Kurt gave his annual recital at Sept Chênes, and played with three orchestras that season, with no little éclat. Lanny encouraged him and Beauty intrigued to push him to the fore. Lanny hadn’t told his mother about his fear of the Nazis, for Beauty couldn’t get political movements straight, and her son’s antagonism to Hitler and Mussolini was to her merely an aspect of his friendship for the Reds. The Germans whom Kurt met seemed to be musical people, and all that Beauty wanted was for them to tell Kurt that he was a great Komponist, so as to keep him happy in his work. She would do any entertaining, pay any sums to that end; she would have been willing to pay orchestra directors to hire Kurt, if it had been possible to arrange this without its becoming known.
Lanny made trips to look at paintings, and Zoltan came to report on others. They had detailed plans of the Berlin palace, with red lines marking where pictures were to go and blue lines around them when the spaces had been filled. Gradually the blue was encompassing the red, and both men were making themselves multimillionaires—that is, of course, French multimillionaires, with the franc approaching forty to the dollar. The franc continued to decline incomprehensibly, regardless of Dawes Commission and Locarno treaties and all the rest. The cost of living kept rising, and in spite of the boom on the Riviera there were unemployment and very little increase in wages. A lovely world to be rich in, but not so good to be poor in.
II
There was a subdued but incessant strife going on between Lanny Budd and his mother over this issue of riches versus poverty, Whites versus Reds. From Beauty’s point of view, everything was marvelous right now; everybody told her that it was “prosperity,” and that it was spreading all over the world. Why couldn’t they all be happy, after so many years of suffering? But Lanny had gone out and got himself mixed up with these malcontents, these agitators, people who were always in trouble, and kept coming to him with hard-luck stories and disturbing his peace of mind and that of his family. Really, Lanny couldn’t get any pleasure out of his financial success because of the crazy notion he had adopted that this success was responsible for other people’s failures; the profits he had made had been wrung out of the sweated labor of the poor.
Beauty couldn’t keep from trying to set him straight about it; she would point out to him how, when she went to M. Claire and ordered a new party dress, several women were immediately set to work at good wages—
“How do you know they’re good wages?” broke in the exasperating Pink. “Did you ever make inquiry?”
Beauty knew that a great establishment, the leading couturier of Nice, wouldn’t have anything but the most skilled workers and pay them handsomely. Anything else was unthinkable. And couldn’t you see how these employees would take the money and spend it in the stores, and it would keep circulating and make prosperity all over the Riviera? Some of Beauty’s business friends had explained that to her and she had got it fixed in her mind. The people who came to Lanny with stories of unemployment and misery were moved by jealousy of the more fortunate classes, and naturally, if they spent their time agitating and making trouble, nobody would want to hire them. Lanny encouraged them in their notion that they had a grievance against society, and thus made them into permanent parasites who would never have any way to live except on his bounty.
“I suppose you’re not doing anything to make parasites out of your White Russians!” the son would remark, not without irritation.
“But that’s different, Lanny. Those people have been delicately reared and they’ve never learned how to work. What can they do?”
“No use to argue with a bourgeois mind!” Lanny would exclaim.
Beauty never got clear just what this meant, but she knew it was a term of reproach and it hurt her feelings. She was annoying her son, whom all his life she had tried to make happy. How could she help worrying about him and trying to keep him out of trouble? Twice he had been in grave danger and might have lost his life; but he wouldn’t see it, he didn’t care, he was willing to throw himself away on a sudden whim. How could his mother have any peace, knowing that every time he left the house he might be walking into some mishap of this sort? Oh, how Beauty hated those Reds! But she had to choke down her feelings and keep from exposing her “bourgeois mind” to the dialectical materialism of her too highly educated son.
III
Marie de Bruyne also was unhappy. She spent the winter in this lovely home, to which so many people would have paid highly to be invited; she smiled and played the social game according to the rules, but the verve, the elan, had gone out of her. Lanny assumed that it must be because of his misconduct: his interest in Socialist Sunday schools, his meeting with various Reds who came along, and giving them money for their propaganda. He didn’t think it quite fair of Marie to take it so hard, and he tried to justify his ideas to her; she would listen politely and rarely argue, but he knew that she, too, believed in the property system of the world in which she lived. He felt that he was being punished rather heavily for having sought what seemed’ to him the truth; but he loved her, and wanted very much to see her happy as in the old days, so he made many concessions, gave up engagements and avoided expressing ideas which he knew were disturbing to the bourgeois mind.
But it didn’t seem to do any good. He would see her sitting alone when she didn’t know he was watching, and there would be an expression on her face of the mater dolorosa, the look which he had noticed the first time he had met her and had thought one of the saddest he had ever seen. He began to wonder if there wasn’t something else upon her mind. Nearly two years had passed since the “scandal,” and she had begun traveling about with him again; surely she couldn’t still be brooding over that! Lanny had read that persons who had been brought up under the dark shadow of Catholicism rarely got over it entirely; they always had guilty feelings lurking in some part of their minds. Could it be that she was turning back to her husband and the family institutions of France?
He began to inquire, very gently, tactfully. Six full years since that luncheon at Sept Chênes, when it had been planned for him to fall in love with an heiress off a yacht, and he had chosen the wrong woman. Had he succeeded in making her happy? Or did she regret her choice? Smiles came back to her face. Now, as always, she responded to his advances of affection. He decided that his guess must be wrong.
Was it that she was troubled about her boys? They were good, sturdy fellows, both of them now doing their military service—something which Lanny had escaped because everybody took him for an American, and he hadn’t ever had to show that he was born in Switzerland. Just what that made him he would never know to the end of his days, but it didn’t bother him; he wanted to play the piano and he didn’t want to shoot people. As for the young de Bruynes, they seemed to have a mechanical bent and were planning to study at the Ecole Polytechnique; they weren’t running wild so far as anybody knew, and there was no war in sight. Lanny asked casual questions about them, and made certain that they were not the cause of the mother’s state of mind.
Could it be her deeply rooted idea that she ought to retire from his life? He redoubled his attentions to her, and his evidences of contentment; he became ostentatious in his lack of interest in the damsels who displayed their shapely limbs on the bathing-beaches and their virginal backs on the dancing-floors. But all in vain; Marie remained depressed whenever she was not playing a part. Her lover began to think of unlikely, even melodramatic reasons. Could there be some blackmailer preying upon her? That impecunious cousin who had come more than once to the Côte d’Azur and had shown a weakness for boule, the least expensive of the gambling-games?
He decided to force the issue. He brought her over to the studio alone, and sat by her and put his arms about her. “What is it, darling? You must tell me!”
“What do you mean, Lanny?”
“Something is troubling your mind. You are not yourself.”
“No, dear, it isn’t so.”
“I have been watching you for months, a year. Something is seriou
sly wrong.”
“No, I assure you!” She fought hard and lied valiantly. It was nothing; she was the happiest of women. But he would not take no; she must tell. At last she broke down and began to weep. It was better for him not to know, not to ask—please, please!
But he didn’t please, he wouldn’t stop; he kept saying: “Whatever it is, I have a right to know it. I insist.”
IV
In the end she had to give up. She revealed to him that for more than a year she had had a gnawing pain in the abdomen. At first it had been slight, and she had thought it was some digestive disturbance. But it had grown worse, and she was in terror of it.
“But, Marie!” he cried, amazed. “Why don’t you have an examination?”
“I can’t bear to hear about it. I am a coward. You see, my mother died—” She stopped. There was a word of dread which he could guess.
“And you’ve been keeping it from me all this time?”
“You have been happy, Lanny, and I wanted you to stay so.”
“Darling!” he cried. “You have let it get worse, and it may be too late.”
“Something told me it was too late from the beginning.”
“That is nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Nobody can say that. I am going to take you to a surgeon.”
“I knew you would insist. That is why I couldn’t bring myself to tell you, or anyone.”
A strange thing. Her resistance was gone. She couldn’t bear to be examined, but she had known that he would make her go, and that she couldn’t stand out against him. She was like a child in his hands. She didn’t say yes, she didn’t say no; she let him go ahead, as if she were on a train that she couldn’t stop. She sat staring in front of her, her hands clasped, her face white, a picture of dread.
He rushed to his mother. He called up Emily Chatters-worth, who had lived in this part of the world so long, and knew everybody and everything. She gave him the name of the best surgeon in Cannes, and Lanny phoned and made an appointment. Marie had delayed a year, but Lanny couldn’t bear to delay an hour.
He was ready to take her. Another strange thing, the fixed attitudes of women. She was numb with dread, facing the thought which had paralyzed her brain for a year—but she couldn’t go to a surgeon’s without being properly dressed. Lanny helped her, he took the part of a maid, of a nurse; from that time on he would be everything. All trace of their disharmony was gone, his irritation swept away in a moment. What a fool he had been, what a cruel, blind person, to be arguing with her about politics, to be finding fault with her in his heart, never guessing this dreadful secret!
To the doctor he said: “C’est mon amie.” It was a recognized status, and no apologies called for; he went through the ordeal with her, stood by and held her hand while the surgeon asked her questions and examined her. The man shook his head and said he would give no opinion until they had X-rays.
Poor Marie let herself be led like a lamb to the slaughter. Her lips trembled, and she pressed them together. Her hands trembled, and Lanny held them tightly. He would have liked to hold her soul, but there was no way to reach it. She awaited the word of doom, and it was delayed. The pictures had to be taken and developed and studied. Somehow she would have to live through the night. She would take a sleeping-powder, something with which Lanny was to become familiar. Driving her home from Cannes he whispered consolation, or tried to. “I love you,” was the only sentence that seemed to have any effect. She would answer: “Oh, Lanny, what will become of you?”
In those days the art of photographing the human interior was not so well developed as it has become. The surgeon pointed out shadows which were suspicious. He said that there was probably a growth, but there was no reason to assume that it was malignant. The fact that Marie’s mother had died of cancer might mean something, or might not—in short, there was no way to say except to perform an exploratory operation. There was certainly some pathological condition—the surgeon used long words which were not familiar to a youth whose reading had been mostly in the field of belles-lettres. The surgeon tried to comfort them both. If all the women who dreaded cancer died of it, the human race would be rapidly depleted.
Marie felt that it was her duty to write to Denis, and next day came a telegram from him, begging her to come to Paris, where he knew a surgeon in whom he had confidence. He telegraphed Lanny also, urging him to bring her to the château. It was an overture. In the presence of danger the members of any group get together; kindnesses are remembered, enmities forgotten. Marie said that might be better; she would be near the boys in case of emergency. Lanny said: “All right; let’s start at once.” He would take her by train if she didn’t feel equal to motoring; he could have the car shipped to Paris, where he would need it if he were to be of use to her. She was shocked by the extravagance of shipping a car; she could stand the drive. “Then let’s get going.” That was his way, the American way.
V
In Paris there was the husband; anxious, kind, repenting of his sins, no doubt, and not reminding the truant pair of theirs. These two men, the old and the young, would walk together down a long road of sorrow which fate had paved for them. Hat in hand, they would wait in medical offices; they would walk through corridors of hospitals; they would go side by side to the bitter end. They had few things in common, but these they would talk about—for to sit without a word suggests hostility, and France is the land of politesse. The weather, political developments—facts, but never opinions; the international situation, the state of business, the decline of the franc; the pictures Lanny had seen or bought, the charms of a new actress, the voice of a new singer—with such matters they would seek to maintain sympathetic relations while they motored, waited in an office, dined in a restaurant—whatever circumstances compelled them to do.
The surgeon in Paris was no stranger to the customs of the land. It had happened before that two anxious gentlemen appeared, escorting one lady; it had even happened that two ladies brought one gentleman. That one of the men should be elderly and the other young was not incredible; that both should be rich, elegant in their manners, sorrowful in their souls—all that was nearly as familiar in medical offices as in romans. The surgeon made his “palpations,” asked his questions, studied the X-ray photographs. His verdict was the same as the other’s: an exploratory operation was called for, and ought not be delayed.
Marie let herself be handled as if she were a piece of merchandise; valuable merchandise, to be carefully packed and kept covered by insurance. Three men decided her fate; they fixed the time and the place; she had known that they would do it, and for that reason had kept the painful secret for so long, perhaps too long. The surgeon said nothing discouraging to her, but to the men he called it a great misfortune that she had waited so long. She knew he would say that; she seemed to know all things that were going to happen; it had been just so with her mother, and Marie had been old enough to watch it and remember it. Cancer is not hereditary, but the susceptiblity to cancer is; she had that firmly fixed in her mind, and it was enough.
She was going to the hospital in the morning, and wanted to have a talk with each of her men separately; a sort of ceremony, a last will and testament orally delivered. What she said to Denis would never be known to her lover; what she said to her lover would never be forgotten by him—the words, the tones, the whole impress of a personality. No use trying to say that she wasn’t going to die; she might not die on the morrow, but she would die soon, and the only way to help her was to assume it, and let her say her say.
She didn’t know where human souls went when they died. Her childhood religion didn’t return to life in this crisis. Denis wanted her to receive extreme unction according to the rites of their church, and she said that would be a small matter to make him happy, and perhaps the boys. Pascal had argued, with French common sense, that if it wasn’t true it could do no harm, whereas if it was true it would be of great importance; so take your free chance of getting into heaven.
But Marie’s though
ts were all on this earth; she was walking backward into the shadows. She wanted to know what was going to become of the two young soldiers whom she was contributing to the defense of la patrie. Lanny had been right, she should have told them the truth long ago; she wanted him to promise to talk to them, to be their friend, a parrain to them. Denis had consented to this; they were going to be tied together for the rest of their lives. No simple affair, la vie à trois, but a subtle and intricate product of an old, perhaps too old, civilization!
She wanted to talk to Lanny about marriage. She should have followed her better judgment and done it some time before. No one could appraise a woman but another woman; no one knew a man’s needs but the woman who lived with him and loved him. “Look for a woman with a wise mind and an honest soul, Lanny. Pretty faces fade, as you can see by looking at me; but the best things endure longer.” Tears came into her eyes; alas, the best things do not endure long enough! That, too, he could see by looking at her.
That was all she had to tell him; except to help poor Denis in case of need. He was a much better man than anybody guessed; perhaps that was true of all men. Her four men—husband, lover, and two sons—were going on in a cold and strange world; Marie herself was going into one perhaps colder and stranger, but she did not think about herself. Lanny must help the boys to choose their helpmates; that was a mother’s duty in France, and they would miss her. Lanny would miss her, too; the tears were running down his cheeks as he promised to comply with her various requests. She said that if there were spirits, and if they could return, she would be present when he chose his bride. He tried to say that he would never marry, but she stopped his lips with her fingers. That was silly, that was no way to console her, and certainly was a poor compliment for the woman who for six years had sought so earnestly to make him happy.
Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 56