Пользователь - WORLD'S END

"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 procиss. 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."