World's End (The Lanny Budd Novels) Read online

  “I don’t know how much I believe of that stuff,” said the Baroness de la Tourette; “but at least the man knows the facts and won’t mind talking about them.”

  “But will he want to bother with a child, Sophie?”

  “Hand him an envelope with a hundred-franc note in it, and let nature do the rest,” said the practical-minded baroness.

  So Mrs. Budd telephoned and asked for an hour or two of the valuable time of Dr. Bauer-Siemans, and took Lanny with her and left him in the outer office while she told about the baron, and then the gigolo.

  The psychoanalyst was a learned-looking gentleman having a high forehead topped with black wavy hair, and gold pince-nez which he took off now and then and used in making gestures. He spoke English with a not too heavy accent. “But why don’t you talk to the boy yourself, Mrs. Budd?” he demanded.

  More blood mounted to Beauty’s already well-suffused cheeks. “I just can’t, Doctor. I’ve tried, but I can’t speak the words.”

  “You are an American?” he inquired.

  “I am the daughter of a Baptist minister in New England.”

  “Ah, I see. Puritanism!” Dr. Bauer-Siemans said it as if it were “poliomyelitis” or “Addison’s disease.”

  “It seems to be ingrained,” said Beauty, lowering her lovely blue eyes.

  “The purpose of psychoanalysis is to bring such repressions to the surface of consciousness, Mrs. Budd. So we get rid of them and acquire normal attitudes.”

  “What I want is for you to talk to Lanny,” said the mother, hastily. “I would like you to consider it a professional matter, please.” She handed over a scented envelope, not sealed but with the flap tucked in.

  The doctor smiled. “We don’t usually receive payment in advance,” he said, and laid the envelope on the desk. “Leave the little fellow with me for an hour or so, and I’ll tell him what he needs to know.” So Beauty got up and went out; meantime the doctor glanced into the envelope, and saw that Lanny was entitled to a full dose of the facts of life.

  VII

  The boy found himself seated in a chair facing the desk of this strange professional gentleman. When he heard what he was there for, the blood began to climb into his cheeks; for Lanny, too, was a little Puritan, far from the home of his forefathers.

  However, it wasn’t really so bad; for the Baroness de la Tourette had been right. Lanny had not failed to see the animals, and the peasant boys had talked in the crudest language. His mind was a queer jumble of truth and nonsense, most of the latter supplied by his own speculations. The peasant boys had told him that men and women behaved like that also, but Lanny hadn’t been able to believe it; when the doctor asked why not, he said: “It didn’t seem dignified.” The other smiled and replied: “We do many things which do not seem dignified, but we have to take nature as we find it.”

  The doctor’s explanations were not by means of the bees and the flowers, but with the help of a medical book full of pictures. After Lanny had got over the first shock he found this absorbingly interesting; here were the things he had been wondering about, and someone who would give him straight answers. It was impossible for Lanny to imagine such desires or behavior on his own part, but the doctor said that he would very soon be coming to that period of life. He would find the time of love one of happiness, but also of danger and strain; there arose problems of two different natures, man’s and woman’s, learning to adjust themselves each to the other, and they needed all the knowledge that was to be had.

  All this was sensible, and something which every boy ought to have; Lanny said so, and pleased the learned-looking doctor, who gave him the full course for which the mother had paid, and even a little extra. He took up a subject which had a great effect upon the future of both mother and son. “I understand that your mother is divorced,” he remarked. “There are many problems for children of such a family.”

  “I suppose so,” said Lanny innocently—for he was not aware of any problems in his own family.

  “Understand, I’m not going to pry into your affairs; but if you choose to tell me things that will help me to guide you, it will be under the seal of confidence.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lanny. “Thank you very much.”

  “When families break up, sooner or later one party or the other remarries, or perhaps both do; so the child becomes a stepchild, which means adjustments that are far from easy.”

  “My father has remarried and has a family in Connecticut; but I have never been there.”

  “Possibly your father foresees difficulties. How long have your mother and father been divorced?”

  “It was before I can remember. Ten years, I guess.”

  “Well, let me tell you things out of my experience. Your mother is a beautiful woman, and doubtless many men have wished to marry her. Perhaps she has refused because she doesn’t want to make you unhappy. Has she ever talked to you about such matters?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You have seen men in the company of your mother, of course.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You haven’t liked it, perhaps?”

  Lanny began to be disturbed. “I—I suppose I haven’t liked it if they were with her too much,” he admitted.

  Dr. Bauer-Siemans smiled, and told him that a psychoanalyst talked to hundreds of men and women, and they all had patterns of behavior which one learned to recognize. “Often they are ashamed of these,” he said, “and try to deny them, and we have to drag the truth out of them—for their own good, of course, since the first step toward rational behavior is to know our own selves. You understand what I am saying?”

  “I think so, Doctor.”

  “Then face this question in your own heart.” The doctor had his gold pince-nez in his hand, and used them as if to pin Lanny down. “Would you be jealous if your mother were to love some man?”

  “Yes, sir—I’m afraid maybe I would.”

  “But ask yourself this: when the time comes that you fall in love with some woman—as you will before many years are past—will you expect your mother to be jealous of that woman?”

  “Would she?” asked the boy, surprised.

  “She may have a strong impulse to do it, and it will mean a moral struggle to put her son’s welfare ahead of her own. My point is that you may have to face such a struggle—to put your mother’s welfare ahead of yours. Do you think you could do it?”

  “I suppose I could, if it was the right sort of man.”

  “Of course, if your mother fell in love with a worthless man, for example a drunkard, you would urge her against it, as any of her friends would. But you must face the fact that your mother is more apt to know what sort of man can make her happy than her son is.”

  “Yes, sir, I suppose so,” admitted the son.

  “Understand again, I know nothing about your mother’s affairs. I am just discussing ordinary human behavior. The most likely situation is that your mother has a lover and is keeping it a secret from you because she thinks it would shock you.”

  The blood began a violent surge into Lanny’s throat and cheeks. “Oh, no, sir! I don’t think that can be!”

  Aiming his gold pince-nez at Lanny’s face, the other went on relentlessly. “It would be a wholly unnatural thing for a young woman like your mother to go for ten years without a love life. It wouldn’t be good for her health, and still less for her happiness. It is far more likely that she has tried to find some man who can make her happy. So long as you were a little boy, it would be possible for her to keep this hidden from you. But from now on it will not be so easy. Sooner or later you may discover signs that your mother is in love with some man. When that happens, you have to know your duty, which is not to stand in her way, or to humiliate or embarrass her, but to say frankly and sensibly: ‘Of course, I want you to be happy; I accept the situation, and will make myself agreeable to the man of your choice.’ Will you remember that?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Lanny. But his voice was rather shaky.

>   VIII

  Beauty had been wandering around in the shops, in a state of mind as if Lanny were having his tonsils out. A great relief to find him whole and sound, not blushing or crying or doing anything to embarrass her. “Dr. Bauer-Siemans is a well-informed man,” he said with dignity. He was going to take it like that, an affair between men; his mother need not concern herself with it any further.

  “Home, Pierre,” said Beauty; and on the way they were silent.

  Something was going on in Lanny’s mind, a quite extraordinary process. There used to be a popular kind of puzzle, a picture in which a cat was hidden, a large cat filling a good part of the picture in such a way that you had a hard time to find it. But when once you had found it, it stood out so you could hardly see anything else; you couldn’t imagine how you had ever looked at that picture without seeing the cat.

  So now with Lanny Budd; he was looking at a picture, tracing one line and then another; until suddenly—there was a large cat grinning at him!

  Farther out on the peninsula of Antibes, a mile or so from the Budd home, lived a young French painter, Marcel Detaze. He was several years younger than Beauty, a well-built, active man with a fair mustache and hair soft and fine, so that the wind blew it every way; he had grave features and dark melancholy eyes, in striking contrast with his hair. He lived in a cottage, having a peasant woman in now and then to cook him a meal and clean up. He painted the seascapes of that varied coast, loving the waves that lifted themselves in great green masses and crashed into white foam on the rocks; he painted them well, but his work wasn’t known, and like so many young painters he had a problem to find room for all his canvases. Now and then he sold one, but most were stored in a shed, against the day when collectors would come bidding.

  Beauty thought a great deal of Marcel’s work, and had bought several specimens and hung them where her friends would see them. She watched his progress closely, and often when she came home from a walk would say: “I stopped at Marcel’s; he’s improving all the time.” Or she would say: “I am going over to Marcel’s; some of the others are coming to tea.” There were half a dozen painters who had their studios within walking distance, and they would stop in and make comments on one another’s work. It had never struck Lanny as strange that Beauty would go to meet a painter, instead of inviting him to her home to tea, as she did other men.

  Many circumstances like that Lanny had never noticed, because he was a little boy, and the relationships of men and women were not prominent in his thoughts. But Dr. Bauer-Siemans had put the picture in front of him and told him to look for the cat; and there it was!

  Marcel Detaze was Beauty’s lover! She went over there to be with him, and she made up little tales because she wanted to keep the secret from Lanny. That was why the painter came so rarely to the house, and then only when there was other company; that was why he didn’t come when Robbie was there, and why he had so little to do with Lanny—fearing perhaps to be drawn into intimacy and so betray something. Or perhaps he didn’t like Lanny, because he thought that Lanny stood between Beauty and himself!

  If the boy had found out this secret without warning it would have given him a painful shock. But now the learned doctor had told him how to take it—and he would have to obey. But not without a struggle! Lanny wanted his mother to himself; he had to bite his lip and resolve heroically that he would not hate that young Frenchman with the worn corduroy trousers and little blue cap. He painted the sea, but he didn’t know how to swim, and like most French people on the Riviera he seemed to have the idea it would kill him to get caught out in the rain!

  Well, the doctor had said that Beauty was to select her own lover, with no help from her son. So Lanny forced himself to admit that the painter was good-looking. Perhaps he had attracted Beauty because he was so different from her; he appeared as if nursing a secret sorrow. Lanny, having read a few romances, imagined the young painter in love with some lady of high degree in Paris—he had come from there—and Beauty taking pity on him and healing his broken heart. It would be like Lanny’s mother to wish to heal some broken heart!

  Another part of the “cat” was Beauty’s relations with other men. There had been a stream of them through her life, ever since Lanny could remember. Many were rich, and some were prominent; some had come as customers of Robbie—officials, army officers, and so on—and had remained as friends. They would appear in elaborate uniforms or evening dress, and take Beauty to balls and parties; they would bring her expensive gifts which she would gently refuse to accept. They would gaze at her with adoration—this was something which Lanny had been aware of, because Beauty and her women friends made so many jokes about it.

  For the first time Lanny understood a remark which he had heard his mother make; she would not “pay the price.” She might have been rich, she might have had a title and lived in a palace and sailed about in a yacht like her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Hackabury; but she preferred to be true to her painter. Lanny decided that this was a truly romantic situation. Marcel was too poor to marry her; or perhaps they thought Robbie wouldn’t like it. The boy suddenly realized that it was exciting to have such a beautiful mother and to share the secrets of her heart.

  IX

  The two, returning from the visit to the doctor, came to their home, and Lanny followed Beauty into her room. She sat down, and he went and knelt by her, and put his head against her and his arms around her waist. That way he couldn’t see her face, nor she his, and it would be less embarrassing. “Beauty,” he whispered, “I want to tell you something.”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “I know about Marcel.”

  He felt her give a gasp. “Lanny—how”—and then: “That doctor?”

  “He doesn’t know—but I guessed it. I want to tell you, it’s all right with me.”

  There was a pause; then to his astonishment, Beauty put her face in her hands and burst into tears. She sobbed and sobbed, and only after some time managed to blurt out: “Oh, Lanny, I was so afraid! I thought you’d hate me!”

  “But why should I?” asked the boy. “We are going to understand each other, always—and be happy.”

  6

  Arms and the Man

  I

  It was February; springtime on the Riviera. The garden was carpeted with irises and anemones, and overhead the acacia trees were masses of gold. It was the height of the “season”; the boulevards blooming with gay parasols trimmed with lace and with large, floppy hats with flowers and fruits on them. On the beaches the ladies wore costumes so fragile that it seemed too bad to take them into the water, and many didn’t. There was opera every night, and gambling in scores of casinos, and dancing to the music of “nigger bands”—thumping and pounding on the Côte d’Azur as if it were the Gold Coast of Africa.

  There had come a postcard from Robbie in London, then another from Constantinople, and now a “wireless” from a steamship expected to dock in Marseille next day. Beauty having engagements, Pierre took Lanny in the car to meet him. It was the Route Nationale, the main highway along the shore, becoming ever more crowded with traffic, so that the authorities were talking about widening and improving it; but to get things done took a long time in a land of bureaucracy. The traveler passed scenes of great natural beauty, embellished with advertisements of brandies, cigars, and mineral waters. You wound upward into the Estérels, where the landscape was red and the road dangerous. Then came the Maures, still rougher mountains; in the old days they had been full of bandits, but now disorder had been banished from the world, and bandits appeared only in grand opera.

  Pierre Bazoche was a swarthy, good-looking fellow of peasant origin, who had entered the service of Mrs. Budd many years ago and seemed unaffected by contact with wealth; he put on his uniform and drove the car whenever that was desired, and the rest of the time he wore his smock and cut the dead wood which the mistral blew down. He spoke French with a strong accent of Provence, and pretended that he didn’t know English; but Lanny saw the flicker of a s
mile now and then, which led him to believe that Pierre was wiser than he let on. Like all French servants—those in the country, at any rate—he had adopted the family, and expressed his opinions with a freedom which gave surprise to visitors.

  Pierre Bazoche and Lanny were fast friends, and chatted all the way. The boy was curious about everything he saw, and the chauffeur was proud of his responsibility, having been cautioned many times and made many promises. He could tell the legends of the district, while Lanny dispensed historical information from the guidebook. Toulon, the great French naval base: Lanny read statistics as to the number of ships and their armament, and wondered if any of it had come from Budd’s.

  The journey wasn’t much more than a hundred miles, but cars were not so fast in those days, nor was the highway built for speed. When they got to the Quai du Port, the ship Pharaoh wasn’t in sight yet, so they went to a waterfront café and ate fried cuttlefish and endives, and then strolled and watched the sights of one of the great ports of the world, with ships and sailors from the seven seas. If the pair had ventured into side streets, they would have found a “cabbage patch” of vast dimensions; but such places were dangerous, and they had promised to stay on the main avenues and never under any circumstances become separated.