Lanny Budd belonged to the leisure classes. You could tell it by a single glance at his smiling unlined face, his tanned skin with signs of well-nourished blood in it, his precise little mustache, his brown hair neatly trimmed and brushed, his suit properly tailored and freshly pressed, his shirt and tie, shoes and socks, harmonizing in color and of costly materials. It had been some time since he had seen any bloodshed or experienced personal discomfort. His life had been arranged to that end, and the same was true of his wife. But now this damnable messy business, this long-drawn-out strain and suffering—good God, what were doctors and scientists for if they couldn’t devise something to take the place of this! It was like a volcanic eruption in a well-ordered and peaceful community; not much better because you could foresee the event, going in advance to an immaculate hospice de la maternité and engaging a room at so much per week, an accoucheur at so much for the job.
A surgeon! A fellow with a lot of shiny steel instruments, prepared to assist nature in opening a woman up and getting a live and kicking infant out of her! It had seemed incredible to Lanny the first time he had heard about it, a youngster playing with the fisherboys of this Mediterranean coast, helping them pull strange creatures out of the sea and hearing them talk about the “facts of life.” It seemed exactly as incredible to him at this moment, when he knew that it was going on in a room not far away, the victim his beautiful young playmate whom he had come to love so deeply. His too vivid imagination was occupied with the bloody details, and he would clench his hands until the knuckles were white. His protest against nature mounted to a clamor. He thought: “Any way but this! Anything that’s decent and sensible!” He addressed his ancient mother, asking why she hadn’t stuck to the method of the egg, which seemed to work so well with birds and snakes and lizards and fishes? But these so-called “warm-blooded creatures,” that had so much blood and spilled it so easily!
II
Lanny knew that Irma didn’t share these feelings. Irma was a “sensible woman,” not troubled with excess of imagination. She had said many times: “Don’t worry. I’ll be all right. It doesn’t last forever.” Everybody agreed that this young Juno was made for motherhood; she had ridden horseback, swum, played tennis, and had a vigorous body. She hadn’t turned pale when she crossed the threshold of this hospital, or even when she heard the cries of another woman. Things always went all right with Irma Barnes, and she had told Lanny to go home and play the piano and forget her; but here he sat, and thought about the details which he had read in an encyclopedia article entitled “Obstetrics.” From boyhood he had had the habit of looking up things in that dependable work; but, damn it all, the article gave an undue proportion of space to “breech presentations” and other variations from the normal, and Lanny might just as well have been in the delivery-room. He would have liked to go there, but that would have been considered an extreme variation from the normal in this land of rigid conventions.
So he sat in the little reception-room, and now and then the perspiration would start on his forehead, even though it was a cool spring day on the Riviera. He was glad that he had the room to himself; at times, when somebody came through, he would lower his eyes to his book and pretend to be absorbed. But if it was one of the nurses, he couldn’t keep from stealing a glance, hoping that it was the nurse and the moment. The woman would smile; the conventions permitted her to smile at a handsome young gentleman, but did not permit her to go into obstetrical details. “Tout va bien, monsieur. Soyez tranquille.” In such places the wheel of life revolves on schedule; those who tend the machinery acquire a professional attitude, their phrases become standardized, and you have mass production of politeness as well as of babies.
III
Lanny Budd was summoned to the telephone. It was Pietro Corsatti, Italian-born American who represented a New York newspaper in Rome and was having a vacation on the Riviera. He had once done Lanny a favor, and now had been promised one in return. “Pete” was to have the news the moment it happened; but it refused to happen, and maybe wasn’t going to happen. “I know how you feel,” said the correspondent, sympathetically. “I’ve been through it.”
“It’s been four hours!” exclaimed the outraged young husband.
“It may be four more, and it may be twenty-four. Don’t take it too hard. It’s happened a lot of times.” The well-known cynicism of the journalist.
Lanny returned to his seat, thinking about an Italian-American with a strong Brooklyn accent who had pushed his way to an important newspaper position, and had so many funny stories to tell about the regime fascista and its leaders, whom, oddly enough, he called “wops.” One of his best stories was about how he had become the guide, philosopher, and friend of a New York “glamour girl” who had got herself engaged to a fascinating aristocrat in Rome and had then made the discovery that he was living with the ballerina of the opera and had no idea of giving her up. The American girl had broken down and wept in Pete’s presence, asking him what to do, and he had told her: “Take a plane and fly straight to Lanny Budd, and ask him to marry you in spite of the fact that you are too rich!”
It is tough luck when a journalist cannot publish his best story. Pete hadn’t been asked not to, but, all the same, he hadn’t, so now Lanny was his friend for life, and would go out of his way to give him a break whenever he could. They talked as pals, and Lanny didn’t mind telling what only a few of his friends knew, that Irma had done exactly what Pete had said, and she and Lanny had been married on the day she had found him in London. As the Brooklyn dialect had it, they had “gone right to it,” and here was the result nine months later: Lanny sitting in a reception-room of an hospice de la maternité, awaiting the arrival of Sir Stork, the blessed event, the little bundle from heaven—he knew the phrases, because he and Irma had been in New York and had read the “tabs” and listened to “radio reporters” shooting out gossip and slang with the rapid-fire effect of a Budd machine gun.
Lanny had promised Pete a scoop; something not so difficult, because French newspapermen were not particularly active in the pursuit of the knightly stork; the story might be cabled back to Paris for the English language papers there. Lanny had hobnobbed with the correspondents so much that he could guess what Pete would send in his “cablese” and how it would appear dressed up by the rewrite man in the sweet land of liberty. Doubtless Pete had already sent a “flash,” and readers of that morning’s newspapers were learning that Mrs. Lanny Budd, who was Irma Barnes, the glamour girl of last season, was in a private hospital in Cannes awaiting the blessed event.
The papers would supply the apposite details: that Irma was the only daughter of J. Paramount Barnes, recently deceased utilities magnate, who had left her the net sum of twenty-three million dollars; that her mother was one of the New York Vandringhams, and her uncle was Horace Vandringham, Wall Street manipulator cleaned out in the recent market collapse; that Irma’s own fortune was said to have been cut in half, but she still owned a palatial estate on Long Island, to which she was expected to return. The papers would add that the expectant father was the son of Robert Budd of Budd Gunmakers Corporation of Newcastle, Connecticut; that his mother was the famous international beauty, widow of Marcel Detaze, the French painter whose work had created a sensation in New York last fall. Such details were eagerly read by a public which lived upon the doings of the rich, as the ancient Greeks had lived upon the affairs of the immortals who dwelt upon the snowy top of Mount Olympus.
IV
Lanny would have preferred that his child should be born outside the limelight, but he knew it wasn’t possible; this stream of electrons, or waves, or whatever it was, would follow Irma on her travels—so long as she had the other half of her fortune. As a matter of fact the fortune wasn’t really diminished, for everybody else had lost half of his or hers, so the proportions remained the same. Irma Barnes still enjoyed the status of royalty, and so did the fortunate young man whom she had chosen for her prince consort. In the days of the ancien régime, w
hen a child was born to the queen of France it had been the long-established right of noblemen and ladies to satisfy themselves that it was a real heir to the throne and no fraud; no stork stories were accepted, but they witnessed with their own eyes the physical emergence of the infant dauphin. Into the chamber of Marie Antoinette they crowded in such swarms that the queen cried out that she was suffocating, and the king opened a window with his own hands. It wasn’t quite that bad now with the queen of the Barnes estate, but it was a fact that the newspaper-reading and radio-listening public would have welcomed hourly bulletins as to what was going on in this hospice de la maternité.
But, damn it, even Lanny himself didn’t know what was going on! What was the use of planning what to say to newspaper reporters about the heir or heiress apparent to the Barnes fortune, when it refused so persistently to make itself apparent, and for all the prince consort knew the surgeon might be engaged in a desperate struggle with a “cross-birth,” or perhaps having to cut the infant to pieces, or perform a Caesarean section to save its life! Lanny dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands, and got up and began to pace the floor. Every time he turned toward the bell-button in the reception-room he had an impulse to press it. He was paying for service, and wasn’t receiving it, and he was getting up steam to demand it. But just at that juncture a nurse came through the room, cast one of her conventional smiles upon him, and remarked: “Soyez tranquille, monsieur. Tout va bien.”
V
Lanny called his mother on the telephone. Beauty Budd had been through this adventure two and a half times—so she said—and spoke as one having authority. There wasn’t a thing he could do, so why not come home and have something to eat, instead of worrying himself and getting in other people’s way? This was the woman’s job, and nobody in all creation was so superfluous as the husband. Lanny answered that he wasn’t hungry, and he wasn’t being allowed to bother anybody.
He went back to his seat in the reception-room, and thought about ladies. They were, as a rule, a highly individualistic lot; each on her own, and sharply aware of the faults of the others. He thought of those who made up his mother’s set, and therefore had played a large part in his own life; he recalled the sly little digs he had heard them give one another, the lack of solidarity he had seen them display. They had been polite to Irma, but he was certain that behind her back, and behind his, they found it difficult to forgive her for being so favored of fortune. However, as her pregnancy had moved to its climax they had seemed to gather about her and become tender and considerate; they would have come and helped to fetch and carry, to hold her hands and pull against them in her spasms of pain, had it not been for the fact that there were professional women trained for these services.
Lanny thought about his mother, and her role in this drama, the stage entrance of another soul. Beauty had been an ideal mother-in-law so far. She had worked hard to make this marriage, for she believed in money; there was in her mind no smallest doubt of money’s rightness, or of money’s right to have its way. Had not her judgment been vindicated by the events of a dreadful Wall Street panic? Where would they all have been, what would have become of them, if it hadn’t been for Irma’s fortune? Who was there among Irma’s friends who hadn’t wanted help? Go ahead and pretend to be contemptuous of money if you pleased; indulge yourself in Pink talk, as Lanny did—but sooner or later it was proved that it is money which makes the mare go, and which feeds the mare, takes care of her shiny coat, and provides her with a warm and well-bedded stall.
Beauty Budd was going to become a grandmother. She pretended to be distressed at the idea; she made a moue, exclaiming that it would set the seal of doom upon her social career. Other handicaps you might evade by one device or another. You might fib about the number of your years, and have your face lifted, and fill your crow’s-feet with skin enamel; but when you were a grandmother, when anyone could bring that charge publicly and you had to keep silent, that was the end of you as a charmer, a butterfly, a professional beauty.
But that was all mere spoofing. In reality Beauty was delighted at the idea of there being a little one to inherit the Barnes fortune and to be trained to make proper use of the prestige and power it conferred. That meant to be dignified and splendid, to be admired and courted, to be the prince or princess of that new kind of empire which the strong men of these days had created. Beauty’s head was buzzing with romantic notions derived from the fairytales she had read as a child. She had brought these imaginings with her to Paris and merged them with the realities of splendid equipages, costly furs and jewels, titles and honors—and then the figure of a young Prince Charming, the son of a munitions manufacturer from her homeland. Beauty Budd’s had been a Cinderella story, and it was now being carried further than the fairytales usually go. Grandma Cinderella!
VI
Lanny couldn’t stand any more of this suspense, this premonition of impending calamity. He rang the bell and demanded to see the head nurse; yes, even he, the superfluous husband, had some rights in a crisis like this! The functionary made her appearance; grave, stiff with starch and authority, forbidding behind pincenez. In response to Lanny’s demand she consented to depart from the established formula, that all was going well and that he should be tranquil. With professional exactitude she explained that in the female organism there are tissues which have to be stretched, passages which have to be widened—the head nurse made a gesture of the hands—and there is no way for this to be accomplished save the way of nature, the efforts of the woman in labor. The accoucheur would pay a visit in the course of the next hour or so, and he perhaps would be able to put monsieur’s mind at rest.
Lanny was disturbed because this personage was not in attendance upon Irma now. The husband had assumed that when he agreed to the large fee requested, he was entitled to have the man sit by Irma’s bedside and watch her, or at any rate be in the building, prepared for emergencies. But here the fellow had gone about other duties, or perhaps pleasures. He was an Englishman, and was probably having a round or two of golf; then he would have his shower, and his indispensable tea and conversation; after which he expected to stroll blandly in and look at Irma—and meanwhile whatever dreadful thing was happening might have gone so far as to be irremediable!
Lanny resumed his seat in the well-cushioned chair, and tried to read the popular novel, and wished he had brought something more constructive. The conversation of these fashionable characters was too much like that which was now going on in the casinos and tearooms and drawing-rooms of this playground of Europe. The financial collapse overseas hadn’t sobered these people; they were still gossiping and chattering; and Lanny Budd was in rebellion against them, but didn’t know what to do about it. Surely in the face of the awful thing that was happening in this hospice—knowing it to be their own fate through the ages—the women ought to be having some serious concern about life, and doing something to make it easier for others! They ought to be feeling for one another some of the pity which Lanny was feeling for Irma!
VII
The door to the street opened, and there entered a tall, vigorous-appearing American of thirty-five or so, having red hair and a cheerful smile: Lanny’s one-time tutor and dependable friend, Jerry Pendleton from the state of Kansas, now proprietor of a tourist bureau in Cannes. Beauty had phoned to him: “Do go over there and stop his worrying.” Jerry was the fellow for the job, because he had been through this himself, and had three sturdy youngsters and a cheerful little. French wife as evidence that la nature wasn’t altogether out of her wits. Jerry knew exactly how to kid his friend along and make him take it; he seated himself in the next chair and commanded: “Cheer up! This isn’t the Meuse-Argonne!”
Yes, ex-Lieutenant Jerry Pendleton, who had enlisted and begun as a machine-gun expert, knew plenty about blood and suffering. Mostly he didn’t talk about it; but once on a long motor ride, and again sitting out in the boat when the fish didn’t happen to be biting, he had opened up and told a little of what he had seen.
The worst of it was that the men who had suffered and died hadn’t accomplished anything, so far as a survivor could see; France had been saved, but wasn’t making much use of her victory, nor was any other nation. This battle that Irma was fighting in the other room was of a more profitable kind; she’d have a little something for her pains, and Lanny for his—so said the former doughboy, with a grin.
More than once Lanny had been glad to lean on this sturdy fellow. That dreadful time when Marcel Detaze had leaped from a stationary balloon in flames it had been Jerry who had driven Lanny and his mother up to the war zone and helped to bring the broken man home and nurse him back to life. So now when he chuckled and said: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Lanny recognized the old doughboy spirit.
The tourist agent had troubles of his own at present. He mentioned how fast business was falling off, how many Americans hadn’t come to the Riviera that season. Apparently the hard times were going to spread to Europe. Did Lanny think so? Lanny said he surely did, and told how he had argued the matter with his father. Maybe the money values which had been wiped out in Wall Street were just paper, as so many declared; but it was paper that you had been able to spend for anything you wanted, including steamship tickets and traveler’s checks. Now you didn’t have it, so you didn’t spend it. Lanny and his wife could have named a score of people who had braved the snow and sleet of New York the past winter and were glad if they had the price of meal tickets.
Jerry said he’d been hard up more than once, and could stand it again. He’d have to let his office force go, and he and Cerise would do the work. Fortunately they had their meal tickets, for they still lived in the Pension Flavin, owned and run by the wife’s mother and aunt. “You’ll have to take me fishing some more and let me carry home the fish,” said the ex-tutor; and Lanny replied: “Just as soon as I know Irma’s all right, we’ll make a date.” The moment he said this his heart gave a jump. Was he ever going to know that Irma was all right? Suppose her heart was failing at this moment, and the nurses were frantically trying to restore it!
Between Two Worlds Page 94
