Irma wasn’t usually witty; but now she thought of Shore Acres, and said: “You know how it is, I’ve been paying men right along to exercise my horses.”
X
Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson the younger was at school in England; he came to Bienvenu for the Easter vacation, and he and Marceline took up their life at the point where they had dropped it on board the Bessie Budd, a year and a half ago. Meanwhile they had been getting ready for each other, and at the same time making important discoveries about themselves.
The daughter of Marcel Detaze and Beauty Budd, not quite fourteen, was at that point “where the brook and river meet, womanhood and childhood fleet.” Like the diving-champion on the end of a springboard, with every muscle taut, the body poised in the moment of swaying forward, so she presented herself above the swimming-pool of fashion, pleasure, and so many kinds of glory. She had gazed into it as a fascinated spectator and now was getting ready to plunge—much sooner than any member of her family knew or desired. That was her secret; that was the meaning of the fluttering heart, the flushed cheeks, the manner of excitement—she couldn’t wait to begin to live!
Marceline loved her mother, she adored her handsome and fashionable half-brother, she looked with awe upon the blooming Juno who had come recently into her life, surrounded by a golden aura, talked about by everybody, pictured in the newspapers—in short, a queen of plutocracy, that monde which Marceline had been taught to consider beau, grand, haut, chic, snob, élégant, et d’élite. She was going to show herself off in it, and no use trying to change her mind. Men were beginning to look at her, and she was not failing to notice that or to know what it meant. Hadn’t it been in the conversation of all the smart ladies since she had begun to understand the meaning of words? Those ladies were growing old, they were on the way out—and Marceline was coming, it was her turn!
And now this English lad, of almost the same age as herself, and destined, in the family conversation, to become her life partner. Maybe so, but first there were a few problems to be settled; first it was necessary to determine who would be the boss in that family. Alfy was serious, like his father; extremely conscientious, more reticent than seemed natural in one so young, and tormented by a secret pride. Marceline, on the other hand, was impulsive, exuberant, talkative, and just as proud in her own way. Each of these temperaments was in secret awe of the other; the natural strangeness of a youth to a maid and of a maid to a youth accentuated their differences and offended their self-esteem. Was he scorning her when he was silent? Was she teasing him when she laughed? Exasperation was increased by arrogance on both sides.
It is the English custom, when two boys fall to pommeling each other, to form a ring and let them fight it out. Now it appeared to be the same with the sex-war. Rick said: “They’d better settle it now than later.” He gave advice only when it was asked, and poor Alfy was proud even with his father. It was up to a man to handle his own women!
Marceline, on the other hand, fled to her mother and had weeping-fits. Beauty tried to explain to her the peculiar English temperament, which makes itself appear cold but really isn’t. The short vacation was passing, and Beauty advised her daughter to make it up quickly; but Marceline exclaimed: “I think they are horrid people, and if he won’t have better manners I don’t want to have anything more to do with him.” The French and the English had been fighting ever since the year 1066.
XI
Oddly enough, it was the man from Iowa who served as international mediator. Parsifal Dingle never meddled in anybody’s affairs, but talked about the love of God, and perhaps it was a coincidence that he talked most eloquently when he knew that two persons were at odds. God was all and God was love; God was alive and God was here; God knew what we were doing and saying and thinking, and when what we did was not right, we were deliberately cutting ourselves off from Him and destroying our own happiness. That was the spiritual law; God didn’t have to punish us, we punished ourselves; and if we humbled ourselves before Him, we exalted ourselves before one another. So on through a series of mystical statements which came like a message from a much better world.
All this would have been familiar doctrine to the forebears of either of these young people. Perhaps ideas have to be forgotten in order to become real again; anyhow, to both Marceline and Alfy this strange gentleman was the originator or discoverer of awe-inspiring doctrines. A rosy-cheeked, cherubic gentleman with graying hair and the accent of the prairies. Once when he wanted to bathe his hands on board the sailboat he had used what he called a “wawsh-dish,” which Alfy thought was the funniest combination of words he had ever heard.
But apparently God didn’t object to the Iowa accent, for God came to him and told him what to do. And when you thought of God, not somewhere up in the sky on a throne, but living in your heart, a part of yourself in some incomprehensible way, then suddenly it seemed silly to be quarreling with somebody who was a friend of the family, even if not your future spouse! Better to forget about it—at least to the extent of a game of tennis.
Beauty thought how very convenient, having a spiritual healer in the family! She thought: “I am an unworthy woman, and I must try to be like him and love everybody, and value them for their best qualities. I really ought to go to Lanny’s school, and meet some of those poor people, and try to find in them what he finds.” She would think these thoughts while putting on a costly evening-gown which Irma had given her after two or three wearings; she would be escorted to a party at the home of the former Baroness de la Tourette, and would listen to gossip about a circus-rider who had married an elderly millionaire and was cutting a swath on this Coast of Pleasure. The ladies would tear her reputation to shreds, and Beauty would enjoy their cruel cleverness and forget all about the fact that God was listening to every word.
A complicated world, so very hard to be good in!
BOOK THREE
Blow, Winds, and Crack Your Cheeks
11
’Tis Woman’s Whole Existence
I
The betrayal of the British labor movement had entered like a white-hot iron into the flesh of Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson. He had brooded over it and analyzed its causes; he had filled his soul with images of it; and the result was to be a drama called The Dress-Suit Bribe. No literary title, dignified and impartial, but a fighting title, a propaganda title.
The central figure was a miner’s son who had escaped from the pits by becoming a secretary of his union. He had a wife who had been a schoolteacher, somewhat above him in station. They had no children, because the labor movement was to be their child. At the opening of the play he was a newly elected member of Parliament. There were characters and episodes recalling his early days of fervor and idealism, but now we saw him absorbed in the not very edifying details of party politics, the maneuvers for power, the payment of past obligations in the hope of incurring more.
The leisure-class woman in the story had no doubt been modeled on Rosemary, Countess of Sandhaven, Lanny’s old flame; one of those women touched by the feminist movement who did not permit themselves to love deeply because it would interfere with their independence, their enjoyment of prominence and applause. She was a political woman who liked to wield power; she set out to seduce a labor leader, riot because she wanted to further the interests of her Tory group, but because she enjoyed playing with a man and subjecting him to her will. She tried to teach him what she called common sense, not merely about love, but about politics and all the affairs of the world they lived in. She didn’t mind breaking the heart of a wife whom she considered an inferior and superfluous person; if in the process she broke up a labor union, that was an incidental gain.
It was a “fat” part for an actress, and at Lanny’s suggestion Rick had endowed the woman with an American mother; a common enough phenomenon in London society, this would make the role possible for Phyllis Gracyn. Lanny’s old friend and playmate had been starred in two plays which had “flopped” on Broadway through no fault of her own; so she
was in a humble frame of mind, and when Lanny wrote her about Rick’s play she cabled at once, begging to be allowed to see the script. The part had been written for her—even to allowing for traces of an American accent.
Lanny had become excited about the play, and had talked out every scene with his friend, both before and after it was put down on paper. Irma and Beauty read it, and Emily and Sophie, and of course Rick’s wife; these ladies consulted together, and contributed suggestions as to how members of the grand and beau and haut monde felt and behaved. So the play became a sort of family affair, and there was small chance of anything’s being wrong with its atmosphere and local color. After Emily had read the entire script, she offered to put in five thousand dollars on the same terms as the rest of them, and Sophie, the ex-baroness, was not to be outdone.
The play would be costly to produce, on account of the money atmosphere. If you want actors to look like workingmen or labor leaders, you can hire them cheaply, but if you want one who can play the Chancellor of the Exchequer, you have to dip into your own. Rick, who by now had considerable experience, estimated the total at thirty thousand dollars, and the figure sounded familiar to Lanny, because that had been the cost of Gracyn’s first production, the sum for which she had thrown him over. Now he would take a turn at being the “angel”; a higher, celestial kind, for whom she wouldn’t have to act anywhere but on the stage.
II
The play was finished early in April, and the family went north, with Alfy returning to school. Lanny and Irma motored the mother and father as far as Paris, starting several days ahead; for Zoltan Kertezsi was there, and they wanted to see the spring Salon through his expert eyes; also there were plays to be seen, of interest to professionals such as they were about to become. As it happened, France was in the midst of a furious election campaign, and when you had an uncle running for the Chamber of Deputies, you were interested to see the show. Hansi and Bess had consented to come and give a concert for the benefit of his campaign, so it would be a sort of family reunion.
The Hungarian art expert was his usual serene and kindly self. He had just come back from a trip to the Middle West, where, strange as it might seem, there were still millionaires who enjoyed incomes and wanted to buy what they called “art paintings.” Lanny had provided Zoltan with photographs of the Detazes which were still in the storeroom, and three had been sold, at prices which would help toward the production of The Dress-Suit Bribe. Irma insisted upon putting up a share of the money, not because she knew anything about plays, but because she loved Lanny and wanted him to have his heart’s desires.
She took the same tolerant attitude toward political meetings. If Lanny wanted to go, she would accompany him, and try to understand the French language shouted in wildly excited tones. Jesse Blackless was running as candidate in one of those industrial suburbs which surrounded Paris with a wide Red band. Under the French law you didn’t have to be a resident of your district but had to be a property-owner, so the Red candidate had purchased the cheapest vacant lot he could find. He had been carefully cultivating the constituency, speaking to groups of workers every night for months on end, attending committee meetings, even calling upon the voters in their homes—all for the satisfaction of ousting a Socialist incumbent who had departed from the “Moscow line.” Irma didn’t understand these technicalities, but she couldn’t help being thrilled to find this newly acquired uncle the center of attention on a platform, delivering a fervid oration which drove the crowd to frenzies of delight. Also she couldn’t fail to be moved by the sight of Hansi Robin playing for the workers of a foreign land and being received as a comrade and brother. If only they hadn’t been such terrible-looking people!
III
All this put Lanny in a peculiar position. He attended his uncle’s réunion, but didn’t want him to win and told him so. Afterward they repaired with a group of their friends to a café where they had supper and argued and wrangled until the small hours of the morning. A noisy place, crowded and full of tobacco smoke; Irma had been taken to such haunts in Berlin, London, and New York, so she knew that this was how the intelligentsia lived. It was supposed to be “bohemian,” and certainly it was different; she could never complain that her marriage had failed to provide her with adventures.
By the side of the millionairess sat a blond young Russian, speaking to her in English, which made things easier; he had just come out of the Soviet Union, that place about which she had heard so many terrible stories. He told her about the Five-Year Plan, which was nearing completion. Already every part of its program had been overfulfilled; the great collective farms were sowing this spring more grain than ever before in Russian history; it meant a complete new era in the annals of mankind. The young stranger was quietly confident, and Irma shivered, confronting the doom of the world in which she had been brought up. From the attitude of the others she gathered that he was an important person, an agent of the Comintern, perhaps sent to see that the campaign followed the correct party line; perhaps he was the bearer of some of that “Moscow gold” about which one heard so much talk!
Across the table sat Hansi and Bess; and presently they were telling the Comintern man details about the situation in Germany. Elections to the diets of the various states had just been held, and the parties of the two extremes had made tremendous gains; the middle classes were being wiped out, and with them the middle-class point of view. Hansi said that the battle for the streets of the German cities, which had been waged for the last two or three years, was going against the Communists; their foes had the money and the arms. Hansi had witnessed a battle in broad daylight in Berlin. A squad of Stormtroopers had been marching with their Hakenkreuz banners and a fife and drum, and passing a co-operative store they had hurled stones through the windows; the men inside had rushed out and there had been a general clubbing and stabbing. The Jewish violinist hadn’t stayed to see the outcome. “I don’t suppose I ought to use my hands to beat people,” he said, spreading them out apologetically.
“Poor Hansi!” thought Irma. He and Freddi were unhappy, having discovered how their father was dealing with all sides in this German civil war. The Nazis were using Budd machine guns in killing the workers, and how could that have come about without the firm of “R & R” knowing about it? The boys hadn’t quarreled with their father—they couldn’t bear to—but their peace of mind was gone and they were wondering how they could go on living in that home.
Also Irma thought: “Poor Lanny!” She saw her husband buffeted between the warring factions. The Reds were polite to him in this crowd because he was Jesse’s nephew, and also because he was paying for the supper, a duty he invariably assumed. He seemed to feel that he had to justify himself for being alive: a person who didn’t enjoy fighting, and couldn’t make up his mind even to hate wholeheartedly.
Yet he couldn’t keep out of arguments. When the Communist candidate for the Chamber of Deputies put on his phonograph record and remarked that the Social-Democrats were a greater barrier to progress than the Fascists, Lanny replied: “If you keep on asking for it, Uncle Jesse, you may have the Fascists to deal with.”
Said the phonograph: “Whether they mean to or not, they will help to smash the capitalist system.”
“Go and tell that to Mussolini!” jeered Lanny. “You’ve had ten years to deal with him, and how far have you got?”
“He knows that he’s near the end of his rope.”
“But we’re talking about capitalism! Have you studied the dividend reports of Fiat and Ansaldo?”
So they sparred, back and forth; and Irma thought: “Oh, dear, how I dislike the intelligentsia!”
But she couldn’t help being impressed when the elections came off, and Zhess Block-léss, as the voters called him, showed up at the top of the poll in his district. On the following Sunday came a runoff election, in which the two highest candidates, who happened to be the Red and the Pink, fought it out between them. Uncle Jesse came to Irma secretly to beg for funds, and she gave
him two thousand francs, which cost her seventy-nine dollars. As it happened, the Socialist candidate was a friend of Jean Longuet, and went to Lanny and got twice as much; but even so, Zhess Block-léss came out several hundred votes ahead, and Lanny had the distinction of having an uncle who was a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the French Republic. Many a young man had made his fortune from such a connection, but all Lanny could expect was a few more additions—that is to say, accounts for food and wine consumed by parties in restaurants.
IV
The Pomeroy-Nielsons had gone to London, where Rick was engaging a stage director and a business manager. The Budds and the Robins went for a visit to Les Forêts, where Emily Chattersworth had just arrived. Hansi and Bess played for her; and later, while Bess and Lanny practiced piano duets, Irma sought out the hostess to ask her advice about the problems of a Pink husband and a Red uncle-in-law.
Mrs. Chattersworth had always been open-minded in the matter of politics; she had allowed her friends and guests to believe and say what they chose, and as a salonnière had been content to steer the conversation away from quarrels. Now, she said, the world appeared to be changing; ever since the war it had been becoming more difficult for gentlemen—yes, and ladies, too—to keep their political discussions within the limits of courtesy. It seemed to have begun with the Russian Revolution, which had been such an impolite affair. “You have to be either for it or against it,” remarked Emily; “and whichever you are, you cannot tolerate anyone’s being on the other side.”
Said Irma: “The trouble with Lanny is that he’s willing to tolerate anybody, and so he’s continually being imposed upon.”
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