He had been invited to take this journey with no conditions attached, and he could leave whenever he wished. After all, he didn’t have to sign a contract to marry. He could go as any other guest and see how he got along with the skipper’s daughter. Maybe she wouldn’t want to marry him when she discovered how good-for-nothing he was. Maybe he would never be fit to many anybody. He saw himself gently dismissed, and again as nobly renouncing. In case of need, he could think of several polite pretexts.
Yes, that was the way to look at this cruise. He would have a chance to try out Lizbeth’s mind. He would no longer have to conceal from her the fact that he was a Socialist in his sympathies; not using that alarming word, of course, but leading her gently to a sympathetic understanding of the sufferings of the poor, the indignities of the lowly. After all, she wasn’t to blame for her upbringing; the fact that her mother and father hadn’t succeeded in spoiling her was proof of what a sweet and gentle nature had been her endowment. He had never known anything wilful that she had done, unless you counted her determination to love Lanny Budd. And that was something not too difficult for a man to excuse.
XIII
Robbie, shrewd intriguer, had told Cousin Jennie about Lizbeth and the proposed trip. So this maiden lady was full of questions about the heiress: What did she look like and what did she do and say? Lanny had to tell how he had met her at Emily Chattersworth’s villa, and had visited her in Green Spring Valley, and about her home and her parents and the servants and country club and what not. A decorous New England lady would never, ask if he had kissed her, but she could hint gently that Lanny seemed lacking in ardor and wonder secretly if there was some other woman in his life. Cousin Jennie went walking and found a bookstore and brought back travel books about the West Indies and the South Seas, about Bali and Java. She read these aloud to her patient, and sighed at the thought of being able to visit these lands of wonder. The Magic City! The Pearl of the Antilles! The China Seas! The Spice Islands! Lanny, who had been raised on the Core d’Azur, ought to have understood the device of making up fancy names for the tourist trade, but his critical faculties were less active at this time.
The owner of the Oriole called again. “We are ready to leave in three days, Lanny. What do you say?”
“I don’t believe the doctors would let me go that soon, Reverdy.”
“I renew my suggestion that we wait at Miami. There is an excellent harbor, and plenty to entertain us. Robbie tells me he will arrange to have you flown there. You can wait for good weather, and there are airports all along the coast, so it’s not at all like flying to Iceland. What about it?”
“I hate to say no, Reverdy. But I think of all the trouble I shall cause you, how helpless I am—”
“Forget it, Lanny. We have people on board with nothing to do but holystone the decks and polish the brass. As for myself, what have I to do but give my friends pleasure? I will take you into my confidence and say that you are the one who will be doing the favor. Lizbeth says she will come if you do—and you know how much I wish to have her.”
“If you put it that way! But I must point out—Lizbeth has never seen me in my present condition, and she may not like it.”
“Lizbeth has been told about it, and she says for you to come. Her mother doesn’t think it is proper for her to do the inviting—”
But evidently there was a difference of opinion in the Holdenhurst family. No receiver clicked, so Lanny could guess that Lizbeth had been on an extension phone, or that she had taken the receiver from her father’s hand. “Nonsense!” came her voice. “Come on, Lanny! We’ll have a lovely time.”
What could Lanny say but “All right”? Then he added: “When you see this poor wreck you may wish you hadn’t spoken!”
BOOK SIX
Like Gods Together, Careless of Mankind
21
Pretty Kettle of Fish
I
With returning strength Lanny found it easier to write, and this was one way to pass the time. He wrote letters to his clients and his friends, telling them that he was on the way to recovery and where he expected to spend the next few months. Among these persons, naturally, was Laurel Creston; he owed it to her to let her know that he was out of danger, and since he was no longer a P.A., he could write more freely than before. “I have had to give up the duty I had undertaken, and I fear it will be some time before I can take on another. I am obeying the doctors and trying to put all cares out of my mind. I am a burden to myself and to everybody, and it is extraordinarily kind of your uncle to take me on his yacht.”
Lanny thought that was putting it tactfully; if a lady fictionist had any tendency to feel slighted, this was letting her know that he was no good to anyone, herself included. He didn’t mention Lizbeth, and perhaps Laurel wouldn’t know that her cousin was going on the cruise; she could find out, of course, but at least Lanny had indicated that he didn’t consider the matter of any importance. He was taking this trip for the sake of his health, lured by the warmth of the tropic seas. “By the time I return,” he wrote, “you will be well on with that novel, and I promise to be your first reader.” He signed this “Bienvenu,” as much as to say that while he was no longer a secret agent he might become one again. It wasn’t melodrama to suppose that the chambermaid who cleaned Laurel’s room or the janitor who burned her trash might be in the pay of the Nazis.
Reverdy telephoned again. It was the first of November, and the yacht Oriole was about to depart from her Baltimore basin. On board would be himself and Lizbeth, his man secretary and her woman tutor—Lizbeth was going to improve her mind, and counted upon Lanny to help. Also there was the woman doctor, bound for her post in South China, and a Miss Gillis, whom Lanny vaguely remembered as a frail gray-haired lady. All wealthy families have impoverished relatives or school friends of the wife, who perform light duties, such as shopping, helping the social secretary, making up a four at bridge, or looking after a child who has eaten green fruit. “I’ll phone you from Miami,” added Reverdy. “We’ll wait there and go fishing until you arrive.”
The doctors said they would be willing to take off the casts in another week, and that seemed to fit the schedule. There was more telephoning, and Robbie undertook to send a two-engine plane with room in the cabin for a single bed. Budd-Erling didn’t make such a plane, but Robbie would get it; if you asked how, he would give a sly smile and a wink, and remark: “A lot of people want what I’ve got, so now and then they have to give me what I want.” The father himself didn’t come; he was frightfully busy, but would send a man to stay with Lanny from the moment he left the hospital until he was safe on the Oriole. Also Robbie would send the promised check to the hospital.
II
The breaking off of the plaster was accomplished, and—oh, blessed relief!—Lanny could roll over in bed. He indulged in that luxury for hours, and slept at night as he had not done for weeks. Instead they put on him what they called “short-length braces,” made of molded leather and steel, and extending from his ankle-joints to his knees. Also as an extra precaution, he would use crutches for a few days.
In the morning, word came that the plane was at the airport. He wrote a check for the faithful Cousin Jennie, who was returning by train. He presented twenty-dollar bills to the nurses, since he couldn’t go out and buy them presents. Robbie’s man didn’t have much to do, because there were so many hospital people eager to help. The patient’s journey to the ambulance was a sort of triumphal progress, with everybody lined up to smile and say good-by. From the ambulance he was carried on a stretcher to the plane and there laid on a bed. Robbie’s man sat on a camp chair beside him, and away they went.
The weather was promising, and they were making a flight to Southern Florida, a distance of some eighteen hundred miles. Robbie’s injunctions were to break the journey at the Washington airport and spend the night. Lanny might have an ambulance and be taken to a hotel if he wished; but Lanny said there was no sense in that, his supper could be brought to the plane
and he could sleep right there. He was cheerfully interested in the first careful tentatives at lifting his legs. His escort was an employe of the Budd-Erling plants he was interested in talking about it, and Lanny in listening. They passed the evening, and at dawn were off on the second leg of the journey.
An ambulance was waiting at the Miami airport, and the traveler was driven to a pier where the elegant 212-foot yacht had been laid alongside especially for this event. From first to last Lanny never had a moment’s discomfort; that is the way the rich are treated in this world, provided they have the sense to stay within their own sacred circle and not go wandering off on secret arctic missions with false passports. Reverdy Johnson Holdenhurst never did anything like that, but took care of himself and his family and friends if they would let him. Reverdy declared that the legend, “three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves,” was true only of the wastrels and fools; it certainly wasn’t true of those who had the sense to put their money into city real estate, like the Astors and Vanderbilts and Rockefellers—and the Holdenhursts of the Monumental City.
There were yachts and speedboats in this ample harbor, a winter playground of the rich. But many of them were no longer “private’”; they had been turned over to the Coast Guard to be used for patrol and escort duty in a public emergency. Some had been equipped with guns, and others were doing the best they could with small arms. There were persons who thought the Oriole ought to be in this service; they had annoyed Reverdy with their suggestions, and he saw that they didn’t get a second chance. His privacy, and the state of his health, were matters which he considered his first concern, and now he was anxious to get away from American waters before some damnable bureaucrat took it into his head to say that it was not permissible for a pleasure yacht to cruise in the Pacific.
III
All the passengers and some of the crew were lined along the rail when the ambulance came out on the pier. The invalid was transferred to a surgical cart, one of those little beds on rubber-tired wheels which are used in hospitals to carry patients to and from operations. A convenient thing to have on board, Reverdy said, and he’d have got it sooner if he had thought. Lanny might sleep on it all the time if he wished; but Lanny said no, he was soon going to be walking. To show how smart he was, when the vehicle reached the deck of the yacht he sat up so as to shake hands with the friends who gathered about.
He was happy as a bird let out of a cage. Such a wonderful thing, to be able to look around you, and to feel sunshine on your face and hands! He was pale from six weeks’ confinement, but the sun would soon fix that, he could feel the process already under way. Imagine feeling the cold of the subarctic one day, and the caressing warmth of the subtropics the next! Everybody here was in white ducks or flannels, and Lanny had not failed to be provided with a summer outfit in Halifax.
Here came Lizbeth; and how pretty she looked in a yachting costume! It had been so that Lanny had first seen her in the Golfe Juan—and be sure it was perfectly tailored, also perfectly laundered by the man who was on the yacht to perform that special service. The softest light French flannel, cream-colored with blue trimmings; and to go with this, lovely cheeks that didn’t need retouching, and soft brown hair that had received exactly the right kind of permanent. Lizbeth was blushing with happiness like a June bride, and possibly she thought of herself that way. She had never looked sweeter. Lanny decided that he had made a wise decision, and that this trip was going to be one of unblemished delight.
Until the owner of the yacht, after telling about the golf game, he had played and the fish he had caught, remarked casually: “We won’t sail until morning, because we have another passenger coming on the night train from New York: my niece, Laurel Creston?’
Just so casually does a thunderbolt fall from the sky, or a parachute bomb explode after drifting down from a plane! Fortunately, a man who has been trained to be a diplomat in boyhood and who has been a secret agent for years learns not to let consternation show in his face. As it happened, Lanny had discussed with Laurel how they would both behave if and when fate brought them together in the presence of “Uncle Reverdy.” After one gulp, Lanny was able to remark: “Laurel Creston? Isn’t she a writer?”
“Yes,” replied the other. “She has had a number of stories in magazines. One that I read I thought quite good. She telephoned that she was planning to start work on a novel, and thought that a cruise would give her the necessary quiet. So I told her to come.”
“It sounds very interesting,” was Lanny’s casual comment.
IV
Later on he had time to think this development over, and he decided that it was a consequence of his recent letter to Laurel. The moment she had received it, she had telephoned to her uncle, asking if she would be welcome. That was clear enough; but why had she done it? It might be that she valued Lanny’s knowledge of Germany, and wanted to have him available while she wrote. That was conceivable; but staring at Lanny like the face of a jack-o’-lantern in the dark was the other possibility, that Laurel had made up her mind all of a sudden not to let Lizbeth have him to herself over a period of six months and perhaps for life!
Inner voices told him that that was the real reason, and no use fooling himself. His letter had told Laurel that he had given up the dangerous mission abroad, which was practically saying that he was free to think about love and marriage. All women are psychologists—they have had to be in order to survive through the ages—and especially is that true of one who hopes to survive as a writer of fiction for other women. The nurses at the hospital had known that a man lying helpless in bed is a shining mark for sympathetic attention; and surely the woman whose mind had created “The Gauleiter’s Cousin” would be no less acute! Now “Mary Morrow” was on the train from New York, with a suitcase full of manuscripts and a couple of steamer trunks full of clothes, and in her mind the set purpose of cutting out her cousin Lizbeth and carrying off the living prize in a contest of charm!
It may have seemed egotistical of Lanny Budd’s subconscious mind to be so sure; but then, a presidential agent has to be something of a psychologist too, and this one had been watching women ever since he could remember in the nursery. If there was anything unfavorable about them that his mother hadn’t told him, it had been supplied by Emily and Sophie and Margy, by Rosemary and Irma and Marceline and Marie de Bruyne. In addition to these living authorities, there was Man and Superman, which Lanny had read and chuckled over. Yes surely; when a woman encounters the right man for her biological purposes she goes after him. She may be ever so haughty in spirit, she may have been taught an ever-so-stiff decorum in a city whose ruling group has always been Southern and has refused to be “reconstructed.” But when she meets the right man she starts spinning webs like a spider and all other women of the eligible age become her enemies pro tem.
So this invalid lying on a pallet with rubber-tired wheels suddenly saw the cruise of the Oriole in an entirely new light; no longer as a sojourn in the land of the Lotos-eaters, but as a biological battleground a jousting tournament, a duello—many such similes came to his mind. In the end he settled upon an old Scotch phrase, and the trim white shining Oriole became “a pretty kettle of fish!”
V
Lanny wasn’t on deck when Laurel’s taxi brought her to the pier. He did not meet her until next morning, when he was wheeled out into the sunshine, clad in a fresh white duck outfit. The yacht was gliding down the Miami River and out into Biscayne Bay. There was Laurel with her uncle, he in his proper yachtsman’s costume and she in a light blue summer dress. “Laurel,” said the skipper, “this is my friend Lanny Budd.” And then to Lanny: “This is my niece, Laurel Creston.” Ladies first, always.
Both of them had studied their roles. Laurel said: “I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Budd. I have heard about you.” Lanny said: “I think I have seen your work in a magazine. I am honored.” Very formal very proper—but in their secret hearts quite a tumult! Laurel would be thinking: “Will he forgive me?” Lann
y was thinking: “Dare I give her a wink?”
An odd sort of intrigue, seeming-guilty yet in fact innocent. A P.A. had begun it, because he hadn’t dared reveal to anyone that he had helped a woman wanted by the Gestapo to escape from Germany. Laurel had acceded to it, because she hadn’t wanted her uncle to know that she had been accumulating “Red” literature in her trunk in Berlin, and had given help to the anti-Nazi underground. She and Lanny had thought it easy enough never to mention their meetings in Germany; but this simple bit of concealment had grown by accretion, until now there were large chunks of their lives which they must never refer to. Laurel might say that she had visited the French Riviera, but never that she had been a guest of Lanny’s mother. And nothing about those delightful motor rides in and near New York; nor about her medium-ship, because if she did the guests would want to attend séances, and who could guess what Otto Kahn might say about past events? Whole chunks cut out of their lives! And they must always be on formal terms, always “Mister” and “Miss,” at least until they had been on the yacht for some time.
Here came Lizbeth, dressed in her prettiest, and ready to give her full attention to the invalid; so it was up to Laurel to take herself tactfully out of the way, to get a book and become absorbed in it. Day and night, Lizbeth would be there, and watching like a hawk; a female hawk, which presumably has no less keen vision than her partner, and may have the double duty of keeping watch to make certain that the partner is not paying visits to any other lady hawk’s perch. From the first hour it was made plain to Lanny Budd that he was Lizbeth’s guest, almost her property; it was to her that he was expected to pay attention, and for any of the other females on board to divert him from this duty would be presumption, not to say treason. It simply wasn’t done, on board yachts, and all persons of refinement and discretion would understand it.