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Couldn't they think of something? The husband tried various suggestions: a performing
elephant from the circus, a troop of Arabian acrobats he had seen in a cabaret—their black hair
was two feet long and when they did several somersaults in one leap they brought down the
house. "Don't be silly, dear," said the wife.
He thought of an idea to end all ideas. "Offer a prize of a hundred thousand francs for the
most original suggestion for a party. That will start them talking as nothing ever did." He
meant it for burlesque, but to his amusement Irma was interested; she talked about it,
speculating as to what sort of suggestions she would get, and so on; she wasn't satisfied until she
had asked Emily, and been assured that it might be a good idea for Chicago, but not for Paris.
Even after Irma dropped it, she had a hankering, and said: "I believe my father would have
done it. He didn't let people frighten him away from things."
It would have to be a conventional soiree. The young Robins would come and play—a
distinguished thing to furnish the talent from your own family, and have it the best.
Fortunately the Paris newspapers did not report Communist doings—unless it was a riot or
something—therefore few persons knew that Hansi had assisted in electing Zhess Block-less to
the Chamber of Deputies. (Already that body had met, and the new member, refusing to be
intimidated by the splendid surroundings, had put on his old phonograph record, this time
with a loud-speaker attachment, so that his threats against the mur d'argent had been heard
as far as Tunisia and Tahiti, French Indo-China and Guiana.)
Lanny was fascinated to observe his young wife functioning in the role which she had chosen
for herself. She was not yet twenty-four, but she was a queen, and had found out how queens
conduct themselves. No worry, no strain, no sense of uncertainty. Being an American, she could
without sacrifice of dignity ask the chef or the butler how things were done in France; then
she would say whether or not they were going to be done that way in her home. She spoke with
quiet decision, and the servants learned quickly to respect her; even the new Controleur-
General was impressed, and said to Lanny: "By heck, she's a whiz!"
When the great day arrived, she didn't get excited, like many hostesses, and wear herself out
so that she couldn't enjoy her own triumph; no chain smoking of cigarettes, no coffee or
nips of brandy to keep her going. Nor did she put responsibilities off on her mother or
mother-in-law; that would be a bad precedent. She said: "This is my home, and I want to learn
to run it." She had thought everything out, and had lists prepared; she summoned the
servitors before her and checked off what had been done and gave them their final
instructions. She had learned to judge them in two or three weeks. Jerry was a "brick," and
anything he undertook was just as good as done. Ambroise, the butler, was conscientious, but
had to be flattered; Simone, the housekeeper, was fidgety and lacking in authority; Feathers
had always been a fool and would get rattled in any emergency. Having checked everything,
Irma took a long nap in the afternoon.
At about nine in the evening the shiny limousines began rolling up before the palace, and a
stream of immaculate guests ascended the white marble stairs, covered with a wide strip of red
velvet carpet. It was the cream of that international society which made its headquarters in
the world's center of fashion. Many of them had met Irma in New York or on the Riviera, in
Berlin, London, Vienna, or Rome. Others were strangers, invited because of their position; they
came because of curiosity as to a much-talked-about heiress. They would see what sort of show
she put on, and were prepared to lift an eyebrow and whisper behind a fan over the slightest
wrong detail.
But there wasn't much to quarrel with. The young Juno was good to look at, and the best
artists had been put to work on her. The prevailing fashions favored her; they had gone back
to natural lines, with high waists. The décolletage for backs was lower; in fact, where the back
of the dress might have been there was nothing but Irma; but it was enough. Her dark brown
hair was in masses of curls, and that looked young and wholesome. Her gown of pale blue silk
chiffon appeared simple, but had cost a lot, and the same was true of her long rope of pearls.
The daughter of the utilities king was naturally kind; she liked people, and made them feel it.
She did the honors with no visible coaching. She had taken the trouble to learn who people were,
and if she had met them before, she remembered where, and had something friendly to say. If
they were strangers, she assumed that they were welcoming her to Paris and thanked them for
their courtesy. At her side stood a good-looking young fellow, bon garçon, son of his father—
Budd Gunmakers, you know, quite a concern in America. In the background was a phalanx of
older women: the two mothers, large and splendid, and Mrs. Chattersworth, whom everyone
knew. In short, tout comme il faut, viewed by tout le monde.
XII
A modest-appearing young Jewish violinist came forward, and with his wife accompanying
him played Cesar Franck's violin sonata; French music, written in Paris by a humble organist
and teacher who had lived obscurely among them until an omnibus had killed him; now they
honored him, and applauded his interpreter. As an encore Hansi played Hubay's Hejre Katy,
fiery and passionate; when they applauded again, he smiled and bowed, but did not play any
more. His sister-in-law, Rahel Robin, whom nobody had ever heard of, came to the piano, and
with Lanny Budd accompanying and her husband playing a clarinet obbligato, sang a couple of
Provencal peasant songs which she herself had arranged. She had a pleasing voice, and it was a
sort of homelike family affair; you wondered if they were showing themselves off, or if they were
saving money.
Certainly they hadn't saved on the food and drink, and that is important at any party. In the
ball-room a smart colored band played jazz, and in the other rooms the young wife and the
young husband moved here and there, chatting with this one and that. Madame Hellstein, of
the international banking-house, with her daughter Olivie, now Madame de Broussailles; Lanny
had told his wife: "I might have married her, if Rosemary hadn't written me a note at the
critical moment!" So, naturally, Irma was interested to look her over. A lovely daughter of
Jerusalem—but she was growing stout! "These Jewish women all do," thought Irma.
And then one of Zaharoff's married daughters, who also had looked upon the son of Budd as
a parti. And old M. Faure, rich importer of wines and olive-oil who had bought paintings of
nude ladies from Zoltan. A traveling maharajah who bought ladies—but from another dealer! A
Russian grand duke in exile; a crown prince from one of the Scandinavian lands; a couple of
literary lions, so that you wouldn't appear to be snobbish. Lanny had been a dear and hadn't
asked for any Reds or Pinks; they wouldn't appreciate the honor, he said.
Irma wasn't clever; but that is a quality for the "outs," whereas she was among the "ins." She
was serene and gracious, and as she moved among this elegant company little shivers of
happiness ran over her and she thought: "I am getting away with it; it is truly distingué"— this
being one of the first French words she had learned. Lanny, thirty-two and world weary, thought:
"How hard they all try to keep up a front and to be what they pretend!" He thought: "All the
world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"—these being among the first words
of Shakespeare he had learned.
He knew much more about these players than his wife did. He had been hearing stories from
his father and his business friends, from his mother and her smart friends, from his Red uncle,
from Blum and Longuet and other Pinks. This lawyer for the Comité des Forges who had all
the secrets of la haute finance hidden in his skull; this financier, paymaster for the big banks, who
had half the members of the Radical party on his list; this publisher who had taken the Tsar's
gold before the war and now was a director of Skoda and Schneider-Creusot! Who would envy
these men their stage roles? The whole show was tolerable to the players only because of the
things they didn't know, or which they thrust into the back of their minds. Lanny Budd,
treading the boards, playing acceptably his part as prince consort, enjoyed it with one-half his
mind, while the other half wondered: how many of his guests could bear to dance if they
knew what would be happening to them ten years from now?
12
Pleasure at the Helm
I
THE Dress-Suit Bribe was in rehearsal in London, and if Lanny could have had his own way,
he would have been there to watch every moment. But Irma had her new white elephant on
her hands, and had to get some use of it; several weeks would have to pass before she would
feel justified in going away and leaving its staff of servants idle. Meanwhile, she must invite
people to come, at any hour from noon to midnight. Supposedly she was doing it because she
wanted to see them, but the real reason was that she wanted them to see her. And having
offered them hospitality, she was under obligation to accept theirs; she would be forever on
the go, attending social affairs or getting ready for future affairs.
Always she wanted company; and Lanny went along, because it had been his life's custom to
do what he didn't want to do rather than to see a loved one disappointed and vexed. His wife
was attaining her uttermost desire, she was standing on the apex of the social pyramid; and
what could it mean to her to climb down and go off to London to watch a dozen actors and
actresses rehearsing all day on an empty stage, the women in blouses and the men with their
coats off on a hot day? The fact that one of these women was Phyllis Gracyn didn't increase her
interest, and Lanny mustn't let it increase his too much!
He persuaded the young Robins to stay for a while; he much preferred their company to that
of the fashionable folk. They would play music every morning, and at odd times when social
duties permitted. Nothing was allowed to interfere with Hansi's violin practice; it was his task
to master one great concert piece after another—which meant that he had to fix in his head
hundreds of thousands of notes, together with his own precise way of rendering each one.
Nobody who lived near him could keep from being touched by his extraordinary
conscientiousness. Lanny wished he might have had some such purpose in his own life,
instead of growing up an idler and waster. Too late now, of course; he was hopelessly spoiled!
II
Sitting in the fine library of the Duc de Belleaumont, filled with the stored culture of France,
Lanny had a heart-to-heart talk with his half-sister, from whom he had been drifting apart in
recent years. She was one who had expected great things of him, and had been disappointed.
It wasn't necessary that he should agree with her, she insisted; it was only necessary that he
should make up his mind about anything, and stick to it. Lanny thought that he had made up
his mind as to one thing: that the Communist program, applied to the nations which had
parliamentary institutions, was a tactical blunder. But it would be a waste of time to open up
this subject to Bess.
She had something else she wanted to talk about: the unhappiness which was eating like a
cancer into the souls of the members of the Robin family. They had become divided into three
camps; each husband agreeing with his own wife, but with none of the other members of the
family; each couple having to avoid mentioning any political or economic problem in the
presence of the others. With affairs developing as they now were in Germany, that meant
about every subject except music, art, and old-time books. Johannes read the Borsenzeitung,
Hansi and Bess read the Rote Fahne, while Freddi and Rahel read Vorwarts; each couple
hated the very sight of the other papers and wouldn't believe a word that was in them. Poor
Mama, who read no newspaper and had only the vaguest idea what the controversy was about,
had to serve as a sort of liaison officer among her loved ones.
There was nothing so unusual about this. Lanny had lived in disagreement with his own
father for the greater part of his life; only it happened that they both had a sense of humor,
and took it out in "joshing" each other. Jesse Blackless had left home because he couldn't agree
with his father; now he never discussed politics with his sister, and always ended up in a
wrangle with his nephew. The majority of radicals would tell you the same sort of stories; it
was a part of the process of change in the world. The young outgrew their parents—or it might
happen that leftist parents found themselves with conservative-minded children. "That will be
my fate," opined the playboy.
In the Robin family the problem was made harder because all the young people took life so
seriously; they couldn't pass things off with teasing remarks. To all four of them it seemed
obvious that their father had enough money and to spare, and why in the name of Karl Marx
couldn't he quit and get out of the filthy mess of business plus politics in which he wallowed?
Just so the person who has never gambled cannot understand why the habitué hangs on, hell-
bent upon making up his night's losses; the teetotaler cannot understand the perversity
which compels the addict to demand one more nip. To Johannes Robin the day was a blank
unless he made some money in it. To see a chance of profit and grab it was an automatic
reflex; and besides, if you had money you had enemies trying to get it away from you, and you
needed more of it in order to be really safe. Also you got allies and associates; you incurred
