Пользователь - WORLDS END Страница 48

II

Until recently Robbie and his family had occupied an old Colonial house in the residential part of Newcastle. But there was a transformation going on all over New England. Motorcars had become so dependable, and hard-surfaced roads so good, that it was getting to be the fashion to buy a farm and turn it into a country estate; your friends did the same, and collectively built a country club with a golf course, and thus had the advantages of town and country life. You got blooded rams, bulls, and boars; you produced milk and strawberries and asparagus. You were called a "gentleman farmer," and not merely had fresh air, space, and privacy, but you tried to make it pay, and if you succeeded you bragged to all your friends.

The population of such districts consisted of a "gentry," and a great number of tenants and servants, all contented and respectable, and all voting Tory, though it was called "Republican." What Lanny saw of "New" England turned out to be much like Old England. The scenery resembled that "green and pleasant land," where he had enjoyed long walks in the springtime three years ago. There were country lanes and stone walls and small streams with mill dams, and old farmhouses and churches that were shown as landmarks. To be sure, some of the trees were different, high-arching white elms and flowering dogwood soon to be in party costume; also, the dialect of the country people was different - but these were details.

The new house of the Robbie Budds stood at the head of an archway of elms more than a hundred years old. The farmhouse originally on the spot had been moved to one side and made into a garage with chauffeur's and gardener's quarters above. A new house had been built, modern inside, but keeping the "old Colonial" pattern. It had two stories and a half, and what was called a "gambrel" roof, starting at a steep pitch, and, when it got halfway up, finishing at a flatter pitch. In front of the house were big white columns which went above the second story; at one side were smaller columns over a porte-cochere.

Inside, the house was plain, everything painted white. The furniture was of a sort Lanny had never seen before; it also was "old Colonial," and he was to hear conversation about it, and learn the difference between "highboys" and "lowboys," and what a "court cupboard" was, and a "wing-chair," and a "ball and claw." Everything in the house had its proper place and to move it was bad manners. This had been explained to Lanny by his father; Esther had strict ideas of propriety. He should not play the piano loudly, at least not without asking if he would disturb anyone. He would make things easier if he would go to church with the family. Above all, he must be careful not to speak plainly about anything having to do with the relationship of men and women; Esther tried her best to be "modern" but she just couldn't, and it was better not to put any strain upon her. Lanny promised.

III

He had seen pictures of her, so he knew her when he saw her standing at the head of the stairs, with the big grandfather's clock behind her. It was an important moment for her as well as for him, and both of them realized it. She was becoming a stepmother, one of the most difficult of human relationships; she was taking a stranger into her perfectly ordered home, one from a culture foreign to hers and greatly suspected. He was young and he was weak, yet he had a power which could not be disregarded, having entered her husband's life ahead of her and sunk deep roots into his heart.

Esther Remson Budd was thirty-five at this time. She was a daughter of the president of the First National Bank of Newcastle, a Budd institution. She had lived most of her life in the town, and her ideas of Europe were derived from a summer of travel with teachers and members of her class in a young ladies' finishing school. She was one of the most conscientious of women, and gave earnest thought to being just and upright. She was not cold, but made herself seem so by subjecting to careful consideration everything she did and said. She was charitable, and active in the affairs of the First Congregational Church, in which her father-in-law taught a men's Bible class every Sunday morning. She guided her three children lovingly but strictly, and did her best to use wisely the powers which wealth and social position gave her.

To Esther at the age of twenty-one Robbie Budd had been a figure of romance. He went abroad frequently, met important people, and came home with contracts, the report of which spread widely - for hardly a person in that town could prosper except as Budd's prospered, and when Robbie sold automatics to Rumania, the merchants of Newcastle ordered a fresh stock of goods, and Esther's father bought her an electric coupe, a sort of showcase to drive about town in. Everybody she knew wanted her to marry Robbie; most of the girls had tried and failed, and knew there was some mystery, some story of a broken heart.

The time came when Robbie took Esther for a long drive and told her about the mysterious woman in France, the artists' model who had been painted in the nude by several men - a strange kind of promiscuity, wholly outside the possibilities of Newcastle, which in its heart was still a Puritan village. There was a child, but the woman refused to marry him and wreck his life. He had ended the unhappy affair, which was then about five years old; he had done so because he saw it preyed upon his father's mind, it could not possibly be fitted into the lessons imparted to the men's Bible class. Robbie would ask Esther to marry him, but only after she knew about this situation, and understood that he had a son and would not disown him.

The two families were working busily to make this match. Did the president of Budd's give his friend, the president of the First National Bank, some hint of the problem? Or did the latter guess what might have happened to a handsome and wealthy young businessman in Paris? Anyhow, Esther's father had a talk with her, of a sort unusual in Puritan New England. He told her the facts of life as concerning future husbands. Among the so-called "eligible" men of the town, those slightly older than herself and able to support her in the position to which she had been accustomed, she would have difficulty in finding one who had not had to do with some woman. The difference between Robbie Budd and most others was that they didn't consider it necessary to tell their future brides about the wild oats they had sown.

Esther asked for time to think all this over, and in the end she and Robbie were married. It had been thirteen years now, and they had three children, and Esther was as near to happiness as any of the "young matrons" she knew. Robbie played golf while his wife went to church, and he drank more liquor than she considered wise; but he was indifferent to the charms of the country club's seductresses, he let her have her way entirely with the children, and he gave her more money than she had use for. On the whole she could count herself a fortunate wife.

But now came this one wild oat of her husband, to be transplanted into her garden and to grow there. She was compelled to face the circumstances which had brought this about. If Lanny was going into an army, it obviously ought to be the American army; and if he came to America, and was denied his father's home, that would be a repudiation and an affront. To say that Robbie had had a previous marriage in France was one of those conventional lies that were hardly lies at all. Women would smile behind their fans, and whisper; but after all there has to be a statute of limitations on scandals.

IV

So Esther was standing at the top of the white-paneled staircase with the grandfather's clock behind her. She was tall and rather slender; she held herself erect, and was quiet and grave in manner. She had straight brown hair, drawn back from a high forehead in defiance of fashion's edicts. Her nose was a little too long and thin, but the rest of her features were regular and her smile kindly. Her brown eyes appraised Lanny, and she kissed him on the cheek. She had made up her just mind that she was going to treat him exactly like her own children, and Robbie had told Lanny that he was to call her "Mother."

She took him into her sitting room to get acquainted. He liked to talk, and was eager and friendly about it. He had been on a steamship which had been in peril of the submarines; he told how the passengers had behaved when they had struck a floating ice cake. He had been in London when it was bombed, and had a bit of shrapnel which had come through the window of a hotel room. (Of course he didn't say who had been in that room with him.) Esther, listening and watching, decided that he was intelligent, and if anything went wrong it could be explained to him. The load upon her mind grew lighter.

She took him to his room, which was in the rear. It was small, but had its own bath, and was alongside the rooms of her two boys. The walls were of pale blue, and the blankets on the single bed were the same. The rug in front of it was made by winding a long soft rope of braided rags into a spiral; his new mother explained that this was a "round-rug," and was an antique. She showed him the "highboy" in which he was to keep his shirts and such belongings. Esther knew the story of each old piece of furniture, which she had "picked up" on trips here and there in the country. Each of these adventures was important to her. As an art lover, Lanny could see that the pieces were well proportioned, and they must have been well made to be in use after a hundred years.

Outside it was warm, and the window of the room was open. There was a cherry tree close by, getting ready to bloom. A bird was singing in it with extraordinary vigor, and Lanny commented on this. Esther said it was a mocking-bird which came every season, and had arrived only a few days ago; not many of them reached New England. Lanny told about the nightingale which made its nest in the court at Bienvenu, and was treated as a member of the family. He had tried to write out all the notes it had sung, and now he would do the same for the mocking-bird. His new mother said this task would keep him busy. The mocking-bird said: "Kerchy, kerchy, kerchy, kerchy." Then it stopped and caught its breath and said: "You pay. You pay. You pay."

V

For months thereafter one of Lanny's adventures would be meeting his relatives. First came his two half-brothers, who attended a private school in town, and were taken every morning and called for in the afternoon. Robert junior was twelve, and Percy eleven; they were handsome boys, who knew how to move quietly about a well-ordered home. Of course they were curious about this new arrival from foreign parts. They took him out at once to show him their Belgian hares; also Prince, their fine German shepherd dog, which they called a "police dog," and which Lanny knew as an "Alsatian." Prince was formally introduced, and looked the newcomer over warily, smelled him thoroughly, and finally wagged his tail. That was important.

Then came Bess, who was nine; her school was near by, but she had a singing lesson that afternoon, and the chauffeur went for her after he had brought the boys. Bess was like her mother, tall for her years and slender, with the same thin nose and sober brown eyes. But she had not yet learned restraint; eagerness transformed her features. When she heard that Lanny had been where the submarines were she cried: "Oh, tell us about it!" She hung on every word, and Lanny found himself a young Marco Polo. "Oh, what did you do?" And: "What did you say?" And: "Weren't you dreadfully frightened?"

Lanny relived his own childhood through this half-sister. She asked him questions about his home and what he did there; about the war and the people he knew who had been in it; about the Christmas-card castle in Germany; about Greece, and the ruins, of which there were pictures in her school; about England, and the boat race, and the poor girl who hadn't had enough to eat, and the aviator who at this moment might be up in the air shooting at German planes with a machine gun - was it made by Budd's?

Not one detail escaped her; she would prove it if he left anything out the next time he told the story. And the teller became her hero, her idol; it was a case of love at first sight. He played the piano for her, he showed her how to dance "Dalcroze," and taught her the words of old songs. He made the French language come alive for her. The hour in the distant future when Bessie Budd first had to admit that this wonderful half-brother of hers was anything less than perfect would mark one of the tragedies of her stormy life.

VI

Comically different was Lanny's first meeting with his grandfather, Samuel Budd, which took place by appointment on the second evening after his arrival. Robbie escorted him to the old gentleman's home; impossible to subject a youth to such an ordeal alone. On the way the father told him what to do; not to talk too much, but to answer questions politely, and listen attentively. "It would have been better for me if I had always followed those rules," he said, with a trace of bitterness.

Robbie was driving and they were alone; so he could speak frankly, and it was time to do so. "People are what circumstances have made them, and they don't change very much after they are grown. Your grandfather is a stubborn person, as much so as the bricks of which his house is built, and you might as well butt your head against one as the other."

"I don't want to butt him," said the boy, both amused and worried. "Tell me exactly what to do."

"Well, the first thing is to get clear that you are the fruit of sin."

From this remark Lanny realized that the quarrel which had wrecked his mother's life and separated him from his father was still going on, and that the wounds of it were festering in Robbie's heart. "Surely," the youth protested, "he can't blame me for what happened then!"

"He will tell you about visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."

"Who says that, Robbie?"

"It's somewhere in the Old Testament."

Lanny thought and then asked: "Just what does he want me to do?"

"He'll tell you that himself. All you have to do is to listen."

Another pause. Finally the son was moved to say: "I suppose he didn't want me to come to Newcastle?"

"He has agreed to accept you as one of his grandsons. And I think it is important that he should be made to do it."

"Well, whatever you say. I want to please you. But if you're doing it for my sake, you don't have to."

"I'm doing it for my own," said the other, grimly.

"It's been so many years, Robbie. Doesn't that count with him at all?"

"In the sight of the Lord a thousand years are as a day."

Most of the persons Lanny had met in his young life never said anything about the Lord, except as a metaphor or an expletive. Several had said in his hearing that they didn't believe any such Being existed. But now the thought came to Lanny that his father differed from these persons. Robbie believed that the Lord existed, and he didn't like Him.

VII

The president of Budd Gunmakers Corporation had been born in a red brick mansion on the residence boulevard which skirted the edge of Newcastle. He had lived in it all his life, and meant to die in it, regardless of automobiles, country clubs, and other changes of fashion. His butler had been his father's butler, and wasn't going to be changed, even though he was becoming tottery. There were electric lights in the house, but they were hung in old chandeliers. The hand-carved French walnut bookcases were oiled and polished until they shone, and behind their glass doors Lanny caught glimpses of books which he would have liked to examine. He knew this was a very old mansion, and that political as well as business history had been made in it; but it seemed strangely ugly and depressing.