“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 went 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.”
“How can you say that, when you mean to expose my very special mark of excellence, my seventeenth-century drawing, as a fake? And yet I suppose you must do it, if your book about le beau ténébreux is to be honest and complete.”