“Now I meet another princess,” Lanny remarked, “and I am wondering what she is really like.”
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed the girl. She shot a quick look at him, and then, meeting his eyes, looked back into the mainsail. He saw the color mount in her cheeks.
“I have been thinking a lot about a princess,” he said. “It is not just a title, you know; it’s a state of affairs. Few kings of old days had as much power as your father wielded, and few kings’ daughters have as much passed on to them as you.”
“I suppose so,” she admitted, in a low voice. She did not look at him again for quite a while.
“A princess is born to power; she doesn’t have to do anything to get it, and, on the other hand, she has no way to escape it. She is a prisoner of her destiny. People behave to her in a certain way, and expect her to behave to them according to her station; there is a code of etiquette which has grown out of the circumstances, much the same all over the world, and it quickly becomes fixed. The courtiers and ladies-in-waiting are shocked if the princess doesn’t do what they expect, and the princess, knowing this, finds it hard to break out of her role. Isn’t that true?”
“That’s about the way it is.”
“But all the time the princess knows that she’s a woman, like any other. She becomes a double personality, leading a double life. So when someone comes to me and says: ‘Would you like to meet the Princess So-and-so?’ I usually answer: ‘Not especially.’ I have learned that meeting one is usually a bore; you don’t meet the real person, you only meet the role, so to speak, the figurehead. Of course if you believe in royalty, and like to stand about a throne—or if you’re looking to get something by royal favor—that’s another matter. But not wanting anything, I find myself thinking: ‘What is Her Royal Highness really like? What is she thinking at this moment? Is she bored by her role, or does she enjoy it? Is she perhaps frightened—afraid not to play it right, because people will laugh at her if she does it wrong? Is she flattered by their praise, or is she afraid of their malice?’ That malice can be a terrible thing, Miss Barnes; for the world is far from being kind.”
“I know,” said the young woman, her voice still low.
“Maybe I’m imagining most of this, and maybe you haven’t ever thought of it, except vaguely. Maybe you’ve just been raised a certain way, and you go on living from day to day. Maybe you don’t like to question your own soul, or to have some impertinent young upstart begin doing it!”
His companion had turned her head away, and he saw her reach hurriedly for her handkerchief and put it to her eyes. He exclaimed, in concern: “Have I offended you?”
“No,” she answered, hastily. “Wait.” He did so, and presently she turned her face half-way toward him, and explained: “You see, Mr. Budd, my father killed himself getting all that money; and I’d ever so much rather have had him.”
XII
There was the answer to the riddle, and there was Rick’s play if he cared to write it. Irma Barnes had loved her father. Had she known that he “kept women all over town”? Maybe so, maybe not—Lanny wasn’t going to inquire about that. Anyhow, she had loved him, and admired him, a capable, hard-driving master of men, a gay companion when he was at home. She had known him as a little girl knows a playmate and friend, and when she learned that he had dropped dead in the middle of a hard Wall Street battle, she didn’t feel compensated by his possessions. She didn’t mention her mother, but that too was significant, and, with the hint that he had got from Emily, Lanny could guess that she thought her mother had set more store by the money than by the man.
Anyhow, there was the soul of a princess. After a while she smiled and said that Lanny wouldn’t miss the next installment this time. He decided then that her mind wasn’t slow; she just stayed withdrawn into herself, watching the world go by and doing what people asked her to do. Was it out of kindness, or lack of initiative? She was only twenty, and hadn’t thought much.
What had they taught her in school? Apparently nothing very useful: good manners and deportment, some French, and a smattering of the arts. She knew how to read, but she didn’t know how to enjoy reading. When you have so much money, and so many persons to attend you, it becomes your duty to let them do it; having things done to you and for you is in accord with your station in life, your social importance; but to go off into a corner by yourself and bury your nose in a book is a waste of opportunity, to say nothing of seeming churlish to all the dressmakers and hairdressers and manicurists and masseuses and dancing- and music-masters and maids and secretaries and other humble persons who get their living by serving you, and are so pathetic in their efforts to please you. “You’ve no idea how many people I had to disappoint in order to get this sail with you!” confessed the princess of public utilities. “But I’m glad I did.”
The ice was broken, and she told him about her life, which seemed like one in a high-class jail to Lanny, who had been accustomed to do so much for himself and to spend so large a share of his time alone, dreaming his dreams, trying to express them on the piano, or to find them in books or works of art. Irma Barnes had hardly ever been alone in her life, despite the fact that she had been an only child. She had hardly ever been able to do anything for herself; there was always somebody ready to leap to do it ahead of her, and to have his or her feelings hurt if the young mistress didn’t wait and submit. That she was physically vigorous was due to the fact that she had played tennis with a tennis instructor, ridden horseback with a riding master, swum with a swimming expert—and so on, one thing after another all day long. Irma Barnes had never hauled a seine with fisherboys and -girls on any beach; to her a fish was something the butler brought in steaming hot on a large dish of chased silver, and showed to the master with a flourish, and then proceeded to cut into slices on a side table.
XIII
The weather continued to favor them, and they sat at a little outdoor table by a teahouse and ate tiny biscuits with butter and honey, discussing the fact that riches accumulated automatically, and what caused them to behave in that way. Someone had told the mother and daughter about Lanny’s strange eccentricity of teaching in a Red Sunday school. He was quite sure it wasn’t Emily who had done this; more likely some lady with an eligible son of her own. The facts were notorious, and, despite his mother’s anxious warnings, Lanny had no idea of trying to slur them over. What he believed meant much more to him than it did to Beauty, and it would have been silly to let the girl take an interest in him without knowing the pink tinge of his mind.
He told her about the children of the workers who came there; what they looked like, how they behaved, what he taught them. She imagined unruly little ragamuffins, but he assured her that they came with clothes carefully mended and that they had been washed for the occasion, at least everything that showed. They were, he said, the elite of the children of the poor; alert, eager-eyed, taking their class-consciousness as a religion; their parents had been acquainted with suffering and they knew that life was no playground. To all this a glamour girl listened as to something from another planet; things strange, rather thrilling, but also alarming.
What was it all for? What did these people expect to do? He explained in words of one syllable the idea of social ownership: the means of producing what all had to use were to be public property, publicly administered for the public benefit; something like the post-office, the army, the trams. He forgot for the moment that Irma came from a country where the trams and the railroads were privately owned, and that her father had owned some. She listened to his picture of a co-operative society, out of Bellamy, and she brought up the stock objections. Who would do the dirty work? Would people work if they didn’t have to? And would you pay everybody the same?
She wanted to know how he came upon these unusual ideas. He told her about his Red uncle, not trying to prettify him. This dangerous person, so greatly disliked by Lanny’s father, had taken him, half by accident, to a slum in Cannes. “Oh, do they have slums in Cannes?” exclaimed the
girl, and Lanny replied: “Would you like to see them?” He told her about Barbara Pugliese and her tragic fate. He told about the Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon, and the regime of despotism which he had set up in Italy. “Oh, but they tell me the country is much better managed!” exclaimed Irma. “The trains all run on time!”
Lanny perceived that he would have a job of educating to do. He talked about the Peace Conference and what he had seen and learned there. He mentioned Lincoln Steffens, and found that she had never heard the name; in fact, her mind was pretty much a blank about current events. She knew the names of the leading screen stars, of the singers she had heard at the opera, the leaders of jazz bands who were announced over the ever more popular radio; but literary names, except for a few best-sellers, were unknown to her. The names of statesmen also were vague in her mind; she had no idea what they stood for, except that her father had approved of certain ones at home and disapproved violently of certain others. Lanny could guess that the former were men with whom the father had been able to do business.
It wasn’t at all the sort of conversation that he had planned, or that Beauty would have approved; but the heiress asked questions, and he answered, and told her stories which he thought were within the range of her understanding. Perhaps he did not allow enough for the immaturity of her mind; perhaps he talked too long and wearied her; but certainly she saw that he was kind, and perfectly respectful, possibly even grandfatherly. If she was looking for a man who wasn’t after her money, she had reason to believe that this was the one. She said: “I don’t think my mother would approve of these ideas.”
He replied: “Probably not. You don’t have to tell them to her unless you wish.” That was the nearest he came to sedition, or seduction, or whatever the mother would have considered it.
They went back to the boat, and it was “turning chilly, so she was glad to have her wrap. The breeze held, and they sailed before it merrily. They saw the sun go down behind the open sea, and before dark they reached the little pier. Driving to her home he was smitten by doubts, and said: “I do hope I haven’t been boring you with all this political stuff.”
“Not at all,” she answered. “I was truly interested. I hope you will come again.”
“I’ll be delighted to. I know that you have many engagements, and I don’t want to intrude; but this is my home, you know, and I am at your service.”
“Call me up,” she said; and they left it there.
Driving back to his home, Lanny was thinking: “Well, she’d be all right, if I could get her out of that environment.” But then he thought: “Her environment is her money, and she won’t get out of it till she dies.”
He found that his mother was out, so he strolled to the lodge. “Well?” asked Rick, quizzically. “Did you get me that story?”
“I got one,” Lanny replied. “But I’m afraid I can’t let you use it.”
The lame Englishman sat up in his chair and looked at his friend. His wife was in the next room and he called: “Ho, Nina, come in here! Lanny is going to marry Irma Barnes!”
33
Uneasy Lies the Head
I
Irma Barnes was going about with Lanny Budd. All the Riviera took note of the fact, and the million tongues of gossip were busy. He was the lucky one; favored over all the millionaires, the princes and the dukes and the marquesses. In various ways it was made apparent to him that he had become a person of importance. The spotlight swung onto Bienvenu and stayed there. Peace and privacy were gone; there were visitors calling, motor-cars in the drive, the telephone ringing; people urging Lanny and his beautiful mother to come here and there. “And bring Irma,” they would add, casually.
He had the time to give to her, and she took it for granted that he would give it. She enjoyed his company; he knew everybody and everything, or so it seemed to her; he made clever remarks, and while she wasn’t clever herself, she smiled appreciatively when he was. Moreover, he was kind; and while nobody was unkind to her, she had been put on guard against insincerity. It wasn’t long before they were calling each other by their first names, and he had the run of the chateau. Irma had had it out with her mother; the older woman wasn’t pleased by it, but she would be polite, because the young generation was running wild and you had to give them their head.
Lanny played tennis with Irma and beat her regularly. It was a novel experience for her; not one of her suitors had had that much originality. He escorted her to a cocktail party, tres snob, and when she had had two drinks he told her that was one too many, she showed the effects. He wasn’t sure if she’d take it from him, but she did; moreover, she told others about it, and rumor spread, he had her completely under his thumb; he was posing as a young Puritan, a moralist. Imagine, after the way they lived in Bienvenu! She’d soon find out, if the million tongues had their way. One proper English lady told Mrs. Fanny that the place had “a faintly incestuous atmosphere!”
Lanny didn’t leave it for the gossips to tell about himself. He took Irma for a long drive in the mountains, to that village of Charaze where the one-legged gigolo resided. On the way they talked about love, and he told her the story of Rosemary, beginning on the banks of the river Thames when he was sixteen and she was seventeen, and ending two or three months ago, when she left for the Argentine. No use keeping back the names, for “everybody” knew about it, “everybody” knew that he had built a “cottage” for her and her children. Just now the Dowager Countess Eversham-Watson had it for the season. “You know,” said the million tongues, “that whisky woman from Kentucky. Is she his latest flame? Nobody seems to be quite sure about it.”
There was snow up in those mountains, and one had to drive carefully. The retired gigolo hopped up on his peg-leg and embraced Lanny; he was so happy that the tears stood in his eyes. He had a wife and several brown little ones; they sat in his stone cabin and listened while he played the marvelous silver-embossed flute which the duquesa had presented to him. The wife spread a red-and-white-checked cloth on the table, and brought a long loaf of bread, fresh butter and cheese, dried figs and new wine; before they left, Irma purchased the whole row of little dancing men which M. Pinjon was carving for the next Christmas trade.
Then, driving down in the late afternoon, Lanny told the story of Marie de Bruyne. Again no use hiding names, for it had been in the newspapers; it was a “scandal,” and there were those who cherished that sort of history and would remember it till they died—and perhaps later, if they were consigned to the same place as Marie. Lanny had no shame about the story, and if it was going to shock a strictly brought-up American girl, the sooner he knew it the better. He was in his thirtieth year, and had had only three women in his life; he hadn’t bought any of them, or betrayed any, and all had been happy. If Irma were to investigate the records of her many suitors, both in New York and on the Riviera, she would hardly find a better one.
II
Irma Barnes liked love stories, it appeared; especially when they were autobiographical. She asked questions, not bold or improper, but questions of a stranger in a strange land, trying to understand its customs. This very old continent of Europe had its long-established institutions, and la vie à trois was one of them; doubtless the practice existed also across the seas, but more carefully hidden, at least from young girls. It was a daring adventure to have a man tell her such things; a tribute to her maturity, and one more proof that he wasn’t after her money—or if he was, he was taking a bold line!
He didn’t say: “I tell you these things because I am thinking about asking you to marry me.” But it was understood between them. Silly to pretend otherwise, when it was in the thoughts and conversation of everyone who knew them. They were feeling each other out, trying experiments, making little tentative approaches and then retreating. Lanny would go off and think: “Well, what would it be like with her?” or “What did she mean by that remark?” Irma would step out of his car, asking herself the same questions. She would go into the house, and there would be an Austrian
baron or the son of a South African gold magnate waiting to take her to dinner. She would think: “Would this be better?”
Everywhere she went people were attentive to her; every man bowed, clicked heels, kissed her hand in the romantic European way. Each studied her tastes, her whims, and sought to please her by every gesture and word. The European men were ardent; with hardly an exception, they made love to her all the time. Never for a moment did they let her forget that they were men, and she an adored woman; their manners, their phrases, their tones, had all been created for that purpose. It was called “gallantry.” She found it exciting; she lived in a pleasant state of surprise, for there was always a new type of man, a new sort of elegance, a new distinction of appearance, costume, gesture, intonation; a new foreign accent, with perhaps a hint of mystery, of power, something to be awed by, perhaps even to be afraid of. Hard to be sure, when you were so young, and didn’t entirely trust anybody, not even your own mother. How often she missed the strong, capable father, who knew men and could have told her what she needed to know.
Lanny was different from all the others. He was casual, sometimes irritatingly so; he seemed to take too much for granted. Or was it that he thought too well of himself? Was he a bit conceited? She asked him, and he said it wasn’t that he valued himself so highly, he valued some of the other men so little, and didn’t care to mix up with them. Was it the remark of an honest man, or of a jealous one? She asked him about some of the other men. He answered that he didn’t know these individuals, but he knew a lot about European men in general; watch their attitude toward women—other women!
Lanny was younger than many of the suitors, but he talked the oldest. Many of the things he said were over her head; she told him so, and he explained what he meant. He didn’t make love to her; hadn’t even tried to take her hand. She wondered why. He had made love to other women. Didn’t he care for her that way? Was it because of her money? Hang the money!—so she would think, but not for long. It was pleasant having the money, and if anyone failed to treat her with the deference due to her money rank, she would resent it quickly. Her mother kept her attention firmly fixed on the fact that she was the greatest “catch” on the Riviera, perhaps in Europe.