“Understand that I have thought it over carefully, and for a long time. Even in Berlin I realized that I wasn’t hitting it off with Irma, and I found myself asking: ‘What sort of woman is this Trudi, and how would she and I make out?’”
“What did you answer?”
“For one thing, I decided that here was the truest character and the clearest mind that I had come upon in a woman.”
“That is very pleasant to hear, and it counts for a lot; but it isn’t everything. Do you realize that you have never once said that you love me?”
“What sort of man would I be if I made love to you after you had told me that your heart was pledged and your thoughts were fixed on your husband? I should only be worrying you, imposing upon you, adding to your burdens. I don’t mean to let myself do any of those things.”
“I am trying to understand you, Lanny. Have you always had such complete control of your feelings?”
“Not always; but now I am old enough to know myself and my needs. You and I have both been married, and we can talk on the basis of facts. I have decided, for my part, that the basis of happiness in love is congeniality and mutual trust. The rest will follow easily enough.”
“Just what would you like me to do, Lanny?”
“I will say it in the plainest words. I should like you to make up your mind that you are a widow. When you have once said that, I promise to leave you in no doubt whatever about my wishes and feelings.”
There was a long silence. Lanny sat looking at Trudi, and she looked over the rooftops. Finally she said: “Give me the time while you are gone. I will think it over and try to settle it in my own mind.”
“All right,” he replied, “it’s a date.” He took her hand, held it for a few moments, and kissed it gently.
“Tell me,” she said, “about those families in America, so that I can imagine you while you are away.”
“Right now I have six of them,” he smiled, “my mother and her husband, my father and his family, my daughter and her grandmother, Bess and her husband, Marceline and hers, and finally the Robin family—I don’t know just what their relationship is, but it must be something. If you ever tie up with me you will have to learn a lot of birth-dates!”
IV
The car was to be stored in Paris, partly because its owner was learning to economize and partly because he couldn’t carry the Comendador in it. He rode to Le Havre in the hired station-wagon, a vehicle of American manufacture now coming into popularity. On board the luxurious steamship he enjoyed the society of a stoutish gentleman who manufactured lead-pencils in a small town of Ohio. He had been seeing Europe with two aspiring daughters who had another cabin; apparently they knew all about Lanny Budd’s marital tragedy, and hoped that he would tell one or both of them about it. The father enjoyed playing poker, which meant that he came to bed very late and slept late; at other times he talked about the presidential campaign which now was exciting all Americans. The Republicans had put up a Kansas oil man, and he was trying to appear as “liberal” as Roosevelt. The pencil man thought it was a great mistake, for what the American people wanted was to be let alone by reformers and cranks. Lanny got away from him and read books and magazines, studied the ship’s bulletins as to the progress of General Franco’s armies, and paced the deck thinking about a newborn democratic government being strangled in its cradle.
The two grandmothers came to the pier, bringing Frances to meet her father. This was intended to sound a keynote of peace. In spite of all rivalries and jealousies the two ladies were going to play bridge together, and pretend that the tragedy was perfectly normal, respectable, and not especially important. Lanny was being ousted from Irma’s bed, but not from her board; indeed, while she was away he would occupy his accustomed suite with the pedigreed four-poster bed and the massive shiny plumbing-fixtures; he would have the run of the place, the use of cars and horses and playgrounds, and be waited upon with promptness and cordiality by the servants. In short, he was still royalty. He wondered if it would have been the same if he had been so ill advised as to accede to Joseph Barnes’s proposal and let Irma have the sole custody of the child!
Four months had passed, and the little one was bigger, brighter, more full of words and curiosities. She couldn’t take her eyes off this wonderful, almost legendary father. She had been told that he had been in a strange far-off country where there was a war, and that a bullet from an airplane had passed within an inch of his elbow. It was almost too exciting for six and a half years; he had to tell it at once, and again at every bedtime. Two elderly ladies had to resign themselves to taking two large back seats for the time; for nature begins at the beginning, and sees to it that the female creature admires, adores, and craves the company of the male—even when later on she will eat him up!
V
The Comendador had been taken into the custody of the United States government and was in the Appraisers’ Stores. Lanny drove to town next day in a station-wagon and made the required affidavit to the effect that the picture was an “original work of art painted by Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, approximately in the 1785.” Such an importation being not liable to duty, a brief inspection sufficed. So Lanny drove home with his treasure, and the servants carried it in, unscrewed the bolts, and took it out of the packing-box. Another picture was removed temporarily and the new treasure was hung in the drawing-room in what Lanny said was a proper light, and all the family gathered to inspect it. Really, a most distinguished thing, and many friends would appreciate an opportunity to view it, declared Fanny Barnes.
Her secretary got busy on the telephone, and all that evening the neighbors and friends were streaming in. A pity the old Comendador couldn’t be there to share the honors; even the sour and embittered painter might have appreciated it. He would have found the company distinguished and the costumes exotic, and would have been delighted by the modern coal-tar dyes. Lanny discovered that he had created a fascinating topic of conversation: Where were the bullet holes? He had to tell the story over and over, and people would think they could see them but really couldn’t, and they would challenge one another—it became a regular guessing-game. One would say: “Too bad it had to be such an ugly old man!” Then he would think that maybe he had proved himself a booby, and would add something about the brilliance of the colors. Many wanted to know the price, and when Lanny told them they said: “Whew!” But they were impressed, and more than one remarked: “If your plateglass friends don’t take it, give us a chance.” Lanny thought: “Am I pricing it too low?”
He was going to see his other families in the morning, and take the treasure along. He suggested hiring a station-wagon in the village, but Fanny said: “Oh, don’t think of it! We have three on the place, and one can be spared without the slightest trouble. Take it for your own until you have sold the picture, and then take a car.” He saw what she meant: for him to go outside for anything would indicate that he was an outsider, and would create, a scandal. Once royalty, always royalty—that was the law, and never must he do or say anything that would reduce his rank or impair his dignity.
He understood that in accepting this arrangement he was putting himself somewhat into the hands of the Barnes family; he was accepting favors and thereby binding himself. But he never wished to do anything to hurt them, so he would go on playing the game according to their rules. “Call me Mother, just as if nothing had happened,” Fanny had whispered when they had first met. “Frances mustn’t notice any change.” A well-mothered man he had always been, and now he had four of them within a big gun’s range: Mother Beauty Dingle, Mother Fanny Barnes, Mother Esther Budd, and Mother Leah Robin!
VI
At the Budd home in Newcastle they killed the fatted calf. They felt that he hadn’t been fairly treated by his wife, and they wished to cheer him up. A relief to discover that he was already cheered. The Comendador was unbolted once more and properly hung, and then began another and bigger reception: members of the huge Budd tribe, also the Robin fam
ily, and Hansi and Bess. The news spread quickly, and the throngs increased, many of them strangers, begging permission on the ground that they were art lovers. Robbie Budd, always a great one for spoofing, remarked: “Look here, Lanny, you’ve got the grandest prize puzzle ever devised. Don’t tell anybody where the bullet holes are and you’ll have the whole town sitting up nights arguing.” Presently he began to see further possibilities, and said to his serious and conscientious wife: “Esther, it’s a gold mine for your church!”
The daughter of the Puritans was never sure when her husband was teasing her, and she asked: “How do you mean?”
“Have a raffle, and sell guesses at five dollars a shot, and give part of the jackpot to the person who comes nearest to spotting the twelve bullet holes. Get a lot of photographs of the painting and let each person put pinholes through where he thinks the bullets went, and sign his name on the back, and then the judges will award the prize. It’s a dead-ringer for money-making, and absolutely legal—it’s not a game of chance but of skill, and the lottery laws can’t touch it. That’s the way to support the unemployed of this town!”
Esther wasn’t sure whether he meant it, and presently Robbie wasn’t sure himself; for when he told it to people they said: “Why not?” They fell to arguing in front of the picture, and when they asked Lanny and he delayed answering, they began backing their opinions with private bets.
Robbie’s imagination took flight, for he was a business man and an advertiser, and ways to make money and publicity were his specialty. He saw this painting becoming a nationwide sensation; some great institution would take it up—say, a chain of newspapers—and use it to make money for charity and at the same time to advertise the chain. The newspapers would furnish a color-process reproduction and tell all about Goya, and the Spanish war, and Lanny’s strange adventure. They would exhibit the painting in a string of cities all the way across the continent, and crowds of people would file by, each having five minutes in which to make up his mind and put his pinholes through the newspaper facsimile. When it was all over, the millions of marked copies would be run through a photoelectric machine which would automatically pick out the perfect guesses—if there were any. Thus the prizes would be awarded without any chance of favoritism.
“That’s got everything it takes for a knockout!” chuckled this wide-awake promoter. “It’s got art, and history, and adventure; it involves socially prominent people, and it would win a million new readers for the newspaper chain that took it up! Take my advice and let them try it, and afterwards you can sell the painting for half a million dollars!”
Lanny said: “Bring on your newspaper owner.”
VII
The art expert told his father in confidence what he had paid for this old master, and Robbie said that was about the best deal he had ever heard of; Lanny’s repute rose astronomically. “What are you going to do with all that money?” inquired the father. “Take my advice and put it into Budd-Erling stock.”
“I want to put it into Budd-Erling products,” replied the son. “I’m hoping you’ll let me have a couple of Number Nines at cost.”
“What on earth do you want with Number Nines?”
“Alfy and his chum Laurence are taking a training-course and are going to volunteer in the service of the Spanish government. I want to be sure they have the best planes to fly.”
The light went out of Robbie Budd’s countenance as from a bulb when you turn a switch. “My God, Lanny, you don’t mean such a thing!”
“I surely do. They say that somebody has got to match Mussolini’s and Hitler’s volunteers.”
“Lanny, that’s the most dreadful thing I ever heard in my life. Have those young people gone stark mad?”
So the pair went into an argument: the same old argument they had been having for nearly twenty years and that never got anywhere. Lanny told what he knew about Spain, and Robbie told what he had read in the Hearst newspapers, which had launched an all-out campaign against the so-called Red government of Madrid. In the column of Arthur Brisbane, most highly paid newspaper editor in the world, Robbie had read about “nuns soaked in oil and burned,” and he believed it. What was the use of Lanny’s trying to tell him about churches turned into arsenals by a priesthood turned into landlords and bankers? What was the use of trying to explain to the president of Budd-Erling that the Catholic Church of Spain was not quite the same thing as the Congregational Church of Connecticut? No use whatever, for Robbie believed what his business interests taught him must be true.
The manufacturer was in the midst of the same civil war himself; the same forces were lined up at home, and he was the Juan March or the Zaharoff of New England. The war upon the New Deal had flamed to heat like that of an “oxflame” torch; the Hearst newspapers were assailing Roosevelt in the same columns and with much the same charges as they brought against the Spanish Loyalists. The Roosevelt administration was in alliance with the Communists and was waging the campaign on Communist issues. Arthur Brisbane didn’t charge that the New Dealers had soaked any nuns in oil and burned them—not yet; but that was what the Reds meant to do all over the world, and That Man in the White House was bowing them into power.
Robbie had convinced himself, as he always did, that his crowd was going to carry the election; he had put up a lot of money for it, and was being asked for more and more, and was hounding his friends at the country club to increase their allotments. And here he had to sit and listen to his firstborn son defending these triplets of destruction: the New Deal of Washington which had hiked income taxes of the rich to the point of confiscation, le New Deal of Paris which had nationalized the munitions industry, and el New Deal of Madrid which had forced the landlords to divide up their estates with the peasants!
VIII
The culmination of this argument was one full of dismay for an amateur sociologist. His father wouldn’t sell Budd-Erling planes to the Spanish government, nor would he sell them to anybody who was going to turn them over to the Spanish government. Even if he were willing to go against his conscience, he hadn’t the right to sacrifice the interests of his stockholders. The company would be boycotted by the governments of the world if its planes were to appear with the Red label on them!
“But, Robbie!” exclaimed the greatly shocked son. “You are furnishing planes to Franco! It amounts to that when you sell to Goring, who is sending shiploads of munitions by way of Portugal every week!”
“He may be sending Budd-Erlings, but I have no knowledge of it.”
“Are you making any attempt to get knowledge? Have you mentioned the subject to him?”
Lanny, persisting, brought out the point clearly: his father recognized the Nazi government of Germany as a legitimate government, entitled to purchase arms in America; but he refused to recognize the government of Spain as a government in any sense whatever.
“But, Robbie, the Spanish government was chosen in a fair and free election, after a long and open campaign such as we have in America! The Hitler government was approved in an imbecile farce held after all the opposition leaders had been murdered or jailed, and when only one ticket was permitted and no opposition voice was allowed to be raised! How can you, an American, approve the Nazi gangsters and repudiate a whole people struggling out of medieval darkness?”
“There’s no use arguing, son. I have my convictions, and my duties as a citizen and a director of industry. I have to act according to my understanding.”
“All right, but I think you ought to know what you are doing to your son. All my lifetime, ever since I was old enough to listen, I have heard you defending the munitions industry and yourself as a salesman, and always I have heard one theme, that you based your justification on freedom of trade. Your goods were for sale to anybody who came with the price. How many years ago was it that I heard you quoting Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara? Have you forgotten ‘The True Faith of an Armorer’? ‘To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect to persons or prin
ciples: to aristocrats and republicans, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man, white man and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes.’ In the name of that True Faith you defended the selling of arms to Chinese mandarins and South American filibusters, and even to Nazis, who for ten years had no pretense of being a government, but were simply organized assassins shooting down their political opponents in the streets. How many times have I heard you declare that if you had suspicions of a man’s reasons for buying arms you might report him to the poiice, but you would never refuse to take his money!”
“It’s quite true, Lanny. I defended freedom of trade, and I acted on it so long as I could believe that I was living in a free world. But now I see the enemies of the free-enterprise system organizing to destroy it in every nation, and naturally I do not admit those enemies to the benefits of the system. I do not grant the rights of free speech to Communists who are trying to destroy free speech. If I had my way I wouldn’t let them vote to abolish the right of voting; I wouldn’t let them have a political party to destroy all other political parties. Certainly you know there is no freedom of trade inside Russia or with Russia.”
“That is a question of definitions. Because trade is organized and systematized—”
“They can fool you with fancy words, but not me. There is nothing of what I mean by freedom of trade in or with Russia, and there won’t be any with Spain if the Reds get their way. It is simply an attempt to spread the Russian system into Western Europe and let it build a fortress there. We failed to stop them in Russia because the country was too big and our people didn’t understand the danger; but it appears they can be stopped in Spain, and certainly I’m not going to turn traitor to my class and my principles and take the gold of men whom I know to be enemies of civilization.”
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 59