“It’s hell for anybody who thinks of being an artist.”
“As you do? Well—you must find your inner vision.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. But it doesn’t come out in the modern manner.”
“Yes, I understand that. I don’t get on very well with the modern manner, either. But I must warn you: don’t try to fake the modern manner if it isn’t right for you. Find your legend. Find your personal myth. What sort of thing do you do?”
“Might I show you some of my stuff?”
“Certainly, but not now. I must leave first thing in the morning. But I shall be back in Oxford before long. Exeter College wants to consult me about its chapel. I’ll let you know in plenty of time, and I shall keep some time for you. Where shall I send a note?”
“My college is Corpus Christi. I pick up letters there. But before you go, won’t you have another cognac?”
“Certainly not, Mr. Cornish. Some of the masters drank a great deal, but we assistants and apprentices, even three centuries afterward, must keep our hands steady. I won’t have another cognac, and unless you are certain that you are a master, you won’t have one either. We must be the austere ones, we second-class men.”
It was said with the ironic grin, but for Francis, suckled at least in part on the harsh creed of Victoria Cameron, it was like an order.
Late in the autumn, and not long after his meeting with Saraceni, Francis was surprised and not immediately pleased to receive the following letter:
My dear grandson Francis:
I have never written to you at Oxford before this, because I did not feel that I had anything to say to a young man who was deep in advanced studies. As you know, my own education was scant, for I had to make my way in the world very young. Education makes a greater gulf in families even than making a lot of money. What has the uneducated grandfather to say to the educated grandson? But there are one or two languages I hope we still speak in common.
One is the language, which I cannot put a name to, that you and I shared when you were a lad, and used to come on afternoon jaunts with me, making the sun-pictures with my camera. It was a language of the eye, and also I think chiefly a language of light, and it gives me the greatest satisfaction to think that perhaps your turn for painting and your interest in pictures had a beginning, or at least some encouragement, there. You now speak that language as I never did. I am proud of your inclination toward art, and hope it will carry you through a happy life.
Another language is something I won’t call religion, because all through my life I have been a firm Catholic, without truly accepting everything a Catholic ought to believe. So I cannot urge you sincerely to cling to the Faith. But don’t forget it, either. Don’t forget that language, and don’t be one of those handless fellows who believes nothing. There is a fine world unknown to us, and religion is an attempt to explain it. But, unhappily, to reach everybody religion has to be an organization, and a trade for a lot of its priests, and worst of all it has to be reduced to what the largest mass of people will accept and can be expected to understand. That’s heresy, of course. I remember how angry I was when your father demanded that you be raised a Protestant. But that was a while since, and in the meantime I have wondered if the Prots are really any bigger turnip-heads than the R.C.s. As you grow old, religion becomes a lonely business.
The third language we speak in common is money, and it is because of that I am writing to you now. Money is a language I speak better than you do, but you must learn something of the grammar of money, or you cannot manage what your luck has brought you as my grandson. This is much on my mind now, because the doctors tell me that I have not a great way farther to go. Something to do with the heart.
When my will is executed, you will find that I have left you a substantial sum, for your exclusive use, apart from what you will share with my other descendants. The reason I give in my will is that you do not seem to me to be suited by nature to the family business, which is the banking and trust business, and that therefore you must not look for employment or advancement there. This looks almost like cutting you out, but that is not so at all. And this is between us: the money will set you free, I hope, from many anxieties and from a kind of employment that I do not think you would like, but only if you master the grammar of money. Money illiteracy is as restrictive as any other illiteracy. Your brother Arthur promises well as a banker, and in that work he will have opportunities to make money that will not come your way. But you will have another kind of chance. I hope this will suit your purpose.
Do not reply to this letter, for I may not be able to deal with my own letters for very long, and I do not want anyone else to read what you might say. Though if you chose to write a farewell, I should be glad of that.
With affct. good wishes…
Francis wrote a farewell at once, and did his utmost with it, though he was no more a master of the pen than his grandfather; lacked, indeed, the old man’s self-taught simplicity. But a telegram told him that it came too late.
Was there anything to be done? He wrote to Grand’mère and Aunt Mary-Ben, and he wrote to his mother. He considered going to Father Knollys at the Old Palace and asking for—and paying for—a requiem mass for his grandfather, but in the light of what the letter had said he thought that would be hypocritical and would make the old colonial laugh, if he knew.
Was his feeling of grief hypocritical? It struggled in his heart with a sense of release, and new freedom, a feeling of joy that he could now do with his life what he liked. His grief for the old Scots woodsman quickly turned to elation and gratitude. Hamish was the only one of his family who had ever really looked at him, and considered what he was. The only one of the whole lot, perhaps, who had ever loved the artist in him.
Christmas was drawing near, and Francis decided that duty called him back to Canada. After one of those penitential mid-winter sea voyages across the Atlantic he was once again in the up-to-the-minute decor of his mother’s house, and little by little became aware of what his grandfather had meant to the Cornishes and the McRorys, and the O’Gormans. To the bankers a real regard for the old man was greatly tempered by the delightful business of administering his affairs. He seemed more splendid in death than he had ever been in life. Gerald Vincent O’German in particular was loud in his praise for the way the old man had disposed of his estate. There was something for everybody. This was a Christmas indeed!
Gerry O’German was understandably better pleased than was Sir Francis Cornish, for Gerry now succeeded his father-in-law as Chairman of the Board, while Sir Francis remained in his honourable but less powerful place as President. But then Lady Cornish inherited substantially, which was very agreeable to Sir Francis, and took much of the salt out of the tears of his wife. Even Francis’s younger brother, Arthur, who was just twelve, seemed enlarged by Grand-père’s death, for his future in the Cornish Trust, always sure, was now clearer than it had been before, and Arthur, at school, was taking on the air of a young financier, stylish, handsome, well-dressed, and adroit in his dealing with contemporaries and elders.
The stricken ones, of course, were Grand’mère and Mary-Ben, but even they had their benefit from the Senator’s death; had not Reverend Mother Mary-Basil from Montreal, and His Grace the Rev. Michael McRory from his archdiocese in the West, come to Blairlogie for the funeral, and stayed on to visit the two old women, dispensing comfort and good counsel that was none the less sweet for the handsome remembrances the Senator had made of his brother and sister in the great will.