Not Yet Drown'd Read online

  “Or will you conceal them, so that I cannot?”

  She had her reasons: Sandy was not yet drown’d; wasn’t that the meaning of the message he had sent her? Hector had seen that page of music too, titled in Sandy’s handwriting, but Hector’s mechanical mind would not consider it evidence that Sandy was still walking on the earth among the living. Then her maid had hummed that very tune—so uncanny! Somewhere, sometime Sharada had surely heard Sandy play his tune—perhaps only once, at some distance, across some Indian town at dusk. But for Catherine, hearing Sharada hum that tune was like hearing the old women singing on the hill, when she and Sandy had been adrift on the water in the mist. To Catherine it meant, come this way; this is the way. She could try to explain all this to Hector, but he would never consider these sufficient reasons to go to India.

  Indeed, she herself knew these to be preposterous reasons to go to India. Nevertheless, she was going. To India, where one might find the things that were lost: lost notes, lost colours—perhaps even a lost brother.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well, what?”

  “Catherine, you are most exasperating. Is it that woman? Do you suppose that dreadful American woman will pursue you here, you and Grace?”

  “Oh, no; we have seen the last of her, I daresay. And she, of us.”

  “What, then? I only hope you are not still…cherishing fantastic hopes…imaginings, about Sandy.”

  “No, my dear, I am quite innocent of fantastic imaginings. I am mired in grim doubt, as mired as you could wish.” And this was true; she was as full of doubt as of hope. “Now let us change the subject. Let us discuss…oh, let us discuss, perhaps, smuggling—the justifications for smuggling contraband steam looms into a country, a foreign kingdom which has banned them. Just for the sake of argument, how might a promising young mechanic, a practitioner and devotee of natural philosophy, justify his participation in such an enterprise? Is it for money? Is there a great deal of money to be made?”

  “Catherine, you are infuriating! You were always infuriating.”

  “Well? And will you tell me your reasons so that I can argue them with you?”

  Hector did not reply, only frowned and looked out at the Flemish city, fingertips drumming on the broad rail.

  “Or will you keep your own counsel,” said Catherine, “and permit me to keep mine?”

  “These are separate matters; you must not muddle them up together. I would be shirking my duty as your brother, and as head of the family, if I failed to solemnly represent the dangers of allowing your rampant impulsiveness to get the better of you.”

  “I give you my word that no rampant impulsiveness has got the better of me. There. You have done your duty as brother and as head of the family. Are you satisfied?”

  Hector scowled but did not speak, so Catherine continued. “And perhaps you will allow me, your sister and the wee bairn of the family, to inquire whether you are equally satisfied that no rapacious greed has got the better of you?”

  “Oh, fie, Catherine! It is only steam looms!”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him whether opium was only opium, but he went on. “And there is very little money being made in the undertaking, certainly not enough to compensate for the risks we run. It is mostly a gesture of goodwill, a generous and brotherly sharing with an old acquaintance of Mr. Fleming’s—that may at some future time blossom into a mutually profitable manufacturing partnership in flax and hemp. There! Are you satisfied?”

  “Why must the looms be smuggled, then? Why so furtive?”

  “Because the king of the Netherlands wishes to shelter his neophtye mechanics from the harshness of competition while they figure out how to build steam-powered looms as good as ours. It is a mistaken precaution, however, a faulty notion; why should they struggle for years, decades, and replicate all our own early difficulties? Why should the weavers not have the fruits of our experience now? Flemish trade and manufacturing will benefit immediately. The Flemish mechanics will soon copy our machines, and learn a great deal from doing so. No doubt they have taken one apart already. Not the least harm is done; everyone gains.”

  “Well,” said Catherine, “let us each attend to our own conscience, then. Apparently each of us has been endowed with one of our very own.”

  10

  more cultivated Geniuses

  “That doesn’t look like any straw hat I’ve ever seen,” said Catherine, gazing up at the famous portrait by Sir Pieter Paul Rubens.

  “No, it’s probably a mistake,” said Mr Sinclair, “a persistent mistranslation. It should be called Le Chapeau de Poil—of felt—not de Paille—of straw.”

  “Oh, a felt hat! Yes, it might certainly be a felt hat,” said Mrs Todd. Mr Todd sighed noisily, shifting from foot to foot.

  Their little party stood before Rubens’s famous painting in the gilded leather–paneled drawing room of a handsome Antwerp house, having already passed through a vast reception room hung with sumptuous tapestries. The house, and the noble collection which filled it, had belonged to a notable merchant banker of impeccable taste and fathomless resources, now recently deceased. His worldly goods were to be auctioned in a few weeks’ time, so prospective bidders (and those, like themselves, who had not the slightest prospect of bidding) had come to see the collection before its dispersal into the hands of new owners. Small groups of well-dressed people sauntered about the room, talking quietly or shrilly, considering the pictures in turn. Catherine heard comments and exclamations in French and Dutch, German and Italian.

  The lady in the painting was all neck and hands. The deep neckline of her dress framed translucent plump flesh; and her fingers were long, tapered, be-ringed. Her chin was tucked demurely down, but her gaze was unabashed. Her face was illuminated by reflected light (reflected from where? wondered Catherine) even under the wide brim of her black hat. “It does seem amazingly familiar,” said Catherine, “as though I had seen it before.”

  “Perhaps that is because it has been very much copied,” said Mr Sinclair. “I have done several portraits just like it, for it is a composition which suits every woman.”

  “I should so like to try it myself!” cried Mrs Todd. “If only I dared. But who would sit for me?”

  “You might do it as a self-portrait. You would need only a looking glass for your model,” said Mr Sinclair.

  “Oh, Mr Todd, do say that I might,” begged Mrs Todd prettily. “It will be just the thing to occupy my mornings when we sail. Only pigments and a canvas—and of course I shall require a wide-brimmed hat, of any colour. The colour doesn’t signify in the least, as I can paint it as I please.”

  Catherine wandered away from them so she could look at the great man’s collection without distraction. Each picture was worth seeing: a Diana at her hunt; a barefoot Eurydice with a viper of malicious appearance; a horribly accomplished Crucifixion, from which Catherine quickly averted her glance. What manner of man found it edifying (or worse, stimulating) to contemplate so gruesome an image?

  She came to a set of eight smaller pictures in watercolour, framed alike and hung together. They were only sketches, she realised, and unsigned, but they showed a certain mastery. They might be composition studies, she thought, for they were imbued with vigour yet lacking in the polish or painstaking finish of the other works in the collection. Why were they here? Reading the French captions set into the painted border surrounding each picture, she realised that the series portrayed the life and career of Alexander the Great. Here was the hero before the high priest; here he was wounded at the battle of Issus; here he was in his magnanimity granting clemency to the family of Darius. And then there was the scene of his victory over Porus, king of India. Macedonian Alexander had gone to India; why shouldn’t she? She looked closely at the painting itself. The great Alexander was left-handed, for he held his sword in his left hand, and his shield on his right arm. Catherine’s own Alexander, her own dearest Sandy, had been left-handed too.

  But something about
this picture nudged her memory. It gave her an uncomfortable twisted feeling; and wasn’t it like something she had just seen, just now?

  She returned to the magnificent reception room hung with tapestries, which they had already passed. Yes, here was the same composition woven as a great tapestry, eight feet high and twelve feet long: Alexander’s defeat of the Indian king Porus at the River Hydaspes. But it was a mirror image of the little watercolour sketch in the other room. In the tapestry, Alexander was right-handed; he held his sword in his right hand, his shield on his left arm.

  Mr Sinclair appeared at her shoulder. “A superb collection, isn’t it?” he said. “The man was endowed not only with the collector’s compulsion but with the connoisseur’s eye as well—and, rarest confluence of all, the means to indulge them.”

  “A happy combination!” said Catherine. “But then I have not seen many collections—only Mr John Clerk’s, in Edinburgh, and some dark old paintings in one or two gloomy old lairds’ houses when I was too young to notice them properly.”

  “Ah, you have been in Mr Clerk’s house! Pray, what did you think of his collection?”

  “Oh, I am in no way qualified to judge; you must excuse me,” said Catherine.

  “I beg your pardon, Mrs MacDonald, but I must contradict you. You have eyes in your head for seeing, and a mind inside it for judging and considering what you see. And I have observed you here, doing what very few people do, which is to really look. I am quite sure that anyone who looks intelligently can form an opinion worth airing.”

  Catherine smiled, flattered in spite of herself. “You almost induce me to speak,” she said.

  “But did you not admire Mr Clerk’s Rubens? You do not recall noticing it? A plumpish but pathetic Callisto? And yet he has it in a place of honour—or so he had, when I saw it several years ago. And in a dazzling carved and gilt frame; and he would draw the attention of all his visitors to it, for he was excessively proud of having secured so valuable an object.”

  “Alas, I certainly do not remember noticing it. I did admire the portrait of his father—a sober, old-fashioned picture painted by Sir Henry Raeburn. And I was much struck by a set of Indian pictures; tiny, brilliant paintings like jewels. Those I see still in my mind’s eye from time to time. In any case, Mr Clerk was drawing our attention to other things: an old pipe music manuscript he had just acquired; and a tiny working model of my brother’s steam engine. It is a sorry admission, but I am proof that the untutored opinion—the natural taste of the sublime savage, if you like—is of little value after all.”

  He laughed, quite clearly delighted. “No, no, Mrs MacDonald; in fact you have proven just the contrary; for the pictures you describe—the Raeburn portrait and the Indian miniatures—are genuine, and very good examples of their type. Whereas Mr Clerk’s Callisto is a fake, and a sorry daub as well.”

  “Is it? Surely not! How can you be so certain?”

  “Because I painted it myself, in my impoverished student days. You doubt me! I was astonished beyond words when I first recognised it hanging in Mr Clerk’s cabinet. It was like meeting an old enemy unexpectedly at point-blank range. I owned only the one canvas in those impecunious days of my youthful ambition, so I painted it over and over again as I traveled about Europe on my student pilgrimages from one great collection to another, and copying, copying, everywhere I went. For of course you must copy the masters if you are to learn to paint; there is no other course. My one and only canvas was now a still life, now a Venus, now a Flemish portrait, now a Renaissance allegory, and the paint thicker upon its surface at every new incarnation. I parted with it at last in Paris to a compassionate Jacobite expatriate only slightly less poor than I, who wanted a present for his wife to hang on the wall of their lodgings. I had just copied the Callisto in Brussels, though my supplies of paint were so scanty by this time that it was really just the thinnest film of a picture, with the shadow of my previous effort—a nature morte—almost showing through if you knew how to look. But I got enough money to pay for my return passage to Scotland, and my kind friends were happy to have the picture, or so I believed then. Thus I parted with the much-abused single canvas of my student days and thought no more about it. So you can imagine my astonishment upon coming face to face with it in the house of the eminent Edinburgh collector! He was very proud of it, for it was then his newest, proudest acquisition.”

  “His newest thing is always his favorite, I think,” said Catherine.

  “Just so. And he was filled with the glee of having snatched it from under the very nose of another collector. He told us how he had accomplished this canny feat, but I was unable to attend, for I was sadly distracted. At first I was not absolutely certain, as some time had passed, and it was painful for me to believe that even in my student days I could have produced so unconvincing a piece of work—for really, it was not an admirable thing at all. But then I managed to maneuver myself into a position to discern the proof—that is, the traces of the nature morte that I knew underlay my Callisto. And there it was! Pears, dead hares, and guns. Thus I knew it was mine.”

  “What did you say? Or do?”

  “Nothing, at that time, in company. But later, when Mr Clerk and I were alone together, I led him, as artlessly as was in my power, to see the outlines of the pears and hares. He had never noticed them before. But even this new discovery did not cast any shadow of doubt over the chastity of his cherished Callisto. Not even an Iago could have had any success with our Mr Clerk! On the contrary, he was inclined only to congratulate himself on having got two Rubenses for the price of one. He was unable to hear any suggestions of another nature, and went so far as to imply that my doubt was only the incompetent’s base envy of a master’s skill.”

  “And how did you bear such aspersions?”

  “Poorly, I am afraid. We did not part friends. But I had assuaged my conscience. It was never my intent—indeed, it had never occurred to me—that my bungling journeyman copy might deceive anyone. But some people will not be undeceived. So I told myself, ‘He that is robb’d, not wanting what is stol’n, Let him not know’t and he’s not robb’d at all.’”

  “As for this collection,” said Catherine, gesturing about the tapes-tried gallery, “I suppose it harbours no cuckoos of yours?”

  “Not a one, alas!” Mr Sinclair said with a laugh. “Though several of these paintings have long been the objects of my ardent admiration. And of my most sincere compliment, too, in the form of faithful imitation. I have appropriated more than a few of these pictures—copied, reworked, adapted, and used their composition and their elements again and again. The classical column, the balustraded terrace, the scarlet drapery arranged handsomely behind the sitter—these are the standard settings for a great many portraits by any painter. No, if I may claim any artistic genius, it lies in an ability to recognise what is worth copying. Well, and I claim also a certain hard-won felicity of execution.”

  “Speaking of copying, I see that the little watercolour sketches in the next room are copies of these tapestries. But why are they in reverse?”

  “Very noticing of you—but backward still! Let us go and look at them. The tapestries in fact came after, for the little watercolours are the designer’s original sketches. So astute of this great collector to have got them. From these original designs, then, a full-size cartoon was next made, also backward, to be placed under the loom for the guidance of the weavers in producing the tapestries. The weavers work from the back of the tapestry, you understand. Occasionally one sees errors where a designer has forgotten to reverse some important element, so that a finished tapestry might have odd left-handed figures or inscriptions with some backward letters. The weaver, of course, simply copies what he is given.”

  “How very confusing it must be to draw in reverse, in mirror image!”

  “There is a certain knack, a versatile way of seeing. It is a knack that all good engravers must have. And there are tricks, too—tracing and mirrors and the like—but I must not reveal the
secrets of my trade.”

  An elderly footman belonging to the house approached them, bowed, and asked a question in Flemish. Mr Sinclair answered briefly in the same language; then, as the footman went away again, he translated for Catherine. “He says a foreign maidservant is below, seeking a Meester Mikdinell, or something like that; he was not quite clear about the name, but he did clearly convey a distinct disapproval of uncivilized foreign names. The foreign maidservant carries an important letter but refused to give it to him. I told him to bring her to us. Do you know where your brother might be found?”

  “Hector has a knack of evaporating just when he is wanted. But he did say something this morning about a playhouse. He wondered whether there might be a play worth seeing.”

  “Ah! It is nearby. But here she comes, the barbaric foreign maidservant.” They could see Sharada at the far end of the enfilade of the formal rooms following in the wake of the elderly footman. She had not yet seen them; as she passed through the magnificent galleries, she took the opportunity to look about her. A party of vivacious Italian visitors was making its way out, and the footman stood against the gilded embossed-leather panels lining the narrow passage that separated one gallery from the next to give them room to pass. Sharada, just behind him, moved to one side as well to make way for the Italians. But then, it seemed, she sprang forward again, nearly colliding with one of the dark gentlemen in the Roman party. He laughed, steadying her by the shoulders. With a remark to one of the ladies in his company, they continued on their way, the ladies laughing now and fanning themselves. The elderly footman looked extremely annoyed, however; he frowned heavily at Sharada and addressed some words to her. “That was a rebuke, I make no doubt,” said Mr Sinclair. “But why such a leap—like a deer?”

  “I daresay she suddenly saw the leather paneling on the wall behind her—saw that she was in danger of actually touching it. And if there is one thing she cannot bear to touch, it is the hide of a cow. My trunk is a handsome leather-bound thing—I confess I have always been ridiculously proud of it—but she cannot bring herself to touch it. I have seen her use a cloth so as not to touch it, and then she must launder the cloth! Sometimes she will get Annie to handle the trunk instead.”