Wide Is the Gate

by Sinclair, Upton;

  “No,” he assented. One half of him grieved to say it, while the other half was glad.

  “There are matters to be settled about Frances. If we can keep bitterness out of our hearts, we won’t have to pull her this way and that, or teach her to distrust either of her parents.”

  “Oh, surely we mustn’t do that, Irma!”

  “Before we left the Adlon, I was tempted to make it my condition for helping that woman, that I was to have the right to keep Frances at Shore Acres. But I decided to rely upon your good sense in the matter. You will always be free to come there and to be with her. If you will try not to force your ideas upon her, I will not have to teach her to fear those ideas.”

  He saw how she had been spending the hours of that long drive through Germany; he hated to admit, even to himself, that he had been spending some of his hours in the same way. He had thought: “If it were a boy, I would put up a fight for his mind; but a daughter—no, she will have to be Irma’s daughter!” The twenty-three-million-dollar baby would be ruled by her twenty-three million dollars! Lanny had tried to have some effect upon the upbringing of Marceline, and had learned how fixed the ladies are in their ways, how complete is their solidarity and how powerful their discipline.

  “There’s one serious problem,” he said. “Beauty is going to feel herself robbed.”

  “Beauty has always been kind to me, and all this is not her fault. I will do everything in my power to keep from making her unhappy. She can come to Shore Acres whenever she pleases; I will give her a house on my estate, just as she gave me one on hers. And that goes for you, too—anything, so long as we don’t quarrel, or intrigue against each other for the child’s affections. You have seen cases like that, and it is the worst thing that can happen to a young mind; it can wreck her entire life.”

  “We must permit nothing of that sort,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, Beauty is going to blame me for this mess.”

  “She will tell you that,” said Irma; “but of course it won’t be true.” The utility king’s daughter had acquired considerable understanding of psychology during six years’ association with a munition salesman’s ex-mistress!

  IV

  Hallein is an old and poor town, but they managed to get two connecting rooms in a hotel, and Irma retired to her room with a polite “Good night.” As a matter of courtesy she refrained from locking her door, and Lanny, equally courteous, refrained from going near it. Perhaps if he had stolen in and sat on the edge of her bed and wooed her, he might have won her back and persuaded her to give him another trial. He was tempted sorely; he loved her, and his heart ached with anticipatory loneliness. Was she tempted, too? His door was not locked, and she might have stolen in and said: “Oh, Lanny, I love you! Believe what you please, do what you please, I still love you!” They might have gone on, living a sort of cat-and-dog life, like many other couples they knew.

  But no, she had laid down her terms and she would stick by them. Lanny thought: “Can I make promises like that? Can I make promises in any way resembling them?” His answer was “No.” At least, that was the answer part of the time; but then he would think of that lovely body, lying there waiting for him, perhaps aching for him; then there would be in his soul a duel like that between fiend and conscience which had gone on in the soul of Launcelot Gobbo. “‘Budge,’ says the fiend. ‘Budge not,’ says my conscience.” In this particular case the casuists might have had a hard time deciding which was fiend and which was conscience; it would depend upon the rank you assigned to a man’s marital vows and the affection he owed to the mother of his child, as against whatever he might owe to the exploited proletariat, whose ill-required toil had provided his leisure, his culture—all those things which set him apart from the aforesaid proletariat.

  They met politely in the morning. A quick glance at her face showed him that she had been weeping; also that she had done her best with powder and rouge to hide the fact. Was she hurt because he had not come to her? Had her pride been wounded by his pride? He would never know; he had been pushed out of her heart and would not be taken back. When a surgeon cuts living flesh he does not do it by slow degrees; he makes his knife sharp and cuts quickly; and at once the severed stump begins to heal over, forming its own skin and excluding the excised tissues. Lanny recalled some words from King Lear: “He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven, and fire us hence like foxes.” Here was the brand, and its heat was fierce, and the pain of it.

  Irma didn’t want any breakfast, she said; just a cup of coffee; she wanted to drive to Salzburg at once, so as to get a morning train. All right, he would take her, omitting no final courtesy. At the travel bureau she learned that, as she had guessed, the quickest route was by Berlin and Bremen. She would take a German steamer—why not? She had always liked the Germans, always got along with them; and there was no reason in the world why she should not proceed through Germany. Was she not a friend of the Fuhrer, having made her personal declaration of support only the previous evening?

  It gave Lanny a fresh realization of what the brand from heaven was doing to them. She was going her own way; she had her own life to live, just as he had. She would choose her own friends, think her own thoughts, and speak them—doubtless with the same sense of relief which he felt, but which as yet he hardly dared acknowledge to himself. Was it that way with her? Apparently not. He was surprised by her decisiveness of words and manner. She had a job to put through and she was doing it. Could it be that she was a harder person than he; more selfish, or at any rate less sentimental? How could it be otherwise, if she was going to be a Nazi or to tolerate the Nazis?

  He had a sudden vision of what it would mean to give up his little daughter. Poor kid! She would be brought up in that world; and when she was forty would she look like Magda Goebbels? Thinking such thoughts, Lanny discovered that he might have a hard time not coming to hate the mother of his child. It was a hateful world in which she lived, and she would become one of the pillars of it, one of the makers of it. She hadn’t been interested in politics so far; but Lanny had made that change in her. She would understand what politics meant from now on—the defense of her fortune and her privileges. She would know who was threatening to take them away and what measures to use against those enemies.

  Quite a train of thought to have been started by watching a woman pay for train and steamer accommodations and order her reservations telegraphed ahead! Then waiting while she wrote a telegram to her maid and a cablegram to her mother—and not telling him what she was saying in either!

  V

  There was just time to catch the train. He drove her to the station, and they stood together on the platform, waiting for the noisy monster which was to separate their lives. Lanny had got himself together; they had too many memories of happiness, and must not spoil them entirely. “if we must part forever, give me but one kind word to think upon”—so an English poet had written. Irma said: “Don’t be too unhappy, Lanny; and don’t throw yourself away. We mustn’t either of us have the other on our conscience.”

  “No, indeed,” he replied. “You have been very good to me, perhaps too good, and I shall always be grateful.”

  “I feel the same way, Lanny. You have taught me a lot—even though you may not believe it.”

  What did she mean by “throwing himself away”? Was she referring to Trudi Schultz? She had seen Lanny walk away with the woman. Had he told her to wait for him here in Salzburg or elsewhere? Nothing was more likely. Irma wouldn’t take much stock in the idea that Trudi would go on pining for Ludi. No, Lanny Budd was a “catch,” and any woman who could get him would take him. But it wasn’t Irma’s affair, and she had no right to refer to it. One couldn’t suppose that either of them would live the rest of their lives alone. When she left him, she gave him the right to go and find some other woman.

  “One thing more, Irma,” he said; “a matter of real importance to me.”

  “Yes, Lanny?”

  “You know that I have been playing a
double game in Germany. I could not do what I wish to do if the Nazis knew my real feelings.”

  “I understand that.”

  “I would like to have an agreement that we will not talk about the reason for our parting. It is really nobody’s business.”

  “That is fair.”

  “Your family and your friends will not be too deeply grieved because you have left me. It will suffice if you say that our tastes do not agree, and that we prefer different company and different parts of the world to live in.”

  “You are right.”

  “You understand,” he persisted, “I might some day get into serious trouble if the story got about that you had left me because I was working against the Nazis.”

  “I have no desire to get you into any trouble,” she assured him. “You may count upon me not to discuss your affairs or your beliefs with anyone.”

  The train came in. Lanny put his wife in her compartment and set her solitary bag beside her. “Good-by, dear, and God bless you!” There were tears in the eyes of both; it was a tragic moment. But the world was full of many kinds of tragedy. What people think about it and what they want to do about it makes them into different sorts of persons, and they cannot live in the same house or even in the same land. The parting between Irma Barnes and Lanny Budd was like the parting between Germany and Czechoslovakia, for example, or that between the Soviet Union and Finland, or that between the New Dealers and the old-line Republicans in Washington. It was a world-wide phenomenon, and if Lanny and Rick and their friends were right, it wasn’t going to end until it had split the whole world down the middle.

  He stood on the platform and saw the train depart, with such a sense of desolation as he had never before known in his life. A part of his body, his mind, and his soul had been torn from him; and all of him was one ache. Was he ever going to see her again? And what was going to take her place in his life? His very automobile seemed different, like an empty house. The seat where she had sat would be haunted; when he sat at table to eat a meal, the seat beside him would be haunted; when he lay in bed it would be the same.

  He wished he had insisted that Trudi Schultz should wait for him. It would have been fun to motor her to Paris, a polite brother-and-sister jaunt. He thought of looking up the trains, and perhaps meeting her at the station. But no, he realized that they must not be seen together; if he was to go on helping her work, it would have to be in secret. Easy enough to arrange that in Paris, but not on the road, for one who had as many friends as Lanny Budd. Gossips would get busy quickly—he must prepare his mind for that, among other unpleasantness. Beauty would hear about it soon—and, oh, God, what tears, what agonies of soul! Lanny decided hurriedly that wherever he went for a while, it would be some place where his mother wasn’t!

  VI

  He was free; free as the wind; he could go in any direction—even back into Germany, if he so desired. He had several thousand marks in cash in his pockets, and a fine car; not many men would have wasted away with grief under the circumstances. True, he no longer had the Barnes millions at command, but he had his profession and his valuable card-file—presumably not all the rich would drop him because his wife had done so. Also, he owned a third interest in about a hundred Detaze paintings, and could sell one whenever he needed the price of a meal!

  He thought it would be pleasant to meet Zoltan Kertezsi and talk about pictures. Zoltan had been in Paris, but he was a flea, and you might meet him walking down the street in Salzburg; if Lanny sent him a wire he would step into a plane and come. It would have been pleasant punting on the River Thames and talking to Rick, he being one of the few to whom Lanny could tell his troubles. Just to think of him was to be braced in soul; to hear his voice saying: “It’s a damn good thing! It’ll make a man out of you!” But Rick was some distance away, and if Lanny went to him, how could he keep from running into Beauty?

  Then he thought of Hansi and Bess. They, too, were persons to whom he had a right to pour out his heart. He hadn’t seen them for more than a year, and what a lot they would have to tell him—South America, Hawaii, Japan, and now this Comintern Congress! How long was the thing likely to last? He decided that his half-sister and her husband were the persons he wanted with him at this unhappy moment; they would be glad, perhaps even gladder than Rick. They had come to dislike Irma—he knew it, in spite of the fact that they tried to hide it. They would welcome him with open arms and let him drive them wherever he wished. They would go back to Bienvenu and play violin and piano duets for a year and a day!

  Hansi’s comings and goings were usually determined by concert dates. But now the couple had bolted across Siberia in a hurry, on account of the Congress, so it might be a time when they were footloose and could have a real holiday. They would labor to make a Communist out of him, of course; but he wouldn’t mind—he might even let them succeed for a while. It would be a good way to make sure he had got loose from Irma Barnes!

  He had no address for them, but he knew that distinguished artists were demigods in the Soviet Union—that was one of the fine things you could say about the place. He sent a telegram, addressed to “Hansi Robin, American violinist, care of Intourist, Moscow,” and reading: “Attending festival Irma returned to New York incompatibility what are your plans suggest returning via Vienna waiting here have car reply Salzburg care American Express Lanny.” He guessed that the word “incompatibility” would tell them a bookful, and he wouldn’t have to add “lonesome” or anything like that. “Have car” would help. Bessie Budd, who had also been brought up in a motor-car, would say: “Oh, the poor fellow! We ought to go right away, Hansi.” Lanny, knowing them so well, could hear the violinist answer: “In Salzburg, with so much music day and night, anybody can be happy. Let us see the Congress out.”

  And sure enough, when the reply came it said:

  “Concert engagement prevents immediate leaving will arrive approximately one week cheerio conclusion inevitable new horizons beckon you magnificent celebrations here constructive decisions following your party line never say the oceans love Hansibess.”

  All that was clear, too, and Lanny was pleased to see that his sister’s revolutionary zeal had not entirely stifled her Yankee sense of humor. For many years Lanny had been lamenting the factional disputes of the left-wingers, which exposed them all to the menace of advancing Fascism; so now, when the Comintern had formally declared for the united front with all anti-Fascist elements, it was a masterpiece of family tact to say that the representatives of fifty nations in convention assembled were following the party line of Lanny Budd! And when the mountain so politely came to Mahomet, surely he couldn’t reject its advances!

  VII

  Lanny didn’t bother about hunting a room, because he wouldn’t mind driving twice a day through lovely mountain scenery. He strolled from the Residenzplatz to the Platzl, and from there to the Cafe Bazar, watching the picturesque crowds; the ladies from Hyde Park and Park Avenue wearing Dirndl costumes, the garb of Tirolese peasant girls, consisting of elaborately embroidered aprons over flowered skirts coming up to a low-cut bodice with broad bands at the shoulders. The men who accompanied them, sometimes bald or gray whiskered, each hoped to be mistaken for a Bua, a peasant lad, and failed to realize how their bare white knees gave them away. “Salontiroler,” they were called by the natives.

  Lanny Budd, who had met the members of smart society in a dozen capitals, greeted several persons and might at once have been “in the swim,” but it suited his mood to go alone and brood. He stood by the parapet of a bridge and watched the noisy River Salzach cutting the town in half. He inspected the Magic Flute House. He wandered into the Getreidegasse and climbed three flights of stairs to the little four-room apartment where the Mozart family had lived. He inspected the porcelain stove at which the tiny mite of genius had warmed his fingers; and then in the Mozart museum he looked at the clavichord on which the child had learned his delicate and gracious art.

  Realizing that he was hungry, a footloose and
fancy-free bachelor strolled to the Traube and ordered a Wienerschnitzel and a Gosser-Bier. Meanwhile he studied the program of the Festspiele. Tickets were scarce, but if you were willing to pay an extra sum you could find what you wanted, and Lanny proceeded to schedule for himself a week of exalted delights—broken only by occasional pangs when he thought of Irma traveling alone and weeping into strange pillows. However, she had little Frances waiting for her; also Mother Fanny Barnes and Uncle Horace Vandringham, to both of whom Lanny was prepared to give her a quitclaim deed.

  With the background of a great fortress on a high rock was a lovely spot known as the Mirabell gardens. A casino had been installed there and you might play all the gambling-games and think you were at Monte Carlo. Also there was a modest bandstand, and in the afternoon you might listen to music. As Lanny strolled through, a gypsy orchestra was playing Liszt’s Waldesrauschen, which is worth anybody’s time to hear, so he seated himself on one of the shaded benches of which many rows had been provided. He sat with closed eyes, accepting a great soul’s invitation to forget the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.

  He was only partly aware of the fact that somebody came and sat on the bench beside him. But presently he began to experience a peculiar feeling; the bench was shaking slightly, as if the other person was breathing hard, or perhaps was afflicted with palsy. People have different ways of responding to the incitements of music, and after this piece was concluded Lanny stole a glance out of the corner of his eye at the middle-aged, rather stoutish gentleman at his side, and realized that he was sobbing softly to himself; carefully repressing every sound, but there were tears streaming down his cheeks and he was making no effort to check or remove them.

  This wasn’t a place of Anglo-Saxon formality, but of Austrian Gemutlichkeit; so Lanny remarked, politely: “Schone Musik!”