“Yes, but why in this mock sixteenth-century style?”

“Because it is the last style in which a painter could do what Francis was doing. After the Renaissance do you see any pictures that reveal all that a man knows about himself? The great self-portraits, of course. But even when Rembrandt painted himself in old age, he could only show what life had done to him, not how life had done it. With the Renaissance, painting took a new turn, and threw away all that allegorical-metaphysical stuff, all that symbolic communication. You probably don’t know that Francis was an expert on iconography—the way you discover what a painter meant, instead of just what anybody can see. In The Marriage he means to tell his own truth, as clearly as he can. And he wasn’t telling it to someone else. The picture was a confession, a summing-up, intended simply for himself. It’s a magnificent thing in several different ways.”

“Who’s the peculiar angel?” said Maria. “You left him out when you told us who all the characters were. He’s obviously somebody of the greatest importance.”

“I am virtually certain he was Francis’s elder brother. Only one of the sketches is labelled, but it is identified as Francis the First, and I can only guess that he was a very deep influence on Francis the Second’s whole life.”

“How? It looks like an idiot,” said Arthur.

“Presumably it was an idiot. You didn’t know your uncle. He was a deeply compassionate man. Oh, he had the reputation for being a curmudgeon, and he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and often he seemed to have no tolerance for people at all. But I knew him, and he was far beyond what people mean when they say tender-hearted—which can mean cabbage-headed. He had a sense of the profoundly tragic fragility of human life that I have never known in anyone else, and I am as sure as I can be of anything that it was the knowledge of this grotesque creature, this parody of what he was himself, that made him so. He was a romantic in his youth; look at the way he has painted the girl who became his wife, and let him down so painfully. Look at the dwarf; Francis knew that poor wretch, alive and dead, and he did what he could to balance the scales of Fate when he painted him. All the portraits in The Marriage are judgements on people Francis knew, and they are the judgements of a man who had been rudely booted out of a youthful romanticism into a finely compassionate realism. Now Arthur, for God’s sake don’t ask me again why he painted this summing-up of his life in this bygone style. It was the only style that would contain what he had to say. The Old Masters were deeply religious men, and this is a deeply religious picture.”

“I never heard anyone suggest that Uncle Frank was religious.”

“The word is greatly misunderstood in the turmoil of our day,” said Darcourt, “but in so far as it means seeking to know, and to live, beneath the surfaces of life, and to be aware of the realities beneath the superficialities, you may take it from me that Francis was truly religious.”

“Uncle Frank a great painter!” said Arthur. “I don’t know just how to cope with it.”

“But it’s bloody marvellous!” said Maria. “A genius in the family! Aren’t you thrilled, Arthur?”

“There have been some rather bright people in the family, but if they were geniuses, or near it, they were financial geniuses. And don’t let anybody tell you that financial genius is just low cunning. It’s the real intuitive goods. But this sort of genius—For a financial family a painter is rather a skeleton in the cupboard.”

“There is something about a cupboard that makes a skeleton very restless,” said Darcourt. “Francis Cornish is loudly demanding to be let out.”

“Your problem is going to be these people in New York. How will they like it when you reveal that their treasured Old Master—the only known work of The Alchemical Master—is a phoney?”

“It isn’t a phoney, Arthur,” said Maria. “Simon has been telling us what it is, and phoney is the last word to use. It is an astonishing personal confession in the form of a picture.”

“Arthur is right, though,” said Darcourt. “They will have to be approached with the greatest tact. I can’t go to them and say, Listen, I have news for you: they must want me to come, to hear what I have to tell them. It’s the difference between ‘Come in, Barney,’ and ‘Barney, come in.’ “

“I suppose that’s one of your Old Ontario gobbets of folk wisdom,” said Maria.

“Yes, and a very wise one, when you think about it. I can’t just tell them what I know, and stop short. I must give them an idea about where this discovery might lead.”

“And where would that be?” said Arthur.

“It certainly can’t be the devaluation and destruction of the picture as a work of art. It must point a new way.”

“Simon, I know you. I see it in your eye. I see it wriggling up your sleeve. You have a scheme. Come on—tell.”

“Well, Maria, I wouldn’t say I had a scheme. Just a vague idea, and I feel rather embarrassed about bringing it out, because it is sure to sound stupid.”

“This modesty is just camouflage for some real Darcourt craftiness. Out with it.”

So, diffidently, but not artlessly—because he had been rehearsing what he would say for several days—Darcourt told them what he had in mind.

There was a long silence. After a while Maria fetched drinks; whisky for the men and for herself a glass that looked like milk, but was of a rich, golden colour. They sipped, amid further silence. At last Arthur spoke.

“Ingenious,” he said, “but I mistrust ingenuity. It’s too damned clever.”

“A little better than just clever,” said Darcourt.

“Too many intangibles. Too many things that cannot be controlled. I’m afraid the answer must be no, Simon.”

“I’m not ready to take that as your final word, Arthur,” said Darcourt. “Please think about it for a while. Forget it and then think about it again. Maria, what do you think?”

“I think it’s very foxy.”

“Oh, please! Foxy is a nasty word.”

“I didn’t mean it nastily, Simon. But you must admit that it’s a poopnoddy scheme, if ever there was one.”

“Poopnoddy?” said Arthur. “Is that one of your Rabelaisian words?”

“Go to the head of the class, Arthur,” said Maria. “Rabelaisian in spirit, though I don’t know quite what he would have said in French. Avalleur de frimarts, or something like that. Intending to deceive the unwary, anyhow. I must have a few Rabelaisian words to counteract Simon’s cataract of Old Ontario folk-sayings, about Barney and all the gang.”

“If you think those people in New York are unwary, you are out of your mind,” said Darcourt.

“But I think you think Arthur and I are unwary.”

“If you had been wary, would you ever have got yourselves into this opera thing?”

“That’s beside the point.”

“I think it’s the very finest end of the point. What has it brought you?”

“We don’t know, yet,” said Arthur. “We shall have to wait and see.”

“While you’re waiting, will you give some thought to my idea?”

“Now that you’ve brought it up, I don’t see how we can help it.”

“Good. That’s all I ask. But I must talk to the New York people, you know. After all, I am going to explode their picture. From one point of view, that is.”

“Look, Simon, can’t you somehow soft-pedal the whole business of the picture?”

“No, Arthur, I can’t and I won’t. It isn’t just the heart of my book. It’s the truth, and you can’t suppress truth forever. That skeleton is banging very loudly on the doors of the cupboard, and if you don’t want to let it out my way, you may be sure somebody else will eventually let it out by smashing the cupboard. Don’t forget all those sketches Francis bequeathed to the National Gallery.”

“Will that concern us? We don’t own the picture.”

“No, but I shall have written the book and if I soft-pedal this material it will be shown up as a stupid, know-nothing book. I don’t see why I should put up with that, just to satisfy your Kater Murr notions.”