Also Mr. Hackabury talked about America; he thought it was terrible that a boy had never seen his own country. “They are a different people,” he said, “and don't let anybody fool you, they are better.” Lanny said his father thought so too, and had told him a lot about Yankee mechanics and farmers, how capable and hard-headed they were, and yet how kind. The soapman told about life in a small village, which Reubens had been when he was a boy. Everybody was independent, and a man got what he worked for and no more; people were not worldly, the stranger was welcomed and not suspected and snubbed. Pretty soon the lilacs and honeysuckle would be in bloom.
“Yes,” said Lanny, “I've seen them. Mrs. Chattersworth, who lives up on the heights above Cannes, has some in her gardens, and they do very well.”
To this the other replied: “I suppose they'll live here if they have to, but they won't like it.”
In short, the old gentleman was homesick. He said that back in Reubens were fellows who had grown up with him, and would now be pitching horseshoes on the south side of a big red barn where the snow melted early. Lanny had never heard about pitching horseshoes and asked what it was. “I know where the peasants have their horses shod,” said he. “I'll take you there and maybe we can buy some shoes.”
So that's what they did next morning. Since Pierre was driving the ladies for shopping, Mr. Hackabury rented a car, and they were taken to the blacksmith's place, and to the man's bewilderment Mr. Hackabury paid him three times too much for some clean new shoes, and gave him several little cakes of soap besides. When the ladies came home after lunch to dress for a tea party, they found that this oddly assorted couple had picked out a shady corner of the lawn, and Mr. Hackabury with his coat off was showing Lanny the subtle art of projecting horseshoes through the air so that they fell close to a stake.
III
In short, there sprang up one of those friendships which Lanny was always forming with persons older than himself. Such persons liked to talk, and Lanny liked to listen; they liked to teach, and he liked to learn. So when the stores were all on board the yacht, and the passengers packed and ready to follow, Mr. Hackabury took his new friend aside. “See here, Lanny; do you like motoring?” When Lanny replied that he did, the soapman said: “I've been studying the guidebooks, and I have a scheme. We'll motor to Naples and pick up the yacht there, and so I'll escape two or three days and nights of seasickness.”
Lanny said: “Fine,” and the owner of the yacht made the announcement to his surprised guests. He proposed to hire a car; but Beauty said there would be no one to use her car while she was away, and she would feel a lot safer if they had Pierre to drive them.
So for three days and nights the boy stayed with this homesick manufacturer, and absorbed a lifetime's lore about the civilization of Indiana. Ezra told the story of his life, from the time he had raised his first calf, an orphan which he had fed with his fingers by dipping them in the milk. A drunken hobo who worked on the farm at harvest-time had shown Ezra's father how to make a good quality of soap, and presently Ezra was making it for the neighbors, earning pocket money. He began saving pocket money to buy machinery to make more soap, and that was the way a great business had started.
For fifty years now Ezra Hackabury had lived with his nose in soap. Before he was twenty-one the people of the village of Reubens, seeing his diligence, had helped to finance the erection of a brick factory, and all these persons were now well-to-do and able to play golf at the country club. The soapman quoted from Scripture: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings.” Ezra hadn't done that, but he said: “I reckon I might if I put my mind to it.”
There was a box of soap in the car, having a bright bluebird on the box, and one on the wrapper of each cake. The soapman had chosen this symbol because the bluebird was the prettiest and cleanest thing he had seen in his boyhood, and the people of the Middle West all understood his idea. Later on a fellow had written a play of the same name, which Ezra regarded as an infringement and an indignity. People assumed that he had named the soap for the play, but of course the fact was the other way around, said the manufacturer.
The box in the car contained little sample cakes. Mr. Hackabury was never without some in his pocket, his contribution to the spread of civilization in backward lands. Every time a motorcar stopped in Italy, a swarm of ragged urchins would gather and clamor for pennies; the American millionaire would pull out a fistful of his Bluebird packages, and the children would grab them eagerly, and either smell or taste them, and then register disillusionment. Lanny said: “Most of them probably don't know what soap is for.” Mr. Hackabury answered: “It's terrible, the poverty of these old nations.”
That was his attitude to all the sights of Italy, which he was seeing for the first time. He thought only of the modern conveniences which were not at hand; of the machinery he would like to install, and the business he could do. He wasn't the least bit interested in getting out and looking at the windows of an old church; all that was superstition, of a variety which he called “Cath'lic.” When they came to Pisa and saw the leaning tower, he said: “What's the use? With modern steel they could make it lean even more, but it don't do anybody any good.”
So it went, the whole trip. Carrara with its famous marble quarries reminded Mr. Hackabury of the new postoffice they were building in Reubens; he had a picture postcard of it. When he saw a dog lying in the road, he was reminded of the hound with which he had hunted coons when he was a boy. When the soapman saw a peasant digging in hard soil, he told about Asa Cantle, who was making a good living raising angleworms to be planted in soil to keep it aerated. There were a million things we could learn about nature that would make life easier for everybody on earth. Ezra told as many of them as there was time for.
They could watch the sea part of the time, and it stayed smooth as the millpond from which the Bluebird soap factory derived its power. But Mr. Hackabury was not to be fooled — he was sure that when they got on it they would find it was heaving and sinking. “The food ain't so good in these Eye-talian inns,” he said, “but what I eat I keep. And anyhow, we can say we've seen the country.”
IV
They bade farewell to Pierre and the motorcar, and went on board the yacht, which put to sea. The smells improved — but the treacherous element behaved just as Mr. Hackabury had said, and he took to his cabin and did not appear again until they were under the shelter of the rocky Peloponnesus.
Meanwhile a new friendship opened up for Lanny Budd. On the deck sat Marcel Detaze before his easel, wearing his picturesque little blue cap and his old corduroy trousers; he had sketched out a view of the Bay of Naples with Capri for a background, and a fisherboat with a black sail crossing the dying sun. Marcel worked on this for days, trying to get the thing which he called “atmosphere,” which made the difference between a work of art and a daub. “Do you know Turner's atmosphere?” he asked of Lanny. “Do you know Corot's?”
Marcel was one of those painters who don't mind talking while they work. So Lanny drew up a camp chair and watched every stroke of the brush, and received lectures on technique. Every painter has his own style, and if you took a microscope to the brushwork, you could tell one from another. The despair of Marcel was the infinity of nature; a sunset like this shifted its tints every moment, and which would you choose? You had to get the effects of distance, and you had to make a flat surface appear endless; you had to turn a dead mineral substance into a thousand other things — not to mention the soul of the painter who was looking at them all. “No landscape exists until the painter makes it,” said Marcel.