Пользователь - WORLD'S END

Too bad that Beauty couldn't be on hand to share the sensation. She would have taken her friends, and stood and listened to what the crowds were saying; presently somebody would have glanced at her, and then at the picture, and then back at her again, in excitement and a little awe, and the blood would have started climbing to Beauty's cheeks, and even to her forehead; it would have been one of life's great moments. Call it vanity, but she was like that; "professional beauties" were amateur actresses, performing upon a larger stage with the help of newspapers and illustrated magazines. "I'll send her a ticket and tell her to come," said Robbie, who found her foibles diverting.

A further idea occurred to him, and he said to his son: "Do you remember what Beauty once told you about a painting that made my father angry?" Yes, that was one of the things Lanny wasn't going to forget - not in this incarnation! He said so, and Robbie inquired: "Would you be interested to see it?"

The youth was staggered. Somehow the idea seemed rather horrible. And with Rick along too! But he told himself that this was an old-fashioned attitude, unworthy of a connoisseur of art. Surely Rick would feel that way about it. So Lanny replied: "I would, of course."

"I've been told where it was. If it's been sold, maybe you can find out where it's gone." Robbie gave the name of one of the fashionable dealers on the Rue de la Paix, and told him to ask for the "Lady with a Blue Veil," by Oscar Deroulй. "You don't have to say that you know anything about it," added the father.

The two fellows set out. Lanny had to make some explanation, for of course Rick would recognize the portrait. Lanny couldn't say that he was an illegitimate son, and that this painting was to blame for it - no, that would be too much for even the coldest-blooded connoisseur! He said: "My mother posed for several painters when she was young, and I guess my father thinks I'm old enough to know about it now."

"Well, you surely can't blame the painters," was Rick's consoling reply.

V

The decorous and black-clad picture dealer found nothing out of the way in the fact that two young gentlemen wanted to see the "Lady with a Blue Veil" by Oscar Deroule. It was his business to show pictures; a clerk went down some stairs and brought it up, and set it on a stand for them to look at, and then went to attend to another customer. So they had it to themselves, and no need to repress their feelings. "Oh, my God!" exclaimed Rick; and Lanny's heart hit him several blows underneath his throat.

There was Mabel Blackless, as she was in those days, just ripened into womanhood, a creature of such loveliness as made men catch their breath. The painter who had done her was a lover of the flesh, and had set himself to exploiting its lusciousness; the creams and whites and pinks, the velvety texture, the soft curves, the delicately changing shadows. Beauty was seated upon a silk-covered couch, half supported by one arm. There was a light blue veil across her hips, and the shower of her hair fell over one shoulder, half hiding a breast; she was in bright sunlight, and the fine strands gleamed like gold - not such an easy thing for a painter to get.

These were the modern days - they always are - and when a woman went swimming at Juan, she put on a fairly light bathing suit, and when it was wet it clung tightly, so really there wasn't so much in the picture that Lanny didn't know already. One thing he had never seen was her breasts, with nipples of delicate pink; he couldn't help thinking: "So that is where I was nourished!" He thought: "God, what a strange thing life is!" He confronted once more that most bewildering of ideas: "I was her accident! If it hadn't happened, where would I have been?"

He looked at the date in the corner of the painting; it was 1899, and he knew it was just before Robbie had come along and started him upon his strange journey into the present. Now, by the magic of art, the son could stand and look at the past; but no magic would enable him to look into the future, and know what he was going to do with his own power to create life. Were there baby souls waiting in the unknown, for him to decide whether or not they were to be?

His friend saw how deeply stirred he was; the blood had a way of mounting into Lanny's cheeks, just as you saw recorded in the portrait of his mother. Rick tried to ease him down by discussing the work from the technical point of view. Finally he allowed himself to remark: "If I owned that painting I don't think I'd ever marry. I'd expect too much!"

Lanny's reply was: "I think I'm the one who ought to own it." He recalled his father's wish to buy him something; and now he knew what it was going to be. When the dealer rejoined them he inquired: "What is the price of this painting?"

The man looked at him, and then pretended to look on the back of the painting. The artist was not a well-known one, and the price was thirty-two hundred francs, or six hundred and forty dollars. "I will take it," Lanny said. "I will pay you two hundred francs down, and if you send the painting to the Hotel Crillon this evening, I will have the rest." The dealer knew then that he should have asked a higher price, but it was too late.

When Lanny told his father what he had done, the latter was much amused. "Do you want to take it to America?"

Lanny laughed in turn. "I thought Beauty and I ought to have it. I'll send it to her, and she can stick it away with Marcel's work."

"It's a queer sort of a present," said Robbie, "but if it's what you want, O.K. There are half a dozen paintings of Beauty somewhere in the world, and you might hunt them up." Then the shrewd businessman added: "Buy options for two years, and you'll get some bargains that'll surprise you. The franc has been pegged, but it won't hold after the war!"

VI

The tongues of the two young men were loosened and they talked about love. Lanny told of his happiness with Rosemary, now almost a year past. He didn't have a right to say how far they had gone - but he found that Rosemary had told Rick's sister, and she in turn had told Rick. These young people had few secrets; their "emancipation" took the form of voluminous talk, and it was a mark of enlightenment to employ the plainest words.

When Lanny said he hadn't been able to be interested in any other girl, Rick told him it was hard luck that he had aimed too high. "I mean," he added, hastily, "from the English point of view. Her family puts on a lot of side. Of course, it's all bally rot; perhaps we'll sack the lot of them before this war is over."

Lanny told what his father had said to Zaharoff, that it might end as it had in Russia; to which Rick replied in his free and easy way that he'd take his chances with a new deal. He informed his friend that the Codwilliger family was planning for Rosemary to marry the oldest grandson of the very old Earl of Sandhaven; the grandson was the future heir, since his father had been killed in the same siege of Gallipoli where Rosemary's father had been wounded. Lanny could see how useless it was for him to hope - that is, of course, from the English point of view. He gathered the impression that he had been greatly honored by having had the future mother of an earl for a temporary sweetheart.

It was Rick's turn to open his heart. "I've been meaning to tell you, Lanny - I'm married."

"What?" cried the other, amazed.

"The night before I left for France. It's quite a long story. If you want to hear it - "

"Oh, do I, Rick!"

The baronet's son had come to London to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps, and at the home of one of his school friends had met a girl just his age, a student at a college not far from his training camp. They had hit it off together, and used to meet whenever Rick had free time. "We talked about love," he said, "and I told her I'd never had a girl. Of course all the chaps want to have one before they go to the front - and all the girls want to have them, it seems. She said she'd try it with me, and we were both quite happy - only of course there wasn't very much time."