In Search of Love and Beauty Read Free Page A

heating system and transformed the Victorian attics and cellars into living spaces for modern disciples. Of course, all this took further loans, and Leo wrung his hands and said they would be bankrupt and ruined, Mark soothed him and carried on, supervising everything himself until he was satisfied; so that in the end Leo had his Academy of Potential Development and Mark had collateral with which to raise further loans and mortgages and launch himself on his career.
    Established as the partriarch of this domain, Leo took charge of it with panache; but he still relied on Mark to look after practical details, and when anything went wrong, with the boiler, the electric wiring, the plumbing, he straightaway sent for Mark. But Mark was not easy to locate: his personal life had always been secretive and convoluted, and as the years passed and his business interests grew, his professional life also began to diverge into intricate and mutually exclusive paths. Often it took Leo days to find him, and he even had to call on Louise for help. On such occasions, this was the way their conversation might go:
LOUISE :          
What do you want with him?
LEO :          
Is he there or isn’t he there?
LOUISE :          
That depends on what you want—no, don’t hang up! Leo!
LEO :          
All right then, last chance: where is he?
LOUISE :          
I don’t know.
    This last would be in a voice sufficiently small to satisfy Leo; and from this point on their conversation became quite amiable and ranged over topics beyond Mark’s whereabouts. Louise was very eager and curious to be allowed to visit the Academy of Potential Development, but Leo discouraged her. Mark too was evasive, telling her to wait until everything was set up; so that Leo had already been settled in there for over a year before they would allow her to come and see the place.
    Mark drove her up from the city. She commented on everything they saw, and as the city and its suburbs were left behind and the landscape unfolded into views of fields, river, and distant hills, her rapture mounted; so that by the time they arrived and Mark drove through the gates, between two pillars topped by concrete spheres like cannonballs, Louise was so excited that she leaped out of the car before it had come to a standstill. There on the steps leading up to the porch stood Leo, flanked by a few followers whom he so completely overshadowed that they might as well not have been there.
    Leo, standing in welcome on his front steps, was an impressive figure. He wore the costume he had devised for his comfort—a long robe like a monk’s, girdled by a studded cowboy belt which drooped over his low-slung stomach. Louise rushed out of the car and up the steps to meet him. She was in her way as impressive as he. Tall and stately, she wore a dress of heavy plum-colored silk swathed in loops over her breasts and hips. Her hair, disordered from the drive and the excitement, had got loose from its pins and gave her the somewhat frantic air of a prophetess. Her voice boomed in greetingand his boomed back again as they met—collided—like two giants on the steps.
    That was a wonderful day for Louise. Leo devoted himself to her entirely, and secure and proud of his possession, took pleasure in showing her around it. He was the beneficent deity, not only of the house and all its inmates, and of the acres of ground that belonged to it and had been left wild and romantic as a Victorian garden; but also beyond that of the entire countryside rolling pale green and gold in summer sunshine, with here and there a patch of dark wood and a ribbon of crystal water. He showed her everything and beamed as she admired and exclaimed; and truly, it was wonderful that all this land, wrested from Indians by Dutchmen and Scotsmen, should now belong to him, Leo