This was a lesson which Robbie preached incessantly, so that to Lanny it became like the landscape and the climate, the music he heard and the food he ate. Robbie would enforce it with picturesque illustrations; he would bring up a lame fish that had had one of its fins bitten off, and he would say: “You see, he didn't keep up his armaments industry!”
Now Lanny heard more of this, and decided that he had better put off telling his father about becoming a Dalcroze dancer. And what about all those noble ideals which Kurt Meissner had revealed to him, and which had impressed him so greatly a month or so ago? What was the use of thinking about religion and self-dedication and all that, if men were shrimps and crabs, and nations were sharks and octopi? Here was a problem which men had been debating before Lanny Budd was born and which it would take him some time to settle!
Playground of Europe
I
BEAUTY stayed a couple of weeks, and so did Robbie, with the result that Lanny's life became what the newspapers call one continuous round of social gaieties. Beauty gave a tennis party, with afternoon tea, and a row of fashionable ladies decorating the sidelines. She gave a dinner party, with dancing on the loggia, and Venetian lanterns hanging, and an orchestra from Cannes. When they were not having or preparing things like these, they were motoring to the homes of friends up and down the coast, for motorboat races, or bridge, or fireworks, or whatever it might be.
Lanny had his part in these events. People who had heard about “Dalcroze” would ask for a demonstration, and he would oblige them without having to be begged. Lady Eversham-Watson put up her ivory and gold lorgnette and drawled: “Chawming!” and the Baroness de la Tourette lifted her hands with a dozen diamonds and emeralds on them and exclaimed: “Ravissant/” — all exactly as Lanny had foreseen. This attention and applause did not spoil him, because it was his plan to take up the role of teacher, and here was a beginning. He liked to please people, and everybody loved him for it; or at any rate they said they did, and Lanny took the world for the gay and delightful thing it strove so hard to appear.
It was a world of people who had money. Lanny had always taken it for granted that everybody had it. He had never known any poor people; or, to be more exact, he had never known about their poverty. The servants worked hard, but they were well paid and had plenty to eat and enjoyed working in the rich homes, knowing the rich people and gossiping about their ways. The Provencal peasants partook of nature's bounty, and were independent and free-spoken. The fishermen went to sea and caught fish; they had done that all their lives, and liked to do it, and were healthy, and drank wine and sang and danced. If now and then one was hurt, or lost his boat, a collection would be taken, and Lanny would tell Beauty about it and she would contribute.
The rich people had the function of exhibiting elegance and grace to the world, and the Céte d'Azur was a place set apart for that performance. It was the winter playground of Europe; the wealthy and fashionable came from all over the world and either built themselves homes or stayed in luxurious hotels, dressing in the latest fashions and displaying themselves on waterfront parade grounds such as the Boulevard de la Croisette in Cannes and the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. They danced and played baccarat and roulette, golf and tennis; they motored and sailed, and ate arid drank in public, and lay about on the beaches under gaily striped umbrellas. Photographers took pictures of them, and newspapers and magazines all over the world paid high prices for them, and so the exhibition of elegance had become a large-scale business.
The ladies who lent their charms to this parade were spoken of as professional beauties, and they took their profession with the same seriousness as a physician takes the healing of bodies or a priest the saving of souls. It was an exacting occupation and left its devotees little time to think about anything else; during the exhibition periods, known as “seasons,” they made it a rule to change their costumes four times a day, thus keeping the cameramen on the jump; during the “off seasons” they hardly got a chance to recuperate, because they had to spend their time planning with couturiers and marchands de modes and others to keep them at the head of the next procèssion.
It would seem as if a woman by the name of Beauty Budd had been especially cut out for such a career. And she might have had it, but for the fact that she was so poor. All she had was this home, and a thousand dollars a month which Robbie allowed her. He was strict with her; had made her promise not to incur debts, and never to gamble unless it was a business matter, with Robbie himself taking part. Of course you couldn't take that too literally; she had to play bridge, and couldn't very well insist upon paying cash for the clothes she ordered — the makers would have thought there was something wrong with her.