to discuss the position I shall take in your business enterprises and the salary attaching thereto at your convenience.

(4) I undertake to bring up and show every proper care for any children attaching to the union, with the proviso that they be reared in the Protestant faith as evinced in the Church of England.

(signed)

FRANCIS CHEGWIDDEN CORNISH

(agreed)

For a time the Senator breathed deeply and audibly through his nose. Should he tear the agreement up and hit the Wooden Soldier on the head with a bottle? He had expected to be generous, but to have his generosity prescribed for him, and in such figures, hit him very hard in his Highland pride. To be tied down to a deal! The Wooden Soldier was sipping a glass of claret with total self-composure; the light falling on his eye-glass gave him the air of a miniature Cyclops, about to eat a sheep.

“There are two copies, of course,” he murmured; “one for you and one for me.”

Still the Senator glared. He could afford the money, though it had never occurred to him that he might pay his son-in-law’s debts acquired before marriage. It was Number Four that stuck in his craw. Protestants! His grandchildren Protestants! He had no quarrel with Protestants so long as religion did not become an issue; let them be wrong, let them even be damned, if that was their perverse desire. But his grandchildren—and then he bethought himself of that small, obstinate grandchild who had precipitated this whole hateful affair. If Mary-Jacobine did not marry the Wooden Soldier, then who? Where in the time could he find a Catholic who would take her—a Catholic as outwardly suitable, if not really desirable, as Major Cornish?

“Anything troubling you?” said the Major. “I worked out the financial terms as exactly as I could, and I don’t think I could bring any of the figures down.”

The figures! How crass these English could be! To hell with the figures! But Number Four—

“This fourth item,” said the Senator in a voice that trembled a little; “it will not be easy to persuade my wife or my daughter that it is desirable or necessary.”

“Not negotiable, I’m afraid,” said the Major. “All the Cornishes have been C. of E. since Reformation times.”

Like his daughter, the Senator was subject to sudden changes of mood. His fury left him naked and weak. What use to struggle? He was beaten.

He took out his fountain pen and signed the prettily written paper—both copies—in his bold, poorly formed hand.

“Thank you,” said the Major. “I’m glad we understand each other. If you would ask Mary-Jacobine to be at home tomorrow at eleven o’clock, I shall have the honour of calling upon the ladies.”

SURELY THE SENATOR might have argued a little more, said the Daimon Maimas. He buckled under very quickly, wouldn’t you say?

—No, I wouldn’t say that, said the Lesser Zadkiel. It was the temperament of the man, you see, as it was of his daughter. They were so good when they were cool but quite out of their element when they were overcome with feeling. Not that they didn’t feel, or couldn’t feel; not a bit. The trouble was that they felt so powerfully it utterly overset them and brought them sometimes near to panic. A Celtic temperament; a difficult heritage. Often they made terrible mistakes when an intelligent approach to feeling was called for. You know what happened? In later life the Senator became something of a philosopher, which is a great escape from feeling, and Mary-Jim acquired the trick of banishing or trivializing anything that was troublesome.

—What about the scene in the Cecil Hotel? said the Daimon.

—Oh, that was a real Celtic hullabaloo. Mary-Jacobine wept and vowed that she’d rather die than marry the Wooden Soldier, and after half an hour of that she caved in and said yes, she’d do it. Her parents didn’t browbeat her; it was the situation itself that overwhelmed her. It was panic and despair.

—Yes, indeed, said the Daimon. I had to deal with the same temperament in Francis, and sometimes it was hard work. He never became either a philosopher or a trivializer; he faced his troubles head-on. It was a lucky thing for him that he had me at his elbow, more than once.

—Yes, that’s what they call it; luck. It’s interesting, isn’t it, to observe the parents. It would be quite wrong to say that they sold their daughter to preserve their respectability; they wouldn’t have done that. But you have to understand what respectability meant to those people. It was much more than just What will the neighbours think? It was How will the poor child face the world with such a clouded beginning in life? It was What can I do to save my darling from hurt? It was emotion, disguising itself as reason, that governed the Senator. Marie-Louise had a good hard Norman head on her shoulders, but the Church had relieved her of any necessity to use it for thinking. She had done the best she knew, and failed. They faced real wretchedness in their terms. It wasn’t worry about London, which wouldn’t have cared even if it knew. It was Blairlogie. How Blairlogie would have gloried in the fall of a virgin McRory! How she would have felt the whip, all her life!

IN BLAIRLOGIE, Aunt Mary-Ben McRory was, in her own phrase, “holding the fort” while her brother and his wife and dear Mary-Jim disported themselves in the fashionable world. She did not mind. She knew she had been born to serve, and she was willing to serve, and if any hint of longing or jealousy entered her mind she prayed it away at once. She was a mighty prayer. In her bedroom she had a little prie-dieu—padded but not overpadded on the kneeling portion—before a fine oleograph of a Murillo Virgin, and the worn upholstery on the kneeler showed how much it was used.

When she was not much older than Mary-Jim was now, God had made it plain to her that her portion was to serve. Dr. J.A. and many other people had referred to it as a freak accident, but she knew it was God’s way of defining her role in life.

It had happened at a Garden Party in Government House—or Rideau Hall as it was familiarly called—in Ottawa. That was during Lord Dufferin’s last months as Governor-General and Hamish had been asked, as a rising young man and already a political figure, to a Garden Party in late July. Being still unmarried he had taken his sister Mary-Ben, and for the occasion she had bought a splendid hat covered with black and white plumes. How romantic it had been! Delighting in the romanticism, she had wandered into the shrubbery, her mind on the romantic figure of Vergile Tisserant, who had been increasingly attentive, when suddenly—

It is now part of ornithological history, and even has its footnote in medical history, that at that time the Great Horned Owl—a species referred to by the Canadian naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton as “winged tigers among the most pronounced and savage birds of prey”—had been making occasional forays into the more inhabited parts of the country, and now and then had swooped upon humans, and especially upon ladies who were wearing those fashionable black and white hats; for to the owls they looked like skunks. As Mary-Ben strolled musing in the vice-regal shrubbery, an owl swooped, seized the hat, and soared away with it—and with a considerable portion of the wearer’s scalp in its terrible talons.

For weeks she had lain in hospital, her head swathed in bandages and her spirit in ruins. How had those girls in mythology survived the fearful, birdlike descents of Jove? But of course they had been singled out for a special destiny, hadn’t they? Had she been so chosen by the God of her own faith, and if so, for what? She found out when, little by little, the bandages were removed and her ravaged skull, with only a few locks of hair still remaining, was revealed. A wig was out of the question, for her scalp was now too tender to endure it. She had to make do with little caps, like turbans, of the softest materials. She never made any attempt to ornament the little caps, for she knew what they were. They were the head-dress of servitude, and she had been marked to serve. So—serve she did, in her brother’s household, with the little caps protecting her little skull. Not even Dr. J.A. had been so harsh as to mention that the swooping god had mistaken her for a skunk.

She had been keeper of her brother’s household for three years before his marriage to Marie-Louise Thibodeau and there was never any question that she should make way for the wife; no, indeed, she served her, and kept tedious duties from her, and when the first child was born she was invaluable, even suggesting the romantic name by which she was known. Marie-Louise, who found the social obligations of a rising man’s wife wholly agreeable, was glad enough to let Mary-Ben—who was known even more often as Aunt, as soon as Mary-Jim began to speak—see to the household.

Besides, Aunt had Taste, which can be a form of power in those who possess it.

Aunt’s taste and Aunt’s judgement came into full sway when Hamish decided to build a fine house, and move up to the hill which dominated the southern horizon of Blairlogie. Marie-Louise had no ideas about houses, but Aunt had enough for three, and it was she who told the builder what was wanted, and drew little pictures, and gently domineered over the workmen. It was a brick house, of course, and not just your common brick but a finely surfaced rosy brick, as impenetrable as tile. Because Hamish was in lumber, the interior finish had all the latest things in turned wood, matched wood, wooden lace worked on the band-saw, and, in the room called the library, wooden panelling, not as it is generally known, but in octagons of what looked like hardwood flooring, set on the bias. Hideous, but of course very hard for the workmen to do, said Dr. J.A., who always had an opinion, and usually a disagreeable one.

Aunt furnished. Aunt chose wallpapers, showing a fondness for flock papers in which a pattern stood out from the background in a substance rather like velvet. Aunt chose pictures, spending money in a way that astonished her brother, in the shops of art dealers in Montreal. Aunt selected the subject for the stained-glass window that did not really light the landing on the staircase; it was Landseer’s The Monarch of the Glen, a very choice thing. All of this choosing Aunt called “helping wherever she could, without interfering”.

Aunt’s desire not to interfere influenced the shape of the house, which had a substantial sun parlour attached to the north side that was rarely warmed by any sun. Above the sun parlour was a suite of rooms that was Aunt’s alone. She could go in there and shut the door, she said, and be totally out of the way in her little sitting-room—it was quite big, really—and her bedroom with the little prayer-alcove off it, and her bathroom where she could do things she had to do—by which she implied difficult attentions to her destroyed scalp. Hamish and Marie-Louise need never know she was in the house when they were entertaining, or wanted to be by themselves, as married folk very properly should do.

Busy as a bee, nodding and smiling sweetly, deferring to everybody, Aunt built the house and even chose its name; 26 Scott Street simply would not do, and Aunt proposed St. Kilda, as a lovely name, and a link with Barra. As neither Marie-Louise nor Hamish had any alternative, that was what appeared in the stained-glass fan-light over the front door.

Aunt’s mind, busy as it was, never strayed toward introspection or the making of significant connections. If it had done so she might have wondered why one of her evening prayers was so particularly dear to her—that which ran:

God, who ordainest the services of angels and men in a wonderful order, be pleased to grant our life on earth may be guarded by those who stand always ready to serve thee in heaven.… God, who in thy transcendent providence delightest to send thy holy angels to watch over us, grant our humble petition that we may be safe under their protection, and may rejoice in their companionship through all eternity.

Did Aunt think of herself as one of those divinely appointed guardians and servers? God forbid that she should be guilty of such pride! But beneath what the mind chooses to admit to itself lie convictions that shape our lives.

There had never been any suggestion that Aunt might go with the family on the great expedition to launch Mary-Jacobine upon the world. Aunt did not repine. She knew she was unsightly. Yes, yes, she insisted upon it, and when Marie-Louise or Mary-Jacobine or the Senator protested that it was not so, she would smile sweetly and say, Now dear, you don’t have to be kind. I know what I look like, and I have offered it up.

This business of “offering up” figured largely in Aunt’s religious life. After that terrible affair at Rideau Hall, she had offered up her attachment to Vergile Tisserant, as a sacrifice she hoped would be acceptable at the Heavenly Throne. Before Vergile there had been Joseph Crone, who had decided that he would rather be a Jesuit than Aunt’s husband, and she had offered him up, too. She offered up her ugliness, as an act of acceptance and humility. Oh, Aunt had plenty of gifts for God, and perhaps God was grateful, for He had given her quite a lot of power in her small sphere.

Letters from Marie-Louise and less often from Mary-Jacobine kept her aware of how things were going in England. Neither of the ladies had much gift for writing but—the mother in French, the daughter in English—they tried for as long as they could to keep Aunt informed. But a new kind of life, and new people, so far removed from anything Aunt had known, were not in their power to describe, and the letters grew fewer and briefer.

Aunt accepted this without complaint. She had much to do, maintaining St. Kilda in good order, and keeping the servants up to the mark. These were a Polish housemaid, Anna Lemenchick, who was so short as to be almost a dwarf, but broad beyond the ordinary, and a cook, Victoria Cameron, who was always on the verge of being dismissed because she had a fiery Highland temper and was apt, in the phrase Aunt used, to “kick right over the traces,” if she were crossed. Everything was against Victoria; to begin, she was a Protestant, and there were plenty of Catholic cooks to be had; as well as a temper she had a rough tongue in her head, and gave saucy answers; she was also astonishingly bow-legged, and could be heard all over the house, tramping around the kitchen like a great horse. With these disadvantages it was not surprising that nobody noticed that she had a beautiful dark face, like one of the Spanish Madonnas Aunt admired so whole-heartedly. But who ever heard of a beautiful cook? Victoria’s trump card was that she was by many lengths the best cook in Blairlogie, a natural genius, and the Senator would not hear of letting her go. These, with visits twice a week from Mrs. August, a Pole who did the rough cleaning, made up the indoor staff.

The outdoor staff was all embodied in a drunken detrimental called Old Billy, who cared for and drove the horses, shovelled snow, cut grass, exterminated the flowers, and was supposed to do heavy lifting and any odd jobs that turned up. But Old Billy was a devout Catholic and a noisy repenter of his misdeeds and frequent toots, so it was impossible to get rid of him, grave trial that he was.

It was Aunt who looked after young Mary-Tess when she was home on holiday from the convent. That was easy, for Mary-Tess was a cheerful girl, and skating and tobogganing were her great pleasures. Aunt had little pleasures of her own. There was her music; she played and sang. And there was a weekly visit from the Senator’s mother-in-law, old Madame Thibodeau, a stately lady far gone in fat, who spoke no English but enjoyed a gossip in French, in which Aunt was as fluent as her brother. Old Billy was sent with the barouche, or in winter with the elegant scarlet cutter, to haul her up the hill every Thursday at four, and haul her back again, substantially heavier because of the great tea she had eaten, at half past five. Each month there was a visit from Father Devlin and Father Beaudry, of St. Bonaventura’s; as a guarantee of total chastity, they visited the old maid together, and devoured huge meals in gloomy silence, occasionally punctuated by the more edifying bits of parish news. Irregular and unforeseeable were visits from Dr. J.A.—Dr. Joseph Ambrosius Jerome, the leading Catholic physician of Blairlogie, who kept an eye on Aunt because she was supposed to be frail.

He was by far her liveliest visitor. A little, spare, very dark, grinning man, saturnine in his appearance and alarming in his opinions, he was locally believed to have powers of healing verging on the miraculous. He “brought back” lumbermen who had chopped themselves in the foot with one of their terrible axes and were in danger of blood-poisoning. He sewed up Poles who had decided some obscure point of honour with knives. He saw people through double pneumonia with poultices and inhalations and sheer exercise of his healing power. He told women to have no more babies, and threatened their husbands with dreadful reprisals if this were not so. He blasted out the constipated and salved their angry haemorrhoids with ointments of opium. He could diagnose worms at a glance, and drag a tapeworm from its lair with horrible potions.

If not actually an atheist, the Doctor was known to have dark beliefs nobody wanted to explore. He was rumoured to know more theology than Father Devlin and Father Beaudry clapped together. He read books that were on the Index, some of them in German. But he was trusted, and nobody trusted him more than Aunt.

He understood her case, you see. He knew her nerves as nobody else knew them. He hinted darkly that to be a maiden lady at her age was not altogether a safe thing, and to her terrible embarrassment he sometimes demanded to squeeze her pallid little breasts, and peep up her most secret passage, assisted by a flashlight and a cold tube called a speculum. A man who has done that has a very special place in a virgin’s life. And he teased her. Teased her and taunted her and refused to take her at all seriously; if she had known anything intimate about herself, she would have realized that she loved him. As it was, she knew him as a close, terrifying friend, upon whom she placed the uttermost reliance. He was almost more than a priest—a priest with a strong whiff of the Devil about him.

It was to the Doctor that she first confided the news, contained in a letter that had come from Marie-Louise, that Mary-Jim was to be married! Yes, married to an Englishman, a Major Francis Cornish, very much a swell, it appeared. Well, wouldn’t you know that Mary-Jim wouldn’t be long without a husband. Such a lovely girl! And it looked as if they would be coming to Blairlogie to live. We shall have to polish up our manners for the English swell, won’t we? Whatever would he think of such an old auntie as herself—such a figure of fun!

“I dare say it won’t be long before he’ll want to know what’s under that cap,” said the Doctor. “What’ll you tell him, then, Mary-Ben? If he’s a soldier as you say, I suppose he’s seen worse things.” And the Doctor departed, laughing and scooping the remains of the cake-tray into his pocket. It was for some children in the Polish section, but he took care to make it look like greed.

At a later visit, Aunt was bursting with news. They’d been married! Somewhere in Switzerland, apparently. A place called Montreux. And they were going to stay there for a while, on a honeymoon, before coming home. Madame Thibodeau had been delighted; a honeymoon in a French-speaking land seemed somehow to mitigate the Major’s terrible Englishness.

The Senator and Marie-Louise returned to Blairlogie late in the autumn, and were less communicative than Aunt had expected. Very soon, of course, it had to come out—some of it, anyhow. Mary-Jacobine and the Major had been married by the English chaplain in Montreux, in the English Church. Now it’s no good taking it like that, Mary-Ben; the thing’s done, and we can’t change it. We can pray, of course, that he may see the light at last, though I don’t think he’s much of a man for changes. Now, put a good face on it, and stop weeping, because I’ll have to tell Father Devlin, and he’ll tell Father Beaudry, and only God knows what the town will make of it. Yes, I did all I could, and I might as well have saved my breath. I’ll have to tell Mary-Tess, too, what her sister’s done, and believe me I’ll make her understand that there’s to be no more of that sort of thing in this family. Oh, Mother of God, there’ll be Mother Mary-Basil to tell, and that won’t be an easy letter to write; you’ll have to help me. Hamish just takes it like a mule; there’s no getting anything out of him.

The regrettable baby was not brought into the conversation at this point, or later, till at last a telegram came: “My wife delivered of a boy last night. Regards, Cornish.” The telegram came sufficiently late in the year following to still the counting fingers, Aunt’s among them, with which Blairlogie greeted all first children.

Of course the town knew all about it, and supposed much that nobody had told. The local paper, The Clarion, had announced the wedding in a brief piece, without saying anything about the Protestant aspect of the marriage, but as the name of the officiating clergyman was the Rev. Canon White, it was not necessary. There was the spite of that Tory rag for you! They knew that everybody would understand at once. Thank God the proviso number four was still a secret, but how long would that last! Later The Clarion announced the good news of the birth of Francis Chegwidden Cornish, son of Major and Mrs. Francis Chegwidden Cornish; grandson of our popular Senator, the Hon. James Ignatius McRory and Mrs. McRory; and great-grandson of Madame Jean Telesphore Thibodeau. But these were bare bones; rumour supplied ample flesh. The Tory-Scots talked.

You’d have thought the girl could have found a Canadian now, wouldn’t you?—Oh, but nobody’d be good enough. The Senator has made a proper fool of that girl.—What foot d’you suppose he digs with?—Oh, sure to be an R.C. with all that raft of priests and nuns in the family and old Mary-Ben with her holy pictures all over the house (some of them right in the sitting-room, wouldn’t it give you the creeps!)—he couldn’t be anything but an R.C. Not that I ever heard of an Englishman that was.—Anglicans, so far as they’re anything. But somebody told me she met this fella at the Court.—Yes, and more than that, the King himself had a hand in the match—sort of hinted, you know, but that’s just like an order—Well, no doubt we’ll find out soon enough. Not that they’ll be telling me, a Tory through and through. Would you believe it, I’ve lived in Blairlogie for sixty-seven years, and generations before me, and a McRory has never so much as given me a good-day?—They smell the Protestant blood in you, that’s what it is.—Yes, the black drop, they call it.

But at last, more than a year later, Major and Mrs. Cornish and their infant son arrived in Blairlogie on the afternoon train from Ottawa. If ever the town looked well, it did so in autumn, when the maples were blazing, and close watchers said Mary-Jim wept a little as she stepped into the barouche in which Old Billy drove them to St. Kilda. The child was in her arms, in a long shawl. The Major, without hesitation, took the two seats facing forward for himself and his wife, leaving the seats with their backs to Old Billy for the Senator and Marie-Louise. Watchers did not fail to notice that. There was a mass of luggage on the station platform for Old Billy to pick up later—military trunks, metal boxes, and queer-shaped leather cases that might be guns.

When they retired that night, the Major had some questions to ask.

“Precisely who is the old party in the little cap?”

“I’ve told you times without number. She’s my aunt, my father’s sister, and she lives here. It’s her home.”

“Rum old soul, isn’t she? Wants to call me Frank. Well, no harm in that, I suppose. What did you say her name was?”

“Mary-Benedetta, but you’d better call her Mary-Ben. Everybody does.”

“You’re all Mary-Something, aren’t you? Jolly rum!”

“Family Catholic custom. And listen—you’re not the one to talk about caps.”

The Major was applying the special mixture, which smelled like walnuts, to his hair, before he put on the woollen cap that supposedly hugged the dressing to his head and delayed baldness, of which he had a dread.

“Eats a lot for a little ’un, doesn’t she?”

“I’ve never noticed. She has terrible indigestion. A martyr to gas.”

“I’m not surprised. Let’s hope she doesn’t go the way of Jesse Welch.”

“Who was he?”

“I only know his epitaph:

Here lies the body of Jesse Welch

Who died of holding back a belch:

The belch did in his pipes expand

And blew him to the Promised Land.”

“Ah, but Mary-Ben couldn’t belch to save her life. Too much a lady.”

“Well, it had better go somewhere, or—BANG!”

“Don’t be diskie, Frank. Come to bed.”

The Major now did what he always did last thing before going to bed. He removed his monocle, for the first time in the day, polished it carefully, and laid it in a little velvet box. Then he tied on a strap of pink netting which held his moustache in place overnight and enabled it to defy its natural instinct. He climbed into the high bed and took his wife in his arms.

“The sooner we build our own house, the better, wouldn’t you say, old girl?”

“My very thought,” said Mary-Jim, and kissed him. She regarded the moustache-strap as no detriment. It was a conjugal rather than a romantic kiss.

Contrary to probability, during the year past they had become fond of one another. But neither was fond of the child that lay silent in the crib at the foot of the bed.

There was no use delaying the matter, and the next day Dr. J. A. Jerome was asked to take a look at the baby. Dr. Jerome investigating a case was not the jokey, chattering man he was in social meetings, and he did a number of things without speaking. Clapped his hands near the baby’s ear, passed a lighted match before its eyes, poked it here and there and even pinched it, then pinched it again, to make sure he had heard its curious cry. He measured its scalp and probed the fontanelle with a long finger.

“The Swiss man was right,” he said at last. “Now we must see what we can do.”

To the Senator, upon whom he dropped in that night for a dram, he was more communicative.

“They’ll never raise that one,” said he. “No point in sparing you, Hamish; the child’s an idjit, and the mercy is it won’t live long.”

THE CORNISHES lost no time in building their house on a piece of land that was visible from St. Kilda, being beyond the big house’s garden and across a road. It was not as large as the Senator’s mansion, but it was a large house all the same, and Blairlogie people joked that perhaps the Major intended to take boarders. What did two young people, with one child, want with a house the like of that? It was modern, too, in the manner that passed as modern at the time, and word got around that several of the rooms weren’t meant to have wallpaper, and were plastered in a gritty way that must be intended to take paint. There were a great many windows, too, as if it wasn’t hard enough to heat a house in that climate without having so much glass. It had steam-heating, expensive though it was, and so many bathrooms that the thing was a perfect scandal—bathrooms right off the bedrooms, and a washroom with a toilet in it on the ground floor, so that you couldn’t decently conceal where you were going when you went. Snoopers were not encouraged, though it was the local custom to visit any house during its building, just to see what was going on.

The scandal of the house, however, was minor compared to the scandal of seeing the Major and his wife walking to the Anglican church, most Sunday mornings. That was a slap in the eye for the McRorys, now wasn’t it? A mixed marriage! Just wait till the boy grows up a little. He’ll be an R.C. right enough. The Papists would never let him go.

But the boy was not seen. He was never taken out in his baby-carriage, and when Mary-Jim was asked about him directly, she said he was delicate and needed special care. Probably born with one glass eye, like his father, said the ribald. Maybe he was a cripple, said the people who failed to add that in Blairlogie there were more cripples than he. They would find out, in time.

They did not find out when the house was completed, and furnished. (Did you see the carloads of furniture coming into the station, from Ottawa and as far away as Montreal?) Mary-Jim knew what had to be done, and in due time a small notice appeared in The Clarion announcing that on a certain day in June Mrs. Francis Cornish would be At Home at Chegwidden Lodge.

This meant, according to local custom, that anyone not positively Polish was free to come, drink a cup of tea, and look around. They came in hundreds, trudged all over the house, rubbed fabrics between their fingers, covertly looked in drawers and cupboards, sucked in their lips, and murmured jealously among themselves. Didn’t it beat the band! The money that must have been poured out! Well, it was nice for them that had it. And Chegwidden Lodge—what were you to make of that? The postmaster’s wife said that her husband had half a mind to insist that letters be addressed to 17 Walter Street, which is what the vacant lot had been before this mansion was set up. Everybody agreed, out of her earshot, that the postmaster had only half a mind at the best of times, and nothing of the sort happened. The postmaster’s wife reported that letters were posted with Chegwidden Lodge plainly printed on the envelopes. Their own stationery! And Mary-Jim correcting everybody about the way to say it, and wanting them to say Cheggin, as if they couldn’t read plain English—if that word was English, mind you.

The day Mary-Jim received Blairlogie was also the last day she did anything of the sort; she had only agreed to a single occasion because of her father’s political position. There was no sign of the baby. It was usual for babies to hold court, and be exclaimed over, as the wonders they were.

The baby had a nurse, a starched, grim-faced woman from Ottawa, who made no friends. A rumour went around that when the baby cried, its cry was queer—the queerest thing you ever heard. Victoria Cameron made it her business to track down the source of this rumour, and, as she suspected, it was Dominique Tremblay, the maid at Chegwidden Lodge. Victoria descended upon Dominique and told her that if she ever dared to open her mouth about family matters again, she, Victoria Cameron, would rip the soul-case out of her. Dominique, terrified, said no more. But when she was questioned, she rolled her eyes dramatically, and laid her finger to her lips; this made rumour worse.

Rumour whispered that the ailing child was the victim of some fault in the father (you know what those old English families are) or—hush!—one of those diseases soldiers pick up from foreign harlots. That would be why Mary-Jim had no more children. Was it choice or inability? Rumour knew of women whose insides were simply a mass of corruption from diseases communicated to them by their husbands. Such speculation kept Rumour pleasantly engaged in dispute for some time.

Rumour was checked after February 1909 when Dr. Jerome told Mary-Jim that she was pregnant again. This was both good and bad news to the Cornishes. The Major was delighted that there was to be a child of his loins—a son, he was certain—and so was Mary-Jim. Although they would not have passed as a loving couple, they were congenial, and invariably as polite to one another as if they weren’t married at all, Blairlogie said. But with the caprice of domestics, the starched, grim woman from Ottawa chose this moment to leave. People who discharge employees have to give reasons; employees are under no obligation to explain why they leave. Still, the starched, grim woman volunteered the opinion that another year in Blairlogie would be the death of her, and added insultingly that she had always heard it was the Jumping-Off Place, and now she knew it. So Mary-Jim was pregnant, and had the care of the sick child, except for such help as Victoria Cameron could give her. Victoria showed every sign of becoming a family retainer and champion, although she was still not much more than thirty. Dominique Tremblay was not to be trusted, and was kept out of the nursery.

This was inconvenient, for the Senator wanted his cook in his own kitchen. The Major fussed over his wife like a bridegroom, and was angry with fate when she was tired and in low spirits. Dr. Jerome said something had to be done, and, having said it to the Cornishes and to Marie-Louise and Aunt Mary-Ben, he said it with special emphasis to the Senator, once again as they sat in the uniquely panelled library, over a dram.

“I won’t make strange on you, Hamish, it would be far better for everybody if that child had not lived. It’s a burden, and it will always be a burden, and it’ll be a burden to the new child, because a dooley elder brother is a weight to carry.”

“You said it wouldn’t live when first they brought it home.”

“I know I did, and I was right. It’s the child that’s wrong. It has no business to be going on living, the way it is. Five years! It’s utterly unscientific.”

“And of course there’s nothing in the world to be done about it.”

The Doctor paused: “I’m not so sure of that.”

“Joe—you don’t suggest—?”

“No, I don’t. I’m a Catholic like yourself, Hamish, and a pillar of the Church, even if I’m an external pillar. A life is sacred, whatever its quality may be. But if that Swiss man had had any sense he wouldn’t have been such a busybody when it was born. The first five minutes, you know—you don’t invite death, but you let nature make its choice. I’ve done it myself scores of times, and never a twinge of conscience. Some of these fellows, you know, are too anxious to show their skill to have any discretion or humanity. But I tell you plump and plain, I wish that boy were out of the way. He’s bad for Mary-Jim, and he’s bad for all of you!”

“Well, but what did you mean, Joe, when you said you weren’t sure. What weren’t you sure of?”

“The child isn’t what it was a few months ago. We may be quit of it yet—and the sooner the better.”

Apparently Dr. Jerome’s suspicions were well founded, for a few days later, after a blazing row with the Major, Marie-Louise summoned Father Devlin in a hurry, and the sick child was baptized for the second time, as a Catholic. And it was only a day or two later that one of the top workmen at the Senator’s planing-mill made a small coffin—made it beautifully. And at night a little procession of two carriages took its way to the Catholic cemetery—a bleak, windswept, treeless place and in March dreadfully cold. It was as private as such an affair can be. Old Billy had dug the little grave with pick and shovel breaking the frost-bound soil, and he it was who stood in the background as the Senator and Marie-Louise, Aunt Mary-Ben, and Major Cornish heard Father Devlin read the burial service. The Senator and the Major carried coal-oil lamps to light the scene. There were no tears as the Senator’s first grandchild was buried in the otherwise empty McRory plot.

When the spring came, it was Aunt Mary-Ben who saw to the placing of a little white marble marker—it was only a foot wide, and lifted itself above the earth no more than three inches—on which raised letters said FRANCIS.

Mary-Jim’s pregnancy went splendidly after that, and on September 12 the subject of Simon Darcourt’s biography was born, and christened, in the Anglican Church, Francis Chegwidden Cornish.

SO YOUR MAN makes his appearance on the scene at last, said the Lesser Zadkiel. You were at the birth, of course?

—Where else would I be, said the Daimon Maimas. I’d been on the job, so to speak, since the boy was conceived on December the tenth, 1908, at 11:37 p.m.

—What precisely was it you needed to do? said the Biographical Angel.

—Obey orders, of course. When Francis was conceived—at the very moment of the Major’s fortunate orgasm, They summoned me and said This is yours; do well by him but don’t show off.

—Had you been showing off?

—I never think that a few flourishes do any harm to a life and perhaps I have overdone it, once or twice. But They take a very different view. When They gave me Francis They said, don’t show off and I tried my best not to show off. That family needed an influence like me.

—You found them dull?

—My dear Zadkiel, we haven’t even touched on Blairlogie. There was dullness for you! But its been my experience, over several aeons, that a good dull beginning does no harm to an interesting life. Your man runs so hard to get away from the dullness he was born to that you can do very interesting things with him. Put them into his head to do himself, that’s to say. Without me, Francis would just have been a good, solid citizen like the rest of them. Of course, I knew all there was to know about the burial of the first Francis. There was a rum thing, as the Major said at the time.

—You haven’t any pity, Maimas.

—Neither have you, Zadkiel, and don’t pretend you have. Long. long ago—if we must talk as though time had any meaning for us—I learned that when a tutelary spirit like myself is given a life to watch over, pity merely makes a mess of things. Far better to put your man over the hurdles and scrape him through the hedges, and toughen him up. It is not my work to protect softies.

—Well, shall we get on with the story, now that we have reached Francis? It was necessary to tell about his immediate forebears in some detail, because they were what was bred in his bone, which poor Darcourt wants to find out.

—Yes, but now I am on the job—I, Maimas the Daimon, the Tutelary Spirit, the Indwelling Essence. Though he was a McRory, and a Cornish, and all that goes with such a mixture, I also was what was bred in his bone, right from the instant of his conception. And that made all the difference.