After the little one had gone reluctantly to bed, he was shut up in the privacy of the library with his former wife and the wife’s new husband; a strictly modern situation, never before heard of or imagined in these ancestral halls. Irma’s divorce had been got in Reno, Nevada; and within a half-century an English earl had been sentenced by his peers to six months’ imprisonment for putting his trust in that variety of escape mechanism. But this time it was the woman who had got the unshackling; and here she was now, living in what her Church called adulterous relationship; but all the same, the rector came to tea and the curate played bowls with his lordship on the green.
“We mustn’t quarrel,” Irma had said, “if only for Frances’ sake,”—and Lanny had agreed with her. Some of their friends thought they couldn’t have been very much in love, or they wouldn’t have taken their parting so easily. Apparently their friends would have thought it a sign of true love if they had thrown the dishes at each other’s heads, or made a scandal in the newspapers; perhaps even if Lanny had strangled Irma, or if she had put poison into his coffee. That had been the old-fashioned way; among the portraits in this ancient castle was one of a black-whiskered military earl who had hurled his unfaithful wife down the great stairway and broken her neck. At least, that was the way tradition had it; he had said it was an accident, and there was no law that could contradict him. That kind of marital solution made tremendous Elizabethan drama, but it didn’t appear so well suited to everyday use.
Irma was now a countess, and that was what she wanted; that was the way she got something for her money. As the wife of Lanny Budd she had got little, because Lanny didn’t respect money, indeed flouted it openly; he couldn’t see that it was any fun to spend great sums entertaining a swarm of people who didn’t care a hang about you and would have snubbed you on the street if you had gone broke. But now as Lady Wickthorpe, Irma had a whole community in awe of her and treating her with ceremony. A handsome brunette woman of thirty, quiet and dignified in manner, she went about with the blue-eyed rosy-cheeked lordship at her side, knowing that everything was exactly right. If now and then she found him slightly dull, she wouldn’t admit it even to herself. She had borne him two sons, and thus had settled her obligation to the British peerage; the fact that she had a child by a previous marriage and that the father of this child came visiting was taken by the Wickthorpe villagers as an Americanism.
VIII
What Lord and Lady Wickthorpe were doing now was trying to save civilization; their own phrase, and they were in deadly earnest about it. Lanny had known “Ceddy” since boyhood, when he had been a viscount; he had always been serious-minded, and talked a lot about duty to the “Empah.” Now he said: “This war is the most tragic blunder in our hist’ry.” His wife’s usually so placid face wore an expression of pain as she added: “The most cruel and wicked thing!” A woman thought more about the human side of it: the young men going out and not coming back, the homes being blown into rubble, the women and children buried beneath them.
“We must find a way to stop it,” continued his lordship. “We are simply throwing away our heritage; we are turning all Europe over to a band of Asiatic barbarians.”
That was the point of view of a large group of British aristocrats, industrialists, men of affairs; even after Dunkirk there were many who felt sure in their hearts that nobody could benefit from this war except Stalin. They pictured him in their imaginations, the Caucasian despot, gloating over the blunder his capitalistic foes were committing; he sitting back watching, getting ready to leap in at the end, when the other nations had completely exhausted themselves. “There are two great civilizations in the world, the Anglo-Saxon and the German,” declared Ceddy; “and these two are going to destroy each other’s cultures and leave the world to the lesser breeds. Surely Hitler must see that as well as we!”
“He does see it,” responded Lanny. “He has set it forth in practically the same words. The problem is, how to get the two sides together.”
This couple knew no one else who was in position to meet the topflight Nazis at the present time; so now they proceeded to cross-question him and to drink in every word. Numbers One, Two, and Three—Hitler, Göring, and Hess—they had come to Paris for the victory parade and Lanny had talked with them. They were all in agreement, they had no quarrel with Britain, no claims against the British Empire; they wanted nothing but a free hand in Eastern and Central Europe, a part of the world in which the British had no proper interest and no right to interfere.
Hitler had said it over and over in his speeches; he had assured Lanny that he was willing to get out of France—except perhaps Alsace-Lorraine; he was willing to help restore Belgium and Holland and Norway, which he had been compelled to take, partly by the accident of geography and partly by British intrigue. Hitler was sure that he could invade Britain, but he didn’t want to, and couldn’t understand why the British ruling classes failed to appreciate the service he had done them in putting down the Reds throughout the greater part of Europe—to say nothing of his offer to invade the vulture’s nest in the east and smash it once for all. Hitler had said: “Poland? Um Gottes. Willen, how did we come to get into a war over Poland? Poland is a pigsty; Poland stinks! You British tell the Americans that you believe in democracy; you don’t, of course, but even if you did, what has that to do with Poland, a dictatorship of landlords and colonels? Poland is the breeding-place of the typhus-carrying louse!”
It all seemed so simple to the Wickthorpes and their little coterie. They weren’t pacifists, but they wanted to fight the right war, and when they knew they were fighting the wrong one, they begrudged every drop of British blood, every dead Tommy or officer, every home that was bombed, every factory and shipyard and oiltank and whatnot. They grieved for the Germans almost as much as for themselves; they were quite sure that if the Nazis had been treated with tolerance and consideration they would have developed the same conservatism as British statesmen. “You know we were pretty rough ourselves in the old days,” remarked Ceddy, who liked to read hist’ry. “Building an empah is never a milk-and-water proposition. Take Clive, for instance—or, for that matter, Cecil Rhodes.” He was talking to an old friend, and could speak frankly.
Lanny reported on Pétain and his regime. A humiliating position they were in, but they had got into it by their own bad judgment, declared the noble earl. There was no need for England to do the same; nothing of the sort was desired by Hitler, and to say otherwise was merely the trickery of demagogues, of Reds open or camouflaged. Britain and Germany should be friends; they should define their separate interests and recognize each other’s right to live and grow; the world was big enough, but not big enough to support war. There should be an armistice at once, then a frank discussion and settlement. Churchill, of course, would have to resign. After Lanny had told all he had learned about efforts being made to this end, Ceddy went into detail about Hitler’s proposals through his agents in Eire and Sir Samuel Hoare in Spain. Something was surely coming out of these dickerings, declared his lordship.
IX
Lanny waited for the couple to bring up the delicate subject which Rick had mentioned; and sure enough, Irma remarked: “Ceddy is thinking of resigning, and we both of us wonder what you will think about it.”
“You surprise me,” responded the secretive one. “Won’t you be sacrificing a lot of influence?”
“We don’t think so, Lanny. It is impossible for us to function under the present Cabinet.”
“I know that permanent officials aren’t supposed to have anything to do with policy, but I have always felt certain that Ceddy was finding ways to make his influence felt.”
“That used to be so, but the time appears to have passed. Churchill dominates everything, and no one dares lift a voice in opposition. He really believes that he can win this war; he means to try, even if he wrecks all Europe.”
“A man who is prey to his hatreds, I fear. But as to Ceddy, I am troubled to see him giving up the career that
has meant so much to him. Won’t you miss your daily routine, old man?”
“I was happy in it so long as I thought I was accomplishing something; but I no longer feel that, and it irks me to take the orders of wrong-headed men.”
“But take the long view, Ceddy! Times will surely change.”
“My reading of our hist’ry convinces me that in the long run an Englishman does not suffer politically from following his conscience.”
“Take the case of Ramsay MacDonald,” put in Irma. “He stood out against the last war, but after it was over he became Prime Minister.” Irma was too young to remember those events, but she, too, had been reading hist’ry—or at any rate Listening to it in her drawing-room.
Lanny might have replied that the Scotch idealist had resigned because he stood to the Left, whereas the Earl of Wickthorpe stood to the Right, and that made all the difference in the political world. But it wasn’t Lanny’s role to suggest ideas of that sort. Instead he remarked: “I shall miss the inside view of things which you have given me.”
“I don’t think it will make much difference in that respect. There are others who share my point of view, even though they don’t feel free to act upon it. They will keep me informed.”
“What does Gerald think about it?” That was Gerald Albany, a colleague in the Foreign Office whom Lanny had often met at Wickthorpe and in London.
“He agrees that it’s all right for me, but for various reasons he doesn’t care to join me. I am in a peculiar position, as you know, on account of my rank. I had no business to be a civil servant.”
Said Lanny: “I’ve always appreciated your devotion to the public welfare. Are you going to make a personal issue of your resignation?”
“Irma and I are in agreement that it isn’t the time for that. My resignation will speak for itself. I’ll retire to this place and become a country squire for a while—Britain will need food as much as guns.”
“But you won’t give up your activity on behalf of peace!” exclaimed Lanny anxiously.
“We shall do what we can in a quiet way to spread an understanding of the situation and to counter the intrigues of the wild men. We count upon you to bring us news from America, and from the Continent, if you are able to travel there.”
The wife put in, anxiously: “Do you think the decision is wise, Lanny?”
“On the whole I believe I do. After all, a Foreign Office job is a routine one, and there are many men who can fill it. It is a humiliating job for a man of Ceddy’s station and ability; his friends have known that for a long time—I have heard several say it. As a member of the House of Lords his words and example will count for more than he realizes. He might be the man to name the Prime Minister and determine the policies of the Government.”
Really, it was a shame to play with lima that way. Lanny knew her so well, it was like tempting a child with candy. From earliest childhood she had been taught that she was a person of tremendous importance, because of the fortune of J. Paramount Barnes, utilities magnate who had killed himself gaining it. Quite literally, Lanny doubted if Irma had ever even heard of the idea that her money didn’t constitute her a privileged person, until she had found herself married to Lanny Budd. Now the vision of herself as wife of the man who was really dominating the Government of the British Empire—well, it swelled her up visibly, and that wasn’t so good, because maternity and good living had already done their work with her, and she was worried about embonpoint, just like Beauty Budd, and living on a diet of mutton chops and salads, which were supposed to be “reducing.”
X
Not far from here was the estate of Rosemary, Countess of Sand-haven, Lanny’s old flame. She was a year older than he, still blooming, and a lovely person to look at, with gentle regular features and two great ropes of straw-colored hair which she had refused to cut off in spite of fashion. Her husband was in the diplomatic service and just now in Brazil; he had given his word not to get into any more scandals, but he had never promised to live within his income. Sand-haven Manor was in debt, and any time Lanny came to England, all he had to do was to call up Rosemary, and have tea with her and stroll in the long gallery where her husband’s ancestors and their ladies were portrayed. He would remark: “I think I might interest somebody in that Romney.” Rosemary would reply: “What do you suppose it would bring?” and they would go through a routine of his refusing to set prices, she saying what a nuisance it was, she had nobody else to advise her and why couldn’t he be sensible?
The way it would end, he would say: “Well, if it was mine, I would think that five thousand pounds was a good price.” She would answer: “All right, if you can get that, I’ll put it up to Bertie.” Lanny would send cablegrams, and in a few days would have the money; then Rosemary would cable her husband and he would authorize the sale. Lanny would get ten per cent from his client and Rosemary would take ten per cent of what Bertie got—and in addition would make him agree to use part of the balance to pay off this and that creditor who was worrying her. Half the British aristocracy was in debt, Lanny judged from their conversation.
Such a picture deal would mean that Lanny would pay at least two visits to Sandhaven Manor, and drink two cups of hot tea per visit, and nibble as many cookies. Also he had to sit and look at a very lovely blonde, who for two considerable periods had been his sweetheart and teacher in the arts of love. She was a product of the feminist movement of the nineteen-teens; she had once smuggled a hatchet into the National Gallery so that an older woman could smash a picture in the cause of votes for women. She had learned to assert her right to do everything that men did and a little more of it. Both she and her husband enjoyed the privilege of taking love where they found it; and Rosemary had never found more with any man than with the grandson of Budd Gunmakers.
She was completely free-spoken; she had as much right to make the proposition as a man had; and she never failed to talk about these matters, inquiring as to Lanny’s love life, and why they couldn’t be happy now as they had been in their teens and again in their twenties. Lanny had made up his mind that he wanted an exclusive love, if any, but tie couldn’t tell Rosemary that without seeming a prig, and incidentally hurting the feelings of a good friend. It wouldn’t help any to say that he was in love with some other woman, for Rosemary wouldn’t have seen why that should make any difference. It was a problem how to deal with this situation, and Lanny had taken refuge in the idea of being a queer fellow who had been so much hurt by love that he had sworn off it for the rest of his days.
He would divert the conversation to Rosemary’s two sons, who were both in the army, one a German prisoner, and the other having escaped by the beaches of Dunkirk. Lanny said nothing about it, but he thought: Perhaps young Bertie had been one of those many men whom he and Rick had helped to lift out of the water. There had been so many of them, and the work of getting them onto the ships had gone on by night as well as by day; many had been too exhausted to speak, and Lanny hadn’t seen their faces or even their uniforms. It was the toughest ordeal that he had ever undergone, but now, looking back upon it, he felt proud of himself.
XI
A seat on one of the Clippers crossing the Atlantic these days went not by price but by favor, and you had to be very important. But few could be more so than a man who was making airplanes to help in the salvation of Britain, and when such a man said that his son was bringing him data which might be the means of improving the plane, the authorities had to take his word. Robbie’s London solicitor, Mr. Stafforth, said he would arrange it as soon as possible; and apparently he knew the ropes, for two days later the laconic gentleman called up to report that arrangements had been made for the following Friday.
Also there came a call from Rick, saying: “Our friend will call on Thursday afternoon.” So Lanny bade farewell to his family at Wickthorpe and went up to the huge sprawling city under the silvery barrage balloons. He always went to the Dorchester, because there, in the super-luxury lounge, he would find the sort of pe
ople whose talk was important to a P.A. “People with Munich faces,” Rick had called them; and sure enough, Lanny could have found a dozen in an hour who would say that we had already lost the war and what was the use of making so much fuss about it? People to whom the war meant nothing but personal inconvenience, and who meant to have as little of that as they could contrive!
Lanny lunched with an exquisitely corrupt youth whose father had got him exempted on grounds of his being indispensable to a banking business. Now with a pretty little doll who called herself a chorus lady but didn’t work at it, he outlined to the son of Budd-Erling—whom he imagined to be immensely wealthy—a scheme for making a fortune out of speculations in French electrical shares; they were down to a quarter of their value, and this tipster had information as to which concerns had made their deals with the Nazis and would stand to come out on top when peace had come—which would be before the leaves fell, his father was sure.
Expecting Alfy’s visit, Lanny went to the obscure hotel where he had met Rick. It was a cheap place and a drab room, but had the advantage that nobody knew you or concerned himself about what you were doing. Lanny was lying on the bed reading back copies of New York newspapers when the Royal Air Force man tapped on his door.
The Hon. Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson, twenty-three, would become a baronet if he could manage to live long enough, which seemed far from likely at the moment. He had been Lanny’s friend since his nursery days, and was one of the few who shared the secret that Lanny was an enemy of the Fascists posing as their friend. Alfy knew that his father had got important information through this American, and he assumed that someone overseas must be doing the same. Four years ago he had been flying for the Spanish Republican government, and Lanny had been the means of helping him out of a Franco dungeon. For that he owed his life, and was ready to pay the debt if ever the opportunity came. Just now what Lanny asked was to learn all he could about the air war now coming to its climax around and above the coasts of Britain. So Alfy would set aside the rule of silence which his group had laid upon him.
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