I
THE city of Newcastle, Connecticut, lies at the mouth of the Newcastle River, and has a comfortable harbor, not muddy except in springtime. It has a highway bridge across the harbor, and beyond it a railroad bridge, both having “draws” so that ships may go up. The Budd plant lies above the bridges, and has a railroad spur running into it. Above the plant are salt marshes, which the progenitor of the family had the forethought to buy for a few dollars an acre. Everybody called him crazy at the time, but as a result of his forethought his descendants had both land and landings, by the simple procèss of putting a steam dredge at work running channels into the marsh and piling earth on both sides. In the year 1917 you could not have bought an acre of this salt marsh for ten thousand dollars.
As a result, the city had only one direction in which to grow; which meant that rents were high and working-class districts crowded. The families which had owned farms in that direction had either sold them, and moved away and been forgotten, or else they had leased the land, in which case they constituted the aristocracy of Newcastle, owning stock in banks and department stores, water and gas and electric companies, street railways and telephones. As a further result, Newcastle had remained a small city, and many of the workers in Budd's lived in near-by towns and came to the plant on “trolley cars.”
In fact only a small part of Budd's itself was at Newcastle. Farther up the river were dams, and here the company made cartridges and fuses. The dams had locks, and motor barges took raw materials up and brought finished products down. This enabled Lanny's grandfather to say that he disapproved of the modern tendency toward congestion in great cities. Also it enabled him to get much cheaper labor.
In the state of Ohio, once known as the “Western Reserve” and settled largely by people from Connecticut, the Budds had a powder plant. In the state of Massachusetts they had recently bought a six-story cotton mill with a dam and power plant, the concern having gone into bankruptcy because of competition in Georgia and the Carolinas; this plant was now making hand grenades. In a somewhat smaller furniture factory they were setting up a cartridge plant. In the salt marshes of Newcastle ground was being made for new structures which would enable them to double their output of machine guns. So it went; the government was advancing the money to concerns which had the skill and could turn out instruments of war quickly.
All these deals had been arranged and plans laid months in advance, and many contracts were signed before war had been declared or funds voted by Congress. By the time Lanny arrived at Newcastle, all the men of the Budd family were under heavy pressure, working day and night, and talking about nothing but the war and the contribution they were making to it. Nearly everyone in the town was in the same mental state, and this afforded an opportunity for a stranger to slip in unobserved, and have time to adjust himself to an unknown world. Nobody would bother him; indeed, unless he made a noise they would hardly know he was there.
II
Until recently Robbie and his family had occupied an old Colonial house in the residential part of Newcastle. But there was a transformation going on all over New England. Motorcars had become so dependable, and hard-surfaced roads so good, that it was getting to be the fashion to buy a farm and turn it into a country estate; your friends did the same, and collectively built a country club with a golf course, and thus had the advantages of town and country life. You got blooded rams, bulls, and boars; you produced milk and strawberries and asparagus. You were called a “gentleman farmer,” and not merely had fresh air, space, and privacy, but you tried to make it pay, and if you succeeded you bragged to all your friends.
The population of such districts consisted of a “gentry,” and a great number of tenants and servants, all contented and respectable, and all voting Tory, though it was called “Republican.” What Lanny saw of “New” England turned out to be much like Old England. The scenery resembled that “green and pleasant land,” where he had enjoyed long walks in the springtime three years ago. There were country lanes and stone walls and small streams with mill dams, and old farmhouses and churches that were shown as landmarks. To be sure, some of the trees were different, high-arching white elms and flowering dogwood soon to be in party costume; also, the dialect of the country people was different — but these were details.
The new house of the Robbie Budds stood at the head of an archway of elms more than a hundred years old. The farmhouse originally on the spot had been moved to one side and made into a garage with chauffeur's and gardener's quarters above. A new house had been built, modern inside, but keeping the “old Colonial” pattern. It had two stories and a half, and what was called a “gambrel” roof, starting at a steep pitch, and, when it got halfway up, finishing at a flatter pitch. In front of the house were big white columns which went above the second story; at one side were smaller columns over a porte-cochere.
Inside, the house was plain, everything painted white. The furniture was of a sort Lanny had never seen before; it also was “old Colonial,” and he was to hear conversation about it, and learn the difference between “highboys” and “lowboys,” and what a “court cupboard” was, and a “wing-chair,” and a “ball and claw.” Everything in the house had its proper place and to move it was bad manners. This had been explained to Lanny by his father; Esther had strict ideas of propriety. He should not play the piano loudly, at least not without asking if he would disturb anyone. He would make things easier if he would go to church with the family. Above all, he must be careful not to speak plainly about anything having to do with the relationship of men and women; Esther tried her best to be “modern” but she just couldn't, and it was better not to put any strain upon her. Lanny promised.
III
He had seen pictures of her, so he knew her when he saw her standing at the head of the stairs, with the big grandfather's clock behind her. It was an important moment for her as well as for him, and both of them realized it. She was becoming a stepmother, one of the most difficult of human relationships; she was taking a stranger into her perfectly ordered home, one from a culture foreign to hers and greatly suspected. He was young and he was weak, yet he had a power which could not be disregarded, having entered her husband's life ahead of her and sunk deep roots into his heart.
Esther Remson Budd was thirty-five at this time. She was a daughter of the president of the First National Bank of Newcastle, a Budd institution. She had lived most of her life in the town, and her ideas of Europe were derived from a summer of travel with teachers and members of her class in a young ladies' finishing school. She was one of the most conscientious of women, and gave earnest thought to being just and upright. She was not cold, but made herself seem so by subjecting to careful consideration everything she did and said. She was charitable, and active in the affairs of the First Congregational Church, in which her father-in-law taught a men's Bible class every Sunday morning. She guided her three children lovingly but strictly, and did her best to use wisely the powers which wealth and social position gave her.
To Esther at the age of twenty-one Robbie Budd had been a figure of romance. He went abroad frequently, met important people, and came home with contracts, the report of which spread widely — for hardly a person in that town could prosper except as Budd's prospered, and when Robbie sold automatics to Rumania, the merchants of Newcastle ordered a fresh stock of goods, and Esther's father bought her an electric coupe, a sort of showcase to drive about town in. Everybody she knew wanted her to marry Robbie; most of the girls had tried and failed, and knew there was some mystery, some story of a broken heart.
The time came when Robbie took Esther for a long drive and told her about the mysterious woman in France, the artists' model who had been painted in the nude by several men — a strange kind of promiscuity, wholly outside the possibilities of Newcastle, which in its heart was still a Puritan village. There was a child, but the woman refused to marry him and wreck his life. He had ended the unhappy affair, which was then about five years old; he had done so because he saw it preyed upon his father's mind, it could not possibly be fitted into the lessons imparted to the men's Bible class. Robbie would ask Esther to marry him, but only after she knew about this situation, and understood that he had a son and would not disown him.
The two families were working busily to make this match. Did the president of Budd's give his friend, the president of the First National Bank, some hint of the problem? Or did the latter guess what might have happened to a handsome and wealthy young businessman in Paris? Anyhow, Esther's father had a talk with her, of a sort unusual in Puritan New England. He told her the facts of life as concerning future husbands. Among the so-called “eligible” men of the town, those slightly older than herself and able to support her in the position to which she had been accustomed, she would have difficulty in finding one who had not had to do with some woman. The difference between Robbie Budd and most others was that they didn't consider it necessary to tell their future brides about the wild oats they had sown.
Esther asked for time to think all this over, and in the end she and Robbie were married. It had been thirteen years now, and they had three children, and Esther was as near to happiness as any of the “young matrons” she knew. Robbie played golf while his wife went to church, and he drank more liquor than she considered wise; but he was indifferent to the charms of the country club's seductresses, he let her have her way entirely with the children, and he gave her more money than she had use for. On the whole she could count herself a fortunate wife.
But now came this one wild oat of her husband, to be transplanted into her garden and to grow there. She was compelled to face the circumstances which had brought this about. If Lanny was going into an army, it obviously ought to be the American army; and if he came to America, and was denied his father's home, that would be a repudiation and an affront. To say that Robbie had had a previous marriage in France was one of those conventional lies that were hardly lies at all. Women would smile behind their fans, and whisper; but after all there has to be a statute of limitations on scandals.
IV
So Esther was standing at the top of the white-paneled staircase with the grandfather's clock behind her. She was tall and rather slender; she held herself erect, and was quiet and grave in manner. She had straight brown hair, drawn back from a high forehead in defiance of fashion's edicts. Her nose was a little too long and thin, but the rest of her features were regular and her smile kindly. Her brown eyes appraised Lanny, and she kissed him on the cheek. She had made up her just mind that she was going to treat him exactly like her own children, and Robbie had told Lanny that he was to call her “Mother.”
She took him into her sitting room to get acquainted. He liked to talk, and was eager and friendly about it. He had been on a steamship which had been in peril of the submarines; he told how the passengers had behaved when they had struck a floating ice cake. He had been in London when it was bombed, and had a bit of shrapnel which had come through the window of a hotel room. (Of course he didn't say who had been in that room with him.) Esther, listening and watching, decided that he was intelligent, and if anything went wrong it could be explained to him. The load upon her mind grew lighter.
She took him to his room, which was in the rear. It was small, but had its own bath, and was alongside the rooms of her two boys. The walls were of pale blue, and the blankets on the single bed were the same. The rug in front of it was made by winding a long soft rope of braided rags into a spiral; his new mother explained that this was a “round-rug,” and was an antique. She showed him the “highboy” in which he was to keep his shirts and such belongings. Esther knew the story of each old piece of furniture, which she had “picked up” on trips here and there in the country. Each of these adventures was important to her. As an art lover, Lanny could see that the pieces were well proportioned, and they must have been well made to be in use after a hundred years.
Outside it was warm, and the window of the room was open. There was a cherry tree close by, getting ready to bloom. A bird was singing in it with extraordinary vigor, and Lanny commented on this. Esther said it was a mocking-bird which came every season, and had arrived only a few days ago; not many of them reached New England. Lanny told about the nightingale which made its nest in the court at Bienvenu, and was treated as a member of the family. He had tried to write out all the notes it had sung, and now he would do the same for the mocking-bird. His new mother said this task would keep him busy. The mocking-bird said: “Kerchy, kerchy, kerchy, kerchy.” Then it stopped and caught its breath and said: “You pay. You pay. You pay.”
V
For months thereafter one of Lanny's adventures would be meeting his relatives. First came his two half-brothers, who attended a private school in town, and were taken every morning and called for in the afternoon. Robert junior was twelve, and Percy eleven; they were handsome boys, who knew how to move quietly about a well-ordered home. Of course they were curious about this new arrival from foreign parts. They took him out at once to show him their Belgian hares; also Prince, their fine German shepherd dog, which they called a “police dog,” and which Lanny knew as an “Alsatian.” Prince was formally introduced, and looked the newcomer over warily, smelled him thoroughly, and finally wagged his tail. That was important.
Then came Bess, who was nine; her school was near by, but she had a singing lesson that afternoon, and the chauffeur went for her after he had brought the boys. Bess was like her mother, tall for her years and slender, with the same thin nose and sober brown eyes. But she had not yet learned restraint; eagerness transformed her features. When she heard that Lanny had been where the submarines were she cried: “Oh, tell us about it!” She hung on every word, and Lanny found himself a young Marco Polo. “Oh, what did you do?” And: “What did you say?” And: “Weren't you dreadfully frightened?”
Lanny relived his own childhood through this half-sister. She asked him questions about his home and what he did there; about the war and the people he knew who had been in it; about the Christmas-card castle in Germany; about Greece, and the ruins, of which there were pictures in her school; about England, and the boat race, and the poor girl who hadn't had enough to eat, and the aviator who at this moment might be up in the air shooting at German planes with a machine gun — was it made by Budd's?
Not one detail escaped her; she would prove it if he left anything out the next time he told the story. And the teller became her hero, her idol; it was a case of love at first sight. He played the piano for her, he showed her how to dance “Dalcroze,” and taught her the words of old songs. He made the French language come alive for her. The hour in the distant future when Bessie Budd first had to admit that this wonderful half-brother of hers was anything less than perfect would mark one of the tragedies of her stormy life.
VI
Comically different was Lanny's first meeting with his grandfather, Samuel Budd, which took place by appointment on the second evening after his arrival. Robbie escorted him to the old gentleman's home; impossible to subject a youth to such an ordeal alone. On the way the father told him what to do; not to talk too much, but to answer questions politely, and listen attentively. “It would have been better for me if I had always followed those rules,” he said, with a trace of bitterness.
Robbie was driving and they were alone; so he could speak frankly, and it was time to do so. “People are what circumstances have made them, and they don't change very much after they are grown. Your grandfather is a stubborn person, as much so as the bricks of which his house is built, and you might as well butt your head against one as the other.”
“I don't want to butt him,” said the boy, both amused and worried. “Tell me exactly what to do.”
“Well, the first thing is to get clear that you are the fruit of sin.”
From this remark Lanny realized that the quarrel which had wrecked his mother's life and separated him from his father was still going on, and that the wounds of it were festering in Robbie's heart. “Surely,” the youth protested, “he can't blame me for what happened then!”
“He will tell you about visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.”
“Who says that, Robbie?”
“It's somewhere in the Old Testament.”
Lanny thought and then asked: “Just what does he want me to do?”
“He'll tell you that himself. All you have to do is to listen.”
Another pause. Finally the son was moved to say: “I suppose he didn't want me to come to Newcastle?”
“He has agreed to accept you as one of his grandsons. And I think it is important that he should be made to do it.”
“Well, whatever you say. I want to please you. But if you're doing it for my sake, you don't have to.”
“I'm doing it for my own,” said the other, grimly.
“It's been so many years, Robbie. Doesn't that count with him at all?”
“In the sight of the Lord a thousand years are as a day.”
Most of the persons Lanny had met in his young life never said anything about the Lord, except as a metaphor or an expletive. Several had said in his hearing that they didn't believe any such Being existed. But now the thought came to Lanny that his father differed from these persons. Robbie believed that the Lord existed, and he didn't like Him.
VII
The president of Budd Gunmakers Corporation had been born in a red brick mansion on the residence boulevard which skirted the edge of Newcastle. He had lived in it all his life, and meant to die in it, regardless of automobiles, country clubs, and other changes of fashion. His butler had been his father's butler, and wasn't going to be changed, even though he was becoming tottery. There were electric lights in the house, but they were hung in old chandeliers. The hand-carved French walnut bookcases were oiled and polished until they shone, and behind their glass doors Lanny caught glimpses of books which he would have liked to examine. He knew this was a very old mansion, and that political as well as business history had been made in it; but it seemed strangely ugly and depressing.
The master was in his study, the ancient butler said, and Robbie led his son at once to the room. At a desk absorbed in some papers sat a man of seventy, solidly built and heavy, as if he did not exercise; partly bald, and having a considerable tuft of whitish gray hair underneath his chin, a style which Lanny had never seen before. He wore gold spectacles, and had creases between his heavy gray eyebrows, which gave him a stern expression, cultivated perhaps for business purposes. From his desk it appeared that he had carried home with him the burden of winning a war.
“Well, young man?” he said, looking up. He did not rise, and apparently didn't plan even to shake hands.
But to Lanny it seemed that a gentleman ought to shake hands with his grandfather when he met him for the first time; so he went straight to the desk and held out his hand, forcing the other to take it. “How do you do, Grandfather?” he said; and as the answer appeared to come slowly he went on: “I have heard a great deal about you, and I'm happy to meet you at last.”
“Thank you,” said the old gentleman, surprised by this cordiality.
“Everybody has been most kind to me, Grandfather,” continued Lanny, as if he thought his progenitor might be worrying about it.
“I am glad,” said the other.
Lanny waited, and so did the old man; they gazed at each other, a sort of duel of eyes. Robbie had told him not to talk; but something came to Lanny suddenly, a sort of inspiration. This old munitions maker wasn't happy. He had to live in an ugly old house and be burdened day and night with cares. He had an enormous lot of power which other people were trying to get away from him, and that made him suspicious, it forced him to be hard. But he wasn't hard; underneath he was kind, and all you had to do was to be kind to him, and not ask anything from him.
Lanny decided to follow that hunch. “Grandfather,” he announced, “I think I am going to like America very much. I liked England, and I've been surprised to find everything here so much like England.”
“Indeed, young man?”
“The best part of England, I mean. I hope I shan't see anything like their terrible slums.”
The elderly industrialist rose to the bait. “Our working people are getting double wages now. You will see them wearing silk socks and shirts, and buying themselves cars on the installment plan. They will soon be our masters.”
“I was told the same thing in England, sir. People complain about the taxes there. The owners of the great estates say that they are going to have to break them up. Do you think that will happen in this country?”
“Apparently we plan to finance our share of the war by means of loans,” replied the president of Budd's. “It is a dangerous procedure.”
“M. Zaharoff talked about that. He doesn't seem to object to war loans of any size. Maybe it is because he is getting so large a share of the proceeds.”
“Ahem! Yes,” said the grandfather. “I am happy to say that Budd's have not conducted their affairs on the same fly-by-night basis as Zaharoff.”
The art of conversation is highly esteemed in France, and Lanny had acquired it. He had heard the worldly-wise Baroness de la Tourette declare that the one certain way to interest a man was to get him to talking about his own affairs. A beginning having been made in this case, Lanny went on to remark: “I find that Budd's have a very good reputation abroad, sir.”
“Humph! They want our products just now.”
“Yes, sir; but I mean with persons who are disinterested.”
“Who, for example?”
“Well, M. Rochambeau. He spent a good part of his life in the Swiss diplomatic service, so he's very well informed. He has been most helpful to me during the two and a half years that I haven't been seeing Robbie. Anything I didn't understand about world affairs he was always land enough to explain to me.”
“You were fortunate.”
“Yes, Grandfather. Before that there was M. Priedieu, the librarian at Mrs. Chattersworth's château. He helped to form my literary taste.”
“What books did he give you, may I ask?”
“Stendhal and Montaigne, Corneille and Racine, and of course Moliere.”
“All French writers,” said the deacon of the First Congregational Church. “May I inquire whether any of your advisers ever mentioned a book called the Bible?”
“Oh, yes, sir. M. Rochambeau told me that I should study the New Testament. I had some difficulty in finding a copy on the Riviera.”
“Did you read it?”
“Every word of it, sir.”
“And what did you get out of it?”
“It moved me deeply; in fact it made me cry, four different times. You know it tells the same story four times over.”
“I am aware of it,” said the old gentleman, dryly. “Have you read the Old Testament?”
“No, sir; that is one of the unfortunate gaps in my education. They tell me you are conducting a Bible class.”
“Every Sunday morning at ten o'clock. I am dealing with the First Book of Samuel, and would be pleased to have my grandson enroll.”
“Thank you. I will surely come. M. Rochambeau tells me that the best Jewish literature is found in the Old Testament.”
“It is much more than Jewish literature, young man. Do not forget that it is the Word of Almighty God, your heavenly Father.”
VIII
All that time Robbie Budd had been sitting in silence, occupied with keeping his emotions from showing in his face. Of course he knew that this youngster had had a lot of practice in dealing with elderly gentlemen. Colonels and generals, cabinet ministers, senators, diplomats, bankers, they had come to Bienvenu, and sometimes it had happened that a boy had to make conversation until his mother got her nose powdered; or perhaps he had taken them for a sail, or for a walk, to show them the charms of the Cap. All this experience he had now put to use, apparently with success; for here sat the leader of the men's Bible class of the First Congregational Church of Newcastle, Connecticut, who was supposed to be saving the world for democracy, and had before him a portfolio of important papers contributory to that end; but he put his heavy fist on them, and set to work to save the soul of a seventeen-year-old bastard from a semi-heathen part of the world where you had difficulty in finding a copy of the sacred Word of God.
To this almost-lost soul he explained that the Scripture was a source, not merely of church doctrine, but of church polity; and that officers of the church — including Deacon Budd — were to be thought of as exemplars of Christian doctrine, from whom others might understand the nature of Conversion and the reality of Salvation. The deacon reached into the corner of his desk and produced a small pamphlet, yellowed with age, entitled A Brief Digest of the Boston Confession of Faith. “This,” said he, “was composed by your great-great-grandfather for popular use as a simple statement of our basic faith. In it you will find clearly set forth that central truth of our religion — that there is no Salvation save in the blood of the Cross. For that guilt incurred by Adam's sin passed on into humanity together with the colossal iniquity of the accumulated sins through the ages has made all men hopelessly evil in God's sight, and deserving His just punishment of spiritual death. Outraged by human sin, the wrath of God has only been appeased by the atoning blood shed by His Son upon the Cross, and only by faith in the blood of Christ can any man find Salvation. No righteousness of life, no good deeds or kindly words, no service of fellow-men can offer any hope of Salvation. It is belief in that redeeming blood poured out on Calvary that alone can win God's forgiveness and save us from eternal death. I recommend the pamphlet as your introduction to the study of the true Old Gospel.”
“Yes, Grandfather,” said Lanny. He was deeply impressed. As in the case of Kurt explaining the intricacies of German philosophy, Lanny could not be sure how many of these striking ideas had been created by his remarkable progenitors.
Having thus performed his duty as a guardian of sound doctrine, the old gentleman allowed himself to unbend. “Your father tells me that you had a pleasant voyage.”
“Oh, yes,” replied the youth, brightening. “It couldn't have been pleasanter — except for the collision with an iceberg. Did Robbie tell you about that?”
“He overlooked it.”
“It was such a small iceberg, I suppose it would be better to speak of it as a cake of ice. But it gave us quite a bump, and the ship came to a stop. Of course everybody's mind had been on submarines from the moment we left England, so they all thought we had been torpedoed, and there was a panic among the passengers.”
“Indeed?”
“The strangest thing you could imagine, sir. I never saw people behave like that before. The women became hysterical, especially those in the third class. Those that had babies grabbed them up and rushed into the first-class saloon, and they all piled their babies in the middle of the floor. No one could imagine why they did that; I asked some of them afterwards, and they said they didn't know; some woman put her baby there, and the rest of them thought that must be the place for babies, so they laid them down there, and the babies were all squalling, and the women screaming, some of them on their knees praying, and some clamoring for the officers to save them — so much noise that the officers couldn't tell them that it was all right.”
“A curious experience. And now, young man, may I ask what you plan to do with yourself in this new country?”
“Surely, Grandfather. Robbie wishes me to prepare for St. Thomas's, and he's going to get me a tutor.”
“Do you really intend to work?”
“I always work hard when I get down to it. I wanted to be able to read music at sight, and I have stayed at it until I can read most anything.”
“These are serious times, and few of us have time for music.”
“I'm going to learn whatever my tutor wishes, Grandfather.”
“Very well; I'll look to hear good reports.”
There was a pause. Then the old man turned to his son. “Robert,” said he, “I've been looking into this vanadium contract, and it strikes me as a plain hold-up.”
“No doubt,” said Robbie. “But we're getting our costs plus ten percent, so we don't have to worry.”
“I don't like to pass a swindle like this on to the government.”
“Well, the dealers have their story. Everybody's holding up everybody all along the line.”
“I think you'd better go down to New York and inquire around.”
“If you say so. I have to go anyhow, on account of that new bomb-sight design.”
“It seems to be standing the tests?”
They went on for quite a while, talking technical details. Lanny was used to such talk, and managed to learn something. In this case he learned that an elderly businessman who got his church doctrine and polity from eighteen hundred years ago, and his chin whiskers and chandeliers from at least a hundred years ago, would change a bomb-sight or the formula for a steel alloy the moment his research men showed him evidence of an improvement.
At last the grandfather said: “All right. I have to get back to work.”
“You're carrying too much of a load, Father,” ventured Robbie. “You ought to leave some of these decisions to us young fellows.”
“We'll be over the peak before long. I'll hold up this vanadium deal for a day, and you run up to New York. Good-by, young man” — this to Lanny — “and see that you come to my Bible class.”
“Surely, Grandfather,” replied the youth. But already the elder's eyes were turning toward that pile of papers on his desk.
The other two went out and got into the car, and Robbie started to drive. Lanny waited for him to speak; then he discovered that the vibration of the seat was not from the engine, but was his father shaking with laughter.
“Did I do the right thing, Robbie?”
“Grand, kid, perfectly grand!” Robbie shook some more, and then asked: “Whatever put it into your head to talk?”
“Did I say too much?”
“It was elegant conversation — but what made you think of it?” “Well, I'll tell you. I just decided that people aren't kind enough to each other.” The father thought that over. “Maybe it was worth trying,” he admitted.