He told the outcome of their first venture, the hundreds of thousands of hand grenades which had been turned into children’s savings-banks for the Christmas trade; those which had not been sold last year were now in the hands of dealers, awaiting that season of joy and brotherhood which comes but once a year and unfortunately does not last until the next one. They had bought an amazing assortment of products which the American Expeditionary Force had brought to France and had to get rid of at any price: canned tuna-fish, wooden legs, and alarm clocks; thirty-seven thousand padlocks with two keys each, fourteen thousand gross of lead-pencils with erasers attached—
“You cannot imagine how many unlikely things are required by an army,” explained Johannes Robin. “Can you suggest to me any patriotic organization which might be wishing to purchase an edition of twenty-five thousand lives of the one-time President, William McKinley?”
“I regret that I cannot think of one at the moment,” replied Lanny, gravely.
“He was the most handsome statesman that could be imagined, but confidentially I admit that my efforts to read his speeches have been failures. I fear it will prove the least profitable of all my speculations, even though I bid only a quarter of a cent per copy for the books. It will be necessary to take off the covers, or ‘cases,’ as they are called, and turn the paper to pulp, and I must find out if it will be possible to re-stamp the cases and put some other books inside them, perhaps a life of Pope Benedict XV or else of Tovarish Lenin.”
Mr. Robin went on to explain that he had been planning to move into Germany, but was waiting until matters settled down so that it would be easier to come and go. He was buying up properties of all sorts in the Fatherland. “Do not think that I am being vainglorious if I say that I am going to become an extremely rich man, for I have information as to coming events, and it would be foolish not to make use of my opportunities. If one is in business, one buys what one believes will increase in value and sells what one believes will lose in value.”
Lanny agreed that this was according to his understanding of the game.
“Tell your father to trust me a little more, Lanny,” urged the other. “I failed to see him the last time he came over, and I am sorry, because one cannot judge events from far away. Your father is troubled that I persist in selling German marks; in America he gets the propaganda which the Germans are putting out—you understand the situation?”
“I haven’t been watching the money-market, Mr. Robin.”
“You would not, being an art lover, and for that I honor you. But I explain that all over the world are people of German race who have money, and love the Fatherland, and the Fatherland needs help, but how can the help be given? If these Germans can be persuaded to invest in the Fatherland’s paper money, life may continue at home. So the government gives out news to the effect that prosperity is beginning, that Germany is coming back with a rush, that there will be no more paper marks, that the mark has reached its lowest point—and so they sell plenty more marks. But they do not sell them to Johannes Robin—on the contrary, I sell millions and millions to Germans for delivery in three months, and when the time comes I buy them for half what I am due to receive. This troubles your father, because he considers it a risk. Tell him to trust me and I will make him a really rich man, not just one of the medium fellows!”
“I’ll tell him what you say, Mr. Robin,” said Lanny; “but I know that my father always prefers to invest in real things.”
“He is wise in that he keeps his money in dollars, and when the mark is really down we will go into Germany and buy great manufacturing concerns for a few thousands each.’ I will take you, Lanny, and we will buy old masterpieces of painting for the price of a good dinner.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with them,” said Lanny. “I have a storeroom full of the paintings of Marcel Detaze which we ought to sell.”
“Oh, take my advice and do nothing yet!” exclaimed the shrewd man of business. “Now everything is in a slump, but in a short time things will get started again, and there will be such a boom as no man has ever dreamed of. Then your father and I will be riding on top of the wave.”
VI
Lanny went to the train to meet the young travelers from Rotterdam. He would have known them anywhere, having had so many snapshots of two dark-eyed, dream-smitten children of ancient Judea, whose shoulders some prophet had covered with his mantle, whose heads he had anointed with holy oil. Lanny Budd, in the Sunday school class of the stern old Puritan manufacturer, his grandfather, had learned about a shepherd boy named David, who had played the harp, listened to the voice of Jehovah, and entered into communion with the Almighty One, the Lord God of Hosts. If you counted up the number of man’s descendants in a hundred generations, you could be sure that every Jew in the world shared the blood of that minstrel and future king; and here were two of them, stepping from the Blue Express, one carrying a suitcase and a violin case, the other a suitcase and a clarinet case.
Both of them eager, both with dark eyes shining and red lips smiling; a dream of seven years coming true for them—they were meeting the wonderful Lanny Budd! It is a pleasure to be able to make anybody so happy, and Lanny would do his best by kindness and gaiety to come up to their expectations. He understood the situation, because long ago Mr. Robin had revealed how Lanny Budd was the model of all things excellent to those boys; he was cultured, he had traveled, and he belonged to the ruling caste of the modern world, for whom the arts were created and before whom the artists performed.
Lanny remembered how thrilled he had been, how the whole earth had taken on hues of enchantment, when he had traveled to Kurt Meissner’s home and seen a great castle with its snow-covered turrets gleaming in the early morning sun. Now came little Freddi Robin, at that same age of fourteen. He and his brother were seeing the Côte d’Azur for the first time, and semi-tropical landscapes were as magical to them as snow had been to Lanny. Trees laden with oranges and lemons, bowers of roses and cascades of purple bougainvillaea, rocky shores with blue water turning green in the shallows—all these sights brought cries of wonder, and then anxiety as to whether one was being too demonstrative in the presence of Anglo-Saxon reticence. Everybody at Bienvenu liked them at once; impossible not to, they were so gentle, so sweet-tempered and anxious to please. They spoke acceptable English, French, and German, as well as their native Dutch. Their eager conscientiousness was evident, and persons who knew the harsh world were touched by the thought of what these boys might be made to suffer.
VII
For so long Hansi Robin had been looking forward to the day when he would play a duet with Lanny Budd; and now in the generously proportioned drawing-room of the villa he got out his fiddle and tuned it to Lanny’s piano. From his portfolio he took the score of the César Franck Sonata in A Major, made popular by Ysaye. He laid the piano part on the rack in front of his friend, and waited to give him the time to note the key and the tempo, and to bend up the corner of the first page so that he could turn it quickly. He put his fiddle in position and raised his bow; then he put it down again, and said, in a low voice: “I am sorry to be so nervous. I have wanted so much to do this. Now I am afraid I may stumble.”
“You are less likely to stumble than I,” said Lanny, comfortingly. “I have heard this sonata, but I have never seen the score. Let us agree to pardon each other.”
Little Freddi had his hands clenched tightly and also his lips, and could give no comfort to anybody. But Kurt and Beauty, who were sitting by, said reassuring things, and presently Hansi got himself together; he raised his bow and nodded, and Lanny began. When the violin came in, a tender and questioning melody floated onto the air, and Kurt, the real musician of the family, started inwardly, for he knew tone when he heard it, he knew feeling and élan. This music was restless and swiftly changing, it pleased and then became vehement; its fleeting forms were the perpetual miracle of life, something new unfolding itself, discoveries being made, vistas of experience being opened. The frail l
ad forgot his anxieties and played as if he and his violin were one being. When the sonata came to its climax in a long and well-executed trill, Kurt exclaimed: “Oh, good!” which meant a tremendous lot, coming from him. Lanny, who had been raised in France, jumped up and grabbed Hansi and gave him a hug. The lad had tears in his eyes; it was such a moment as doesn’t come often, even to the emotional tribe of the music-makers.
Kurt asked for something else, and Hansi brought out a violin and piano arrangement of Wieniawski’s Second Concerto. Lanny knew that Kurt disliked the Poles above all the other tribes of men; but the artist is above prejudice, and Hansi executed these fireworks with great éclat. The Romance wept and wailed, and when they came to the allegro con fuoco and the molto appassionato, then indeed Lanny had to get a hump on him, as the saying is. He missed some of the notes, but never failed to get the first in every bar, and he was there at the finish. An exhilarating race, and they wound up with a grand flourish, red in the face and proud of themselves.
Politeness required that they should hear Freddi also. He insisted that he wasn’t anything compared to his brother, but they wanted him to play his clarinet, and Hansi produced the score of Haydn’s Gypsy Rondo, part of a trio. Kurt took the piano this time, and Lanny listened to gaily tripping music out of the eighteenth century, when it seemed easier to be contented with one’s lot in life. Lanny was proud of these two charming lads, and certain that they would be loved by all good people. He saw that his mother was pleased with them. Some day she would be taking them to play for Mrs. Emily, and they would be invited to give a recital at Sept Chênes, where all the rich and famous persons on the Riviera would hear them. Such is the pathway to fame.
VIII
From then on what a tootling and a tinkling, a blaring and a banging, in the studio behind the high garden wall! Lanny thumping valiantly the new grand piano, afraid of nothing; Hansi with his fiddle and a head full of millions of notes; little Freddi with his sweetly wailing clarinet; Kurt sometimes with a cello, sometimes a flute, sometimes a French horn—he could have played the kettledrums if he had had a couple of them. Food was forgotten, sleep forgotten—time was so short and art so long! Now indeed would the passers-by on the highway stop and sit in the shade of the wall for a free concert. Sweet, sweet, O Pan! The sun on the hills forgot to die, the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly—there was no river for him to dream on, but the fishpond in the patio served the purpose, and everything in Bienvenu was happy, and wished that the two minstrels out of ancient Judea might stay with them and help to banish sorrow.
Beauty would send the maid and summon them to meals. Also she would insist that growing lads had to have exercise. “Exercise, my eye!” exclaimed Lanny, dripping with perspiration from the ferocious labor of trying to play orchestral ac companiments on the piano. However, she would make them go sailing and swimming; and surely Lanny ought to take them torch-fishing, and let them have at least one motor-ride along this world-famous coast!
One afternoon, while they were in the midst of their musical riots, the maid come over to report that there was somebody at the telephone, asking for “Monsieur Rick.” A lady who said that her name was “Barbara.” Lanny went to the phone, for he owed a debt of courtesy to this woman who had given his friend such great assistance. Rick had taken her address and sent her a copy of his published article, and had received a friendly letter, congratulating him upon the intelligence it displayed.
Now Lanny explained over the phone that Rick had gone back to England. Barbara told him that she was visiting in Cannes, and he didn’t like to say an abrupt good-by and hang up; he always had the impulse to be friendly to people, and he told her that he and some musician friends were enjoying themselves, and wouldn’t she like to come over for tea and hear them? Only after she had accepted the invitation did the thought occur to him that maybe an Italian syndicalist agitator might not seem so acceptable an acquaintance to his mother as she had to an English journalist on the hunt for copy!
He decided to exercise discretion, and tell Beauty no more than he had to. It was an Italian lady he had met in San Remo, unusually well informed as to the international situation; she had given Rick a lot of data, so Lanny had thought he ought to be polite. “You don’t have to bother with her,” he added. “Send the tea over to the studio and we’ll take care of her.” It was a blazing hot afternoon, and company meant dressing up; Beauty voted to have her siesta, and Lanny was relieved.
IX
It was the assumption that persons coming to Bienvenu would step into a conveyance; Lanny just forgot that some people were poor—it is so easy to forget that when you live in an ivory tower! Barbara Pugliese walked from the village, and arrived dust-stained and sweaty, in which condition she did not look attractive. Lanny was inclined to be embarrassed before his friends; but she sat quietly and listened to the music, and expressed her appreciation in well-chosen words. He decided that he was being a snob, and that two Jewish boys whose father had been born in a hut with a mud floor had no call to look down upon a woman of culture who had given up her social position to help the downtrodden.
As it turned out, nothing could have been further from the thoughts of the two musical Robins; they were glad to chirp for anyone who cared to listen; and when the tea was brought, they fixed their solemn dark eyes upon the strange Italian woman with the sad thin face, and kept them there for the rest of the afternoon. Lanny told them how his uncle had once taken him on a visit to the “cabbage patch” of Cannes, and how he had there met a sick lady who was living not for herself, but for the poor and oppressed whom she had taken as her friends.
This was an invitation to Barbara to explain how she had come to adopt this unusual way of life. She told about her girlhood in a small Italian village, where her father had been a physician, and thus she had grown up in daily contact with the bitter poverty of the peasants. Her father had been one of the soldiers of Garibaldi, a Free Mason and a rebel, so that early in life Barbara had been made aware of the power of landlords and monopolists over the people. She told dreadful stories of suffering and oppression, and how, when she had tried to enlighten the victims, the priests had denounced her and stirred up mobs against her. But she had persisted, and her fame had spread among the peasants, until when she traveled to their villages the black-shawled women would come with torches to lead her to the place where she was to speak.
She told also about the crowded cities of Italy to which the tourists flocked, and about which the poets imagined romantic things. Rarely did it occur to these persons to visit the moldering slums, where the lace-makers sat on the balconies, not to enjoy the sunsets, but to catch the last gleams of light and toil for the last moment possible in order to earn a crust of bread for the children. Lanny thought it was just as well that his mother was not present, for she was fond of lace, and wouldn’t like to have these distressing thoughts about it. Also she smoked cigarettes and favored an Italian brand, and would not have enjoyed knowing that they were made by tiny children, who contracted nicotine poisoning and crawled home to die. But Barbara Pugliese hadn’t run away from such things—she had made these people her friends and helped them to form cooperatives, workers’ schools and libraries, people’s houses, all the means of their education and organization.
Perhaps it was not tactful of her to talk so long. After tea she should have said: “You will wish to go on with the music.” But before her sat two heirs of the ancient Hebrew exaltation, drinking in her words as the thirsty multitudes on the desert had drunk the water that gushed forth when Moses smote the rock. “As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God!” Barbara was a propagandist, and here were two empty vessels to be filled, two dry sponges ready to absorb her doctrine.
Lanny could understand what was going on, for he himself had had the same experience nearly seven years ago. Now he was disillusioned and world-weary, or so it pleased him to think; he had been behind the scenes and learned the futility of efforts to save
mankind from the consequences of its own follies and greeds. But to these naive children with the blood of the prophets in their veins, this was the very voice of the Almighty One speaking from Mount Sinai; the woman who delivered it was holy, her aspect noble, her face beautiful—even though the wind had made her hair straggly, and dried perspiration gave her a shiny nose!
“Then you don’t think the Bolsheviks are wicked?” exclaimed Hansi Robin.
“The Bolsheviks are trying to end poverty and war, the two greatest curses of mankind. Can that be wicked?”
“But they kill so many people!”
“Always through history you find slaves revolting, and they are put down with dreadful slaughter. You find that any killing done by the slaves is small compared with what the masters do. The capitalist system, which is the cause of modern war, has destroyed thirty million people by battle, starvation, and disease; what moral claims can it have after that?”
“But can’t people be persuaded to be kind to one another?” This from the gentle Freddi.
“No one can say that we of the working people haven’t tried. We have pleaded and explained, we have tried to educate the whole people; we have built a great system of cooperatives and workers’ schools, paid for with our very life-blood. But the masters, who fear us and hate us, are doing their best to destroy all these things.”
So it went, until Lanny thought: “Mr. Robin wouldn’t like this any better than my father!” He saw that he ought to break it up, so he said: “Hansi, won’t you play something for Compagna Barbara before she leaves?”
Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 15
