So there it was! He had the key to the lock in his hand at last! But was Darcourt excited, exultant? No, he was very calm, like a man from whom doubt and anxiety had all been swept away. Patience has been rewarded, he thought, and then put the thought from him as savouring of pride. There was one album left.
“Thou hast kept the best wine till the last”. The inscribed banner that floated from the mouth of that strange angel in The Marriage at Cana was proven by what he now turned over, with a feeling of wonder. “My coachman, Zadok Hoyle”; the fine-looking, soldierly, but—to the observant eye—unlucky man who stood by a fine carriage and a pair of bays was unquestionably the huissier, the jolly man with the whip in The Marriage. And then—at last Darcourt lost his calm, phlegmatic acceptance of his great good luck—here, among pictures of bearded, ancient, youthful, hearty, and unstable citizens of Blairlogie at the turn of the century, was a picture of a dwarf, standing in front of a humble shop, squinting into the sun but grinning subserviently as the Senator—the local great man—took his Sun Picture. And underneath was written, “F. X. Bouchard, tailor”. The dwarf who stood so confidently, so proudly, in The Marriage and—just possibly—the original of Drollig Hansel.
Was this—could it be—the awakening of the little man?
The kindly assistant librarian popped her head around the partition.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, Professor Darcourt?”
“By God, I would,” said Simon, and the secretary, somewhat startled by the vehemence of his reply, set before him a waxed-paper cup of the liquid which the staff of the Library called, with scholarly generosity, coffee.
It was in this lukewarm, muddy draught that Darcourt drank to his good fortune. Here he sat, amid the evidence that settled a mystery of significance to the world of art. He, Simon Darcourt, had identified the figures in The Marriage at Cana, thereby showing it to be of our own time, telling in a finely contrived riddle the life experience of the painter. He had destroyed the fine-spun theory of Aylwin Ross and identified for all time The Alchemical Master.
It was the late Francis Cornish.
But it was not of the sensation in the art world Darcourt thought. It was of his book. His biography. It was not merely lifted out of the dullness he had feared; it had taken wings.
Like a good scholar he piled up the albums neatly on the big table in the alcove he was using. Never leave a mess. He blessed Francis Cornish and the primary precept of scholarship: never throw anything away. He would return tomorrow and make copious notes.
As he worked he was humming again. One of the metrical Psalms, this time.
6
Ottawa is not a place to which anyone goes at the end of November simply for pleasure. Reputedly the coldest capital city in the world, in comparison with which Moscow is merely chilly, it is preparing at the end of the year for its annual ferocious assault on the endurance, good nature, and ingenuity of its inhabitants. Darcourt was glad that the National Gallery was luxuriously warm, and he scuttled between it and his hotel, his collar turned up against the sneaping winds from the river and the canal, cold in body but deliciously warm in spirit. Everything he found out from yet another and rigorous examination of what Francis Cornish had defined as his Old Master Drawings confirmed the great discovery he had made in the University Library.
Like everything else Francis had left behind him, the many portfolios and envelopes were a jumble, but a jumble of treasures, some substantial and some of less importance. The assemblages of Francis’s own drawings were honestly labelled; student work, mostly; creditable in the detailed care they showed, and a little eccentric in the trouble the artist had taken in finding real old paper for his work, and preparing it for his silver-point studies. Why so much trouble for what was, after all, simply a student exercise? Each drawing was labelled, with detailed information about which original had been copied, and the date when the copy had been made. But there was about them a hint, which Darcourt took care not to allow to swell into a certainty, that the copy was almost as good as the original and in some cases was every bit as good—though it was identified as a copy. Francis, in another century and with a living to make, could have done well as one of those patient copyists who supplied wealthy tourists with copies of drawings they admired. The talent of the copyist may be very great—technically greater than that of many artists who would scorn such work and have no talent for it—but he remains a copyist.
There was one large brown envelope that Darcourt opened last, because he had a sense that it could contain what he was looking for. He wanted to tease himself, to work up an expectation that amounted almost to a fever, like a child that saves one parcel of its Christmas horde in vehement hope that it contains the gift most eagerly desired. Unlike the others, it was sealed; the gummed flap had been stuck down, instead of being merely tucked in, as was the case with all the others. It was labelled, not “Old Master Drawings”, but “My Drawings in Old Master style, for the National Gallery”. The Gallery authorities would probably not have allowed him to open it, or not without some Gallery representative being at his elbow as he did so, but Darcourt, who now regarded himself as a thorough-going crook, managed to sneak into the little kitchen where Gallery workers made their tea and coffee and secreted their biscuits, and quickly and efficiently steamed it open. And there it all was. If he had been a fainting man, he would have fainted.
Here were preliminary sketches for The Marriage at Cana; several plans for the groupings of the figures, and quick studies for heads, arms, clothes, and armour for the figures—and every head was a likeness, though not always a wholly faithful likeness, of somebody in the Sun Pictures taken by Grandfather James Ignatius McRory. No, not quite every head; the woman who stood in the centre panel was unknown to Grandfather, but she was very well known to Darcourt. She was Ismay Glasson, wife of Francis Cornish and mother of Little Charlie. Nor was there any source in the Sun Pictures for the figure of Judas; but he was Tancred Saraceni, caricatured in several of Francis’s notebooks and plainly labelled. And the dwarf, so vaunting in The Marriage, so self-doubting in the photography; F. X. Bouchard, beyond a doubt. And the huissier; Zadok Hoyle, Grandfather’s coachman. Why was he important enough to be included in the composition? Darcourt hoped that somehow he might find out, but it was not vital that he do so.
Most mysterious were the studies of that angel, who flew so confidently above the centre panel—so confidently that his influence extended over the whole three panels of the work. But here he was, and one of those drawings was identified as F. C., and although those were Cornish’s own initials, this angel was certainly not Francis Cornish.—Was the drawing merely signed, in an idle moment? Or was this crazed, yet inexorably compelling and potent figure—this Spook, this grotesque—some notion Francis cherished of his inner self? Had he thought so strangely of himself? Another puzzle, and Darcourt hoped he might solve it, but knew that he had no need to do so. Here were the originals of the people in The Marriage, and if not all of them could be equated with people Francis and Grandfather McRory had known, that did nothing to lessen the importance of his discovery. It was with a light heart that Darcourt carefully resealed the envelope, and left the Gallery, with much affability toward those who had permitted him to seek for material which they assumed, and quite rightly, was for information that would flesh out his biography of their dead benefactor.