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VIII
In the afternoon they went to an exhibition of modern art. "Everybody" was talking about the Salon des Indиpendants, and therefore Beauty had to be able to say that she had seen it. She had a quick step and a quick eye, and so was able to inspect the year's work of a thousand or more artists in fifteen or twenty minutes. After that she had a dress fitting; the business of being an art-work oneself didn't leave very much time for the art-works of others. Lanny's mother, flitting through life like a butterfly over a flower bed, was so charming and so gay that few would ever note how little honey she gathered.
She left the two boys to share the display between them. The painters and sculptors of a continent had turned their imaginations loose, and the boys wandered past wall after wall covered with their efforts. Each seemed to shriek: "Look at me! I am the ne plus ultra!" Few seemed willing to paint in the old accepted way, so as actually to reproduce something. Here faces were made into planes and conic sections; eyes and noses changed positions, trees became blue, skies green, and human complexions both. It was the epoch of the "Nude Descending the Staircase"; this nude consisted of spirals, zigzags which might have been lightning flashes, a tangle of lines resembling telephone wires after a cyclone. You couldn't form the least idea why it was a "nude," and wished you might know the artist and ask if it was a colossal spoof, or what.
There were plenty of recognizable nudes; they were shown in the morgue, on the battlefield or the operating table. There were women with great pendent paunches and breasts, men with limbs diseased or missing. You got the definite impression that the "independent" artists of the continent of Europe were a disturbed and tormented lot. Perhaps they lived in garrets and didn't get enough to eat; Lanny and Kurt, neither of whom had ever seen a garret or missed a meal, did not think of that explanation. They could only wonder why, in a world with creatures like Lanny's mother, painters should prefer ugly and repulsive subjects. There was something wrong; but the riddle couldn't be solved by the son of Beauty Budd nor yet by the son of the comptroller-general of Castle Stubendorf in Upper Silesia.
Beauty had an engagement for dinner, so the two boys went to a cinema, an art which was still in its rough-and-tumble days. The French equivalent of a custard pie was, it appeared, a bucket of paperhanger's paste; the paperhanger was mistaken for a lover by a jealous husband, and the pursuit and fighting ended with the pot of paste falling from a ladder onto the husband's head, to the hilarious delight of the husband-haters of Paris. In the orchestra pit a solitary man sat in front of a piano and a book of scores marked for different kinds of scenes - love, grief, or battle, whatever it might be. He would turn hastily to the proper page, and when the ladder was about to topple he was ready with the thunderstorm passage from the William Tell overture'. Quite different from the Salon des Inde-pendants, and also from Hellerau; but the tastes of boys are catholic, and they laughed as loudly as the least cultured bourgeois in the place.
Next morning Beauty did not get up until nearly noon, so the boys drove about; Kurt had never been to Paris before, and Lanny, quite at home, showed him the landmarks and gave him history lessons. Later came a polo-playing American by the name of Harry Murchison, a scion of the plate-glass industry; he had a fancy car, and drove them out to Versailles, where they had lunch in a sidewalk cafe, and wandered through the gardens and forests, and saw the Little Trianon, and were told by a guide about Marie Antoinette and the Princesse de Lamballe and other fair ones of the vanished past - but none of them so fair as Beauty! Both Lanny and Kurt were a bit jealous of the handsome young American who sought to monopolize the mother; but she was kind and saw to the equal distribution of her favors.
When they were back in the hotel she had them show some "Dal-croze" to her friend while she dressed. Harry was taking her to the opera, it appeared; but first they had dinner, and then drove the boys to the station and saw them on the rapide for the Cфte d'Azur. Beauty always had tears in her eyes at partings, and so did Lanny, and - unexpectedly - so did Kurt. Beauty kissed him good-by; and when the two boys were settled in their compartment and the train was under way, Kurt exclaimed: "Oh, Lanny, I just love your mother!"
Lanny was pleased, of course. "So does everybody," was his reply.
2
Cфte d'Azur
UN THE eastern side of a little peninsula which juts out into the Mediterranean stood the tiny village of Juan-les-Pins, looking across a bay, the Golfe Juan, with the Esterel mountains in the background. On this lovely sheltered coast was a villa, with a tract of two or three acres, which Robbie Budd had given to Lanny's mother years ago. He had put it in trust so that she could not sell or even mortgage it, thus placing her in an odd position, with financial ups and downs that made no real difference. Just now "Juan," as it was called, was enjoying.a mild prosperity; land was being divided up into lotissements, considerable sums were being offered, and Beauty had the thrill of being worth a hundred thousand francs. In due course would come a depression, and she would be "ruined," and sorrowful about it; then would come a terrific "boom," then another "slump" - and Beauty believing in each one. But always she and Lanny would have a home, which was the way Robbie intended it to be.
This had been Lanny's nest ever since he could recall. In its deeply shaded pine woods he had picked the spring flowers and learned the calls of birds. On its slowly shelving sand-beach he had paddled and learned to swim. Down the shore were boats of fishermen drawn up, and nets spread out to dry, and here was the most exciting kind of life for a child; all the strange creatures of the deep flapping and struggling, displaying the hues of the rainbow to the dazzling sun, with fisherboys to tell him which would bite and sting, and which could be carried home to Leese, the jolly peasant woman who was their cook. Lanny had learned to prattle in three languages, and it was a long time before he was able to sort them out; English to his mother and father, French to many guests and occasional teachers, and Provengal to servants, peasants, and fisher-folk.
The house was built on the top of a rise, some way back from the sea. It was of pink stucco with pale blue shutters and a low roof of red tiles. It was in Spanish style, built round a lovely court with a fountain and flowers; there Lanny played when the mistral was blowing, as it sometimes did for a week on end. Along the road outside ran a high wall with a hedge of pink and white oleanders peering over it, and a wooden gate with a bell which tinkled inside the court, and on each side of the gate an aloe, having thick basal leaves and a tall spike with many flowers - "God's candelabra," they were called.
Here was a happy place for a boy, with no enemies and few dangers. His father taught him to swim in all sorts of water, and to float as peacefully and securely as a sea turtle. He learned to row and to sail, and to come in quickly when storms gave their first warnings. He learned so much about fishing, and about the nuts which the peasants gathered in the forests and the herbs which they found in the fields, that Beauty used to say, if they ever got really poor, Lanny would feed them. He learned also to make friends, and to share in so many occupations that he would never need to be bored.
His mother, being a lady of fashion, naturally worried now and then about the plebeian tastes of her only child, and when she was there would invite the children of her rich friends as playmates. And that was all right with Lanny, the rich children were interesting too; he would take them down the shore and introduce them to the fish-erboys, and presently they would be ruining their expensive clothes learning to cast a hand net for shrimp. They would plan a walking trip into the hills, and rest at the door of some peasant cottage, and when they came back would tell how they had learned to weave baskets. Beauty would say with a laugh that Robbie's forefathers had been farmers, though of course in Connecticut they weren't the same as peasants.
II
Lanny Budd had never been to school, in the ordinary sense of the word. For one thing, his mother so often took him on journeys; and for another, he taught himself as many things as it seemed safe to put into one small head. He remembered phrases of every language he heard, and that was saying a lot on the Riviera. He was forever picking at the piano, and if he saw people dance a new dance, he had learned it before they got through. All his mother had to do was to show him his letters, and presently he was reading every book in the house that had pictures. You might be surprised to hear that Beauty Budd considered herself a lady of literary tastes; it meant that she noted the names of the books she heard people talking about, bought them, read the first few pages, and then was too busy to look at them again. Sooner or later Lanny would get hold of them, and if he didn't understand them, he would start pestering somebody with questions.
A good part of his education had come from listening. All sorts of people came to the house, and a well-bred little boy would sit quietly in a chair and not say a word. As a rule, people would forget that he was there, and have no idea that he was stowing things away in his mind: society and fashion, what people wore and what they ate, where they went and whom they met; the aristocracy of Europe and its titles; the rich people and their stocks and bonds, dividends and profits; the new cars, the new restaurants; the theaters and what they were showing, the operas and the names of the singers; the books that people were talking about; the journalists, the politicians, the heads of states - everything that was successful and therefore important.
When they were alone, the child would start in on his mother. "Beauty, what is taffeta, and what do you mean by cutting it on the bias? What are penguins and why are they like French politicians? What were the Dreyfusards, and why did the abbe get so excited when he talked about them?" It was hard on a mother who had developed to a high degree the art of taking part in conversation without bothering too much about details. With Lanny she had to get things right, because he would remember and bring them up again.
He had developed at a very early age the habit of cherishing some profound remark that he had heard one of his elders make, and getting it off in other company. Of course it would cause a sensation; and of course an active-minded child did not fail to enjoy this, and to repeat the performance. He had the advantage that he was operating behind a screen; for the elders seldom realize how shrewd children are, how attentively they listen, and how quickly they seize upon whatever is of advantage to them. The elders would say anything in a little boy's presence - and then later they would be astonished to find that he knew about such matters!
The city of Cannes lay only a few miles from his home, and the mother would betake herself there for shopping, and to have her charms attended to. Lanny, having promised never to go away with anybody, would find himself a seat on a street bench, or in a sidewalk cafe; and sooner or later there would be someone taking an interest in a bright lad with wavy brown hair, lively brown eyes, rosy cheeks, and a shirt of gray oxford cloth open at the throat.
In this way he had met, during the winter before he went to Hellerau, Colonel Sandys Ashleigh-Sandys - do not pronounce the y's - late of His Majesty's Royal Highlanders in the Indian Northwest. The colonel had white mustaches and a complexion like yellow parchment; it was trouble with his liver. He wore a linen suit, comfortably cut. A member of the exclusive "British colony," he would have turned away from any grown person who ventured to address him without a proper introduction; but when the tables were crowded and a small boy invited him to a seat, he did not think it necessary to decline. When the boy began to chat with all the grace of a man of the world, the colonel was inwardly amused and outwardly the soul of courtesy.
Lanny chose to talk about the latest popular novel he was halfway through. The old martinet with parasites in his liver questioned him about his reading, and found that this benighted lad had never, read a novel of Scott, had never even heard of Dickens, and all he knew about the plays of Shakespeare was the incidental music of A Midsummer Night's Dream, written by a Jewish fellow. Lanny asked so many questions, and was so serious in his comments, that before they parted the colonel offered to send him a one-volume edition of the poet which he happened to be able to spare. One condition would be imposed - the lad must promise to read every word in the book.
Lanny had no idea of the size of that promise. He gave it, and also his name and address, and a couple of days later there arrived by the post an elegant tome weighing several pounds. It was the sort of work which is meant to be set upon a drawing-room table and dusted every day but never opened. Lanny kept his pledge literally, he began at the title page and spent a month reading straight through, in a state of tense excitement. He wore his mother out at mealtimes, telling her about the lovely ladies who were accused of dreadful crimes which they had not committed. Just what the crimes were supposed to be was vague in Lanny's mind, and how was his mother to answer his questions? What did a man mean when he said he knew a hawk from a handsaw, and what were maidenheads and how did you break them?
Presently there was Lanny making himself swords out of laths and helmets out of newspapers, and teaching fishermen's children to fence and nearly poke one another's eyes out! Shouting: "Zounds!" and "Avaunt, traitor!" and "Lay on, Macduff!" down on the beach! Spouting poetry all over the place, like an actor - maybe he might turn out to be that - how was any woman to know what she had brought into the world? It was evident to her that this child's imagination was going to carry him to strange places and make him do uncomfortable things.
III
Lanny and Kurt, arriving at Cannes, parted company before they left the train. The German boy was to be met by his aunt; and this widow of the Court-Counselor von und zu Nebenaltenberg was a person with old-fashioned notions who would probably disapprove of Americans on general principles. The situation turned out to be even more difficult, for the aunt knew or professed to know all about "that Budd woman," as she called Beauty, and was shocked that her nephew had met such a person. She wouldn't say what it was - just one word: "Unschicklich!"
Kurt asked no questions. "Mrs. Budd has gone to Scotland for the shooting season," he remarked, casually. He sat erect in the stiff chair, facing the meager, severe old lady, telling her the news about the many members of their family. He ate a sound German luncheon of rye bread with slices of Leberwurst and Schweizerkдse, followed by a small Apfelkuchen and a cup of weak tea with milk. When the two had finished this meal, the aunt laid out the proper portions of food for her solitary maid, and then opened a cedar chest which stood between the windows of the dining room, and stowed all the remaining food therein, and carefully locked the chest with one of a bunch of keys which she carried at her waist. "You can't trust these native servants with anything," said the Frau Doktor Hofrat. Her husband had been dead for ten years, but she still wore black for him and of course carried his titles.
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