she put on, and were prepared to lift an eyebrow and whisper behind a fan over the slightest
wrong detail.
But there wasn't much to quarrel with. The young Juno was good to look at, and the best
artists had been put to work on her. The prevailing fashions favored her; they had gone back
to natural lines, with high waists. The décolletage for backs was lower; in fact, where the back
of the dress might have been there was nothing but Irma; but it was enough. Her dark brown
hair was in masses of curls, and that looked young and wholesome. Her gown of pale blue silk
chiffon appeared simple, but had cost a lot, and the same was true of her long rope of pearls.
The daughter of the utilities king was naturally kind; she liked people, and made them feel it.
She did the honors with no visible coaching. She had taken the trouble to learn who people were,
and if she had met them before, she remembered where, and had something friendly to say. If
they were strangers, she assumed that they were welcoming her to Paris and thanked them for
their courtesy. At her side stood a good-looking young fellow,
Budd Gunmakers, you know, quite a concern in America. In the background was a phalanx of
older women: the two mothers, large and splendid, and Mrs. Chattersworth, whom everyone
knew. In short,
XII
A modest-appearing young Jewish violinist came forward, and with his wife accompanying
him played Cesar Franck's violin sonata; French music, written in Paris by a humble organist
and teacher who had lived obscurely among them until an omnibus had killed him; now they
honored him, and applauded his interpreter. As an encore Hansi played Hubay's
fiery and passionate; when they applauded again, he smiled and bowed, but did not play any
more. His sister-in-law, Rahel Robin, whom nobody had ever heard of, came to the piano, and
with Lanny Budd accompanying and her husband playing a clarinet obbligato, sang a couple of
Provencal peasant songs which she herself had arranged. She had a pleasing voice, and it was a
sort of homelike family affair; you wondered if they were showing themselves off, or if they were
saving money.
Certainly they hadn't saved on the food and drink, and that is important at any party. In the
ball-room a smart colored band played jazz, and in the other rooms the young wife and the
young husband moved here and there, chatting with this one and that. Madame Hellstein, of
the international banking-house, with her daughter Olivie, now Madame de Broussailles; Lanny
had told his wife: "I might have married her, if Rosemary hadn't written me a note at the
critical moment!" So, naturally, Irma was interested to look her over. A lovely daughter of
Jerusalem—but she was growing stout! "These Jewish women all do," thought Irma.
And then one of Zaharoff's married daughters, who also had looked upon the son of Budd as
a
nude ladies from Zoltan. A traveling maharajah who bought ladies—but from another dealer! A
Russian grand duke in exile; a crown prince from one of the Scandinavian lands; a couple of
literary lions, so that you wouldn't appear to be snobbish. Lanny had been a dear and hadn't
asked for any Reds or Pinks; they wouldn't appreciate the honor, he said.
Irma wasn't clever; but that is a quality for the "outs," whereas she was among the "ins." She
was serene and gracious, and as she moved among this elegant company little shivers of
happiness ran over her and she thought: "I am getting away with it; it is truly
being one of the first French words she had learned. Lanny, thirty-two and world weary, thought:
"How hard they all try to keep up a front and to be what they pretend!" He thought: "All the
world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"—these being among the first words
of Shakespeare he had learned.
He knew much more about these players than his wife did. He had been hearing stories from
his father and his business friends, from his mother and her smart friends, from his Red uncle,
from Blum and Longuet and other Pinks. This lawyer for the Comité des Forges who had all
the secrets of
had half the members of the Radical party on his list; this publisher who had taken the Tsar's
gold before the war and now was a director of Skoda and Schneider-Creusot! Who would envy
these men their stage roles? The whole show was tolerable to the players only because of the
things they didn't know, or which they thrust into the back of their minds. Lanny Budd,
treading the boards, playing acceptably his part as prince consort, enjoyed it with one-half his
mind, while the other half wondered: how many of his guests could bear to dance if they
knew what would be happening to them ten years from now?
12
