From London Far (34 page)

And Meredith, taking one glance at Higbed and seeing that no more could be done, walked off to change. Dusk was falling. The swimming pool of Otis K Neff was shadowy. The sharks appeared to have gone early to bed.

A countryman of Mr Neff’s has cited as an example of the oddities of the human mind the persuasion that rich men judiciously vindicate their grandeur by inhabiting structures so vast that they can only appear to infest them like vermin. But the image thus evoked by Thoreau of minute creatures crawling painfully down interminable corridors Mr Neff had in at least one important particular very successfully modified. Down the corridors of Dove Cottage it was quite unnecessary to crawl, since every corridor took the form of two gigantic conveyor belts. Along these belts Mr Neff, Mr Neff’s guests, and Mr Neff’s servants were effortlessly fed to their appropriate destinations just as if they were so many nuts and bolts in a well designed assembly plant. It is conceivable that Thoreau would have considered nuts and bolts thus marshalled and promenading as of even less dignity than rats or lice. But Mr Neff simply did not look at the matter in this way. He had applied himself rationally to the problem of cutting down the number of foot-pounds of energy daily required of one who would inhabit a Wollaton Hall expanded to occupy an area indentical with that of Hampton Court.

Or not quite rationally. For what had set Mr Neff upon this particular innovation had, in point of fact, been a dream: a recurring and harassing dream in which he everlastingly plodded down inconceivably gorgeous and elaborate vistas without ever getting anywhere that he really wanted to go. That it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive was decidedly no part of Mr Neff’s philosophy, and this dream (which Dr Higbed would certainly have found interpretable at several different levels of experience) worried him a good deal. Presently it invaded, too, his waking consciousness, until at length as he plodded about his Cottage he was frequently doubtful as to whether he were dreaming or not. By constructing corridors in which he never did anything but stay put, Mr Neff, like the Deity on the occasion of Creation, firmly divided night and day. In his dreams he might endlessly toil through corridors still, but during his waking life the corridors should as endlessly toil past him.

It is no longer motion cheats your view
, thought Meredith as a remote coign of Dove Cottage hurtled towards him,
As you near it the land approaches you
. He stepped with quite practised agility from his conveyor belt to a turntable, was swept in a wide arc round a spacious hall, fed into another corridor and presently deposited before double doors which gave upon a suite of rooms. Certain embarrassments with which a submarine had confronted an inadequately married couple were most prodigally obviated here. There were two bathrooms, two bedrooms, and an intervening
salon
the proportions of which would have made it entirely suitable for an ambassadorial reception. He crossed this with some impatience and knocked at a farther door. ‘Jean,’ he called, ‘I think I’ve made it out.’

‘Made it out?’ Jean appeared in an evening gown which Meredith felt to be decidedly exotic. But then, of course, as between Tampico on the one hand and North Oxford or the environs of Cambridge on the other there must be substantial discrepancies in a matter so mutable as that of feminine
couture
. ‘You mean about Higbed?’ Jean asked.

‘Yes. The fact is–’ Meredith hesitated. ‘Well, did you ever happen to hear of something called Pygmalionism?’

‘Of course.’ Jean looked surprised. ‘It’s a fancy name for iconolagnia.’

‘For
what
?’ Meredith was quite perturbed by this readiness in the field of sexual pathology.

‘Iconolagnia. The element of non-aesthetic pleasure in the contemplation of gods in fig-leaves and goddesses barely in that. Of course, it has to be an exclusive interest. Anyone can get an occasional faintly carnal pleasure from a painting, can’t they?’

‘I suppose they can.’ Meredith nodded uncertainly. ‘You know, when I first saw the Horton
Venus
in Bubear’s passage I took it for a moment to be a real woman. And then when I realized that it was a painting I experienced a distinct pleasurable surprise. Would you say that was iconolagnia?’

‘Of course not.’ Jean was reassuring. ‘That was just a mixture of modesty and artistic appreciation. It’s obvious that Neff hasn’t any modesty to speak of. Are you suggesting that he hasn’t any artistic appreciation either?’

Meredith looked round the vast salon in which they stood. ‘I should think it demonstrable that he hasn’t a scrap. But the point is this. Higbed has deluded himself into the belief that he has been brought here by a group of women anxious to make – um – certain recondite studies in which he supposes that he might assist them. Whereas in point of fact I judge that the explanation must be quite different. And, curiously enough, it was his making some chance reference to Pygmalionism (for he blathered a great deal, as you might expect) that set me on the track of it. When you come to think of it, any man who spends vast sums of money on secretly buying and hoarding stolen paintings must be pretty mad. No true love of the arts could lead him to do such a thing.’

‘I disagree.’ Jean was suddenly very much the person who had written those papers on Minoan weapons in the
Hellenic Review
. ‘Think of all the immemorial stories of dragons stealing and guarding human treasure – which meant jewels and armour and utensils finely wrought: the equivalent, in fact, of everything that we now think of as art. Why did the dragons do it? It wasn’t iconolagnia or Pygmalionism, we may be sure. The fact is that the creatures had robust aesthetic sensibilities and liked beautiful things just for their beauty. At the same time they were loathly worms, inhuman and utterly without morals, and they didn’t care two hoots whether they came by all those beautiful things honestly or not. And I’ll bet it’s just the same with Neff. He’s a dragon – a horribly powerful modern dragon with oil interests and railroad companies instead of fiery breath and yard-long talons. And he just gathers all these beautiful things and sits on them for the sake of sitting.’

‘That’s just it!’ Meredith interrupted as rapidly as if he were countering a colleague on Martial. ‘For the sake of sitting, and not for the beauty of the things in themselves. It’s like being a miser, as that admirable young man in the flying-boat suggested. And the activities of the miser are based as you know on a certain morbidity of development. He is a person whose notions of love and possession haven’t progressed beyond those of a very small infant. Now, Neff collects pictures and so on not quite in that spirit, but somewhere near it. They don’t minister to his sense of beauty, nor just to his sense of power and opulence in any ordinary way. They have become love-objects. It’s like women doting over toy dogs, or men senselessly keeping half a dozen mistresses hidden away in different parts of a great town.’

‘Well I’m blessed!’ Jean was looking at Meredith in the frankest surprise. ‘But go on.’

‘Of course, it’s disconcerting and repellent.’ Meredith was by now so satisfied with his discovery that he made this statement in a rather perfunctory way. ‘Still, it’s a reasonable hypothesis, and certainly the only one I can think of as covering the facts. Neff’s going hungrily round secretly possessing himself of picture after picture is a sort of perversion – a streak of madness which has now begun to spread. And all those people who have been his pimps and procurers have become afraid of some open scandal which would expose this whole monstrous trade in stolen masterpieces. So some of them – Properjohn and Flosdorf, for instance – decided that he must be cured or controlled by some suitable psychological treatment. But they daren’t risk bringing in an American doctor openly, and so they kidnapped an English one and are holding him against the critical moment.’

‘But I don’t know what you mean by the critical moment.’

Meredith hesitated. ‘Think of the man who keeps all those mistresses – and who, because of some sense of guilt, keeps them absolutely secretly. Or think of the miser with his hoard. Each has a counter-impulse to
tell
, to let people
see
. I’ve read cases of such men finally inviting their friends–’

‘Good heavens!’ Jean was looking more surprised still. ‘Do you mean that as Neff gets loopier and loopier about these artistic fetiches or whatever Higbed would call them he is likely to invite his friends and rivals in a big business way to peer at them through keyholes?’

‘Well, something like that. He’s liable to give the game away somehow. And not just as a matter of simple recklessness or boastfulness, since there would be no point in bringing in a Higbed to combat that. The impulse Higbed might be able to deflect or resolve must be, broadly speaking, a pathological one – like this Pygmalionism, or treating pictures as erotic counters. I’ve said it’s very disagreeable.’

‘What is much more relevant is that it’s very incredible. I don’t believe a word of it.’

‘Very well!’ Meredith was quite nettled. ‘We will take it that Neff is a simple amateur of the arts. At the same time, we know that Higbed, who is an accomplished psychiatrist, has been brought here, willy-nilly, as what Properjohn called an insurance policy – and because, in the fellow Flosdorf’s words, purveying stolen pictures to Neff is like sitting on a volcano and waiting for it to erupt. I invite you to connect these facts on any theory other than my own.’

‘And I invite you to wait until we see Neff – which I suppose we’re going to do at dinner. Is he the Old Dragon, swinging the scaly horror of his folded tail? Is he the New Pygmalion, dreaming of biting succulent gobbets out of the Horton
Venus
? The way he handles his eating irons will show.’ Jean, who was fiddling with her hair before a huge mirror, turned round as if a thought had suddenly struck her. ‘Those Giorgiones of ours – have you seen them?’

‘Yes. Flosdorf has had them unpacked. I should judge them to be fine paintings of that period – but whether actually by Giorgione or not I am, of course, without the connoisseurship to say.’

‘But you can say whether they are iconolagnic? Giorgione could be when he tried. Think of the
Sleeping Venus
at Dresden.’

‘As a matter of fact, they are not. The severest puritanism, that is to say, could not regard them as in any sense improper pictures.’

‘I see.’ Jean paused. ‘And do you remember something we learnt right at the beginning: that Neff had turned keen on archaic sculpture?’

‘Dear me! yes.’

‘Well, wouldn’t you say that archaic sculpture represented rather a severe taste in the New Pygmalion? Would anyone think of biting gobbets out of the Proserpina of Chiusi, or of peering through a keyhole at the Apollo of Delphi or a Canopic urn? And although the iconolagnic Neff might very well give an El Greco to the Elks how could he bear to part with that Ingres to the Aquatic Club? Your theory seems to me feebler and feebler the more one looks at it. In fact I think it would look much better if it stood on its head.’ And Jean, who appeared quite to have forgotten her own reasonable suggestion of waiting to see what acquaintance with Mr Neff might produce, nodded emphatically at Meredith.

‘Stood on its head? If I may say so, there is no more barren controversial trick than standing the other man’s theory on its head.’ Meredith looked very severely at Jean. ‘And, anyway, I don’t see how it can be done.’

‘Nothing simpler. You say Higbed is here to make Neff sane. I say he is here to make him mad.’

‘I just don’t understand you.’

‘Well, it’s like this. Clearly enough, Neff is extremely eccentric. Look at this house and those horrible fish. And it might very well be to the interest of powerful people about him to drive him some stages further into downright madness. To get control of things, you know, or to prevent defalcations from being discovered. Of course, if they were sufficiently unscrupulous they might simply liquidate him straight away. But with a man holding such immense interests it is easy to imagine particular circumstances in which a good, certifiable madness would be preferable. You will agree to that?’

‘Within limits, yes.’ Meredith was cautious. ‘But I don’t at all see–’

‘It’s as clear as a pikestaff! For can you imagine anyone better able to drive a man mad than Higbed?’

‘And that, no doubt, is why they started by driving Higbed himself mad. Just to give him a vivid sense of the effect required. I think your idea is utterly fanciful.’

‘It’s not nearly so fanciful as your Pygmalionism, Richard Meredith.’ And the author of papers on Minoan weapons tossed her head in a not altogether scholarly way. ‘For why Higbed? Higbed is a psychiatrist. But quite a large body of men are psychiatrists. What then distinguishes him from these? The fact, I should say, that he is thoroughly unscrupulous. Bring him here forcibly and, ten to one, he can be corrupted – a thing you probably couldn’t predict of a single other skilled man in his profession. Very well. That points to his being brought for the most sinister purpose. And what is the most sinister purpose such a man could fulfil? Clearly that of using his knowledge of the mind the wrong way round – getting some hold on Neff (who is hypochondriac, likely enough) and edging him imperceptibly into the madhouse. You see? And I would say that my argument amounts almost to a demonstration. And even if it’s only a hypothesis it’s miles better than yours. Don’t you think?’

‘I do
not
think. In fact, your argument (as you are pleased to call it) is an outrageous piece of sophistry.’ Meredith spoke with the most convinced emphasis. ‘And I would say further–’

‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

Both Meredith and Jean swung round, startled. Framed in the doorway stood an impeccably filmic butler such as it was inevitable that an establishment telescoping Hampton Court, Wollaton Hall, and four Queen Anne mansions should own. This functionary bowed with a freezing grandeur. ‘Mr Neff’s compliments, sir,’ he said, ‘and he hopes that the Signora and yourself will dine with him at eight o’clock.’