The Golden Calves

by Louis Auchincloss

  A simpler interpretation might have been that it was part and parcel of Augusta’s increasing detachment from life as she grew older. Certainly the girls noted it, and were often hurt by the cool impartiality with which she regarded their personal problems. When Inez’s husband deserted her, to the outrage of her father and sisters, Augusta refused to join in the clamor of denunciation, and was heard to make dry comments about what modern husbands had to put up with. And when Peter had decried the radicalism of Julia’s socialist lover, she had simply remarked that the young man must have seen enough in their milieu to wish to visualize a new and braver world. But there had been one terrible moment, for which Peter wondered if he would ever find it in his heart to forgive her, when she had forsaken her usual habit of distancing herself from the fray to burst out, as he was holding forth to the girls at a family dinner about his theories of influencing: “Oh, Peter, I’m so sick of all that! Why must you go on with it? Why must you scribble ‘Peter Hewlett’ all over the wonderful things you’ve bought? You’re like a little boy chalking ‘Jack loves Lucy on the side of some noble monument. Can’t you leave your masterpieces alone? Do you think they can’t speak for themselves?”

  ***

  Sitting alone now in the dark room under the lighted glory of the pictures, Peter reflected that she always meant what she said. And now she would certainly leave him if he did what he threatened. It was even possible that she would never return. What was impossible was that he should let her go. He had lived too long in the presence of her disapprovals to contemplate with any complacency what his life would be in their absence. At least while she was with him he could exercise some containment of her criticisms. Away from him, who could tell what their boundaries might be?

  Almost irately he rose now to turn off all the lights by the master switch. Very well! Did that satisfy her? There he was, Peter Hewlett, a nothing in the blackness of the void that only his money had been able to illuminate. The sole light now was in the doorway where he had seen Augusta’s robed figure. He saw it again, in his mind’s eye, this time no longer as a high priestess, but as an aging woman, her gray hair in curlers (oh, yes, even Augusta had her little vanities!), a puffy wrapper enveloping the bony shape so cleverly enhanced by her gowns. Why was she so somber? Was she jealous of the collection, of Julia, of Mark?

  He could bear the darkness no longer. He illuminated the El Greco. Could there not be more than one truth and one Peter Hewlett? Did he have to see himself as an old fool, half-crazed by anger at the handsome young man he had wanted as a protégé?

  Oh, there were moments, there were times … There were always moments and times. Had he not once wanted to kill his own father? Had there not been a day when Inez, as a chubby, shameless youngster, had aroused feelings of lust in him? Had he not actually hoped, when Augusta had that cancer scare, that she would die? Which were the martyrs in the auto-da-fé, the writhing heretics, condemned to a quick demise, or the placidly watching soldiers, condemned to a long one?

  Looking up, he thought for a moment that Augusta had come back and was standing again in the doorway. But no, it was still empty. Now he imagined that he saw her again, without the curlers or the puffy wrapper, once more a priestess, a goddess from the machine. The embodiment of what? His conscience? He grasped at the notion; he seemed to snatch at it, as if to quell the rising rustle of sneers in the darkness, mocking his twaddle. Well, why not?, he retorted to the whispers. Might not imagined absolution be as real as imagined guilt? Maybe it was only horse sense to do as Augusta bade.

  One by one now he turned on all the picture lights again and repaced the gallery slowly. There was, after all, a way of facing facts, if he chose. With self-discipline he could dredge them up from the sludge of his illusions and self-pity. It might even prove a kind of anesthetic. Facts were not supposed to be painkillers, but could they not be, if the self-deception had been lurid enough?

  Very well. Here was one fact. Every painting in that room was a great one. Here was another. Augusta had chosen the best. She had even chosen the El Greco, which was probably a fake. But she had chosen it not because it was an El Greco: she had chosen it because it was great. More facts. His eye was good,’ but not as good as hers. And as to his theories of the development of American painting, did they not range from the obvious to the fanciful? That slick volume, showily illustrated from his own collection, that he had written and privately published to expound them, what had it been but an effort to conceal the inadequate critic behind the glorious accumulator? He had even hoped, had he not, by exposing his eccentric, cantankerous but supposedly lovable personality, to persuade the purchasers of that expensive tome that he was himself a kind of artist?

  Other facts? Did they matter? He cared for Julia and Mark, but not really importantly. He had probably come as close to love with Augusta as he had ever come to that emotion. Was it another fact that he was facing all this?

  Enough! He would put off the many-colored robe of his masterpieces, and when he had done so, he would be as bony as Augusta but with a pot beside, a naked old man whom she, for arcane reasons of her own, had seemed to love.

  He sat up all night in his study, making lists. The collection would be disposed of, part in his lifetime, the rest on his death. The American paintings would be given to the Museum of North America. Of the European masters, one-third would be sold at auction and the proceeds placed in trust for the girls. Another third would be donated to museums across the country, in accordance with their needs and fitness. The final third would be retained for his lifetime and would pass under his will, half to the Museum of North America and half to his family. Except that the museum would have the right to dispose of its share by sale or otherwise, as it elected.

  In the dull light of dawn he reduced his plan to a neat memorandum in purple ink. He then slipped it under Augusta’s door and retired to his own room. He slept a dreamless sleep and awoke at noon, rested, sullen and resigned.

  He found Augusta in the dining room. She must have been waiting for him for hours.

  “You’re a great man,” she said quietly. “I always knew there was a great man in you somewhere. I suppose it’s why I married you.”

  “You’ve had a long wait.”

  “It was worth it.”

  “Oh, Augusta, I’m so wretched!”

  “My poor darling. That will pass.”

  There was a letter on his place from Carol Sweeters. It announced his resignation from the museum staff and thanked Peter for his hint to Miss Vogel that the time had come to take the California job. He concluded with a postscript that a recent test had proved the vision serpent a fake.

  Peter uttered a high cackle of laughter as he handed the letter to Augusta. “He says he still believes in it. Do you know what I’ll do? When it’s been deaccessioned I’ll buy it and send it to him as a wedding present.”

  “Is he going to marry that girl?”

  “I think so. Anyway, that might clinch his purpose.”

  “Julia called this morning. I told her all was forgiven. She and Mark have set a date. Next month.”

  “Really!”

  “And I told them what your wedding present would be. A spanking trust fund. I don’t know if I really approve of that, but Julia has always been sensible about money.”

  “You told them so that I couldn’t change my mind!”

  “No, I trust you, my darling. Only it never hurts to add a little guaranty.”

  “Do you think they’U be happy?”

  “Oh, yes. Mark, with everything he wants, will lose a bit of his shine. He may even become a tiny bit dull. But he will be good-tempered and conscientious, and he will do a fine job at the museum. Not that I care so much about that.”

  “And Julia?”

  “Oh, she’ll have several children and become very domestic. One has seen that before with cool professional women.”

  “Will she give up her career?”

  “It depends on what you call her career. No woman
ever gives up decorating. But her real career will be running the museum, for which she is even more qualified than he. It amuses me to think that Mark probably imagines, in kicking free from you, that he’ll be independent of the Hewletts. But now he’ll be controlled by the right one. And that will be all for his good.”

  Peter, drinking his coffee, black as he always liked it, reflected that in dismantling his collection he was only dismantling his presumptions. There could not be any great satisfaction in becoming nothing, but neither could there be much in pretending one was anything else. If the gods were all around one, maybe the best one could do was to be a vision serpent and hallucinate that one was, after all, a god too.

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