Presidential Agent

by Upton Sinclair

  VII

  Lanny couldn’t visit England without paying a call at The Reaches, one of his half-dozen homes. A lovely thing to have friends, and to know that you have chosen well and aren’t going to have to sever precious ties and mutilate your own life; to know that marriage isn’t going to change your friend, nor political disagreements, nor weaknesses of character. To see a family grow, and yet always be the same; to see a tradition surviving and being passed on to new generations; to see knowledge increasing and loyalty never failing—yes, if you have a friend like that, and his adoption tried, you grapple him to your heart with hooks of steel.

  Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson, Bart., was in his seventies, but as lively as ever and as interested in what was going wrong in the world about him. He had filled two rooms of his rambling old red-brick house with original documents on the contemporary English drama, and was still dreaming that he might find somebody to help him pay the expenses of this unusual sort of collection. His wife had died not long ago, but he had three children and twice as many grandchildren, all living in England and dutifully visiting him now and then. His oldest, Rick, lived with his family at The Reaches; Nina kept the house, a task not too difficult, since servants were plentiful. In 1937, as in 1914, there were young people dancing and singing all over the place, playing tennis, punting on the Thames, and in the evening sitting out in the moonlight, listening to distant music and experiencing thrills the like of which they were sure had never before been heard of in the world. As always, they considered themselves a unique and original and vitally significant generation; they were respectful to their elders, who held the purse-strings, but slightly sorry for them, as being so backward and out of date, preferring Beethoven to hot jazz, and Tennyson and Browning to Auden and Spender.

  Rick was no good for punting, on account of his knee which had got smashed while helping to save England; but his oldest son was at home, vacationing from Oxford, and Alfy’s long legs and digestion were sound, in spite of his months in a Franco dungeon. It was the first time Lanny had seen him since their parting on the right bank of the Tagus River several months ago; Lanny hadn’t really seen him then, just a dark form stepping out of a boat and scrambling up the bank, dislodging the stones of Portugal. Of course Alfy had written, pouring out his thanks, more ardently than he could do now that he was face to face with his rescuer. But he managed to get out: “I’ll never forget it, Lanny; and be sure that if I ever have a chance to return it in kind, I’ll be there.”

  “I hope I’ll never be in a fix as bad,” replied the family friend. “But if I do, I’ll holler.”

  “And be sure I’m going to earn that money and pay it back,” added the youth.

  “That was a contribution to the cause, Alfy; and both you and I will make more of them, I don’t doubt.”

  “You will make them all until I have paid you back,” declared the baronet’s grandson. He said no more, for the subject of money wasn’t dwelt upon in his world. Rick had already sent an installment of what it had cost to buy the lad out of a Fascist dungeon, but Lanny had returned it, knowing that the large family was in debt and not likely to get out of it, with Rick deliberately refusing to write “potboilers,” as he called the sort of plays his rich friends enjoyed seeing.

  Lanny said: “I’ve come on something interesting in the States; a way to put some of our ideas across. But I’m pledged not to talk about it.”

  “That’s all right,” replied Rick; “if it’s a secret, the fewer who know it the better.”

  “There’s nothing to prevent my passing information on to you as always,” added the visitor. He told some of the news from his Connecticut home, and bits of what he had heard at Wickthorpe Lodge.

  “The Beaver is on the warpath, privately as well as publicly,” commented the playwright. “They call him flighty, but you notice that he never wavers from loyalty to his fortune.”

  “And to Empire Free Trade,” added Alfy. It was the scheme of having parts of the British Empire trade with one another, to the exclusion of the rest of the world; “the Beaver” had been tireless in its advocacy ever since his Canadian days.

  “It’s all the same,” replied the father. “It means that greed and jealousy continue to rule the world, and people spend their substance building fences to keep the rest of the world out.”

  Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson was a saddened man. He was only a couple of years older than Lanny, but already there were touches of gray in his wavy dark hair and lines of care in his forehead. He had had his success as a playwright, but that had been a fluke, so he declared, and wasn’t likely to happen again. He had his ideas of what was decent, and he followed them, even though he saw the rest of the world traveling another road. He slaved to collect material and organize it into a thoughtful article, and then he sold it to one of the weeklies for five or six pounds. He might have got ten times as much from one of their press lordships, Beaverbrook or Rothermere or Astor, on the single condition that he would write what they told him instead of what he believed.

  Alfy was tall like his father, more slender, and had dark wavy hair; his features were thin and sensitive and his spirit high. He had absorbed his father’s ideas, and took them with desperate intensity; he had proved it by going off to Spain to fight in the air for the people’s cause. Now he was under a sort of parole and couldn’t go to Spain again; he had taken up the idea of the law as a career, and Lanny knew that it was as a means of repaying his debt. Lanny didn’t think that this idealistic lad would ever be a moneymaker in any field, but he let the matter rest until Alfy should have finished at Magdalen College, pronounced Maudlin.

  VIII

  The grandson of Budd’s was accustomed to refer to himself playfully as an amphibious animal; one of those prehistoric lizards whose ancestors had always lived in the water, but which was now climbing out onto the rocks and painfully learning to breathe air in its pure state instead of air that was hidden in the interstices of drops of water. The Lanny lizard could manage it for a while, he said, but every now and then the effort would become too great and he would have to slip back into the element which was his natural home.

  By that element he meant the world of fashion and pleasure. It was a world where everybody had, or at any rate was assumed to have, all the money he could possibly want. It was the “leisure-class” world, and the people in it were proud of the fact that they had never done and didn’t know how to do anything useful. The farther back they could trace an ancestry which had never done it, the more distinguished they were. To them the world provided every luxury the ingenuity of men had been able to devise: delicious foods and rare wines, with skilled cooks to prepare and trained servants to serve them; soft and delicate fabrics, cut always in a manner having esoteric significance; fast motorcars, swiftly gliding yachts—and not merely physical satisfactions, but intellectual and moral and aesthetic; great music and literature and art—in short, all the delicate and gracious things that life had to offer. The best examplars of that leisure-class life were truly delightful companions.

  The Lanny lizard would crawl out of this agreeably warm ocean onto the hard rocks which were called “reality,” into the rare and cold atmosphere known as “social reform.” Here people slept in uncomfortable beds, ate poor food badly served, and wore clothing entirely without distinction. They were frequently worried about money and forced to borrow it from someone who had it—which usually meant the Lanny lizard. They worked hard and had few pleasures; they were frequently embittered and hard to please; they were jealous, not merely of the idle rich, but sometimes, alas, of their own comrades whose labors had won too great appreciation. They played little and studied and read a great deal; they were apt to be proud of their knowledge, and had invented a jargon of their own, more adapted to repel than to enlighten.

  In short, it was a difficult atmosphere to breathe, and the lizard would find himself getting dizzy and yearning for his old-time home. It was fatally easy to slide back into that pleasure ocean; and
moreover, it was from there that he got his food; he had to go back for what were called “business reasons,” and his friends the reformers were glad to have what he brought out of it. The result was, Lanny was one of those creatures which have both gills and lungs, and spend their time splashing in the tide-waters, being caught by the waves and bumped against the rocks, and never sure what they are or where they belong.

  IX

  In this world of fashion and pleasure one of the conspicuous activities was the making of love. To these elegant ladies and gentlemen love had become a game; something to cultivate and experiment with, always in refined and elegant ways, of course. It was something which pervaded their beings, like a perfume always in the air, like soft music heard from far off, while eating, sleeping, or conversing. The ladies of fashionable society prepared themselves elaborately for the practice of this gracious art. Their costumes were carefully devised to stimulate and suggest it, by revealing exactly the proper portion of their “charms.” Ideas of what was permissible differed widely in different lands, but in those of the West it had been the custom to reveal the face, the arms and shoulders, and the upper part of the bosom; of late years the entire back down to the waist had been added to this list. When stimulation began to fail, exposure must be increased.

  The same sort of changes had been observable in the dance. A little more than a hundred years ago Englishmen had considered it grossly indecent to stand face to face with a lady and put one arm around her and hold her ever so lightly while going through the movements of a dance; Lord Byron, usually no prude, had written a vehement protest against a vile new procedure known as “waltzing.” Now this practice had had its day and lost its charms; it wasn’t tantalizing enough or mimetic enough to interest anybody. Dancing had become still more obviously a form of love play, a way of titillating the most basic of all instincts, of suggesting the most universal of pleasures.

  Reflections upon this subject of love and love-making were passing through the mind of Lanny Budd for the reason that he had promised his friend Adella to get a price on a painting in the fine Georgian home of his old sweetheart, Rosemary. She was a year older than Lanny, which meant that she was at the age called “dangerous” for women, and therefore not entirely safe for men. Lanny had been keeping away from her on purpose, but now business drew him to her. He could come near to guessing her thoughts, for he knew her as well as he ever could know any woman. She had been his first love, and memories of her perfumed nearly all his haunts. She had sat with him by the river-bank at The Reaches, and on the shore at Bienvenu, his mother’s estate. She had motored with him through France and Germany, and sailed on the yacht Bessie Budd all the way to the Lofoden islands.

  She was gentle and kind, and had accommodated herself to his eccentricities. When the time had come for her to marry, she had considered that she owed it to her family to choose a member of her own class; at least, that is what she told Lanny, though he suspected that she had wanted to become a countess, and had enjoyed that eminence. Anyhow, she hadn’t wanted to hurt him, and didn’t see why he should be hurt. The ladies of her class made such state marriages—mariage de convenance was the French phrase; they bore their children and then considered their duty done; after that they could be free if they wished, and as a rule they did. Bertie, the earl, had had his affairs, when and as he pleased; in the course of the years Rosemary had become certain that he would play fair and not object to what she did, provided she observed reasonable discretion. Such was the fashion in the smart world, and if you didn’t like it you could stay out of it—which you probably had to do, anyway.

  Rosemary and Lanny had been happy for a couple of years, and then, after a ten years’ interval, for another year or two; why not for a third period? She knew that he was divorced, and she would be frank and straightforward in “propositioning” him. And what was he going to answer? He couldn’t say: “I am married again,” for that was a secret which he shared with only three persons, Rick and Nina and F.D.R. He couldn’t be mysterious and say: “Sorry, old dear,” for Rosemary would ask straightway: “Is there another woman?” and if he was the least bit vague about it she would draw her own conclusion. She knew many of his friends, and it was a part of their modernism to talk with frankness about their own and others’ sex lives. The story would go out: “Lanny Budd has another woman, and who is she?” Everybody would be watching him, and the longer he kept the secret the hotter would become their curiosity. Reserve was one thing your smart friends wouldn’t forgive; it was a mark of distrust and opened you to the suspicion that you were involved in something disgraceful.

  On the other hand if he said: “I am no longer interested in you, Rosemary,” that would be wounding her intolerably. He couldn’t say: “I have adopted a different moral code,” for either she would know it was an evasion, or else her curiosity would be aroused; that was one of her characteristics, and she would want to know all about these new ideas and where had he picked them up. He thought of telling her that he wasn’t well, but he knew that his looks belied it. In short, he couldn’t make up his mind what to say, and had to leave it to the inspiration of the moment, a dangerous thing for a person of sympathetic nature.

  X

  Rosemary had taken care of herself, as ladies of her world know so well how to do. She did not look her age; a bit “matronly,” but nowhere near to “plump”; Lanny knew that it meant heroic dieting, the foregoing of a lesser pleasure for the sake of a greater. She had always had a wealth of straight flaxen hair; she had scorned to bob it in the bobbing season and now she scorned to wave it in the “permanent” season. She was as Nature made her, trusting that great mother and with good reason. She permitted few cares to disturb her, for she had “inherited that good part.”

  She received him in her sitting-room, newly done in pale blue silk. Windows were open and a gentle breeze stirred the curtains; a bird sang on a branch almost inside. “He gets paid with breadcrumbs,” said Rosemary. “Oh, Lanny,” she added, “it’s so good to see you! Why don’t you come often?”

  It was a bid at the very outset, and he chose to evade. “This bird has to travel long distances for his breadcrumbs. I have just come from America.” He talked about Robbie Budd, who had always been her friend, and who sent his warm regards. He told news about the Robin family, and his mother, and other mutual friends; that was the sort of conversation she liked; she could take an interest in general ideas if she had to, but she found it rather exhausting and rarely did it if the other person would let them alone. She told him about Bertie, who was fishing in Scotland, and about her children, who were nearly grown, depriving their mother of the last hope of concealing her age.

  Presently he asked: “Have you any more paintings you would like to get rid of?”

  “Oh, Lanny, you are going to make me talk about horrid business things!” But she resigned herself without difficulty, and they strolled through the gallery. She remarked that Bertie was always spending more than he made; women were always “working him” for presents. When Lanny came to the unhappy Amy Robsart he looked at her for a while and then said: “I know a woman in the States who might be interested in that, if you would put a reasonable price on it. The woman has been reading Kenilworth.”

  Possibly Rosemary had never heard of that novel, but she wouldn’t be gauche enough to reveal the fact. “What is it worth, Lanny?”

  “I’m not the one to tell you, because I’d be getting my commission from the purchaser and I’d have to represent her.”

  “I know, Lanny, but you’re my friend, and I have to ask someone I can trust. Tell me what you’d be willing to pay if you were buying it from a dealer.”

  “Bless your heart, darling, I’d pay the least I thought the dealer would take, and the dealer would ask the most he thought I’d pay. There really is no fixed value for a painting.”

  “Tell me the highest price you would recommend as fair to your client.”

  “Well, if you would quote me eight hundred pounds,
I’d feel justified in advising anyone to take it—that is, assuming that the person wanted such a painting.”

  “It’s a very old thing, Lanny.”

  “I know; but the old houses of England are full of old paintings, and unless they have a well-known name they’re just curiosities. I have grave doubts whether this is a Garrard, as it is supposed to be, and I wouldn’t offer it as such.”

  “I’ll have to telegraph Bertie; you know it’s his property.”

  “Of course.” Lanny knew Rosemary made her husband allow her ten per cent commission for her cleverness in making these deals. That didn’t hurt Lanny.

  They went back to the sitting-room, and after tea was brought, they were again alone. She looked lovely in a Japanese silk teagown which matched the pale blue of her room, and had golden herons and clumps of bamboo on it; he wasn’t sure if he ought to look at her, but of course that was what she was made for. Suddenly she exclaimed: “Lanny, we used to be so happy! Don’t you suppose we might be again?”

  There it was, “plain and flat,” as he had expected and feared. “Darling,” he replied, “I’m in the same fix as you were when you were young; I have to think about my parents. My mother is so anxious for me to settle down, and I’ve made her so unhappy with my entanglements; my break with Irma was a blow.”

  It was a “red herring,” cleverly dragged out for the emergency. Rosemary asked: “What was the matter between you and Irma, Lanny?”

  “Well, you know how it is: Irma wants one kind of life and I want another. I think you had something to do with it. She saw how high you had flown, and she wanted to sit on the same perch. Now she’s got there, and I hope she has the fun she expects.”