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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

obligations to them, and when a crisis came they expected you to play a certain part, and if

you didn't you were a shirker. You were no more free to quit than a general is free to

resign in the midst of a campaign.

The tragedy is that people have lovable qualities and objectionable ones, impossible to

separate. Also, you have grown up with them, and have become attached to them; you may

be under a debt of gratitude, impossible to repay. If the young Robins were to lay down the

law: "Either you quit playing at Großkapital in Germany, or we move out of your palace and

sail no more in your yacht"—they might have had their way. But how much would have been left

of Johannes Robin? Where would they have taken him and what would they have done with

him? Lanny had put such pressure on his father in the matter of playing the stock market,

and had got away with it. But in the case of Johannes it was much more; he would have had

to give up everything he was doing, every connection, associate, and interest except his

children and their affairs. Said Lanny to Bess: "Suppose he happened to dislike music, and

thought the violin was immoral—what would you and Hansi do about it?"

"But nobody could think that, Lanny!"

"Plenty of our Puritan forefathers thought it; I've a suspicion that Grandfather thinks it right

now. Very certainly he thinks it would be immoral to keep business men from making money, or

to take away what they have made."

So Lanny, the compromiser, trying to soothe the young people, and persuade them that they

could go on eating their food in the Berlin palace without being choked. Including himself,

here were five persons condemned to dwell in marble halls—and outside were five millions, yes,

five hundred millions, looking upon them as the most to be envied of all mortals! Five dwellers

begging to be kicked out of their marble halls, and for some strange reason unable to persuade the

envious millions to act! More than a century ago a poet, himself a child of privilege, had called

upon them to rise like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number; but still the many slept

and the few ruled, and the chains which were like dew retained the weight of lead!

III

The dowager queen of Vandringham-Barnes had gone down to Juan in order to be with the

heir apparent. A dreadful thing had happened in America, something that sent a shudder of

horror through every grandmother, mother and daughter of privilege in the civilized

world. In the peaceful countryside of New Jersey a criminal or gang of them had brought a

ladder and climbed into the home of the flyer Lindbergh and his millionaire wife, and had

carried off the nineteen-month baby of this happy young couple. Ransom notes had been

received and offers made to pay, but apparently the kidnapers had taken fright, and the

body of the slain infant was found in a near-by wood. It happened that this ghastly discovery

fell in the same week that the President of the French republic was shot down by an assassin

who called himself a "Russian Fascist." The papers were full of the details and pictures of both

these tragedies. A violent and dreadful world to be living in, and the rich and mighty ones

shuddered and lost their sleep.

For a full generation Robbie Budd's irregular family had lived on the ample estate of

Bienvenu and the idea of danger had rarely crossed their minds, even in wartime. But now it was

hard to think about anything else, especially for the ladies. Fanny Barnes imagined kidnapers

crouching behind every bush, and whenever the wind made the shutters creak, which

happened frequently on the Cote d'Azur, she sat up and reached out to the baby's bed, which

had been moved to her own room. Unthinkable to go on living in a one-story building, with

windows open, protected only by screens which could be cut with a pocket-knife. Fanny wanted

to take her tiny namesake to Shore Acres and keep her in a fifth-story room, beyond reach of

any ladders. But Beauty said: "What about fire?" The two grandmothers were close to their

first quarrel.

Lanny cabled his father, inquiring about Bub Smith, most dependable of bodyguards and

confidential agents. He was working for the company in Newcastle, but could be spared, and

Robbie sent him by the first steamer. So every night the grounds of Bienvenu would be

patrolled by an ex-cowboy from Texas who could throw a silver dollar into the air and hit it

with a Budd automatic. Bub had been all over France, doing one or another kind of secret

work for the head salesman of Budd Gunmakers, so he knew the language of the people. He

hired a couple of ex-poilus to serve as daytime guards, and from that time on the precious mite

of life which was to inherit the Barnes fortune was seldom out of sight of an armed man.

Lanny wasn't sure if it was a good idea, for of course all the Cap knew what these men were

there for, and it served as much to advertise the baby as to protect her. But no use telling that

to the ladies!

Bub came by way of Paris, so as to consult with Lanny and Irma. He had always been a pal of

Robbie's son, and now they had a confidential talk, in the course of which Bub revealed the fact

that he had become a Socialist. A great surprise to the younger man, for Bub's jobs had been

among the most hardboiled, and Bub himself, with his broken nose and cold steely eyes, didn't

bear the appearance of an idealist. But he had really read the papers and the books and knew

what he was talking about, and of course that was gratifying to the young employer. The man

went down to the Cap and began attending the Socialist Sunday school in his free time,

becoming quite a pal of the devoted young Spaniard, Raoul Palma.

That went on for a year or more before Lanny discovered what it was all about. The bright

idea had sprung in the head of Robbie Budd—to whom anarchists, Communists, and

kidnapers were all birds of a feather. Robbie had told Bub that this would be a quick and easy