It ruined the cruise, and made sorrow for the well-meaning host and hostess. Johannes took it without complaint, but he had to abandon his dream of using this trim white vessel as a means of cultivating the favor of the enviable classes. Otherwise he would have to leave his adored boys and their wives at home—and then, of course, it wouldn’t be any fun for Mama, she would prefer to stay with her darlings, no matter what outrageous opinions they chose to voice. After all, there was something to be said for their side; it hadn’t been so pleasant living in a slum, as Jascha himself ought to remember. Jascha talked about the problem with Lanny, strolling on the deck one windy night, and the best the young man could suggest was for the owner of the Bessie Budd to become a convert to the new cause, and use the trim white vessel for excursions of the proletariat in need of recuperation. A floating “Park of Culture and Rest”!
BOOK SEVEN
The Paths of Glory
31
God’s Opportunity
I
Ex-tutor and ex-lieutenant Jerry Pendleton had set himself up, with Lanny’s help, in a tourist bureau in Cannes and was doing well with it; in these times it would have been hard to do badly. His devoted French wife had three little ones, and the pension was thriving under the management of the hard-working mother and aunt; money was being put away, and some day it would come to Cerise and her children, so Jerry had every reason to feel content with the world as it was. He would visit Bienvenu now and then to go sailing or fishing with Lanny, or play tennis; once in a while Beauty out of the kindness of her heart would invite Cerise to a lawn party or other affair where there were many people and it wouldn’t be necessary to devote much time to her. Cerise, although quiet and inoffensive, was an outsider because she couldn’t talk about the fashionable people and what they were doing.
One of the steady boarders at the pension was a gentleman who had come from a small town in the American Middle West more than fifteen years ago, which was before the Budds had known Jerry or his wife. This boarder had been an insurance agent, and, having inherited a small income, had decided to see the world. He had discovered that his money would buy more in Cannes than anywhere at home, and so he had settled down in the Pension Flavin. He told a peculiar story about how he had come upon this respectable boarding-house; he had sat on a bench on the Boulevard de la Croisette and closed his eyes and asked God to send him to the proper sort of place; then he had got up and walked, and God had told him to turn off that fashionable and expensive avenue, and presently had told him to enter a certain house, and he had done so—and there he was.
The board had been forty francs per week, which in those days was eight dollars. With the rise in the cost of living the proprietors of the establishment had been forced to raise the price again and again, until now it was two hundred francs, which at the present rate of exchange was only five dollars; so the American considered that God had shown him partiality. He had occupied the same third-floor rear room all through the World War and the peace and what had come since. Having learned to speak French with a strong Iowa accent, he had won the esteem of everybody in the establishment.
This exemplary boarder went by the unusual name of Parsifal Dingle. The first half was due to the fact that an expectant mother in an unromantic small town on the prairies had seen a picture of an opera singer in shining armor. The French found nothing eccentric in either name; they pronounced the last one “Dang’,” with their nasal sound. The visitor had long ago got used to this and other eccentricities. He told himself that God had made the French as well as the Iowans; God was in them all, and God no doubt had His purposes.
Mr. Dingle did not belong to any sect, or give himself any label, but followed along the lines of what was known at home as “New Thought.” A surprisingly great number of people believed in it; people scattered all over the farms and villages of America, or living obscurely in the great cities, where they listened to lectures, formed hundreds of sects with odd names, and printed papers and magazines which often attained large circulation. Mr. Dingle subscribed to several, and after he had read them he would pass them on to others, and if these persons showed interest he would explain his ideas.
In brief, Mr. Dingle believed that there was a God, and that he, Mr. Dingle, was a part of Him. This God was alive and He was real, and He lived and worked in you; He would guide you if you asked Him, and especially if you believed that He would. The way of asking was to retire to some quiet place, as Jesus had directed, close your eyes and think about God and His goodness, and believe that He would do what you asked, if it was a good and proper thing. Mr. Dingle had never asked God to give him a mansion on the Boulevard de la Croisette or a beautiful blond mistress, for he did not consider such things as proper objects of desire; he asked God to give him peace of soul, kindness to his fellow-men, and contentment with his lot in life, and God had granted these modest requests.
The effect of this credo was to produce a highly desirable inmate of a pension. He never tried to force his ideas upon anyone, and it was impossible to quarrel with him about anything; if you tried it, he would retire to his room and pray, and emerge with such a beatific countenance that you could only feel ashamed of your bad disposition. He was not stout, but comfortably eupeptic; his face was round and rosy, so that he looked like a mature, slightly graying cherub in a well-laundered white linen suit. Mr. Parsifal Dingle from the state which he called Ioway, at your service.
II
Ever since the year 1914, when a runaway college student boarding at the Pension Flavin had become Lanny Budd’s tutor, the family at Bienvenu had been hearing about this unusual but worthy boarder. Jerry liked him because, their hometowns being close together, they understood each other’s accents and taste in foods. As the years passed, Jerry began to talk about Mr. Dingle’s peculiar ideas, first in a “kidding” way, later on more seriously. It appeared that Mr. Dingle had some sort of strange gift; he would put his hands on people and give them what he called a “treatment,” and their pains would disappear. Neither Lanny nor his mother had ever met this boarder, but they had seen him coming out of the pension, and he had become in the course of the years something of a legendary figure to them.
A couple of years ago it had happened that Miss Addington, Marceline’s governess, had suffered an unusually severe spell of her periodic headaches. Lanny had mentioned it to Jerry, and a little later Jerry had phoned; Mr. Dingle wanted to know if he might be permitted to call and try to help the lady; if so, Jerry would be glad to drive him over. The stiff and proper member of the Church of England was startled by the proposal; but she knew that the American gentleman operated in the name of God, and there was nothing in that special charter which God had granted to the Church of King Henry the Eighth which forbade other persons to call upon Him if they so desired; besides, the headache was really very bad. So Mr. Dingle came, and asked to be alone with her, which caused a maiden lady to feel uneasy; but he seemed to be a respectable person, and presumably one could think of him as a physician. He asked her to sit in a chair, and he stood behind her and put his hands across her forehead, and then just stayed there with his eyes closed.
The result astonished everybody, especially the governess. When he got through and took his hands away, he asked: “How do you feel?” and she blinked a couple of times and exclaimed: “Why, it’s gone!” It was really quite preposterous, but it was so—and it was certainly convenient. After that, whenever Miss Addington had one of these spells, she would send in haste for Mr. Parsifal Dingle. She tried to pay him, but he didn’t want money. Seeing that his cuffs showed signs of wear, she argued that at least she ought to pay his carfare, and in the end he permitted her to give him twenty francs, which varied somewhere between forty and sixty cents during this period.
Any prim and easily shocked maiden lady of forty was naturally a subject of humor among Beauty’s fashionable friends. They anticipated a romance, and asked eagerly how it was developing. Sophie referred to the healer as Miss Addingto
n’s Knight of the Holy Grail, and said that the only barrier to a perfect match would be that dreadful name Dingle—why didn’t he change it to Bell? Wasn’t there a song: “Dingle bell, dingle bell, dingle all the day”? Margy, who had read poetry, said that a dingle was a dell or a dale, and the poor man ought to take one of those names. But Mr. Dingle had heard all these jokes when he was a schoolboy, and he stayed as he was.
III
Now came Rosemary with her brood and settled them in that comfortable, spick-and-span house which they were calling “the cottage,” in order to have a name for it, though it was bigger than the lodge and nearly as big as the villa. The first thing that happened was that the youngest child, little Blanche, got hold of some green fruit and had a violent attack of colic. There was great excitement, and the English doctor whom they all patronized was not in his office. They gave the little one an emetic, but perhaps that wasn’t enough; she lay in a semi-coma; her skin began to assume a greenish hue, her heart seemed weak, and Rosemary was in a panic. Miss Addington, without a word to anyone, rushed to the phone and called Mr. Dingle, telling him to take a taxi at once.
The same thing happened again; Mr. Dingle asked to be alone with the child, and put his hands on her forehead, and in a very short while her heart had revived and her color returned and she fell peacefully asleep. Of course everybody knows that children have these attacks suddenly and get over them no less suddenly, and perhaps that was all it was; but it gave the ladies a great deal to talk about, and after this crisis was over, Beauty invited the gentleman with the strange gift to come over to the villa and tell her about his ideas and how he performed his miracles. He said very modestly that it was no miracle at all, but something which God did, and would do for anyone who believed in Him and who would take the trouble to follow the plain directions which Jesus had given us.
Now Beauty Budd had managed to live her adult life without any clerical assistance. She had been taught early in life that God forbade her to do all the pleasant things, and she had just gone ahead and done them, and decided that God was the creation of a domineering Baptist preacher by the name of John Eliphalet Blackless. Here on the Riviera were a number of well-trained professional gentlemen engaged in God’s service, and she had met several of them, both Catholic and Protestant, and found them agreeable men of the world, good conversationalists and judges of food and wine. It had been tacitly understood that they kept God for those special occasions when they performed His rites in church, and you were free to attend if you cared to, but no priest or clergyman had ever been heard to mention the name of God on any social occasion; everyone whom Beauty knew would have considered it something in the nature of a faux pas.
So this idea of a God whom you carried around with you was something entirely new and decidedly startling. The idea that God was inside Beauty Budd, and had known all that she was thinking, and all that she had done—for God’s sake, why hadn’t He stopped her? Mr. Dingle insisted that it was a comfortable idea when you got used to it, because it took away all fear; God loved you, in spite of your faults, and all He asked was that you should try to improve yourself and let Him help you. It was what Mr. Dingle described as a “free” religion; you didn’t have to have any priest to intercede for you, but God was here all the time, at the center of your consciousness, and you could appeal to Him, and get your answer in the state of your own heart. “No,” said the healer, “you don’t hear any voice, you just feel different. Try it; you may be astonished to see how it works.”
Beauty knew how all her fashionable friends would laugh if they heard about this. But God wouldn’t laugh, Mr. Dingle assured her, and it could be a strict secret between God and herself. But very soon, if Madame Detaze found that her prayers were being answered, she would gain courage, and would wish to tell others of her discovery, just as Mr. Dingle himself had been doing since the door of faith had been opened in his heart.
Of course it wasn’t within Beauty’s nature to keep any such secret. When Lanny came back from a swimming-party she told him what had happened to little Blanche, and all that Mr. Dingle had explained to her. Had Lanny ever heard of such an idea? The young scholar replied that he had indeed, many times; it was a very old idea, which had appeared everywhere among the tribes of men. Socrates had talked about his daimon, and Jesus about his heavenly Father. People of this way of thinking were known as “mystics,” and Lanny had learned about them from his study of Emerson. He got the volume which Eli Budd had given him, inscribed by the philosopher’s own hand, and told Beauty to read the essay called The Oversoul. But Beauty couldn’t make anything out of this highbrow language, and much preferred the simple, A-B-C explanations which the healer gave her.
She invited him over to tea, and had only Lanny and Miss Addington and Rosemary—for of course the latter couldn’t laugh, seeing how terrified she had been, and how kind the man had been, whether he had really healed the child or not. They all asked questions, and Mr. Dingle talked inspirationally. He had been thinking about these matters ever since he was a young man, and had absorbed the formulas of all the New Thought groups; but Beauty didn’t know that, he seemed to her one of the most original and most exalted personalities she had ever encountered. No priest or clergyman she had ever heard in a church had more noble ideas, or voiced them in more beautiful phrases.
After that the gentleman with the odd name became an habitue of Bienvenu. No one could have been less intrusive; he never came unless he was asked, he rarely spoke unless he was spoken to, and if he had the slightest reason to think that he might be in the way he would go into the court and look at the flowers, or onto the loggia and watch the sun set over the golfe behind the Esterels, and you knew that he was praying. He was a very good influence for everybody, because they were ashamed to voice cynical or unworthy ideas in his presence. Also, it was comforting to know that if anything serious happened to you, he would be on hand and call God to your aid.
IV
There was never a more inveterate matchmaker than the lovely blond mistress of Bienvenu, and having this new male on the premises, she couldn’t help thinking about Miss Addington. That badly inhibited English lady was surely in need of assistance; so Beauty would perform the kindly service of inviting Mr. Dingle to lunch, and then arranging that the governess should be excused from her duties for a while. This was easy, because there were two governesses, and the children wanted to be together all the time. Miss Addington became greatly interested in Mr. Dingle’s views on religion, and he convinced her that there was nothing contrary to Anglican etiquette in what he did. Had not Jesus after his death returned to his disciples and given the explicit instruction: “In my name they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”? How could words be plainer?
But in spite of their being an obviously well-matched couple, that was as far as matters proceeded between them; and after several weeks of watching and waiting, Beauty began to find it rather provoking. What would become of the future of the human race if men and women did nothing together except to search the Scriptures and practice praying? If Beauty had been a selfish soul she would have remembered that she had a good governess and had better let well enough alone; but Beauty believed in love, and she thought: “I could arrange for them to live on the place, and Miss Addington could continue her duties until Marceline is grown.” She had it all worked out in her head, and she tried to put it into Miss Addington’s head. The maiden lady would blush, and the next time the visitor appeared she would have some old-fashioned ruching about her somewhat shrunken neck, also a bit of ribbon in her hair. But these hints didn’t appear to be caught by Mr. Dingle.
Evidently he had lived alone for so long that he had become shy; or was there something in his religion which committed him to a celibate life, the attitude which Beauty had heard referred to as “platonic”? She felt that it was her duty to straighten the matter out; so one day when she was alone in the drawing-room with the healer she sprang the question: “What is your attitude towa
rd love?”
Mr. Parsifal Dingle blushed slightly, and showed signs of being flustered. “I had,” he explained, “a very sad experience, one which altered my whole life.”
“Indeed?” said Beauty. She didn’t say: “Would you mind telling me about it?” but there was that in her voice. She wished earnestly to understand this gentleman’s ideas and everything that had helped to shape his personality.
“When I was a young man, Madame, I became deeply attached to a young lady of excellent character, and suffered a tragic bereavement. Somehow I have never been able to think about love since then—I suppose it is because I have looked for the qualities which I found in that young lady.”
Beauty felt that such a love story would touch Miss Addington’s Victorian heart. She said: “I appreciate your delicacy of feeling; but is it wise to let one’s whole life be dominated by an old grief?”
“I have never felt that it was a deprivation, Madame. I have submitted to God’s guidance, and He has given me other kinds of happiness.”
“Yes, Mr. Dingle; but have you never reflected that you might be denying happiness to some woman?”