“And you were falling in love with him?”
“I never thought of any man but Marcel. Kurt was Lanny’s friend and I thought he was helping Lanny to be a good boy, and I used to hold him up as an example. Then the war came, and Kurt became an officer in the German army. He and Lanny kept in touch, because Lanny had a friend in Holland and Kurt had one in Switzerland who forwarded letters for them. After the Armistice, when Lanny and I met in Paris, he was unhappy because he hadn’t got word from Kurt, and thought he must have been killed in the last fighting, like Marcel. Lanny wrote to Kurt’s father in Stubendorf, but no answer came. He went on worrying half-way through the Peace Conference; and then one day, walking on the Rue de la Paix, he saw his friend riding in a taxi.”
“A German officer?”
“In civilian clothes. Lanny knew he must be there on a forged passport. He followed him and made himself known. Kurt tried not to recognize him, but finally admitted what he was doing. Of course it would have meant shooting if he had been caught. Lanny didn’t tell me, he didn’t tell anyone; he just went on doing his work at the Crillon, and keeping that secret locked in his heart.”
“How perfectly awful, Beauty!”
“That went on until late one night Kurt got word to Lanny that the French police had raided the headquarters of the group for which Kurt was working. The poor fellow had been walking the streets for twenty-four hours before he called Lanny; and they went on walking on a rainy winter night while Lanny tried to think of some place to take him. He thought of you—but you had so many servants, they decided you couldn’t hide anyone. They thought of my brother Jesse, who is some sort of Red, as you know; but the police were watching Jesse—this was right after Clemenceau had been shot. When Kurt was about exhausted, Lanny decided there was nothing to do but bring him to my hotel. After midnight I heard a tap on my door, and there were the pair of them, and what could I do?”
“You mean you kept that man in your apartment?”
“If I had sent him out on the street, it would have been to certain death; and I had seen so much killing. I thought the war was over, and we were supposed to be making peace.”
“What was he doing in Paris, Beauty?”
“He was trying to influence French and Allied opinion for the lifting of the blockade against Germany. You remember how it was—we were so indignant about the starving of German women and children.”
“But what could a German agent do along that line?”
“He had large sums of money at his disposal. He won’t talk about it, but from hints I have picked up I gather that he accomplished a good deal. He managed to meet some influential people. Don’t you begin to guess anything, Emily?”
Mrs. Chattersworth had been listening to the troubles of a harum-scarum friend; it hadn’t dawned on her that they might have anything to do with herself. But now suddenly a bolt of lightning flashed in her mind. “Beauty Budd! That Swiss musician?”
“Yes, Emily,” said the anxious culprit. “That Swiss musician was Kurt Meissner.”
V
The time had come to which Lanny’s mother had been looking forward over a period of six months. Sooner or later she was going to have to make a clean breast of these matters to Emily, and with forebodings in her heart she had rehearsed the scene. Now, when it actually confronted her and she saw the look of horror on Emily’s face, she couldn’t bear to let her speak, but rushed on desperately:
“For God’s sake, Emily, don’t think that I meant to do this to you! Nothing on earth could have made me do it. I hadn’t an idea of it until I walked into your drawing-room and saw Kurt standing at your side. I never had such a shock in my life. I came near to fainting, and can’t imagine how I managed to carry it off.”
“How did this man know about me?”
“As I told you, Lanny had discussed you along with others. He mentioned a list of his friends. What Kurt did was write to Switzerland and get in touch with his superiors, and with their help he went to work on the names he had got.”
“But he wrote me that he was a cousin of an old friend of mine who had died in Switzerland. How could he have known about that?”
“He tells me the German intelligence service can find out anything. That’s all I know. His lips are sealed, and not even love can open them.”
“But what could he have been expecting to accomplish in my home, Beauty?”
“He wanted to meet influential persons, and he did. Presumably he got what he wanted from one of them—so he didn’t come back to you any more.”
“How perfectly appalling, Beauty!”
“I assure you I haven’t got over the shock of it yet. I tremble every time I see a French uniform.”
“And you never gave me an idea what was happening to me!”
“Lanny and I debated that problem in great distress of mind. We figured that you wouldn’t want to give him up to be shot; that didn’t seem according to your nature. On the other hand, if you didn’t report him, you’d become responsible for what he might do. So long as you didn’t know, you couldn’t be blamed. After you came and told me that the police had questioned you about Kurt, I never slept a wink. How we got him out of the country is a long story that I won’t bore you with now.”
“I can’t think when I was ever less bored,” replied the other. She looked into those lovely, gentle features, now so strained and anxious, and added: “I used to think of you as a sort of cross between a gazelle and a butterfly; now I’ll have to call you one of the world’s great actresses. I have never been so completely taken in.”
“You have to find it in your heart to forgive me. I was caught up by a whirlwind. You see, I had fallen in love with the man. It sounds disgraceful, but let me tell you how it was.”
“I’m not so surprised by that part. How long were you shut up in the apartment with him?”
“A whole week; but it wasn’t only that, it was the tragedy of his position. You know, Emily, how I felt about the war at the outset. I hated it, and only as I watched Marcel’s frightful sufferings did I begin to hate the Germans. Before the war was over, I had learned to hate them heartily. And there were Kurt and I all day and all night—he couldn’t leave—at least, I wouldn’t let him. Everything I believed about the war was a challenge to him. We argued and quarreled, we fought the whole war over, until at last Kurt made me see the German side. They really have a side, Emily.”
“I suppose they think so.” Mrs. Chattersworth’s voice was cold.
“Kurt was wounded twice; the last time he had pieces of his ribs shot away, and while he was in the hospital he was nursed by a young woman who had been a schoolteacher. They fell in love and were married, and she was expecting a baby. That was the time toward the end of the dreadful food shortage caused by the blockade. The baby was born dead, and the mother contracted T.B., but she went on working; Kurt was at the front, and didn’t know about it until she had died of a hemorrhage. That’s the story he told me; and there he was—having lost everything, even his home—he swears he will never live in Poland. The Germans are a proud and bitter people, Emily, and they’re not going to take their defeat gracefully. It’s not merely the territory they’ve lost, the ships and all the material things; it’s the humiliation, the insult of having been made to admit a guilt they don’t feel. I really thought that when the Versailles treaty was signed Kurt might take his own life. And you know, I wasn’t so happy myself: the world after the war didn’t look lovely to me; the way people were behaving made me sick. I thought: Here’s Lanny’s friend whom I might help. And I did that; I’ve managed to get him back to something at least half-way normal. I know it seems a ridiculous love affair, but if only the world will let us alone and not have any more wars, Lanny and I between us can keep Kurt at his music. I’ve come to beg your forgiveness—and for your help in this task.”
VI
The stately Mrs. Emily Chattersworth had not always enjoyed the secure position which was hers in France. Far back in the past, but still
vivid in memory, were the days when she had been the wife of a great New York banker, whose institutions had been under investigation by a legislative committee. Then she had known what it was to read scare headlines about her husband’s business and even his private life; to have her telephone wires tapped, her servants bribed, her home burglarized and papers stolen. She said nothing about it now, but remembered that she too was an exile!
Nor was the salonnière in position to throw stones on account of the younger woman’s sexual irregularity. Emily had had an unhappy married life, and after her husband’s death in France she had taken a well-known French art authority as her ami, gently putting aside his offers of marriage because she wouldn’t trust any man’s attitude toward a great fortune. Now her hair had turned white, and the band of black velvet which she wore about her throat was no longer wide enough to conceal the wrinkles; her heart was sad, because she was losing the man she loved, and, fearing that, was ceasing to love him. Now she faced the problem: was she going to give up another friend?
Emily had met Beauty at the time of the latter’s unmatched loveliness, and when she was generally accepted as the wife of the wealthy and handsome Robbie Budd. Americans came to France to do as they pleased, and it wasn’t the fashion to ask to see marriage certificates. It was only later that Emily Chattersworth had learned about the stern old Puritan father in Connecticut who threatened to disown his son—and meant it—if he should wed an artists’ model in Paris. By that time Emily had come to know Beauty and to appreciate her natural sweetness of disposition. Also, the childless Mrs. Chattersworth had grown fond of an eager and precocious lad whom she would have been glad to have as a son.
With one-half of her mind she listened to the details of a strange love entanglement, while with the other half she debated what course she was going to take. The voice of prudence said: “A German agent will always be a German agent, no matter what he may pretend. At any rate, you can never have any peace of mind about him. The possibilities of embarrassment are endless, and will last as long as Germany and France last. While you were being deceived, you could be excused; but now that you know, what excuse can you give?”
But the voice of the heart said: “This woman is in trouble, and it isn’t of her making. Am I to say to her: ‘I will have nothing more to do with you or your son’?”
Aloud, the mistress of Sept Chenes remarked: “What on earth do you expect of me, Beauty? I introduced your friend to a large comapny in my home as M. Dalcroze. Now how can I tell them that he is Herr Meissner?”
“At present he travels as my chauffeur, and his passport reads ‘D. Armand.’ We will let the D stand for Dalcroze, and call him Kurt Dalcroze-Armand. If anyone remembers meeting him in Paris, you can say that he came to you as a stranger and that you introduced him by the wrong name.”
“You seem to have thought of everything, Beauty.”
“I spent weeks shut up in that dreadful hotel suite with nothing to do but plan and scheme ways to make some sort of future for Kurt and myself.”
What Emily said at the end of the session was that she would stand by her friends so long as Kurt devoted himself strictly to music. Let the Swiss gentleman with the unusual name of Dalcroze-Armand arrive in Bienvenu as Lanny’s friend and music-teacher, and stay inside the estate and work at his art. “Frenchmen will soon be doing business with Germans again,” said Emily, “and I doubt if anyone will concern himself with your visitors or employees. If the police should happen to trace him, we’ll have to see some of our friends in the government.”
Beauty sat with her hands clasped and the tears starting on her cheeks. “Oh, thank you, thank you, Emily! You will see how hard I shall work to repay your kindness!”
VII
Fortified by this powerful support, Beauty went back to Spain, and her tall chauffeur with the bright blue eyes and abundant straw-colored hair donned his uniform and motored his mistress to the French border. That was the point of peril, and in preparation for it Beauty had donned the gayest costume ever worn by an American lady of fashion on a motor-tour. Not too outré, no jewels, and only a little make-up and perfume, but an effect of springtime, most agreeable in December; a jardiniere hat sprouting golden poppies, a pink crape dress hinting at hidden charms, and a full-length silver-fox coat spread on the seat at her back, ready for use when the sun dropped low and the chill of the Riviera night descended. Border guards and customs officials would know that this must be the favored one of some fabulous American magnate; and when she presented her passports and descended from the car to fill out her declaration, she enveloped them in gracious smiles, costly perfumes, and fluent French. Each one imagined himself a master of multimillions, embracing that vision of joy, and no one had more than a glance for a chauffeur standing by a car, keeping guard over a silver-fox coat and other treasures.
When they were safe in France and darkness covered them, the chauffeur slipped out of his uniform and donned a well-tailored costume appropriate to a Swiss piano virtuoso. They spent the night in an inn at Cette, and drove all the next day and night, arriving at Bienvenu in the small hours. The gates were swung open and then locked behind the car, and Beauty’s protege was safe in a love-nest from which he was not going to emerge for many a month if his amie could have her way.
There was that new studio, all pink stucco with sky-blue shutters; and a new grand piano—or should one say a grand new piano? Lanny had had to give up the idea of having Kurt choose it, and had found it himself in Cannes. Those two boys—so they still thought of each other—exchanged embraces with ardor born of anxiety on the one side and of gratitude on the other. Tired and stiff as Kurt was after a grueling journey, he seated himself at the sonorous instrument and poured out the tumult of Schumann’s Widmung. Ich Hebe dich in Zeit und Ewigkeit—and Beauty and Lanny and the piano each might take it as applying to her or him or it!
VIII
That pink and white motherly hen had her three chicks under her warm wings—and how she would guard them! She had seen so much of cruelty and suffering, she had felt so much of grief and terror, that all she asked of a harsh world was to be let alone in her quiet nest; she could get along without any more glory, or whatever it was that a “professional beauty” had craved. Her smart clothes were hung in closets, where they would grow quickly out of date; but never mind, she said, fashions move in spirals, and they’d be good ten years from now. When her smart friends invited her to dances, she told them that she was still in mourning for Marcel. Naturally they would wonder about that severe and dignified-looking music-teacher of whom they caught glimpses; but if they suspected a scandal it would be sexual, not military.
Two children and a lover were three children in Beauty’s eyes, and she would do everything in her power to spoil them. If they wanted anything they should have it, and if they did anything it was marvelous. She wanted them to take that attitude to one another; she would sing the praises of each to the others, and watch them all with anxious eyes. Fortunately no sign of disharmony appeared. Kurt found Baby Marceline a charming creature, and joined Lanny in his course of child study. Kurt hadn’t thought that one so young could perceive musical rhythm, and when she would toddle over to his studio he did not resent the interruption, but played little German folk tunes for her to dance to, and then carried her home and laid her in her crib. Beauty understood that he was thinking of the child he had hoped for and lost.
When Kurt had visited Bienvenu in the year 1913 there had been two women servants. Rosine was now married, and had a family of her own; Leese had brought one of her nieces as maid-of-all-work, and a brother as handyman. Of course these servants gossiped about the family, as did the servants of all the other families on the Cap d’Antibes. Very soon the peasants and fisherfolk knew that the young music-master was also the lover of Madame; but nobody objected to that—“C’est la nature.” They took it for granted that he was Swiss, and knew that he spent his time causing thunderous volumes of sound to echo through the pine woods and over
the golfe. Passing on the road they would stop to listen, and between hauls of their nets the fishermen would look at one another and exclaim: “Sapristi!”
Kurt had got all his instruments and his large stock of music. Lanny also had a supply, and they carried armfuls back and forth and soon got them hopelessly mixed. Lanny was relieved to find that Kurt did not carry the late international unhappiness into the realm of art; he was willing to listen to English and French and even to Italian music. But he had severe standards; he liked music that was structurally sound and hated that which was showy. Presently Lanny began to note that it was the great German composers who had the desired qualities and the foreign ones who lacked them. Lanny said nothing about this, because he was trying so hard to please his friend.
IX
Lanny was only a little more than a year younger than Kurt, but this had made a great difference when they were boys, and his attitude of deference still continued. It was Lanny’s nature to admire other people and find them wonderful. His mother had often objected to that attitude, but in the case of Kurt she didn’t; so all things worked together to make Kurt the master of this household. It was his genius which was being cultivated; it was his taste which set the standards. Beauty didn’t really know anything about music, except for dancing. She liked pretty tunes, but didn’t know why everything had to become so complicated and so noisy. But that was the way Kurt liked it, and that was the way he had it.
Beauty’s first man had wanted her to be the most admired woman in a ballroom, and so she had spent his money upon clothes; he had liked to sit up most of the night playing poker, and so she had lost a lot of his money for him. Beauty’s second man had liked to sit out on the rocks and observe the colors of sunsets and breaking waves; he had raved about the way certain men put upon canvas little dabs of lead dissolved in oil. All right, Beauty had given tea-parties for painters, and had listened to their patter, and learned to tell Manet from Monet, Redon from Rodin, and Pissarro from Picasso. Now here was another kind of genius, another strange and bewildering art; Beauty listened, and it seemed to her a chaos of sound, going on without any discoverable reason for either starting or stopping. But Lanny would cry out that it was magnificent, he had always known Kurt had it in him; Beauty decided that she had known it too.
World's End (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 81
