IV
One of the consequences of Rick’s coming was that the subject of world politics was brought back into the family conversation. Lanny had deliberately put the subject out of his mind, and tried tactfully to have Kurt do the same. Kurt got no newspapers from home, and when members of his family wrote to him, they put the envelope in a second envelope addressed to Lanny Budd, so as to avoid attracting attention. But now came Rick, bringing with him the custom which prevailed in his father’s home of discussing public affairs at all hours of the day and night. Rick took a couple of newspapers and half a dozen weeklies, and would lie propped up in bed reading and making notes. The war, however many bad things it had done, had brought it about that British politics were French politics and German politics and Russian politics and American politics. All the nations of the earth had been thrown into one stew-pot, there to simmer slowly. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble!
So Lanning Prescott Budd descended the steps of his ivory tower and pushed open its gold-embossed doors and thrust out his delicately chiseled nose. Instantly it was assailed by the odors of a colossal charnel-pit, a shell-hole as big as the crater of a volcano, filled with the mangled flesh and bones of millions of human beings. His ears, carefully schooled to the appreciation of exquisite music, were stunned by the screams of dying populations, the wails of starving children, the imprecations of the frustrated, the moans of the hopeless. Before his eyes stretched a prospect of desolation; shell-blasted fields, skeleton trees without a leaf, buildings that were smoke-blackened walls, their empty windows like human faces with eyes picked out by birds of prey.
The Turks were still slaughtering Armenian peasants. Civil war was still raging in Russia, the Whites now being driven in rout to all points of the compass. In Siberia a freight-train loaded with Reds was wandering aimlessly upon an eight-thousand-mile track, the locked-in prisoners perishing of starvation and disease. The Polish armies, invading Russia, were still dreaming of world empire. The White Finns were killing tens of thousands of Red Finns. The Rumanians were killing Red Hungarians. There were insurrections and mass strikes in Germany, a plague of labor revolts in France and Britain, millions unemployed in every great nation, famine everywhere in Europe, flu in the western half and typhus in the eastern.
When, in the middle of 1919, President Wilson and his staff had left the Peace Conference, that body had stayed on to settle the destinies of Austria and Hungary and Bulgaria and Turkey. It was still holding sessions, with despairing peoples waiting upon its decisions; when these were announced they were generally out of date, because events had moved beyond them. The British and French statesmen were agreed that Italy should not have Fiume, but an Italian poet with a glory complex had raised a revolt and seized the city. All Statesmen agreed that the Bolshevik madness must be put down, but meanwhile it throve and spread, and mountains of supplies which the Allies had furnished to the White generals were being captured and used by the Reds. The statesmen decided that Turkey should lose most of her empire, but the Turks dissented and retired into their mountains, and who had an army to go after them? The French had seized the land of poor Emir Feisal—all but those parts which had oil; the British had these, and there was a bitter wrangle, and it looked as if the alliance which had won the war would break up before it finished dividing the spoils.
British statesmen had promised to make a world fit for heroes to live in, and now Rick’s version was that they had made one it needed heroes to live in. Lying on the table in Lanny’s study was one of Eli Budd’s volumes, the poetry of an old-time New Englander who had been one of the patron saints of Rick’s grandmothers, but to Rick himself was no more than a name. Rick was moved by curiosity to dip into the volume, and he happened upon A Psalm of Life, which was to be found in all school readers. The crippled aviator declared that it “griped his guts”; anybody could write “doggerel” like that, and to prove it he composed on the spot a revised version:
Tell me not, ye wishful thinkers,
That the spirit reigns supreme,
And man’s hoping is a token
Of the mortal’s valid dream.
The modern psalmist went on to tell the world how he had “seen the Brute in action,” and his conclusion was:
I have wakened from a nightmare
To a living death by day;
All my dreams a tabulation
Of the price my hope must pay.
V
On the first day of every month, unless it was Sunday, the businesslike Robert Budd dictated a letter to his son—a good, satisfying letter telling about the family and the business, and never failing to include some advice to the boy about taking care of himself, and learning to spend money wisely, and not letting women get too much hold on him. Lanny had saved these communications over a period of years, and if he had published them, judiciously expurgated, they might have made a New England equivalent of the letters of Lord Chesterfield.
The family in Connecticut was thriving, as it always had, and meant to; they were solid people. Lanny’s two half-brothers were in St. Thomas’s; they could enter younger than Lanny, because they had been trained according to a system. Lanny’s half-sister Bess, who adored his memory, was reading a book he had recommended and struggling to play a piano piece he had mentioned. Esther Budd, his stepmother, was marshaling the ladies of Newcastle for the relief of war victims in Armenia and Poland. The President of Budd Gunmakers Corporation was showing his age, but could by no means be induced to relax his grip upon affairs; he had inherited a great institution and was determined to pass it on to his heirs in better condition than he had received it.
They were going to save the business, Robbie assured his son; they were making the dangerous transformation of their activities, and instead of machine guns and carbines and automatic revolvers, cartridges and hand grenades and time fuses, were producing a great variety of implements of peace. No easy task finding markets for new products, but they would do better in the boom which was surely on the way. But what a tragedy for America, and how it would some day regret the dismantling of its vitally important munitions industry! Lanny understood that to his father there was a loss of dignity and prestige, even a personal humiliation, in having to turn from the fashioning of beautiful, shining, deadly machine guns to the monotonous multiplication of frying pans, tack hammers, and freight elevators. It was possible to feel romantic about the Budd gun, which was the best in the world and had proved it in the rock-strewn thickets of the Meuse-Argonne; but who the hell wanted to hear about hardware?
However, the great plant had to go on; wages had to be earned, and taxes and upkeep, and dividends if possible. The world had munitions enough to last a decade, and the pacifists were in the saddle in America; the hallelujah shouters were proclaiming that the war to end war had been won and the world made safe for democracy. There was no philanthropist to subsidize and save an American munitions industry, built at breakneck speed by heroic labors. Far from appreciating this service, the nation had turned upon its benefactors and was calling them profiteers and merchants of death. Robbie Budd was a deeply offended munitions salesman, and the more so because his oldest and best-loved son had taken up with these critics and no longer desired to follow in his father’s footsteps. Robbie never referred to this, but Lanny knew what was in his heart.
However, Robbie was a businessman, and the customer is always right. The customer didn’t want machine guns, he wanted automobile parts and bicycles and gadgets of a thousand sorts, and Budd’s would oblige him at mass-production prices. Also the customer would want oil, and Robbie, having many connections in Europe, had picked up a good thing in that line, and had let his friends and innumerable cousins in on it, and now was concerned to prove himself a businessman in his own right, not merely a son of Budd’s. He had come to London twice during the fall and winter, and had been too busy to go down to Juan; Lanny had protested and pleaded, and so in the month of March Robbie cabled that he was on his way
to Paris, and that nothing should interfere with a holiday. This sort of cablegram always marked a red-letter day in Lanny’s young life. Moralists might scold about blood and profits, but none of them could deny that Robbie Budd was good company.
VI
The foreign representative of Budd Gunmakers had known for some time that he had got himself an odd sort of extra family, and he was curious to see what had been happening to it of late. Impossible to imagine a more unlikely tie-up than the butterfly. Beauty and the grave and punctilious artillery officer turned spy! Add to it Lanny, product of a sexual irregularity, who didn’t mind his fate, but seemed to have decided that the moralists were out of step with him. So many families were breaking up and recombining, wasn’t it more sensible to leave everyone free to move without notice?
Father and son went for a long walk, as was their custom. Robbie was in his middle forties and had been leading a sedentary life all winter; for the first time in Lanny’s experience he puffed a bit on the hills, but he didn’t like to admit it and went on talking. He was a hearty, solid man, with brown eyes and hair—when he went swimming you saw the hair growing all over his chest. He liked having a good time, but underneath he was greatly worried about the world, which was in what he called a god-awful mess. People in Europe had been fighting for so long, they seemed to have forgotten what productive labor was. Lanny knew that his father’s mind had watertight compartments in it, and there was no use mentioning the difficulty of combining peaceful industry with the mass production and marketing of instruments of slaughter. What Lanny had to do was to let his father talk, and when he couldn’t agree, say nothing. All through the war, both in France and in New England, Lanny had had to practice the art of keeping his thoughts to himself, and at the Peace Conference he had perfected his technique.
He described the life of Beauty and Kurt, who were getting along surprisingly well. Beauty was much in love with her man, and had got over being embarrassed about it; Kurt was a good influence because he kept her at home—he wouldn’t let her spend money on him, so she didn’t spend it on herself. You could see Kurt’s musical stature growing, Lanny said; and Robbie listened politely, but without much enthusiasm. Robbie had been to Yale, and had got vaccinated with culture, but it hadn’t “taken”; he knew a lot of college songs and popular stuff, but left highbrow music to those who pretended to understand it. Maybe Lanny did; in any case, his father was satisfied if it kept him happy and out of mischief.
One important question: Was Kurt having much to do with Germans? Lanny answered: “No. What could he do, anyhow?” The father didn’t know, but he said there would be war of one sort or another between France and Germany so long as those two nations existed. And certainly Bienvenu must not become a secret headquarters of the Germans.
They went back and had a swim with the family. There was a boat-landing with steps, and on the bottom step Lanny had had two iron handles fastened for Rick. If there were no strangers present to embarrass him he would unstrap his leg brace, and with his two arms and one good leg would help himself down into the water, where he could float around and swim with his hands. Nobody must offer to help him, or take any notice of his troubles, just let him alone and in his own way he would work them out. Meanwhile, observe the blue sky and the varicolored houses, the gray rocks and green hills of the Golfe Juan. Robbie, who had seen Rick in Paris just before he went out to his near-death, had admired his grit then and admired it now. He told Lanny that was one fellow who must have help whenever he needed it.
Also Robbie saw Beauty in her tight bathing suit, and had a good time describing in exaggerated language the ravages of embonpoint upon her charms. Beauty and the cream pitcher were a standing joke in that family. You might have thought it in dubious taste while millions of babies were perishing of slow malnutrition. If Beauty had had one of those little ones before her, she would have starved herself to feed it; but the little ones were in the newspapers, while the cream pitcher was on the table four times a day, including teatime. Also there was Leese, whose arts were a perpetual conspiracy against the figures of ladies who came to Bienvenu. Bouillabaisse with butter floating on top, rissoles fried in olive oil, sugary fruit pátês with curlicues of whipped cream—so it went, and Beauty would tell herself she was just tasting this or that, and would go on until there was no more taste on her palate.
VII
In the evening the family sat in front of a log fire, for the nights were chilly. Mrs. Emily had been invited to join them, and they talked about the state of the world, concerning which various members of the group had special information.
Robbie told about America. President Wilson had come home from his peacemaking to find the country wholly indisposed to ratify the commitments he had made. He had spent his last reserves of health upon a tour of the nation; then a paralytic stroke had laid him low and he was a helpless invalid. If you were willing to believe Robbie Budd, the executive branch of the United States government now consisted of an elegant lady who owned a jewelry business, and whom Lanny had seen in Paris wearing a gorgeous purple gown and a purple hat with plumes; a navy doctor whom the President had raised to the rank of admiral; and a secretary whom Robbie described by a term of depreciation common among the ruling classes of New England—“Irish Catholic.” The President saw no one, and this triumvirate of amateurs decided what papers he was permitted to read and sign. The Constitution of the United States might be the most perfect instrument which had ever emanated from the brain of man, but it had its oversights, and one was a failure to provide what was to happen when a president had a paralytic stroke.
However, it was an election year. In three months the Republican party would name its candidate; no college president, but someone who understood American business and its needs. The money to elect him would be forthcoming—Robbie knew where it was coming from—and in a little less than a year America would confront the world as a new-born nation, no longer to be trifled with in international affairs. Robbie didn’t think that, Robbie told it, and the others listened respectfully.
The talk turned to the state of France, and here they heard a salonnière who numbered men of affairs among her friends. Clemenceau, the Tiger, had won the war but lost the peace—at least in the estimation of the Robbie Budds of France—and he had been ousted. There was a new premier, Millerand, and now it appeared that he too was yielding to the blandishments of Lloyd George. They were likely soon to have Poincaré, which meant simply that the war with Germany would be resumed in one form or another. Nobody in Europe was in a mood to think of mercy—save only the Germans! It was a very sad picture that Emily Chattersworth drew.
The mention of Lloyd George brought Rick into the conversation. Rick’s father knew the key men of his country, and reported what they were saying in the clubs. Lloyd George was the only one of the war chiefs who still held power, and he did it because he had no principles, but was able to say, with the most passionate fervor, the opposite of what he said the day before. The “little squirt of a Welsh lawyer” had wrecked his own party getting power, and now was the prisoner of the Conservatives; useful to them because he could talk Liberal, and that was necessary with a bitterly discontented electorate.
Lanny told a story about his English friend Fessenden, one of the secretaries attached to the British staff at the Peace Conference. Fessenden had noticed that through a long and tedious discussion Lloyd George was “doodling” on a sheet of paper, and at the end crumpled it up and threw it onto the floor. Young Fessenden rescued it, thinking it might be something that would be of advantage to his country’s opponents. He found that the British Prime Minister had covered an entire sheet with repetitions of one single word: “Votes. Votes. Votes.”
VIII
Here sat these seven friends in soft-cushioned chairs, seeing one another’s faces by the light of shaded lamps and the red and gold flames of burning cypress logs. Convenient little tables held ashtrays for their cigarettes and glasses for their drinks. On the walls aroun
d them were fine pictures, and shelves full of books for every taste. In one corner of the room was a piano, and when they asked him to play, Kurt produced soft music which turned time into beauty and glorified the processes of the human spirit.
Everything in the world appeared to be theirs, and yet their talk was troubled; it was as if the ground upon which this lovely home was built had turned to sand and might slide into the sea. On the center table lay newspapers telling with shocked headlines that the French and British armies had occupied Constantinople, which was threatened with revolution and might plunge the world into another war. When one said “another war” one didn’t count the dozen or so small wars which were going on all the time, and which one had come to take for granted; one meant another war involving one’s own land; one meant—horror of horrors—a war in which the late Allies might be fighting against each other!
Robbie Budd, newly hatched oil man, could tell them what the day’s news meant. The old Turkish Empire had collapsed, and a new Turkey was going to be born, with all the benefits of modern civilization, such as oil wells and tanks and pipelines, not to mention copper mines in Armenia and potash works on the Dead Sea. The only question was, which benevolent nation was going to have the pleasure of conferring these blessings upon the Turks? (This wasn’t Robbie’s phrase; it was Rick’s rephrasing.) The British had got hold of all the oil, but the French had got Syria and the Hejaz and were trying to control the routes of the pipelines; behind the scenes there was a furious quarrel going on, with screaming and calling of names in the nasal French language.
Now suddenly came this coup d’état in Constantinople. The benighted Turks didn’t want to accept benefits from either Britain or France, but wanted to dig their own oil wells and keep the oil; so the quarreling friends were obliged to act together in spite of their wishes. Lloyd George was talking about a holy war, in which the Christian Greeks would put down the heathen Turks; but what effect would that have upon the several hundred millions of Moslems who lived under the union Jack or near it?
Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 6