IX
In every town where a conference took place there was always some resident English family of social acceptability, to whose home the wearied statesmen might repair for refreshment. Wickthorpe’s secretary phoned to Mr. Budd, saying that he and his wife were invited to such a home on the lake-shore. They were received by an elderly lady and her two unmarried daughters, and introduced to other English residents—the hostess had made friends or enemies for life by extending or withholding invitations to this affair. Members of the diplomatic staff drifted in, including the gray-haired and mustached Prime Minister whom Lanny Budd looked upon as a pathetic renegade; but the renegade didn’t know it, of course, and bowed graciously, saying: “Ah Amer-r-ricans! I am r-r-really fond of your country.” Tea was served in lovely Dresden cups, and in addition to little cakes there were scones in honor of a Prime Minister who came from Lossiemouth. They were passed around by means of a wicker table mounted on rubber-tired wheels and called “the curate,” because its invention had deprived large numbers of amiable young Englishmen of their principal social function.
Wickthorpe was glad to see them, and was especially attentive to Irma, in a dignified and respectful way. He had always behaved thus, and Lanny’s mother had observed it and had hinted at it tactfully to her son; but Lanny wasn’t going to worry about any such matter—Irma had always had hosts of friends, both women and men, and how could people help admiring her? “Ceddy,” that is, Cedric Masterson, fourteenth Earl of Wickthorpe, introduced her to distinguished persons, including the long and clerical-looking Sir John Simon. Lanny saw the ladies watching and putting their heads together, and knew they were saying: “That’s Irma Barnes, the American heiress.” They would look at Lanny and add: “That chap is her husband—some sort of art broker, they say.” No use expecting people to say kind things behind your back in fashionable society, for they have social positions to guard and would cheapen themselves if they allowed too many to break into the sacred precincts.
It was Saturday afternoon, and everybody seemed to have plenty of time. Two distinguished diplomats played croquet with young ladies on the lawn, and others sat in groups under blossoming magnolia trees and talked about friends at home. Wickthorpe introduced Lanny to a couple of young fellows who were filling the same role of secretary-translator which the American had played in Paris at the age of nineteen. They and His Lordship talked freely about what had been happening on Isola Bella—it had all been settled that morning, it appeared, and the conference was ready to adjourn. The independence of Austria was to be guaranteed, and the three powers pledged themselves to oppose “by all practicable means” an evil thing called “unilateral repudiation of treaties.” That meant, of course, Hitler’s recent pronouncement about rearming; and Lanny was greatly heartened—until he began thinking about the word “practicable.” He had been among diplomats enough to learn how they said something which seemed to mean something but didn’t; how they put in weasel words which would sneak away with the substance of any sentence.
“Just what is practicable right now, Ceddy?” he inquired; and the answer was: “Oh, well, you know we don’t want to get into a war.”
“I hope not,” said Lanny. “But suppose Hitler won’t stop for anything less?”
“Well, but he’s got to, old chap. If we fight Hitler, we’re both playing Stalin’s game.”
“Yes, I know. But if you don’t fight, maybe you’re both playing Hitler’s game.”
They had no time for further discussion. As Wickthorpe was turning away he remarked: “I say, Lanny, you understand that what we’ve been talking about is strictly under your hat.”
“Oh, of course,” said the other, with a pang for his friend Pete. “But, if it’s settled, why don’t you give it out?”
“Well, you see, some of our leading papers don’t publish on Sunday, so we’re holding the announcement for Monday morning.”
X
The news was released in due course, and the diplomats entrained for Geneva, where the Council of the League was due to meet, and, it was hoped, take a firm stand against the violators of law. Brass bands played the delegates out of Stresa, and marching throngs of Fascisti sang to them of the future glories of Italy. Lanny and Irma bade farewell to their friends and set out through the Alpine passes on the way to Vienna. It was the season of spring floods and avalanches, which are no respecters of social position; but Lanny was a skilled driver and Irma was not the nervous sort, so they enjoyed some of the world’s most celebrated scenery.
In Vienna he had an appointment with one of the old empire’s nobility who had at last consented to put a price on some of his art treasures. They were invited to tea in one of those half-abandoned marble palaces on the Ringstrasse, and looked at old masters and argued over what they would bring in the American market. This displayed an elderly aristocratic couple in the worst of lights to Irma Barnes; but they had the titles and manners and there could be no denying that they had once had the “stuff.”
Poor souls, they had lost the war, and it was necessary to treat them with great consideration. What seemed small sums to a utility king’s daughter were of the utmost importance to them, and they suffered agonies of soul under the process of deflation which Lanny felt obliged to put them through. “If you really want me to make sales, this and this and this is what you will have to accept.” They wanted so badly to get an offer; but Lanny was immovable. “I do not make offers. I tell you that at such and such a price I will try to find you a buyer; but you must make the offer.” In the end, close to tears, they gave way.
A night at the opera, and next day the motorists were at the Polish border. It wouldn’t do to pass so close to the Meissners without stopping, so Lanny telephoned to Kurt and, learning that he was going to Berlin to conduct one of his works, invited him to come along in the car. Driving to Stubendorf, Lanny said: “Let’s not say anything about having stopped in Stresa. They will look upon that conference as an anti-German conspiracy.”
Irma, a comfortable person, well satisfied with the world’s arrangements, wished that people wouldn’t quarrel and upset everybody’s peace of mind. She was inclined to take the point of view of those she was with; at least to let them think that she did so. She was sure there ought to be some reasonable settlement of Germany’s claims, but she hadn’t insisted upon it while having tea with the fourteenth Earl of Wickthorpe and his colleagues. She would agree with the Meissners that Stubendorf ought certainly to be allowed to go back to Germany; but if she had been visiting one of the Polish families of the district—well, she hadn’t met any Poles, and their case wasn’t clear to her. Both sides had factories, and both needed the coal which came from the mines under these hills. “Why can’t they buy it from each other?” she wanted to know, and Lanny mentioned that profits go to those who own and not to those who buy. “You ought to know that!” he said.
XI
The arrival of this fashionable American couple always created a stir in Stubendorf. Seine Hochgeboren was away, so they stayed the night at the home of Kurt’s father, the Comptroller-General of the great estate. They slept in the rather small room which had been Kurt’s, and which Lanny had shared with him on his first Christmas visit more than twenty years ago. The Meissners were warm-hearted people, and they still saw him as the gay and graceful lad who had shown them Dalcroze dancing and amused them with his American accent. He hadn’t known that he had one, of course, and they had never told him, but had cherished his quaint phrases after he had gone. Now he was here with his heiress wife, and since the pair had been guests several times at the Schloss, it was doubtful if the family of a mere Beamter was good enough to receive them. A lot of fuss had to be made and extra food prepared.
Kurt and Lanny played music out of the treasury of four-hand compositions. The family all sang for a while, and it was so lovely that tears ran down the cheeks of the old couple. The father’s heath was failing, and he wasn’t going to listen to music much longer, at least not played on the
old piano in his somewhat crowded livingroom. They didn’t spoil that sentimental evening with talk about politics or anything in the ugly outside world. Irma thought: “Now I am meeting the real Germans; and oh, dear, why can’t they stay like this always?”
But no, indeed; Germany was ringed with enemies—die Einkreisung, they called it—and they were getting ready to break that ring. In the morning the travelers shifted their bags so as to make room for Kurt in the back seat and they drove into Germany. First they were held up by not very prompt or courteous Polish border guards, and Kurt said: “You see what we have to go through.” Then, on the first level plain they came to, uniformed young Germans were drilling in the yet unmelted snows. None of the travelers commented, but all three were thinking: “It is the big new army the Fuhrer has promised!” Later they passed an airport, and planes flew close overhead, as if inspecting a foreign car and its occupants; all three of them thought: “The new fighter planes of General Goring!”
They talked about music, and the paintings that Lanny had handled, and about Robbie’s new business undertaking. Kurt was always glad to hear how Beauty was getting along; he said that she had saved his life after the war, and in the Continental fashion he spoke frankly about the years of happiness she had given him. Once when a sparkplug fouled and they stopped to have it fixed, Irma and Kurt strolled up and down and she told him: “Lanny is behaving much better, and I am really happy about him.” She meant it, for like most humans she found it easy to believe what she wanted to. Sometimes it appeared as if life could hardly have gone on in these days of old Europe’s trials if it hadn’t been for this odd human faculty.
Kurt didn’t wish to stay in a fashionable hotel; he had already promised to visit the family of his brother Emil, a colonel in the Reichswehr. He was going to be busy with rehearsals, which his friends might attend if they would be interested. Nothing would have pleased Lanny more, but he had business he must see to. So they parted for a while, and as Lanny drove on to the Adlon he was wondering: “Am I really fooling him? And just how much?” He knew that he was fooling Irma pretty well, and it hurt him; but it was one of those things which couldn’t be cured and must be endured.
XII
Lanny had telegraphed Furtwaengler, announcing that he and his wife were on the way; now, in the morning, he phoned the Oberleutnant, whose first words were: “Ach schade, Herr Budd, you should have been here for the wedding!”
“Why didn’t you let me know in time?” asked the visitor. He meant it for a joke, but the staff officer took it for a rebuke and was profuse in apologies. Only after he had received forgiveness did he feel free to rave over the wonders of that greatest of all German social events, the marriage of the Fuhrer’s second-in-command to Emmy Sonnemann, the stage and screen star who had been his official mistress for some time. After the ceremony there had been a reception in the Opera House—the performance had been held up for more than an hour while Minister-Prasident General Goring and his bride stood in the great hall at the head of the staircase, shaking hands with all the eminence of the Third Reich and the diplomatic world.
Lanny said: “I read a lot about it in the foreign press. I saved some clippings for you.”
“Danke schon!” exclaimed the worshipful young Schutzstaffel man. “We are collecting everything and will prepare scrapbooks for the National Bibliothek.”
“How are the happy couple?” inquired the visitor, gallantly, and was informed that they were both sitting on top of the world. The Oberleutnant had become fond of this phrase, which he believed was the very latest American slang, and Lanny didn’t suggest how uncomfortable this position might prove to a man of Seine Exzellenz’s figure.
Lanny specified what pictures he had come to purchase, and mentioned with seeming casualness that he and his wife had been attending the Stresa Conference. No competent staff officer would fail to get the significance of that. “Seine Exzellenz will wish to see you! Will you hold the wire?” Lanny did so, and presently was told that the Minister-Prasident was due to leave that afternoon and spend a night and a day in the Schorfheide. Would Herr and Frau Budd honor him by coming along? Lanny replied that nothing would give them both more pleasure.
He hung up, and remarked: “So, we are going to see Karin hall!”
“And Emmy, do you suppose?” asked Irma.
9
SHAPE OF DANGER
I
In a white marble palace on the fashionable Konigin Augustastrasse lived Irma’s friend the Furstin Donnerstein, second wife of a Prussian landowner and diplomat some thirty years older than herself. She had first met Irma on the Riviera, before the latter’s marriage, and had taken a fancy to her; they had gone about together, gossiping about nothing very much. Now the Furstin had three children in her nursery and was bored, missing that gay free life on the Coast of Pleasure and finding Berlin society stiff, cold, and dull. Her husband’s position required that she go out, so she picked up a great deal of news, of which she desired to make the normal use. When Irma came along they would have a regular spree of gossip, the American having to swear that she wouldn’t repeat a word of it in Germany.
So it would be: “Ach, meine Liebe,” and: “Na, na, meine Gute!”, Hilde, a tall blonde, rather thin for a German matron, smoked too many cigarettes, and perhaps as a consequence of this was nervous and intense in manner. She would begin: “Man sagt—” and then she would look about, lower her voice, and say: “Perhaps I’d better not”—which was provoking. She would get up and go to the door of her boudoir and open it suddenly and look out. “You never can tell. One’s servants have all become politisch gesinnt”—she spoke nine-tenths English and one-tenth German. “It is you Americans who are to blame. They have heard of that fabelhaftes Land where there are no class distinctions, where anybody can become rich and nearly everybody does. So now we have a kleinburgerliche Regierung—the little man is on top, and we are prisoners in our own homes. Somebody may report on us, and some official may welcome a chance to show himself eifrig at our expense.”
Irma had seen in some homes a device called a “cozy,” a sort of little tent made of quilting, to be set over the teapot and the hot-water kettle to keep them warm. Now Irma learned that it was used by Germans to set over a telephone, because they had the idea that there was some secret device which could be installed in the receiver so that outsiders could listen to conversations even when the phone was disconnected. Hilde wasn’t sure if it was so, and didn’t know how to make sure; so, when talking to Irma she carefully put the “cozy” over the phone, and when they were leaving the room she took it off, so that no servant might see what she had been doing. “Wirklich, it is like living in Turkey in the days of the sultan!”
Hilde Donnerstein was no conspirator, nor was her husband; they were simply two members of the old nobility who were, as she said, out of fashion; they resented the tough crowd who had seized the power and the glory for themselves, and they took revenge in telling personal scandals and funny stories about the absurdities of the Emporkommlinge.
“Ach, meine Liebe! I must say I don’t envy you your visit to that monstrous Karinhall! But I suppose you are curious about Emmy—no doubt you have seen her on the screen. Ganz kary atidenhaft—what is it that you say?—statuesque—but as for acting, ausserst gewohnlich; all people of taste stay away. Of course, I suppose an opera house is the proper place for the wedding-reception of an actress. It is characteristic of our time—eine Filmkonigin instead of a real one!”
“Lanny says the film queens do it much better,” remarked Irma.
“How can we judge? But really, when you consider what the life of that couple has been—you have heard that their affair has been of long standing?”
“I have heard rumors.”
“They were getting along reasonably well; der dicke Hermann said: ‘You know that I cannot marry you, of course’; and Emmy, who is not so bright, didn’t know, but was afraid to say so. But one day the pair were in a motor accident—schrecklich—the
car into a tree crashes; der Dicke is not much hurt, aber die Geliebte, she has her skull cracked and is in hospital a long time, and of course it is something that cannot be hidden, die ganze Welt talks; Hermann must go every day to see her, and it becomes a scandal. Then just the other day unser—” The Furstin wishes to say “unser Fuhrer,” but doesn’t quite dare, even in her own boudoir. She says: “Die Nummer Eins wishes to send his Number Two to the Balkans on a diplomatic mission—you know how it is, we must have allies there, our enemies seek to undermine us in every part of the world; and Hermann proposes to take his woman with him, she must have a rest, and he will make a little holiday of it. But die Nummer Eins says: ‘Bist du toll? You will force your mistress upon them? They will take it as an insult; they will say: “What do you think we are—niggers, perhaps?”’ Die Nummer Eins is furious, and gives the fat man a dressing down. ‘Marry her!’ he says. ‘I have had enough of scandal in my party—make her your wife, or we are unten durch in the Balkans!’ So that is how we had this grand Staatshochzeit mit Empfang, with gifts the like of which have never been seen in all the world. It is what you say in America, eine Hochzeit vor dem Gewehrlauf!”
Irma didn’t know these words, but the Furstin explained that it was when the bride’s father or her brothers come with guns and fetch the groom. Irma said, greatly amused: “Oh, a shotgun wedding!”
Wide Is the Gate Page 19
