23
And Both Were Young
I
The Galeries Freycinet are strategically situated on the fashionable Rue de la Paix, and with money furnished by Lanny and his mother, Zoltan hired their two largest rooms for a month. This was a long time for a one-man show, but Zoltan was planning a campaign and was sure the public would keep coming. The first thing he did was to present a copy of one of Marcel’s small seascapes to the art critic of one of the great Paris newspapers; so, a few days before the opening, this gentleman published a two-column article about a painter who was taking his place as a shining light in the galaxy of French genius. Without any advertising or promotion, Marcel Detaze was forging to the front of French representationalists; in spite of all the fads and follies of a frivolous time, it was possible for sound and solid work to find recognition in the art worlds of both Paris and London. This article was illustrated by the Poilu, the Sister of Mercy, and the aforementioned seascape; before the month was over, the seascape was placed on sale at one of the near-by galleries and sold for thirty-five thousand francs.
This one article started the ball rolling, and the other critics didn’t have to be paid so much; there were even a few so important that they didn’t have to be “sweetened” at all. Socially prominent persons had to be visited and told about the forthcoming event. For that purpose Lanny and his mother came to Paris a week in advance and told all their friends what they were there for. At such a time one reaps the reward of having such a person as Emily Chattersworth for a friend; she would spread the word among key people, and no one doubted her judgment in a matter of art.
The fact that Marcel’s face had been burned off in the war, so that he had been forced to wear a mask, and that in spite of this handicap he had gone forward and developed a new style—this didn’t make him a great painter, but it surely made him a great subject for conversation about painting; it made him popular with persons who had to fill newspaper space with gossip and comment. It caused his name to stand out, and gave people a reason for attending a one-man show instead of races at Longchamps, steeplechases at Auteuil, or polo at Bagatelle.
So the opening day was a real occasion. Zoltan acted as master of ceremonies; looking as if he had been “poured out of the egg,” as the Germans say, precisely correct in his “morning,” his striped gray trousers, large silk tie, and boutonniere. His slightly florid light-brown mustache lent the right touch of artiness. He had hired at a fancy price the best-trained doorman in Paris, who knew everybody who might by any possibility come to an exhibition; this man was provided with a telephone in a booth, and upstairs was a messenger who would bring word to the expert, so that he might be waiting at the head of the stairs. “Oh, how do you do, Lady Piddlington? Have you quite recovered, Your Grace?” Greeting each one in his or her own language—French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, even Swedish—he had a bit of them all. His manners were always French, they being international and romantic. He would stroll with the important ones and tell them what to see and they would see it.
Beauty Budd was, of course, an indispensable part of the show. You might say that she had been preparing for it ever since her arrival in Paris, a seventeen-year-old virgin. Meeting painters and posing for them, learning all the patter; meeting Robbie Budd and acquiring the manners of the beau monde; learning to dress, learning to be gracious, to exercise charm; meeting Marcel and loving him, so that he poured his genius into glorifying her. He had painted her when he had first met her, a piece of ripe fruit with the loveliest colors that nature can produce and that paint can imitate; a woman in a light summer dress, standing in the doorway of his cabin with a little straw hat and veil in her hand. He had painted her again in the days of his deepest tragedy, when she had stood by him and he adored her as the embodiment of womanly pity.
The picture, Sister of Mercy, was one of those things like Whistler’s Mother, whose merit no critic can dispute, and which at the same time are so simple that the least-taught person can understand them and share their sentiment. There would always be some people standing in front of it; and when they saw Beauty, they would stare at her, and the blood would climb into her cheeks and stay there—in fact she wouldn’t need any rouge at all for a month, though of course she would put it on for safety. She was forty-five, and no flower blooms, no fruit hangs on the tree, forever.
What she had to do for a whole glorious month was what she loved most of all things in the world: to dress up and meet swarms of the right people, and be admired by them, and tell them all they wanted to know about Detaze—who could tell them better than Madame Detaze, veuve? Zoltan had advised her to dress very simply, and with dignity, and she played to perfection the part of a woman who had been the saving influence in the life of a genius. The fact that she really had been that made the playing much easier.
II
Lanny also had his place in this more-than-one-man show. The stepson of the painter had shared the secrets of the last five years of his life; had traveled with him to Greece and Africa, watched his work of this period, and had something to do with its moods. This was also true of the war years—no doubt whatever that he had helped to bring some of these later works into being. He really understood Marcel’s technique, and could talk to critics and experts about his development. Zoltan declared that many an art critic got his job because he was a relative of the newspaper proprietor or of his mistress, or because he owned the right clothes and would work for practically no salary. You saved the life of such a man when you tactfully gave him his cues and his technical terms.
Something even more important than being an art expert was being a social expert. Lanny knew how to talk to a duchess whose title came down from the ancien régime, or to a Russian princess in exile, or to a Hollywood movie star. He could guess that the duchess had come because she loved paintings, but that she wasn’t likely to buy one; that the Russian lady was hoping to meet somebody to whom she could peddle her fur coat; that the movie star wanted to be looked at and mentioned among those present. He knew how to watch Zoltan and pick up his signals, whether he should devote his time to this one or get rid of that one. He could meet sudden emergencies—as when Zoltan introduced him to the widow of a great department-store proprietor from St. Louis, and this stout bejeweled lady somehow got things mixed up and proceeded to express to Lanny her wonder that one so young should have painted all these lovely pictures. If he had dealt with that situation crudely and affronted a dowager queen of merchandising, he might have deprived the people of the Mississippi valley of their chance to have a great art collection brought among them.
To a show such as this came many sorts of people. Some really appreciated the pictures, and followed Lanny about, drinking in every word that he said. Some were persons of wealth, who might have to pay in cold cash for their enthusiasm. Others bore upon their persons evidence that they were poor—but Lanny would give time to them, regardless of the high prices which he and his mother were paying for these rooms. Old friends of Marcel, or young painters and students from the Left Bank, word spread among them—“Il faut les voir!”—and they came in clothes that had been patched and collars that had been trimmed with scissors. Some looked so ill-nourished that Lanny wondered how they could stand up for long periods; their fingers were bloodless and wax-like as they pointed out this or that feature of a canvas, and one couldn’t be sure whether the trembling was caused by excitement or exhaustion. But they were living the life of art which they loved, and wine of the spirit was here poured out for them without price.
Great numbers of Americans were in Paris seeking culture, and they always wanted the very latest thing. Some knew what they were seeing, and others took it on faith. A couple of wizened little old ladies whom Lanny guessed to be schoolteachers heard him telling an English journalist about Marcel’s life and work, and they attached themselves to his coattails and followed him from one painting to the next. They never made a sound, and in the end faded away as quietly as they
had come; but for an hour or more they were his adoring pupils, drinking in culture like two topers who have knocked out the bung from a cask of wine.
Others did less honor to their native land. Two ladies of fashion, loaded with expensive decorations, gushing in unnecessarily loud voices—they too had read the papers, or perhaps somebody had told them, but they hadn’t bothered to get it quite straight. They came up to a canvas and one said: “Who painted that?” The other drew closer and peered through her lorgnette. As it happened, if Lanny knew what a land- or seascape represented, he had given it a title as well as a number. The lady read and exclaimed: “Cap Ferrat! Oh, I adore his work!” Said the other: “Yes, it is grand. But I wonder why they call him ‘Cap.’” The learning of the one with the lorgnette was equal to this test. “They say he was in the French army,” she explained.
III
Two friends of the Murchisons from Pittsburgh showed up; elderly, quite plain-looking people, but you couldn’t always tell by that. They said they liked the pictures, and spent a lot of time studying them and discussing them quietly. Finally they came to Zoltan and asked for the prices of three—one of the Riviera, one of Norway, and one of Africa. The prices were not posted on the pictures, but kept decorously on a typewritten list in the pocket of Zoltan and of an assistant. The cheapest of all the canvases was priced at fifty thousand francs, and the three which the old couple wanted came to a quarter of a million, or about ten thousand dollars. That didn’t seem to worry them a bit; the man wrote out a check on a Paris bank and asked about arrangements to have the pictures shipped. Nothing was to be taken away until the exhibition was over.
Then an English couple, identifying themselves to Lanny as friends of Rosemary, Countess of Sandhaven. This was a swanky young pair, dressed up to the last minute, the man with a monocle and the lady with a swagger-stick. She pointed it at a weatherbeaten old Greek peasant, holding under his arm that little lamb which Mr. Hackabury had purchased and caused to be served for dinner on the yacht Bluebird. “How much is that one?” asked the Honorable “Babs” Blesingham, and when Zoltan said: “A hundred and seventy-five thousand francs,” she exclaimed indignantly: “Oh, but that is cheek!”
Zoltan, who knew the manners of the British aristocracy, replied: “Your grandchildren may sell it for five thousand pounds, my lady.”
She frowned as if she were doing mental arithmetic; then she said: “Well, anyhow, I like it. Send it around to my hotel when you’re ready.”
Zoltan, sure of himself and not awed either by smart costumes or by insolent manners, replied: “We are not reserving anything, my lady. If you wish to be sure of it, be so good as to make it definite.”
“All right, Reggie, give him a check.” Just as if she were tossing a five-sou piece to a beggar!
In the midst of all these excitements came the Robins. They had seen some of the paintings at Bienvenu, and now they saw them all, and were so excited that they wrote a long letter to Papa, enclosing some of the bought-and-paid-for newspaper clippings. The result was a telegram to Lanny, directing that the boys with Lanny’s advice were to select a million francs’ worth of the Detazes and have them shipped to him. Papa had just bought a palace in the suburbs of Berlin, it was revealed, and they were going to move into it, and Marcel’s landscapes would hang on the marble walls of a very grand entrance hall where the proudest Prussian nobility had trod. Quite a step upward for a Jew who had been raised in a hut with a mud floor; also for a painter who had lived in a cabin on the Cap d’Antibes and dressed most of the time in a workman’s blouse and a pair of corduroy trousers smeared with all the colors he had put on a hundred canvases!
Lanny couldn’t give much time to the boys right then, but he had told Mrs. Emily about them, and they went out to Les Forets and played for her. She fell in love with them as Lanny knew she must; she invited musicians to hear them, and made them happy with her praise. She was one person who had no trace of prejudice against the Jews; if they had better brains that was the hard luck of the Gallic and Anglo-Saxon races! Lanny wasn’t so sure about Marie; but she knew how he admired this pair, and she couldn’t fail to invite them to her home and have them meet her two boys, who were of nearly the same age and whose musical tastes she wished to cultivate. Hansi was a good example for anybody’s sons, for all could see how hard he had worked and what a reward of happiness he had won in his mastery of a great musical instrument. The boys made friends gladly and when the Schieber heard how his dear ones had been received in two chateaux, he could consider that he had got double value for his million francs.
IV
The Budd family arrived on schedule. They had reservations at the Crillon, Lanny’s place of memories; he went there to see them as soon as the boat-train arrived. Six years and a half had passed since he had left their home; he had changed a lot, and wondered how it would be with them.
It seemed to him that his stepmother hadn’t changed at all. She was one of those cool, quiet persons upon whom the years made little impression; tall and still slender, with no wrinkles about her eyes, no gray in her straight brown hair. She had parted from her strange stepson on friendly terms, and greeted him as if it had been last week. She had come to his world, where he would play the host and she would accept his kindnesses as he had accepted hers; she wouldn’t approve of all that she saw, but she would be carefully polite, watch over her children, study the guide-books with them, learn history and art—but not manners and surely not morals.
Robert, junior, was twenty and Percy a year younger. They were handsome, upstanding fellows who had enjoyed the best possible upbringing, and had played football in prep school; both were at Yale, the target which Lanny had been aimed at but had missed. They were still repressed, and knew that it wasn’t good form to show much excitement over being in a foreign country; but they had their own ideas about Paris, which they would reveal to Lanny before long. Their main desire was to get away from mother and Miss Sutton, the gray-haired lady who had been Bess’s governess and had been as it were adopted; she traveled with the party as a combination of companion and secretary, doing the telephoning, buying the tickets, running the errands. No Budd would do anything so vulgar as to enlist among the “Cookies.”
Bess was the one in whom Lanny had been interested in Newcastle. They had kept their promise not to forget each other, and had exchanged letters now and then, telling the news and enclosing snapshots. So Lanny knew that his half-sister had turned into a very proper young miss of seventeen; she was going to be tall, like her mother, and now she was what the English call “leggy.” She held her mother’s high round forehead and rather thin nose, but her brown hair was unruly like her father’s; her upper lip was a little short, which made her smile rather quaint. She had candid brown eyes, and an expression of eagerness which mother and governess combined had been unable to subdue. Bess wanted to know, and not to have somebody tell her. She wanted to see Europe so eagerly that it hurt; she had kept her face pressed to the window of the train and of the taxicab. “Oh, Mummy, look!” Mummy would say: “Yes, dear.” She had learned that it didn’t do much good to say “Don’t.”
Now her wonderful half-brother was going to show her Paris: the Louvre, Notre Dame, Versailles, the Eiffel Tower—“Is that the Obelisk over there, Lanny? And is that really the Place de la Concorde? Have they taken away all the big guns? Is the picture exhibition still going? Mummy, can’t we go over and see it right now?”
Esther wasn’t ready to go out yet; she wanted time to prepare for the ordeal of meeting her husband’s ex-mistress, who she had to pretend was an ex-wife; that was what Paris meant to a daughter of the Puritans, and no wonder she didn’t like it in her heart. But she could think of no reason why Lanny shouldn’t take the children to see his stepfather’s paintings; the place was only five minutes’ walk, he told them. So they set out, with the arrangement that they were to bring Beauty back for lunch.
Of course the three “children” had their curiosities about this mysterious mo
ther of Lanny, about whom they had been told so little. Had the boys picked up any hint of the truth? If so, they were too well bred to reveal it. The Detaze show was the best of all places for them to meet the dubious charmer, with everybody paying court to her and two portraits presenting her in the best possible light—but not that naked one, which was safely locked in the storeroom at home!
Anybody who met Beauty could see that she was a kind soul. Naturally, she was in a flutter over meeting Esther’s children, but then she was always in something of a flutter. She was still nearly as eager as Bess, interested in everybody and everything that came along. She wanted Robbie’s children to approve of her, and she even had hopes that she might win their mother’s regard.
The young people looked at the pictures, and Lanny told them the stories, and it was a most interesting lecture, something that couldn’t have been had in Connecticut. It took them over the Mediterranean lands, and to the fiords of the Northland; it took them through the war, and taught them about French patriotism, as well as suffering and horror. The very elegant Hungarian art expert lent his aid, explaining the fine points about Marcel’s technique. When the morning was over, the young Budds could never doubt that Lanny’s mother had been married to a great painter. The prices asked for his work would have convinced them of that. Moreover, Mr. Kertezsi had told them that the French government had just purchased a Detaze for the Luxembourg. (He didn’t tell them that he had let the government have it for a couple of thousand francs, so that he might have something with which to impress Americans.)
V
Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 51
