From London Far Read Free Page B

of whose subtle planes and infinite dyes the artist had toiled through oblivious, torrid days. She lay on scarlet; behind her a great emerald curtain was drawn back to reveal an angry sky and a strip of mysteriously sun-drenched sea; upon the goddess herself scattered tints from this tremendous setting were at play with the ivory and rose and gold of the curved torso, the studied relaxation of the limbs. Meredith, when he had looked at the picture for some time, remembered that it ought to be at Horton House.
    He had seen it before, and the Vermeer too – but that had been at the Italian and Dutch Exhibitions back in the thirties. Normally the Vermeer lived at Scamnum Court, the Duke’s principal country seat. And the Titian lived in Town. But only –
    And then Meredith remembered. Horton House was a burnt-out shell, and had been so these two years past. One of the last of the big raids had got it. And by what the Duke – grown old and obstinate – had chosen to leave there, exposed to the hazards of bomb and rocket, a good many people had been disturbed. That the Duke himself should stop on in the vast, almost deserted house (sleeping, it was said, very comfortably in an attic which he shared with his butler) was his own affair, but assuredly he ought to have sent away the Titian, and the Gobelin tapestries, and the famous Crispin Collection of cameos. Not but what (Meredith seemed to remember) the precious things were thought to have turned out safe and sound after all, the Duke having in fact tucked them away in cellars far below the level of the nearby Thames. But this cellar certainly had nothing to do with Horton House; it was hidden in the heart of Bloomsbury. Why, then, should the Titian be here – and stacked casually against a whitewashed wall?
    Until he asked himself this question Meredith had been so absorbed by the great painting that he had not looked farther about him. Now he shifted his gaze – this with the intention of taking a comprehensive view of his surroundings – only to have it riveted once more on an immediately adjoining object. Almost blocking the corridor was an immense conglomerate of masonry and plaster, which would have looked like the disregarded product of some large-scale work of demolition but for the fact that it was held together by an elaborate system of steel rods and screws designed for the purpose. Meredith advanced several paces until he was in a position to examine the mass on its thither side. What he found was a fresco by Giotto. A very familiar fresco, which Meredith was accustomed to view as often as he visited Italy. The fact was astounding but undeniable. The Titian had travelled some five miles from Horton House. This formidable fragment of a thirteenth-century church had travelled some seven hundred from Florence!
    London’s going: Rotterdam’s gone – Meredith began to see some appositeness in these cryptic phrases. Toledo had gone – years ago and as a sort of curtain-raiser on chaos. That put a big question mark against most of the world’s El Grecos. Budapest had gone – which meant Caravaggios and Tiepolos. What had happened to the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, with its host of Rembrandts; to the Mauritshuis at The Hague, with the Head of a Girl , and the View of Delft ? There were people whose business it was to collect information on such matters – but Meredith suspected that it was all pretty fragmentary as yet. And other things must be pretty fragmentary too: marbles, bronzes, terracottas, great paintings, rare books, unique manuscripts – enough of these lay in scraps, rubble, dust amid the still-smoking ruins of Europe. Experts and connoisseurs had followed the armies; and, doubtless, carefully constituted commissions timelessly inquired. But sufficient confusion must remain to afford scope to a small host of depredators and thieves. Had not the crowning achievement of Botticelli been discovered lying in a granary or a stable? Meredith shut his eyes at