Money or Love Read online

  “I am afraid that this time there is no hope,” Robin replied. “But I hope you will come and see my collection in London. The other half of the pictures I inherited from my father is in my house in the country.”

  “I want to see them all, every one of them!”

  Chuck said it so firmly that Alena half expected the chandelier above them to quiver with the force of his voice.

  Then he turned his attention to her.

  He spoke to her possessively, as if she was part of the collection he would wish to buy.

  Alena had to admit he was quite interesting.

  He told her very frankly, without being the slightest embarrassed, how he had started from the bottom and how by good luck and good judgement he had reached the top.

  “But being halfway up the ladder,” he said, “means to me there’s a hellava way to go before I get exactly all I want!”

  “And what do you want?” Alena managed to ask.

  “That’s a secret, or rather something I cannot put exactly into words, but I assure you that I intend to make Chuck Finberg a household word and a reason for a great deal of flag-waving before I leave this world.”

  Alena smiled.

  “But you realise you cannot take it all with you.”

  “I have often thought that the ancient Pharaohs had the right idea when they were buried with their treasures, but I shall be content if I can be certain that when I die they write on my tombstone, ‘he done it’!”

  Alena could not help laughing.

  “I am quite sure,” she told him, “you will succeed. And I promise, if it’s possible, that I will come and wave a flag over your tomb!”

  “Now I really do want to talk about your pictures. If they are so important in England, think how much bigger an attraction they would be in America.”

  “If you are trying to beg, borrow or steal them, the answer, I am afraid, is ‘no’.”

  “That’s an answer I seldom get and when I do I take no notice!”

  Alena did not speak and he went on,

  “I want to see your pictures and I want to possess them. But I do see, Alena, that I will have to work out a way I can do it.”

  “I hate to disappoint you, but what you are asking for is impossible, Mr. Finberg.”

  “In my dictionary there ain’t no such word!”

  “Then it is something you will have to learn slowly and perhaps uncomfortably, because, just as the moon is out of reach, so are my brother’s pictures!”

  There was silence for a moment, and then Chuck said,

  “Already there is talk in America of how it might be possible to reach the moon. I was thinking that perhaps I might be the first man to step onto it! But instead maybe I should concentrate on your pictures and how to get them to my house in Fifth Avenue.”

  Alena laughed again.

  “You can concentrate and you can concentrate, but this time, Mr. Finberg, the odds are hopelessly against you and the gate is closed.”

  “Shall we take a bet on it?”

  “You will lose your money.”

  “I will risk it, Alena, and I will bet you a thousand dollars to one golden guinea that I gain my own way!”

  “I will take it!”

  *

  Driving home very much later that night Alena had to admit that she had enjoyed the party.

  They had danced after dinner.

  She found that Chuck Finberg, although he might be as old as Robin had suggested, was a very good dancer.

  However, she had enjoyed more than anything else dancing with Vincent who, much to her surprise, had also been invited.

  The band played a slow dreamy waltz and, when it had come to an end, they walked out into the garden.

  Lit with fairy lights and Chinese lanterns hanging from every tree it was very romantic.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” Vincent asked her.

  “Very much more than I expected. This is my first real party and I was afraid I might be a wallflower. But I have danced every dance.”

  “They should all have been with me, but you have too many admirers. I have a feeling that after tomorrow I will have to work very hard to keep you all to myself.”

  “You know that your portrait of me comes before anything else,” Alena muttered.

  “I wish I thought you meant that,” he replied. “But I know, if nothing else, it will be the finest and the most beautiful work I have ever completed.”

  “Then I am most honoured, Vincent.”

  When they decided to return home, Robin offered Vincent a lift in his carriage.

  Robin appeared to be lost in his own thoughts and, when they reached Dunstead House, he told the coachman to take Vincent on to his flat.

  Then he walked inside without saying goodnight to him.

  Vincent had Alena’s hand in his.

  “Good night my beautiful inspiration, my Goddess at whose feet I worship,” he mumbled softly.

  “I will come to you in the Picture Gallery about ten thirty tomorrow morning,” suggested Alena. “Unless, you have something else to do.”

  “I shall be waiting for you,” Vincent answered her, “and try not to forget me when you dream of dollars!”

  “I shall be dream of nothing of the sort,” retorted Alena. “It’s Robin who will be doing that!”

  She smiled at Vincent as she spoke and hurried into the house.

  The carriage drove off and Burley closed the door.

  Robin had already reached the top of the stairs and he waited until Alena joined him and sighed,

  “I enjoyed this evening and loved the dancing.”

  “What did you think of Chuck, Alena?”

  “He is quite unlike anyone that I have ever met, but extremely egotistical and full of his own self-importance. I think that you will have to hold on tight to all our pictures, otherwise he will somehow attempt to magic them out of the house!”

  “He is prepared to pay me anything I ask for them.”

  As if she knew what he was thinking, Alena cried,

  “No, Robin, No! You are not to do that again.”

  Robin sighed.

  “Of course you are right. But equally the mountain of dollars he has offered me dazzles my eyes.”

  “As long as they do not dazzle your brain, it’s not too important. And you know as well as I do that the collection belongs to England as well as us and it is just utterly and completely impossible for you to dispose of any more of the pictures.”

  Robin sighed again.

  “I suppose you are right. Goodnight, dearest Alena. You looked very beautiful tonight, as everyone told me.”

  “I am so glad, Robin, but I do know that I am not as expensive or as valuable as our pictures!”

  She closed her door before Robin could reply.

  She heard him laughing as he walked along to his own room.

  Once she was in bed, Alena found it difficult to go to sleep.

  She kept thinking of the party and Chuck Finberg.

  She recalled how much she had enjoyed her dances.

  There had been three with Vincent and many other men had asked her to dance, including the Ambassador himself. As there were so many guests, Alena felt honoured by his invitation.

  “I feel that you should be dancing with one of your distinguished guests,” she muttered, as he moved her round the room.

  “I am dancing with the one who is undoubtedly the most beautiful,” he answered her. “If we took a vote from everyone here, I know you would come out on top!”

  “That is the most flattering compliment I have ever been paid and I shall remember it. Thank you very much.”

  The Ambassador laughed.

  “I understand from your brother that this is the first party you have attended in London? I am sure you don’t realise it but you have already made a great number of women feel that you have pipped them at the post.”

  Alena smiled at him.

  “One lesson I have already learned about American men is
that they pay the most extraordinary compliments.”

  “I am being very sincere and I am quite sure that Chuck Finberg and many others here agree with me.”

  Alena felt sure that all the attention she was receiving was due to the very attractive gown she had worn – one of the new ones she had purchased in Bond Street.

  One or two guests had already come to her to say that they knew her mother and father and, without being conceited, she knew that she had been a success at the party.

  Many of the guests had noticed her and then, as she thought how exciting it all was, she remembered just what Robin had said about finding her a husband.

  She glanced across the room at Chuck Finberg and she could still hear his voice with its strong nasal accent ringing out louder than anyone else’s.

  Even as she looked at him, she felt herself shudder.

  It was one thing to find him interesting, unusual and obviously, as Robin would say, ‘a go-getter.’

  It was quite another thing altogether to imagine him touching or kissing her.

  It was then quite suddenly that Alena had felt that she wanted to go home.

  However once home, snuggled down in her bed, she could not help thinking that she had been rather stupid.

  She was quite certain the majority of guests would stay until the early hours of the morning, but when she said she wanted to go, Robin had been only too glad to leave too as he had so much to do the next day.

  Vincent had appeared at her side the moment she stopped dancing.

  “I think we should go home,” Alena had said to him.

  “I am ready to go at any moment,” Vincent replied. “I want to feel fresh and alert for my painting.”

  Now she thought it rather touching of him to care so much about her picture.

  Then she told herself that, like Chuck Finberg, he was obsessed by Robin’s art collection.

  Unexpectedly she asked herself if this was the real reason Vincent was so insistent on painting her.

  Was it possible that as all the pictures meant so much to him, like Mr. Finberg, he would do anything to be the possessor of them?

  But as he could not, the nearest to it was to be able to come to the Picture Gallery every day to paint her?

  She did not know why, but she wanted more from him, but what exactly that was she could not put into words.

  She only knew that however much pressure Robin put on her she could not and would not marry Chuck Finberg.

  Then she told herself that she was being absurd.

  Pictures or no pictures she was very certain that Mr. Finberg had no wish at all to marry her – or for that matter anyone else. He had certainly shown her no more attention than any of the other men had this evening.

  He was climbing to the top of the business ladder and, when he reached the summit, he wanted to be standing there alone.

  Alena felt that she was quite safe, but at the same time it was something she had to make Robin believe.

  When he had suggested that they should both marry very rich people, she had easily acquiesced largely because she had not really thought out what it might entail.

  It would, of course, save them, save their houses and save the pictures.

  But it also meant belonging to a man she did not love in any way.

  She had always thought of love as something very precious, very perfect and undeniably spiritual.

  She could hardly expect it to be like that if she gave herself to a man ‘for better or worse,’ simply because he was a millionaire!

  From that moment, Alena realised that what she wanted was the love that she had always dreamt about.

  The love that comes from one’s head as well as from one’s soul.

  Whether one was rich or poor was immaterial.

  What mattered was that one was receiving and at the same time giving something supremely wonderful.

  Something so precious, so perfect and so Holy that it could never ever be expressed in anything so mundane as money.

  She turned over on her pillows.

  ‘Please God, please,’ she prayed, ‘bring me love because love is more important than anything else in the whole wide world.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Alena awoke and realised that she had overslept.

  She had taken a long time to drift off into sleep and after she had finally dropped off, she remembered nothing until she opened her eyes.

  Bright sunshine was streaming in through the sides of the curtains.

  She was aware of a feeling in the air that told her it was far later than she usually woke.

  With an effort she turned round to look at the clock beside her bed and started when she saw that it was after ten o’clock.

  She would have to hurry herself if she was not to keep Vincent waiting.

  She put out her hand to the bell that would summon her maid to the room.

  As she did so, the door opened.

  She turned and saw to her surprise it was Robin.

  “I am afraid I have overslept, Robin, did you want me?”

  “I just wanted to tell you something important – ”

  He then walked over the room and pulled back the curtains.

  Alena blinked her eyes as the sun poured in making everything dazzling.

  She sat up in bed wondering what was so urgent.

  It was unlike Robin to come to her at this hour.

  He stood for a moment at the window and then he came back and sat down on the end of her bed.

  “I have just been showing Chuck Finberg round the Picture Gallery – ”

  “So early, Robin?”

  “He is an early starter. He told me that he always rises at seven o’clock every morning. Otherwise he would never get through the day.”

  “It seems strange that he should have so much to do in England.”

  “As it so happens, he was going to Birmingham as soon as he left me. He is concerned with some machinery being made there, which I am thankful to say he did not tell me all about.”

  “Why was he here, Robin?”

  “Now you are asking a silly question. Of course, he came to see the pictures.”

  “I might have known. I suppose that he tried to buy them and you told him firmly, as you told him last night, that they were not for sale.”

  Before Robin could speak, Alena gave a little laugh.

  “It must come as a shock to him that for once in his life his money is getting him nowhere.”

  “That is not quite true, Alena, because I have, you may be surprised to hear, made a pact with him.”

  Alena looked at her brother, then drew in her breath.

  “You are not going to have more pictures copied, Robin? It is far, far too dangerous to do it again.”

  “No, I am not going down that road again. What I have suggested to Mr. Finberg, because he was so insistent, is that he should rent from me ten of my best pictures for a very large fee.”

  Alena’s eyes opened wide and she asked,

  “Can you do that? I should have thought that the Trustees would be concerned about the pictures leaving the country.”

  “I am very aware of that problem, so I then added a condition that I think would be acceptable to the Trustees, and is also acceptable, I may say, to Chuck Finberg.”

  “And what might that be?”

  She was thinking as she spoke that she was certain Robin was taking risks and it would cause a great deal of trouble and undoubtedly make many more people realise how desperately poor they really were.

  Robin was silent for a moment before he added,

  “Chuck Finberg agreed to rent the pictures and to guarantee their return – he will marry you.”

  He spoke quietly and for a moment Alena thought she could not have heard him correctly.

  Then she screamed,

  “Marry me! You have told Mr. Finberg that to loan the pictures he must marry me!”

  “That is what he has agreed,” Robin persisted. “I think myself it is an exc
ellent idea and very practical.”

  “It is nothing of the sort,” gasped Alena. “I have to marry him and I have no wish to do so!”

  She gasped again and added sullenly,

  “It is not me he wants, it’s only so that he can get his greedy hands on the pictures.”

  “You can hardly expect him to fall in love with you the moment he saw you,” Robin smiled sarcastically, “but he did say he thought you were very beautiful and he would be most honoured to have you as his wife.”

  “He only wants me as his wife so that he can show off our pictures to loads of people in New York who will not appreciate them! I refuse. Do you hear me, Robin, I absolutely refuse to marry this man.”

  “Very well then, Alena, if you want to starve, you are going the right way about it. To be frank with you, we have very little money left and, as you well know, nothing else to sell.”

  There was a prolonged silence while she wondered what she should say.

  Finally, in a hesitant voice he could hardly hear, she countered,

  “What about you, Robin? I thought you were going to marry Mary-Lee.”

  “I am taking her driving today and I will propose to her then.”

  “Do you think she might accept you?”

  “I think it most unlikely. I am not important enough socially and, unlike Chuck Finberg, she is not particularly interested in my pictures.”

  Again there was another silence till Alena groaned,

  “I just cannot marry him. How can I marry a man I have never seen before I met him last night?”

  “I think you will find that he will treasure you as he treasures the pictures and remember they are only loaned to him if he takes you with them.”

  “I don’t want to think about it at all, the whole idea makes me feel sick.”

  “You will feel much sicker, my dear Alena, if we are forced to return to the country and try to survive in the house with no servants and no food. I am not exaggerating when I say we have very little money left.”

  “I thought you were gambling on a certainty – ”

  “I thought so myself,” he admitted, “but there have been so many items we had to buy and so many wages to pay that the money has just slipped away.”

  Alena was thinking how much needed to be done to the house in the country before they could even attempt to live in it.