The Minister relied on the advice other Deputy, who relied on the advice of her assistant (who was not quite her lover but would have been if they were not both so busy and so tired), and her path was clear. A Civil Servant under her Ministry had behaved with unwarrantable freedom, making deals involving money not yet allocated, and without a word to her. She made a statement in the House repudiating the purchases, and assuring the Commons that no one was more zealous in cutting down unwarrantable expenditures than she. Piously, she said that she yielded to no one in her love of art in all its forms, but there were times when even she had to regard art as a frill. When grave financial problems confronted the country, she knew where her priorities lay. She went no further, but it was assumed that these priorities lay in the Maritimes, or on the Prairies, where money problems are endemic.
Without an election, the press was in need of a political punching-bag, and Ross provided one for at least two weeks. The most conservative insisted that he be humbled, made to understand the facts of Canadian life, taught a sharp lesson: the more extreme papers demanded that his appointment be revoked, and hinted that he ought to go back to Europe, where he obviously belonged, having learned that decent people didn’t blaspheme against hockey.
The righteous uproar was almost over when Ross appeared one night in the Old Curiosity Shop. Looking at him, in his painfully reduced state, Francis knew that he loved him.
But what was there to say?
“The Ark of the Lord seems to have fallen into the hands of the Philistines,” was what he did say.
“I have never met this kind of thing before. They hate me. I think they wish me dead,” said Ross.
“Oh, not at all. Politicians get far worse abuse all the time. It will blow over.”
“Yes, and I will be left discredited in the eyes of my staff and perpetually school-marmed by the Minister, who will grudge me every penny that goes to the Gallery. I’ll be nothing more than a caretaker, looking after a cat-and-dog collection and without any hope of improving it.”
“Well, Aylwin, I don’t want to be stuffy, but you really shouldn’t have spent money you didn’t have in your grip. And the Minister—you know that as a woman she has to show herself tougher than any of the men; she can’t afford a single feminine weakness. The Prime Minister reserves all those for himself.”
“She’s out to get me, you know. Wants to prove me a fairy.”
“Well—are you? I’ve never known.”
“Not more than most men, I suppose. I’ve had affairs with women.”
“Well, why don’t you make a pass at the Minister? That would answer her question.”
“Grotesque suggestion! She smells of drug-store perfume and cough-drops! No, there’s only one thing that will put me right.”
“And that is—?”
“If only I could get one of those pictures for the Gallery. Just one would raise enough interest in the international art world to show the Minister I wasn’t completely a fool.”
“Yes, but how could you do that?” But even as he spoke, Francis knew.
“If I could get a private benefactor to give one to the Gallery, it would do an immense amount to put me right, and eventually it would put me totally right. If I could get the one I want, that’s to say.”
“Benefactors are very elusive creatures.”
“Yes, but not unknown. Frank—will you?”
“Will I what?”
“You know damn well what. Will you stump up for one of those pictures?”
“With art prices what they are at present? You flatter me!”
“No I don’t. I know what you have been paying in London in the past two or three years. You could do it.”
“Even if I could, which I don’t for a moment admit, why would I?”
“Haven’t you any patriotism?”
“It is variable. I take off my hat when our flag goes by—heraldic eyesore though it is.”
“For friendship?”
“From what I’ve seen of the world the worst thing that can happen to friendship is to put a price on it.”
“Frank, you’re making me beg. All right, damn it, I’ll beg.—Will you?”
Never in his life, which had not been sparing of discomfort, had Francis been so cornered. Ross looked so wretched, so beaten, and so beautiful in his wretchedness. In the biblical phrase, his bowels yearned toward Ross. But his compassion was not the whole of Francis’s complex of emotions. The more money he had, the more he loved money. And—he couldn’t explain it but he felt it—having relinquished his work as an artist, so much of what was deepest in him was now caught up with possessions, and therefore with money. To give a picture to the nation—very fine in the saying, and so dangerous in the doing. Be known as a benefactor and everybody wants something, often to sustain mediocrity. Yet—there was Ross, the last of his loves, and miserable. He had loved Ismay with his whole heart—and like a fool. He had loved Ruth like a man, and Ruth had died with hundreds of thousands of others, a victim of the world’s cruel stupidity. He loved Ross, not because he wanted Ross physically, but for his daring youth, which the years had not touched, for his defiance of conventions that Francis knew had kept himself in chains, had made him the sustainer of a failing estate and the supporter of a child who was not his own, had held him back from claiming a great painting as his work. Yes, he must yield, whatever the hurt to his purse, which was now almost his soul. Almost; not wholly.
And so Francis was about to say yes, and would have done if Ross had been able to hold his tongue. But his fatal urge toward speech stepped between Ross and his success.
“The gift could be anonymous, you know.”
“Of course. I would insist on that.”
“Then you agree.—Frank, I love you!”
The words startled Francis more than any blow. Oh God, this was putting a price on friendship, and no doubt about it!
“I haven’t agreed yet.”
“Oh yes you have! Frank, this will put everything right! Now, about price—let me get in touch with Prince Max tomorrow!”
“Prince Max?”
“Yes. Even you, drinker of cheap schlock though you are, must know about Prince Max, head of the great Maximilian wine-importers in New York? He’s acting on behalf of his wife. She was Amalie von Ingelheim and she inherited the whole collection from the old Gräfin.”
“Amalie von Ingelheim. I didn’t know she’d married Max! I know her—knew her.”
“Yes, she remembers you. Calls you Le Beau Ténébreux. Said you taught her to play skat when she was a kid.”
“Why is she selling?”
“Because she’s a girl with a head on her shoulders. She and Max are a thriving pair of aristocratic survivors. They even look alike, though he must be a good deal older than she is. She’s had a good career already as a model, but you know those careers don’t run much more than eighteen months. She’s been on the covers of the two biggest fashion magazines, and there’s no place else to go. She and Prince Max are buying a cosmetic business—a really good one—and she’ll make herself a hugely rich, international beauty.”
“And the pictures?”
“She says she never gave a damn about the pictures.”
“So? Little Amalie has certainly grown up—in a way.”
“Yes, but she’s not without heart. She’ll listen to reason. And if I tell her you are the buyer, everything will work out well. That’s to say, as cheaply as we have any right to expect—from aristocratic survivors. The picture could be here and in the Gallery before Christmas. What a gift to the nation!”