The Manticore

MYSELF: Oh, he laughed it off. Said Denyse would manage it if anyone could. Didn't want to talk about it. But it never happened. The College took a long time answering letters and asked for information that was hard to provide. I knew all about it because by this time my old friend Pledger-Brown was one of the pursuivants, and we had always written to each other at least once a year. One of his letters said, as I remember it, "This can never be, you know; not even your Stepdame's New World determination can make you Stauntons of Longbridge. My colleague in charge of the matter is trying to persuade her to apply for new arms, which your father might legitimately have, for after all bags of gold are a very fair earnest of gentility, and always have been. But she is resolute, and nothing will do but a long and very respectable descent. It is one of the touching aspects of our work here in the College that so many of you New World people, up to the eyebrows in all the delights of republicanism, hanker after a link with what is ancient and rubbed by time to a fine sheen. It's more than snobbery; more than romanticism; it's a desire for an ancestry that somehow postulates a posterity and for an existence in the past that is a covert guarantee of immortality in the future. You talk about individualism; what you truly want is to be links in a long unbroken chain. But you, with our secret about Maria Ann and the child whose father might have been all Staunton, know of a truth which is every bit as good in its way, even though you use it only as food for your sullen absalonism."

DR. VON HALLER: Absalonism; I do not know that word. Explain it, please.

MYSELF: It was one of Adrian's revivals of old words. It refers to Absalom, the son of King David, who resisted and revolted against his father.

DR. VON HALLER: A good word. I shall remember it.

14

The time was drawing near to Christmas, when I knew that Dr. von Haller would make some break in my series of appointments. But I was not prepared for what she said when next we met.

"Well, Mr. Staunton, we seem to have come to the end of your anamnesis. Now it is necessary to make a decision about what you are going to do next."

"The end? But I have a sheaf of notes still! I have all sorts of questions to ask."

"Doubtless. It is possible to go on as we have been doing for several years. But you have been at this work for a little more than one year, and although we could haggle over fine points and probe sore places for at least another year, I think that for you that is unnecessary. Ask your questions of yourself. You are now in a position to answer them."

"But if I give wrong answers?"

"You will soon know that they are wrong. We have canvassed the main points in the story of your life; you are equipped to attend to details."

"I don't feel it. I'm not nearly through with what I have to say."

"Have you anything to say that seems to you extraordinary?"

"But surely I have been having the most remarkable spiritual – well, anyhow, psychological – adventures?"

"By no means, Mr. Staunton. Remarkable in your personal experience, which is what counts, but – forgive me – not at all remarkable in mine."

"Then you mean this is the end of my work with you?"

"Not if you decide otherwise. But it is the end of this work – this reassessment of some personal, profound experience. But what is most personal is not what is most profound. If you want to continue – and you must not be in a hurry to say you will – we shall proceed quite differently. We shall examine the archetypes with which you are already superficially familiar, and we shall go beyond what is personal about them. I assure you that is very close and psychologically demanding work. It cannot be undertaken if you are always craving to be back in Toronto, putting Alpha and Castor and all those things into good order. But you are drinking quite moderately now, aren't you? The symptom you complained of has been corrected. Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"Yes, though I had almost forgotten that was what I came for."

"Your general health is much improved? You sleep better?"

"Yes."

"And you will not be surprised or angry when I say you are a much pleasanter, easier person?"

"But if I go on – what then?"

"I cannot tell you, because I don't know, and in this sort of work we give no promises."

"Yes, but you have experience of other people. What happens to them?"

"They finish their work, or that part of it that can be done here, with a markedly improved understanding of themselves, and that means of much that goes beyond self. They are in better command of their abilities. They are more fully themselves."

"Happier, in fact."