Пользователь - o 3b3e7475144cf77c Страница 6

closing New York prices. In this April of 1930 there was a phenomenon under way which was

being called "the little bull market"; things were picking up again, and the speculators were full

of enthusiasms. Was the Graf converting Hansi's frenzied rans on the violin into movements of

stocks and bonds? However, there might be somebody who understood, some lonely heart that

hid its griefs and lived in secret inner happiness. Someone who sat silent and abstracted after the

performance, too shy to approach the players and thank them; who would go out with fresh

hopes for a world in which such loveliness had been embodied in sound. In any case, Hansi

and Bess had done their duty by their hostess, a white-haired grande dame who would always

seem wonderful to them because it was in her chateau near Paris that they had met and been

revealed each to the other.

VIII

It was considered a social triumph, but it was not sufficient for young people tinged with all

the hues between pink and scarlet. In the Old Town of Cannes, down near the harbor, dwelt

members of depressed classes, among whom Lanny had been going for years, teaching his ideas in

a strange, non-religious Sunday school, helping with his money to found a center of what was

called "workers' education." He had made many friends here, and had done all he could to

break down the social barriers. As a result, the waiter in some fashionable cafe would say: "Bon

soir, Comrade Lanny!" When he got out of his car to enter the Casino, or the Cercle Nautique,

or some other smart place, he would be delayed by little street urchins running up to shake

hands or even to throw their arms about him.

What would these people feel if they knew that the famous violinist who was Lanny's brother-

in-law had come to town and given a recital for the rich but had neglected the poor?

Unthinkable to go sailing off in a luxurious pleasure yacht without even greeting the class-

conscious workers! Lanny's Socialist friend Raoul Palma, who conducted the school, had been

notified of the expected visit, and had engaged a suitable hall and printed leaflets for the little

street urchins to distribute. When Hansi Robin played in concert halls the rich paid as much

as a hundred francs to hear him, but the workers would hear him for fifty centimes, less than a

cent and a half in American money. From the point of view of Hansi's business manager it was

terrible; but Hansi was a rich man's son and must be allowed to have his eccentricities.

Wherever he went, the word would spread, and working-class leaders would come and beg his

help. He was young and strong, and wanted to practice anyway, so why not do it on a platform

for this most appreciative kind of audience?

Perhaps it was because they knew he was a "comrade," and read into his music things which

were not there. Anyhow, they made a demonstration out of it, they took him to their hearts,

they flew with him upon the wings of song to that happy land of the future where all men would

be brothers and poverty and war only an evil mem ory. Hansi played no elaborate composition

for them, he performed no technical feats; he played simple, soul-warming music: the adagio from

one of the Bach solo sonatas, followed by Scriabin's Prelude, gently solemn, with very lovely

double-stopping. Then he added bright and gay things: Percy Grainger's arrangement of Molly

on the Shore, and when they begged for more he led them into a riot with Bazzini's Goblins'

Dance. Those goblins squeaked and squealed, they gibbered and chattered; people had never

dreamed that such weird sounds could come out of a violin or anything else, and they could

hardly contain their laughter and applause until the goblins had fled to their caverns or

wherever they go when they have worn themselves out with dancing.

When it was late, and time to quit, Bess struck the opening chords of the Internationale. It is

the work of a Frenchman, and, pink or scarlet or whatever shade in between, everybody in that

crowded hall seemed to know the words; it was as if a charge of electricity had passed through

the chairs on which they sat. They leaped to their feet and burst into singing, and you could no

longer hear the violin. "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation; arise, ye wretched of the earth!" The

workers crowded about the platform, and if Hansi had let them they would have carried him,

and Lanny, and Bess too, out to their car, and perhaps have hauled the car all the way to the

Cap d'Antibes.

IX

The trim white Bessie Budd crept slowly beyond the breakwater of Cannes and through the

Golfe Juan, passing that group of buildings with the red-tiled roofs which had been Lanny

Budd's home since his earliest memory. Now for several months the yacht was to be his home.

It carried five members and a small fraction of the Robin family—if that be the way to count an

infant—and four members and two fractions of the Budd family: Lanny, his wife, and their baby;

Beauty, her husband, and her daughter. This was the twelve-year-old Marceline's first yacht

trip, and with her came the devoted English governess, Miss Addington; also Miss Severne, to

look after Baby Frances, with one of the nursemaids assisting. Finally there was Madame Zyszynski

and, it was hoped, Tecumseh with his troop of spirits, requiring no cabin-space.

A windless morning, the sea quite still, and the shore quite close. The course was eastward,

and the Riviera glided past them like an endless panorama. Lanny, to whom it was as familiar as

his own garden, stood by the rail and pointed out the landmarks to his friends. A most

agreeable way of studying both geography and history! Amusing to take the glasses and pick out

the places where he had played tennis, danced, and dined. Presently there was Monte Carlo, a

little town crowded onto a rock. Lanny pointed out the hotel of Zaharoff, the munitions king,

and said: "It's the time when he sits out in the sunshine on those seats." They searched, but

didn't see any old gentleman with a white imperial! Presently it was Menton, and Lanny said:

"The villa of Blasco Ibanez." He had died recently, an exile from the tyranny in Spain. Yes, it was

history, several thousand years of it along this shore.

Then came Italy; the border town where a young Socialist had been put out of the country for

trying to protest against the murder of Matteotti. Then San Remo, where Lanny had attended

the first international conference after the peace of Versailles. Much earlier, when Lanny had

been fourteen, he had motored all the way down to Naples, in company with a manufacturer of

soap from Reubens, Indiana. Lanny would always feel that he knew the Middle Western United

States through the stories of Ezra Hackabury, who had carried little sample cakes of Bluebird

Soap wherever he traveled over Europe, giving them away to beggar children, who liked their

smell but not their taste. Carrara with its marbles had reminded Ezra of the new postoffice in

his home town, and when he saw the leaning tower of Pisa he had remarked that he could build

one of steel that Would lean further, but what good would it do?

A strange coincidence: while Lanny was sitting on the deck telling stories to the Robin

family, Lanny's mother and her husband had gone to the cabin of Madame Zyszynski to find

out whether Tecumseh, the Indian "control," had kept his promise and followed her to the

yacht. The Polish woman went into her trance, and right away there came the powerful voice

supposed to be Iroquois, but having a Polish accent. Tecumseh said that a man was standing

by his side who gave the name of Ezra, and the other name began with H, but his voice was

feeble and Tecumseh couldn't get it; it made him think of a butcher. No, the man said that he

cleaned people, not animals. He knew Lanny and he knew Italy. Ask Lanny if he remembered—

what was it?—something about smells in the Bay of Naples and about a man who raised

angleworms. Mr. Dingle, doing the questioning, asked what that meant, but Tecumseh

declared that the spirit had faded away.

So there was one of those incidents which cause the psychical researchers to prepare long

reports. Beauty thought of Ezra Hacka-bury right away, but she didn't know that Lanny was

up on the deck telling the Robins about him, nor did she know how the Bluebird Soap man

had cited the smells of the Naples waterfront as proof that.romance and charm in Italy were

mostly fraudulent. But Lanny remembered well, and also that the gentleman from Indiana had

told him about the strange occupation of raising angleworms and planting them in the soil to

keep it porous.

What were you going to make out of such an episode? Was Mr. Hackabury really there? Was he

dead? Lanny hadn't heard from him for years. He sat down and wrote a letter, to be mailed

at Genoa, not mentioning anything about spirits, but saying that he was on his way to Naples,

planning to retrace the cruise of the yacht Bluebird, and did his old friend remember the drive

they had taken and the smells of the bay? And how was the man who raised angleworms making

out? Lanny added: "Let me know how you are, for my mother and I often talk about your

many kindnesses to us." He hoped that, if Ezra Hackabury was dead, some member of his

family might be moved to reply.

X

They went ashore at Genoa, to inspect that very ancient city. They had in Lanny a cicerone

who had wandered about the streets during several weeks of the Genoa Conference. A spice of

excite ment was added by the fact that he wouldn't be allowed to enter the country if he were

identified. But local officers would hardly know about that old-time misadventure, or cross-

question fashionable people coming ashore from a private yacht; they could hardly check

every tourist by the records of the Fascist militi in Rome.

No question was raised. Italy was a poor country, and visitors brought much-needed foreign

exchange; the richer they were, the more welcome—a rule that holds good in most parts of the

world. They engaged three cars and were driven about the town, which is crowded between

mountains and sea, and since it cannot float on the latter is forced to climb the former.

Ancient tall buildings jammed close together; churches having facades with stripes of white

and black marble, and inside them monotonous paintings of sorrowful Italian women with

infants in their arms. Before the shrines were wax images of parts of the body which had been

miraculously healed, displays not usually seen outside of hospitals. Mr. Dingle might have

been interested, but he had a deep-seated prejudice against the Catholic system, which he

called idolatrous. Mr. Hackabury had had the same idea.

Lanny showed them the old Palazzo di San Giorgio, where the conference had been held, a

dingy and depressing place, in keeping with the results of the assemblage. Lloyd George had

made the most inspiring promises of peace and prosperity to the representatives of twenty-

nine nations; after which, behind the scenes, the leaders had spent six weeks wrangling over

what oil concessions the Russians were to make to what nations. Lanny's father had been here,

trying to get a share; it had been his first fiasco, and the beginning of a chain of them for all

parties concerned. Instead of peace the nations had got more armaments and more debts.

Instead of prosperity had come a financial collapse in Wall Street, and all were trembling lest

it spread to the rest of the world.

XI

All this wasn't the most cheerful line of conversation for a sight seeing jaunt; so Lanny

talked about some of the journalists and writers whom he had met at this conference, and

forbore to refer to the tragic episode which had cut short his stay in Genoa. But later, when

Irma and Rahel had gone back to the yacht, he went for a stroll with Hansi and Bess, and they

talked about the Italian Syndicalist leader who had set them to thinking on the subject of social

justice. The young Robins looked upon Barbara Pugliese as a heroine and working-class

martyr, cherishing her memory as the Italians cherish that virgin mother whose picture they

never grow tired of painting. But the Fascist terror had wiped out every trace of Barbara's

organization, and to have revealed sympathy for her would have exposed an Italian to exile

and torture on those barren Mediterranean islands which Mussolini used as concentration camps.

When you talked about things like this you lost interest in ancient buildings and endlessly

multiplied Madonnas. You didn't want to eat any of the food of this town, or pay it any foreign

exchange; you wanted to shake its polluted dust from your feet. But the older people were here

to entertain themselves with sight-seeing; so, take a walk, climb the narrow streets up into the

hills where the flowers of springtime were thick and the air blew from the sea. These gifts of

nature were here before the coming of the miserable Fascist braggart, and would remain long

after he had become a stench in the nostrils of history. Try not to hate his strutting Blackshirts

with their shiny boots, and pistols and daggers in their belts; think of them as misguided children,

destined some day to pay with their blood for their swagger and bluster. "Father, forgive them,

for they know not what they do!"

And when you come down from the heights and get on board the yacht again, keep your

thoughts to your own little group, and say nothing to your elders, who have grown up in a

different world. You cannot convert them; you can only worry them and spoil their holiday.

Play your music, read your books, think your own thoughts, and never let yourselves be drawn

into an argument! Not an altogether satisfactory way of life, but the only one possible in times

when the world is changing so fast that parents and children may be a thousand years apart in

their ideas and ideals.

3

And Their Adoption Tried

I