Mr. Wagstaffe was a short, rotund gentleman in a white yachting costume, and had a white mustache decorating a fiery-red face; Lanny knew from his own experience that people dined well on yachts and that the sun of Africa was hot in April. Also he knew what it was to be inspected through a gold lorgnette, and it didn’t cow him. He knew that when you sat next to a young lady who had several millions of dollars in traction and bank stocks in her own name, you were supposed to perk up and think of striking things to say. The trouble was with Mr. Wagstaffe’s stories. He had a stock of them, and they weren’t bad stories, but everything reminded him of one and the telling left little room for other conversation at a small luncheon table.
It happened that another guest had been previously invited for this day. Her name was Madame de Bruyne, and the hostess called her Marie. Lanny remembered having met her more than once at Mrs. Emily’s country place, Les Forêts, near Paris; but that had been before the war, when Lanny was a youngster, and he couldn’t recall that he had ever talked with her. She was a Frenchwoman, slender, with dark brown eyes and hair; she had delicate, pale features, and what Lanny thought the saddest face he had ever seen upon a woman; he had seen his mother in great grief, but this was a kind of permanent, settled sorrow. She smiled faintly at the stories, whether she understood them or not. She said little—but then she had no chance, except when Mr. Wagstaffe had his mouth full of asparagus and mayonnaise. She was placed across the table from Lanny, and of course their eyes had to meet now and then. There was understanding in the woman’s, as if she knew that he had lived most of his life in France, and would be thinking: “Que les Américains sont drôles!”
After the meal it was up to Lanny to invite the heiress to view the gardens and the scenery. He did so, and they chatted. She had been to the places which the Bluebird had visited; Lanny told about his trip and she proved a good listener. To try her out he described how the ancient ruins had made him feel melancholy; her comment was that there were so many troubles in the world nowadays, she didn’t see the use of bothering about any that were so far off. Then they talked about the war; she had a brother who had been in the French ambulance service, and Lanny told her about Eddie Patterson, who had been killed in that service, and she said she would ask her brother if he had met him.
She was a pleasant enough girl, and Lanny could imagine himself pitching in and making himself agreeable and perhaps winning her; then he would be fixed for life, he wouldn’t ever have to work. But it didn’t seem to him like much fun, and the girl was entitled to better luck, though she would probably not have it. How many men were there who could come that close to several million dollars in one lump and not think it was cheap at the price? Such things subjected human nature to too great a strain!
The pair strolled in, and the aunt said they must be going, they had other friends to call on. Emily, who didn’t know how the conspiracy had progressed, asked Nellie if she wouldn’t like to stay a while; Emily would be glad to deliver her to the yacht. It was a bid; but the heiress said that she had better go with her aunt. This was the moment for Lanny to ask: “May I have the pleasure of seeing you again before you sail?” But he just wasn’t interested enough to face that gold lorgnette swinging upon him. What he did was to bid the travelers a polite bon voyage, and thank Mrs. Emily for a pleasant occasion.
Madame de Bruyne said that she was sorry to have to bother her friend to send her home. So of course it was Lanny’s duty to offer to drive her. “Oh, but I live far to the west of Cannes,” said the French lady with the sad brown eyes.
“I like to drive,” Lanny replied. It was kind of him, and Mrs. Emily knew that he was always kind—it explained why she was taking the trouble to find him a rich wife.
IV
On the way Lanny chuckled over the bouncing old gentleman who had left no time for conversation, also the heiress who had looked at the ruins of the Parthenon without feeling sad. Madame de Bruyne said that she was very young, and would learn more about sorrow as she went on. One needed suffering in order to appreciate any form of art. “But not too much,” she added; “that dulls the sensibilities.”
They were speaking French, and Lanny translated the words of Goethe about eating one’s bread with tears. “Yes,” said the woman, “and Heine gives the same testimony about his verses.”
“So she reads!” thought Lanny, and added, out of his own reading: “The people who are sensitive to beauty expect too much of life, and it doesn’t fulfill their hopes.”
“I wonder about that problem with my own children. If I tell them what lies ahead, I may fill them with fears and spoil their childhood. On the other hand, would I let them walk into a burning house without warning them?”
“I think it depends on the children,” said Lanny. “I had plenty of warnings of all sorts, but I don’t know that they worried me. Generally they weren’t real to me. We have to feel the heat before we know what fire is.”
They continued exchanging ideas about life, and when they came to the little villa where Madame de Bruyne lived, she asked: “Wouldn’t you like to come in for a while?”
Lanny thought he would, and sat in a modest drawingroom—it was the home of her aunt, she explained. She offered him something to drink, but he said he didn’t take it, and she asked with a smile: “Did somebody warn you?” He explained that his father had done that; also he had watched people who drank. He didn’t need stimulants, because he was happy anyhow.
“I’ve always remarked that about you,” said the woman.
“I’m surprised to hear you ever noticed me,” he replied.
“Oh, women notice personal details. I thought I’d like my two boys to have natures as sunny as yours. How have you managed to stay so, all through six dreadful years?”
He told her various things about his life. He mentioned the two friends he had met learning to dance “Dalcroze,” one an English boy and the other a Swiss. “You are fortunate to have kept your friends,” she said. “My brother was killed, and two cousins, my childhood playmates.”
He spoke of Marcel. She knew that story; she knew Beauty and had seen the painting, Sister of Mercy, in the Paris salon. It was as if she had been sitting up on a cloud somewhere watching Lanny’s life. He told her about his strange experience in his father’s home in Connecticut, when a ghost or something of Rick had appeared in his bedroom at dawn, just as Rick crashed and lay near death in Picardy. The story affected her greatly; her lips trembled and she said: “I had the same sort of experience with my brother; but he died. I have never told about it, because it was so frightening, and I didn’t know what to make of it.”
Said Lanny: “My great-great-uncle in Connecticut, a Unitarian minister, believed that there is a universal consciousness, and that we are part of it, in some way that we do not understand yet.”
They were talking about the deepest problems of the soul. Did Lanny believe that the dead still live? He told her that he didn’t know what he believed; he had never been taught anything about religion, and hadn’t been able to work it out for himself.
“I was brought up a Catholic,” said Madame de Bruyne. “I was devout when I was a girl, but for several years the conviction has been coming over me that I don’t really believe the things I have been taught. At first I was frightened by this realization: it seemed wicked, and I thought that God would punish me—but now I seem to have grown hardened to the idea. I cannot believe what seems to me unreasonable, even if I am damned for it.”
“Whatever it is that gave us our reason doubtless intended us to use it,” said Lanny.
“I’ve never had anybody say that to me,” declared the woman. It sounded naive, and Lanny was flattered to be taken as a spiritual adviser to so mature a person. He told her about Emerson, who had helped to give him the concept of spiritual freedom. She answered that Emerson was a mere name to her, and this pleased Lanny. He had met society ladies who would pretend to have read any book you mentioned; but when this one didn’t know something she aske
d about it and listened to what you said.
Lanny saw that there was a piano in the room, and asked if she played. He had told her how hard he worked at it, and she invited him to play for her. He played several things, and she knew what they were; her comments pleased him. It seemed that he had never met anyone with whom he shared such quick understandings; their ideas fitted together like mortised joints in a well-built house. When he played happy music she forgot her grief, and their spirits danced together over flower-strewn meadows. When he played MacDowell’s An Old Trysting Place, her eyes were misty, and she did not have to talk. Lanny thought: “I have found a friend!”
V
They forgot all about time, and he was still playing when her aunt came in. Lanny was introduced to a wizened but agreeable old lady, who insisted upon serving tea for them. Over the ceremony Madame de Bruyne told about the capitalist from Philadelphia and his stories. “What was so funny about the horse-race?” she asked, and Lanny tried to explain American humor. He didn’t mention that he had been expected to marry the pale-eyed heiress, but doubtless Madame de Bruyne guessed that. Before he left, he asked: “May I come again?” She replied: “We two old women are often lonely.”
When Lanny got home, there was another “old woman” waiting eagerly to know what had happened, and sure that he must have made a conquest, having stayed so long. Beauty in her fancy had been dwelling in marble halls across the sea, and she clamored for the full story. Men are frequently unsatisfactory under such circumstances: they neglect to tell the things that women want to know, and they have to be plied with questions that bore them—“What was she like?” and “What did she say?” and “Was that all you could find to talk about? What have you been doing all afternoon?”
“I talked with Mrs. Emily for a while,” he said, and, strictly speaking, this was true, though the “while” had been short.
“Was anybody else there?” persisted Beauty.
“A Madame de Bruyne.”
“Marie de Bruyne? What on earth did Emily want her for?”
“I think she had been invited previously.”
“And what did she have to say?”
“She doesn’t talk much. She’s one of the saddest-looking women I ever saw. She’s grieving over a brother that she lost in the war.”
“She has more than that to worry about,” remarked Beauty.
“What else?”
“Emily says her husband is one of those elderly men who have to have virgins.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Lanny, shocked.
“And she isn’t a virgin,” added Beauty, with unnecessary emphasis.
“She told me she has two boys in school.”
“You had a talk with her?”
“I drove her home, and played the piano for her. I met her aunt, Madame Scelles.”
“She’s the widow of a professor at the Sorbonne.”
“I knew they were cultivated people,” said Lanny. “They have very refined manners.”
“For heaven’s sake be careful!” exclaimed the mother. “There’s nothing more dangerous than an unhappily married woman. Remember, she’s as old as your mother.”
Lanny chuckled. “As old as my mother admits!”
VI
Lanny had said that young people don’t take advice; and right away he set out to prove it. He inquired in the bookstores and found a copy of his much-loved Emerson and sent it to Madame de Bruyne by messenger. A couple of days later he called at teatime, and found his new friend at home; also he found that she had read the book. There are doubtless many women of the world who, when you make them a present of a book, sit down and read it straight through; but this was the first time Lanny had had that experience, and it seemed extraordinary to him. They discussed the Concord philosopher’s abstruse and elevated ideas; they reason’d high of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, fix’d fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute; and found no end, in wand’ring mazes lost.
Lanny played music, and the widow of the Sorbonne professor came in and listened, and her comments indicated that she also had a cultivated taste. They invited him to supper, a frugal and unfashionable meal which the old lady herself put on the table; they had a maid only in the morning, it appeared. Gradually Lanny began to discover the situation in this household; Madame de Bruyne had left the rich husband who had to have virgins, and was staying with the sister of her mother long since deceased. They were interested in a school where the orphans of French soldiers were cared for, and went there sometimes to help. Madame de Bruyne was avoiding social life, and spent most of her time at home; but she would always be glad to see Lanny, and very soon he came to feel at home in this household, and would stay for lunch or supper, as they called their informal meals.
A worrisome situation for Beauty Budd! Her darling, her super-eligible offspring, was missing at odd hours, and contented himself with saying: “I was over at Madame de Bruyne’s.” If she asked: “What were you doing?” he would say: “Playing Debussy”; or maybe it would be Chabrier, or César Franck, or de Falla—they were all a blur to Beauty. Or perhaps he would say: “We were reading Racine”—or it might be Rolland or Maeterlinck. She was sure that this couldn’t go on—sooner or later there would be an explosion, dreadful to think of. But what could she say—she who kept a young lover on the place, and in a house which Lanny had constructed for the purpose! Was this a most ingenious form of punishment, devised by some angry god or devil who spied upon the sex-life of the social elite? How different our own actions appear when we see them committed by others—and especially by one for whom we have been planning the great wedding of the season, with half a dozen bridesmaids in pink duchesse satin and white hats, and carrying armfuls of roses to match the satin!
VII
She couldn’t refrain from speaking. She came to his room, and shut the door portentously, and sat by him and gazed into his eyes. “Lanny, tell me honestly!”
“What, dear?”
“Are you falling in love with Marie de Bruyne?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he exclaimed. “She’s a good sport, and a most intelligent woman. I like to talk to her.”
“But, Lanny—it’s playing with fire! A man and a woman can’t—”
“Forget it,” he said. “She’s a second mother to me.”
“But isn’t one enough?”
“You’re the dearest that ever was in the world; but you haven’t read the books that I’m reading, and you don’t play the music I play—”
“I could, Lanny, if you really wanted me to.”
“Bless your heart! It would be hard work, and it would make you nervous and maybe spoil your complexion. Let me have an auxiliary mother, and don’t be jealous.”
“It’s not jealousy, Lanny! I’m thinking about your whole future.”
“I assure you there’s nothing to worry about,” he insisted. “She’s a really honest woman—and they’re scarce, as you know.”
“But, Lanny, it’s not natural. You’ll find you’re getting involved with her.”
“I hadn’t thought about it, old girl; but if you insist, I’ll ask her about it.” There was a grin on his face.
But Beauty couldn’t see any fun. “For God’s sake, no!” she exclaimed.
She dropped the subject; but, oh, how she hated that creature, that shrewd, designing bundle of tricks! “Honest,” indeed! The devil had made all women! This one knew that Lanny was naive and sympathetic, so she pretended to be full of “sorrow”! “Hell!” thought Beauty. “As if I haven’t had sorrow enough! But I smile, I make myself agreeable; I don’t go around mooning and sighing, reading poetry books and quoting them while I make my eyelids tremble! My God, what fools men are!”
VIII
The anxious mother, meaning so well, had struck a spark in a tinder-box. Lanny went off and thought it over. Could it really be true that he was falling in love with Marie de Bruyne? What would it be like to love her? Right away, of course, nature began to tell him: a warm feeling
stole over him, a delicious feeling, of which she was part and parcel—her goodness and kindness, as well as her beauty, which he hadn’t noticed at first, but which had grown on him. He decided that if he didn’t love her, he could easily learn to; and why not?
It was such an intriguing idea that he couldn’t resist talking it over with her. Her reaction to it would be fascinating; he would know her better for it. He waited until the hour when the old lady usually was at the school; Marie didn’t go so often—perhaps because she preferred the company of Lanny to that of orphan children.
They sat alone in the small drawing-room; Lanny in a large soft chair, leaning forward on his elbows. “See here, Marie,” he said. “I’ve an interesting idea. I am wondering if you and I mightn’t be falling in love.”
“Oh, Lanny!” she cried; he saw that she was shocked.
“Hadn’t you thought of it?”
Her eyes dropped. “Yes,” she whispered. “I thought of it, but I hoped you wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“We have such a pleasant friendship.”
“Of course. But mightn’t we be friends and lovers too? That might be twice as pleasant.”
“It wouldn’t, Lanny—it would ruin it all.”
“For heaven’s sake, why?”
“You can’t understand—”
“I’d like to try. Will you answer me a few questions, fairly and squarely?”
“All right.” Her voice was faint, as if she knew the questions would be painful.
“Are you the least bit in love with your husband?”
“No.”
“Have you been living with him as his wife?”
“Not for a long time.”
“Do you feel that you owe him any moral obligation?”
“It’s not that, Lanny.”
“Then what can it be?”