A Palace of Art

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘It is my constant fear, Miss Gloria, that the collection may be dispersed.’

  ‘Dispersed? But wouldn’t it have to be, if there was a sale? I’m sure that’s what happens with furniture.’ Gloria was trying to be practical. ‘Different people bid for different things they like or need.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Gloria, that is so. And that is what would happen. But the collection is not just so much furniture. I do beg you to grasp that fact. It is what some of the gentlemen in London don’t seem to know – or pretend not to know. But you must be different. You have grown up here. Even you, Miss Gloria, can’t—’ Guise broke off in confusion. He was so agitated – a condition disconcerting in so composed a man – that he had been about to blurt out something singularly lacking in tact.

  ‘But, Guise, I do understand.’ Gloria did her best to come to the rescue. ‘You like everything just as it is. And of course furniture has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Oh, but it has, in a way.’ Guise seemed now to be wondering whether he could ever make himself clear. ‘Everything is a part of the collection. Remove anything, Miss Gloria, and it all changes. It’s that that’s to be our tragedy.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ Gloria could say nothing less than this before so emphatic a speech. She was a little bewildered, all the same. The conception that a particular arrangement or disposition of works of art can itself be a work of art eluded her. (This may have been an intellectual weakness in Miss Montacute – but it is a contentious point.)

  ‘Nudd should remain as it is, Miss Gloria. But I do recognise the difficulties. I have recognised them from the first. They are of the financial order.’

  ‘I’m afraid they are. Mr Thurkle has explained that to me. There isn’t any money, really. There are just all the valuable things that are around us here. Guise, I’d like Nudd to remain as it is – perhaps almost as much as you would. If it could just stay put, and I could say good-bye for keeps to the whole—’ It was Gloria’s turn to break off, and only just in time. Having come, rightly or wrongly, to regard the famous Nudd collection as a millstone round her neck, she might have characterised it in terms which must have alienated Guise for good. ‘Tell me,’ she said abruptly, ‘about those Americans. Does Mr Thurkle know about them?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Gloria – and I believe his mind is not wholly closed to the possibility I have seen. It hasn’t been so with some of the others. And that must excuse my presuming as I have done. Particularly in the matter of the Curatorship.’

  ‘Of the what?’

  ‘It appeared desirable, Miss Gloria, that I should assume a higher status – I believe that would be the word – if I were to carry any weight with the interested parties I had in mind. So, on certain occasions, I have ventured to describe myself as Curator. As Montacute Curator. And I hope I may be—’

  ‘It’s quite all right by me. You’ve been doing the curating, after all.’ Guided to this view of the matter more by good sense than by semantic science, Gloria robustly brushed the point aside. ‘But what does Mr Thurkle think?’

  ‘Well, Miss Gloria, I can’t claim to be in his confidence. He finds it difficult, I judge, to approve my taking any initiative in the matter. Quite properly, no doubt. It must seem to him much as if Mrs Bantry had done so.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think Mr Thurkle can know anything about Mrs Bantry.’

  ‘A mere façon de parler, Miss Gloria. Mr Thurkle naturally takes our own view of such things.’

  ‘I’m not sure I have a view.’

  ‘Our English view in general, Miss Gloria. It is noticeable that the parties from America have a more liberal attitude than the English gentlemen.’

  ‘They’re rather more free?’

  ‘Not that at all.’ Guise hadn’t appreciated this mischievous equating of the parties from America with Mr Jake Counterpayne. ‘Very good manners, they have – very good manners, indeed. Although without, of course, always knowing quite what’s what. Most natural, that is – their republican tradition and the like being considered. But very reasonable people to work for, I consider they’d be.’

  ‘I see.’ This time Gloria really did see. ‘If this sort of deal went through, do you think they’d keep you on?’

  ‘I think it possible, Miss Gloria. Although the point is a minor one.’

  ‘It’s nothing of the sort. I wouldn’t look at it, if they didn’t promise to. And I’d make them use that word’—Gloria had to search for it— ‘that word Curator. The collection would be the Montacute Collection – I’d owe that to my mother, I think. And you’d be Montacute Curator for keeps. They’d make you a Doctor of Something in their university, Guise.’ Gloria said this quite without amusement. ‘And that would be just fine.’

  ‘It’s a thought, Miss Gloria.’ Guise produced this uncharacteristic locution almost huskily; he might have been described by an indulgent novelist as deeply moved. ‘And I’m very much obliged for your good opinion – very much obliged indeed, Miss Gloria. To give satisfaction has always been my aim.’ Guise had quickly recovered his authentic professional idiom. Gloria found herself wondering how successfully he’d sink it if he really became the learned Dr Guise. Not that it would matter, if he had the sense to be frank about himself. There wasn’t much doubt that he really knew quite a bit about Giorgione and all that. If he took appropriate occasion to explain from time to time that he had started life at Nudd as a knife-boy or whatever it had been, he would quickly become an exhibit in which his new employers would take a finely democratic pride.

  ‘So we’re getting somewhere,’ Gloria said. ‘Here’s the way to save the collection as a collection. Nudd becomes a sort of college. Is that right?’

  ‘I suppose it might be called that. Certainly a centre for the study of the fine arts in this country. There would be graduate students from the parent campus, no doubt. But eminent authorities would also be in residence.’ Here, it might have been said, was a further professional jargon which Guise had been picking up.

  ‘Do you mean they would be studying English art? Most of the things in the collection seem to come from other countries.’

  ‘Very true, Miss Gloria.’ Guise was patient (as he may have been reflecting he could now afford to be). ‘Of course they would go around studying English art here and there. But world-wide activities would be going on as well. It would be a question of a setting, you might say. A dignified setting. Because that, you see, isn’t easily come by in America. Over there, only the very old families have it. Only the very old families indeed.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Gloria had no occasion to doubt this sociological information, and vaguely supposed that the contemporaries of Christopher Columbus were in question. ‘So which university is it going to be? If there are several after the place, I suppose it will just be the one offering most money. That’s certain to be Mr Thurkle’s view.’ Gloria considered this point. ‘And it would have been my mother’s – don’t you think? It’s the sensible thing.’

  ‘Certainly it is.’ Guise hesitated. ‘But there may not, it seems, be quite the scope I supposed. I mentioned difficulties to you. I ventured to describe them, I think, as of a financial order. One has to agree that great expense would be involved.’

  ‘For the people proposing to buy the place?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Nudd as it stands – although one of the finest houses in the country, to my mind – is not precisely suited to the purposes proposed. There would have to be additions, which alone would cost a great deal. Architects have been down, Miss Gloria, and I understand they have spoken very plainly on the point.’

  ‘At least it isn’t our point.’

  ‘It restricts the number of institutions interested. And that in turn, you will understand, limits what may be called our realistic expectations in the particular field we are considering. And it is the only field, so far as I can see, in which there is any hope’—Guise’s voice suddenly trembled— ‘of saving the collection from dismemberment.’

  ‘Then we must stick
to it.’ Gloria said this firmly, and without any particular sense of the momentous. She knew that she must part with the collection. Or, rather, she knew that she must part from it. It wasn’t her thing, and therefore it oughtn’t to remain the background of her life. The fact that it might fetch even considerably less than had been supposed didn’t perturb her in the least. Indeed, it didn’t interest her all that. The whole affair was something that her mind found itself straying away from. Only her regard for Guise was keeping her thoughts on the ball for even this long. She was rather surprised, as a matter of fact, that Guise was managing it. But this is a surprise which we are not obliged to share. Gloria Montacute didn’t understand art. She did, however, understand dedication. From a point in her own particular sphere about as humble as Guise’s own, she had watched quite a lot of it on the job. Guise had his thing, and it was around them now on these walls. There was nothing very surprising about Guise’s singleness of heart. It was something not nearly so uncommon in the world as it was in the plays they took her to and the gloomy books they talked about. It was important, all the same. So Guise’s disinterestedness claimed her serious regard, even although this had been an absolute field-day for more intimate problems of her own. ‘We must stick to it,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll go up to London and speak to Mr Thurkle about it tomorrow.’

  Guise stood up – as he well might. A natural term had come to the interview – and it seemed a very satisfactory one at that. But Guise hesitated.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said slowly, ‘there’s only one interested party left.’

  ‘Only one?’ Gloria was really surprised. She had been living, after all, in a private climate in which several contending parties (three, to be precise) had been jostling for a prize – although for just what prize had been agonisingly obscure. She had come to think of the world as consisting of small equivocal queues. ‘Only one?’ she repeated blankly.

  ‘I’m afraid so. It seems that my sense of the matter has been a little out of date. Mr Thurkle, and the professional gentlemen advising him, have access to information it’s hard for me to come by. The state of the market, one may say. So may I explain?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  At this, Guise sat down again, and talked for some time. Gloria heard him out in silence.

  ‘We’ll have to sleep on it,’ she said eventually and with decision. Everything of her mother that she had in her – and it must have been something – was startled by what she had heard. ‘But tomorrow I’ll see Mr Thurkle, all the same. Would you say, Guise, that a rapid decision is required?’

  ‘It would be desirable, Miss Gloria.’ Guise again stood up. ‘But you must do nothing in haste,’ he said gravely. ‘Nothing against your own deeper mind. And now I had better be going round the house. There’s the security to see to. I should like you to know that I’m very careful about it.’

  ‘I’m sure you are – dear Guise.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Gloria.’ Miss Montacute’s surprising butler produced what was rather more than a formally respectful bow. ‘Is there anything you would require before retiring?’

  ‘No. Nothing at all. Good night.’

  Half an hour later Gloria was almost asleep – which was something of a tribute, perhaps, to the fibre of which she was composed. And then the telephone at her bedside rang.

  ‘Gloria?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s me – Jake.’

  ‘Oh. Where are you?’ The question came from Gloria with something of the stunned inconsequence of Laertes answering ‘Oh, where?’ when told of the drowning of his sister Ophelia.

  ‘I’m in London.’

  ‘I thought you were making ice-cream.’

  ‘Haven’t begun. When are you coming back to town? I want to show you some pictures.’

  ‘Pictures?’ Gloria was bewildered. Pictures were about the last objects she ever wanted to hear of again.

  ‘Yes. Some pictures. Quite interesting – although they’re hardly the point. Except to me, in a way.’

  ‘Your pictures?’

  ‘Good God, no! I’m not mad.’ There was a pause. ‘Gloria, will you come?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gloria found herself trembling between the sheets. She had heard – she believed she had heard – a young man asking the question of his life. And she had made this reply. ‘I was thinking of coming up tomorrow,’ she said rather faintly. ‘To see a lawyer. Probably in the afternoon.’

  ‘Then in the morning. I’ll tell you a pub where we can meet on the South Bank. That’s where the pictures are. Listen.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

  Had Gloria been obliged to give an account of herself to a dispassionate person – had she been going up to London, for example, on an unlikely visit to a psychiatrist – she would have found it uncommonly difficult to sort out her mental processes during the journey. She ought to have been bewildered that she was going at all. For she had simply been summoned by Jake Counterpayne – it came to that – whom she had met only twice since childhood, and who had, upon the second of these occasions, appeared to her in a confused way as the emissary of predatory relations and up to no more good than had been Octavius Chevalley. Even if she hadn’t been summoned, even if that wasn’t a fair way to put it, even if rather she was answering an appeal, it was still very odd that here she sat in a second-class carriage of what British Rail chose to call the Cathedrals Express.

  Yet what she had to reckon with was the absence and not the presence of bewilderment. It was precisely this, in fact, that was bewildering. And such a complicated state of feeling was not one which she thought of herself as at all well equipped to analyse. The consequence was that she simply sat back and let Oxford and Didcot and Reading go by. What was happening was a fated thing. She had about as much choice left to her as a bride who has climbed into the hired Rolls-Royce with her papa – or, for that matter, as a corpse which has been firmly hoisted into the hearse. The train hurtled towards Paddington. A man came along the corridor to offer, in the spirit of an egalitarian age, even second-class passengers a cup of coffee in the dignity of their own compartment. It was all as commonplace as could be.

  So was the tube. So was the pub. And so, in a disconcerting way, was Jake.

  Jake had disguised himself – or such was her first impression. He was dressed in what other young men of her acquaintance facetiously called a gent’s suiting. He answered almost perfectly, it occurred to her, to Guise’s conception of a public school man. It was surprising that the effect wasn’t crowned by a bowler hat.

  This made for a bad start. (Jake Counterpayne was perhaps prone to bad starts.) Gloria felt that Jake had contrived this effect on a calculation that it would reassure her – which was injurious and absurd. She was an heiress and therefore, so to speak, an Establishment figure, prepared to be soothed by well-cut dark-grey clothes. It was something she just wasn’t going to take. Being forthright by habit (a disposition in which there can be great blessing), she said so crisply and at once.

  ‘I don’t see,’ she said, ‘that you need have got yourself up like that.’

  ‘Oh, but I always do. On these occasions, I mean.’

  Gloria was appalled. Having so lately been in contact – embarrassingly close, if fortunately residually chaste contact – with one whom she now regarded as a kind of professional seducer, she took this as a shameless avowal that Jake thought of himself as in a familiar situation. Establishment heiresses were quite his line. He had a routine.

  But Jake, even if given to unhappiness in love, was far from dim-witted. At least he marked the blankness of the pause his explanation had produced.

  ‘For galleries, that is.’ If he mumbled this, at least he got it out. ‘I hate being part of a stage set.’

  ‘A stage set?’

  ‘Young artists doing their stuff. Prowling round the deliverances of their betters.’

  ‘The what?’ Gloria had to reckon with the fact that Jake even if untuto
red in literature by elderly persons, did from time to time frequent it. So he had at times an odd vocabulary, and a fondness for mysterious quotations, unknown in hospitals.

  ‘You know what I mean. Budding geniuses with a crust in their pockets, posing as the hungry generation ready to tread Moore and Sutherland and all that lot down.’ Jake must have been very nervous to continue with this rubbish, fully intelligible only to a close student of the poet Keats. ‘And stared at by trippers and tourists.’

  ‘Oh!’ Gloria suddenly understood. And this glimpse of a strain of self-consciousness in Jake (which fleetingly reminded her of Octavius) at once softened her towards him. He was as young as she was. ‘You mean you like to be invisible when looking at things?’

  ‘At important things.’

  ‘Aren’t the things at Nudd important? You’re said to have cut quite a flamboyant figure there.’ By some curious infection, Gloria had found a wildly literary word herself.

  ‘To your butler and that awful Domberg?’ Tumbling like a flash to this, Jake produced for a moment an alarmingly breathtaking grin. ‘Bitter?’

  ‘Mild.’ Being unaccustomed to mid-morning beer, had taken Gloria a second to realise that she was being offered a drink. But when the mild came she drank it gratefully enough. It gave her a space in which to collect herself.

  ‘It has been most frightfully nice of you to come.’ These conventional words burst from Jake without conventional effect. He brought out a rather crumpled packet of cigarettes. ‘Smoke these things?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ It was from the tea lady (retired) that this reply came.

  ‘I’ll give them up when . . . if ever I get married. One simple pleasure will be enough. Enough expense too, I expect. Do you object to them at any time?’