Пользователь - WORLD'S END

V

There were two "Courts," at which fashionable American ladies dreamed of being presented; but not Beauty Budd, a divorced woman. The same applied to the "state ball," and to the levee at St. James's Palace. But there were plenty of private balls - it was becoming the fashion to give them at West End hotels, where there was room enough for everybody you knew. There would be dinner parties in advance. Margy, Lady Eversham-Watson, was having one at the Savoy; Lanny Budd, so proud of his beautiful blond mother, saw her in a state of exaltation, being got ready for this grand occasion, and her friends Margy and Sophie in the same state of mind and body.

Lanny knew a lot about women's costumes, being a little ladies' man, and hearing them talking all the time, and going with them to be fitted, or seeing it done at home. Just as lovers of painting hoped to find a genius whom they could buy up cheap, so women like Beauty Budd, forced to economize, dreamed of finding a seamstress of talent who would make them something as good as the great establishments could turn out. And when they got it, was it really good? They would torment themselves, and would ask even a boy who loved beautiful things, and knew the names of materials and ways of cutting them, and what colors went together.

Here was Beauty ready to be launched in a costume about which her son had been hearing talk for weeks: a ball dress of pink tulle, with simili diamonds put on the skirt in three-tier pleated flounces. The corsage was a little coat of heavy guipure lace embroidered with amethysts and gold. It was cut in that ultra style which had caused an old gentleman at a dinner party to say that he couldn't express an opinion of the ladies' costumes because he hadn't looked under the table. The plump and creamy-white bust of Beauty appeared on the point of emerging from the corsage, like Venus from the waves, all that prevented it being two little straps made of flat links of gold. The tiny dancing slippers were of tissue of gold in-crusted with gems, and the high heels took you back to Empire days, having flower designs worked on them in jewels.

"Well, how do you like me?" asked the mother, and Lanny said he liked her well enough to dance with her all night if she needed him. She gave him eager little pats on the head, but he mustn't kiss her because of her powder.

Then he had to admire the costume of the Baroness de la Tourette, likewise completed after labors and consultations. Sophie's crown of henna hair topped a gown of brocade; roses and rose leaves in silver on a ground of rich blue, very supple, and draped graciously - so said its creator, a couturier who was on hand to approve the final effect, and who rubbed his hands together with delight. The gown had a narrow train from the waist, to be held up for dancing, and a deep belt of dark blue velvet, with pleatings of silver lace carried to make kimono sleeves. There was a Cavalier cape of fine old Brussels lace weighted with embroidery of diamonds and gold; and slippers of stamped velvet to match, also embroidered with diamonds. The only difference was that Sophie's were real, while Beauty's were not, and would people notice the difference? It was terrible to feel yourself just an imitation.

But Sophie, good soul, said: "Nonsense! None of the richest people wear their valuable gems any more. They keep them stored in vaults and wear replicas."

"Yes, of course," said Beauty. "But then everybody knows they have the real ones; and everybody knows I haven't!"

"Forget it!" commanded the hardware manufacturer's daughter. "You've got what not one in a hundred has, and most of them would give their eyeteeth for." Kind Sophie said things like that.

Beauty put one more dab of powder on her little white nose, and there was Harry Murchison waiting for her, tall, well set up, looking like a fashion plate. Lanny watched them get into the rich young American's motorcar, and went back into the house, reckoning the months before he, too, would have a full-dress suit and an opera hat, and be able to take his mother to balls at the Savoy Hotel!

VI

Lanny, left alone, went out for a walk. He hked to walk anywhere, but especially in the streets of London. At this time of year it didn't get dark until after nine o'clock, and meantime there were mists and haze and pastel colors in the sky. Lanny would walk by the Serpentine River in Hyde Park, and watch the beautiful black and white swans; he would walk along the Embankment, observing the clouds across the river, and the tugs and launches gliding over the dull gray surface. Sometimes he would climb to the top of one of those new motorbusses, from which for thruppence you could see everything there was in London - seven million people, and nobody had ever counted how many houses, or how many cabs, carriages, and automobiles.

The city had been laid out by ancient Saxon or Roman cows, and rarely had their paths been straight. One village had run into, another, all higgledy-piggledy; and where was Bandbox Lane High Court, or Old Pine Hill New Corners? - you might be within a quarter of a mile of the place, but you couldn't find a soul who had ever heard of it. Few streets had the same name for any distance; you would start walking on the Strand, and presently it was Fleet Street, and then it was Ludgate Hill, Cannon Street, Fenchurch, Aldgate - and like as not would evaporate and disappear entirely. The same peculiarity was shared by the old buildings; you would go down a corridor, and descend three steps, and turn to the left, pass three doors and climb a winding stairway, turn to the right, walk a dozen steps - and knock on a door which hadn't been opened for a hundred years.

Lanny felt in an adventurous mood that evening and started off in a new direction. For a while he was on a wide thoroughfare, with motorcars taking people to the theaters, and crowds looking into windows of gaily decorated shops. Then little by little the neighborhood changed; the shops became poorer, the men wore caps, and the women dingy shawls. The street began to ramble, and Lanny did the same; he was keeping in a general easterly direction, but that didn't mean anything special, for he had never heard of the East End of London. He had the general idea that the seven million population was composed mainly of ladies and gentlemen such as he had seen in Mayfair, with their servants and tradespeople, and a sprinkling of saucy flower girls, lively newsboys, and picturesque old beggars trying to sell you "a box o' lights."

But now Lanny had walked through a looking glass, or plunged down a shaft to the center of the earth, or to the bottom of the sea; he had taken a drug, or fallen into a trance - something or other that had transported him into a new world. He couldn't believe his eyes, and walked on, fascinated, staring; it just couldn't be real, there couldn't be such creatures on earth! English men and women were tall, and stood up straight, and took bold strides, and had long thin faces, sometimes a little too long, especially the women - Robbie impolitely called them horse-faces! Both men and women whom Lanny had met had rosy complexions, sometimes alarmingly so, suggestive of apoplexy. But suddenly here were creatures squat and stooped,

that shambled instead of walking; their legs were short and their arms long - they looked like apes more than human beings! Features crooked, teeth missing, complexions sallow or pasty - no, this couldn't be England!

And the clothes they had on! Lanny had never seen such rags, never dreamed they existed on earth. Clothes that were not fitted to the human form, but dangled as on scarecrows, and when they threatened to fall to pieces were fastened with pins or bits of string, or even pieces of wood. They were filthy with every sort of grime and grease, and gave out the musty acrid smell of stale human sweat; the sum total of it filled the streets and polluted the winds that blew from the North Sea.