“Clear so far as you go, Maestro,” said Professor Nightingale. “But who are these other figures? That creature in the sky, for instance; a very nasty-looking piece of work, like a pinhead in a circus. Who may he be?”
“I cannot tell you, though of course we all know that in Gothic and late-Gothic art—there are lingering elements of Gothicism in this picture—such an angelic figure often represented a relative—big brother, it might be—who had died before The Chymical Wedding was achieved, but whose memory or spiritual influence might have been helpful in bringing it about.”
“All very fine, but I don’t trust the craquelure,” said Professor Baudoin.
“Oh for God’s sake forget the craquelure,” said John Frewen.
“With your permission,” said Baudoin, “I shall not forget the craquelure, and I would thank you, sir, not to snarl at me.”
“I do well to snarl,” said Frewen, who was a Yorkshireman and hot-tempered. “Do you suppose anybody would trouble to fake such a farrago of forgotten rubbish as this? Alchemy! What’s alchemy?”
It was the irrepressible Aylwin Ross who spoke.
“No, Mr. Ross, not that!” said Saraceni. “Some alchemists were cheats, of course, as some priests of all faiths are cheats. But others were truly sincere seekers after enlightenment, and are we who have suffered so much during the past five years under the evil alchemy of science to jeer at any sincere belief of the past, whose style of thought and use of words has grown rusty?”
“Mr. Ross, I should remind you that your position here does not extend to expressing opinions,” said Colonel Osmotherley.
“I am very sorry,” said Ross. “Just a few words from Ben Jonson, that slipped out.”
“Ben Jonson was a great cynic, and a great cynic is a great fool,” said Saraceni, with unwonted severity. “But, gentlemen, I do not pretend to explain all the elements in this picture. That would give an iconographer work for many days. I merely suggest that we could be looking here at a picture prepared to the taste of Graf Meinhard, who, four and a half centuries ago, was reputed to be an alchemist himself—a friend and patron of Paracelsus—and to do things at Düsterstein in what was the most advanced science of his time. His chapel was not, after all, a public place of worship. May he not have pleased himself in this way?”
The experts, credulous perhaps in a matter not within the range of their own knowledge, were inclined to agree that this could have been so. Their discussion was long and cloudy. When he thought it had gone on long enough, Saraceni summed it up.
“Might I suggest, Mr. Chairman and Esteemed Colleagues, that we agree that these panels, which certainly came from Düsterstein, be returned to the great collection there, and that we attribute this picture, which we are all agreed is a splendid previously unknown work of art, and a great curiosity as well, to The Alchemical Master, whose name, alas, we cannot determine more exactly?”
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.