This rencontre amused Lanny, but also it saddened him, for he was decidedly lonely, and now and then became sickened of his job. It was literally true that he hadn’t one real friend in this great city of pleasure, la ville lumière as it was pleased to call itself. There were old friends here who agreed with his secret ideas, but he was not at liberty to go near them, even privately. He had to associate with those he distrusted, and to see their influence spreading and hear their anticipatory gloatings. Even Olivie Hellstein, daughter of the great Jewish banking house, with whom Emily had tried to make a match for Lanny. Just think of it!—he had seen Olivie’s Uncle Solomon, the Berlin banker, being whipped on his naked back by Göring’s thugs in order to extract a ransom from him; Lanny had come to Paris and told the family about it, and had witnessed their horror and grief; yet now Olivie, Madame de Broussailles, and most fashionable of matrons, wasn’t at all sure that it was desirable to see Nazi-Fascism go down to defeat! It would almost certainly bring revolution in Italy and Spain; and had you thought how it would set up the leftwing politicians of France? Lanny recalled again Rick’s saying that class was more than country; indeed, it was more than race, it was more than religion, or whatever you chose to call that which distinguished a Jew from a Gentile.
By way of consolation, Lanny paid a duty call upon Emily Chatters-worth. He went by train, and was amused to realize that it was the first time in his life that he had traveled to Les Forêts by that mode. Emily’s health was failing, she told him, and she dreaded the trip to the Riviera, but all her friends were worried because her home lay in the path of the Schlieffen plan for the invasion of France. What did Lanny think? He told her of the negotiations going on, and that he was sure Hitler would not move until spring. The French army believed itself the best in Europe and would surely fight hard; more than that, who could say? Lanny advised her to go now, because when the fighting got hot, her cars would be commandeered and her château taken as a headquarters or a hospital.
He told her that he talked with Beauty now and then over the telephone. Emily had done the same, and wanted to know, what about that “spooky lady” he had sent to Bienvenu? Lanny said there was nothing spooky about her, any more than about himself; he was surprised that Emily hadn’t read her very lively stories. No, he wasn’t in love with her, and had no idea of being; but she had developed mediumship, and Lanny had been sure that Parsifal would be interested to experiment with her. Parsifal had been sending Lanny copies of his notes on her communications; there had appeared what claimed to be the spirits of members of her family from Baltimore and the Eastern Shore of Maryland; also some of Parsifal’s relatives in Iowa. Both places were a long way from the Cap d’Antibes, and it was all very strange and fascinating. At present Parsifal was trying the experiment of hypnotizing Laurel, and Lanny could hardly wait for a chance to witness this. He had promised his mother that he would surely come for Christmas.
IX
Lanny hadn’t talked with Laurel over the telephone. His mother would have been bound to know about it; and many as were the virtues of Mrs. Beauty Budd Dingle, she had one weakness, which was that she demanded to be first in the mind of her precious only son. She had been willing to make way for Irma Barnes, because Irma had been so incredibly rich, and because she had been Beauty’s own selection. But the mother had been grudging in her concessions to Rosemary, and to Marie, and most of all to that mysterious German woman whose presence in Paris she had guessed but whose name she had never heard. Lanny didn’t want anything of that sort in the case of the author of “The Troglodyte”; so when he wrote a polite note to congratulate Laurel upon her success as a medium, he was careful to write a longer letter to his mother, and to fill it with interesting gossip and declarations of affection.
Laurel answered, in the same tone that he had set. She, too, was amazed by the things which had come out of her subconscious mind, and was grateful to Mr. Dingle for his instructions and to Mrs. Dingle for her hospitality and unfailing kindness. She was going on with her writings, and hoped to make good use of her experiences. She was distressed by this dreadful war, and hoped that Lanny was not putting himself in any danger. That was all; discreet and carefully phrased, and Lanny, who was used to writing that way himself, read the phrases over several times, and realized that she was telling him he could trust her, and that no matter who might read her letters, whether in Bienvenu or Paris, the person would get no hint concerning Berlin or Berchtesgaden, or the misadventures of Miss Elvirita Jones.
So when Lanny arrived at his mother’s home, a couple of days before Christmas, everything was exactly right among all the parties concerned. Laurel had managed to win Beauty’s trust, and had turned herself into a New Thoughter, saying her little prayers several times day and night to keep herself in tune with the Infinite. How much she meant of it and how long she would keep it up after she had rejoined the smart sophisticates of the New York magazine world were questions Lanny did not ask. When you are in Rome, do as the Romans do—unless it is the Romans of II Duce’s Nuovo Impero! Lanny had carefully explained to Laurel that the way to get along with the spirits was to believe in them and accept whatever they told you; and certainly it could do no one any harm to agree with this white-haired and pink-cheeked old gentleman who practiced kindness to everyone he met, no matter how cynical and even cruel they might be in their hearts, and who was patiently investigating Laurel’s subconscious mind and providing her with elaborate typewritten notes concerning it. “Why,” she exclaimed, “in New York people are going to psychoanalysts, paying ten or twenty dollars per hour and not finding out nearly so much!”
X
This place had been Lanny’s home ever since he was old enough to remember anything. Here he had learned to dance and to read and to play the piano. Down on the tiny beach he had made friends with the fisherboys and learned to swim and sail a boat. Here he had lived through most of World War I and here he had helped to bring Marcel, crippled and defaced. Here was the studio where Marcel had painted, and where Lanny now had his library, and his piano, badly affected by the sea air. Here, it seemed to him, he could have passed all his days in serenity—if only it had been a world in which a man’s conscience would permit him to enjoy that luxury.
He had so many happy memories of this villa, built around an inner court, bright with flowers and populated by bees and birds. Always there had been dogs, and nearly always a child learning to toddle or to dance: first Lanny, then Marceline, then Frances, then Freddi Robin’s little boy, and now Marceline’s darling, now two years old, lovely as both his parents had been, and happy as the day was long. He had no memory of his mother, and did not know that he had been deserted in favor of a handsome and arrogant Junker’s son. Lanny would take his tiny hands and hum a tune and teach him little steps, and it was like teaching a bird to peck or a fish to swim. Marcel Detaze—he was going to carry that name out into the world again, and what was he going to do with it?
The Riviera was crowded as Lanny had never seen it that he could recall. So many people wanted to get away from Paris and the bombs that were expected! They offered fantastic rentals, but Beauty had resisted temptation and leased the Lodge to Margy and the Cottage to a cousin of Sophie’s at the old rates. Now there was a dowager and her granddaughter begging to inhabit the second studio, the one which had been built for Kurt and his piano. Beauty was always in need of money, because she could never resist lovely things in shops, and also because she was kindhearted, and was victimized by people in trouble—often perfectly worthless people preying on the well-to-do. Lanny was able to give her the cheerful news that she was going to have a lot of money to tide her over the war—and it would be dollars, not francs, which already were down to two-and-a-half cents. The show in Baltimore had been a success, and now it was in Pittsburgh and presently would be in Cleveland.
The first thing Lanny had to do whenever he came home was to tell Beauty his adventures: every single person he had met and everything that person had said—Robbie
and Esther, Hansi and Bess, Johannes and Mama, Reverdy and Lizbeth, Irma and Ceddy, Frances and Fanny, Rick and Nina and Alfy, Denis and Emily and Olivie, and so on and on. When he thought he was through, she would start asking questions and discover that he had left out the most important details. She would tell him about Sophie and Margy and Maxine and other friends here on the coast, and list the celebrities who had arrived; Lanny would make notes in his mind, that being part of a P.A.’s job.
Only after Beauty was satisfied was he free to turn his attention to his stepfather and Madame and the new medium. They, too, had stories to tell, and a mass of new records to present; Lanny thought it the part of wisdom to hear the tale in front of the fire in the living room, so that his dear mother could be a part of it. Never would he take Laurel for a walk alone, for if he did, right away he would hear: “Lanny, are you going to fall in love with that woman?” Beauty had had full opportunity to study the woman, and couldn’t find any real fault except that she wasn’t an heiress, and why shouldn’t Lanny make real use of his opportunities? Beauty had dragged out of him the story of his talk with Reverdy, and it almost made her weep. “Lanny, where on earth can you expect to find anybody better than that lovely girl?” His excuses fell flat, for he surely couldn’t expect to go on traveling, now while the seas were swarming with U-boats; and anyhow, Lizbeth could live here, and Beauty would take care of her, and she would never have a care in the world.
XI
The three psychic researchers had been conducting experiments day after day. At first Madame had been peeved, fearing that her status in the family would be impaired; but Laurel had managed to win her confidence, and now she was reconciled. They were trying “cross-correspondences”; that is, to find out if Madame’s “spirits” could give half a sentence while Laurel’s “spirits” gave the other half; or if one could give some facts about a certain matter and the other give facts that fitted. It was like asking for the parts of a jigsaw puzzle; and the only person who knew the whole picture was Parsifal, who had composed it. The least this proved was telepathy, the ability of the two mediums to dip into the mind of the experimenter when they were entranced; it might even mean that at a certain level all three minds were one. Having proved this to his satisfaction, the old gentleman had set out to eliminate telepathy as an hypothesis. He would set the “spirits” a problem such as this: “The second bookcase to the right of the door of Lanny’s studio, the third shelf from the top, the seventeenth book counting from the left; give me line 11 of page 272. Parsifal himself didn’t know what the book was, to say nothing of knowing what was on a page whose number he chose at random. If the medium could give him that, it would have to be some form of clairvoyance. After they had done it a few times, Parsifal took to inviting Madame to give one half the line, and Laurel in the next room to give the other half.
The Baltimore lady had developed several “controls,” the most favored being Otto Kahn, the New York banker who had been taken from the scene of his profitable activities some half-dozen years previously. In the spirit world he was, as he had been in real life, a super-intelligent person, and took great pleasure in demonstrating his ability to meet any challenge put to him. He listened while Madame’s “control,” Tecumseh, told about himself and his circle of friends; then the banker announced that he would make it his business to seek out this old-time Amerindian in the “spirit world.” Presently he announced that he had succeeded, and had made friends with him; after that it was like two radio stars who appear as guests on one another’s programs.
It amused an international sophisticate immensely to pretend to stand in awe of a stone-age chieftain, and to treat him with all the ceremony his rank required. Tecumseh had never had anything to do with bankers, and couldn’t be expected to understand that a senior partner of Kuhn, Loeb and Company had been a ruler of another and far more powerful sort. He accepted the white man’s homage, and took seriously every compliment that was paid him. On that basis the pair were good companions, and Otto was always tactful in pointing out any error which Tecumseh’s spirits might make. Otto knew his Shakespeare, and would quote Owen Glendower’s boast: “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.” He would paraphrase: “And they will come when I do call to them”—and sure enough, here they were!
Lanny had read a lot about cross-correspondences in the proceedings of the British Society for Psychical Research. There were cases where part of a sentence had been supplied in England and the other part in Australia. The experiments had been made over a period of half a century, by well-known scientists, writers and clergymen, and the records stayed on the library shelves and gathered dust. Lanny wondered, did anybody ever open the books? Did the scientific world ever pay any attention to what had been so carefully proved? “Spooks!” said the skeptics, and you were considered to be dim-witted if you stooped even to know about such things. Lanny reminded himself that the ancient Greeks had known that the earth was round and that it moved; but the learned world had chosen to forget it for a thousand years or more, and had shut Galileo in a dungeon and forced him to recant the heresy. Eppur’ si muove!
XII
Lanny had written to Parsifal, suggesting that he should hypnotize these mediums, to see if an induced trance would tap a different level of consciousness from a spontaneous trance; also, whether they might be brought into rapport, each with the other. Parsifal had been doing this, and now it had become a regular show, which Beauty’s friends clamored to be allowed to see, but which Beauty’s husband wouldn’t let them see unless they had qualified themselves as serious students of the occult. Lanny was so established; and now he sat in the living room of his mother’s home, together with his stepfather and the two mediums. The only other guests were Sophie and her husband, Mr. Armitage, who had been an engineer and was a thoughtful man, glad to be able to go out with his wife to some place where it wasn’t, as he said, “just gabble, gobble, git.”
Very interesting to see Parsifal Dingle applying his doctrine of universal benevolence to the technique of hypnosis. He made no elaborate passes, no effort to be dominant and impressive; he simply told his subject to gaze steadily into his eyes while he murmured gentle words about sleep. Under this soothing influence both women had learned to pass into the trance in a few seconds, and to come out again under a quiet word of command. This was convenient, because he could repeat an experiment many times and vary it at will; they were never under any strain, and never knew what they had said or done in the hypnotic sleep.
The subject would sit staring in front of her with open eyes, not moving or speaking unless she was told to. Parsifal would bid her raise an arm, and would tell her that the arm would stay there without fatigue; it would stay, apparently for an unlimited time—he hadn’t tried to reach the limit. Lanny thought of Adolf Hitler, whose boast it was that he could give the Nazi salute to a whole army of his troops passing by, and never once have to lower his arm! Perhaps Adi had hypnotized himself—who could say?
Parsifal would comment: “You will have no feeling in your arm,” and he would take a needle and touch it to the woman’s skin and she wouldn’t know it; he could have driven the needle through the arm, and she would not have winced or bled. He would tell Laurel that her mind would be divided into halves, and that her right hand would write answers to questions which were whispered into her right ear, while her lips would reply to questions whispered into her left ear. This she would do with speed, and without any sign of confusion, or of weariness afterwards. He would give her post-hypnotic suggestions, of things she would do when she came out of the trance; not the stunts with which stage performers bring laughter, but serious experiments to find out how far her normal consciousness could be inhibited. Parsifal told her, very impressively, that she would not recognize Beauty Budd when she saw her. Then he terminated the trance, and asked Laurel where Beauty was, and Laurel wandered about the room, very much confused, looking from one woman to another, and unable for quite a while to make up her mind which was her hostes
s.
XIII
But to Lanny the most fascinating experiments of all were those in “age regression,” which he had read about in one of those old “discarded” books by a Dr. Tuckey, and which Parsifal had repeated with great care. He would put Madame to sleep and tell her that she was five years old, and then give her pencil and paper and ask her to make a picture of a man. This old woman, stout, flabby, and approaching second childhood, would go back to her first. She enacted to perfection the role of a tiny child, shy, hesitant, but conscientious and anxious to please. She grasped the pencil as if it were a stick, and put her eyes close to the paper as a child does. Two crudely drawn circles, a small one on top of a large one, and four projections from the large one—that was a man. She not merely acted a child, but thought and felt a child; everything that had been in her mind then was in it now, and everything that had entered her mind since was blotted out. Lanny had read in many psychology books the basic principle that no memory is ever lost; but to see that principle in action was something uncanny, astounding, like taking a ride in an H. G. Wells time-machine.
This peasant child knew only her native language; and Parisfal had gone out and found a Polish refugee, earning his living as a café waiter, and brought him to the house to translate. The child was afraid of her father, who got drunk and beat her; also she was afraid of snowstorms, having been lost in one. When Parsifal told her that she was twelve years old, she could draw a much better man, and she was happier, because she had her calf, the precious pet named Kooba about which she had told Lanny many years ago. Parsifal would accumulate a mass of notes and amaze her in her waking state by recalling things about her past which she had forgotten.