There had been family councils and international negotiations concerning a name for this multimillionaire heiress. Many claims had been entered, and if they had all been granted, the little one would have been loaded down after the fashion of European royalty. Manifestly, it wouldn’t do to give her the name Beauty; that was something that had to be earned—and suppose she failed to meet the test? Beauty’s real name, Mabel, she didn’t like—so that was out. Irma’s own claims she renounced in favor of her mother, to whom it would mean so much. Irma was going to live most of her life in Europe, because that was what Lanny wanted; so should they not give a pining dowager in a Long Island palace whatever solace she could derive from having her name carried on? The Barnes clan also was entitled to consideration, having furnished the money. “Frances Barnes Budd” was a name not hard to say; but never, never was it to be “Fanny”! The Queen Mother of Shore Acres was helpless to understand how her once lovely name was being put to such base uses in these modern days.
II
Irma was reclining in the patio, enjoying the delight of holding the naked mite in her arms while it absorbed the sunshine of the Midi for a measured three minutes. Lanny came in, saying: “Uncle Jesse is over at the villa. Do you want to meet him?”
“Do you think I should?”
“You surely don’t have to if you don’t feel like it.”
“Won’t his feelings be hurt?”
“He’s used to that.” Lanny said it with a grin.
Irma had heard no little talk about this “Red sheep” of her mother-in-law’s family. At first her curiosity hadn’t been aroused, for she didn’t take political questions to heart, and while she had no doubt that Communists were dreadful people, still, if that was what Jesse Blackless believed, he had to say it. Threats to the social order had never been real to Irma—at least not up to the time of the panic. During that convulsion she had heard many strange ideas discussed, and had begun to wonder about them. Now she said: “If you and your mother see him, I ought to see him too.”
“Don’t let him corrupt you,” replied the husband, grinning again. He got fun out of arguing with his Red uncle, and used him for teasing other people.
Lanny went over to the villa and came back with a tall, odd-looking man, having an almost entirely bald head fairly baked by the sun—for he went about most of the time without a hat. He was dressed carelessly, as became a painter, with sandals, white duck trousers, and a shirt open at the throat. His face had many wrinkles, which he increased when he smiled in his peculiar twisted way; he was given to that kind of humor which consists in saying something different from what you mean, and which assumes understanding on the part of other people which they do not always possess. Jesse Blackless was ill-satisfied with the world in which he lived, and found his pleasure in reducing it to absurdity.
“Well, so this is Irma!” he said, looking down at her. She had covered up her bosom with the orange-colored peignoir of Chinese silk which she was wearing. Her vivid brunette color, which had come back quickly, should have pleased a painter; but Uncle Jesse painted only street urchins and poor beggar folk and workingmen with signs of hard toil on them.
“And this is the baby!” he said, peering into the well-shaded bassinet. He didn’t offer any forbidden intimacies, but instead remarked: “Watch out for her—she’d be worth a lot to kidnapers.” A sufficiently horrid idea.
The visitor seated himself in a canvas chair and stretched his long legs. His glance wandered from the young wife to the young husband and back again, and he said: “You made a lucky choice, Irma. A lot of people have tried to ruin him, but they haven’t succeeded.”
It was the first time Lanny had ever known his Red uncle to pay anybody a compliment, and he valued it accordingly. Irma thanked the speaker, adding that she was sure his judgment was good.
“I know,” declared the painter, “because I tried to ruin him myself.”
“Have you given up hope?”
“There’d be no use in trying now, since he’s married to you. I am a believer in economic determinism.”
Lanny explained: “Uncle Jesse thinks he believes that everybody’s behavior is conditioned by the state of his pocketbook. But he’s a living refutation of his own theory. If he followed his pocketbook, he’d be painting portraits of the idle rich here on this coast, whereas he’s probably been meeting with a group of revolutionary conspirators somewhere in the slums of Cannes.”
“I’m a freak,” said Uncle Jesse. “Nature produces only a few of these, and any statement of social causes has to be based upon the behavior of the mass.”
So this pair took to arguing. Irma listened, but most of her thoughts were occupied with the personality of the man. What was he really like? Was he as bitter and harsh as he sounded, or was this only a mask with which he covered his feelings? What was it that had hurt him and made him so out of humor with his own kind of people?
III
The discussion lasted quite a while. They both seemed to enjoy it, even though they said sarcastic things, each about the other. The French word for abuse is “injures,” which also means injuries, but no hard saying appeared to injure either of these men. Apparently they had heard it all before. Lanny’s favorite remark was that his uncle was a phonograph; he put on a record and it ground out the old dependable tune. There was one called “dialectical materialism” and another called “proletarian dictatorship”—long words which meant nothing to Irma. “He wants to take my money and divide it up among the poor,” she thought. “How far would it go, and how long would it take them to get rid of it?” She had heard her father say this, and it sounded convincing.
They talked a great deal about what was happening in Russia. Irma had been a child of nine at the time of the revolution, but she had heard about it since, and here on the Riviera she had met Russians who had escaped from the dreadful Bolsheviks, sometimes with nothing but what they had on. You would be told that the handsome and distinguished-looking head waiter in a café was a former Russian baron; that a night-club dancer was the daughter of a one-time landowner. Did Uncle Jesse want things like that to happen in France and the United States? Irma tried to tell herself that he didn’t really mean it; but no, he was a determined man, and there often came a grim look on his face; you could imagine him willing to shoot people who stood in his way. Irma knew that the Paris police had “detained” him a couple of times, and that he had defied them. Apparently he was ready to pay whatever price his revolution cost.
Presently he revealed the fact that he was taking steps to become a citizen of France. He had lived in the country for thirty-five years without ever bothering; but now it appeared that “the party” wanted him to run for the Chamber of Deputies. He had made himself a reputation as an orator. Said Lanny: “They want him to put on his phonograph records for all France.”
Irma, who was money-conscious, thought at once: “He’s come to get us to put up for his campaign.” Lanny didn’t have much money since his father had got caught in the slump. Irma resolved: “I won’t help him. I don’t approve of it.” She had discovered the power of her money during the Wall Street crisis, and was learning to enjoy it.
But then another point of view occurred to her. Maybe it would be a distinguished thing to have a relative in the Chamber, even if he was a Communist! She wasn’t sure about this, and wished she knew more about political affairs. Now and then she had that thought about various branches of knowledge, and would resolve to find out; but then she would forget because it was too much trouble. Just now they had told her that she musn’t get excited about anything, because excitement would spoil her milk. A nuisance, turning yourself into a cow! But it was pleasant enough here in the sunshine, being entertained with novel ideas.
Lanny apparently agreed with his uncle that what the Russians were doing was important—for them. The dispute was over the question whether the same thing was going to happen in France and England and America. Lanny maintained that these countries, being “d
emocracies,” could bring about the changes peaceably. That was his way; he didn’t want to hurt anybody, but to discuss ideas politely and let the best ideas win. However, Uncle Jesse kept insisting that Lanny and his Socialist friends were aiding the capitalists by fooling the workers, luring them with false hopes, keeping them contented with a political system which the capitalists had bought and paid for. Lanny, on the other hand, argued that it was the Reds who were betraying the workers, frightening the middle classes by violent threats and driving them into the camp of the reactionaries.
So it went, and the young wife listened without getting excited. Marriage was a strange adventure; you let yourself in for a lot of things you couldn’t have foreseen. These two most eccentric families, the Budds and the Blacklesses! Irma’s own family consisted of Wall Street people. They bought and sold securities and made fortunes or lost them, and that seemed a conventional and respectable kind of life; but now she had been taken to a household full of Reds and Pinks of all shades, and spiritualist mediums and religious healers, munitions makers and Jewish Schieber, musicians and painters and art dealers—you never knew when you opened your eyes in the morning what strange new creatures you were going to encounter before night. Even Lanny, who was so dear and sweet, and with whom Irma had entered into the closest of all intimacies, even he became suddenly a stranger when he got stirred up and began pouring out his schemes for making the world over—schemes which clearly involved his giving up his own property, and Irma’s giving up hers, and wiping out the hereditary rights of the long-awaited and closely guarded Frances Barnes Budd!
IV
Uncle Jesse stayed to lunch, then went his way; and after the nap which the doctor had prescribed for the nursing mother, Irma enjoyed the society of her stepfather-in-law—if there is a name for this odd relationship. Mr. Parsifal Dingle, Beauty’s new husband, came over from the villa to call on the baby. Irma knew him well, for they had spent the past summer on a yacht; he was a religious mystic, and certainly restful after the Reds and the Pinks. He never argued, and as a rule didn’t talk unless you began a conversation; he was interested in things going on in his own soul, and while he was glad to tell about them, you had to ask. He would sit by the bassinet and gaze at the infant, and there would come a blissful look on his round cherubic face; you would think there were two infants, and that their souls must be completely in tune.
The man of God would close his eyes, and be silent for a while, and Irma wouldn’t interrupt him, knowing that he was giving little Frances a “treatment.” It was a sort of prayer with which he filled his mind, and he was quite sure that it affected the mind of the little one. Irma wasn’t sure, but she knew it couldn’t do any harm, for there was nothing except good in the mind of this gentle healer. He seemed a bit uncanny while sitting with Madame Zyszynski, the Polish medium, in one of her trances; conversing in the most matter-of-fact way with the alleged Indian spirit. “Tecumseh,” as he called himself, was whimsical and self-willed, and would tell something or refuse to tell, according to whether or not you were respectful to him and whether or not the sun was shining in the spirit world. Gradually Irma had got used to it all, for the spirits didn’t do any harm, and quite certainly Mr. Dingle didn’t; on the contrary, if you felt sick he would cure you. He had cured several members of the Bienvenu household, and it might be extremely convenient in an emergency.
Such were Irma’s reflections during the visits. She would ask him questions and let him talk, and it would be like going to church. Irma found it agreeable to talk about loving everybody, and thought that it might do some people a lot of good; they showed the need of it in their conversation, the traces they revealed of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Mr. Dingle wanted to change the world, just as much as any Bolshevik, but he had begun with himself, and that seemed to Irma a fine idea; it didn’t threaten the Barnes fortune or the future of its heiress. The healer would read his mystical books, and magazines of what he called “New Thought,” and then he would wander about the garden, looking at the flowers and the birds, and perhaps giving them a treatment—for they too had life in them and were products of love. Bienvenu appeared to contain everything that Mr. Dingle needed, and he rarely went off the estate unless someone invited him.
The strangest whim of fate, that the worldly Beauty Budd should have chosen this man of God to accompany her on the downhill of life! All her friends laughed over it, and were bored to death with her efforts to use the language of “spirituality.” Certainly it hadn’t kept her from working like the devil to land the season’s greatest “catch” for her son; nor did it keep her from exulting brazenly in her triumph. Beauty’s religious talk no more than Lanny’s Socialist talk was causing them to take steps to distribute any large share of Irma’s unearned increment. On the contrary, they had stopped giving elaborate parties at Bienvenu, which was hard on everybody on the Cap d’Antibes—the tradesmen, the servants, the musicians, the couturiers, all who catered to the rich. It was hard on the society folk, who had been so scared by the panic and the talk of hard times on the way. Surely somebody ought to set an example of courage and enterprise—and who could have done it better than a glamour girl with a whole bank-vault full of “blue chip” stocks and bonds? What was going to become of smart society if its prime favorites began turning their estates into dairy farms and themselves into stud cattle?
V
There came a telegram from Berlin: “Yacht due at Cannes we are leaving by train tonight engage hotel accommodations. Bess.”
Of course Lanny wouldn’t follow those last instructions. When friends are taking you for a cruise and paying all your expenses for several months, you don’t let them go to a hotel even for a couple of days. There was the Lodge, a third house on the estate; it had been vacant all winter, and now would be opened and freshly aired and dusted. Irma’s secretary, Miss Featherstone, had been established as a sort of female major-domo and took charge of such operations. The expected guests would have their meals with Irma and Lanny, and “Feathers” would consult with the cook and see to the ordering of supplies. Everything would run as smoothly as water down a mill-race; Irma would continue to lie in the sunshine, read magazines, listen to Lanny play the piano, and nurse Baby Frances when one of the maids brought her.
Lanny telephoned his old friend Emily Chattersworth, who took care of the cultural activities of this part of the Riviera. Her drawing-room was much larger than any at Bienvenu, and people were used to coming there whenever a celebrity was available. Hansi Robin always played for her, and the fashionable folk who cared for music and the musical folk who were socially acceptable would be invited to Sept Chênes for a treat. Emily would send Hansi a check, and he would endorse it over to be used for the workers’ educational project which was Lanny’s special hobby.
Just before sundown of that day Lanny and Irma sat on the loggia of their home, which looked out over the Golfe Juan, and watched the trim white Bessie Budd glide into the harbor of Cannes. They knew her a long way off, for she had been their home during the previous summer, and Lanny had taken two other cruises in her. With a pair of field-glasses they could recognize Captain Moeller, who had had a chance to marry them but had funked it. They could almost imagine they heard his large Prussian voice when it was time to slow down for passing the breakwater.
Next morning but one, Lanny drove into the city, with his little half-sister Marceline at his side and Irma’s chauffeur following with another car. The long blue express rolled in and delivered five of their closest friends, plus a secretary and a nursemaid in a uniform and cap with blue streamers, carrying an infant in arms. It was on account of this last that the cruise was being taken so early in the year; the two lactant mothers would combine their dairy farms, put them on shipboard, and transport them to delightful places of this great inland sea, famed in story.
Just prior to the World War, Lanny Budd, a small boy traveling on a train, had met a Jewish salesman of electrical gadgets; they had liked each other
, and the stranger had given Lanny his card. This small object had lain in a bureau drawer; and if, later on, Lanny hadn’t happened to be rummaging in that drawer, how much would have been different in his life! He wouldn’t have written to Johannes Robin, and Johannes wouldn’t have come to call on him in Paris, and met Lanny’s father, and with the father’s money become one of the richest men in Germany. Lanny’s half-sister wouldn’t have met Hansi Robin, and shocked her family by marrying a Jewish musician. The yacht wouldn’t have been called the Bessie Budd, and wouldn’t have taken Lanny and his family on three cruises, and been the means of Lanny and Irma’s getting married in a hurry. They mightn’t have got married at all, and there wouldn’t have been any honeymoon cruise to New York, or any Baby Frances, or any floating dairy farm! In short, if that business card, “Johannes Robin, Agent, Maatschappij voor Electrische Specialiteiten, Rotterdam,” had stayed covered up by Lanny Budd’s neckties and handkerchiefs most of Lanny’s life would have been missing!
VI
Two happy members of the prosperous classes welcoming five of their intimate friends on the platform of a railroad station. Everybody there knew who the Budds were, and knew that when they hugged and kissed people, and laughed and chatted with them gaily, the people must be wealthy and famous like themselves. A pleasant thing to have friends whom you can love and appreciate, and who will love and appreciate you. Pleasant also to have villas and motorcars and yachts; but many people do not have them, and do not have many dear friends. They know themselves to be dull and undistinguished, and feel themselves to be lonely; they stand and watch with a sad envy the behavior of the fortunate classes on those few occasions when they condescend to manifest their feelings in public.