Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

  The excitement was slow in subsiding. The diners talked volubly about what had been said and by whom. The dark-eyed man with the little black mustache considered that he had played the hero; he shook his fist and became inspired, telling what he would have done to the accursed one, the enemy of la patria. Working himself into a warlike mood, he challenged the enemies of Italy to come from all quarters of the earth and he would deal with them single-handed. It is the nature of Italians to say a lot about what they intend to do, and it is the nature of Englishmen to look upon them with an aloof expression which seems to say: “What unpleasant insects!” Lanny was amused by both types.

  He explained to his friend that it was a politcal dispute; the new arrival had called the orator a traitor and betrayer of the working class. Probably this orator had belonged to the extreme left, but had become patriotic during the war; it was a common happening.

  “I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve seen that woman,” Lanny remarked; “and now it comes to me. You remember I told you I had an uncle who is a Red; and once when I was young he took me on a slumming trip—we called on a friend of his in a tenement in Cannes, and it was this woman. Her name is Barbara—I have forgotten the second name. My father was angry and made a fuss, and I had to promise that I would have nothing more to do with my Uncle Jesse.”

  “Would your father feel that way now?” asked Rick.

  “Indeed he would; the day the treaty was signed my father and my uncle had a frightul row. Robbie has a regular phobia on the subject of the Reds and what they might do to me. You know they have a lot of facts on their side, and they are damned clever at making use of them.”

  “Listen, Lanny; I don’t want you to do anything you shouldn’t, but it might be a rare good thing for me to have a talk with that woman. She could tell me everything I need; and there’s what you call local color, human interest—I’d get the feel of the people from her.”

  Lanny was taken aback. “I suppose—if it’s a professional matter—” He stopped, and a grin came on his face. “That’s exactly the way it happened at the Peace Conference. I had to go and see my uncle, because Colonel House wanted to get in touch with the Bolshevik agents!”

  Rick laughed in turn. “But after all, Lanny, you’re going to live in a different world from your father. You’ll have to believe what you believe and not what he tells you.”

  Lanny saw that his friend was in earnest about the woman, so he said: “I wonder if we could find her.”

  “They’ll be looking for a place to get a meal. They probably won’t go far.”

  “All right. You sit here and finish your dinner, and I’ll scout around and see if I can spot them.”

  VIII

  It proved an easy assignment. In the third place Lanny looked he saw the pair seated at a table. As they were eating, he did not disturb them, but went back and fetched Rick, and the two of them approached the table together. “I wonder if you remember me, Signora,” said Lanny, in French, which he knew the woman spoke. “You are, I believe, a friend of my uncle, Jesse Blackless.”

  “Oh, of course!” she exclaimed. She rose up and looked at Lanny’s smiling features, and remembered. “You are that little boy who came to see me in Cannes!”

  “No longer so little,” he replied. “I have never forgotten you. Your name is Barbara—” He had expected to stop, but at exactly the right instant the other name popped into his mind. “Pugliese,” he said—pronouncing it in the Italian manner, “Pool-yay-say.”

  “You have a remarkable memory!” she testified.

  “You were sick when I saw you. I am glad that you appear to be better.”

  “We poor are hard to kill. We have to be.”

  “You made a great impression upon me, Signora. I thought you had the most saintly face I had ever seen. But perhaps you would not like to be described in that way.”

  The woman was amused, and translated the remark to her friend, whose French was apparently not so good.

  “My name is Lanny Budd, and this is my friend, an English flier who was wounded in the war. He has a long English name which is hard to spell or to remember, so pretend that he is another little boy and call him Rici.”

  “I will do that if you will call me Barbara. Your uncle is a man for whom I have a high regard. He stands by his convictions. Where is he now?”

  “I believe at his home, near Saint-Tropez. You know that he paints pictures when he is not rebelling.”

  Barbara smiled. Her face was sad and could be very stern, but it was lighted by intelligence and kindness, and Lanny the young man confirmed what Lanny the lad had judged, that she was a rare and good person in spite of her evil reputation.

  She introduced her companion by the name of Giulio, and all four seated themselves. Rick ordered coffee, and Lanny ordered the tail end of a dinner. Now and then the two would exchange a glance, and Lanny knew that a member of the English ruling classes was getting a thrill out of addressing two dangerous Italian Reds by their first names. Now indeed he was a journalist, getting local color in great splashes!

  Lanny mentioned that they had been witnesses of the recent fracas, and Barbara’s face lost all its gentleness. “That is the most abominable little wretch that I have met upon this earth!” she told them. “When I first knew him in Milan, where I was an official of the party, he was a poor waif who came to meetings, a sick beggar who haunted our headquarters to sponge upon the kindness of members. Now and then someone would give him food—just because it is impossible to eat with any satisfaction while a starving dog is cringing by the table. You cannot imagine the misery of this ragged and homeless one, lamenting the hopelessness of his fate, the worthlessness of himself, the pains he suffered from syphilis—this, I imagine, would not be considered quite good taste in England?”

  “Rather not,” said Rick, to whom the question was addressed.

  “We of the party of course have to allow for the degradation of the workers. It is our duty to lift them up and teach them, and so we aided this poor Benito—the name is Spanish and means ‘Blessed One’ and is freely bestowed by pious mothers. So we taught the favorite of heaven the philosophy of brotherhood and solidarity, and he proved to be quick at learning phrases and using them in speeches. It was not long before he was addressing the workers, denouncing all capitalists and clamoring that their throats should be cut. There was only one person in the world to whom he could not give courage, and that was his mournful self. There is a pun I used to make upon his name, which is Mussolini. I would leave out one of the s’s. The Italian word muso means—I cannot recall the French word, but it is when a child has his feelings hurt, and he will not play, but makes a face very ugly—”

  “Boudant,” supplied Lanny, and added for Rick’s benefit: “Pouting.”

  “That is it,” said Barbara. “And so Benito Musolini means Blessed Little Pouter. In that way I would try to tease him out of his self-pity—and you see how in the end I succeeded. His poor thin cheeks have filled out, he wears well-tailored clothes and orates in the trattoire.”

  “How does he manage this?” inquired Rick, thinking of his “human interest.”

  “He became the editor of the Socialist paper in Milan; and when the British agents or French came to him he took their gold. The paper changed its tone overnight; and when the party kicked him out, he got more gold to start a paper of his own and to denounce his former comrades as traitors to la patria. Now he is here getting material for articles about the conference. He is all for the sacro egoismo; he preaches to the starving workers the glory of holding Fiume and seizing the Dalmatian coast, and that it is their sublime destiny to help fill a sea of blood upon which the Italian navy may sail to world empire. Never has there been such a transformation in a man—you should see him on the platform, how he has learned to thrust out his chin and swell up his chest—our Blessed Little Pouter.”

  “You are making a better pun than you know,” put in Lanny. “There is a kind of pigeon which swells up its c
hest in such a way, and by a strange chance is called a pouter.”

  The woman was delighted, and told her friend about it—uno Colombo! He laughed with glee, and learned to say it in English—Benito Musolini—Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon!

  IX

  Rick questioned his new acquaintance about the state of mind of the Italian workers, and she described the tragic years of slaughter and semi-famine. For her the war had been a struggle of rival imperialisms, and as always the people had paid for it with their blood and tears. But now they had learned their lesson, and soon were going to take affairs into their own hands.

  “You don’t think the war-mongers can mislead them?” asked Rick, by way of drawing her out.

  “Mai più!” exclaimed Barbara. “Our people are disciplined; they have their labor unions, their great co-operatives, their presses, their schools for the children. They are class-conscious and mentally armed.”

  “Yes, but are they armed with weapons?”

  “The soldiers are of the people; would they turn their guns upon their own? You see that already the workers have seized many factories and are holding them.”

  “But can they run them?”

  “Our great weakness in Italy is that we have no coal; we are dependent upon your British capitalists, who will not give credit to revolutionary workers. But the Russian workers are digging coal, and soon it will be coming to us. That is why trade through the Black Sea is so vital to us.”

  “I see that Nitti has come out for the lifting of the blockade.”

  “Nitti is a politician, a twin brother to your Lloyd George. He makes bold speeches, but what he is doing behind the locked doors of the council chamber is another matter.”

  “You don’t think he means it, then?”

  “The Socialists have just shown him that they have the votes. If he does not wish to retire to private life, he must force the French to let us trade with our Russian comrades.”

  “You really believe,” persisted the interviewer, “that labor unions can manage to run factories and produce goods?”

  “Why can they not? Who is it that does the work today?”

  “They do the manual work; but the directing—”

  “Is done by technicians, hired by the capitalists. Why can they not be hired by the workers?”

  They discussed the theories of syndicalism, or labor-union control of industry. Barbara hated every form of government; She would trust no politicians, whatever label they gave themselves. Rick pointed out that in Russia the workers had a strong government; syndicalism appeared to have merged with Bolshevism, which put everything into the hands of the state. Barbara attributed this to the civil war, which was really an invasion of Russia by the capitalist nations. Government control of industry might be a temporary necessity, but she didn’t like it. Rick ventured the guess that if she were to go to Russia she mightn’t find what she expected.

  The woman rebel had one argument to which she would return. Could the workers make a worse mess of the world than their masters had done? Look at what they had made of Europe! One more such holocaust and the Continent would be a wilderness inhabited by savages wearing skins and hiding in caves. “Capitalism is war,” declared Barbara Pugliese; “its peace is nothing but a truce. If once the workers own the tools of production, they do not produce for profit, but for their own use, and trade becomes free exchange and not a war for markets.”

  “I have to admit,” said the interviewer, “that our British labor movement seems to have the sanest program at present.” Lanny found that a startling opinion to come from a baronet’s son. Was Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson turning into a Pink? And if he did, what would Robbie make of it?

  X

  The San Remo conference broke up at the end of ten days, and Rick had his article ready by that time. He had shut himself up in the stuffy hotel room while Lanny was out playing tennis with Fessenden and his friends, or inspecting a sixteenth-century palace and a votive chapel having wax images of portions of the human body which had been healed—including some not customarily exposed to public gaze. When Rick worked, he worked like one possessed, and Lanny read the manuscript page by page and kept his friend cheered by extravagant praises.

  Really it was a first-class article, written by a man who had been behind the scenes and hadn’t been fooled by official propaganda. Rick described the loveliness of the background of the conference; was it the region referred to by the hymn-writer, where “every prospect pleases, and only man is vile”? Here were flower-covered hills, roads lined with palm trees, hedges of roses and oleanders, cactus gardens and towering aloes; and here were elderly politicians whose minds were labyrinths full of snares for the feet of even their friends and allies. Rick cited official statements which had gone all over the earth and which were at a variance with facts. He showed how the old men used words to take the place of realities, until for their peace of mind they had to force themselves to believe their own propaganda.

  The French wanted to weaken Germany, while the British wanted to raise Germany so that they could trade with her: that in one sentence was what all the conferring was about. They had effected a compromise by which they were going to do both at the same time. Privately they admitted that the Versailles treaty was unenforceable, but they solemnly told the world that it was not to be revised; they would “interpret” it—which was another word. They would bluff, and overlook the fact that no one heeded their bluffs. They had announced that they would not discuss the question of Russia, and the next day they proceeded to discuss it. They denounced Germany for not having delivered coal to France, but at the same time they pledged France to take no action about it. The French were helping to drive the Turks from Constantinople, but at the same time they were arming the Turks against the British; gun-running and smuggling were going on all along the Arabian coasts, and wherever else any traders saw a chance for profit.

  The world had been told that it had a League of Nations, which was going to deal with all these problems. But what power had this League, asked Rick, and who cared to give it power? Instead of taking these issues before the League, the three premiers met in a locked chamber and settled them according to the interests of their three political parties. Such, it appeared, was to be the new government of Europe. They were to meet again at Spa, in Belgium, and the Germans were to be summoned to attend; the “Big Three” would again become the “Big Four.” “Absit omen!” wrote Rick—for readers who had been educated in English public schools and therefore carried various tags of Latin in their heads.

  Lanny couldn’t find enough praise for this outspoken article, but it was hard indeed for him to believe that any editor would publish it. Rick said that was a chance he had to take; he would tell the truth, and if the editors couldn’t face it, that was their readers’ hard luck. “I suppose some leftist sheet would print it,” he added; “but they probably can’t pay.”

  The precious document was entrusted to the post, and after saying good-by to the friends they had made, Lanny and Rick motored back to Juan. A couple of days later they read in their newspaper that Lloyd George had returned to England and made a speech in Parliament reporting the outcome of the conference. Rick read it aloud, punctuating it with such words as “tommyrot,” “bilge,” and “hot air.” Everything was lovely, harmony ruled in the hearts of all the Allies, and the British public might rest assured that nothing could weaken the solidarity of the victors in the late conflict. Germany was being disarmed and, in spite of all her subterfuges, this necessary work would be continued. “Airplanes we will get,” declared the rosy-faced cherub with the snow-white mop of hair. “We cannot allow these terrific weapons of war to be left lying about in Germany, with nobody in authority to see to them.”

  “I can tell him he had jolly well better not!” commented the young Englishman, who had been up in the air so many times and had looked down upon the puny works of man from a height of ten thousand feet.

  BOOK TWO

  Someone Whom I C
ould Court

  6

  A Sweet Unrest

  I

  Lanny came home somewhat bored with statesmen, and resolved to devote his attention to a strictly private matter. He found a letter which he opened with great eagerness. It said:

  Dear Lanny:

  I have to be with my little son. I hope that you and Rick have been having a pleasant holiday, and that his effort will succeed. I have given a good deal of thought to your project of marketing the pictures. I approve of it and hope that later on I may be able to give you assistance. In the meantime, believe me, with all good wishes,

  Marie.

  Lanny didn’t have to puzzle over that. He had told her that some day he had planned to have Marcel’s paintings put on the market; he hadn’t asked for her help, of course, but she had thought of this as a camouflage which he would not fail to understand. Her fears were very real to her; he wondered if they would ever permit her to be happy.

  She had given her address, and he wrote a note like her own, carefully guarded. The project for marketing the pictures was in his thoughts continually, he said. He looked forward to having her advice, for he trusted her judgment about art more than that of any other person. He hoped that her patient was improving. He posted this, and tried to put his mind on piano practice, but found it far from easy. All music now turned into Marie; when it danced he was dancing with her, when it was sad he was sad about her, and when it ceased, he was alone, and restless and discontented.

  He took to wandering about at night, brooding over the problem of their love and what they were going to do with it. Beauty, watching her darling anxiously, sought to break into his confidence, and he could not very well exclude her. As usual, it was a relief to share his troubles, and he told what little his friend had imparted about herself and her husband. Under Beauty’s relentless questioning he repeated talks with Marie, and from these his mother was able to comprehend the basis of this unfortunate entanglement. Lanny had always been a precocious child; he had always had ideas beyond his age—and so now he was bored by young girls and wanted a mature woman. Love to him didn’t mean moonlight and roses, it meant what he called “conversation.”