“The light comes from the alcove behind him,” said Ben suddenly. “The alcove where the white deer is. You can’t see the deer, but he must be there, shining like a lamp.”
“Did you think of that while you were working?”
“No. I just felt one ought to see his head and shoulders clearly.”
“It’s better, of course,” said John Adair slowly, “to have a clear reason for what you do before you start, rather than manufacture one to fit the facts of the case afterwards.”
He spoke hesitantly, for the power and beauty of the boy’s drawing had touched him so deeply that he was at a loss as to what to say. He was afraid to praise too much, lest Ben became self-satisfied, afraid to criticize too severely lest he grow discouraged. Above all he was at a loss as to how to advise him to go on with his picture, afraid that the delicate beauty of it, caught now in a few sure lines, a few fine contrasts of light and shade, be lost in the overelaboration of detail with which Ben in the late stages of his work unconsciously tried to hide the faultiness of his technique. He felt in the same sort of fix as a man watching a butterfly fluttering against a windowpane, anxious to guide the creature the right way out, but afraid to handle it less he injure its fragile wings. He decided, this time, to let the boy and his picture severely alone. To Ben’s tentative, “Is it all right, sir, so far?” he replied briefly, “Yes. Don’t attempt the face until you see it clearly, and keep the whole thing as simple as possible.”
“I’ll put it away, I think,” said Ben. “I won’t go on with it until we’ve uncovered the fresco.”
The dinner bell sounded and they went downstairs to devour shepherd’s pie and jam puffs.
CHAPTER
12
— 1 —
After lunch everything favored them. The rain stopped and the sun broke through. Nadine, Jill, and the twins went off in the car to Radford, George and Sally to the Abbey, and Malony and Annie-Laurie to the business of moving house. When John Adair and Ben sat down at the open front door in the sunshine to wait for David they had an empty house behind them.
“Well, here we are,” said John Adair. “Rat and Mole out. Beaver and Badger at home. What’s David?”
Ben had been unaware that the painter’s nickname was known to him. His ears flew their usual flag of distress. “I—we hadn’t thought of a name for David.”
“Placidus,” suggested John Adair.
“Placidus?”
“He’s in the National Gallery, painted centuries ago by Pisanello. Placidus and your cousin—they’ve the same face. Queer. Wood, in tempera. Riding through a forest. You must know the thing as well as I do.”
“I’ve not been to the National Gallery,” said Ben with shame. “You see, in the war the pictures were taken away, and then David said he wanted to take me. And then he was busy and kept forgetting. And I didn’t like to go without him.”
“Great Scott!” ejaculated John Adair. “Has it been reserved for this unworthy dauber to take William Blake the Second for a personally conducted tour of the great masters?”
Ben grinned and hugged his knee. He liked Old Beaver in a bantering mood. It was the invariable cloak of his affection, which gripped beneath it with a sureness of touch that left one in no doubt that he liked one. It struck him suddenly that he had never seen Beaver tease David.
“Do you like him?” he suddenly demanded. He hated people he liked not to like each other.
“Who? Placidus? As an artist I take off my hat to him; as a man I am at present reserving judgment. At the moment there is a certain dilatoriness about him that is just about getting my goat.”
“It mustn’t,” said Ben quickly. “I can hear the car now.”
A moment later David was coming slowly up the steps and taking his time over the latch of the blue gate.
“Don’t hurry,” said John Adair sharply.
David looked up and smiled, wincing a little at the hard tone exactly as Ben would have done. “Am I late? I’m sorry.”
He spoke gently, as Ben would have spoken, with that same willingness to be criticized that so enriched the genius of both of them. The likeness between the two suddenly presented David to John Adair from a new angle; he saw him linked to Ben and not to Sally. Sally out of the picture he looked a different man, and the artist hated himself for his bitterness. David looked still a very sick man, and a bewildered man, as though he had lost his bearings in this brave new world that was, and yet so hideously was not, that for which he and his contemporaries had fought.
John Adair had understood him well enough, though impersonally, when he had sketched him that day in the theater. It was only now, when the man’s sickness of body and mind had touched him to his own hurt, that his understanding failed. Merely impersonal understanding might make a fine painter, but it does not make a humane man. He hated himself. David needed every ounce of energy he possessed, or could get from those about him, for keeping his end up; ridiculous to expect of him anything else for the present. Nature knew what she was doing when she kept her newborn creatures with blind eyes while they gathered their strength, and this was a man who was passing through a painful period of rebirth. And Sally knew what she was doing when she gave all she had and asked for nothing. It was only he, John Adair, who was a crass old dotard. . . . Suddenly, with a flash of insight, he knew the man. . . . He jumped up, went to meet David with outstretched hand, faced him squarely with his tawny eyes alight. “Forgive the impatience of these two musketeers waiting for the third.”
The extraordinary warmth of the tone astonished David, the almost blazing kindness in the eyes, the strong grasp of the hand that seemed apologizing for he did not know what. And Old Beaver’s likeness to Sally was suddenly staggering. He had not before noticed more than the superficial likeness of coloring and haphazard features, but now the glowing comfort of the man’s presence, his strength and generosity, were so like Sally’s that she seemed actually here with them. Seeing her there in her father, trying to come near to him in the person of her father as she had never tried to do in her own person, he felt suddenly closer to her than he had ever felt, closer than he had been able to feel to anyone for what seemed like a century, delivered at last from the hideous sense of isolation. Perhaps now he would be able to give as well as take; that had been the worst thing of all, the endless taking. . . . The release of the moment was so sudden that it stunned him, and he stood speechless with relief. . . . And all this because Old Beaver had suddenly turned friendly.
John Adair came to the rescue. He slipped his hand into his son’s arm and propelled him up the path towards Ben, dancing with impatience on the doorstep. Yes, his son. Even if David remained in bondage to Nadine, never loved Sally, never married her, yet he was spiritually his son by virtue of that flash of insight that had come to him that day in the theater when he had seen him as the prototype of many, and drawn his face with love and understanding; and even more because of this second moment of deep personal knowledge. This was what men craved for when they craved a son.
“Come on,” implored poor Ben. “Oh, do come on!”
— 2 —
Entirely unaware that in revealing David to Old Beaver as being made of the same stuff as himself he had precipitated a crisis, Ben conducted his elders to the storeroom. “There!” he said. “Children’s picture book my foot!”
Pausing to pull up the knees of his trousers, and nearly driving Ben mad by this sartorial caution, David folded himself up beneath the shelf to examine the phenomenon beneath it. John Adair, who suffered from rheumatism in his knees, waited for his verdict before deliberately courting unnecessary suffering.
“Might be worth investigating, I think,” said David.
The coolness of his report infuriated Ben. “Might be! Can’t you see the rabbit?”
“Well, yes. Now you mention it there’s something here that might be a rabbit.”
J
ohn Adair sighed, and with loudly cracking joints crawled beneath the shelf. His reaction was far more satisfactory than David’s. After a few muttered exclamations he exploded into sudden enthusiasm. “By my beard, I believe the boy is right! But the darned shelf is in the way. Get the toolbox, Ben. Look lively!”
Ben dashed off for the toolbox, returning with it to find both men with their coats off, clearing the shelf of Nadine’s jams and chutneys. For three hours they worked feverishly. They took all the bottles down to the kitchen, unfortunately breaking a few in the process, and removed the shelves from the wall. They groaned as they got out the nails that had pierced right through the wallpaper to whatever was beneath it. “Sacrilege!” ejaculated John Adair. “Bloody sacrilege!” Then they set to work to remove what they could of the distemper and paper. It was easier than they had expected. The little room was damp; the distemper was already peeling off, and the two layers of paper came away in solid strips. Beneath them damp stains and patches of paste spread a dingy film over what was below, but there was no doubt about it that what was below was buried treasure.
“Let it alone!” John Adair shouted at Ben, who was trying to peel off a patch of paste with his fingers. “Don’t touch it, you young vandal! This filth must be got off with the proper stuff if you don’t want to harm the fresco. That’s all we can do for now, but, by gad, we’ve done a good day’s work. Look at it, you chaps. Look at it! Sixteenth century, at a rough guess. Floor to ceiling the whole way round. Look at that bit of color there, the blue and the green. When we get that cleaned it will be fresh as the day it was painted. I should say it’s a wood or a garden. Now praised be God who has matched me with this hour.”
“Is that shape there a chap on a horse?” asked David. “Gosh, what a find! ”
“And look there!” cried Ben. “There’s a cross there!”
“Bless the boy! Where?”
“There! On the east wall. That’s where the altar would have been. This was a chapel.”
They sat down on the pile of shelves, got their breath, and stared incredulously. Until they could get the walls properly cleaned they would not know the full glory of their find, but that there was glory there they knew. They were like men staring at the shifting mists obscuring a heavenly landscape, seeing through it no more than shreds of color and hints of celestial shape.
“And God knows there’s enough here already,” said John Adair gently. “Enough, in all conscience, to make a man glad he lived to see it.”
“The more you look the more you see,” said David. “Surely that’s a man on a horse. A white horse, I think—or will be when he’s clean. Dogs round him, perhaps? And I should say he’s a dressy fellow. That red and blue is where his coat would be.”
Ben gave a sudden shout. “It’s the white deer! The one in the alcove! The white deer holding up the cross in his antlers!”
“Where?” demanded David.
“There! Behind the altar!”
“The wish is father to the thought,” murmured John Adair.
“No, sir. Look there. You can see his neck, his pointy face. He’s turned his head to look at the man, and the man has reined in his horse to look at the deer. The horse was galloping a minute ago. Look at his legs. He’s been halted suddenly and his hoofs are slipping on the wet grass of the wood. The animals and birds, they’re just going about their business in the wood, not taking any notice. No, look at that old dog! He’s bowed his head. He’s worshiping. So’s the man, I think, though his head’s high. No, he’s not looking at the deer, he’s looking at the cross.”
His elders, looking intently, could make out little of all this.
“Since you say so,” murmured John Adair. “I’ve not my glasses.”
“I think he’s right,” said David slowly.
“I don’t doubt it. His long-distance vision is extremely good.” From somewhere far away in the house there came a faint hail. “I suppose we can now let the family in on this?”
“No!” said Ben sharply. He couldn’t bear the thought of everybody knowing about this place. If Father or Mother, or Malony, or someone were to call the walls a dirty mess he would murder them.
“No help for it,” said David. “What’s your mother going to say when she comes home and finds jam pots all over the kitchen floor?”
“Oh, gosh, if it just didn’t happen to be the storeroom!” groaned Ben.
David got up quietly and went out of the room. The hail had been George’s, but he thought he had heard Sally’s voice too. He ran down the turret stairs and went through the kitchen to the hall. George was stretched in a chair puffing at his pipe, relaxed and happy after a very pleasant bout of physical exercise in the company of a pretty and appreciative girl. That Sally liked him, and had no hesitation in showing that she did, was a source of satisfaction to him. He could not, he thought, be quite such a dull bore as Nadine’s patient tolerance always made him feel that he was.
Sally in her golden-brown tweeds had an armful of spindle-berry that she was just going to arrange in a blue pot. She had not known that David was coming today, and taken by surprise she took a few quick steps towards him before she could stop herself, the joy blazing out in her eyes, her cheeks as pink as the berries, her eagerness like that of her father three hours ago. Had she always lit up like this for him, and had he not noticed it, David wondered, or had his moment of liberation set her free too? Had she always loved him, and had he not known it until her father’s huge kindness had brought her so close? He was a blind, self-centered fool.
Regardless of George he went to her and took the lapels of her coat between his hands. He had to do something with his hands to keep his arms from going round her in gratitude and compunction; gratitude for the sound normality of her, the healthiness, the childlikeness that had companioned him through these past horrible weeks of isolation and brought him to that final moment of release out there in the garden; compunction that he had not seen until this moment what she was, what she had done, and what she gave. Could he give too? He didn’t know. She made no demand as she stood there smiling at him; she did not understand the meaning of the word investment; that was the glory of her. He had always thought that there was no more odious position for a man than to be loved by a woman whom he could not love in return. Bound to Nadine as he had been for so long, and afflicted with the curse of his good looks, he had several times found himself in that position; yet with Sally it was somehow not odious. He could love the gift of her love just as he would have loved any other gift of hers, because it was a free gift and rebounded back upon her to her own enrichment. Yet a wrench of pain went through him because of her pain; if he could not now get free and come alive and whole for Sally he would hate himself until he died.
“We’ve something to show you,” he said quickly. “We’ve found something—your father and Ben and I. Come along and see it. You, too, Uncle George. Glad it’s you and Sally to see it first.”
George heaved himself to his feet. Shrouded in tobacco smoke he had noticed nothing. David put his hand into Sally’s arm and hurried her along. She came laughing. She did not quite know what had happened, except that David was suddenly nearer than he had ever been, and that the whole world shone with clear light. They ran up the turret stairs, George lumbering after. “There!” said David at the storeroom door, and took his hand from her arm.
While the others gazed not at the frescoes but at her, she stood in the center of the little room unaware of them, still pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, still unconsciously holding the armful of spindleberries, and gazed about her with adoring wonder; not amazed exactly, because that supreme joy of childhood, the expectation of gloriously unlikely things likely to happen at any moment, was still hers, but yet at the same time deliciously surprised to find the expected unlikeness quite so unlikely as all this.
“There’s the chevalier on his horse, riding through Knyghtwood,” she said. “It’s
rather like the picture I told you about, David, the one I saw somewhere but couldn’t remember. I used to see the wood behind Ben, and then I saw it behind you that day in Knyghtwood. You were looking at a kingfisher. What’s he looking at? Could it be the twins? Fairy Person with the Horns?”
The voice of George made itself heard. “What on earth are you talking about, Sally, and what the dickens is Nadine going to say to all this mess?”
“All this mess, General, is, I believe, a most priceless sixteenth-century fresco,” said John Adair, still sitting upon the pile of shelves, and now smoking a pipe to calm himself. “Of course we’ll need to get the thing cleaned up before we can be certain about it, but I shall be very much surprised to find myself mistaken. And Sally, I’m ashamed of you. You have visited the National Gallery with me from infancy up, in smocks, in pigtails, in your first fur coat, as child, girl, and woman, and gazed twenty times if once at Pisanello’s Placidus, and yet for all you apparently remember of the thing you might never have set eyes on it. This fresco portrays the same story as Pisanello’s masterpiece. It was a very popular subject for artists in the Middle Ages. You should all of you have seen that at once. The ignorance of all so-called educated people appalls me.”
“When did you see it, sir?” grinned Ben. “A sort of gleam came into your eye when Sally said all that about having seen David as Placidus, and that was only two minutes ago.”