And so it was agreed, Professor Baudoin abstaining.
“You saved my bacon,” said Francis, catching Saraceni on the great staircase, as they left the session.
“I will confess to being a little pleased with myself,” said the Meister. “I hope you listened attentively, Corniche; I did not utter one word of untruth in anything I said, though of course I was not officious in stripping Truth naked, as so many painters have done. You never knew I studied theology for a few years in my youth? I recommend it to every ambitious young man.”
“I’m grateful forever,” said Francis. “I really didn’t want to confess. Not because of fear. It was something else that I can’t just put a name to.”
“Justifiable pride, I should say,” said Saraceni. “It is a very fine picture, wholly unique in its approach to a biblical subject. Yet a masterpiece of religious art, if one means religion in the true sense. I forgive you, by the way, for giving Judas my features, if not my hair. The Masters must find their models somewhere. I did not call you Meister idly or mockingly, you know. You have made up your soul in that picture, Francis, and I do not joke when I call you The Alchemical Master.”
“I don’t know anything about alchemy, and there are things in that picture I don’t pretend to explain. I just painted what demanded to be painted.”
“You may not have a scholar’s understanding of alchemy, but plainly you have lived alchemy; transformation of base elements and some sort of union of important elements has worked alchemically in your life. But you do know painting as a great technical skill, and such skills arouse splendid things in their possessors. What you do not understand in the picture will probably explain itself to you, now that you have dredged it up from the depths of your soul. You still believe in the soul, don’t you?”
“I’ve tried not to, but I can’t escape it. A Catholic soul in Protestant chains, but I suppose it’s better than emptiness,”
“I assure you that it is.”
“Meister—I shall always call you Meister, though you say I’ve graduated from alunno to amico di Saraceni–you have been very good to me, and you have not spared the rod.”
“He that spareth his rod, hateth his son. I am proud to be your father in art. So do something for me: I ask it as a father. Watch Ross.”
Nothing more could be said, because of a commotion that broke out on the great staircase behind them. Professor Baudoin had misjudged his step, fallen on the marble, and broken his hip.
–That was Saraceni’s Evil Eye, I suppose, said the Lesser Zadkiel.
–Nobody becomes as great a man as Saraceni without extraordinary spiritual energy, and it isn’t all benevolent, said the Daimon Maimas. The Masters and Sibyls turn up in lucky people’s lives, and I am glad I could put such good ones in Francis’s path.
–Lucky people? I suppose so. Not everybody finds Masters and Sibyls.
–No, and at the present time—I mean Francis’s time, of course, because you and I have no truck with Time ourselves, brother—many people who are lucky enough to come into the path of a Master or a Sibyl want to argue and have their trivial say, and prattle as if all knowledge were relative and open to argument. Those who find a Master should yield to the Master until they have outgrown him.
–If Francis has really made up his soul, as Saraceni said, what lies ahead of him? Hasn’t he achieved the great end of life?
–You are testing me, brother, but you won’t catch me that way. Having got his soul under his eye, so to speak, Francis must now begin to understand it and be worthy of it, and that task will keep him busy for a while yet. Making up the soul isn’t an end; it’s the new beginning in the middle of life.
–Yes, it will take some time.
–You are fond of that foolish word time. Time in his outward life will run much faster for him now, but in the inward life it will slow down. So we can get on much faster with this record, or film, or tape, or whatever fashionable word Francis’s contemporaries would apply to it, because his external life occupies less of his attention. Onward, brother!
What was Francis now in the world of MI5? Not one of the great ones, who inspire novelists to write about danger and violence and unexplained deaths. His work with the Allied Commission on Art continued when the conferees in Europe were completed, because the decisions of the conferees created all sorts of problems that had to be settled diplomatically, with much bargaining, much soothing of ruffled national pride, and a few arbitrary judgements in which he played a significant if not a leading role. He had a liaison association with the British Council. But only Uncle Jack knew that he was expected to keep a watchful eye on some people who were important in the world of art but who had other loyalties that did not jibe with those of the Allied cause.
It was this secret aspect of his work that gave him the air of Civil Servant, a conventional man, a clubman who might turn up anywhere in the art world, the country-house world, the fashionable world, and sometimes even close to the Court. Anywhere, in fact, where there were clever people who did not think him clever, or quite one of themselves—not a Cambridge man—and who therefore sometimes talked less discreetly when he was present than they would otherwise have done. He was thought to be rather a dull dog who somehow managed to have a finger in the art pie. But he was also a useful man who could arrange things.
For instance, he arranged that Aylwin Ross should receive favours that might not otherwise come his way and Ross, being what he was, showed gratitude but not for long, because he thought the favours the natural outcome of his own brilliant abilities. It was through Francis that Ross gained a good appointment in the Courtauld Institute, and began his rapid climb toward influence as a critic and creator of taste.
Saraceni had warned Francis to watch Ross, so watch him he did, and saw nothing but a brilliant, attractive young man whose career it was a pleasure to advance. He would have watched Ross at closer range if Ross had not been so busy with his concerns and a little inclined to patronize Francis.
“I really think you misjudge Ross,” he said to Saraceni on one of his yearly visits to the crammed, cluttered flat in Rome. “He is coming on like a house on fire; soon he will be a very big figure in the critical world. But you hint as though he were somehow dishonest.”
“No, no; not dishonest,” said the Meister. “Probably he is all you say. But my dear Corniche, I mean that he is not an artist, not a creator; he is a politician of art. He turns with the wind, and you stand like a rock against the wind—except when it is Ross’s wind. You are a little too fond of Ross, and you don’t understand how.”
“If you suggest that I am in love with him, you are totally mistaken.”
“You don’t want to snuggle up with Ross and whisper secrets on the pillow—or I don’t suppose you do. That might not be so dangerous, because lovers are egotists and may quarrel. No: I think you see in Ross the golden youth you never were, the free spirit you never were, the lucky man you think you never were. There is some grey in your hair. Youth has flown for you. Do not try to be young again through Ross. Do not fall for the charm of that sort of youth. People who are young in the way Ross is young never grow old, and never to grow old is a very, very evil fate, though the twaddle of our time says otherwise. Remember what that angel, or whatever it was, says in the great painting you have made: Thou has kept the good wine until now. Do not pour out the good wine on the altar of Aylwin Ross.”
Ross met Francis on an autumn day walking along Pall Mall.