“And she left home?”
“Walked out in what she stood up in, after a few months I wouldn’t go through again for any money. Have any of you people any children?”
Shaking of heads.
“Then you can’t know what Mother and I went through. We never hear from her. But of course we hear about her, because I make inquiries. She’s done well in the university I grant you. But what has the cost been? We see her, sometimes, when we take care she doesn’t see us, and my heart is sore to see her.—I’m afraid she’s fallen.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well—what would I mean? I’m afraid she’s living an immoral life. Where else would she get money?”
“Students do get jobs, you know. They do earn money, quite legitimately. I know scores of students who finance their own studies doing jobs that only a young, strong person could do, and keep up a program of studies at the same time. They are a very honourable group, Mr. Schnakenburg.”
“You’ve seen her. Who would give her a job, looking the way she does?”
“She’s as thin as a rake,” said Mrs. Schnakenburg. It was her only contribution to the conversation.
“Do you really hate the idea of us giving her this chance?” said Maria.
“To be frank with you, Mrs. Cornish—yes, we do. But what can we say? She’s not a minor, according to law. We’re poor people and you’re rich people. You have no children, so you can’t know the pain of children. I hope for your sake it will always be so. You have ideas about all this music and art and other stuff that we don’t have and don’t want. We can’t fight you. The world would say we were standing in Hulda’s way. But the world doesn’t come first with us. There’s other things to be thought of. We’re beaten. Don’t think we don’t know it.”
“We certainly don’t want you to think that you are beaten or that we have beaten you,” said Arthur. “I wish you would try to see things a little more our way. We sincerely want to give your daughter the chance her talents entitle her to.”
“I know you mean kindly. When I say we’re beaten I guess I mean we’re beaten for the present. But we’ve given Hulda something too, you know. We’ve given her the source of all real strength. And we pray—we pray every night, for as much as an hour, sometimes—that she will come back to that before it’s too late. God’s mercy is infinite, but if you kick Him in the face enough, He can be pretty stern. We’ll bring our girl back to God if prayer can do it.”
“You don’t despair, then,” said Maria.
“Certainly not. Despair is one of the worst sins. It questions God’s intentions and His power. We don’t despair. But we are human, and weak. We can’t help being hurt.”
That was that. After a few more exchanges in which Schnakenburg yielded nothing, while remaining perfectly polite, the couple left.
There was heavy silence in the room. Arthur and Maria seemed greatly put down, but Darcourt was in good spirits. He went to the bar-cupboard in the corner and set to work to make the drinks they had not thought it polite to have while the Schnakenburgs, obviously dry types, were present. As he poured, he sang under his breath:
“Tell me the old, old story
Of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory
Of Jesus and His love.”
“Simon, don’t be facetious,” said Maria.
“I’m only trying to cheer you up. Why are you so down in the mouth?”
“Those two have made me feel absolutely rotten,” said Arthur. “The unfeeling, fancy-pants rich man, childless and obsessed with vanities, steals away the jewel of their lives.”
“She stole herself away long before you heard of her,” said Darcourt.
“You know what I mean. The overbearingness of the rich and privileged.”
“Arthur, you are not well. You are open to subtle psychological attack. And that’s what you’ve had. That man Schnakenburg knows every trick in the book to make people feel rotten who don’t share his attitude toward life. It’s an underdog’s revenge. You are not supposed to kick the underdog, but it’s perfectly okay for the underdog to bite you. One of the insoluble injustices of society. Pay no heed. Just go right on as before.”
“I’m surprised at you, Simon. That man was talking from the depths of a profound religious feeling. We don’t share it, but we must in decency respect it.”
“Look, Arthur. I’m the expert on religion here. Don’t bother your head about it.”
“You are a High Church ritualist, and you despise their simplicity. I didn’t think you were such a snob, Simon.” Maria spoke angrily.
“In your heart you are still a superstitious Gypsy girl, and when anybody talks about God you go all of a doodah. I don’t despise anybody’s simplicity. But I know when a pretence of simplicity is a clever play for power.”
“What power has that man?” said Arthur.
“Obviously the power to make you feel rotten,” said Darcourt.
“You’re unjust, Simon,” said Maria; “he talked with such certainty and trust about God. It made me feel like a frivolous ninny.”
“Look, children—listen to old Abbé Darcourt and stop hating yourselves. I’ve listened to hundreds of people like that. They have certainty and depth of belief but they buy it at the price of a joyless, know-nothing attitude toward life. All they ask of God is a kind of spiritual Minimum Wage and in return they are ready to give up the sweets of life—which God also made, let me remind you. I call believers like that the Friends of the Minimum. God, who is an incorrigible joker, has landed them with a daughter who wants to join the Friends of the Maximum, and you can help her. Her parents’ faith is like a little candle, burning in the night; your Cornish Foundation is, let’s say for the sake of modesty, a forty-watt bulb which may light her to a better life. Don’t switch off the forty-watt bulb because the candle looks so pitiably weak. Schnak is in a mess. Indeed, Schnak looks like a mess, and is an odious little creature. But the only path for Schnak is forward, not backward toward a good job, a nice husband like Daddy, and kids born in the same chains. Father Schnakenburg is very tough. You’ve got to be tough, too.”
“I didn’t know you were a stoic, Simon,” said Arthur.
“I’m not a stoic. I’m that very unfashionable thing, an optimist. Give Schnak her chance.”
“Of course we will. We must, now. We’re committed to it. But I don’t like feeling that I’m trampling on the weak.”
“Oh, Arthur! You sentimental mutt! Can’t you see that being trampled on is victuals and drink to Schnakenburg? In the great electoral contest of life he is running for martyr, and you are helping him. He has his depth and certainty of belief. Where’s yours? You are running for the satisfaction of being a great patron. That’s a reasonable cause for certainty and belief. What ails you?”
“I suppose it’s money,” said Maria.
“Of course it is! You people both have the guilt that our society demands of the rich. Don’t give in to it! Show ‘em that money can do fine things.”
“By God, I believe you really are an optimist,” said Arthur.
“Well, that’s a start. Join me in my optimism and in time you may believe a few other things that I believe, which I never mention to you, because one thing I have learned in my work as a priest is that preaching to the poor is easy work compared with preaching to the rich. They have so much guilt, and they are so bloody pig-headed.”
“We’re not pig-headed! We are the ones who feel for the Schnakenburgs. You, the Abbé Darcourt, are sneering at them and urging us to sneer. You Anglican! You ritualist! You pompous professorial poop! You disgust me!”
“That is not argument. That is vulgar abuse, for which I will not even stoop to forgive you. I’ve played a part in the sort of scene we have just gone through more times than you can imagine. The jealousy of the humble parents for the gifted child! Old, stale goods, to me. The hitting below the belt because somebody has a bigger bank account than you, and must therefore be a mo
ral inferior! The favourite weapon of the self-righteous poor. The use of a mean form of religion to gain a status denied to the unbeliever: they tell you the Old, Old Story, and expect you to cave in. And you do. Real religion, my friends, is evolutionary and revolutionary and that’s what your Cornish Foundation had better be or it will be nothing.”
“You could have been a popular preacher, Simon,” said Maria.
“I’ve never fancied that sort of work; it inflates the ego and can lead to ruin.”
“You’ve made me feel rather better. I don’t know about Arthur.”
“You’re a good friend, Simon,” said Arthur. “I’m sorry I was nasty to you. I withdraw pompous and even poop. But you are professorial. Let’s forget the Schnakenburgs, in so far as we can. Are you making any headway with that book about Uncle Frank?”
“At last I think I am. I think I may be on to something.”
“Good. We want to see the book published, you know. I joke about it, but you understand. We trust you, Simon.”
“Thanks. I’m going ahead. By the way, you won’t see me for a week or so. I’m going hunting.”
“You can’t. It’s out of season.”
“Not for what I’m hunting. The season has just begun.”
Darcourt finished his drink, and departed, singing as he left the room,
“Tell me the old, old story,
Tell me the old, old story,
Tell me the old, old story
Of Jesus and His love.”
But the tone of his voice was ironic.
“A really good friend, the old Abbé,” said Arthur.
“I love him.”
“Platonically, I hope.”
“Of course. Can you doubt it?”
“In love I can doubt anything. I never take you for granted.”
“You could, you know.”
“By the way, you never told me what Mamusia told Simon while I was in hospital.”
“Just that we’ll all get our lumps, really.”
“I think I’ve had my lumps for a while. My mumps-lumps. But I’m coming round, at last. I think I’ll sleep in your bed tonight.”
“Arthur—I’d love that. But is it wise?”
“Darcourt’s doctrine of optimism. Let’s give it a go.”
And they did.
4
The room in the apartment on Park Avenue was splendid beyond anything Darcourt had ever experienced. It was the work of a brilliant decorator—so brilliant that he had been able to make a room of modest size in a New York apartment building seem authentically to be a room in a great house, perhaps a minor palace, in Europe. The grisaille panelling had certainly come from a palace but had been adjusted, pieced out, and trimmed so that it gave no hint that it had ever been anywhere else. The furniture was elegant, but comfortable in a way palace furniture never is, and enough of it was modern to allow people to sit on it without the uneasiness demanded by a valuable antique. There were pictures on the walls the decorator had not chosen, for they spoke of a coherent and personal taste, and some were rather ugly; but the decorator had hung them to greatest advantage. There were tables loaded with bibelots and bijouteries—what the decorator called “classy junk”—but it was classy junk that belonged to the owner of the room. Photographs in sepia colouring stood on a bonheur du jour; they were in frames decorated with coats of arms and crests that obviously belonged to the people whose likenesses were fading inside them. A beautiful but not foolish desk marked the room as a place of business. An elegantly uniformed maidservant had seated Darcourt, saying that the Princess would be with him in a few minutes.
She came in very quietly. A lady who might be in her fifties, but who looked much younger; a lady of great, but not professional, beauty; by far the most elegant lady Darcourt had ever encountered.
“I hope you have not been waiting long, Professor Darcourt. I was detained by a tedious telephone call.” The voice gentle, and hinting at merriment. The accent of someone who spoke English perfectly, as though instructed by an English governess, but with a hint of some underlying cradle tongue. French, perhaps? German? Darcourt could not tell.
“It is good of you to come to see me. Your letter was very interesting. You wanted to ask about the drawing?”
“If I may, Princess. It is Princess, isn’t it? The drawing caught my eye in a magazine. As of course it was intended to.”
“I am so glad to hear you say that. Of course it was meant to attract attention. You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had persuading the advertising people that it would do so. They are so very conventional, don’t you think? Oh, who is going to look at such an old-fashioned picture? they said. Everybody whose eye is wearied by the gaudy, pushy girls in the other advertisements, I said. But that is the way things are being done this year, they said. But what I am advertising is not just of this year, I said. It is meant to be more lasting. It is meant to appeal to people whose lives are not just fixed in this year, I said. I couldn’t persuade them. I had to insist.”
“And now they admit that you were right?”
“And now they are convinced it was their idea all the time. You do not know advertising men. Professor.”
“No, but I know people. I can quite believe what you tell me. Of course they have recognized the subject?”
“The head of a girl, early-seventeenth-century style? Yes, they know that.”
“They have not recognized the girl?”
“How would they?”
“By using the eyes in their heads. I knew the girl as soon as you came into this room. Princess.”
“Did you, indeed? You have a very keen eye. Possibly she was an ancestress of mine. The drawing is a family possession.”
“May I come directly to the point, Princess? I have seen preparatory studies for that drawing.”
“Have you really? Where, may I ask?”
“Among the possessions of a friend of mine, who was a gifted artist—particularly gifted in assuming the styles of earlier ages. He made countless drawings, copies from collections of such things; others from life, I should imagine, from the notations he made on the studies. There are five studies for the head which resulted in the picture you own, and which you have made public in your advertisements.”
“Where are these drawings at present?”
“In the National Gallery of Canada. My friend left them all his drawings and pictures.”
“Has anybody but yourself observed this astonishing resemblance?”
“Not yet. You know how galleries are. They have masses of things they have not catalogued. I saw the drawings when I was preparing my friend’s things for transfer to the Gallery. I was his executor in such matters. It could be years before those particular studies are given any careful scrutiny.”
“What was the name of this artist?”
“Francis Cornish.”
The Princess, who had seemed amused during all their conversation, burst into laughter.
“Le beau ténébreux!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That was what my governess and I called him. He taught me trigonometry. He was so handsome and solemn and proper, and I was longing for him to throw down his pencil and seize me in his strong arms and rain kisses on my burning lips and cry Fly with me! I shall take you to my ruined castle in the mountains and there we shall love, and love, and love until the stars bend down to marvel at us! I was fifteen at the time. Le beau ténébreux! What became of him?”
“He died about two years ago. As I say, I was one of his executors.”
“Had he some profession?”
“He was a collector and connoisseur. He was very rich.”
“So he had retired?”
“No indeed; he was quite active as a connoisseur.”
“I meant from his work.”
“His work?”
“I see you did not know of his work.”
“To what work do you refer? He had studied painting, I know.”
The Princess we
nt off into another peal of laughter.
“I don’t think I understand you, Princess.”
“Forgive me. I was just thinking about le beau ténébreux and his studies in painting. But that was not his real work, you know.”
Darcourt glowed with delight; here it was, at last! What had Francis Cornish been up to during those years of which he had no record? The Princess knew. Now was the time to spill the beans.
“I am hopeful that you are going to tell me what his real work was. Because I have undertaken to write a life of my old friend, and there is a long period from about 1937 until 1945, when he became active with the commission that was sorting out all that mass of pictures and sculptures that had gone astray during the war, about which information was very scant. Anything that you can tell me about that time in his life would be most helpful. This portrait of yourself, for instance; it suggests that you knew him on terms that go a little beyond being a tutor in trigonometry.”
“You think so?”
“I know a little about pictures. That drawing was made with unmistakable affection for the subject.”
“Oh, Professor Darcourt! I am afraid you are a dreadful flatterer!”
So I am, thought Darcourt, and I hope it works with this vain woman. But the vain woman was going on.
“Nevertheless, I think it is ungallant of you to suggest that I can remember 1937 at all, not to speak of studying trigonometry at that time. I had hoped that my looks did not betray so much.”
Damn, thought Darcourt; she must be in her middle sixties; I’ve put my foot in it. Never was good at figures.
“I assure you. Princess, that nothing of the sort entered my head.”
“You are still too young yourself, Professor, to know what time means to women. We take refuge in many helpful things. My line of cosmetics, for instance.”
“Ah, yes: I wish you every success.”
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