“Max, do you have to say that?”
“My dear cousin, forgive my little joke. May I?” And he kissed her affectionately on the cheek. “Saraceni, dear old chap! Dear little cousin, you’re prettier than ever. Miss Nibsmith, how d’you do? And we haven’t met, but you must be Cornish, Tancred’s right hand. How d’you do?”
It was not easy to get a word in with Prince Max. Francis shook his outstretched hand. Max did not stop talking.
“So kind of you to ask me to spend Christmas with you, cousin. It’s not celebrated as cheerfully in Bavaria as we remember, though I saw a few signs of jollification on the road. I came by way of Oberammergau, because I thought that there, if anywhere, the birth of Our Lord would be gratefully acknowledged. After all, they must sell and export several hundred thousand board-feet of creches and crucifixes and holy images every year, and even they can’t utterly forget why. In Switzerland, now, Christmas is in full, raving eruption. Paris is en fete, almost as if Christ had been a Frenchman. And in London people otherwise quite sane are wallowing in the Dickensian slush, and looting Fortnum’s of pies and puddings and crackers and all the other artifacts of their national saturnalia. And here—I see you’ve put up some evergreens—”
“Of course. And tomorrow there will be Mass, as usual.”
“And I shall be there! I shall be there, not having eaten a crumb or drunk a swallow since midnight. I shall not even clean my teeth, lest a Lutheran drop might escape down my gullet. What a lark, eh? Or should I say, ‘Wot larks’, Cornish? Should I say ‘Wot larks’?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Oh, not sir, please! Call me Max. ‘Wot larks’ because of Dickens. You must be a real Dickensian Protestant, no?”
“I was brought up a Catholic, Max.”
“You don’t look in the least like one.”
“And exactly how does a Catholic look?” said the Countess, not pleased.
“Oh, it’s a most becoming look, cousin, an other-wordly light in the eyes, never seen among Lutherans. Isn’t that so, Miss Nibsmith?”
“Oh, but our eyes shine with the light of truth, sir.”
“Good, very good! No trapping the governess, is there? Are you taking on any of that light, Amalie?”
Amalie blushed, as she always did when she was singled out for special notice, but had nothing to say. There was no need. The Prince rattled on.
“Ah, a real Bavarian Christmas, just like childhood! How long will it last, eh? I suppose so long as none of us are Jews we shall be allowed to celebrate Christmas in our traditional way, at least in privacy. You’re not a Jew, by any chance, Tancred? I’ve always wondered.”
“God forbid,” said Saraceni, crossing himself. “I have worries enough as it is.”
Amalie found her tongue. “I didn’t know Jews celebrated Christmas,” she said.
“Poor devils! I don’t think they get much chance to celebrate anything. We’ll drink to better times at dinner, won’t we?”
The Prince had arrived in a small, sporting, snorting, coughing, roaring, farting car, loaded with packages and big leather cases, and when the company assembled for dinner, these proved to contain presents for everybody, all speaking loudly of Bond Street. For the Countess a case of claret and a case of champagne. For Amalie, a photograph of Prince Max in dress uniform, in a costly frame from Asprey’s. For Miss Nibsmith a beautiful if somewhat impractical diary bound in blue leather, with a gold lock and key—for astrological notations, said Prince Max, slyly. For Saraceni and Francis leather pocket diaries for the year to come, obviously from Smythson’s. And for the servants, all sorts of edible luxuries in a hamper from Fortnum’s.
Of course there were other gifts. The Countess gave Francis a book that had been written about the Düsterstein pictures by some toilsome scholar many years before. Amalie, with much blushing, gave him six handkerchiefs which she had embroidered with his initials. Saraceni gave everybody books of poetry bound in Florence. Francis won high distinction by giving the Countess and Amalie sketches of themselves, done in his Old Master style, in which he had taken special care to emphasize the family resemblance. He had nothing for the men, or for Miss Nibsmith, but it did not seem to matter. And when the gift-giving was finished, they sat down to a dinner of greater length than usual, with venison, and roast goose, and a stuffed carp, which was nicer to look at than to eat. And when cheese had been consumed the Countess announced that in special compliment to Francis they would conclude with a traditional English dish, which the chef identified, he being an Italian-Swiss, as Suppe Inglese. It was a dashing attempt at a sherry trifle, rather too wet but kindly meant.
The meal was accompanied by what was less a conversation than a solo performance by Prince Max, filled with casual references—fairly casual but by no means inevitable—to “my cousin Carol, the King of Rumania” and one or two stories about “my ancestor, Friedrich der Grosse (though of course we are of the Swabian branch of the family)” and quite a long account of how he had studied canon law as a boy “so that the priests couldn’t cheat us—we had more than fifty parishes, you know.” And at last when toasts were to be proposed and the Countess, and Amalie, and Miss Nibsmith, and the splendours of Italian art “as represented by our dear Maestro, Tancred Saraceni”, and the King of England, had all been drunk, the Prince insisted with much merriment that they drink also to “the Pretender to the British Throne, my cousin Prince Rupert of Bavaria, whose claim is through his Stuart ancestry, as of course you know.” After this toast Francis insisted on smashing his glass (having made sure it was not too precious) in order that no lesser toast should ever be drunk from it.
Francis emerged somewhat too abruptly from his character as Le Beau Ténébreux, for he was feeling the wines stirring within him. When Amalie, daring greatly, asked him if it were true that there were many bears in Canada, he replied that when he was a boy a child had been eaten by a bear within three miles of Blairlogie. That was true, but not content, he went on to say that the bear had later been seen, walking on its hind legs, wearing the child’s tuque and carrying its satchel of books, making its way toward Carlyle Rural. Even Amalie refused to believe him.
“My dear Amalie, the English wit tends always toward some fantaisie,” said the Countess with grandmotherly solemnity. And then Prince Max took over again, to tell about a boar-hunt he had once enjoyed in the company of several highly placed relatives.
“What does Prince Max do now?” Francis asked Ruth Nibsmith, after dinner.
“Travels for a wine company that has headquarters in London,” she whispered. “Lives on what he makes, which is pretty good, but not of course a fortune. He’s a real aristocrat, a shameless, joyful survivor. Hitler will never down Max. Did you notice the little Wittelsbach thingummy on the door of his car? Max is the real goods, but not tongue-tied, like our English hogen-mogens.”
Christmas morning. Mass had been heard, breakfast had been eaten, and without any words having been spoken about it—though Prince Max talked without a stop about other things—Saraceni led the way to the shell-grotto workroom, and the Countess, the Prince, and Francis followed. The panels on which Saraceni had been working all through the autumn were propped up on tables and walls and against the pillars of lapis lazuli.
Slowly the Prince made a tour of inspection.
“Marvellous,” he said; “really, Tancred, you are greater than your reputation. How you have transformed these dismal daubs! I would never have believed it if I did not have the evidence before me. And you say it is truly undetectable?”
“A determined critic, armed with various testing acids, and special rays to pick up inevitable discrepancies in the brush-work, could probably see what was done—but I doubt if even then he would be sure. But as I have been telling our friend Corniche every day, our task is to do our work so well that suspicion will not be aroused, and prying investigators will not come with their rays and begin to arouse suspicions. As you see, the pictures are rather dirty. And the dirt on them is their very own. No Augsburg dirt where one might expect Nürnberg dirt. Doubtless they will be given a good cleaning before they are hung in the great gallery.”