I
THERE was not much holiday spirit in Paris that Christmas. Half the women were in mourning, and the other half doing the work of their men, who were still under arms, many of them in Germany, guarding the bridgeheads of the Rhine. The season was inclement, with cold and rain; food and fuel were scarce and disorganization general. The very rich were richer, but everybody else was poor, and anxiously peering through a curtain of fog to discern what new calamities lay ahead.
The little staff of official Americans were of course well looked after; not merely sheltered and warmed and fed, but provided with every sort of technical assistance: an elaborate courier service, a post office, a telephone and telegraph service of their own, a printing plant, a wireless station which could send a message all the way around the world in the seventh part of a second. Something like a million and a half dollars had been expended to guarantee their security and efficiency. While the President was away on his tours, the experts busied themselves preparing what was known as the “Black Book,” an outline of the territorial settlements which the Americans would recommend to the President. It was highly confidential, and many persons wanted very much to know what was in it.
This had the effect of intensifying the siege being laid to the Hotel Crillon. Not a physical siege, of course, for the place was well guarded, and you couldn't get in without a pass; but a diplomatic siege, a social siege, waged with the ancient weapons of elegance and prestige, of courtesy and tact for which Paris was famed. Did anybody know a member of the American staff? And would it be possible to give the said member a dinner party, or invite him to tea, or to a salon, or to hear some music, or to see some pictures? The American professors had a hard time making excuses to all the people who wanted to tell their national troubles. The professors were disposed to be reserved, especially at the outset; bearing in mind that they were not negotiators, but advisers to negotiators.
Lanny Budd was only a semi-official person; and, besides, he had connections in Paris of a sort which few others enjoyed. Professor Alston couldn't very well expect him not to meet his own mother and father, or the friends whom he had known since childhood. And of course the effect was to constitute him a “pipeline” into the Crillon. A great many persons found out that Madame Detaze, widow of a French painter, had a son who was a translator or something to the American staff; so at once Madame Detaze became a popular hostess. “Oh, Madame, I have heard so much about that charming son of yours! So brilliant, so wise beyond his years! I'd love to meet him — couldn't you arrange it? Oh, right away, within the next few days!”
Nothing of that surprised the mother; she had always known that her son was all that! So Lanny would be asked to meet dreamers and propagandists, fortune hunters and impoverished aristocrats from places whose names he had to look up in the atlas — Kurdistan and Croatia, Iraq and Mingrelia, Cilicia which must not be confused with Silesia or Galicia, and Slovenia which must be distinguished from Slovakia. Earnest strangers would appeal in the name of President Wilson's doctrine of “self-determination of all peoples”; and Lanny would take their stories to the experts at the Crillon — and like as not would learn that these same people were busily engaged in oppressing some other people, even perhaps killing them wholesale!
II
Beauty called the hotel, saying: “Lanny, I've just met the most delightful young English officer — he's been in Arabia for years, even before the war, and tells such interesting stories about it. You know, they wear robes, and gallop across the desert on beautiful horses, and take long journeys on camels. They say he has an Arabian sheik or something with him, and he's going to bring him to Emily's for tea. Couldn't you run over?”
So Lanny, who for the last six hours had been working without a break at making abstracts of several French reports on conditions in the Ukraine, said yes, and in the drawing room of Mrs. Chattersworth's town house he met a figure out of the Arabian Nights: a man of thirty or so, with a mild face, long and thin, such as painters have imagined for Jesus Christ. He had a black beard and mustache and very beautiful dark eyes, and wore a robe of soft gray silk edged with scarlet, and a four-cornered turban with a hood having a flowered pattern. His father was Sherif of Mecca and King of the Hejaz — at least he said the British called his father “king,” but it was silly, for the father traced his ancestry back to the Prophet, more than twelve hundred years ago, and what was any “king” in the world compared to that?
The Emir Feisal, as this young man was called, spoke no English; what he said was translated by the officer who was his companion and friend. The latter's name was Lawrence, and the two of them had been fighting the Turks and Germans all over the sun-scorched deserts of Arabia, and in the end had swept them out of the country. Colonel Lawrence was about thirty-one and seemed even younger, having the manner of a gay schoolboy. He was stocky, with sandy complexion much burned, and very bright blue eyes. He and his friend had a keen sense of humor and exchanged many jokes during the translating.
But they had a serious purpose, having come to Paris to tell the story of the heroic fight which their people had waged for freedom, and to present to President Wilson the claims they held under the terms of his Fourteen Points — Number 12, to be precise, which specified that “the Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.”
It seemed impossible to misunderstand that. The Emir put it up to Lanny Budd, having been told that he was a compatriot of the great Democrat and a member of the Crillon staff. He begged to be told what Lanny thought about the prospects, and the secretary-translator, speaking unofficially, of course, replied that he had no doubt whatever that President Wilson meant to stand by his promises. It was hard to see how any question could be raised, because the Fourteen Points, with only two reservations, had been expressly accepted by the Allies as the basis of the armistice with Germany. Having given this assurance, Lanny shook hands with the gay young warriors from the sun-scorched lands and they parted the best of friends; the youth went back to his inaccessible hotel and told his chief about it — which of course was what Feisal and his companion assumed that he would do.
Alston smiled a rather wry smile and said that this question of the Hejaz was one of the battles which had to be fought out in the Peace Conference. Lawrence had promised, and the British government had ratified the promise, that the Arabian peoples would have their independence as the price of their support against Turkey and Germany; but unfortunately there was a great deal of oil in Mesopotamia, and a pipeline was proposed to run through Syria; also the British government had promised a lot of Arab territory to the French — it was one of those “secret treaties.” The French were now in possession of the land and it wasn't by any means sure that they could be got out without another war. Moreover, there was another Arab chieftain, Ibn Saud, who had driven the Turks out of eastern Arabia — and what about his claims?
All of which went to show how very inadvisable it was for a youthful translator of the American Commission to meet figures out of the Arabian Nights and cause them to believe that they had assurances of things which they might or might not be going to get!
III
Life does strange things to human beings. Charles T. Alston had been raised in a small farming community of Indiana, and here he was, a specialist in geography, ethnography, and allied branches of learning, helping to decide the destinies of men in lands whose very names were unknown to the people of the Hoosier state. In his village as a boy he had attended a tiny Congregational church, which could not afford a regular pastor but had the services of students from a near-by church school. One of these students had eaten fried chicken and cornmeal mush in little Charlie Alston's home, and had helped to awaken in him a longing for knowledge. Thirty-five years had passed, during which Alston had never seen him; but here he came strolling into the Hotel Crillon — having been in the interim a doctor of divinity, a professor of “Applied Christianity,” a Socialist agitator, and finally one of the trusted agents and advisers of President Wilson in Europe.
Lanny watched him while he talked to his old friend, and thought he was one of the strangest-looking men he had ever known. His unusually sweet and kindly features had not merely the pallor of marble, but seemed to have its texture. His hair, mustache, and beard were jet-black. He was obviously not in good health, and his whole aspect was pain-driven, haunted not merely by his own griefs but by those of mankind; his manner was quiet, his voice low, and his language apocalyptic. He rarely smiled, and when he did so, it seemed to be reluctantly, as a concession to other people's ways. A sense of impending doom rested upon his spirit, as if he saw more of the future of Europe than any of the persons he met.
George D. Herron was his name; and later on Alston told Lanny about the tragedy which had broken his health and happiness. He had been one of the leaders of a movement called “Christian Socialist,” seeking to bring justice and brotherhood in the name of the proletarian carpenter. A clergyman and professor in a small college of Iowa, Herron had been unhappily married, and had fallen in love with the dean of women of his college. He had left his wife — something not in accord with the ethics prevailing in the “corn and hog belt.” The enemies of his dangerous ideas had taken this opportunity to ruin him, and he had been expelled from his job in the college, and had gone abroad with his new wife to live.
That had been a long while ago, and the unhappy professor and his great sin had been pretty well forgotten. In Europe he had come to know working-class leaders, pacifists, humanitarians — those whose spirits could not rest while their fellow-men were being butchered, mutilated, starved, frozen, drowned in mud, and fed upon, hate and falsehood. Living in Geneva, he had been accessible to both sides in the war, and friends and strangers had come to him from Austria and Germany, to sound him out and use him as a means of communicating with the Allied lands. First he had reported to the American embassy in Switzerland, and later to the President direct. He had had something to do with the shaping of the Fourteen Points and had outlined a plan for the forming of a League of Nations. This Socialist agitator who had been driven from his own country in disgrace now possessed the freedom of the Crillon, and could have audiences with the President at a time when the latter was so overburdened that not even the members of his own Peace Commission could see him.
The second time that Lanny met Herron he was walking on the street toward the hotel. He walked slowly, because he suffered from arthritis. Lanny joined him, and he started talking about some of the developments of the day. When they reached the hotel, Lanny waited politely for the elder to go through the revolving doors. He had entered the moving space, when a large military man, coming the other way in haste, pushed the doors violently, and a carved wooden cane which Herron was carrying got caught in the doors and cracked in two. When Lanny came through, his friend was standing with the pieces in his hand, gazing at them and exclaiming: “My Jerusalem cane!”
“Is it valuable?” asked the youth.
“Not to anyone but me. I bought it when I was young and visited the Holy Land. It has been precious to me as a souvenir of deeply felt experiences.”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” said Lanny, sympathetically.
The other still held the broken pieces. “I am not superstitious,” he continued; “but I will tell you a curious incident. When I was leaving home, my sixteen-year-old son asked me why I was carrying that cane, and I said, half playfully: 'I am going to Paris to set up the kingdom of heaven, and this staff from the country of Jesus is a symbol of my purpose.' 'See that they don't break it, Father!' said my son.”
The professor looked at the pieces a moment or two longer and then called a bellboy and gave them to him to dispose of. “Absit omen!” he remarked to Lanny.
IV
It was the twelfth of January before the “Supreme Council” held its first session, in the hall of the dingy old Foreign Office on the Quai d'Orsay, just across the Seine from the Crillon. The gray stone structure kept some of the most vital secrets of France, and had high iron railings and heavy gates. Only important personages were admitted to the opening ceremony, but Lanny and his chief were among them, because some of the American delegates might need information about geography. Lanny's duty was the carrying of two heavy portfolios of maps and other data; he would take them with him to many important gatherings, but rarely would open them — instead, he would keep his ears open, and stay close behind his chief; now and then the latter would touch his knee, and Lanny would lean over and whisper what some excited Frenchman was saying. This kind of assistance was not uncommon among the American officials; neither President Wilson nor his closest associate, Colonel House, knew French, and there always had to be whisperers behind their chairs.
The council hall was splendid and impressive, having on the floor a heavy Aubusson carpet, pearl-gray with large red roses; red damask curtains at the windows, superb Gobelin tapestries on the walls. The ceilings were high, and the lights were set in enormous chandeliers. A great many tables were laid end to end in the shape of a square U, covered with green baize, and pink silk blotters which were changed every day. The chairs were gilded, with silk upholstery, and all this splendor was guarded by huissiers wearing silver chains.
At the bottom of the square U sat Georges Clemenceau, Premier of France, a squat little figure with a strange head, bald and flat on top. He had broad humped shoulders, a short neck, sallow complexion, white walrus mustaches, thick, shaggy eyebrows, and a long, square-tailed black coat. At his back was a fireplace with a crackling fire — you would always find that wherever he sat, for he was seventy-eight, and diabetic, and his blood was growing chilly. Over the fireplace was a figure of Peace holding up a torch — perhaps to warm his soul, which may also have grown chilly. Always he wore gray silk gloves on his hands, because he suffered from eczema.
Near him sat President Wilson, stiff and erect, with lean ascetic face and shining glasses. Beyond him was the Prime Minister of Britain with pink cherubic features and a little white mustache. Next to him was Balfour with his air of aristocratic boredom, cultivated not for this occasion but for life. The other personages tapered off down the line. In the background were generals wearing uniforms and medals, and potentates in the varicolored robes of the East. Marshal Foch was there, and General Pershing, and other military men, because the first matter in hand was the renewal of the armistice, which was for a month at a time, and each time the Marshal had thought of some new ways to tighten the screws upon the hated foe.
After that they took up the question of representation at the conference, and the future methods of procedure. It was supposed to be a deliberative assembly, but after a few sessions it became apparent that everything had been fixed in advance. Someone would make a proposal, and while he was speaking Clemenceau would sit with hands folded and eyes closed, and no one would know whether he was asleep or not. But the moment the speaker finished, the chairman would raise his heavy eyelids and say: “Any discussion?” — and then, before anybody could get his wits together to answer, he would bring down his gavel and snap out: “Adopté!” Said Professor Alston to Lanny: “He's fighting the next war.”
V
At the head of President Wilson's Fourteen Points stood the phrase: “Open covenants of peace openly arrived at.” Taking this statement at its face value, American press associations, newspapers, and magazines had sent their correspondents to Paris, and there were now a hundred and fifty of them in a ravenous condition, having waited a whole month for something to happen. The rest of the world had contributed twice as many; and now they were informed that no press representatives would be admitted to sessions of the conference, but that they would get “handouts” from a press bureau. When they got their first one they found that it contained exactly forty-eight words.
A howl went up that was heard, quite literally, all the way around the world. The hundred and fifty Americans appointed a committee and stormed the American press bureau; a war began that did not end with the Peace Conference, but was continued into the history books. Men took one side or the other — and from that choice you could know what part they were going to play, not merely in this particular melodrama, but in all the others which were to follow upon its heels.
France had been at war for four bloody years, had suffered grievous wounds, and now stood with one foot upon her deadly foe. During these four years the people of France had been under a complete censorship; officials and military men between them had decided not merely what should be done but what should be said and thought. Now suddenly it was proposed to lift this censorship and turn people loose to reveal secrets and criticize policies — in short, to say what they pleased, or what the enemy might hire them to say. “What?” cried the shell-shocked officials. “Open the sessions of the conference, and let newspaper men hear the wrangles of the diplomats, and tell the whole world about national ambitions and demands? If you do that, you will have a series of new wars on your hands — the Allies will be fighting among themselves!”
To this the believers in open covenants openly arrived at replied that the affairs to be settled by the conference were the affairs of the people, and the people had a right to know what was being planned and done. Democracy could not function unless it had information. The only way of lasting peace was to turn the conference into a means of education, an open forum where problems were threshed out in the sight and hearing of all.
So the debate raged; and like everything else with which the assemblage dealt it was settled by compromise and evasion. It was agreed that the press should be admitted to the “plenary sessions”; whereupon these were turned into formal affairs to ratify decisions already worked out by the so-called “Council of Ten.” When the press took to clamoring against the secrecy of the “Council of Ten,” the real work was transferred to a secret “Council of Four.” Presently this became a “Council of Three,” and this holy trinity not only told no pressmen what it was doing, but to make sure that they couldn't find out, it employed but one secretary and kept but one record.
VI
Of course only a small portion of the people of Paris were occupied with the Peace Conference. The common people, mostly women and elderly men, worked at their daily tasks, and gave their thoughts to getting food with prices steadily rising. The well-to-do had their cares also, for it was a violent world, exposed to sudden unforeseeable changes. Only speculators throve; and whenever Robbie met his son he had stories to tell about what these were doing.
The munitions industry was shot to pieces, reported the salesman. Budd's had been forced to close down; all that magnificent plant which had been like a beehive — its chimneys were empty and its gates were locked. “But I thought we still had contracts with the government!” exclaimed the youth. The father answered that it didn't pay to run big plants for a few orders, and they had canceled the contracts on the basis of part payments.
“But what will all those working people do, Robbie?”
“I hope they saved their money. For us the war ended too soon. Nobody could foresee that Germany, was going to collapse like that.”
“We still have those fine new plants, haven't we?”
“What are plants if you can't run them? They're just a drain; upkeep, insurance, and taxes — the government soaks you as hard whether you're making anything or not.”
“I never thought of that,” confessed Lanny.
“Your grandfather isn't thinking about anything else very much.”
Robbie was sending home long reports, mostly without a gleam of hope. There were plenty of people who wanted to go on fighting, but where were they to get the money? Who would want to finance new wars? And, anyhow, the fighting would be done with munitions already manufactured. There were mountains of it piled up all over France, and on the Italian front, and the Balkan front, and the Palestine front — everywhere you looked on the map. It could be bought for almost anything you wanted to offer.
“I've been trying to interest Father in buying some as a speculation,” added Robbie. “But he says we're not going into the junk business. I can't very well do it myself while I'm the European sales agent of our firm.”
In Lanny's mind was a vision of that depressing old Colonial house in Newcastle, with a worried and overworked businessman sitting at a desk piled high with papers — and having in one drawer a bundle of pamphlets setting forth the Confession of Faith of his grandfather. “What does he expect to do, Robbie?”
“We've got to figure out ways to turn some of the plants to peacetime uses. And that's going to cost a lot of money.”
“Well, we made it, didn't we?”
“Most of it was distributed as dividends, and people aren't going to put it back in unless we can show them new ways of making profits.”
“Surely, Robbie, there's going to be a demand for every sort of goods! People are clamoring for them all over.”
“It doesn't matter how much they clamor, unless they've got money. The ones that have money daren't risk it when there's so much uncertainty — and when those in authority can't make up their minds about anything. We've got a President who spent his time studying Latin and Greek and theology when he ought to have been learning the elements of finance and credit.”
Robbie said that Clemenceau and Lloyd George were every bit as ignorant about economic questions; he wanted businessmen and financiers called in to advise. With one-third of Europe in revolution, and another third hanging on the brink; with tens of millions of people not knowing where to get their next day's bread; with trade disorganized, railways broken down, river transport sunk, harbors blockaded, and millions of men still kept out of production, liable to revolt and go home, or to start shooting one another — the man to whom they all looked for guidance had brought a shipload of specialists in geography and history and international law, and only a handful who knew finance, production, or trade.
VII
The telephone rang in Lanny's room, and he heard a voice, speaking English with a decided foreign accent: “Can you guess?” Someone in a playful mood; he kept on talking, and Lanny, who had heard so many kinds of accents in his young life, tried his best to think, but nothing stirred in his memory. “Five years ago,” said the stranger. “On a railroad train.” Lanny groped in his mind. “I got on at Genoa,” said the voice; and suddenly a light dawned, and the youth cried: “Mr. Robin!”
“Johannes Robin, Maatschappij voor Electrische Specialiteiten, Rotterdam — at your service!” chuckled the voice.
“Well, well!” said Lanny. “What are you doing here?”
“A little business, which will be a secret until I see you.”
“And how are the boys?”
“Fine, Lanny, fine — do I call you Lanny, even though you are grown up to a young gentleman?”
“You bet you do, Mr. Robin. I'll never forget the favors you have done me.” In the course of the last four years Mr. Robin had mailed six or eight letters to Kurt in Germany, one of them only a week or two previously. That was how the trader knew that Lanny was in Paris, and his address.
Of course Lanny wanted to see that friend, even busy as he was with all the affairs of Europe. “I'm going to have lunch with my father,” he said. “Wouldn't you like to join us?”
“Sure, I like to meet your father,” said the dealer in electrical gadgets. Lanny told him where to come.
Johannes Robin was somewhat stouter than Lanny remembered him; he had spent money on his clothes and looked the picture of prosperity. He was the same exuberant fellow, who liked to talk about himself; but Lanny, more observant now, got the feeling that he was not entirely at ease. He wanted very much to please these two rich Americans, and was never quite sure whether he was doing it. His handsome dark eyes moved from Lanny's face to Robbie's and back again, and his smile was deprecating and hesitant, as if to say: “I hope you don't mind if I am so proud to know you.”
He was genuinely glad to see the youth and exclaimed over how big he had got. Of course he wanted to tell about those two boys at home, and he had some more snapshots of his family group, which he presented apologetically — they wouldn't take up much room. They talked about Kurt Meissner; Lanny had had no answer to his last letter, and was worried about it. A captain of artillery could have been killed during the last days of the war just as well as at any other time. Robbie said that the Americans had been attacking just as hard between seven in the morning when the armistice was signed and eleven when it went into effect.
With Lanny's father Mr. Robin became the businessman, who had traveled over Europe and knew its affairs, and could tell interesting stories about money-making in wartime. From his safe retreat in the Low Countries he had made quite a lot, in spite of the British blockade; nothing to compare with Mr. Budd's affairs, he said modestly, but enough to constitute success for one who had been born in a ghetto hut with a mud floor. Robbie liked that attitude — he liked people to be what they were and not pretend to be something else; so he and the Jewish importer got along pleasantly. They agreed that business would pick up again, if only the diplomats would quit their stalling; they agreed on many things that ought to be done — and Lanny listened, picking up bits of information which he could take back to his chief, to atone for taking a couple of hours off in the middle of a busy day.
VIII
Before those two had finished their bottle of wine they knew each other well enough for Jascha Rabinowich, alias Robin, to make a confession. “Mr. Budd, I have some ideas in my head that just don't let me rest. You know the feeling perhaps: there is money to be made, so much money, and I see how it can be done at once, but later on it will be too late.”
Yes, Robbie knew the feeling, and gave permission for his new acquaintance to tell him what he had in mind. It turned out to be the same thing that had been interfering with Robbie's sleep: all that mass of munitions and other supplies which had been manufactured at enormous cost, and which were now lying about — “Have you seen them, Mr. Budd?”
Robbie smiled. “My son sees them on the Place in front of his hotel.” It was packed with rows of cannon of every type, howitzers, mortars, field-guns — captured German pieces with the marks of war on them, and now rusting in the rain.
“It is terrible, Mr. Budd, all those goods which cannot even be covered up: shells that they were ready to fire, boots they were going to wear. Now they do not know what to do with it all. To take things back to England — that is possible; but all the way to America — will it pay the cost of crating and shipping?”
“We have been figuring on it, and it won't,” said Robbie Budd. “The army has a commission here, trying to dispose of the stuff.”
“Well, Mr. Budd, I am a man who knows how to sell things. I know dealers all over Europe. And I have ideas. I wake up in the middle of the night, because one has stung me, like it might be — what is it? — abeille — ”
“A bee,” said Lanny.
“For example?” said Robbie.
“Well, hand grenades; there are millions of them — ”
“We made a quarter of a million for our army.”
“And now they are somewhere out in the mud of Lorraine. You know what they look like; I don't need to describe them.”
“What would you do with them?”
“First I unload them. I have a mass of black powder, which I put up in bags. I know a man who supplies mining companies in Chile, Peru, all those countries. Then I cut off the handles; tomorrow I will find something to do with them. Then I have a little round metal box; it has a pretty shape, it sits up on end; I cut a slot in the top, and there you are.”
“What is it?”
“It is a children's bank, where they drop their pennies, their pfennigs, their sous, their soldi — in every country they have little coins for the poor.”
Robbie and his son couldn't keep from laughing. Such an odd idea: a hand grenade, the quintessence of destructiveness, made into a children's bank, the symbol of thrift. Swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks!
Mr. Robin laughed too, but only for a moment. “You don't know what a market it is, Mr. Budd. You don't know the homes of the poor, as I do.”
“But they have no money now.”
“They will get these small coins; and they will starve themselves and save — maybe to pay off a mortgage, maybe to buy a cow, or for a girl's dowry — such things as the peasants hope for. A bank is something sacred, it comes next to the crucifix; it teaches virtue, it is a witness and a reminder; the family that has it has something to live for. If there is peace, on next Christmas Day a million peasant women will give such banks to their children.”
“Christmas is a long way off, Mr. Robin.”
“You would not say that if you knew the novelty trade. Next summer we start to travel for our Christmas trade; and meantime I am finding the agents, I am sending them the samples and the circulars and the contracts; and all that I have to get ready. If I have a couple of hundred thousand banks that have cost me only a few cents each, I know I can sell them, and just where and how. And that is only one small deal, Mr. Budd. I will find a hundred bargains, and a use for each.”
“Have you thought about storage costs?”
“In the old city where I live are hundreds of warehouses, and no longer will they be full of goods when ships can go directly into Germany. They are on the canals, and goods come by the rivers or the sea — there is cheap transport to every part of the world. ALL that is needed is cash to buy — and to do it quickly, before someone else snaps up the bargain. I am so certain of the profits that I am offering to go fifty-fifty with you; I will give all my time and experience, I will do the work, and pay you half the profits. We will form a company, and your name will be kept out of it — I know that you do not want your name in small business like this. It will be a quick thing — in a year it will be over, and I would not dare to tell you how many hundred percent we will clear, because then you would be sure that I must be a swindler.”
IX
Lanny watched these two traders, smoking their cigars and knocking the ashes into the dregs of their coffee cups; he amused himself trying to guess what was going on in their minds. He himself kept silent, knowing that this wasn't his job. He personally would have been willing to trust the Jewish dealer, because he liked him. But Robbie didn't like Jews; his view was that of society people who don't want them in their fraternities or clubs. Robbie would sometimes make playful remarks based upon the assumption that Jews went into bankruptcy freely, and set fire to their warehouses and stores when the season became slack. “Fur stores burn in February” — all that sort of thing.
Would Mr. Robin be aware of that attitude? Lanny guessed that this shrewd fellow knew everything that concerned himself and his affairs; he would anticipate the attitude of fashionable gentiles listening to his business “spiel” and watching the play of his hands and shoulders.
“Look, Mr. Budd,” said the dealer in gadgets. “I come to you a stranger, and perhaps I have nerve to talk money to you. But I have business connections, I have a reputation in my home city; my creditors and bankers will tell you. But more important yet is that you should know me as a man. If I may speak to you frankly, and from my heart, and not feel that I am boring you . . .?”
“I have been interested in you ever since Lanny told me about you, Mr. Robin.”
“Perhaps he told you that I come from a Polish ghetto, and that I have suffered poverty and worked bitterly hard, and paid for everything that I have gained. Now I have had some success, and if I am cautious I and my loved ones do not have to worry the rest of our lives. But I have brains and I like to use them. It is a game that we play, you and me, all of us; you know what I mean?”
“I know.”
“It is a pleasure to rise in the world, to meet new people, educated people, those that have power. I know that I will always be a Jew, and carry the marks of the ghetto; I know that my accent is not right in any language, that I talk with my hands, and that I say things that are not in good taste, so I do not expect ever to shine in drawing rooms. But I expect that businessmen will recognize me, and that I will be able to do things that are worth while. And now through a chance I have met a big businessman — ”
Robbie raised his hand. “Not so big, Mr. Robin!”
“I am telling you how it seems to me. You live in a world far above mine. Maybe you are not really better than me, but the world thinks you are, and I, with my ghetto memories, look up to you. I look at your son and I think: 'I would like my boys should be like him.' And if I persuade you to go into a deal with me, I have a chance to make good in a new way. If I cheat you, I will get some money quick, but then no more. You will say: 'The little kike!' — and that is the end. But if I make good, then I have your respect. You tell your friends: 'I don't care what you say about the Jews, I know one that's straight, I would trust him with the crown jewels' — or whatever it is that you value in America, the Statue of Liberty, shall we say?”
“I am touched by your confidence, Mr. Robin,” smiled the American. “I will try to be worthy of your ideal.”
“I will tell you something more, Mr. Budd — if I am not boring you?”
“Not at all.”
“You have seen the little pictures of my two boys. How I love those boys is something I cannot tell any man. I would give my life if it would spare them unhappiness. Those boys were not born in a ghetto, and its marks are not on them. For them I imagine the finest things in the world. The little one, Freddi, is a quiet lad, and studious; he will be a professor, perhaps. But the other, Hansi, his choice is made; he lives for the violin. He will not be some obscure fellow in an orchestra; he has fire, he has temperament, and he works so hard, I know that he will be a virtuoso, a concert performer. You think, perhaps, it is a fond father's dream; and maybe so, but to me it is real.”
“I understand,” said Robbie, who also had a dream.
“Then one day I meet on the train a little American gentleman, and I talk with him. He is going to visit in a German castle; he has good manners, and what is more, he is kind; he plays the piano, he reads, he has traveled and met famous people, his talk is far beyond his years; it comes to me as incredible that a boy should know so much, and talk so like a man of the world. I go home and tell my boys about him, and how they wish they had been on that train and met that Lanny Budd! Then a year or two passes, and one day I get a letter, with a picture of himself and his mother in front of their home; my boys they pin it up on the wall, and all the time they are talking about that wonderful Lanny Budd. They write him little notes, and he answers, and they are saying: 'Some day we shall meet him!' They are saying: 'Do you think that he would like us, Papa? Do you think he would mind that we are Jews?' Perhaps you have never thought about how it is to be a Jew, Mr. Budd?”.
“I am interested to understand,” said Robbie, politely.
“If you are an orthodox Jew, you have your faith, your ancient laws and customs, and that is enough; you are not interested in anyone but Jews, because you know that the rest is accursed. But if it happens that you learn modern ideas, and decide that the Sabbath is a day like any other day, and that ham will not hurt you if it is well cooked, and that it is all rubbish that you should not eat meat and butter from the same dish — then you are done with the old religion and you are looking for something else to take its place. You wish to live in the world like other people; to be a man among men. If somebody says: 'I do not want you in my home because you are ignorant, and stupid, and you bore me' — that is all right, that may be true, and you cannot complain. But if someone says: 'I do not want you in my home because you are a Jew' — that is not fair, and that hurts. But of course every Jew hears it, and a Polish Jew most of all, because that is supposed to be a very low kind. Every Jew wishes to meet gentiles, and to live among gentiles, but no Jew is ever quite happy, or quite sure; every Jew is thinking: 'Is there something wrong here?' or perhaps: 'Have I done something I shouldn't?' But he cannot ask, because that is not done; and when I say this to you, I have to think if it will displease you.”
“Not at all,” said Robbie. It was a concession on his part.
“So little Hansi is thinking: 'I will play the violin better and better, and then some day, when I meet the wonderful Lanny Budd, he will wish to play duets with me. He will really judge my music, and not as the rich boys do at school, my Jewishness.' That is what my Hansi has said to me; and now, should I smash his dream that the wonderful Lanny Budd might wish to play music with him? Shall I have to hear him say: 'No, Papa, I cannot have Lanny Budd for a friend, because his father says that you are not honest in business, that you took advantage of him when he trusted you'? So you see, Mr. Budd, I should have to go straight, even if it was against my nature.”
“A new kind of business credentials, Mr. Robin!” said the other, smiling. “How much money would you say you could use to advantage in this business?”
“It is hard to know in advance. You understand that the buying will always be a spot-cash proposition. I would say a hundred thousand dollars should be in the bank. I would report to you what I am doing, and if I saw a use for further sums, you could judge each proposition on its merits.”
Robbie had never told his son just how much money he had made in the last few years; so Lanny was startled when his father said: “I guess I could find a hundred thousand without too much trouble. You give me the references you speak of, Mr. Robin, and I'll look into them, and if they are what you tell me, I'll take a flier with you.”
Lanny was pleased, but he didn't say so until they had dropped the dealer at his hotel. Then he chuckled and said: “You're in the junk business, Robbie!”