Book Three
Bella Gerant Alii
12
Loved I Not Honour More
I
THE August sun on the Riviera is a blinding white glare and a baking heat. In it the grapes ripen to deepest purple and olives fill themselves to bursting with golden oil. Men and women born and raised in the Midi have skins filled with dark pigments to protect them, and they can work in the fields without damage to their complexions. But to a blond daughter of chill and foggy New England the excess of light and heat assumed an aspect hostile and menacing; an enemy seeking to dry the juices out of her nerves, cover her fair skin with scaly brown spots, and deprive her of those charms by which and for which she had been living.
So Beauty Budd had to hide in the protection of a shuttered house, and have an electric fan to blow away the heat from her body. She rarely went out until after sundown, and since there was no one to look at her during the day, she yielded gradually to the temptation of not taking too much trouble. She would wear her old dressing gowns to save the new ones, and let her son see her with hair straggling. She got little exercise, there being nothing for her to do in a. house with servants.
The result was that terror which haunts the lives of society ladies, the monster known as embonpoint, a most insidious enemy, who keeps watch at the gates of one's being like a cat at a gopher hole. It never sleeps, and never forgets, but stays on the job, ready to take advantage of every moment of weakness or carelessness. It creeps upon you one milligram at a time — for the advances of this enemy are not measured in space but in avoirdupois. With it, everything is gain and nothing loss; what it wins it keeps. The battle with this unfairest of fiends became the chief concern of Beauty's life, and the principal topic of her conversation in the bosom of her family.
No use looking to the government for help. During the course of the war the inhabitants of the great cities would be rationed, and those of whole countries such as Germany and Britain; but over the warm valleys of the Riviera roamed cattle, turning grass into rich cream, and there were vast cellars and caves filled with barrels of olive oil, and new supplies forming in billions of tiny black globes on the gnarled and ancient trees. Figs were ripening, bees were busy making honey — in short, war or no war, a lady who received a thousand dollars' worth of credit every month in the invulnerable currency of the United States of America could have delivered at her door unlimited quantities of oleaginous and saccharine materials.
Nor could the trapped soul expect help from the servants who waited upon her. Leese, the cook, was fat and hearty, and Rosine, the maid, would become so in due course, and both of them were set in the conviction that this was the proper way for women to be. “C'est la nature,” was the formula of all the people of the South of France for all the weaknesses of the flesh. They looked with dismay upon the fashion of Anglo-Saxon ladies to keep themselves in a semi-starved condition under the impression that this was the way to be beautiful; they would loudly insist that the practice was responsible for whatever headache, crise de nerfs, or other malaise such ladies might experience. Leese fried her fish and her rice in olive oil, and her desserts were mixed with cream; she would set a little island of butter afloat in the center of each plate of potage, and crown every sort of sweet with a rosette or curlicue of fat emulsified and made into snow-white bubbles of air. If she was asked not to do these things, she would exercise an old family servant's right to forget.
So in desperation Beauty turned to her son. “Lanny, don't let me have so much cream!” she would cry. She adopted the European practice of hot milk with coffee; and Lanny would watch while she poured a little cream over her fresh figs, and would then keep the pitcher on his side of the table. “No more now,” he would, say when he caught her casting a glance at the tiny Sevres pitcher. But the boy's efforts were thwarted by the mother's practice of keeping a box of chocolates in her room. She would nibble them between meals; and very soon it became evident that the cunning monster of embonpoint could utilize the bean of a sterculiaceous tree exactly as well as the mammary secretion of Bos domestica. Beauty would be in a state of bewilderment about it. “Why, I hardly eat anything at all!” she would exclaim.
II
The explanation of all this was obvious. Beauty Budd was a social being, who could not live without the stimulus of rivalry. When she was going out among people, she would be all keyed up, and when food was put before her, she would be so absorbed in conversation that she would take only absentminded nibbles. But when she was shut up in the house alone, or with people upon whom she did not need to “make an impression,” then, alas, she had time to realize that she was hungry. Not even the thought of a world at war, and the sufferings of millions of men, could save her from that moral decline.
There were friends she might have seen; but in the tumult of fear which had seized the world she preferred to keep to herself. All the Americans in France were hating the Germans; but Beauty hated war with such intensity that she didn't care who won, if only the fighting would end. As for Lanny, he was doing what his father advised, keeping himself neutral. This being the case, they couldn't even speak to their own servants about the terror that was sweeping down upon Paris.
Lanny had to be “society” to his adored mother. He would invite her to a the dansant; putting a record on the phonograph, and letting her show him the fine points of the fashionable dances. He in turn would teach her “Dalcroze,” and make her do “plastic counterpoint”; she would be required to “feel” the music, and they would experiment and argue, and have a very good time. Then he would invite her to a concert, in which they would be both performers and audience; they would play duets, and he would make her work at it. No fun just playing the same things over; if you were going to get anywhere you had to be able to read. He would put a score before her and exhort and scold like a music master.
When Beauty was exhausted from that, he wouldn't let her lie down by the box of chocolates; no, it was time for their swim. When she got into her suit, he would walk behind her to the beach and survey the shapely white calves, and worry her by saying: “They are undoubtedly getting thicker!” The water was warm, and Beauty would want to float and relax, and let him swim around her; but no again, he would challenge her to a race along the shore. He would splash and make her chase him. But he never did succeed in persuading her to put on Robbie's goggles and sink down among the fishes.
They would read aloud, taking turns. Beauty couldn't concentrate upon a book very long, she was too restless — or else too sleepy. But when she had someone to read to her, that was a form of social life. She would interrupt and talk about the story, and have the stimulus of another person's reactions. In course of the years many books had accumulated in the house; friends had given them, or Beauty had bought them on people's recommendation, but had seldom found time to look at them. But now they would enjoy the company of M. France, whom they had met so recently. Lanny found Le Lys Rouge on the shelves, a fashionable love story treated with touches of the worldling's playful mockery. It had been his popular success, and proved a success with Beauty. It took her back to the happy days, the elite of the world enjoying the impulses of what they politely termed their hearts — the glands having not as yet been publicly discovered. Without difficulty Beauty saw herself in the role of a heroine who had become involved with three men, and couldn't figure out what to do. Having visited in Florence, she recalled the lovely landscapes, and they discussed the art treasures and art ideas in the book.