Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels)
Page 84
On this huge estate there was no useful thing that a young master could do without trespassing; but there were innumerable forms of play. He and Irma might ride horseback, something which he had enjoyed in England now and then. They might play tennis on beautifully kept clay courts, or, when it rained, on an indoor court with a wood floor. They might swim in a well-warmed indoor pool. There were a “game room” with pool and billiards, a bowling-alley, a squash court—also a man in attendance who apparently had nothing to do until someone came along to play. There was a music room with a magnificent piano, and a smaller one had been installed in Lanny’s apartment. All these cabinets full of scores—had they been here in J.P.’s day, or had Mrs. Fanny instructed some music-store to send out one thousand of the world’s masterpieces for the pianoforte?
The only trouble was that Lanny had no time to make use of these treasures. The establishment was built for company, and Irma’s young friends came pouring in to welcome her and to satisfy their curiosity about the lucky man. Lanny had to be on hand, have on the right clothes, and take his part in whatever was proposed: riding or motoring, tennis or squash parties, a sail if the day happened to be warm and the breeze right. There were teas and dinners and dances in honor of the bridal pair; and always reporters hanging onto the skirts of these events, seeking interviews and writing up the gossip from which tens of thousands of debutantes would learn how to do the right thing in the right way, and millions of salesladies and stenographers would have their imaginations fed with dreams of luxury. The time was past when Lanny Budd could amuse himself by talking to any stranger who came along. From now on he must remember that the stranger might be a newspaperman or a spy—for any item about what the husband of Irma Barnes was doing or saying might be sold to one of the “tabs” for five or ten dollars.
XI
Lanny’s position was that of a prince consort, such as the husband of Queen Victoria. He had performed his first and principal duty, he had planted the seed, and now he had to watch and tend it carefully. He would escort his bride wherever she wished to go; unthinkable that he should refuse to do so—it would have started a scandal in no time. He was a member of the “younger set” of Long Island, and would learn to know a large group of handsome and fashionably clad playboys and girls, most of whom would never grow up. He would listen to their eager chatter, having to do for the most part with themselves and their playmates. He would learn to know the various personalities, and be able to understand the jokes having to do with Aggie’s recent motor mishap or Tubby’s excess of embonpoint. They drank a great deal, but rarely lost their ability to get out of the cabaret and tell the chauffeur where to take them. They had built a play world, and were gay in it, persistently and conscientiously. There was nothing they resisted with such determination as the impulse to take anything seriously.
Also Lanny had the duty of meeting two new families, that of his mother-in-law and that of his deceased father-in-law. He had to be polite to them all, and try to satisfy them as to Irma’s future. J.P.’s younger brother Joseph was important, because he was one of three trustees who under the terms of the will had the handling of Irma’s estate. She got the income, but couldn’t spend any of the principal without their consent. The other two trustees had been confidential employees of the father, and all three of them had full-time duties. Just to keep track of twenty-three million dollars and its earnings was quite a business, and the estate had a large suite of offices. The duties of the trustees consisted of clipping coupons and depositing dividend checks, keeping books and rendering elaborate quarterly statements, which Irma turned over to her mother unopened.
Mr. Horace Vandringham was the gentleman who had sent the cablegram to his sister in Cannes. Thanks to Emily Chattersworth, Lanny knew the text of that message; but not a word was said about it now, and Uncle Horace would do his best to atone for his excruciating error. He was older than his sister, and was an “operator” in Wall Street; that is, he not merely bought stocks and waited for them to go up, but he got other people interested with him, they formed a “syndicate,” and Uncle Horace caused the stocks to move in the direction he desired. If he was “long” on the stock, he would circulate rumors of mergers, stock dividends, and “split-ups”; if he was “short,” he would cause the public to hear that the company was in trouble and that the next dividend was to be passed. If his judgment was good he made a “killing”; and apparently it had been, for he lived lavishly and talked money in large quantities. Robbie knew about him and said he was a “shark,” which wasn’t necessarily a term of reprobation in Wall Street.
To Lanny this new uncle presented himself as a “character.” He was big and burly, bald on top, and the top was as rosy as his face. He was full of energy which could not be repressed. When he walked you got the same sort of surprise that you would from watching an elephant in the forest; you wouldn’t have imagined that such a bulky body could move so fast. He swung his arms vehemently, and rocked from side to side even as he strode across a room. He ate violently, laughed loudly, talked a great deal, and was positive in his opinions. He was evidently trying to be agreeable to this new nephew, who might be in position to turn his sister out of her home; he would ask what Lanny thought about some matter, but it was no good trying to reply, because Uncle Horace couldn’t help interrupting and telling him. Lanny gathered that these big Wall Street men were used to having their own way.
Gradually the bridegroom discovered the situation between the two families which he had acquired. The Vandringhams were real aristocrats; that is to say, they belonged to the old Dutch New Yorkers who had had money for generations. But they had lost most of their money, and Fanny had married the upstart Barnes and been unhappy. Now she looked down upon all the Barneses, and favored her brother, who was the real gentleman. She wanted Irma to be a Vandringham and not a Barnes; if ever Irma manifested any tendency of which her mother disapproved—which happened not infrequently—that was the evil Barnes blood showing itself. The mother resented the indignity of the estate’s having to be handled by the Barneses and not by the Vandringhams. How much more money Horace would have made for them!
Also Lanny had to meet the dependents, a matter calling for tact. J.P. had been charitable, and his widow carried on the tradition. Irma’s former governess and the master’s former confidential secretary enjoyed a sort of demi-status; they dined with the family except when there was company, and then they whisked themselves out of sight without having to be told. An older maiden sister of Fanny and two aunts had what you might call a three-quarter status; they disappeared only when there was important company.
Also there lived in various quarters on the estate a number of what you might call half-servants, elderly retired attendants who performed light services when occasion arose. One of Mrs. Fanny’s many tasks was to find things for them to do—for she said she hated to see people idle or things going to waste. She would set them to performing offices for one another; if one man had to be taken to the dentist, another drove him; if one woman fell ill, another nursed her. It might be that the pair hated each other’s guts, but they would do what they were told. One and all, these persons desired to be of service to Lanny, and their humility, their gratitude for being alive, seemed pitiable to him. They didn’t fall on their knees and put their foreheads in the dust when he passed, but it seemed to him that spiritually they did this, and it was one of the reasons why he-found being a prince consort so dubious a satisfaction. But he was in for it. He couldn’t change the world, or the fact that he was Mr. Irma Barnes!
37
Café Society
I
The Detaze show opened in the second week of October, and Lanny owed it to Zoltan and his mother to be on hand. Irma was pleased to accompany him, for she had found the London show amusing, and had met a number of distinguished persons. It is the pleasantest time of the year in New York; the weather is at its best, the theaters are opening, “everybody” is back from the country or from abroad.
She had learned to do things in a certain way, and he was expected to do the same and forget it. She carried little money in her handbag, just enough for tips and such small items. For the rest she said: “Charge it.” In retaurants and hotels she signed slips, and bills were mailed to the estate and the manager attended to them. Now it was Lanny’s duty to sign slips, because it took one more burden off his wife’s hands, and incidentally it looked better. Under this arrangement he would never spend any money of his own unless he was away from her—and she didn’t want him ever to be away.
How silly to bother about such matters, or to try to discuss them! She had told him that she cared nothing about money, and she meant it; why couldn’t he mean it? She had got the money by accident, and she had to spend it, because there was nothing else to do with it. His happiness was hers, they had promised to be one in all things, and didn’t that include money? Let things “ride,” and talk about something worth while!
At home it had been one of Lanny’s pleasures to drive his own car; and that was all right at the estate, there were plenty of cars, and one of the best was called his. But in the city you had to have a chauffeur to drive, or where would you park? If you drew up in front of a hotel and it was raining, you and your wife wanted to step out under the porte-cochere and forget the car until it was time to leave. Lanny had to learn to sit in the back seat and make himself agreeable to the ladies.
So, in one way after another, Irma’s money functioned as a steamroller, making a path for itself and flattening out everything that stood in its way. Did Lanny have any idea about privacy? Did he want to be let alone? When their manager engaged rooms in a hotel, the hotel manager at once notified the press, because it would mean advertising for the hotel; so when the princely pair arrived, the photographers were waiting. Would they kindly oblige just for a minute? It would have been ungracious to say no.
And then the reporters, wishing to know what were their plans, why had they come to town? As it happened, Lanny had come to promote a showing of his late stepfather’s art. That was a worthy and dignified purpose, so he told for perhaps the thousandth time the story of a French painter who had had his face burned off in the first year of the war, and had sat in his studio and painted his greatest pictures wearing a silk mask. That was a good story, and the papers would use it; but also their readers wanted to know, what was Irma wearing, how did Lanny find it in America, and how did he enjoy being the husband of a glamour girl? He said that he enjoyed it greatly, and forbore to mention being a Pink, or to record any objections to living in the royal suite of the Ritzy-Waldorf.
II
The show opened, and it was what New York called a “knockout,” or, if you wanted to be elegant, a “wow.” It had everything that New York required; real art, which was in the Luxembourg and had received the cachet of the leading critics in Paris and London. The melodramatic story attached thereto served for the journalists to write about and for people to tell to one another as they looked at the pictures; it was like having an exciting program for a musical composition. Also, there was the painter’s fashionable but slightly risque widow, with two portraits hanging on the walls; his stepson and the latter’s bride—they weren’t hanging on the walls, but were an important part of the show nonetheless. Back of all this was the shrewd and skillful Zoltan, working to make the utmost of each of these various features.
The crowds on the opening day included a great part of the distinguished names in the worlds of both art and fashion. The press treated it like the opening night of the opera, when they publish two articles, one telling about the music and the singers, and the other about those present, their diamond corsages and ruby tiaras and double ropes of pearls. The critics said that the landscapes of Detaze represented a conventional but solid talent, while his later work, the product of the stresses of the war, could fairly be described as revelations of the human spirit. They called Fear a masterpiece, and said that Sister of Mercy contained real nobility combined with those elements of popularity which had caused it to be likened to Whistler’s painting of his mother.
The result was that on the second day of the show Zoltan reported to Beauty an offer of fifteen thousand dollars for this picture, and a few days later the bidder, a great copper magnate, doubled his offer. It was a sore temptation for Beauty, but Lanny said no, he would never part with any of the paintings of his mother. Beauty didn’t overlook the fact that they constituted an inexhaustible source of social prestige; she had had such a good time showing them and being shown in Paris and London, and she looked forward to Berlin and Munich and Vienna, Boston and Chicago and Los Angeles—perhaps even Newcastle, Connecticut, who could say?
They had greatly increased the prices of the paintings since the success in London; but it made no apparent difference to the public. New York was full of people who had money, and who felt about it as Irma did—what was it good for but to spend? It was the theory upon which the whole economic system was based; the more you spent, the more you made. It worked for the community, in that it kept money in circulation and goods pouring off the transmission belts of the factories. It worked for the individual, in that it brought him to the front, made friends for him, showed that he was on top of the wave, that his business was flourishing and his credit good. The maxim that nothing succeeds like success was old, but it never seemed so true as on the island of Manhattan in October of the year 1929.
The paintings were selling. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be any left, and there couldn’t be any more exhibitions! Zoltan raised the prices all the way down the line; presently he raised them again; but still they sold. People wanted to pay high prices; it was something to brag about. “You see that Detaze? I paid ninety-five hundred for it at the one-man show last year. Widener offered me twelve thousand a few days later, but I said no.” The bank president or cement magnate would puff on his fat cigar and expatiate: “There’s no better investment than a great painting. I keep it insured, and it’s as good as cash in the bank. It may be worth more than my whole business some day. You know about that fellow—very tragic story—he had his face burned off in the war, and he used to sit on the Cap d’Antibes, wearing a mask, and paint the sea and the rocks.” It wasn’t quite so, but that didn’t matter.
Irma’s rich and fashionable friends—she had no others; how could she?—all came to see the pictures. All wanted to hear Lanny tell about them, and all said pretty much the same things. When Irma got bored, the pair would go out and have tea at one of the smart hotels, and dance for a while, and perhaps give a dinner party, and afterward return to the show rooms, because Zoltan had mentioned some important person who was coming. Irma might bring her dinner guests, for it was very “smart” indeed to be associated with paintings which caused the whole town to be talking about her husband and his mother. The glamour girl enjoyed being admired, and had sense enough to know that it was better to be admired for something else than her father’s money. The town was “lousy” with rich people—such was the language of the younger set—but not many of the lice had a genius in the family. Also it was a good way to meet the whispers about “bastardy”; what was a social disgrace in America became romantic when associated with the art life of Paris.
III
After the show the happy young couple would repair to one of the night clubs. These had become elaborate establishments, decorated in gay modernistic style and serving every kind of liquor, just as if there was no such thing as Prohibition. In some you couldn’t get a table unless you were considered a person of con
sequence, and you paid a “cover charge” as high as twenty dollars. There was a band of jazz musicians, and a clever and sophisticated master of ceremonies conducted what was called a “floor show,” with singers and dancers who received high prices. From time to time the patrons danced; the saxophone moaned, the trumpets squealed, the drums thumped in desperate efforts to wake them up, but they danced monotonously like people walking in their sleep. Lanny had a feeling of pity for the entertainers, who worked so frantically to keep things going, to produce what was called “pep.” The jaded patrons must continually have a new stimulus, otherwise they might stop to think—and what would they think?
When Lanny and Irma entered one of these places it was by appointment, and the moment they appeared the spotlight would be turned upon them, telling everybody in the place that celebrities were arriving. When they were seated, the master of ceremonies would make a little speech about them, and they would be expected to arise in the white glare and “take a bow.” If they had been actors or people of that sort they would have made a little speech; but haughty society people, not knowing what to say, stood upon their dignity. After that the singers would sing to them, the comedians would interpolate a kidding remark or two, the Mexican guitar players would come and serenade them, the Gypsy dancers would ogle Lanny and display their seductive curves; the darlings of fashion would remain the center of proceedings until a movie star or a champion pugilist appeared.