A Use of Riches

by J. I. M. Stewart

  “He’s an incompetent old ass – blind and deaf and with his head full of rotten old pictures.” John took the Chianti flask and tilted it recklessly over his glass. “But he thinks things aren’t too bad.”

  He looked at me confidently and inattentively. But although he was really absorbed in some unspeakable release he’s gained – and, I felt, some consequent opening prospect of further unrelenting and utterly satisfying, eternally tormenting labour – although he was really absorbed, he suddenly wanted to give me pleasure in his turn. Of course he knew precisely the figure he’d been cutting, and from moment to moment how I’d felt about it. But he took it all in his stride – and now, wolfing his food and making a large luxurious business of drinking what wasn’t so very much wine after all, he talked about Tim and Charles. I had to rub my eyes, almost, to realise that his eyes haven’t yet rested on either of them. He seemed determined to convince me—as if I needed any convincing!—that he was as inescapably a perceptive father as he was an unreliable one. And, almost immediately, the unreliable side came out – triflingly and in terms of a dip, this time, into the mildest comedy. He is genuinely looking forward to Fyodor Weidle’s bringing them to Saltino for the end of their holidays. They attract him both as individuals and as products of an environment and education that are strange to him; he finds it amusing, I mean, that his sons should be in process of what he calls that sort of togging up. I wish that there was, as yet, more to it than this. But to listen to the largeness of the plans he was now making for their visit, you’d suppose he intended to devote the greater part of his days to them. I endorsed one proposal after another – and at the same time told myself to tell all that to the Marines. Ten minutes at a time will be as much as he’s likely to take away from whatever’s going on in that studio. But there’s to be a whole day, if you please, in the Uffizi. Tim, he says, will take it all in a composed and discriminating way, and seldom be seen to pause unbecomingly before mediocre achievements. But Charles will quickly turn childish and outrageous amid such acres of junk, and Charles will be right. At this, I had a curious moment of apprehension, a glimpse of the risks that – if we have arrived at anything permanent at all – Charles will run as the result of the resurrection of such a father. They’re of a worthwhile order, I suppose. But there they are.

  John talked on. At least while eating his dolce and drinking another third of a glass of Chianti – he seems to have a quite automatic control over anything that might cloud his eye or make his hand tremble – he talked on, and this time about plans on a larger scale. Somebody, it must have been one of the art scribblers he’d barely speak to, has told him that Brazil is the only place where painting is really happening – and so to Brazil, he announced, we shall go. “It’s lucky you have all that money,” he put in parenthetically, and then off he went again. He returned to the Uffizi, and to galleries in general, and talked about pictures being put inside and doing time. The subject ought to be taken up, he said, by the people who go in for penal reform. Completed paintings should always be exposed in the streets – “under some sort of awning,” he said – and carted off by anyone who took a fancy to them. But every five years there should be a Feast of the Grand Combustion, when into the bonfire everything that was over five years old should go.

  And so on. He wasn’t exactly repeating himself. Still I’d sufficiently heard that sort of gay senseless talk long years ago to be much disposed either to weep or to throw a bottle at his head now. Then, quite suddenly, he stopped off. Perhaps he felt that he’d done his stuff, put on a turn for me, and could now be getting back to business.

  Well, that was all right – and I smiled at him as he gave me a long look before grabbing his overcoat and plunging out of the villa. I went into the salotto, and sat down by the stove, and told myself I was wondering what sort of work he got on with by artificial light. But his look came back to me as something that cancelled the whole intended effect of his talk. He might have been a man turning away from a shattered mirror, or from a familiar window that has been reglazed with frosted glass.

  7 January

  Fyodor Weidle and the boys have arrived safely.

  9 January

  Wonderful sunshine. One might be in the Alps. I took another long walk with Weidle. He has been rather a surprise to me. There are things about him that I hadn’t got hold of at earlier casual meetings, or when he was here last. Even that he should be capable of tramping over snow! I’d thought of him as characteristically sitting in a car and wearing a coat with a big fur collar. He did in fact arrive like that – and he’d rather outrageously provided Tim and Charles with astrakhan hats, which please them enormously, although I suspect Tim of a lurking suspicion that they’re not quite Italian, even in winter. But he’s not – Weidle, I mean – flamboyant in a manner I’d somehow supposed. Of course he has the graceful ways and the reserves of guile that go with salesmanship at his level. But, underneath, he is uncompromisingly austere. I imagine he could be what’s called ruthless. Of course he plainly puts in time combing his hair. But it occurs to me that if he didn’t he would be in danger of looking rather like a minor prophet – and who would venture to buy pictures from one of them?

  He spent the first evening with John in the studio, while I played Charles’s favourite Snakes and Ladders with the boys. But since then he’s been chiefly with me. He said at once that John’s command of his craft is a miracle, and that if he’d made any rash bets a little time ago he might have had to eat his own astrakhan, which is old and probably very tough. I haven’t heard him say much to John – except to tease him about his labour-saving devices. The studio, he says, is like a kitchen in the Ideal Home Exhibition. As if Weidle had ever been at that.

  He’s very quiet and thoughtful. And he doesn’t look well. I’ve an idea that he is a sick man, who has got beyond pictures and so on meaning all that much to him – he’s had a long spell of it, after all – and that he’s finishing off by taking a good look at people. But this may be quite deceptive. Though I don’t think it is. No, I think that what he’s looking at up here is some human problems, and that he doesn’t terribly like what he sees. He did tell me today how he got a first inkling that there was something very strange about John’s supposed death. An elderly woman called Morrison, the mother of an American painter who died a few years ago, sent him her son’s collection of drawings to sift through. There was a small portfolio endorsed – I think he said – “In mem. J. A.” He told me that, after he had discovered the truth, he got Mrs. Morrison’s permission to destroy its contents. I was rather startled. “They were better gone,” he said. “There oughtn’t to be any curiosities of art; it’s enough of a curiosity in itself.”

  This was deep in the woods, and the silence around us was oppressive. I could feel that he was troubled by having appeared to offer me an empty epigram. “Of course I know about the drawings made in blindness,” I said. “Rupert told me. And they must have had, certainly, a rather overpowering pathos. But weren’t they also, as it has turned out—”

  He interrupted me – which isn’t at all his habit. “There are kinds of pathos,” he said, “that are best for the dark.”

  I just don’t know what this was a streak of in Weidle. But I think that many men who get along notably on élan have somewhere a melancholy vein. He isn’t in the least given to being consistently enigmatic. That would repel me – whereas in fact he has drawn me into a feeling of real intimacy. I have talked to him unreservedly – even saying things that I haven’t set down here. Like John, he is a very noticing man.

  This evening he made us all play Snakes and Ladders – including John, whom he amused by declaring the game to be the perfect emblem of the human condition. But Charles, when the meaning of this had been explained to him, said it would be so only if played under the bed without matches. This outlandish remark pleased John even more.

  10 January

  Fyodor Weidle has left us. He spent the morning with John in the studio, and on returning t
o the villa rang up London, as is his custom. An hour later, he had a call from New York – and then he came and told me he must go. It is some unexpected business crisis. He has perfect tact, and didn’t make too much of his regrets. But I could see that he really was upset. He is attached to the boys – and they showed their disappointment naively, so that I was afraid he felt he was letting them down. But there is no difficulty about their getting back to England; at Florence they can be put into a sleeper for Calais, and being on their own will delight them. Weidle went straight off without lunch, as he had to do if he were to make Malpensa in time for the night flight. I was sorry to see him go.

  Tim told me this evening that he had seen Sister Barfoot. I suppose it must be true. He spoke with a carefully calculated degree of casualness that startled me. Then I remembered that he had judged her very pretty, and I thought that the embarrassing factor might be in that. But I couldn’t be sure. You never know where John may let you down. Quite apart from his having said the girl was gone, it’s another small ominous note so far as the future of this reunited family is concerned. Plenty of children, I suppose, stumble upon queer facts about their parents, and are none the worse. Still, I shall be relieved, I’m afraid, when Tim and Charles do set off on their return to school at the end of next week.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Martin Craine threw back his head in peals of laughter. “Go-go!” he shouted. “Go-go!”

  The fat pony went. Martin’s heels drummed on her back; they couldn’t be said to reach anywhere near her flanks. Rupert Craine walked alongside. Considered strictly as equitation, it was indecorous. But at least it was a start. “Elbows in,” Craine said conscientiously. “Back straight.”

  Martin shouted with laughter again. He too knew it was a start, and he was triumphant. Hazardously, he turned his head and looked at the ground, which was a long way off. It was a critical moment. “Go-go!” he commanded emphatically. “Go-go!”

  They came back between the mulberry trees, and then in front of the dining-room. Rachael Craine sat up in her pram in sunlight, solemnly observant. She was wearing a bonnet – for Nannie’s ideas were inevitably antique – and this added to the composure of her appearance. It was impossible to believe that that button of a mouth would ever utter, or that anything would deflect that round blue stare.

  “Rach . . . ael!” Martin shouted as they came up. He hadn’t yet any vocabulary for boasting, but he was boasting, all the same. “Ra . . . chael!”

  Incredibly, Rachael opened her mouth – but it was only because she had decided suddenly and prodigiously to yawn. She was unimpressed. The pony pawed with a mild impatience, being aware that the proceedings were over. Nannie came forward, and Craine lifted Martin off. “He may do,” he said.

  “I’m sure he’ll be a credit to you, Mr. Rupert.” Nannie was as little impressed as Rachael had been. She had, after all, no doubt seen Craine on his first pony too. And her responses were always uncompromisingly conventional. “But what a lot of noise!” She turned to Martin. “You’ll have shouted yourself hoarse,” she said sternly and informatively. “And in such a raw air, too!” She shook her head. “I think he’d better gargle,” she said.

  “Nonsense, Nannie.” Craine was momentarily impatient. But then he nodded his head good-humouredly. “As you think best, though. He must be fit for a tougher lesson tomorrow. Martin – more tomorrow?”

  Martin nodded his head. “Go-go!” he said dreamily. “Go-go!”

  Craine walked away, and climbed to the little terrace. There he turned, and looked back over the garden and the paddock. You couldn’t tell that the Pinn was over its banks; from the mist that swathed it only the pollard willows rose in an irregular line, like troops advancing through an inefficient smoke-screen. But beyond the little river Craine’s seven Lombardy poplars, bare and gently swaying, rose into clear sunlight. A vapour trail scrawled the sky above them. The only sound – the only sound now that Martin had stopped shouting – was the faint throb of machinery from beyond Pagan Episcopi. Craine listened for a moment – if a fellow threshed as late as this, there should be somebody in a position to give him a rocket – and then walked into the house. His butler was in the hall.

  “Mr. Weidle, sir,” the man said. “I’ve put him in the library.”

  Craine went into the long chill formal room, lined with his grandfather’s classical texts and histories. Weidle was looking cold and pinched, and the lustre seemed to have gone from his carefully tended hair.

  “For heaven’s sake!” Craine said. “If it must be books, come in among my own. They’re a ragged lot, but I keep them cosy. What’s Evans been thinking of? He must have taken you for a philistine bigwig of the first order.”

  Weidle laughed, and made one of his most perfect gestures. “Just that,” he said. “The top man in the Civil Service. The Principal Secretary—isn’t he?—to or for or in the Treasury. I felt your excellent Evans make the identification instantaneously. Sir Fyodor Weidle, K.C.M.G.”

  Craine led the way into the other room. Weidle was unnaturally vivacious. And he was certainly very tired. Craine, as he presently poured sherry, looked at him curiously. “I heard you had to come back,” he said. “It was in Jill’s last budget.”

  “Ah – so you’ve had that. I might have got here first. But I found, after all, that I needed a couple of days to recover my breath – and to make sure I knew what I was talking about.” Weidle had sat down close by the fire. His vivacity had dropped from him with an awkward abruptness. He sat staring sombrely into the flame.

  “Did you really have sudden urgent business?” Craine was fishing for cigarettes. “It didn’t, somehow, come through like that. Not that Jill doesn’t seem to have been convinced.”

  “Certainly I had sudden urgent business.”

  Craine became quite still. “And nothing to do with Arnander?” he asked.

  “You know very well it was to do with Arnander.” Weidle spoke the words gently – so that the immediate challenge with which he followed them up was surprising. “What does come through?” he demanded. “What does she tell you – in her letters, or whatever they are?”

  “What Jill writes is disturbing,” Craine said. He spoke cautiously. He might have been opening a tricky conference with gentlemen from Ankara or Buenos Aires. “Or perhaps it’s what she doesn’t write.”

  “She speaks of some change in him – towards herself?”

  “Yes. But it seems to have a basis that’s natural enough. During his blindness, he was almost morbidly dependent on her. Do you remember telling me that, when she spoke, he positively vibrated to the sound of her voice? But now, when he’s back at work, she has to play – and rather abruptly – second fiddle. She keeps on saying that it’s something she was used to, long ago.”

  “An abrupt change, but explicable. Is that all?”

  “No, it’s not – or I wouldn’t speak of something disturbing at the back of it. She seems at times to feel that it precisely isn’t like long ago; that something has gone from their relationship. She puts no name to it. It’s only an intuition.”

  “I think she knows more.” Weidle pushed away his glass. “You want the truth about them – out there?” He waited for Craine’s nod. “There are times when he can’t bear her.” He waited again, but Craine was mute. “That’s what it has done for him, and for her – his gaining his sight.”

  Craine managed to speak. “It’s madness – what you’re saying.”

  “You know it’s not. But put it, simply, that she baffles him. And that means that she must eventually find the situation – not him, mind you, but the situation – insupportable. With Arnander blind, she could have made do – although it would have required all the devotion she has. But with Arnander sighted – well, it’s hopeless.”

  “I say it’s senseless, what you’re telling me. It isn’t in Nature – a change like that.” Craine turned away, walked the length of the room, and came back. “Or might you be saying, with equal truth, that he can�
�t bear himself?”

  Weidle nodded. “Say that he can’t bear the suspicion which his response to her – or his lack of response – threatens to bring to his consciousness.”

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “You know I’m not, Craine.” Weidle’s voice was suddenly urgent. “You understand it. I know you understand it. Good God, man, your only chance is in understanding it!”

  There was a long silence, and then Craine sat down. He sat, or sank, down – but his voice when he spoke had steadied itself. “Arnander’s work,” he said. “Tell me about it. Tell me what’s in that studio.”

  Weidle took a deep breath. “I can do that easily. Nothing at all.”

  For a moment Craine seemed to feel that he had listened to a literal statement. “Empty?” he asked.

  “No, no. The sketches, the big compositions – they’re all there. Everything that old Otto Frink saw. And they look very like Arnanders. Not a new sort of Arnanders. Just the old sort. But they’re not even that.”

  “Not even that?” Craine’s mind was still groping. “In heaven’s name, what do you mean? Forgeries?”

  “Nothing of the sort. Something much simpler, although much stranger. The man’s recovery of his technique really has been miraculous. It’s nothing like a hundred per cent – but it’s miraculous, all the same. I’m not surprised that Frink in his near dotage – Frink, who was the first person to proclaim what John Arnander was – didn’t look beyond it. If he had, he would have found – well, what I’ve told you. Nothing at all.”

  “You mean . . . “

  “I mean that – thanks to you – Amander has recovered his sight. But he hasn’t recovered his vision.”