I
BEAUTIFUL flowers bloomed in the garden that was Europe. They spread wide petals to the sunshine, trusting the security of the warm and sheltered place. Over them fluttered butterflies, also of splendid hues and delicate structure, loving the sunlight, floating upon peace and stillness. But suddenly came a tempest, harsh and blind, tearing the fragile wings of the butterflies, hurling them against the branches of trees or into the sodden ground; ripping the petals off the flowers, stripping the foliage, leaving bare wrecked limbs to mock the lovers of beauty. So it was with Lanny Budd during the next dreadful week, and so with all the persons he knew, and with countless millions of others, from Land's End to Vladivostok, from Archangel to the Cape of Good Hope. It was the worst week in the history of Europe — and there were many more to follow.
Lanny had been expecting his friend Kurt Meissner in Paris; but several days before had come a letter from Kurt, written on a Channel steamer, saying that his father had telegraphed him to return home at once, taking the first boat by way of the Hook of Holland. Kurt had been worried, thinking there must be illness in his family; but now Lanny understood what had happened — Herr Meissner had known what was coming. In London and Paris one heard many stories about Germans who had received such warnings, and had taken measures for their personal safety or their financial advantage. Here and there one had even passed on a discreet “tip” to an American friend.
Lanny and his mother came to Paris, and Robbie showed up there on the morning after Austria declared war. He wouldn't lack advance information, be sure! He said that a salesman of armaments wouldn't have to do any more traveling now; the governments would find him wherever he was. The thing had come which Robbie had said couldn't possibly come; but it didn't take him long to adjust himself to it. “All right, it's what Europe wants, let them have it.” Budd's would continue to turn out products, and anybody could buy them who came with the cash. Somebody had been telling Robbie about Shaw's Major Barbara, so now he talked impressively about “the Creed of the Armorer.”
It was good to have Robbie at hand in a time like this; self-possessed as ever, a firm rock of counsel, also a checkbook open to friends in trouble. He and Beauty and Lanny settled down to a conference; and presently Harry Murchison came into it — forcing himself in, by taking his problem to Robbie. They had met once before and were on friendly terms, Harry being the sort of fellow that Robbie approved.
“Mr. Budd,” said he, “I don't know why you and Beauty parted, and I'm not interested; but I know you're still her friend, and she listens to you, and I wish you'd give her sensible advice. I want to marry her — right now — today — and take her out of this hell that's starting here. She can have a new life in America; I'll do most anything she asks, give her anything she can think of. As for Lanny, I'll take care of him, or you can — I like the boy, and we'll be the best of friends if he'll let me. Surely that's a fair offer!”
Robbie thought it was; and so the whole situation was forced into the open. Lanny talked to his father, not merely about Marcel, but about Baron Livens-Mazursky, and Dr. Bauer-Siemans, and the Hackaburys, and Isadora, and Anatole France, and all the rest; he had to make Robbie understand how he came to know so much about love, and why he was taking it upon himself to keep a French painter from losing his beautiful blond mistress. Robbie didn't have much use for either Frenchmen or painters, but he was very much for Lanny, and couldn't help being tickled by this odd situation, a sensitive, idealistic kid undertaking to make a hero out of his mother's lover — and seeming very likely to get away with it. It was clear that Beauty was still half in love with her painter; the other half in love with the idea of becoming a respectable American lady, wife of a man who could give her security and position. Which would she choose?
II
It was a time for showdowns. In the crash of kingdoms and empires, human blunders and failures shrank to smaller proportions. Beauty took her son into a room apart, and told him a story which so far she had kept from nearly everyone she knew. She couldn't look him in the eyes, and blushed intensely — her throat, her cheeks, her forehead. “Your father and I have never been married, Lanny. The story that we are divorced is one that I made up to protect you and me. I didn't want people to know that you are illegitimate, and make it a handicap to your life.”
She rushed on to pour out the details, defending both herself and Robbie. They had met in Paris when they were very young, and they had loved each other truly, and had planned to marry. But Beauty had been an artist's model, and had been painted in the nude. Lanny would understand that, he knew what art was; one of the pictures had been exhibited in a salon, and was much admired. But some malicious person had sent a photograph of it to Robbie's father, the head of an old and proud family of Puritan New England. It had meant only one thing to him, that Beauty was an indecent woman; he was a harsh and domineering man, and was he going to have his son marrying a painter's model, and having her picture in the newspapers naked instead of in the usual bridal costume? That was what he said, and he laid down the law: if Robbie married such a woman his father would disown and disinherit him.
Robbie wanted to do it, even so, but Beauty wouldn't let him; she loved him and wouldn't wreck his life. They had lived together without marriage; the father had consented to ignore his son's mistress, something not so unusual, even for Puritans in New England. It was hard on Lanny, but they hadn't meant for him to happen — Lanny had been an accident, said his mother at the climax of her confusion and blushes.
She had thought she would never have the courage to tell this story to her son; she took it for granted that he would receive it with shame, and perhaps with anger toward her. But Lanny had by now seen so much of lawless love, and heard about so much more, that the distinctions were blurred in his mind. He said it didn't worry him to be illegitimate; it hadn't hurt his health, and it wouldn't hurt his feelings if somebody called him a bastard — he had read about them in Shakespeare and had got the impression that they were a lively lot. What did give him shivers was the idea of having been an “accident.” “Where would I have been, and what would I have been, if you and Robbie hadn't had me?”
Tears came into the mother's bright blue eyes; she saw that he was trying to spare her; he was being a darling, as usual. She hastened to explain the situation which now confronted her, the reasons why her decision was so important. If she were to marry Harry Murchison, that would cover all her past and make her a “respectable” woman; it wouldn't make Lanny legitimate, but it would keep anybody from bothering about it — and anyhow Robbie intended to acknowledge him as his son.
Lanny could understand all that; but he said: “What good will it do you to be respectable if you aren't happy?”
“But, Lanny!” she exclaimed. “I mean to be happy with Harry.”
“Maybe,” said he; “but I don't believe you'll ever forget that you left Marcel without any cause. Suppose he goes and jumps off the Cap?”
“Oh, Lanny, he won't do that!”
“How can you be sure? And then, suppose that France mobilizes? Marcel will have to go to war, won't he?”
Beauty turned pale; that was the horror she couldn't bring herself to face. The boy, seeing that he had the advantage, pushed harder. “Could you bear to leave him if you knew he had gone to fight for his country?” All Beauty could do was to bury her face in her arms and weep. Lanny said: “You better wait and see what happens.”
III
They wouldn't have to wait long. Surely nobody could complain of the slowness of events at the end of July 1914! First it was Russia mobilizing one and a quarter million men; then it was the German Kaiser serving an ultimatum to the effect that Russia had to cease mobilizing. Paris buzzed like a beehive at swarming time; for France was Russia's ally and was bound to go to war if Russia was attacked.
Robbie had said that the governments would find him, and they did. By one means or another, word spread that the representative of Budd's was staying at the Hotel Crillon, in a front suite with a pleasant view up the Champs-Élysées. Military gentlemen representing most of the governments of Europe came to enjoy that view, and partake of the array of drinks which Robbie had upon the sideboard in his reception room — all going onto the expense account of a munitions salesman. The immaculately uniformed gentlemen came to find out what stocks Budd's had on hand at present — of guns and ammunition, of course, not of whiskies, brandies, and liqueurs.
Robbie would smile suavely, and say that he regretted that Budd's was such a very small plant, and had practically no stocks on hand. “You know how it is, I begged your General So-and-So to place an order last year. I warned you all what was coming.”
“Yes, we know,” the military gentlemen would reply, sorrowfully. “If the decision* had rested with us, we should have been prepared. But the politicians, the parliaments” — they would shrug their shoulders. “What could we do?”
Robbie knew all about politicians and parliaments; in his country they were called Congress and had steadily refused to vote what the safety of the country required. Now, of course, there would be a quick change, the purse strings would be loosened. The policy of Budd's was fixed; it was “first come, first served” to all the world. The terms in this present crisis would be fifty percent of the purchase price to be placed in escrow with the First National Bank of Newcastle, Connecticut, before the order was accepted; the balance to be placed in escrow a week before the completion of the order, to be paid against bills of lading when shipment was made. Munitions makers had grown suddenly exacting, it appeared. Robbie added confidentially — to everyone — that he had cabled his firm recommending an immediate increase of fifty percent in its entire schedule of prices: this to meet inevitable rises in the cost of materials and labor.
The visitors would depart; and while the next lot cooled their heels in the lobby, the salesman would take off the heavy alligator-skin belt which he always wore, slip a catch, and draw out several long strips of parchment with fine writing on them. He would sit at his portable typewriter, the newest contraption created by Yankee ingenuity, and would study the parchment strips and proceed to type out a cablegram in code.
That secret code had been one of the thrills of Lanny's life for several years. It was changed every time Robbie made a trip, and there were only two copies of it in existence; the other was in the possession of Robbie's father. The one other person who knew about it was the confidential clerk who devised it, and who did the decoding for the president of the company. The belt in which Robbie kept his own copy was never off his person except when he was in the bathtub or in swimming; usually he swam from a boat, and before he sank down among the fishes he would make sure there were no agents of foreign governments near by.
Robbie had talked quite a lot about ciphers and codes. Any cipher could be “broken” by an expert; but a code was safe, because it gave purely arbitrary meanings to words. The smartest expert could hardly find out that “Agamemnon” meant Turkey, or that “hippo-griff” meant the premier of Rumania. Robbie would use the cable company's code-book for the ordinary phrases of his message: “I have promised immediate delivery,” or “I advise acceptance,” and so on; but crucial words, such as names of countries, of individuals he was dealing with and the goods they were ordering, were in the private code. These precautions had been adopted after a deal had been lost because Zaharoff had a man in the office of Budd Gun-makers and was getting copies of Robbie's messages.
Seeing how overwhelmed his father was, Lanny asked if he could help; and the father said: “It's too bad you don't know how to type.”
“I can find the letters on the keyboard,” replied the boy, “and you don't hit 'em so fast yourself.”
“You'll find it's pretty poor fun.”
“If I'm really helping you, I'll think it's the best fun there is.”
So Robbie wrote his cablegram in English, and showed the boy how to look up phrases in the regular code-book, and underlined those words which would be in his own list. While Robbie interviewed a friend of Captain Bragescu, just arrived from Rumania, Lanny worked patiently by the “hunt and peck” method, producing a long string of ten-letter words: “California Independed Hilarioust Scorpionly Necessands,” and so on. Lanny's grandfather, who had tried hard not to let him be born, and who so far had refused to recognize the failure of that effort, would learn from this painstaking service that the government of Holland was anxious over the possibility of invasion, and would pay thirty percent premium for delivery of twenty thousand carbines during the month of August.
By the time Robbie's interview was concluded, the message was ready, and he went over it and found only two or three errors, and said it was a great help; which of course made the boy as proud as Punch. Robbie burned the original message, and let the ashes drop into the toilet bowl. Then Lanny asked: “Do you ever add anything out of code?”
“Sometimes,” replied the father. “Why?”
“Just say: 'Lanny coded this.'”
Robbie chuckled, but he said: “Wait till he sells the guns and gets the money!”
IV
The cablegram dispatched, the pair went for a stroll, to get some fresh air into their lungs before lunch. The other delegations could wait, said Robbie; no sense in killing yourself — anyhow, Budd's was loaded up with orders; in the past couple of weeks they had accumulated a “backlog” for six months. For years Robbie had been urging the family to expand the plant; Robbie's eldest brother, Lawford, who was in charge of production, had opposed it, but finally their father had adopted Robbie's program. Now he wouldn't have to worry any more.
“What's he worrying about?” asked Lanny, and Robbie answered: “Bankers! Once you let Wall Street get its claws into you, you cease to be a family institution.”
It was Friday, the last day of July. Newsboys were shouting la guerre again. Germany had declared martial law. She was going to war with somebody, and it could only be with France's ally. People appeared to have lost interest in the ordinary tasks; they stopped on street corners, or in front of bistros, kiosks, and tobacco shops, to talk about the meaning of events. People spoke to you who wouldn't ordinarily have done so. “They're scared,” said Robbie. “That brings human beings together.”
There came the sound of drums; a regiment marching — toward the east, of course. The soldiers sweated under a load of equipment; rifle and bayonet, knapsack, a big blanket roll, a canteen, even a little spade. Their blue coats were long and heavy, their red trousers big and baggy. The crowds came running, but they didn't cheer. Neither- the soldiers nor the people looked happy. “Is France mobilizing?” asked Lanny, and his father replied: “Troops would be moving toward the frontier in any case.”
They returned to the Crillon, and while they were at lunch a cablegram was brought to Robbie. “From Newcastle,” he said. It was in code, of course, and Lanny exclaimed eagerly: “Oh, let me try it!” The father said: “O.K.”
When they went upstairs Robbie took off the magic belt, and Lanny shut himself in his bedroom with cablegram and code-book, leaving the father free for more interviews. The cablegram conveyed the information that Turkey was twenty-four hours overdue upon the first payment for ground-type air-cooled machine guns ordered. Might it not be wise to cancel the deal and dispose of the guns to the British army? Robbie was to advise immediately what increased price he thought the British would pay.
It sounded so important that Lanny took the decoded message to his father, and Robbie cut short his interview and got busy on the telephone to locate a member of the British military mission then holding consultations with the French Ministry of War. Lanny went back to put into code the words: “Advise cancellation Turkey am making inquiries Britain.”
A man like Robbie Budd would normally have a secretary with him; but Robbie was active, and had always preferred to handle his own affairs and write his own letters to his father. Now he was caught in a sudden hurricane, and less willing than ever to trust anybody. So there was a chance for a fourteen-year-old boy to step into a secretary's job — for which he was not without some preparation.
Robbie checked the message and found it all right. He put on his magic belt and went down to take a taxi for an appointment with the British officer. Lanny filed the cablegram, and then went to the street and bought the latest newspaper. When he came back he found there was a letter for his mother — in the familiar handwriting of Marcel Detaze, and postmarked Juan-Ies-Pins. It was an unusually thick letter, and Lanny didn't have to guess that Marcel would be pouring out his soul. He took it up to his mother's suite. He would rest for a while from being a code expert, and resume his role as consultant upon affairs of the heart.
V
Beauty had been to lunch with her friend Emily Chattersworth, and was loaded up with “sensible” advice on the problem which was exercising her. But when she saw that letter, all the labors of her friend were undone. She paled and caught her breath, and her hands trembled while she read. When she had finished the long letter, she sat staring in front of her, biting her lip as if enduring pain.
Lanny had an impulse to say: “May I read it?” But he feared that wouldn't be polite, and merely asked: “Is he in trouble, Beauty?”
“He is uncertain about everything,” she answered, and then started to read him the letter, which was in French, and began “Chérie.” Before she got very far, her voice broke, and she handed him the sheets, saying: “You have to know about it.”
Lanny read: “I have been hoping every day to hear from you and to see you, but now I fear it will be too late. It looks as if there will be mobilization, and I cannot come to Paris because it would look like running away. I cannot be sure, but I expect my class will be called among the first. If I go, I will write you. I do not know where I shall be, but you can write me in care of my regiment.
“I keep reminding myself that you are an American, and I cannot be sure how you will feel about what is happening. But you know that I am a Frenchman and can have no doubt who is right in this unwanted conflict. It is cruel that our happiness has to be broken, and that millions of other women will be stricken with grief. It is perhaps a minor tragedy that men of talent have to be dragged from their task of making beauty, and instead must destroy it upon the battlefield. But it is our fate, and if the summons comes, I shall not permit myself to be weakened by repining. In this I hope for your help.
“One sad idea has been haunting my mind. It may be that Lanny's father will wish to take him out of this hell which Europe is about to become. It may be that you will wish to go with your son. I have thought about it day and night, and what it is my duty to say to you. I have written half a dozen letters and torn them up. I have pleaded with you for the right of our love; and then I have decided that I was being selfish, thinking about my own welfare while making myself believe I was thinking about yours. I have written a letter of renunciation, in the name of true, unselfish love, and then decided that I would seem cold, when in reality I was so trembling with grief and longing that my hand could hardly control the pen.
“If I could have one hour's talk with you, I could make it all clear. I expected that as my right, and you gave me to think that I was to have it. But you kept postponing your coming — and I felt that you must have known about this crisis, and the prospect of my being called to the defense of my country. This is not said in complaint, but merely to make plain my situation.
“In what you are about to read, I beg you to remember our hours of ecstasy. Remember our tears that mingled, and all the pulses of our hearts. Everything that I have ever been to you, I am today, and will be forever, if fate spares me. I love you; my being trembles when I think of you, my courage dissolves, I curse war, mankind, fate, and God Himself, that gives us such bliss and then tears it away. I feel all that, and I am all that. But also I am a citizen of France, with a duty there is no escaping. Also I am a rational man, knowing what the world is, and what can happen to a woman in it. I say: 'What have you to offer to this woman, or to any woman born to the pleasant things of life?'
“There are times when I feel that I know about the value of my own work. I say: 'It is good, and some day the world will know that it is good.' But then I remember how van Gogh succeeded in selling only one painting in his lifetime, and that to his brother. So I ask myself: 'Have I anything more than he had?' I tell myself there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of painters, each as sure of his own merits as I am of mine; and very few of them can be right. Who can say there is any sure guarantee that genuine merit will be recognized in the world? Why may it not be suffocated by indifference, just as life may be annihilated in the blast of war?
“I tell myself that if you go to America, you will almost certainly marry there, and I shall never see you again. Grief overwhelms me; but then reason speaks, reminding me that my life may be snuffed out in a few days — or worse, that I may be mutilated, and made into something you had better not see or know about. I say: 'If she takes her dear son to America, that will be the happiest path for her and for him. Her wise American friends must be telling her that. What right have I to add to the ache of her heart?'
“It may be, Chérie, that all this is fantasy. If so, call it a lover's nightmare, and laugh at it. But it is better to write something foolish than not to let you know my heart. If I am called, what I write thereafter will be under the eyes of an army censor. I beg you to learn not to worry about me, it is the destiny of the men of our time. France must be saved from the insolence of an autocrat, and whatever comes to each individual is his to endure. My love, my blessings go with you, and my prayers for your happiness.”
Tears had come into Lanny's eyes as he read, and were trickling down his cheeks. When he was through he, too, sat staring before him, not seeing anything, not knowing anything to say. He didn't think that Marcel believed in prayers, or in blessings. Was it just a manner of speaking, or was it a cry wrung from him when his own forces were not enough to meet his need? Maybe he would be glad to go to war, and to get killed, as a way of escape from his grief.
“It's her own affair,” Robbie had said to his son. “It's a mistake to urge people to any course, because then they hold you responsible for the consequences. Let her make her own decision.” So the boy didn't say a word, just let the tears trickle.
“Oh, Lanny, what shall I do?” whispered Beauty, at last. When he didn't answer, she began to sob. “It's monstrous that a man like Marcel should be dragged away to war!”
“He doesn't have to be dragged,” said the boy. “Don't you see that he would go anyway? We can't help that part of it. Most of the women of France will have that to endure.” Robbie had said this, and the boy knew it was right.
But Beauty was a different kind of woman, belonging to the class which wasn't supposed to suffer. So far she had refused to do so. That was why it seemed such a perfect solution of the problem to flee to America, in the care of a capable man who had no part in Europe's hates and slaughters. That was undoubtedly the sensible way — as Robbie and Emily and all her friends kept assuring her. How provoking and unreasonable that a woman who had given her heart couldn't get it back without rinding it all bleeding and torn!
“Tell me, what shall I do?” she repeated.
“Robbie doesn't want me to say any more about it,” the boy answered. “You know what I think.”
“Harry is coming to take me to dinner,” persisted the mother. “What am I to say to him?”
The boy remembered what his father had told him during the affaire Zaharoff. “Tell him the facts, Beauty.”
VI
Lanny returned to his other job. Robbie wrote out a long message to his father, advising him that Turkish officials were deeply involved in intrigues with Germany and the outcome might be a blockade of all Turkish ports. The British military mission advised that Britain would certainly want all the ground-type air-cooled machine guns it could get. Robbie advised against charging a higher price, except as part of a general boost in the price schedule. He recommended this latter more urgently than ever. Future quotations should be subject to increase depending upon raw-material prices certain to jump enormously.
A long message which would take a good part of the afternoon; Robbie hated to put it off on the youngster, but Lanny said he had never done anything he enjoyed more. He would stick right there and make himself an expert, and when Robbie was willing to send a message without checking it, he would be as proud as if he'd got the tiny red ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
So they went to work, Lanny at his table, and the father talking to harassed and exhausted military men. This went on until after seven o'clock, when Robbie said they'd eat, no matter' what happened to Europe. “Let's go to a place where real Parisians eat,” he suggested. “Fellow I know will be there.”
They got into a taxi, and he gave an address on the Rue Mont-martre. “We're to meet a journalist; a man who has worthwhile connections, and often brings me tips. I give him a couple of hundred-franc notes. It's the custom of the country.”
It was a place Lanny had never heard of before. There were many tables on the sidewalk, but Robbie passed these by and strolled inside; he looked about, and went toward a table where sat a little man with heavy dark mustache and beard, pince-nez on a black silk cord, and a black tie. The man jumped up when he saw him. “Ah, M. Bood!” he exclaimed, trying to say it American fashion, but not succeeding.
“Bon jour, M. Pastier” replied Robbie, and introduced Lanny: “Mon secrétaire.” The man looked puzzled; for not many businessmen have secretaries fourteen years old. Robbie laughed, and added: “Aussi mon fils.”
“Ah, votre fils!” exclaimed the Frenchman, exuberantly, and shook hands with the lad. “C'est le crown prince, hein?”
“J'e l'espeer,” replied Robbie; his French was no better than M. Pastier's American.
The other invited them to sit down. They ordered, and Robbie included a large bottle of wine, knowing that his acquaintance would assist them. The Frenchman was a voluble talker, and impressed Lanny greatly. The boy was too young to realize that persons in this profession sometimes pretend to know more than they can know. To listen to him you would have thought he was the intimate friend of all the prominent members of the cabinet, and had talked with several of them that afternoon.
He reported that Germany had been making desperate efforts to detach France from her Russian engagements. “The German ambassador pleaded with friends of mine at the Quai d'Orsay. 'There is and should be no need for two highly civilized nations to engage in strife. Russia is a barbarous state, a Tatar empire, essentially Asiatic' So they argue. They would prefer to devour us at a second meal,” added the Frenchman, his black eyes shining.
“Naturellement,” said Robbie.
“But we have an alliance; the word of France has been given! Imagine, if you can, the insolence of these Teutons — they demand of us the fortresses of Toul and Verdun, as guarantees of our abandonment of the Russian alliance. Is it probable that we built them for that?”
“Pas probable,” assented the American.
“When the French people hear that, they will rise as one man!” exclaimed the journalist, and illustrated with a vigorous rising of both arms.
“What will your workers do, your Socialists?” asked Robbie. It was a question which troubled everybody.
The other said: “Look,” and indicated with his eyes. “Over there at that table by the window. The question is being settled tonight.” The American saw eight or ten men sitting at dinner, talking among themselves. They might have been journalists like M. Pastier, or perhaps doctors or lawyers. At the head of the table was a large stoutish man with a heavy gray beard, a broad face, and grand-fatherly appearance. “Jaurès,” whispered the Frenchman.
Lanny had heard the name; he knew it was one of the Socialist leaders, and that he made eloquent speeches in the Chamber of Deputies. What Lanny saw was a heavy-set old gentleman with baggy clothes, talking excitedly, with many gestures. “They are Socialist editors and deputies,” explained M. Pastier. “They have just returned from the conference at Brussels.”
The three watched for a while, and others in the restaurant did the same. The Socialists were men of the people, deciding the affairs of the people, and there was no need for them to hide themselves. Lanny decided that their leader must be a kind old gentleman, but he look exhausted and harassed.
“It is a grave problem for them,” explained the journalist; “for they are internationalists, and against war. But Jaurès spoke plainly to the Germans at Brussels — if they obey their Kaiser and march, there will be nothing for the French workers to do but defend their patrie. Have you seen L'Humanité this morning?”
“I don't patronize it,” said Robbie.
“Jaurès speaks of 'Man's irremediable need to save his family and his country even through armed nationalism.'”
“Too bad he didn't discover that before he began advocating the general strike in case of war!”
“Jaurès is an honest man; I say it, even though I have opposed him. I have known him for many years. Would you be interested to meet him?”
“No, thanks,” said Robbie, coldly. “He's a bit out of my line.” He led the conversation to the chances of British intervention in the expected war. He had his reasons for wanting to know about that; it would be worth many hundred-franc notes to Budd Gunmakers.
After dinner father and son strolled along the boulevards and looked at the crowds. When they got to the Crillon, there was another cablegram. Lanny began insisting that he wasn't at all tired; surely he could work till bedtime, and so on — when the telephone rang, and Robbie answered. “What?” he cried, and then: “Mon Dieu!” and: “What will that mean?” He listened for a while, then hung up the receiver and said: “Jaurès has been shot!”
It was the boy's turn to exclaim and question. “Right where we left him,” said the father. “Fellow on the street pushed the window curtains aside and put a couple of bullets into the back of his head.”
“He's dead?”
“So Pastier reports.”
“Who did it, Robbie?”
“Some patriot, they suppose; somebody who thought he was going to oppose the war.”
“What will happen now?”
Robbie shrugged his shoulders, almost as if he had been a Frenchman. “It's just one life. If war starts, there'll be a million others. C'est la guerre, as the French say. Pastier says that Germany's expected to declare war on Russia tomorrow; and if so, France is in.”
VII
It was hard upon a young fellow who had just assumed an important and responsible position to have to be distracted by the sex problem. Lanny learned how it interferes with business, and all the other serious things of life; he said a plague upon it — for the first time in his life, but not for the last. Here he was, the next morning, comfortably fixed by the window in his bedroom, with the code material and a long message from Connecticut, badly delayed by congestion of the cables. But instead of looking up the word “mar-ketless,” he was sitting lost in thought, and presently interrupting his father's reading of the mail. “Robbie, don't you think one of us ought to see Beauty for a few minutes?”
“Anything special?” asked the other, absentmindedly.
“Harry told her last night that she'd have to make up her mind, or he's going back to the States without her. She says it's an ultimatum.”
“Well, there's a lot of ultimatums being served right now. One more hardly counts.”
“Don't joke, Robbie. She's terribly upset.”
“What's she doing?”
“Just sitting staring in front of her.”
“Has she got a looking glass?”
Lanny saw that his father was determined to keep out of it; so he looked up the word “marketless.” But before he started on the word “lightening,” he interrupted again. “Robbie, does it often happen that a woman thinks she is in love with two men and can't decide which?”
“Yes,” said the father, “it happens to both men and women.” He put down the letter he was reading and added: “It happened to me, when I had to decide whether I was going to get married or not.” It was the first time Robbie had ever spoken of that event to his son, and the boy waited to see if he'd say more. “I had to make up my mind, and I did. And now Beauty has to do it. It won't hurt her to sit staring in front of her. She's owed it to herself for a long while to do some serious thinking.”
So Lanny looked up “lightening,” and three or four words more. But he couldn't help trying once again. “Robbie, you don't want me to give Beauty advice; but I've already given her some, and I know it's counting with her. You don't think it was good advice?”
“It wasn't what I'd give her; but it may be right for her. She's a sentimental person, and it seems she's very much in love with that painter fellow.”
“Oh, really she is, Robbie. I watched them all the time on the yacht. Anybody could see it.”
“But he's a lot younger than she is; and that's going to make a tragedy some day.”
“You mean, Marcel will stop loving her?”
“Not entirely, perhaps; he'll be torn in half, just the way she is now.”
“You mean he'll get interested in some younger woman?”
“I mean he'll have to be a saint if he doesn't; and I haven't met any saints among French painters.”
“You ought to know Marcel better, Robbie. He is one of the very best men I ever have met.”
“I'm taking your word for him. But there's a lot you still must learn, son. Beauty would be poor — that is, by the standards of everyone she knows or wants to know. And that's awful hard on the affections. It gets worse and worse as you get older, too.”
“You think it's right for people to marry for money, then?”
“I think there's an awful lot of bunk talked on the subject. People fool themselves, and try to fool other people. I've watched marriages, scores of them, and I know that money was the important element in most. It was dressed up in fine words, of course; it was called 'family,' and 'social position,' and 'culture,' and 'refinement.'”
“But aren't those things real?”
“Sure they are. Each is like a fine house; it's built on a foundation — and the foundation is money. If you build a house without any foundation, it doesn't last long.”
“I see,” said the boy. It impressed him greatly, like everything his father said.
“Don't let anybody fool you about money, son. The people who talk that nonsense don't believe it themselves. They tell you that money won't buy this, that, and the other thing. I tell you that money will buy an awful lot, especially if you're a good shopper. You get my point?”
“Oh, sure, Robbie.”
“Take Edna Hackabury. Money bought her a yacht, and the yacht got her a lot of friends. Now she's lost her yacht, and she and her captain will have to live on two thousand pounds a year; and how many of her old friends will come to see her? She'll be embarrassed if they do, because she can't keep up with them. She'll find that she's forced to get some cheaper friends.”
“I know, Robbie, there are people like that; but others are interested in art, and music, and books, and so on.”
“That's quite true; and I'm glad to see that you prefer such friends. But when those friends grow old, and their blood flows slower, they'll want a warm fire, and money will buy the fire. Money won't buy them appreciation of books, but it will buy them books, and what's the use of appreciation if you haven't anything to use it on? No, son, the only way to be happy without money is to go and live in a tub, like Diogenes, or be a Hindu with a rag around your loins and a bowl to beg for rice. Even then you can't live unless other people have cared enough for money to grow rice, and to market and transport it.”
“Then you don't think there's anything we can do for Beauty?” “What I think, son, is that one or the other of us has got to work at that code; because this is a time of crisis, and a whole lot of women have worse troubles than trying to make up their minds which man they want.”
VIII
That was the first of August; and early in the day came the news that Germany had declared war on Russia. Soon afterward it was reported that both Germany and France had ordered general mobilization.
The temper of Paris changed in an hour. Previously everything had been hushed; people anxious, frightened, horrified. But now the die was cast. It was war! That hateful Kaiser with his waxed mustaches, those military men who surrounded him, strutting and blustering — they had thrown Europe into the furnace. At least, that was the way the Paris crowds saw it; and business came to an end for the day, everybody rushed into the streets. Bugles sounding everywhere, drums rolling, crowds marching and cheering. They were singing the “Marseillaise” on every street corner; and “Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre” — to which Americans sing “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow”; also the “Carmagnole,” which Americans do not know-all the old revolutionary songs of France, now become patriotic and respectable.
Lanny finished his secretarial labors and went out to see the sights, the most stirring any boy could have imagined. Pink mobilization orders posted on kiosks and walls; young men assembling and marching to the trains; women and girls running beside them, singing, weeping hysterically, or laughing, borne up by the excitement of the throngs; people throwing flowers at them, putting roses in the soldiers' red caps, in the hair of the girls. And the regiments marching to the railroad stations, or being loaded into trucks — it wouldn't be long before you could no longer find a taxicab or even a horse in Paris.
And then back to the Hotel Crillon. The Champs-Élysées, that wide avenue, and the great open spaces, the Place de la Concorde, the Place du Carrousel, now like military encampments; regiments marching, horses galloping, artillery rumbling, people singing, shouting: “La guerre! La guerre!”
Inside the hotel another kind of tumult, for it appeared that there were thousands of Americans in Paris, and they all wanted to get out quickly. Many were caught without funds; they wanted food and shelter, railroad tickets, steamer accommodations, everything all at once. They had been reading about a new kind of warfare, and had visions of squadrons of German airplanes dropping bombs upon Paris that afternoon. It seemed that every person who had ever met Robbie Budd was now asking him for advice, for the loan of money, for his influence in getting something from the embassy, from the consulate, from railroad and steamship and travel bureaus.
When they couldn't get hold of Robbie, they would go to his former wife, who had always been able to get anything from him. Beauty, who wanted to sit and stare in front of her and think, who wanted to weep without anybody seeing her ruined complexion, had to put on a few dabs of paint and powder, and her lovely blue Chinese morning robe with large golden pheasants on it, and receive her friends, and the friends of her friend Emily and her friend Sophie and her friend Margy, and tell them what Robbie said, that there wasn't any immediate danger, that the embassy would advance money as soon as they had time to hear from Washington, that Robbie himself couldn't possibly do anything, he was besieged by military men trying to buy things which he didn't have and couldn't make for months yet.
They even fell upon Robbie's newly appointed secretary, to ask what he knew and what he thought. Lanny had never had such an exciting time; it was like going to war himself. He would run to his father with something he thought especially urgent, and there would be that solid rock of a man, hearty, serene, smiling. He'd say: “Remember, son, there've been lots of wars in this old Europe, and this will pass like the others.” He'd say: “Remember, some of these are real friends, and some are spongers who won't ever repay the money they're trying to borrow.” He'd see Lanny standing at the window, watching the troops march by and the flags flying, listening to the drums beating and the crowds shouting; he'd see the color mounting in the boy's cheeks and the light shining in his eyes, and he'd say: “Remember, kiddo, this isn't your war. Don't make any mistake and take it into your heart. You're an American!”
IX
That was the line the father was going to take. Budd's didn't engage in any wars; Budd's made munitions, and played no favorites. The father found time, in the midst of excitements and confusions, to hammer that fact in and rivet it. “I'll have to go back to Newcastle, to try to straighten out my father and brothers; and I don't want my son to step into anybody's bear trap. Remember, there never was a war in which the right was all on one side. And remember that in every war both sides lie like hell. That's half the battle — keeping up the spirits of your own crowd, and getting allies to help you. Truth is whatever you can get believed. Remember it every time you pick up a newspaper.”
The father went on to prove his case. He told how Bismarck had forged a telegram in order to get the Franco-Prussian war started when he was ready for it. He told about the intrigues of the Tsar's government, the most despotic and corrupt in Europe. He explained how the great financial interests, the steel cartels, the oil and electrical trusts, and the banks which financed them, controlled both France and Germany. They owned properties in both countries, and would see that those properties were protected; they would make billions of profits, and buy new properties, and be more than ever masters, however the war might end.
“And that's all right,” continued the father; “that's their business; only remember it isn't yours. Remember that among their properties are all the big newspapers. Find out who owns the one you read.” Robbie took up several that were lying on the table. “This is the de Wendels',” he said; “the Comite des Forges — the steel trust that runs French politics. This one is Schneider-Creusot. And here's your old friend Zaharoff!”
The father opened one paper, and asked: “Did you get this little story?” He pointed to an account of a state ceremony which had taken place on the previous day — Zaharoff had been promoted to commander of the Legion of Honor. A strange bit of irony, that it should have happened the day that Jaurès was shot! “I don't hold any brief for Socialist tub-thumpers,” said Robbie; “but he was perhaps honest, as you heard Pastier say. They shoot him, and they give one of their highest honors to an old Levantine trader who would sell the whole country tomorrow for a hundred million francs.”
Practically all the Americans in Paris sympathized with France, because they believed that France had wanted peace, and because it was a republic. But Robbie wouldn't leave it at that. What counted nowadays was business, and the oil, steel, and munitions men of France wanted what all the others wanted. “Is it peace when you lend billions of francs to Russia, and force them to spend the money for arms to fight Germany?”
“I suppose you're right,” the boy had to admit.
“Put yourself in the place of the German people — your friend Kurt, and his family, and millions like them. They look to their eastern border —”
“A dark cloud of barbarism, the Graf Stubendorf called it,” Lanny remembered suddenly.
“Russian diplomacy has one purpose — to get Constantinople, and that means to keep Germany from getting it. Russia is called a steam roller, and it's built to roll westward; the French paid for it, and taught the Russians how to run it. Of course the Germans will fight like hell to stop it.”
“Who do you think's going to win, Robbie?” Purely as a sporting proposition, it got a boy keyed up.
“Nobody on earth can say. The French are setting out for Berlin, and the Germans for Paris; they'll meet, and there'll be a smash, and one side or the other will crumple. The only thing you can be sure of is that it won't be a long war.”
“How long?”
“Three or four months. Both sides would go bankrupt if it lasted longer.”
“And what will England do?”
“I could make a pile of money if I knew. The men who have to make the decision are running around like a lot of ants when you turn over a stone. If England had said she'd defend France, there wouldn't have been any war. But that's the trouble with countries that have parliaments, they can't make up their minds to anything — not until it's too late.”
X
Harry Murchison had put down his money and engaged a stateroom for two on a steamer sailing the next day; also a berth for Lanny in another stateroom. He had done this before the rush began, and now it was a part of his “ultimatum.” He and Beauty could be married that night; or they could be married by the captain of the steamer. Harry came two or three times during the day to plead his cause and argue against the folly of hesitation. He would lock the door so that nobody could interrupt them, and he wouldn't let her answer the telephone; he was a young man who had been used to having his own way most of his life. He hadn't much consideration for Beauty's feelings; he said that she was somewhat hysterical right now, and didn't really know her own mind. Once the die was cast, the marriage words spoken, she'd settle down and be glad somebody had acted for her.
It was the technique known in America as “high-pressure salesmanship.” Beauty would beg for time, but Harry would insist: “I've got to sail on that steamer. There's going to be an awful lot of plate glass smashed in the next few months, and I've got to be in Pittsburgh to see about replacing it.”
“Don't leave me, Harry,” the tormented woman pleaded. “Surely you can put it off one more week.”
“If you don't go now you mayn't be able to go until the war's over. Call up the steamship company and see what they tell you. Everything is booked for months ahead, and there's talk of our government having to send steamers to get Americans out of Europe.”
Robbie decided suddenly that he had better go too. Cablegrams were being delayed and censorship might stop them entirely. He told Harry that if Beauty rejected the chance, he'd take her half of the stateroom. “But don't let her know it!” he hastened to add. “If she goes, I'll manage to get on board somehow.” Robbie was a friend of all the steamship people, and knew discreet ways to arrange matters. “They can put a cot in the captain's cabin,” he remarked, smiling.
It was a trying position for Lanny, not knowing whether his future was to be on the French Riviera or in a smoky valley of steel and coal three thousand miles to the west. He made no complaint for himself, but he did think that the cards were being stacked against Marcel. It was an elementary principle of justice that both sides should be represented in any court. Lanny had a strong impulse to represent the painter, but Robbie had asked him to keep his hands off, and Robbie's wish was a command.
In between codings and decodings, Lanny would go to see his mother, and tell her that he loved her — that was about all he could say. Toward evening he found Mrs. Emily with her; and these two fashionable ladies had tears running down their cheeks. It wasn't because of Beauty's problems, nor was it the million Frenchwomen left at home to face the thought of bereavement. It was a terrible story which Mrs. Emily had brought. While troops were marching and crowds shouting and singing in all the streets, fate had chosen to strike another blow at Isadora Duncan. She had lain in agony for many hours, trying to bear her baby; and at last when it was placed in her arms, she had felt it suddenly beginning to turn cold. She screamed, and the attendants came running and tried to save it, but in vain; in a few minutes the spark of life had expired, and that unhappy woman was desolate again.
“Oh, my God, what has happened to the world?” whispered Lanny's mother. It certainly seemed as if some devil had got hold of affairs, at least temporarily. Everybody had been so happy, the playground of Europe had seemed such a delightful place — and here it was being turned into a charnel house, a sepulcher not even whited.
“I see those pitiful men marching away,” said Airs. Emily, “and I think how the hospitals and the graves will be filled with them, and it just seems more than a woman can bear.”
“I know,” said Beauty; “it's one of the reasons why I'm so tempted to flee from France.”
“If the Germans break through,” said the other woman, “my home lies directly in their path.”
“Surely the Germans wouldn't harm that beautiful place!” exclaimed Lanny's mother. But then right away she remembered having heard how the Turks used the Parthenon to store powder in!
XI
Robbie and his son went to dinner. Beauty declined their invitation; she couldn't eat anything, she said. They guessed that Harry was coming again. The time was getting short; if she was going she had a lot of packing to do. Apparently she was, for Mrs. Emily had given her another talking to. Also Robbie had been with her — and Robbie was not following the course he had advised for his son.
Father and son came back to the hotel, and there were more delayed cables. But Beauty phoned; she wanted very much to talk to Lanny — just a few minutes, she promised — and Robbie said all right, he'd go on with the decoding himself.
Beauty was pale, seeming more distraught than ever; she was walking up and down the room, twisting her hands together. “Marcel has gone to war,” she announced.
There was a telegram lying on the table, and Lanny read it. “I have been called to the colors. God bless you. Love.” No high-pressure salesmanship here!
“Lanny I've got to make up my mind now!” exclaimed the mother. “I've got to decide our whole future.”
“Yes, Beauty,” said the boy, quietly.
“I want to think about your happiness, as well as my own.” *
“Don't bother about me, Beauty. I'm going to make the best of whatever you decide. If you're Harry's wife, I'll make myself agreeable and never give you any worry.”
“It'll mean that you go to live in America. Will you like that?”
“I don't know, because I don't know what I'll find; but I'll get along.”
“Tell me what you really prefer.”
Lanny hesitated. “Robbie doesn't want me to interfere, Beauty.”
“I know; but I'm asking. I have to think about both of us. If you had your choice — if you had nothing to consider but your own wishes — where would you go?”
Lanny thought for a while. His father could hardly object to his answering a straight question like that. Finally he said: “I'd go back to Juan.”
“You like it there so well?”
“I've always been happy there. That's my home.”
“But now there's going to be war. It mayn't be safe any more.”
“Those French warships will stay in the Golfe, I imagine; and it isn't likely anybody's going to lick the British and French fleets.”
“But Italy has some sort of a treaty with Germany and Austria. Doesn't she have to help them fight?”
“Italy has just announced that she will take a 'defensive attitude.' Robbie says that means they'll wait, and see which side offers them the most. That's bound to be England, because she has money.”
“Our friends all talk about going back to America. It'll be lonely at Juan.”
“Maybe for you,” said the boy. “But you know how it is — I never did see enough of my mother. We could read, and play music, and swim, and wait for Marcel to come back.” Lanny stopped, not being sure if it was fair for him to mention that aspect of the matter.
The mother's voice trembled as she said: “He may never come back, Lanny.”
“There's a chance, of course. But Robbie says the war won't last long. And Marcel may never see any fighting — Robbie thinks the Provencal regiments will be kept on the Italian border, at least till they're sure what Italy's going to do. And then again, Marcel might come back wounded, and we'd both want to take care of him. It wouldn't be nice to know that he was hurt, and in need of help, and we couldn't give it.”
“I know, Lanny, I know.” The tears were starting again in the beautiful blue eyes. “That's what has been tearing my heart in half.” She sat with her hands clasped tightly together, and the boy watched her lips trembling. “That's really what you want to do, isn't it, Lanny?”
“You asked me to tell you.”
“I know. I couldn't decide it all by myself. If I do what you say, I may be a forlorn and desolate old woman. You won't get tired of me?”
“You can bet I won't.”
“And you'll stand by Marcel? You'll help us, whatever hard things may come?”
“Indeed I will.”
“You'll be a French boy, Lanny — not an American.”
“I'll be a bit of everything, as I am now. That hasn't hurt me.” He tried to conceal his joy, but didn't succeed altogether. “You really mean it, Beauty?”
“I mean it. Or, rather, I'll let you mean it for me. I'm a weak and foolish woman, Lanny. I oughtn't to have got into this jam at all. You'll have to take charge of me and make me behave myself.”
“Well, I've wanted to sometimes,” admitted the youngster. He wasn't sure whether he ought to laugh or cry. “Oh, Beauty, I really think it's the right thing to do!”
“All right, I'll believe you. I'll have to write a note to Harry. I just haven't the courage to see him again.”
“That's all right — he ought to stop worrying you. He really hasn't any claim to you.”
“He has, Lanny — more than you can guess. But I'll tell him it's all over — and we'll never see Pittsburgh.”
“I can get along without so much smoke,” declared the boy.
“I think I'd better tell Robbie first,” said the mother. “Maybe he can help to break the shock to Harry. He'll tell him I'm not really as good as I look!”
“Harry won't suffer so much,” said the young man of the world. “There'll be plenty of girls on the steamer willing to marry him.”
“He's a dear, kind fellow, Lanny — you're not in a position to appreciate him. I'll write him, and he can sail tomorrow, and you and I will go to Juan right away. I'll save and pay my debts, and give up trying to shine in society — do you think there'll ever be any more society in Europe, Lanny?”
So it was settled at last; and so it was done. Robbie and Harry sailed the next day — with nobody to see them off. Beauty was packing up her many belongings, with the help of the maid whom she had engaged for her Paris sojourn, but whom she was not taking to the Riviera. Lanny was helping all he could, and writing a letter to Rick, and also one to Marcel, which he hoped would some day be delivered by the postal service of the French army. The army was rather preoccupied on that particular day — since it happened to be the one which the Kaiser's troops had chosen for the invading of Luxembourg and France.