“Simon, that is positively the nastiest, ugliest thing you’ve ever said! My soul into gold! I didn’t ask to be born rich, and if I have a talent for money it doesn’t mean I put money above everything! Have you missed the fact that Maria and I have a real, gigantic, and mostly unselfish passion for the arts and we want to create something with our money? I’ll go further—no, shut up, Maria, I’m going to speak my mind—we want to be artists so far as we can, and furthermore we want to do something with Uncle Frank’s money that he would really have thought worthy. And we’re treated like money-bags. Bloody, insensitive, know-nothing money-bags! Not fit to mix on equal terms with shit-bags like Nutty Puckler and that self-delighted sorehead Virginia Poole! At the first dress rehearsal I was standing in the wings, keeping my mouth shut, and I was shushed—shushed, I tell you—by one of those damned gofers when Albert Greenlaw was snickering and whispering, as he always is! I asked the kid what ailed her, and she hissed, ‘There’s an examination going on, you know!’ As if I hadn’t known about the examination for months!”
“Yes, Arthur. Yes, yes, yes. But let me explain. When art is in the air, everybody has to eat a lot of dirt, and forget about it. When I said you have put your soul into gold I was simply talking about the nature of reality.”
“And my reality is gold? Is that it?”
“Yes, that’s it. But not the way you think. Do please listen and don’t flare up all the time. It’s the soul, you see. The soul can’t just exist as a sort of gas that makes us noble when we let it. The soul is something else: we have to lodge our souls somewhere and people project their souls, their energy, their best hopes—call it what you like—onto something. The two great carriers of the soul are money and sex. There are lots of others: power, or security (that’s a bad one), and of course art—and that’s a good one. Look at poor old Geraint. He wants to project his soul on art, and because he’s a very good man it murders him when all kinds of people think he must project it on sex, because he’s handsome and has indefinable attraction for both men and women. If he simply went in for sex he could be an absolute bastard, with his advantages. But art can’t live without gold. Romantics pretend it can, but they’re wrong. They snub gold, as they’ve snubbed you, but in their hearts they know what’s what. Gold is one of the great realities, and like all reality it isn’t all wine and roses. Its the stuff of life, and life can be a bugger. Look at your Uncle Frank; his reality was art, but art gave him more misery than joy. Why do you suppose he became such a grubby old miser in his last years? He was trying to change his soul from a thing of art to a thing of money, and it didn’t work. And you and Maria are sitting on the heap he piled up in that attempt. You’re doing a fine thing, trying to change the heap back into art again, but you mustn’t be surprised if sometimes it brings you heartbreak.”
“What have you projected your soul on, Simon?” said Maria. Arthur needed time to think.
“I used to think it was religion. That was why I became a priest. But the religion the world wanted from me didn’t work, and it was killing me. Not physically, but spiritually. The world is full of priests who have been killed by religion, and can’t, or won’t, escape. So I tried scholarship, and that worked pretty well.”
“You used to tell us in class, ‘The striving for wisdom is the second paradise of the world,’ “ said Maria. “And I believed you. I believe it still. Paracelsus said that.”
“Indeed he did, the good, misunderstood man. So I took to scholarship. Or returned to it, I suppose I should say.”
“And it has served you well? Perhaps I should say you have served it well?”
“The funny thing is, the deeper I got into it, the more it began to resemble religion. The real religion, I mean. The intense yielding to what is most significant, but not always most apparent, in life. Some people find it in the Church, but I didn’t. I found it in some damned queer places.”
“So have I, Simon. I’m still trying. Will go on trying. Its the only way for people like us. But—
That’s how it is, isn’t it?”
“Not for you, Maria. You’re far too young to talk about the fear of death. But you’re right about the Flesh and the Fiend, even if it makes you sound like Geraint.”
“I think of that sometimes, when I look at little David.”
“No, no,” said Arthur. “That’s all over. Forget about it. The child wipes all that out.”
“There speaks the real Arthur,” said Darcourt, and raised his glass. “Here’s to David!”
“I’m sorry I whined,” said Arthur.
“You didn’t whine—not really whine. You just let loose some wholly understandable indignation. Anyway, we all have a right to a good whine, now and then. Clears the mind. Cleanses the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart—and all that.”
“Shakespeare,” said Arthur. “For once I recognize one of your quotations, Simon.”
“How one comes to depend on Shakespeare,” said Maria. “ ‘What potions have I drunk of Siren tears—’ Remember that one?”
said Darcourt. “Yes; that’s a good one. Puts it very concisely.”
“Thrice more than I have spent. Or rather, thrice more than Uncle Frank has spent,” said Arthur. “I suppose you’re right, Simon. I do think a lot about gold. Somebody must. But that doesn’t mean I’m Kater Murr. Simon, we’ve been turning over in our minds that scheme you were talking about a while ago. That would be more in Uncle Frank’s line, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t have mentioned it, otherwise,” said Darcourt.
“You said you thought the New York people would listen to an offer.”
“If it were put the right way. I think they would appeal to you, Arthur. Collectors, connoisseurs, but of course they don’t want to be made to look foolish. Not like people who have been in any way associated with a fake. They’re not Kater Murr, either. If it came out that they had been cherishing a picture which was just a simple, barefaced fake it wouldn’t do them any good, either in the art world, or in the world of business.”
“What is their business?”
“Prince Max is the head of an importing company that brings vast quantities of wine to this continent. Good wine. No cheap schlock, adulterated with Algerian piss. No fakes, in fact. I’ve seen some of his things on your table. Probably you didn’t notice the motto on the coat of arms on the bottles: ‘Thou shalt perish ere I perish’.”
“Good motto for wine.”
“Yes, but the motto is a family motto, and it means Don’t try to get the better of me, or you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“I’ve met some of those in business.”
“But you must bear in mind that the Princess is a business woman, too. Cosmetics, in the most distinguished possible way.”
“What’s that to do with it?”
“Dear Arthur, it means simply putting the best face on things. That’s what they’ll want to do.”
“So you think they’ll want a whopping price?”
“This is an age of whopping prices for pictures.”
“Even fakes?”
“Arthur, I may be brought to crowning you with this bottle—which isn’t one of Prince Max’s, by the way. How often do I have to tell you that the picture isn’t a fake, was never meant to be a fake, and is in fact a picture of the most extraordinary and unique significance?”