“What trivial minds you men have,” said Gunilla. “When you talk about artists living for pomp and glory, Powell, speak for yourself. What you say, Simon, seems to me to mean keeping the boy up to high principles. Making a man of him. You need have no doubts about me.”
“Good,” said Darcourt. “May I see you all at the chapel on Sunday, then, at three o’clock? Sober and decently dressed?”
When they were leaving, Powell going off to his accustomed bedroom, Darcourt took his opportunity to speak to Maria alone.
“You said nothing about names, Maria. Have you no preference as to what the child should be named?”
“I haven’t forgotten my Gypsy ways, Simon dear. When the child came out of me and gave a cry, they laid it on my breast, and I named him. Gave him his real name. Whispered it into his tiny ear. And whatever you do on Sunday, that will be his name forever.”
“Are you going to tell me what the name is?”
“Certainly not! He will never hear it again until he reaches puberty, when I shall whisper it to him again. He has a proper Gypsy name, and it will go with him and protect him as long as he lives. But it is a secret between him and me.”
“You have been ahead of me, then?”
“Of course. I didn’t think I’d do it, but just before he left my body forever, I knew I would. What’s bred in the bone, you know.”
9
Except for one minor mishap, the christening went smoothly. Only the parents, the godparents, and the baby were present; the Cranes had to be told plainly that they might not come. Al murmured incoherently about objective correlatives and the link between the birth of the child and the birth of the opera. It would, he said, make a terrific and unexpected footnote to the Regiebuch. Mabel begged to be allowed to come simply on the ground that she wanted to see what a christening was like. But when Darcourt suggested that she could manage that by having her own impending child christened, she and Al were quick to say that they did not believe that a few words mumbled by a parson over their child could make any difference to his future life.
Darcourt forbore to tell them that he thought they were wrong, and silly in their wrongness. He had reservations about many of the things which he, as a clergyman, was expected to believe and endorse publicly, but about the virtues of baptism he had no doubt. Its solely Christian implications apart, it was the acceptance of a new life into a society that thereby declared that it had a place for that new life; it was an assertion of an attitude toward life that was expressed in the Creed which was a part of the service in a form archaic and compressed but full of noble implication. The parents and godparents might think they did not believe that Creed, as they recited it, but it was plain to Darcourt that they were living in a society which had its roots in that Creed; if there had been no Creed, and no cause for the formulation of that Creed, vast portions of civilization would never have come into being, and those who smiled at the Creed or disregarded it altogether nevertheless stood firmly on its foundation. The Creed was one of the great signposts in the journey of mankind from a primitive society toward whatever was to come, and though the signpost might be falling behind in the march of civilization, it had marked a great advance from which there could be no permanent retreat.
Hollier had decided to accept the baptismal ceremony as a rite of passage, an acceptance of a new member into the tribe. Good enough, thought Darcourt, but such rites had a resonance not heard by the tin ear of the rationalist. Rationalism, thought Darcourt, was a handsomely intellectual way of sweeping a lot of significant, troublesome things under the rug. But the implications of the rite were not banished because some very clever people did not feel them.
Powell wanted to be a godfather with his fingers crossed. He wanted to make promises he had no intention of keeping—and indeed who can hope to keep the promises of a godfather in all their ramifications? Very well. But Powell wanted to be a godfather because it was as near as he was likely to come to being acknowledged as the real father of the child. Powell could not resist a solemn ceremony of any kind. He was one of the many, who should not therefore be despised, who wanted serious inner matters given a serious outer form, and this was what made him a true and devout child of the drama, which at its best is precisely such an objectification of what is important in life. Darcourt thought he knew what Powell meant better than Powell did himself.
He had no misgivings about Gunilla. There was a woman who could see beyond the language of a creed to the essence of a creed. Gunilla was sound as a bell.
As for Arthur and Maria, the birth of the child seemed to have drawn them nearer than they had ever been before. The blessing that children bring is a cliché. It is as corny as the rhymes of Ella Wheeler Wilcox about art. But one of the most difficult tasks for the educated and sophisticated mind is to recognize that some clichés are also important truths.
It is a cliché that the birth of a child is a symbol of hope, however disappointed and distressed that hope may at last prove to be. The baptism is a ceremony in which that hope is announced, and Hope is one of the knightly virtues in a sense that the Cranes, for instance, had not understood, and might perhaps never understand. The hope embodied in the small body of Arthur David Nikolas as Darcourt took him in his arms and sained him, was, in part, the hope of the marriage of Arthur and Maria. The silver link, the silken tie.
It was after the blessing of the child, and the saining with water, that the slight accident occurred. Following an old custom, now revived by ritualists like Darcourt, he lighted three candles from the great candle that stood beside the font, and handed them to the godparents, saying, “Receive the light of Christ, to show that you have passed from darkness to light.”
Hollier and Gunilla, understanding that they did this on behalf of the child, took their candles with dignity, and Gunilla bowed her head in reverence.
Powell, startled, dropped his candle, spilling wax down his clothes, and scrambled for it on the floor, murmuring, unsuitably, “Oh, my God!” Maria giggled and the child, which had been an angel of propriety even when its head was wetted, gave a loud wail.
Darcourt took the candle from Powell, relighted it, and said, “Receive the light of Christ, in your astonishment of heart, to show that you have passed from darkness to light.”
“That was a bloody good ad lib of yours, Sim bach,” said Powell, at the party afterward. “I’ve never heard a better on the stage.”
“I think yours was even better, Geraint bach,” said Darcourt.
10
The artists and artificers who are assembled to put an opera on the stage make up a closed society, and no one who is not of the elect may hope to penetrate it. There is no ill-will in this; it is simply that people deep in an act of creation take their whole lives with them into that act, and the world outside becomes shadowy until the act is completed, the regular schedule of performances established, and the strength of association somewhat relaxed.
Those who are on the outside feel this keenly. As the last weeks of work on Arthur of Britain progressed, Arthur and Maria sensed the chill. Of course they were welcome everywhere—which is to say that nobody quite liked to ask them to go away. They were known to be the “angels”. They paid the bills, the salaries, all the multifarious costs of a complicated project, and therefore they had to be treated with courtesy; but it was cold courtesy. Even their intimate friend Powell whispered to their other intimate friend Darcourt, “I wish Arthur and Maria weren’t always bumming around while we’re working.”
Darcourt had his place in the adventure; he was the librettist, and however unlikely it was that any words would be changed at so late a point in the proceedings, he was free to come and go, and if Powell suddenly wanted him to explain a difficult passage to a singer, it was a nuisance if he were not at the rehearsal. Because of her shadowy association with the libretto, even Penny Raven appeared at rehearsals without any questioning looks. But not the angels.