Johannes Robin wrote that he had some business to transact in London prior to the sailing of the Bessie Budd; so the yacht would arrive at Ramsgate, with the family on board, and they would come up to town and have a look at the exhibition. Maybe Johannes might decide that he wanted some more of those paintings in his home. Lanny said to his mother that he would drive down and meet them and bring some of them to town; he would rent another car for the rest of the party. Johannes had stated the day they were due to arrive, and Lanny looked up the tides.
V
On the morning of the day when the yacht was due, Beauty awakened first, and lying in bed she looked at the morning paper; then with a cry she started up, and slipping on her peignoir, ran into her son’s room. “Lanny! Wake up! Look at this! Irma Barnes is in town!”
Lanny, having been to a dance and having had some champagne early that morning, had to rub his eyes and shake his mind to make sure that he wasn’t still dancing. He looked at the London Daily Mail, which had made a conspicuous story out of the fact that the great international catch, having twenty-three million dollars in her own right, had arrived unannounced with her mother and had put up at one of the fashionable hotels. There was her picture to prove it—Irma, his playmate of a Riviera season, looking a bit careworn, less blooming than when a young Puritan had had charge of her drink and her dancing hours. The reporter had asked her about the Duca d’Elida, and she had replied, casually: “Oh, that was just newspaper talk.”
“You are not engaged to him, Miss Barnes?”
“He’s a very charming man, and we are the best of friends, but that is all.” So ran the interview.
“Lanny, they’ve had a quarrel!” exclaimed the mother.
“It sounds like it, for a fact.”
“You must call her right away!”
“Do you think I should?” A rather superfluous question—but Lanny, taken by surprise, was thinking out loud.
“Oh, my God!” exclaimed the mother. “If you don’t call her I surely will!”
“We don’t even know where she’s staying.” After the custom of newspapers in dealing with the great, the name of the hotel wasn’t given. It was a favor which the press did to important persons, to spare them the importunities of the needy and the cranks.
However, there were only half a dozen places grand enough for the Barnes family to stay at, and Beauty guessed them in order of importance, and made Lanny inquire. It wasn’t long before he had the social secretary on the phone, and only a few seconds more before he had the heiress herself. Beauty, waiting with bated breath, could hear only one side of that conversation: “Well, darling! What a surprise! What brings you to town? … Well, how nice of you! … Of course I want to see you, right away…. How about lunch? … All right. One o’clock? … It’s a date. How are you? … Only so-so? Well, see you soon. Lots of news. Cheerio!”
And then, of course: “What did she say, Lanny?”
“She said she came to town on purpose to see me.”
“Oh, thank God!” The phrase carried a different significance since Parsifal Dingle had come into Beauty’s frivolous life. “Lanny, she’s broken with that fellow and come to look for you!”
“It really sounds like it, doesn’t it?”
“She found out about the Italians for herself!”
“About the Fascists, let us say.”
“Anyhow, you have your chance. Oh, Lanny, you must ask her now!”
“I will unless she forbids me.”
“You must do it anyway. Don’t let anything stop you!”
“Take it easy,” chuckled the son. “Remember, the duca tried to rush her off her feet, and apparently he didn’t get away with it!”
VI
“Take me to some place where they won’t know me,” said Irma, in the lobby of her hotel.
“That’s not so easy, with your picture in all the papers this morning.”
“Couldn’t we go a long way out into the country?”
“This is England, not France. You’d have a choice of cold mutton with pickles, or veal-and-ham pie, and you wouldn’t like either.”
“I’m not thinking about the food, Lanny. I want to have a talk with you.”
“Well, we’ll drive, and see what we see.”
He took her to his car. She looked very lovely in another sports ensemble of a light worsted, brown trimmed with white at the neck and sleeves, and a little brown cap to match. She seemed to be saying: “This is simplicity, the way you prefer.” Her manner was humble; she had had some unhappiness, and it had chastened her; she seemed more mature and, as her picture indicated, she had lost weight.
As soon as they had started, he said: “You have left that fellow?”
“Yes, Lanny.”
“For good?”
“Forever and ever. Oh, why didn’t you tell me the sort of man he was?”
“I didn’t have much chance to tell you anything, Irma.”
“You didn’t try very hard.”
“I had told you about the Fascists, and what I thought of their code. I told you what they did to Matteotti, and the experience I had with them in Rome. I thought: ‘Well, if that doesn’t mean anything to her—’”
“It did mean a lot in the end. It was what saved me. You remember you told me about the newspaperman, Mr. Corsatti? He was one of the first persons I met there—he and several other reporters came to interview me. The Americans always come, you know.”
“Certainly.”
“Well, he said: ‘I know a friend of yours, Lanny Budd. I saw a lot of him here five years ago.’ I said: ‘Oh, yes, he told me about you.’ So we were friendly; and when the trouble came, it seemed to me he was the one person in Rome I could trust.”
“What was the trouble?”
“It’s something horrid, I feel ashamed to talk about it.”
“I’m no spring chicken, Irma. And, anyhow, I can guess it if you want me to. You found out that Ettore had a girl? Or was it a boy?”
“Oh, such a nasty thing, and it came in such a nasty way: an anonymous letter. At first I thought it was some vile slander, and I would be noble, and tear it up, and tell him that I had done so. But I’d heard things about European men, and I thought: ‘Suppose it is true?’”
“What did it say?”
“It said he was living with the première danseuse of the ballet, and had told her that his marriage wouldn’t make any difference. I thought: ‘Ettore has some enemy, somebody who is jealous of him and wants to ruin him.’ There was another man paying me attention, or trying to, and I thought: ‘Maybe he has sent this, or caused it to be sent.’ I took the letter to my mother, but she wasn’t of much help, because she said that all men were like that, and there was no way to tell, and one shouldn’t break one’s heart over it. I said: ‘I don’t believe they are all like that.’ Are you, Lanny?”
“I have my faults, but that is not one of them.”
“I thought: ‘I’ve got to know the truth.’ So I called Mr. Corsatti and asked him to come to see me, and showed him the letter. He was worried at first and said: ‘Miss Barnes, if I talk to you about this and it becomes known, it will be the end of my job here in Italy.’ I gave my word of honor never to mention it to a soul, not even my mother. Later on he said I might tell you, because he was sure you would understand and keep it quiet.”
“Of course. What did he advise you?”
“He said if I was looking for a husband who would respect me or be faithful to me, I had come to the wrong part of the world. He said that what the letter told me was true, that all the newspapermen knew it, and wondered if I knew it. He said there were decent men in Italy as everywhere else, but they weren’t in power, and I would have no way to meet them. He said that when you met a Fascist you met a man without honor, one who laughed at it. He said: ‘I’ve been here for ten years, and I’ve watched them from the beginning. If you take my advice you won’t say a word to anybody, but take a plane and get out of Italy.’ He really thought that Ettore
might have me kidnaped.”
“They’ve done much worse,” said Lanny; “but not to foreigners, so far as I know.”
“Well, anyhow, I was through. I told mother I wes going alone unless she would go with me. We hired a plane to fly us to Cannes, and then I phoned to your home and learned that you were in London. So here I am. Are you glad to see me?”
“More glad than I can trust myself to tell you.”
“Why not trust yourself just for once?”
“Well, you know how it is, Irma—”
“I didn’t tell you all my conversation with Mr. Corsatti. Shall I finish? He said: ‘Why the hell didn’t you marry Lanny Budd?’”
Lanny couldn’t help laughing. “How did he come to say that?”
“We had got to be pretty good friends. I had done some bawling in his presence—because I felt so cheap and humiliated.”
“What did you answer?”
“Do you really want to hear?”
“The worst way in the world.”
“I said: ‘Lanny Budd didn’t ask me.’ He said: ‘That proves he’s a gentleman.’ ‘Maybe so,’ I said; ‘but it doesn’t help me. Can I ask a gentleman to marry me?’ He said: ‘Sure you can. You’ll have to. With all that money you’ve got, what can a fellow do?’ So we talked about you. I told him that you had told me about Marie de Bruyne—he knew about her, of course.”
“It was all in the papers,” assented Lanny.
“Well, he said: ‘That’s a different sort of story. A man has a woman that he loves, and he sticks by her, and that’s all anybody has a right to ask.’ Then he said: ‘If you really care for Lanny Budd, take my advice and go and have a straight talk with him. Tell him I told you to say: “I know I’ve got too much money, and it’s silly, but it isn’t my fault and it oughtn’t to be allowed to mess up my life.” So I said: ‘All right, I’ll go and do it.’ Now I’ve done it, and you can tell me whether he was right.”
VII
So there it was. Driving on the Euston Road and watching out for the traffic, Lanny found time for a quick glance at his companion and saw that a mantle of blood had climbed to her throat and cheeks. He realized that she was doing something which she considered desperately bold. He managed to spare one hand from the steeringwheel long enough to lay it on hers. “It’s all right, dear,” he said. “It’s very kind of you and I’m deeply grateful.”
“Are you going to be sorry for me?”
“I’m going to do just what Pietro Corsatti said, have a straight talk with you. In the first place, there’s that embarrassing fact that my father never married my mother.”
“I don’t care a thing about that, Lanny. The point is that you got here somehow.”
“It’s going to worry your mother a lot; and you saw that it worried her brother in New York.”
“Well, I’d like to make them happy, but it will have to be in some way that doesn’t make me so unhappy.”
“I want you to face the facts about us,” persisted the amiable young bastard. “I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t point them out. If you marry me, the newspapers will probably be moved to dig up the painful secret. I doubt if they’ll say it in plain words, because it’s hard to prove a negative, and there’d always be the possibility that Robbie might have had a secret marriage, and that I might come down on them for a million dollars. But they’ll have deft little touches, to the effect that your family has been making genealogical researches as to the bridegroom. All the smart people will know what they mean.”
“I don’t care what they know or what they say, Lanny. I’m sick of publicity and gossip, and all I want is to get away from reporters.”
“You feel that way at the moment; but you have to live in the world, and your family and your money are both things that are going to stay with you.”
“What I want to know is just one thing, and that is what you really feel about me.”
“I’ll tell you as honestly as I can: I think you’re a grand girl, and if you’d come along with just a reasonable amount of money, I’d have kissed you sure and certain, and the rest would have depended on what you wanted. But you know how it is, you came like the Queen of Sheba—rings on your fingers and bells on your toes. I saw all that crowd of suitors. I knew some of them, and what was in their minds, and I just had too much respect for myself to breathe the same air with them.”
“I know, it’s all been hateful. But can’t you manage to forget my money and think about me for a while?”
“You asked me to talk straight, and I’m doing it. We’ll be fooling ourselves if we forget your money, for the world won’t let you forget it, and you don’t really want to forget it yourself. You’ve got to own it, and manage it, and spend it, and you’ve got to know that pretty nearly everybody you meet is thinking about it. You’ve got to shape your life accordingly, and if it isn’t to get you down and ruin your happiness, you’ll have to be a wise and careful person.”
“You make it sound rather awful, Lanny!”
“Well, I want you to know that I’ve been thinking about your money, and just what I’ve been thinking. Everybody I know has been urging me to ask you to marry me. My mother has her ambitions for her son, just as your mother has for her daughter. So I had to put my mind on the problem, what would it be like to be married to a very rich woman? What would I do, and how would I keep it from getting me down? I said: ‘First of all, she’ll have to know that I don’t want her money. It’s got to be so that never as long as she lives will that thought cross her mind.’”
“So you took the chance of letting me go off and marry a Fascist!”
“I let you do what you wanted, Irma, because that is your right. It’ll still be your right if you marry me. You’ll do what makes you happy, and if you love me, it’ll be because you want to.”
“Are you sure that a woman wants so very much freedom?”
“When she’s very much in love, she thinks she doesn’t; but it won’t do any harm for her to have it.”
“What a woman wants is for a man to want her very much.”
“She wants that; but she must remember that there are long years ahead, and she needs a lot of other qualities and virtues in the man who loves her. She wants him to be able to think straight, and to control himself.”
“You talk like an old gentleman.”
“I’m a lot older than you, and I have had experience, and made a lot of mistakes which you won’t have to suffer for. I want you to understand me, and not expect any more than I can give.”
“What could I expect that you haven’t got, Lanny?”
“It all comes back to the problem of your money. I don’t mean merely that I’m not much of a businessman; I mean that I don’t have a proper respect for large sums of money. I don’t believe in them. I’ve watched people getting them and spending them, and neither job appeals to me. I think that money does things to people, and when it gets through, I don’t like them any more. I’d rather be able to sit down at the piano and play a Beethoven sonata than be able to make all the money in the Barnes fortune; and when you see me doing what I like, will you get provoked and think I’m an idler?”
“I don’t know that I ever heard a Beethoven sonata,” said Irma Barnes. “But if I promise to let you be happy in your own way and never, never ask you to have anything to do with my money, will that satisfy you?”
“Suppose you find that I am voicing ideas which imperil your fortune? I don’t mean your particular fortune, but all great wealth, as something that oughtn’t to be allowed. Suppose people tell you that I’m a dangerous Red, and keeping bad company, and being watched by the police?”
“They’ve already told me that. But you see I came and asked for you.”
“Suppose I answer yes, just what would you want to do?”
“I think I should want to go to some place a long way off, where there wouldn’t be any horrid gossips and reporters.”
“That would be a long way, indeed!” But then an idea occurred to hi
m, and he added: “You remember my telling you about my brother-in-law, Hansi Robin, who is such a fine violinist? Well, his father has a yacht, and they’re begging me to go for a cruise with them. They’re Jews. Does that bother you?”
“Not if they’re friends of yours.”
“There’s Hansi and Bess, and there’s his younger brother Freddi and his bride. They’re all musical, and it’ll be pretty noisy; but you can go off in a corner and read, or Mama Robin will teach you to knit sweaters for the poor.”
“It sounds very homey and nice. Where would they go?”
“Iceland and Labrador, and all the way to New York. I doubt if we’ll meet any reporters until we get to America; only whales and icebergs. The only difficulty I can see is how to get married without too much fuss, and having Ettore brought into it, and my bastardy.”
“Oh, Lanny, don’t use that horrid word!”
“You’ll hear it a lot—no good fooling yourself. Would you be satisfied with a quiet wedding, or will your mother require a dozen bridesmaids and six flower girls and a cathedral?”
“Lanny, I’ll go off and marry you before a justice of the peace, or however they do it here.”
“You really mean that?”
“I’ve thought it all over. I’m throwing myself at your head.”
“When?”
“Right now, if you say so.”
“Before lunch?”
“Hang the lunch!”
So Lanny drew up by the left-hand curb of the street, and performed a little ceremony of his own devising. He took her two hands in his and said: “I will be gentle and kind. I will study your wishes, and try to oblige you. I will be your friend as well as your husband. I will try my best to see that you do not regret this step. Is that what you want to hear from me?”
“Yes, dear,” she responded, and her eyes were misty. “Only one thing you forgot. You didn’t say: ‘I love you.’”
“I admit that was an oversight. I love you.” He kissed her again, regardless of the spectators on the street. He had seen the English poor doing this on Hampstead Heath on bank holidays; and if the rich could see the poor doing it, why shouldn’t the poor see the rich?
Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 79
