BOOK SEVEN
The Things That Are Caesar’s
27
Fever of the World
I
Lanny Budd was living in a world which did not please him; which indeed seemed to be far on the way toward madness. The job he had chosen—or which perhaps had chosen him—obliged him to meet people whose company he could hardly tolerate, and forbade him to meet anybody he really wanted to know. As a result, he stayed alone except when he was collecting information, and found his pleasure in music, or in books, which he was free to read without permission of the Nazis. He was forced more and more in upon himself, and had to fight against moods of depression, and a tendency to brood over his failures and the tragic scenes he had witnessed.
For example, that poor devil he had left behind in the dungeon of the Château de Belcour. It wasn’t that Lanny blamed himself for having left him. There wasn’t a thing those three intruders could have done; to have carried the man out would have given the whole thing away and ruined the career of a presidential agent. It might have been the part of kindness to smother him to death; but Lanny had never killed anybody, and hadn’t even thought of it. Now he kept wondering: was the poor devil still alive, and still being tortured for having tried to give help to Trudi?
The broken figure became a sort of symbol of the cause which Lanny loved and believed in. Not merely the German people—the good Germans, the good Europeans among the Germans—bound, gagged, imprisoned, and condemned to years of torment; but all the other unfortunate peoples whose fate Lanny had been watching: Italians, Chinese, Abyssinians, Spaniards, Austrians—and now the Czechs, the next on the list, standing helpless, watching the assassins gathering about their house. The unhappy Paul Teicher became multiplied in Lanny’s imagination by thousands, by millions, by hundreds of millions. It was the destiny of the peoples of Europe and Asia to have their lands invaded, their young men slaughtered and their women raped, their fields ravaged and their homes burned about their heads, their cities bombed to rubble, their leaders and intellectuals shot or hanged or beheaded or shut up in stockades. Such had been the events in incubation during the whole span of Lanny’s life—this wonderful new twentieth century which had called itself “modern” and had hoped so much from itself and for itself.
The state of affairs had been getting worse year after year; the crimes had been increasing in arithmetical progression. And now it seemed that what had happened so far was merely a shadow of the holocausts and desolations ahead. The hopes of Spain were going to be completely extinguished. That cold methodical murderer, General Franco, would continue to receive killing materials from Italy and Germany and to blast and rend the bodies of his fellow countrymen, until there was no longer left in Spain a single person of intelligence, of even common decency. Every man and woman in the land who believed what Lanny believed would be slaughtered, or shut up in a dungeon to perish slowly of the diseases of malnutrition. Every child in Spain would be taken and turned into a pious robot, saving his soul by letting some black-robed priest mumble ancient magic over his poor little lice-infested head.
And now it was happening to Austria. Wien, Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume!—Lanny heard gorgeous waltz music every time he thought of it; and now it had become a Nazi headquarters, and was being gleich-geschaltet—co-ordinated—which meant that in a thousand dark holes were being repeated those hideous iniquities which he had witnessed in Munich and Berlin. And now the beautiful old city of Prague, and the Czechs, one of the most intelligent and democratic-minded peoples of Europe—whose only offense was that their ancestors, nearly a thousand years ago, had permitted many Germans to enter their country and to purchase lands and other property.
These accumulated horrors caused Lanny Budd to ask questions of the universe into which through no intention of his own he had been so suddenly and strangely projected. What ruled this complex of phenomena—a Providence of any sort, or just blind chance? Lanny hadn’t seen any works of art or of artisanship brought into existence by blind chance, so he had to believe that there must be some intelligence at work; some mind must have contrived the production of two billions of human creatures on a small planet revolving obscurely in vast and complicated stellar and galactic systems. What that intelligence could be, and how it worked, and above all what it wanted, became harder for Lanny to imagine the older he grew and the more familiar with massed human misery.
Presumably, that Providence or God wanted each human to do his best; and for Lanny that could only mean a great deal of puzzling and worrying. Perhaps this puzzling and worrying was part of the process; perhaps God meant for each of the two billion creatures to go on striving until it learned to think more clearly, and to organize and cooperate with its fellows. Yes, that must be so—but it seemed such a wasteful, a ghastly process. Why couldn’t they have learned to cooperate from the beginning? Why couldn’t they have been born with enough sense in their heads—instead of with a desire to dominate and oppress, to rob and to kill?
When you asked questions like that, there was only one answer: “God knows.” Since God wouldn’t tell, that didn’t get you very far. The two billion humans were here on this planet, with no wisdom or guidance save what they themselves could devise and provide. If they were ever going to stop dominating and oppressing, robbing and killing, it would be because some among their number had sufficient intelligence to persuade the others to settle down and produce wealth for themselves instead of trying to take it away from their neighbors.
To Lanny’s mind this seemed to call for an international government and a world police force. But then he found himself thinking: “Good God, suppose there should be a world police force set up by the new Mohammed!” That was to him just the most horrid thought in the world; and every day seemed to be bringing the possibility nearer to mankind.
II
Politics in England had become so hot right now that Lanny was afraid to go from Wickthorpe Castle to the near-by Reaches. He drove into London and called Rick from there, asking him to come to town; Lanny met him at the station and drove him for a while, as the safest way to discuss the meaning of the Wiedemann visit and the errand of Lord Halifax to Paris. Lanny really didn’t have much to tell that was new; the leftwing press had a pretty clear outline of the Nazi-Tory plot to give Hitler what he wanted, in the hope of steering him toward the east. But the leftists couldn’t prove it; what they published was shamelessly denied, and the “appeasers” went right ahead with their plotting. Lanny could confirm Rick’s ideas, but he couldn’t let him publish the evidence, or even hint at it, because Ceddy knew that Lanny and Rick were friends. The playwright would have to do what he had done on previous occasions—pass the information on to others, a little here and a little there, so that in the end readers of the opposition papers would get a fairly clear outline of the picture.
Lanny told about his discontent, and pleaded for the privilege of being with friends for a few days. Why couldn’t Nina and Rick take time off and come with him for a motoring trip? Why not drive north and see that Lake District where Wordsworth had managed to live a peaceful life through all the horrors of the Napoleonic wars? “The world is too much with us,” Lanny quoted. They would keep off the beaten paths and avoid the fashionable folk who would know them. Rick said “Topping!” and they met by appointment without telling anybody, and felt as gay as three schoolchildren playing hooky.
The Lake District is in the northwest part of the tight little isle, a couple of hundred miles from London. That would have been a week’s comfortable journey in the poet’s day, and he had taken it rarely during his eighty years. In Lanny Budd’s reckoning it was a forenoon’s drive if he was in a hurry; but this holiday party took it slowly, stopping to look at ancient landmarks of which every schoolchild hears. The English countryside wore its midsummer dress of dark green, and the natives called the weather hot, but it didn’t seem so if you had been reared in the Midi. All England was having a holiday, apparently; a startling thing to come to t
he land of a contemplative poet’s quiet dreams, and discover his roads paved, his lake shore lined with villas and hotels, and the lakes sprinkled with rowboats and canoes. They had to drive some distance away in order to find accommodations.
The poetry of Wordsworth had been given to Lanny at the age of seventeen by his great-uncle Eli Budd in Connecticut, and he had read and marked it dutifully. Rick, whose education had been more of what he called “mod’n,” didn’t know it so well; however, Lanny had brought along a copy, and they allowed themselves time to read long passages and look for the features described. It was too late in the year for the golden daffodils, and they would hardly have recognized the peaceful vale; but they heard the twofold shout of the cuckoo, and saw the buzzard mounting from the rock, deliberate and slow. They sat upon one of the multitude of little rocky hills and looked down upon the tiny lake of Grasmere, a mile or so long, with its one green island and its rocky shores. They saw the silver wreaths of curling mist, and the earth and common face of nature spake to them, exactly as to the youthful worshiper a century and a half ago.
Ye presences of nature in the sky
And on the earth! Ye visions on the hills!
And souls of lonely places!
III
But there was a limit to the time that men of this age could spend in the contemplation of natural phenomena. More even than in the poet’s day they were besieged by the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever of the world. Just as the mind of the poet had been haunted by the menace of Napoleon, so the mind of Lanny Budd was haunted by Nazi-Fascism, and he wanted to exclaim to Rick: “O friend, I know not which way I must look for comfort!” Surely now, if ever in recorded time, England was a fen of stagnant waters, and all the poet’s other phrases of grief and despair applied as well to this new age.
The Englishman answered: “Yes, but we survived the Napoleonic wars, and I fancy we shall pull through again.”
Said Lanny: “Every time I go to Germany, and see the preparations the Nazis are making, I grow more doubtful. I don’t think you have ever been in such danger as you are today—certainly not since the time of the Spanish Armada.”
Rick agreed, but added that there were some wide-awake men in the government, and some real preparing was under way. “Alfy knows some of the Air Force chaps, and they are working hard, I can assure you.”
Lanny revealed his personal discontent; he couldn’t keep himself persuaded that he was accomplishing anything, that anybody was paying real heed to the information he brought. His friend told him earnestly: “I don’t know what you may be accomplishing in the States, but I can assure you you’re being helpful here. It bucks me up to get your confirmation, and to know exactly who our enemies are and what they are planning. I pass on the facts to one key person after another, and if we all have a clear view of the situation today, we owe some of it to your efforts. Certainly you are accomplishing more than if you were to kick over the traces and come out on our side; you could never again go into Germany, or enter the drawing-room at Cliveden, or meet people like that in France or the States.”
“That’s true,” Lanny had to admit. “But just now the whole task seems so immense—so hopeless.”
“I’m tempted the same way,” admitted the playwright; “but I shan’t give up to it, and neither must you. The house is on fire, and we don’t know whether we can get the people out, but we have to give the alarm, as loud as we can, and as often.”
Said the son of Budd-Erling: “In New England they have a heavy-iron ring the size of a wagon wheel; they hang it on a chain from a sort of scaffold, and when there’s a fire they hit it with a blacksmith’s hammer.”
“Righto!” replied the other. “You’re the chap who comes running with the hammer, and I’m the one who makes the racket. The townspeople are fat and lazy, and hate to have their dreams disturbed, but we keep on banging and little by little we rout some of them out.”
IV
Margy, Dowager Countess Eversham-Watson, had been begging Beauty to come and spend a while with her, and Beauty wanted to take Frances, at least for a week-end. Irma and her mother had never got over their memories of the Lindbergh kidnaping, and the precious darling rarely went off the estate; but Lanny agreed to take her and bring her back, and since he possessed the legal right to do so, Irma had to be content with having the child’s governess and the child’s maid go along. The theory was that everything Frances could need was provided at Wickthorpe, but Lanny observed that nothing could take the place of the outside world; whenever the little one was taking any sort of trip, she was always wild with delight.
When Margy Petries of Kentucky had become the second wife of Lord Eversham-Watson, she had rebuilt and enlarged the mansion and renamed the place Bluegrass. When her husband known as “Bumbles” had died, Margy’s stepson, the new heir to the title, had occupied the mansion, and Margy had built herself a villa on another part of the grounds. Beauty was to stay there along with Frances, while Lanny was to be a guest of the stepson, whom he had played with as a boy.
David Douglas Patrick Fitzgerald, seventh Lord Eversham-Watson, was a big, handsome fellow as his father had been; jovial, easy-going, and untroubled by intellect. An ardent sporting man, he had taken over the management of his father’s racing stable, whose pure-blooded Kentucky horses had been one of Margy’s contributions to the family prestige as well as to its exchequer. The books showed that they had won close to half a million pounds since the World War. Davy, as he was called, was pure-blooded English, but had always had Americans in his home, and delighted himself with American slang. He was impressed by Lanny’s attainments and liked to hear his stories, especially since the report had got around that this art expert had become a pal of the Nazis One, Two, Three. Everybody wanted to hear about them right now while they were making such bally nuisances of themselves, and Davy had filled up the house with people who wanted to ask questions.
So Lanny spent a week-end in the society of England’s “sporting set.” Most important among them was a short little gentleman, old, almost doddering, with a fringe of white hair around a bald head and a little white mustache decorating a benevolent smiling mouth. “Old Portland” or “dear Portland” was the way everybody referred to him, for he took them back to what they believed was a kindlier age, when there had been no income and death duties. He had been a duke for more than sixty years and had been Queen Victoria’s Master of the Hunt. William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck was his name, and he was K.C., P.C., G.C.V.O., Baron Balsover and Cirencester (pronounced Cizeter), Viscount Woodstock, Earl of Portland and Marquess of Titchfield. He had shot one thousand stags, been in at the kill of as many foxes, and had served ten thousand banquets. All in himself he was an era.
In boyhood Lanny had been taken by Margy and some of her friends to see the enormous Welbeck Abbey, home of this duke; it was in the Midlands, where he owned close to two hundred thousand acres, including coal lands and the sites of several villages. To a boy the most interesting fact was that the Duke’s father had been possessed by a passion for building things underground; an underground ballroom a hundred and sixty feet long, an underground carriage road which took him secretly into his village of Worksop, a mile and a half away. He had a garden with ovens built into the walls so as to heat it and ripen fruit quickly; a skating rink for the maidservants of the Abbey; a riding school with four thousand gas-jets to light it. A boy does not forget oddities like these.
You ran into them frequently in the ruling-class world of Britain. They were individualistic people, especially when they had a great, deal of money; they did what they damned well pleased, and there was seldom any law against it. Some of them had come to New England, and their names had been Budd, and Lanny had learned about them and so was used to the idea of eccentricity. He knew there were dukes who set the fashion in clothes, and others who wore any old thing that pleased them. He had heard the great Duke of Norfolk tell a story on himself—how he had been strolling on the ground
s of his estate, which he maintained as a park for the public, and had been rebuked by a member of that public for walking on the grass. “Can’t you read? Don’t you see that sign that says: ‘Keep off the grass’? It’s people like you that will cause this place to be closed to the rest of us!”
V
There was one of these ill-dressed noblemen among the company at Bluegrass. He appeared in a blue serge suit, worn shiny at the elbows and the seat of the pants, and a hat made of plaid cloth, of a shape known as “ratcatcher.” When he dressed for dinner, his black tie was crooked. He had a thin nose, a wide mouth, and a mass of dark hair thrown to one side and having a tendency to fall over his left eye. He looked for all the world like a poet or painter from a Bloomsbury lodging house—of which he would soon own hundreds, perhaps even thousands.
His name was Hastings William Sackville Russell, and when his aged father died he would be twelfth Duke of Bedford, Marquess of Tavistock, Earl of Russell, Baron Russell of Thornhaugh and Baron Howland of Streatham. The father lived quite alone in a Bedfordshire mansion, and Lanny had heard that it was full of old masters, including eighteen Canalettos in a single room. He decided to cultivate the son for this reason, but the son told him it was no use; the old gentleman had sixty rooms ready for guests, and sixty more for himself, but he occupied only three or four, and preferred the company of giraffes and zebras, of which he had a herd. It had been his practice to drive the zebras in harness, and his park was given up to a great number of llamas from the Andes, with a fence around them and guards in green uniforms and cockaded hats to watch over them. Also he had lions and tigers and panthers and what not, and had had an armored train built so that he could drive among them in safety. He could afford to indulge such whims, because he owned large chunks of land on which the city of London had been built, and this land was “entailed”—that is, it couldn’t be sold, but only leased, and was handed down to the eldest son.
Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 72