“Yes, dear,” she said. “That covers everything.”
“And that is our ceremony?”
Her eyes dropped, and she whispered: “Yes.”
“You know, Trudi,” he said, still smiling, “I have never kissed you.” He arose, took her by the hand, and led her to the couch which stood at one side of the room. He sat beside her, remarking: “I think it will be very nice to kiss you.”
He was surprised by her response. She leaned toward him and put herself into his arms, and at the same time began to weep ever so softly.
“That is the way you feel, dear?” he asked.
“Oh, Lanny!” she exclaimed. “I have been so lonely! And I have tried so hard to keep you from knowing it!”
VIII
After that Lanny didn’t want to return to Bienvenu; he wanted to stay right where he was. He would have been happy to get a larger studio and move into it; but he had to use discretion while he was still legally a prince consort, and Trudi insisted they must always meet secretly so that she might never be the means of drawing the attention of Nazi agents to Lanny Budd. They must continue their old practice: she would be walking on the street and he would come with his car.
So many delightful roads and landscapes there were outside of Paris, north, south, east, west; so many convenient places to dine, and ancient and obscure old inns where couples having an informal honeymoon could stay overnight with no questions asked. “Oh, Lanny!” she exclaimed, more than once. “You are spending so much money!” To which he replied: “I have never lived so economically since I was born.”
They read the papers and listened to the radio in the car, and most of their thoughts were on the black shadow of death and destruction which was creeping over Spain. They were made heart-sick by the spectacle of futility and hypocrisy presented by the Non-Intervention Committee in London and by the League of Nations delegates in Geneva. They attended a huge rally called by the trade unions of Paris in the vast Luna Park; they sat separately listening to Leon Blum defending his policy, and the greater part of the audience chanting: “Des avions pour l’Espagne!” They came away certain that the cry would not be answered; but somehow their bitterness was easier to bear when they told each other about it. Grief shared is grief reduced by much more than half. Lanny said: “You can’t be really unhappy when you have love.”
Straightway Trudi’s conscience smote her. “Oh, Lanny, we ought to be unhappy!”
“Be it if you can!” he answered; and she tried her best, but was not completely successful. A man who had managed to find happiness in four love affairs during two full decades of Europe’s misery assured her that this, too, was an art which could be acquired. When he held her in his arms he would say: “Nature makes it quite plain that she wishes us to go on with this, even in wartime.”
IX
Mr. and Mrs. Dingle, returning from New York, stopped in Paris on their way to Bienvenu, and Beauty suggested that Lanny drive them the rest of the way; but he said he had offered to take Alfy and his chum to Madrid. That promised to be dangerous, and the mother tried to dissuade him, but it couldn’t be done. He wasn’t sure that he would return to Bienvenu this coming winter, and Beauty became suspicious, and got him alone in her room and said: “It’s that German woman, Lanny?”
He didn’t think it worth while to lie to her. To do so would be cruel, for she would go on hunting up eligible young ladies. He answered: “It’s a very heavy secret, old darling, and you mustn’t breathe a word of it to a living soul. There are several sorts of reasons.”
“Oh, Lanny! What dreadful things are you doing?”
“It’s all right so long as we’re not talked about. All you have to do is to say that I am working hard at selling pictures, and putting away a nest-egg for my old age.”
“Tell me the truth, dear—are you happy, with this woman?”
“Happier than I have ever been since Marie died.”
That justified all things to Beauty Budd. Love was made for happiness, and people were made for love. “Is she a good woman?” she asked; and the wayward son replied: “So good it’s positively terrifying. Sometimes I don’t see how I can live on such a high moral plane.”
He was grinning, but his mother took him seriously. “I know how it is,” she confessed. “I have the most devoted of husbands, and sometimes I feel the same way!”
She brought along Madame Zyszynski, who was to spend a month or two at Balincourt; Beauty was about to phone there and tell them to come for her, when Linny said: “I’ll make a test with her, and deliver her afterwards.” He drove the medium over to the Left Bank and deposited her in a little hotel, with a copy of Le Rire to entertain her; then he went to Trudi’s studio and told her: “Madame is around the corner, ready for a seance.”
Trudi was taken aback, even shocked. “Lanny, do you really think I ought to do that? I’ve been trying to put Ludi out of my mind.”
“I know, but he’s in your subconsciousness, and if you get a message from him, it certainly won’t make you think he’s alive. Also, other spirits might show up; the Bhikkhu, or your great-uncle Wilhelm if you had one, or maybe Tecumseh will do some Indian war-whoops for you—it’s quite hair-raising.”
Trudi took off her smock and put on a dress and hat and set out to walk to the near-by hotel, while Lanny sat in his parked car and read Le Populaire. The strangest newspaper in the world right then, he thought. Longuet had founded it during the World War and spent his fortune to build it up; then Blum had become joint editor, and by push and political skill had become the dominant factor. In this Spanish crisis they had compromised their disagreement on the basis that every editor was to voice his own convictions; so here was an editorial staff conducting a diurnal debate, and it was like listening to half a dozen brass bands each playing a different tune. In one column the Premier of the French Republic explained that la chere Marianne must put her own house in order, and that if she did so she would be impregnable to any attack; in the next column the foreign-affairs editor was declaring that the blunder of statesmanship now being committed by his colleagues would be fatal to republican institutions not merely in Spain, but in France and the rest of Europe. An admirable demonstration of freedom of discussion; but to Lanny it seemed like having a debate among the crew of a ship while the ship was heading for the rocks.
X
Madame was to go to a picture show, one of her greatest delights, thus giving Lanny time to hear a report from his amie. When she came he saw at once that something important had happened; her cheeks were flushed, and it was not just the walk in chilly autumn weather. “Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed. “The most amazing experience! I don’t know how to tell it!”
“Ludi?” he inquired.
“Ludi alive and chatting with me, answering questions and asking some!”
“His voice?”
“That made it still more uncanny. Madame’s voice and the old Indian’s voice, but Ludi’s mind, his personality. He knows all about us!”
“I hope he is complaisant!”
“He gives us his blessing. He says it is the wise course and he has been hoping for it.” There was a pause, and suddenly the woman exclaimed, in a tone of distress: “Lanny, you surely wouldn’t do a thing like that to me!”
She had asked it before, so he wasn’t surprised. “It is the thought that none of us can quite get away from, dear. But you must know that I don’t play monkey-tricks.”
“You might be trying to help me to be happy.”
“It would be a cheap and easy way, but I have chosen the hard one. Our love has to rest on the foundation of truth.”
“Lanny, will you give me your word that you didn’t tell Madame anything about us?”
“My word of honor as a gentleman, a lover, and a friend. I have never spoken your name to Madame or to anyone else outside of Germany since I learned about your underground work more than four years ago. I have never spoken the name of Ludi, except in that seance with the Bhikkhu which I told you
about.”
“I have to believe that, Lanny.”
“Indeed you do! I take these psychic phenomena seriously; I make notes on them and study them, and try with the best faculties I possess to decide what they mean. I try not to let myself be cheated, and I surely don’t ever dream of cheating anybody else. I am seeking what may be the key to new realms of knowledge. It may be the spirits of the dead, or it may be our memories taking on a life of their own. It may be a sort of mind plasma, working independently of you and me, building new forms just as you draw pictures or I play tunes. It may be another process of creation under way—I don’t know what it is, but I know that it is real, and I am fascinated by it and want to find out all I can. Tell me now about Ludi.”
“He talked about us in the most matter-of-fact way. He knows how I live. He even mentioned the auberge where we spent the last weekend, and the old armoire which you said your stepmother would love.”
“Did he say how he knew these things?”
“He said he couldn’t explain to me because I couldn’t understand. He repeated that, and of course it seems rather like an evasion.”
“Not necessarily. How would you explain an algebraic formula to a child?”
Lanny had taken the precaution to bring along a notebook, and he scribbled words such as armoire and oeufs a la coque, which he had ordered for breakfast on their last excursion; also the name of “Estaire,” Ludi’s effort to give the name of Lanny’s stepmother. It seemed to suggest that some French mind or tongue was concerned in the effort. Ludi had said nothing about Germany, except that he knew of Trudi’s work and was aiding it. He wanted to assure her that he did not need her where he was and that he was happy in her happiness. He spoke a language of spirituality which was foreign to a Marxist tongue. When she commented on this he said: “When I am something, I know it, don’t I?” He laughed, and went on to convince her that it was really he, mentioning various little domestic details, including a toothbrush with a handle made of plastic of a bright purple color.
XI
“Well, there you are,” said Lanny. “I thought it might happen to you sooner or later. And now what are you going to make of it?”
“I’ve been trying to recall everything he said, to see if there’s anything I myself didn’t know.”
“So then you will be deciding that it’s ‘telepathy.’ But don’t fool yourself with a word. Don’t forget what an assumption you are making: that your mind and Madame’s are one somewhere underneath; or at least they have some way of leaking one into the other, or getting mixed up so that you cannot keep secrets from her. That is surely something new and worth knowing about.”
“Yes, but it isn’t Ludi.”
“It seems to me that if two minds can communicate without material means, it becomes a lot more easy to believe that two minds can exist without material means.”
“Theoretically, I agree; but it makes a great difference in my feelings this afternoon if I decide that I was talking with Madame and not with Ludi.”
Lanny smiled. “Poor old Zaharoff has been tormenting himself over that difference for the past six or seven years.”
“Oh, by the way!” Trudi remembered. “I believe I got a message for him! Ludi sort of faded away at the end; he talked some nonsense which I couldn’t get straight, and then Tecumseh broke in and said there was a little dark lady trying to speak, but hers was another foreign language and it was silly to have so many—as bad as it had been in his own land, when the Indians fought one another because they couldn’t understand one another. The lady kept saying: ‘Coraje!’—that is Spanish, is it not?”
“Yes. Courage.”
“Then she spoke some French words, and Tecumseh repeated them. She wanted her husband to have coraje, and to come to her; he would be coming soon now, and he must not be afraid.”
“Madame knows that she is going to Balincourt tonight, so that seems all rather obvious.”
“Tell him, anyhow,” replied Trudi. “No doubt the poor old man needs coraje right now.”
“Robbie says he has contributed to the cause of Franco,” remarked her companion; “so I doubt if you wish to help him too much.”
XII
That evening Lanny sat in the great library with the galleries and the bronze railings, before the fire of logs at which the retired munitions king warmed his eighty-six-year-old bones. His skin had come to resemble badly wrinkled parchment, and he rarely lifted his shrunken hands from his knees. He had attached to his chair a cord with a button so that he could summon his man at any moment. Except for this man and the East Indian servants he appeared to be entirely alone; if there were ladies in the house the visitor never saw them.
Zaharoff was always glad to welcome the sun of Budd-Erling, thanked him for troubling to bring the medium, and asked how Robbie was doing and what he thought about the situation in Europe. Zaharoff himself found it most alarming—all the Western world was threatened with revolution on the Russian pattern and it was extremely doubtful if the avalanche could be checked. Lanny committed himself to the extent of saying that the problem was complex, and that his father would be deeply interested to know his associate’s views.
By the edge of the rug in front of them lay a German shepherd dog, a beautiful creature, brown and black, with a glossy coat perfectly groomed. Lanny had never seen him before, but apparently he was an old dog, familiar with the household and taking seriously his guardian duties. He lay never taking his eyes off the stranger; but the warmth of the fire was too much for him, and his head would begin to sink slowly until it rested on his paws, and at the same time his eyelids would droop; then he would start to sudden awareness and lift his head again and resume the performance. Looking from the dog to his master, Lanny perceived the same phenomenon of age; the old man was listening to the beginning of Lanny’s sentence, but only half listening at the end. Doubtless it was his bedtime, so Lanny decided to deliver his message and depart promptly.
“Sir Basil,” he said, “I think the duquesa has made another attempt to communicate.”
The effect was immediate. The old man started into wakefulness, and his two trembling hands were clasped together over the hollow where a paunch once had been. “What did she say, Lanny?”
The younger told the story, mentioning a woman friend of the family; a thoroughly conscientious person, he declared, and there could be no doubt that the episode had occurred. But what a pitiful and unsatisfactory communication! Lanny, watching his host, was startled to see tears stealing down his cheeks, something the younger man had never before observed in twenty-three years of acquaintance with this “mystery man of Europe.”
“Tell me, mon garcon!” he burst out, “what am I to believe about her? I would give my fortune to know, but nobody will tell me—nobody that I can trust!” His voice rose to a cry, and he stretched out his hands to the visitor; a sight not soon to be forgotten—ten bony claws, covered with brown wrinkled parchment, waving about in front of Lanny’s face! And the greatest fortune in Europe—Robbie Budd said it was still that—offered for a simple little thing like telling what becomes of us when we die!
“If I could only know one way or the other!” the old man pleaded. “If I knew that I would see her, I would go tonight with never a qualm. But if I am not to see her, I sit here and cherish my memories, and count them better than nothing!”
The anguished tone called for an answer, and Lanny tried to give the kindest he could think of. “At least we all have this certainty, Sir Basil; if there is no future, we shall never know it. The days before we existed did not trouble us too greatly.”
“That is not enough for me, Lanny. I do not want oblivion. I have so many responsibilities, and I cannot see anybody who is competent to carry them, who even has any conception of them. You spend a lifetime getting the reins in your hands, and then you have to drop them, certain that the vehicle will go into a ditch or over a cliff. You want to cry out a warning, but the world has no ears—or perhaps you have lost yo
ur voice! You have made mistakes, and you have learned from them, but can you teach anybody? Never, never! The world turns its back upon you! Nobody comes near you except to get money! If there is anyone you can trust, he is too spineless, too lacking in ambition, to make any use of power. So everything is gone, everything!”
The old spider, the old wolf, the old devil was actually sobbing; sobbing out loud, and tears streaming from his eyes. The visitor was embarrassed—for, after all, here was a Knight Commander of the Bath of the British Empire, and this wasn’t in the ritual. On the contrary, decidedly Levantine, the sort of thing to be expected of the lesser breeds without the law! Lanny could not have been more taken aback if the aged plutocrat had torn off his green smoking-jacket with the purple collar and cuffs, the tan-colored flannel trousers, and the gold-embroidered slippers, followed by the underthings, whatever they were—in short, every stitch which covered his once expanded but now shriveled nakedness.
“Life is too cruel, I tell you, mon fils! It is one series of traps and pitfalls. It is incomprehensible, it is intolerable, it is inexcusable!” Zaharoff was speaking French, and this long series of tripping syllables made a sort of litany of protest. “What is that in the Bible about vanity and vexation?”
The scholarship of Lanny’s great-great-uncle Eli Budd enabled him to quote the passage with reasonable accuracy: “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”
“That is it,” said the aged one; then, his voice dying low: “That is the last word.”
After a pause, it apparently occurred to him that this behavior had not been quite according to the code. “You must excuse me,” he said. “I am losing my powers. It is a terrible thing to have to admit, and I have fought against it, but I cannot fight any more. I am a lonely and beaten old man, going empty-handed into my grave.”