“Don’t be hurt, darling. Or at least, don’t show it. I expect we’re on the program, somewhere.”

This was a moment Darcourt had been dreading. “There was a slip-up,” he said; “quite by accident the acknowledgement of the help of the Cornish Foundation was left off the program. Easily explained. The Festival generally arranges those things through its own administration, you see, and as this was a sort of special production, not quite of the Festival, though under its umbrella, there was an oversight. I didn’t see a proof till this afternoon. But don’t worry. Slips are being stuffed into every program at this moment, with the proper acknowledgement on it.”

“Typewritten, I suppose?”

“No, no; one of those wonderful modern multilith processes.”

“Same thing.”

“An understandable error.”

“Completely understandable, in the light of everything else that connects the Cornish Foundation with this opera. I don’t know why they bother. Who gives a damn, so long as the show goes on?”

“Oh, please, Arthur, the Festival is very much aware of its benefactors.”

“I suppose the benefactors take care, in the most unmistakable way, that it is so. We haven’t been aggressive enough, that’s the answer. Next time we must take care to push a little harder. We must learn the art of benefaction, though I must say I’m not looking forward to it.”

“You thought of yourself as a patron in the old sense, the nineteenth-century sense. Not surprising, when one thinks of the nature of this opera. But better times will come. More was lost at Mohacs Field.”

Arthur was somewhat appeased, but not entirely.

“I’m sorry you feel slighted, Arthur, but I assure you—no slight was intended.”

“Simon, let me explain. You mustn’t think Arthur is sore-headed, or pouty. That simply isn’t in his nature. But he—I should say we—thought of ourselves as impresarios, encouraging and fostering and doing all that sort of thing. Like Diaghilev, you know. Well, not really like Diaghilev. He was one of a kind. But something along those lines. You’ve seen how it was. Nary a foster or an encourage have we been permitted. Nobody wants to talk to us. So we’ve played it Geraint’s way, and everybody else’s way. But we’ve been surprised and a little bit wistful.”

“You’ve been as good as gold,” said Darcourt.

“Exactly!” said Arthur. “That’s precisely what we’ve been. As good as gold. We’ve been the gold at the bottom of the whole thing.”

“Gold isn’t really a bad part to play,” said Darcourt. “You’ve always had it, Arthur, so you don’t know how other people see it. Its no use talking about Diaghilev; he never had a red cent. Always cadging for money from people like you. You and Maria are just gold—pure gold. You are a very rich couple, and you have genius with money, but there are things about gold you don’t know. Haven’t you any notion of the jealousy and envy mixed with downright, barefaced, reluctant worship gold creates? You’ve put your soul into gold, Arthur, and you have to take the bitter with the sweet.”

“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.”