So in desperation Beauty turned to her son. “Lanny, don’t let me have so much cream!” she would cry. She adopted the European practice of hot milk with coffee; and Lanny would watch while she poured a little cream over her fresh figs, and would then keep the pitcher on his side of the table. “No more now,” he would say when he caught her casting a glance at the tiny Sèvres pitcher. But the boy’s efforts were thwarted by the mother’s practice of keeping a box of chocolates in her room. She would nibble them between meals; and very soon it became evident that the cunning monster of embonpoint could utilize the bean of a sterculiaceous tree exactly as well as the mammary secretion of Bos domestica. Beauty would be in a state of bewilderment about it. “Why, I hardly eat anything at all!” she would exclaim.
II
The explanation of all this was obvious. Beauty Budd was a social being, who could not live without the stimulus of rivalry. When she was going out among people, she would be all keyed up, and when food was put before her, she would be so absorbed in conversation that she would take only absentminded nibbles. But when she was shut up in the house alone, or with people upon whom she did not need to “make an impression,” then, alas, she had time to realize that she was hungry. Not even the thought of a world at war, and the sufferings of millions of men, could save her from that moral decline.
There were friends she might have seen; but in the tumult of fear which had seized the world she preferred to keep to herself. All the Americans in France were hating the Germans; but Beauty hated war with such intensity that she didn’t care who won, if only the fighting would end. As for Lanny, he was doing what his father advised, keeping himself neutral. This being the case, they couldn’t even speak to their own servants about the terror that was sweeping down upon Paris.
Lanny had to be “society” to his adored mother. He would invite her to a thé dansant; putting a record on the phonograph, and letting her show him the fine points of the fashionable dances. He in turn would teach her “Dalcroze,” and make her do “plastic counterpoint”; she would be required to “feel” the music, and they would experiment and argue, and have a very good time. Then he would invite her to a concert, in which they would be both performers and audience; they would play duets, and he would make her work at it. No fun just playing the same things over; if you were going to get anywhere you had to be able to read. He would put a score before her and exhort and scold like a music master.
When Beauty was exhausted from that, he wouldn’t let her lie down by the box of chocolates; no, it was time for their swim, When she got into her suit, he would walk behind her to the beach and survey the shapely white calves, and worry her by saying: “They are undoubtedly getting thicker!” The water was warm, and Beauty would want to float and relax, and let him swim around her; but no again, he would challenge her to a race along the shore. He would splash and make her chase him. But he never did succeed in persuading her to put on Robbie’s goggles and sink down among the fishes.
They would read aloud, taking turns. Beauty couldn’t concentrate upon a book very long, she was too restless—or else too sleepy. But when she had someone to read to her, that was a form of social life. She would interrupt and talk about the story, and have the stimulus of another person’s reactions. In course of the years many books had accumulated in the house; friends had given them, or Beauty had bought them on people’s recommendation, but had seldom found time to look at them. But now they would enjoy the company of M. France, whom they had met so recently. Lanny found Le Lys Rouge on the shelves, a fashionable love story treated with touches of the worldling’s playful mockery. It had been his popular success, and proved a success with Beauty. It took her back to the happy days, the élite of the world enjoying the impulses of what they politely termed their hearts—the glands having not as yet been publicly discovered. Without difficulty Beauty saw herself in the role of a heroine who had become involved with three men, and couldn’t figure out what to do. Having visited in Florence, she recalled the lovely landscapes, and they discussed the art treasures and art ideas in the book.
Lanny remembered that M. Priedieu, the librarian, had spoken about Stendhal. A copy of La Chartreuse de Parme had got onto the shelves, they had no idea how. Once more Beauty saw herself as a heroine, a woman for whom love excused all things. She was enraptured by detailed and precise analysis of the great passion. “Oh, that is exactly right!” she would exclaim, and the reading would stop while she told Lanny about men and women, and how they behaved when they were happy in love, or when they were sad; of different types of lovers, and what they said, and whether they meant it or not; how it felt to be disappointed, and to be jealous, and to be thwarted; how love and hatred became mixed and intertangled; the part that vanity played, and love of domination, and love of self, and love of the world and its applause. Beauty Budd had had a great deal of experience, and the subject was one of unending fascination.
Perhaps not all moralists would have approved this kind of conversation between a mother and a son. But she had told Lanny in Paris that if they came back to Juan, he would be a French boy. So he would have to know the arts of love, if only to protect himself. There were dangerous kinds of women, who could wreck the happiness of a man, old or young, and care not a flip of the fan about it. One should know how to tell the good ones from the bad—and generally, alas, it was not possible until it was too late.
There was another purpose, too; Beauty was defending herself, and Marcel, and Harry, or rather what she had done to Harry. Perhaps her conscience troubled her, for she talked often about the plate-glass man, and what might be happening to him in Pittsburgh. Love was bewildering, and many times you wouldn’t be happy if you did and wouldn’t be if you didn’t. You might make a resolve to go off by yourself and have nothing more to do with love; but men had refused to let Beauty do it, and some day soon women would be refusing to let Lanny do it.
After which they would go back to Henri Beyle, soldier, diplomat, and man of the world, who had written under the pen name of Stendhal, and who would tell them how love had fared in the midst of the last World War—just a hundred years earlier, not so long ago in Europe’s long story.
III
There came post cards from Marcel Detaze; he was well, busy, and happy to know they were safe at home. He was not permitted to say where he was, but gave the number of his regiment and battalion. The censoring of mail was strict, but no censor in France would object to a painter’s declaring that he loved his beautiful blond mistress or to her replying that the sentiments were reciprocated. Beauty fed her soul upon these messages—plus Robbie’s assurance that the war couldn’t last more than three or four months. Maybe Marcel wasn’t going to see any fighting; he would come home with a story of interesting adventure, and life would begin again where it had left off.
Everybody they had met in Paris, and everybody they met now, was confident that the French armies were going to hold the Germans while the Russian steam roller hurtled over Prussia and captured Berlin. The French military authorities had been so confident that they had planned a giant movement of their forces through Alsace and Lorraine; they would break the German lines at the south, then, sweeping north, cut the communications of the enemy advancing through Belgium and northern France. The papers told about the beginning of this counterattack and what it was intended to do; then suddenly they fell silent, and the next reports of fighting in this district came from places in France. Those who understood military affairs knew what this meant—that the armies of la patrie had sustained a grave defeat.
As to what was happening farther north, not all the censorship in the land could hide the facts from the public. One had only to take a map and mark on it the places where fighting was reported, and he would see that it was the German steam roller which was hurtling—and at the rate of ten or twenty miles a day. The little Belgian army was fighting desperately, but was being swept aside; its forts were being pulverized by heavy artillery, and towns and villages in the pa
th of the invasion were being wrecked and burned. The still smaller British army which had been landed at the Channel ports was apparently meeting the same fate. The Kaiser was on his way to Paris!
IV
There came a letter from Sophie, Baroness de la Tourette. That very lively lady had been having an adventure, and wrote about it in detail—being shut up in a room in a fourth-class hotel in Paris, much bored with nothing to do. She had gone to spend the month of August with friends at a country place on the river Maas, which flows through the heart of Belgium. Sophie was a nonpolitical person, entirely devoted to having a good time; she rarely looked at newspapers, and when she heard people talking about war threats, she paid no attention, being unable to take seriously the idea that anybody would disturb the comfort of a person of her social position.
The ladies she was visiting shared her attitude. News traveled slowly in the country; and when at last they heard that the Germans had crossed the frontier, they did not worry; the army would be going to France, and it might be interesting to watch it pass. Only when they heard the sound of heavy guns did they realize that they might be in danger, and then it was too late; a troop of Uhlans with long lances came galloping up the driveway, and the automobiles and horses on the place were seized. Soon afterward arrived several limousines, and elegant officers descended, and with bowing and heel-clicking informed the ladies of the regrettable need to take the château for a temporary staff headquarters. They all had wasp waists, and wore monocles, long gray coats, gold bracelets, and shiny belts and boots; their manners were impeccable, and they spoke excellent English, and seemed to be well pleased with a lady who was introduced as Miss Sophie Timmons from the far-off state of Ohio.
Her friends had suddenly realized that under the law, being married to a Frenchman, she was French and might be interned for the period of the war. That night she sent her maid to the village and succeeded in hiring a cart and an elderly bony white horse; taking only a suitcase, she and the maid and a peasant driver had set out toward Brussels. There was fighting everywhere to the south and east of them, and the roads were crowded with refugees driving dogcarts, trundling handcarts, or carrying their belongings on their backs. More than once they had had to sit for long periods by the roadside to let the German armies pass, and the woman’s letter was full of amazed horror at the perfection of the Kaiser’s war machine. For a solid hour she watched motorized artillery rolling by: heavy siege guns, light field-pieces, wicked-looking rapid-firers; caissons, trucks loaded with shells, and baggage trains, pontoon trains, field kitchens. “My dear, they have been getting ready for this all our lifetime!” wrote the Baroness de la Tourette.
She watched the marching men in their dull field-gray uniforms, so much more sensible than the conspicuous blue and red of the French. The Germans tramped in close, almost solid ranks, forever and ever and ever—in one village they told Sophie of an unbroken procession for more than thirty hours. “And so many with cigars in their mouths!” she wrote. “I wondered, had they been pillaging the shops.”
The fugitives slept in their cart for fear it might be stolen; and after two days and nights they reached Brussels, which the Germans had not yet taken. From there they got to Ostend, where the British were landing troops, and then by boat to Boulogne, and to Paris by train. “You should see this city!” wrote Sophie. “Everybody has gone that can get away. The government has taken all the horses and trucks. Maybe the taxicabs have been hired by refugees—I’m hoping that a few will come back. All the big hotels are closed—the men employees are in the army. The Place de la Concorde is full of soldiers sleeping upon straw. The strangest thing is that gold and silver coins have disappeared entirely; they say people are hoarding them, and you can’t get any change because there’s only paper money. I am waiting for a chance to come south without having to walk. I hope the Germans do not get here first. It would be embarrassing to meet those officers again!”
V
When Marcel departed to join the army, he had brought the keys of his cottage to the servants at Bienvenu and left them for Madame Budd. The servants being French, the occasion had not been casual; they had wept and called upon God to protect him, which in turn had brought tears to the eyes of Monsieur. He had said that it was pour la patrie, and that they should take care of the precious Madame, if and when she returned; after those wicked Germans had been driven from the soil of France, they would all live happy forever after, as in the fairy tales.
Leese and Rosine of course knew all about the love affair. To them it was romance, delight, the wine and perfume of life; they lived upon it as women in the United States were learning to live upon the romances, real and imaginary, of the movie stars of Hollywood. Beauty’s servants talked about it, not merely among themselves, but with all the other servants of the neighborhood; everybody watched, everybody shared the tenderness, the delight; everybody said, what a shame the young painter was so poor!
Now Beauty received a card from Marcel, saying that, if anything should happen to him, he wanted her to have his paintings. “I don’t know if they will ever be worth anything,” he wrote; “but you have been kind to them, while to my relatives they mean nothing. Perhaps it might be well to move them to your house, where they would be safer. Do what you please about this.”
Beauty, watching for every hint in his messages, clasped her hand to her heart. “Lanny, do you suppose that means he’s going to some post of danger?”
“I don’t know why it should,” said the boy. “We have our own paintings insured, and certainly we ought to take care of his.”
Beauty had been going to the little house and sitting there, remembering the times when she had been so happy, and reproaching herself because she had not appreciated her blessings. Now she went with Lanny to carry out Marcel’s commission. There were more than a hundred canvases, each tacked upon a wooden frame, and stacked in a sort of shed-room at the rear of the house. One by one Lanny brought them out and studied them—all those aspects of Mediterranean sea and shore which he knew better than anything else. He exclaimed over the loveliness of them; he was ready to set himself up as an art critic against all the world. Beauty wiped the tears from her eyes and exclaimed over the wickedness of a war that had taken such a lover, and stopped such work, and even made it impossible for Sophie to come to the Riviera unless she walked!
There was a group of paintings from the trip to Norway. Lanny had never seen these or heard of them, for it had been before he was told about Marcel. The boy had heard so much about this cold and shining country, and here it was by the magic of art. Here was more than fiords and mountains and saeters and ancient farmhouses with openings in the roofs instead of chimneys; here was the soul of these things, old, yet forever new, so long as men loved beauty and marveled at its self-renewal. Here, also, was Greece with its memories, and Africa with its grim desert men, muffled and silent. The Bluebird was being made over into a hospital ship right now; but its two cruises with the soap king would live—“well, as long as I do,” said Lanny.
VI
The whereabouts of Marcel was supposed to be a secret, upon the preserving of which the safety of la patrie depended. But when you take thousands of young men from a neighborhood and put them into encampments not more than a hundred miles away, it soon becomes what the French call un secret de Polichinelle, something which everybody knows. The truck drivers talked when they came to the towns for supplies, and pretty soon Leese and Rosine were able to inform the family that the painter’s regiment was on guard duty in the Alpes Maritimes.
Italy had declared for neutrality in this war; but it could not be forgotten that she had been a member of the so-called Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria. There was a powerful Italian party known as the Triplicists, who wanted to carry out the pledges, and in these days of quick political overturns France dared not leave her Provençal border unguarded. So Marcel had for a while what the British called a “cushy” job. But the trouble was that as the menace of the German s
team roller increased, more and more men were being grabbed up and rushed to the north. Right away Beauty decided that she must visit that camp. She didn’t wait to write, not knowing if the censor would let such a letter pass; she would just go to the place and lay siege to whatever authorities might be in command. Beauty had arts which she trusted, but which could not be exercised by mail.
The difficulty lay with transportation. They had their car, but Pierre Bazoche was in the army—oddly enough he was a sergeant, and gave orders to the beloved of his former employer. This seemed to the employer among the atrocities of war, but it amused Lanny, and he was sure it wouldn’t worry Marcel. Pierre was a capable fellow, and his orders were doubtless proper.
Leese could always find among her innumerable relatives a man or woman to do anything that was needed, and she now produced an elderly truck driver of the flower farms of the Cap d’Antibes, who could be spared for this journey of romantic interest. He was washed and made presentable in Pierre’s uniform, and managed to solve the problem of getting the essence, which had suddenly grown scarce and high in price, being needed in huge quantities to move the troops and guns for the saving of Paris.
World's End (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 25
