The Front Populaire worked in a peculiar way under the French practice. There was an election in which the parties all ran their individual candidates, and then a week later there was a run-off in which the two highest candidates fought it out. This meant that until the twenty-sixth of April the Communists and the Socialists were bitter rivals; then until the third of May they would be friends, uniting against a common foe; after that date—“Well, we’ll see how it works out,” said the Red deputy. Having faithfully served the proletariat of a Paris faubourg through four years of general betrayal, Zhess Block-less was appealing for a vindication, and it was indeed a cruel thought that a canary-colored Socialist might take advantage of his stricken condition to steal his votes and his post of service.
The patient having been forbidden to talk, Lanny had everything his own way for once. He told the news from Bienvenu and Connecticut, from England and Italy and Spain. He found that his uncle knew all about the last-named; the Communists, too, had their channels of information. What they had learned all fitted in perfectly to the Communist formulas; it might have been part of the old phonograph record to which Lanny had been listening from boyhood. Ansaldo and Fiat had put up the money for Mussolini, with some help from the House of Morgan; Thyssen and other steel kings had financed Hitler; and now an ex-smuggler who owned the government tobacco monopoly was going to defeat the will of the Spanish people and restore reaction to the Iberian throne!
To the painter turned politician this was proof positive of the futility of politics, except as he conducted it, for purposes of agitation and propaganda; the privileged classes would never give up without a fight, and to expect it was to be futile like Jesse’s nephew or else a deliberate betrayer of the workers like that Socialist who was trying to displace Jesse. The sick man forgot his doctor’s orders and began telling some of the things he had learned during four years’ service in the Chamber; how the two hundred families controlled the legislation of the country by means of an organization called the “Union of Economic Interests,” but which should have been called the “Master-Briber of France.” All business men were mulcted for funds, and when the organization set out to defeat some particular measure, any deputy could pay his gambling debts and buy a diamond bracelet for his amie.
Lanny said: “I know about it from Denis de Bruyne, so don’t get excited and make your illness worse.” He watched this suffering old man, wrinkled, bald, and pathetic, and thought: “Yes, a man can give up his pleasures; a man can throw himself into a battle. What makes him do it?”
Obviously, intensity of conviction. Jesse Blackless knew that he was right, he had the answer to all the questions, and if the world followed his guidance it might be saved. A man with that certainty made his mind into a sharp sword to pierce the minds of others; he couldn’t do this if he let the sword be blunted by qualifications or hesitations. That was how Adi Schicklgruber had made headway with the bewildered and unhappy German people; he had got a few simple ideas fixed in his mind and had told them a million times without wearying or resting. When two such men got opposing ideas, then you had a war, like that between the Communists and the Nazi-Fascists now. Perhaps it was futile to imagine that men would ever stop fighting and settle their arguments by the method of open discussion and the counting of noses; but it seemed to Lanny that somebody ought to recommend the procedure and keep it before the public mind with the same determination the fanatics displayed.
VIII
On a rainy Sunday some ten million Frenchmen—no women—went to the polls and had their noses counted. The Red workers of Uncle Jesse’s district stood by him loyally, and he came out at the top. But he didn’t get an actual majority, so there had to be another poll. This time not all the medecins of Paris could keep the old war-horse off the platform; he had to be assisted, and was able to speak for only a few minutes, but that was enough to set the crowd wild. He pledged his undying war upon capitalist reaction in all its forms, and his loyalty to the Front Populaire so long as it stood by that program; on the following Sunday, again rainy, the voters turned out and re-elected him. They elected seventy-two Communist deputies instead of ten. It was almost unbelievable!
The people’s coalition had more than sixty per cent of the deputies, which meant that Blum was certain to become Premier. Having contributed several thousand francs to Blum’s campaign fund, Lanny felt that he had a share in the victory and could go back to Bienvenu with a good conscience. He did so, and was pleased to find that his idle friends on the Riviera were staggered and in grave fear as to their incomes and security. That included the Spaniards, for how could they hope to put through a coup d’etat while a Jewish Socialist had control of French foreign policy and for all practical purposes commanded the French Army and Navy?
Beauty had accepted the invitation to spend the summer at Shore Acres, and was going for the month of June with Margy to lend her assistance to another London season. Beauty was a sensible woman, for all her foolishness; she knew that in her middle fifties she could no longer expect to be invited on her looks, and so she took the trouble to make herself useful to her friends; advising about invitation lists, attending to difficult commissions, making herself agreeable to all. Now she yearned to use her social skills to repair the damaged fortunes of her son, and she begged him to come to London with her. Lanny knew exactly what that meant, for already she had been introducing him to young females whose parents had money.
Beauty Budd didn’t go by all the precepts of the ancient Jewish Scriptures, but there was one which had her fervent endorsement—the statement that it is not good that man should live alone. She was certain that some designing female was going to snap Lanny up, even before Irma might have severed the legal bond; and if it had to be somebody, let it be somebody whom Beauty had inspected. Doing her best to conform to her son’s strange fancies, she sought out a “bluestocking,” one of those unfortunates who wear glasses and at whom, according to the non-biblical legend, men seldom make passes. This person was the daughter of a retired banker, and had a couple of published novels to her credit; Beauty took the trouble to meet her and invite her to lunch and then leave her alone with Lanny. Afterward the mother was distressed to learn that the novels were of the so-called stream of consciousness school, which Lanny considered the acme of futility and a symptom of the declining vitality of the parasitic classes. After making several vain efforts to find a line of conversation, Lanny had invited the lady to play croquet!
IX
But there was somebody in London with whom he would know how to talk. That was Rosemary, Countess of Sandhaven, and when he thought about her he felt little tingles running up and down his nervous system. He had been living without love for the better part of a year, and now he was beginning to look at women again and to think about them. Modern love is a complicated invention, and few knew it better than the blundering grandson of Budd’s. He had come to the age where he was beginning to reckon up the cost. Not in money, for that wasn’t much of an item; the Riviera was well supplied with ladies, obtainable at any price from ten francs up to ten thousand; with many of the most high-toned, those whom you met in smart society, no price was specified, but you left a proper sum on the mantelpiece before taking your departure. To know what the proper sum should be was like knowing what size banknote to hand to the butler after you had spent a week in a friend’s house.
What troubled Lanny was the emotional entanglements, the intellectual and social obligations you got in for. You would no longer be permitted to stay at home and read or play the piano; you had to take the lady to casinos and cabarets. If she was given to sports, you had to play tennis with her—whereas Jerry Pendleton played a much faster and more enjoyable game. If you tried to sneak off for a drive with Raoul Palma, she would be certain that it was some other woman and she might pay you off with some other man. If you visited Paris or London or Berlin she would want to go along—and then you might as well have the banns published in the newspapers!
But with Ros
emary everything would be simple. Rosemary was passionate, yet at the same time she was serene; she took things easily, including love, and maybe that was the way to take it if you wanted to keep out of trouble. Rosemary’s social position was such that nobody could hurt her feelings; she was good company—by which Lanny meant that she would keep quiet and let him talk, and not force her ideas upon him. Really an agreeable mistress; he had made sure of it when he was sixteen, and again a decade later, and here the wheel of fortune had come round again! He would send her a wire: “Shall I come for a visit?” She would answer: “Delighted.” She would come to London and get some sort of place. Lanny would never forget the first time, when the bombs had been falling on the city; he still had in a drawer the fragment of shrapnel he had carried off as a souvenir of that belle nuit d’amour.
But there were complications, even so. Bertie might make a fuss—Rosemary had never been quite sure that her restless husband would behave himself according to modern standards of gentility. Then, too, Lanny had to think about little Frances and his claims upon her; he mustn’t put himself at a disadvantage in any dispute which might arise with Irma over the custody of the child. Finally, there was the other half of him which wanted to sacrifice itself for a cause and would look upon him with disdain if he involved himself in another fashionable intrigue. He very much wanted the approval of that half, and had no answer to its claim that he ought to find some woman who would co-operate with him in the fight against Fascism. Right away he would start thinking about Trudi. What was she doing, and what would it be like to live with her, and would it lie in his power to make her happy?
X
When the time came for Beauty to depart she hated to leave her son at Bienvenu alone, and was not to be persuaded that swimming and sailing and fishing with an ex-tutor constituted company enough. She invited him to motor her to London, and he knew what that meant, of course; she would take him to Bluegrass, Margy’s country place, and it wouldn’t be more than a couple of days before charming young ladies would be happening to drop in at mealtimes.
But it was hard for Lanny to resist an invitation to drive, and so they drove, and spent a couple of nights and a day with Emily at Les Forets. It happened to be the day, early in June, when Leon Blum became Premier of the French Republic, a red-letter day in Lanny’s calendar. He could talk frankly with Emily about it, and he told her, among other things, that he had just had a letter from Kurt Meissner, who was expecting to arrive in Paris in a couple of weeks. Lanny conceived it his duty to warn Emily, in the strictest confidence, of his suspicions concerning Kurt’s purposes. If the salonniere didn’t mind entertaining a Nazi agent, that was her privilege, but Lanny didn’t want her to do it under the impression that she was promoting international understanding or the art of music.
Lanny told about Forrest Quadratt, who was playing the same role in the States. The Germans were spreading their nets all over the world, and whether it was the refined and subtle artist, the humblest kitchen slavey, or the horny-handed stevedore of the docks, they all had their work laid out and performed it with fanatical devotion. Beauty had a letter from her daughter, who had settled down cheerfully for an indefinite stay at Shore Acres. Vittorio had become fast friends with Quadratt, and Lanny remarked: “That is, no doubt, according to orders; a consequence of the meeting of Ribbentrop and Ciano.” To Beauty Budd this was a sign of her son’s pathological state of mind. The tactful Emily didn’t say what she thought, but promised to respect her friend’s confidence.
Lanny delivered his mother to Bluegrass, but ducked on the charming young ladies. He had a deal for a couple of pictures in London, and some money to collect; then he proceeded to The Reaches and spent several days with Rick, punting on the Thames, and agreeing with his friend as to the very bad state of Europe. He told the news he had picked up from different sorts of people, and it was a service to a handicapped man who could sit at a typewriter and hammer out an article and have it reach thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of readers. That is the way democracy has been made, and the way it can be protected; they both agreed upon the supreme importance of publicity.
XI
Lanny told this best of friends about the state of his heart. Irma was out of his thoughts; her place had been taken by Rosemary. There wasn’t a day or night that he didn’t think of her, and there was a constant pull upon him to call her up or to drop in and see her. He was sure they would take up their old relationship with hardly any preliminaries.
Rick said: “But there’s nothing to that, Lanny. You’ve tried it, and it never got you anywhere.”
“We had a lot of fun,” he replied, putting it crudely.
“I know, but you can’t go on playing round forever. You know she would never give up Bertie unless she had to. She likes her great manor and her title and everything it brings her. You can’t hope to be anything but a hanger-on.”
“It’s my hard luck that I keep picking out the wrong girls.”
“You go with the wrong set. Join some of the Socialist groups and you’ll meet a better sort.”
“I can’t, Rick, because I’d get myself spotted and lose all my connections.”
Among the callers that day at The Reaches had been a young professor of the University of London; and now Rick commented: “That’s the sort of place where you’d meet women who are interested in our ideas. Give a couple of lectures there and you’d have a swarm of them around you.”
Lanny couldn’t keep from laughing. “Me lecture at a university? When I haven’t any education at all?”
“They often bring specialists on unusual subjects. You could talk instructively on the founding of great art collections in America. Tell them your experiences, and you’d have a dozen budding art experts ready to follow you.”
Lanny didn’t find that so alluring; he didn’t want a dozen, only one, and that one should have a gentle Mona Lisa smile, heavy smooth ropes of straw-colored hair, and the aspect of Minerva, goddess of wisdom. Rosemary had made those things desirable to him in his boyhood, and the spell had never been broken.
“But you can’t do it!” exclaimed Rick. “Really, old top, it would be disgraceful. It would only drag you out of the movement again. It wouldn’t add anything to your life, and it might get you into the devil of a mess.”
That settled it. Lanny couldn’t do anything that Rick said was disgraceful. Both in matters of Socialist ethics and of English good form Rick had always been the authority. Now the younger man replied: “I suppose I’d better get out of England for a while. Raoul has been begging me to go to Spain, and maybe that’s my next job.”
“Oh, good!” exclaimed the baronet’s son. Then he added: “But don’t come out with some Andalusian senorita!”
XII
Lanny drove back to Margy’s to say good-by to his mother. Out of politeness he had to stay a couple of days and meet at least one charming young lady. Being in a highly susceptible mood, he fell promptly under her spell; but when he began to talk with her about world affairs he decided he would as soon keep a canary-bird.
He was glad when there came a letter from a client in the Middle West, asking if he knew of a representative Greuze to add to a French collection. Having a set of his card-files always in his car, Lanny looked up a portrait of a woman which he had inspected in Geneva more than a decade ago while taking in one of the League meetings. “Lovely and sentimental,” were the words he had written, and the price was sixteen thousand dollars. Now he wired Geneva to know if the picture was still available and the answer came: “Yes.” He cabled his client, offering to inspect the work again and report in detail. To this he got another “Yes,” so he had a graceful way of escape from having Margy and Beauty trot out more fillies before him. Margy from Kentucky raised blooded horses in order to keep herself from being homesick, and thus Lanny was led to identify the marriage market and the horse-fair.
A jolly way to earn your money, by motoring into the high Alps in the month of June! Lanny crossed the
Rhine at Strasbourg, city of dreadful memories for him, for at this bridge the Nazis had turned over to him the broken body of Freddi Robin. Now they didn’t invite him to inspect the fortifications they were rushing to completion; but he arrived at night and saw the arc-lights of the constructions all up and down the river and heard the grinding and roaring of great machines. Only a little more than three months had passed since Hitler had moved in his troops, but he would do in that time as much as the French had done on their side in as many years. That was German efficiency, and what a tragedy that it couldn’t be put to less hateful ends!
The snow-capped peaks were rose-pink in the dawn and after sunset, and in the twilight they turned to purple. The great lake was garnet-blue, the swans and excursion boats gleaming white, and the plane trees and chestnuts a lively green; Lanny thought, not for the first time, that every prospect pleased him and only man was vile. The magnificent new palace of the League of Nations was almost completed, and rarely had history contrived a more cutting bit of irony. It was as if a monarch had built himself a stately pleasure dome, and as soon as it was done he was carried into it in his coffin and walled up.
The legions of Il Duce had marched into Addis Ababa, and there was nothing for the League to do but bow its head in defeat. As Lanny arrived in the old city of Calvin, the world’s statesmen were gathering for a special meeting of the Assembly, in which they would condone the crime by withdrawing their decree of sanctions. Lanny Budd, who had been present at the birth of the League, might now have witnessed its obsequies, but the very thought of it made him sick. He could imagine the bland hypocrisy of the British Tories, and the feeble plea of poor Blum for disarmament and collective security; crying peace, while down in the valleys the Nazi labor battalions were toiling day and night to get ready for war. In the soul of an amateur publicist there remained no smallest trace of that naive enthusiasm which had taken him to a dozen international gatherings and caused him to run here and there with the crowds, gazing at top-hatted and morning-coated statesmen and listening to their, promises of disarmament and collective security.
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 44
