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the blessed event.

The papers would supply the apposite details: that Irma was the only daughter of J.

Paramount Barnes, recently deceased utilities magnate, who had left her the net sum of twenty-

three million dollars; that her mother was one of the New York Vandringhams, and her uncle was

Horace Vandringham, Wall Street manipulator cleaned out in the recent market collapse; that

Irma's own fortune was said to have been cut in half, but she still owned a palatial estate on

Long Island, to which she was expected to return. The papers would add that the expectant

father was the son of Robert Budd of Budd Gunmakers Corporation of Newcastle, Connecticut;

that his mother was the famous international beauty, widow of Marcel Detaze, the French

painter whose work had created a sensation in New York last fall. Such details were eagerly

read by a public which lived upon the doings of the rich, as the ancient Greeks had lived upon

the affairs of the immortals who dwelt upon the snowy top of Mount Olympus.

IV

Lanny would have preferred that his child should be born outside the limelight, but he knew it

wasn't possible; this stream of electrons, or waves, or whatever it was, would follow Irma on

her travels—so long as she had the other half of her fortune. As a matter of fact the fortune

wasn't really diminished, for everybody else had lost half of his or hers, so the proportions

remained the same. Irma Barnes still enjoyed the status of royalty, and so did the fortunate

young man whom she had chosen for her prince consort. In the days of the ancien regime,

when a child was born to the queen of France it had been the long-established right of noblemen

and ladies to satisfy themselves that it was a real heir to the throne and no fraud; no stork

stories were accepted, but they witnessed with their own eyes the physical emergence of the

infant dauphin. Into the chamber of Marie Antoinette they crowded in such swarms that the

queen cried out that she was suffocating, and the king opened a window with his own hands. It

wasn't quite that bad now with the queen of the Barnes estate, but it was a fact that the

newspaper-reading and radio-listening public would have welcomed hourly bulletins as to what

was going on in this hospice de la maternité.

But, damn it, even Lanny himself didn't know what was going on! What was the use of

planning what to say to newspaper reporters about the heir or heiress apparent to the Barnes

fortune, when it refused so persistently to make itself apparent, and for all the prince consort

knew the surgeon might be engaged in a desperate struggle with a "cross-birth," or perhaps

having to cut the infant to pieces, or perform a Caesarean section to save its life! Lanny dug his

fingernails into the palms of his hands, and got up and began to pace the floor. Every time he

turned toward the bell-button in the reception-room he had an impulse to press it. He was

paying for service, and wasn't receiving it, and he was getting up steam to demand it. But just

at that juncture a nurse came through the room, cast one of her conventional smiles upon him,

and remarked: "Soyez tranquille, monsieur. Tout va bien."

V

Lanny called his mother on the telephone. Beauty Budd had been through this adventure two

and a half times—so she said—and spoke as one having authority. There wasn't a thing he

could do, so why not come home and have something to eat, instead of worrying himself and

getting in other people's way? This was the woman's job, and nobody in all creation was so

superfluous as the husband. Lanny answered that he wasn't hungry, and he wasn't being

allowed to bother anybody.

He went back to his seat in the reception-room, and thought about ladies. They were, as a

rule, a highly individualistic lot; each on her own, and sharply aware of the faults of the

others. He thought of those who made up his mother's set, and therefore had played a large part

in his own life; he recalled the sly little digs he had heard them give one another, the lack of

solidarity he had seen them display. They had been polite to Irma, but he was certain that behind

her back, and behind his, they found it difficult to forgive her for being so favored of fortune.

However, as her pregnancy had moved to its climax they had seemed to gather about her and

become tender and considerate; they would have come and helped to fetch and carry, to hold

her hands and pull against them in her spasms of pain, had it not been for the fact that there

were professional women trained for these services.

Lanny thought about his mother, and her role in this drama, the stage entrance of another

soul. Beauty had been an ideal mother-in-law so far. She had worked hard to make this

marriage, for she believed in money; there was in her mind no smallest doubt of money's

rightness, or of money's right to have its way. Had not her judgment been vindicated by the

events of a dreadful Wall Street panic? Where would they all have been, what would have

become of them, if it hadn't been for Irma's fortune? Who was there among Irma's friends who

hadn't wanted help? Go ahead and pretend to be contemptuous of money if you pleased; indulge

yourself in Pink talk, as Lanny did—but sooner or later it was proved that it is money which

makes the mare go, and which feeds the mare, takes care of her shiny coat, and provides her

with a warm and well-bedded stall.

Beauty Budd was going to become a grandmother. She pretended to be distressed at the idea;

she made a moue, exclaiming that it would set the seal of doom upon her social career. Other

handicaps you might evade by one device or another. You might fib about the number of your

years, and have your face lifted, and fill your crow's-feet with skin enamel; but when you were

a grandmother, when anyone could bring that charge publicly and you had to keep silent, that

was the end of you as a charmer, a butterfly, a professional beauty.

But that was all mere spoofing. In reality Beauty was delighted at the idea of there being a

little one to inherit the Barnes fortune and to be trained to make proper use of the prestige and

power it conferred. That meant to be dignified and splendid, to be admired and courted, to be the

prince or princess of that new kind of empire which the strong men of these days had created.

Beauty's head was buzzing with romantic notions derived from the fairytales she had read as a

child. She had brought these imaginings with her to Paris and merged them with the realities of

splendid equipages, costly furs and jewels, titles and honors—and then the figure of a young

Prince Charming, the son of a munitions manufacturer from her homeland. Beauty Budd's had

been a Cinderella story, and it was now being carried further than the fairytales usually go.

Grandma Cinderella!

VI

Lanny couldn't stand any more of this suspense, this premonition of impending calamity. He

rang the bell and demanded to see the head nurse; yes, even he, the superfluous husband, had

some rights in a crisis like this! The functionary made her appearance; grave, stiff with starch

and authority, forbidding behind pincenez. In response to Lanny's demand she consented to

depart from the established formula, that all was going well and that he should be tranquil .

With professional exactitude she explained that in the female organism there are tissues which

have to be stretched, passages which have to be widened—the head nurse made a gesture of the

hands— and there is no way for this to be accomplished save the way of nature, the efforts of

the woman in labor. The accoucheur would pay a visit in the course of the next hour or so,

and he perhaps would be able to put monsieur's mind at rest.

Lanny was disturbed because this personage was not in attendance upon Irma now. The

husband had assumed that when he agreed to the large fee requested, he was entitled to have

the man sit by Irma's bedside and watch her, or at any rate be in the building, prepared for

emergencies. But here the fellow had gone about other duties, or perhaps pleasures. He was an

Englishman, and was probably having a round or two of golf; then he would have his shower, and

his indispensable tea and conversation; after which he expected to stroll blandly in and look at

Irma—and meanwhile whatever dreadful thing was happening might have gone so far as to be

irremediable!

Lanny resumed his seat in the well-cushioned chair, and tried to read the popular novel, and

wished he had brought something more constructive. The conversation of these fashionable

characters was too much like that which was now going on in the casinos and tearooms and

drawing-rooms of this playground of Europe. The financial collapse overseas hadn't sobered

these people; they were still gossiping and chattering; and Lanny Budd was in rebellion

against them, but didn't know what to do about it. Surely in the face of the awful thing that

was happening in this hospice— knowing it to be their own fate through the ages—the women

ought to be having some serious concern about life, and doing something to make it easier for

others! They ought to be feeling for one another some of the pity which Lanny was feeling for

Irma!

VII

The door to the street opened, and there entered a tall, vigorous-appearing American of thirty-

five or so, having red hair and a cheerful smile: Lanny's one-time tutor and dependable friend,

Jerry Pendleton from the state of Kansas, now proprietor of a tourist bureau in Cannes. Beauty

had phoned to him: "Do go over there and stop his worrying." Jerry was the fellow for the job,

because he had been through this himself, and had three sturdy youngsters and a cheerful

little French wife as evidence that la nature wasn't altogether out of her wits. Jerry knew

exactly how to kid his friend along and make him take it; he seated himself in the next chair and

commanded: "Cheer up! This isn't the Meuse-Argonne!"

Yes, ex-Lieutenant Jerry Pendleton, who had enlisted and begun as a machine-gun expert,

knew plenty about blood and suffering. Mostly he didn't talk about it; but once on a long motor

ride, and again sitting out in the boat when the fish didn't happen to be biting, he had opened

up and told a little of what he had seen. The worst of it was that the men who had suffered and

died hadn't accomplished anything, so far as a survivor could see; France had been saved, but

wasn't making much use of her victory, nor was any other nation. This battle that Irma was

fighting in the other room was of a more profitable kind; she'd have a little something for her

pains, and Lanny for his—so said the former doughboy, with a grin.

More than once Lanny had been glad to lean on this sturdy fellow . That dreadful time when

Marcel Detaze had leaped from a stationary balloon in flames it had been Jerry who had driven

Lanny and his mother up to the war zone and helped to bring the broken man home and nurse

him back to life. So now when he chuckled and said: "You ain't seen nothin' yet," Lanny

recognized the old doughboy spirit.

The tourist agent had troubles of his own at present. He mentioned how fast business was

falling off, how many Americans hadn't come to the Riviera that season. Apparently the hard