XII
But the greatest experience of Parsifal Dingle in England’s green and pleasant land took place in the rear parlor of an obscure lodging-house in Bloomsbury, to which Divine Guidance had seen fit to lead him. It wasn’t the first time he had attended a spiritualist seance, but it was the first time that the gates of the future life had swung open for him personally. A few lower middles, small tradesmen and such, sat in a circle, holding one another’s hands in the dark, while a stoutish lady medium went into a trance, and an illuminated trumpet flew about over their heads, and various voices came from it—those of William Ewart Gladstone, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Pocahontas, each in turn describing the state of bliss in which they lived on the other side. That they all spoke with a Cockney accent troubled nobody, because the medium had explained that the spirits of the departed would be using her vocal cords, and naturally would speak as she spoke.
Missouri wasn’t far away from Mr. Dingle’s place of origin, and he remained in a dubious state of mind—until suddenly the trumpet stopped close to his ear, and the same Cockney voice said: “This is your brother Josephus.” The gentleman from Iowa could not help giving a start, because Josephus was certainly an unlikely name for a lady medium in Bloomsbury to think of—just as it had been an unlikely name for Parsifal’s mother to think of when her second son was born. She had assumed that it was a Bible name, and had learned her mistake too late. The bearer of this odd name had “passed over” in youth, and now claimed to be hovering over his older brother, and for identification he mentioned the pump with the broken handle which had stood on the back porch of their home. This caused perspiration to stand out on the visitor’s forehead; and when the spirit declared that Aunt Jane and Cousin Roger were by his side, Lanny’s stepfather decided that a new stage in his mental progress had begun.
He went and told Beauty about it, and prayed that she might be well disposed toward his words; and again the prayer could not be resisted. Beauty went, and was troubled because the place was so “common,” also the people; but her husband explained that it was people of much the same class whom Jesus had picked out for his disciples, and to whom he had appeared at Emmaus. So Beauty listened submissively; and when the, trumpet stopped over her head and the voice said: “This is Marcel,” and called her “Chérie” half a dozen times, she felt a stirring as if every hair of her body was moving. When the voice said: “You have put my little blue cap away on a shelf in the closet,” Beauty began to sob audibly, and came near to breaking up the show.
She went out from that seance in a state of great confusion. For right away treasonable doubts began to stir within her. She was well known as the former wife of Marcel Detaze, whose forthcoming one-man exhibition was being discussed in the newspapers. That a French painter should have an old blue cap, and that his widow, getting married again, should have put it away on a closet shelf—well, it was at least conceivable that somebody might have made such guesses. She had been warned that there was a widespread circle of fraudulent mediums who gathered data and assisted one another. Such are the problems which a lady of fashion prepares for her mind when she starts investigating occult phenomena!
Beauty told her friends about it, and learned that she and her husband were not alone in carrying on such researches. The great city was full of mediums of all sorts—and not all in cheap lodging-houses, but many established in the most fashionable places. It was one of the striking results of the great war; so many wanted to hear the voices of their lost loved ones. There were hordes of soothsayers, clairvoyants, and psychometrists, seers of crystal balls, readers of palms and cards and teacups. They would tell you that you were about to receive a letter, and that a dark man was coming into your life; sometimes these things happened and sometimes they didn’t, but the former cases made the greater impression on your mind. As for Mr. Dingle, how could anybody ever persuade him that a medium could have found out that there had been a pump with a broken handle on the back porch of his boyhood home in far-off Iowa?
34
To Him Who Hath
I
Paris was called a city of women, while London was a city of men; not chic, but always in need of housecleaning. It made no fuss over you, but let you go your own way; it was dignified, even austere, and if you wanted anything improper, you had to know where to look for it. In this moral man’s town you didn’t pay the art critics to tell the public about what you had for sale; you managed it in the respectable way, which was to pay for large but conservatively worded advertisements in the papers. Seeing these, the critics would know that the work of Detaze was significant.
Zoltan understood such matters; he knew the writers, the editors, the dealers, and, more important yet, the buyers. He knew how to place the interesting facts about Detaze where they would get publicity; he knew who would be impressed by the prices which had been paid at Christie’s, and who by the fact that there was a work by this painter in the Luxembourg. Beauty pulled wires shamelessly, and Margy helped, and likewise Sophie, who came with her new husband for the season. Very elegant show rooms were engaged, and Jerry Pendleton saw to the packing of the paintings at Bienvenu and drove the truck himself; it was off season for the tourist trade, and his little wife could attend to the office.
Hansi and Bess arrived from New York, with stories about the success of a concert tour, including a recital in Newcastle and a reception at Esther Budd’s home. Genius had won out over Jewishness; Hansi was a lion, and his roars had shaken the town, and Mumsy had been all smiles over her daughter’s happiness. Bess was really sticking to her piano, and Hansi thought that with a couple of years more she might be able to serve as his accompanist. “But, dear, aren’t you going to have any babies?” Esther had asked. The daughter had wanted to say: “I am afraid they might have short legs!”—but that would have been mean.
Robbie had told the family about the Irma Barnes fiasco, and Bess thought it was a tragedy that Lanny couldn’t find a proper wife. Wouldn’t he let her take up the matter? “Where would you look for one?” he inquired, and she answered: “Not among the smart people of this town, or on the Riviera.” That was the trouble—Lanny didn’t go where there were decent, hard-working girls who would appreciate what he had to offer. These ultra ladies who drank like whales and smoked like volcanoes in eruption were just looking for new thrills, and when they were tired of Lanny it would be off again, gone again. A young Red was telling him!
Hansi had a bright idea, not for a wife, but for a holiday, to divert Lanny’s mind. Hansi was always scheming to get his father away from business for the summer months. If they stayed at their summer place on the Wannsee there were always telephone calls and telegrams, putting problems and cares on Johannes’s mind; but when he got off on the Bessie Budd, his subordinates had to do the worrying, and in the end everything came out just as well. The family had been planning a short cruise by themselves—since it was so plain that the fashionable folk didn’t like the young Robin Redbreasts. But why wouldn’t Lanny come, and just Beauty and her husband? If there was to be a Detaze show in New York in October, why not cruise by the northern route and down the coast of Labrador and Nova Scotia? Freddi was going to be married, and it would be a honeymoon for him. Maybe Bess could think of some nice girl to bring along, and Lanny could play duets with her even if he didn’t want to make love to her. Lanny consulted Beauty, and said they would go with pleasure; but leave out the girl, he’d play the duets with Bess. Hansi sent a telegram to his father, telling this good news; then he and Bess left for Amsterdam, where Hansi was to give a recital.
II
When Lanny had been in London as a little boy, before the World War, watching his young mother dressing for parties and going off with fashionable gentlemen such as Harry Murchison, he had thought that the acme of all delights would be to grow up and put on a white tie and tails and take that lovely creature to dances. Now he had the opportunity, and used it. Margy gave a grand ball at the Savoy, and the blond Beauty, who would never cea
se to think that she was a debutante, went with her son in just as much excitement as if he had been her first beau; she really looked as lovely as ever, for she had been dieting and dancing off her embonpoint, and the real debutantes were using so much makeup that they made it easier for matrons and grandmothers.
Also Lanny took her to the sporting events: to Epsom Downs to see the great race, which was called the “Mystery Derby” that year, because nobody could guess the winner; also to Ranelagh for polo, and to the opera at Covent Garden, where Rosa Ponselle was singing. Nothing could have been more chaste and proper, and society was amused at these evidences of reform on the part of a pair who hadn’t been exactly conventional in the past. There was a husband in the background, who retired to his chamber and communed with God. Was it his prayers that accounted for the transformation? Or was it that the American heiress had put Lanny’s nose out of joint, by running off and getting engaged to an Italian duca? By the way, did you see the report that their engagement was shortly to be announced? Poor Lanny, what a come-down, to have to take to selling pictures again! But they say that fellow Detaze is bringing tremendous prices. Is he dead, or what?
Lanny played his part acceptably in this world of gaiety and gossip. When the bright young debs asked him sly questions about heiresses he told them that his heart was broken and would they help to heal it? “Is this a proposal, sir?” they would ask, and he would say: “Would you like it to be?” So they would spar and play, like a couple of kittens exercising their clawing apparatus. The kittens might grow up to be tigers, or fairly useful domestic cats—it took an expert to tell them apart. Lanny was something of an expert; but perhaps he was fastidious, he wanted more than nature provided in one female organism. Or was it that his imagination had been dazzled by Irma Barnes? He thought of her a great deal, and it seems to be one of the weaknesses of our humanity that we appreciate something only after we have lost it.
He didn’t find the “society” game as delightful as he had imagined it fifteen years ago. For one thing, his conscience was continually troubled. Rick came to town, and talked about his rejected manuscript, so full of distressing facts about unemployment; about conditions in Wales and the Tyneside, where whole communities were without a single man who had steady employment. Ships were burning oil, so it appeared that Britain’s coal trade was slowly dying. Steel was depressed, because the Americàns had new “straightline” processes, and British employers couldn’t be induced to reorganize the industry. Here in London, amid all the display of pomp and luxury, one saw the old sights of misery and despair, and knew that for every case exhibited in public there were a thousand hidden behind the dingy walls of Britain’s ancient slums.
How could anyone be happy putting on fancy clothes and playing about like children in such a world? But they did; it was the “season,” and the rout had never been so noisy. There really seemed to be some law that the more poverty there was for the poor, the more riches for the rich; and how they did spend it, what fantasticalities they contrived! Just now the ladies were wearing knee-length skirts on the street, but in the drawing-rooms they had long tails and streamers and whatnot touching the floor. Margy, Dowager Countess Eversham-Watson, made her appearance in a teagown of blue-and-gold georgette with a long spreading train having bold futurist designs and completely bordered with ostrich feathers. Sophie, former Baroness de la Tourette, went to the races wearing a coat trimmed with mink-tails: three mink-tails around each cuff, a wide band of mink-tails dangling from either side of her waist, and an extraordinary collar made by laying thirty mink-tails not end to end, but side by side, as a baker might place ladyfingers in a tray. In all, sixty minks had died to make an Ascot holiday for this hardware lady from Cincinnati.
Naturally, in order to move in company such as this, Lanny Budd had to put some tailors at work in a hurry. The old things that he had brought in his car were out of the question. Gentlemen’s morning coats had only one button this season, and if you had two or three, you declassed yourself at once. Gentlemen’s coats had huge lapels, and they wore wide, bulgy ties, and rather voluminous trousers. Their top-hats were slightly less tall and more flaring. What would become of the tailoring trades if gentlemen failed to do themselves properly?
III
Lanny did as the ladies urged, because they insisted that somewhere in this rout he was going to find the girl of his dreams. Would he catch a glimpse of some gentle, shy young thing hovering on the outskirts and recognize her as a kindred spirit, wishing to escape? “Somewhere there must be one made for this soul to move it!” With the poet’s lines in his ears he went from place to place, wherever his mother asked to be escorted. He watched and she watched; she saw some that pleased her, but he found faults.
Beauty heard a rumor about a costume party that was to take place on board a ship at one of the docks, very mysterious and recherché. It was called “A Voyage to the Island of Cythera,” and as this island had been devoted to the worship of Aphrodite, the name was suggestive to say the least. The engraved invitations didn’t say who was giving the party, but it was observed that only the most exclusive members of society had received them; therefore it must be important, and the newspapers were full of speculation. On the back of the invitations was a figure in an elaborate Watteau costume, telling you what to wear and informing you that you would be admitted only upon presentation of the card. Since you didn’t know who was giving the party, you couldn’t wangle permission to bring your friends. People found it provoking, and curiosity mounted to a high pitch.
Margy managed to solve the mystery, but only under solemn pledge of secrecy. She got a card for Lanny Budd and lady—and of course that lady would be his darling mother. He had himself fitted in the garb of a lute-player, while Beauty appeared as one of Marie Antoinette’s dairymaids—the one who had the shortest skirt and the lowest-cut corsage. At ten in the evening Margy’s limousine delivered them at Charing Cross Pier on the river Thames. The dark-eyed little whisky lady from Kentucky was a charming Columbine, and the widower gentleman from South Africa who was wooing her at the moment was appropriate as Pierrot. The four of them went on board an elaborately decorated brig, and found themselves among a troop of eighteenth-century ladies with powdered hair and gentlemen with perukes and swords, wandering about gazing at decorations which included Gobelin tapestries, and divans and chaises-longues covered with magnificent silks from China and Japan. The deck of the vessel had been turned into a series of bowers and nooks, all discreetly dark; while below was a great compartment with a bar at one end, having the contents of a champagne warehouse on top and behind and under it. At the other end was a jazz band with players in eighteenth-century costumes; this was certainly a novelty, and would have been a greater one if it could have been presented at the court of Louis le Bien-Aimé!
The Voyage to the Island of Cythera proved to be an imaginary one. The vessel stayed moored to the pier, and the guests danced, drank the free champagne, rested in the quiet nooks. As night turned into morning, they became hilarious, and the sights were not so different from those of Paris; except that nowhere else had Lanny ever seen half-drunken gentlemen climbing the masts of a ship and diving into the water from the yard-arms! The tide carried them swiftly, but they landed at other piers, walked back, and came in dripping to dance some more. In the small hours two in succession tried to lure Marie Antoinette’s dairymaid to one of the divans, and judging by the way they handled her they must have thought she was the real thing. Rather than risk a fight, Lanny took his too attractive mother home. Later they learned from Margy that this affair, attended by the most prominent folk of London, had been an advertising stunt devised by an interior-decorating concern. Seeing that they had all the divans, the Gobelins and silks and satins, it had cost them only a thousand pounds, and they had had all London talking about it for two or three weeks.
IV
The Detaze exhibition opened, and the fashionable crowds came, just as they had come in Paris. Zoltan was on hand, elegant
and affable as always. Lanny was there to help him, and Beauty to play the queen. The papers said all the kind things which Marcel’s work deserved, and the high prices did not alarm the wealthy art patrons. A new assistant at this show was Marceline, now eleven; growing fast, and rather “leggy,” but with sweet features and perfect manners, a miniature little charmeuse. It was her debut as her father’s daughter, and she was bursting with happy pride at the attention given to his work. She had no memory of him, but his sad story was a part of her being, and she could talk about any one of the paintings with as much sophistication as Zoltan himself—in fact, his very phrases.
Nina brought her children up to town to see this show. They, too, had heard all the talk and knew the phrases—Detaze was a family affair. Little Alfy, two months older than Marceline, with dark eyes and dark wavy hair like his father’s, talked with his father’s sophistication about “representational art” and “symphonic color effects.” These children, destined for each other by family arrangement, maintained a tension which was practice for matrimony. Alfy was the haughty, impervious male; Marceline was learning how to tease him, and this one-man show was her great opportunity. It was her father, not his, who was being glorified; and had not Rick been heard many times to say that the critic must hold himself subordinate to the creator? This controversy would be continued all summer, for Marceline was going to be a guest at The Reaches while her mother was visiting among the Eskimos.