Пользователь - WORLDS END

Inside the racetrack the big busses were lined all the way down the straight. The weather was fine, and everybody happy. The royal family put in an early appearance, and the King and Queen stood in the royal box and received a hearty ovation. "Bumbles" pointed out to Lanny the precautions taken to keep the suffragettes from interfering with the.race; for last year one of them had dashed out and thrown herself under the horses' hoofs and got killed - "the daughter of a very good family, too," said his lordship, with disgust. To keep that from happening a second time the track had been lined with three sets of railings, and police and soldiers were watching all the way around. Every Derby receives a name, and this one was dubbed "the silent Derby," because a French horse won and two outsiders were placed; the favorites were nowhere, so that everybody lost money except the bookies.

IV

At the next week-end came the art lover Rick, and they saw the Russians in Le Coq d’ Or by Rimsky-Korsakov. They saw the foolish King Dodon with a tall gold crown and a great black bear.d to his waist, and a huge warrior in chain mail, with a curved sword half as big as himself and shining like a bass tuba. This was the Tsar's own ballet troupe, trained for the dance since early childhood, and all London raved over them. Lanny's enthusiasm for dancing came back, and he and Rick exhausted themselves trying to reproduce those amazing Muscovite leaps.

Also, they went to hear Chaliapin, an enormous blond man with a voice that filled the firmament. They went to see Westminster Abbey, and found a fashionable wedding going on; they heard the clamor of high-toned bells, and got a glimpse of the bridal pair emerging, one in a cloud of tulle, the other with a pale, peaked face, dwarfed by a tall black cylinder on top. Rick didn't seem to think very highly of the old families which ruled his country; he said the groom was probably dim-witted, while the bride would be the daughter of a brewer or a South African diamond king.

Later on came the Trooping of the King's Colours on the Horse Guards' Parade, the occasion being the King's "official birthday": a gorgeous ceremony with a troop of horsemen wearing huge bearskin hats. The King rode at their head, a frail-looking gentleman with dark brown mustaches and beard closely trimmed. They had mounted one of those bearskins on top of him, also a uniform much too large for him, loaded with gold epaulets and a belt, a wide blue sash, and a variety of stars and orders. The young Prince of Wales looked still more uncomfortable, having a pathetic thin face and a sword which he would have had a hard time brandishing.

They made the Queen colonel-in-chief of a regiment; her uniform was blue, all over gold in front, and her hat was of fur with a blue bag hanging from it, and a tall white pompon standing up a foot in the air. Lanny had seen in an American magazine a picture of a drum major in such a costume. He said that to Rick, who replied that the influence of this royal family was a very bad thing for England. "They give themselves up entirely to the tailoring and dressmaking business," said the severe young art lover. "Their friends are the big money snobs. If an artist receives honors, it is some painter of fashionable portraits. Titles are entirely a question of finance; you pay so much cash into the party treasury, and become Sir Snuffley Snooks or the Marquess of Paleale." In short, Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson having got no honors for his efforts to promote little theaters in England, his eldest son thought ill of the government.

"Go and see it in action," he advised. So Lanny went on a weekday to Westminster, and was admitted to the visitors' gallery of the House of Commons, now covered with heavy wire net on account of suffragettes' attempts to throw themselves over the railing. Lanny looked down upon the members of the House, mostly wearing top hats, except for the Labour non-conformists. The front-benchers sprawled with their feet upon the bench in front of them. Any of the members, when they didn't like what was said, shouted loudly. The Labour men hated the Tories, the Tories hated the Liberals, and the Irish hated everybody. A fierce controversy was under way over the question of self-government for Ireland; the Ulstermen were swearing they would never be ruled by Catholics, and Sir Edward Carson was organizing an army and threatening civil war. In short, the Mother of Parliaments was hardly setting the best of examples to her children all over the world.

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,