Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 3

  The sentimentalists and cranks had had their way, and America lay disarmed in the face of a world of enemies—so Robbie declared. Budd Gunmakers was producing mostly hardware and what Robbie called “notions,” meaning everything from hairpins to freight elevators. What the salesman now had in mind was the weapon of the future, and the means of transport of the future, the plane. All the world was taking to the air; the nations which wished to survive would be driven to it; and behind the sheltered and well-protected waters of Long Island Sound Robbie would erect an airplane factory. Before long he would make it into the greatest in the world, and give the name of Budd’s a new and better meaning.

  An expert in aerodynamics had showed up, and in an abandoned warehouse near the Newcastle docks had done a lot of experimenting; Robbie had helped him with a few thousand dollars, and they had got an important new design for an internally braced flying wing. Also Robbie had discovered a fellow with patents for an air-cooled radial engine that was going to add another hundred miles to the speed of planes, and if they could do that they would own the world. Robbie was on fire with enthusiasm about it; he had organized a company and gone the rounds among his friends, those who had put their money into New England-Arabian Oil with him and done very well. Business was picking up and people had money, but good investments were scarce, because the government was putting out most of the bonds. So Robbie had had no trouble in selling stock in Newcastle, and had taken an option on the land. Now he was in Paris to talk with Zaharoff and with Denis de Bruyne and some of Denis’s associates; later he was going to London to see investors there; he was doing it all privately—the Wall Street crowd wasn’t going to get a look-in. “Believe me, son, I’m not going to stay a poor man.” Indoctus pauperiem pati!

  II

  Robbie sat at the well-appointed table a deux, enjoying his sole meuniere and his Chablis, dry and well chilled. Business didn’t interfere with his appetite, quite the contrary; he had always taken the good things of life as they came along, and in spite of his graying hair and hard work he was robust and rosy. He enjoyed telling about his affairs; not exactly boasting, but speaking with quiet assurance, pointing out how he had been right and forgetting when he had been wrong. He had studied the field thoroughly and convinced himself that aviation was the industry of the future, the only one that wasn’t overbuilt. It held the advantage that it was both a peace and a war industry; you could turn out “flivver planes,” and then with only a few changes in design you could be turning out training planes and perhaps fighters. “Our country is asleep,” declared the ever-vigilant patriot; “but the day is coming when everybody will be grateful to a few men who have-learned to design high-speed planes and to make them in a hurry.”

  The promoter had an appointment with the one-time munitions king of Europe for the following morning and he wanted to have his son come along. “You know how to handle that old spider better than I do,” he said, meaning it for a compliment. “You might sell him a Detaze; but don’t try it until I get through with my deal. If I get this thing going, you’ll never need for money.”

  “I don’t need for it now,” said Lanny, amiably.

  Robbie didn’t notice this unhelpful remark, but went on to say that Denis de Bruyne and his elder son were to dine with them in the evening; he had taken the liberty of assuming that Lanny wouldn’t mind having the matter put before Denis. Robbie phrased it tactfully, as if the husband of Lanny’s former amie were Lanny’s own special property.

  “Denis is a business man,” the son replied. “If he puts his money into anything, he’ll look into it carefully.”

  Robbie inquired about the funeral, and when Lanny described the ceremonies he couldn’t keep from smiling, even though he felt deeply for the bereaved family. “It’s hard to understand how people would want to go through such a rigmarole,” he commented. “But I suppose that when they suffer too much they lose their balance.”

  “It’s what Mama was brought up in,” replied Lanny. “It helped her in a crisis, so it’s all right.”

  “No use expecting women to be rational,” added the father; it was one of his oft-repeated formulas. Following an obvious train of thought, he added: “Beauty’s coming over from London to see what she can do with some of her friends.”

  Lanny knew what that meant without asking any questions. From boyhood he had watched this team at work on one sort of deal or another: his “go-getter” father and his lovely mother, who passed for the father’s divorced wife, working together so perfectly that nobody could understand why they should ever have separated. It was always something involving large sums of money, and also what most people would have called gossip, but which Robbie would refer to as psychology; it involved the rehearsing of conversations in advance—you say this and then I’ll say that, and so on; because even in the smartest society people want to believe that you are entertaining them because you like them and not just because you want them to invest in oil stock or to introduce you to a government official who is charged with the purchasing of light machine guns for his country. Most of the time the deal would be put through, and then Mabel Blackless, alias Beauty Budd, alias Madame Detaze, and now Mrs. Parsifal Dingle, would receive a present of a new car or a mink coat or perhaps a check for a couple of thousand dollars with which to do her own purchasing.

  “Why do you take so much trouble?” asked the son of this odd partnership. “Why don’t you put your plans before Irma?”

  “I want a lot of money this time—five millions, at least. I mean to build a model plant, and I don’t want to start on a shoestring.”

  “That’s all right, Robbie, Irma’s got it, and you know how highly she thinks of you.”

  “Yes, son, but that’s one thing I never have been willing to do—to barge in on your marriage. If anything did go wrong with my enterprise—not that it possibly can—but I try to keep business apart from family.”

  Lanny understood quite well that he was having an expert salesman’s tact applied to himself. Robbie fully meant to put the project before Irma, but he wanted to be told to do it. The younger man knew what he was expected to say and he didn’t mind saying it. “Irma’s doing her own deciding. She’s quite proud of her judgment, and if you have a good proposition she’ll expect you to put it before her; she wouldn’t like it if you left her out.”

  “All right,” said the father. “You tell her what I’m doing, and tell her I don’t mean to approach her unless she asks for it.”

  III

  The French practice of la vie a trois, which seems so strange to Americans and so highly immoral to the orthodox, had made Denis de Bruyne and Robbie Budd into friends of some ten years’ standing. In the Anglo-Saxon parts of the world an elderly husband and pere de famille would hardly choose for a friend the father of his wife’s young lover; but in Paris it had come about, and two men of large affairs had discovered that business customs are more powerful than marital in the shaping of minds and manners. These two, who lived and operated three thousand miles apart, thought and felt in much the same way about their worlds. In return for Denis’s courtesy in listening while Robbie abused “that man Roosevelt” and his so-called “New Deal” which really was the rankest kind of Socialism, Robbie would listen while Denis applied the same phrases to Leon Blum and his Socialist party which really was the rankest kind of Communism.

  Robbie Budd was a son of Puritan ancestors, but he was a rebel son and had gone out into the world prepared to take it as he found it. He had watched his boy as a happy lover, then through a period of widowerhood of an odd irregular sort, and now for a period of godfatherhood of the same sort. Lanny was only a few years older than Denis, fils, and Charlot, but he had promised their dying mother to look after them, and when he was in Paris he seldom failed to meet them; he would inquire gravely about their affairs, and they in turn would dutifully report, and accept whatever admonitions he considered it proper to give—even though they had no intention of following them.

  Robbie’s
business brought him often to Paris, where he would meet Denis, and they would discuss the state of America and France, and those nations whose affairs were tied up with them. Each met a sensible man of the world, cherishing the same hopes and balked by the same evil forces. Each would have liked to have his own way, but could succeed only to a limited extent. Each was troubled by a vague sense of inadequacy, and each had sons who tried unsuccessfully to tell him what was wrong. When the fathers met together they comforted each other, forming a clan against both the demagogues and the younger generation.

  Denis was past seventy, a handsome gray-haired man with a thin aristocratic face. His vices, which had broken up his marriage, hadn’t seemed to injure his health. Lanny had been told that he had an unfortunate hankering for virgins; but Denis had never mentioned the subject. To his father Lanny had expressed a mild curiosity on the subject of an elderly Frenchman’s affliction. How did one find virgins? Were there, in the lush underworld of Paris, merchants who made a specialty of this commodity? Or did one advertise in the newspapers: “Wanted virgins; highest prices paid; references required”? Having lived most of his life in the beau monde, Lanny had come to understand that a dignified and even austere appearance, the best tournure and the most gracious and benevolent manners did not exclude the possibility of secret practices, amusing or disgusting according as you chose to take such matters.

  IV

  The dinner was served in the drawing-room of Robbie’s suite, in order that the four men might be able to talk privately. Denis was a hard-headed person, and it wasn’t necessary to use finesse with him. As soon as the waiter had departed Robbie said: “I have a project which I think will be of interest to you.” The other replied: “Tell me about it, by all means.”

  Robbie launched on his “spiel,” an exposition to which he had given as much care and study as Daniel Webster or Jean Jaures would have devoted to an oration. He had practiced it many times, varying it to fit the audience. It wasn’t necessary to point out the importance of aviation in the modern world, for the Frenchman had more than once expressed himself on the subject; indeed, Robbie tactfully indicated that Denis’s opinion had been one of the factors causing him to take up this project. He had come to France because he knew how deep was his friend’s anxiety over the inadequacy of the country’s air defenses and what Lanny had told him of the rearmament campaign of General Goring, Commander of the German Air Force.

  Said Robbie: “One thing you can be sure of, there will never be war between your country and mine; so, if I should succeed in building the world’s best airplane factory in a part of the world where Goring cannot get at it, that would be a good thing for la patrie as well as for the individual investors. It is possible that I could go to the Germans with my proposition; but you know my feelings for France and how much I would prefer helping her to helping her enemies.”

  Robbie didn’t say what he would do in the event that French capitalists didn’t back him. On the other hand he didn’t say that he wouldn’t under any circumstances go to Germany; that would have seemed to him sentimental, out of keeping with the character of a business man—and besides, Denis wouldn’t have believed him. Business men talked on the basis of the open market, which modern techniques had broadened to include the world. Budd-Erling—that was to be the name of the new concern—would make planes for the world market, and no favorites played. We have our price and our terms of payment, and the rule is, first come, first served; your money is as good as the next fellow’s, and we don’t ask about your nationality or your politics or your religion, the color of your flag or of your skin.

  The owner of Paris taxicabs said it seemed to him that Robbie had a sound proposition. He asked many questions and Robbie answered them fully. The American had the whole set-up in a folder, and the Frenchman said to leave it with him and he’d study it and decide what he could do. He offered to put it before some friends, and Robbie said he’d come back to Paris after he had got through in London. So everything was all right, and they went to talking politics—where a great many things were far from right.

  The killing of Barthou had thrown French affairs into turmoil. The Foreign Minister had been one of the few real patriots left in the country, and who was going to take his place? Conferences were under way and wires were being pulled; Denis explained that he would have to leave early because he had to do his share of the pulling. It was a time of real peril for France—the mad Hitler was rearming his country rapidly, and his agents were busy intriguing and stirring up revolts in every nation, big and little. Meanwhile France was torn by domestic strife, and where among politicians would she find a friend and protector?

  Once more Lanny Budd gazed down into the boiling pit of la haute politique; once more he smelled the rather nauseous odors which rose from it. Alas, Marianne, la douce, la belle, no longer seemed to Lanny the shining, romantic creature he had imagined in his happy boyhood; then he had loved her, and all her children, rich and poor, on that lovely Azure Coast where stood his home. But now Marianne was taking on an aspect somewhat drab; her honor was sold in the market-place, and the clamor of the traffickers spoiled the day and the night. French politicians were creatures of the Comite des Forges, of the great banks, of the deux cents familles; the head of one of these ruling families poured out details as to what prices had been paid and what services were being rendered. He was full of bitterness against upstarts and demagogues—save those whom he himself had hired.

  Denis reported that the talk was of Pierre Laval as Barthou’s successor, and apparently this was a politician with whom de Bruyne had had experience. Like most of the pack, the innkeeper’s son had started far to the left, and as soon as he got power had set out to line his pockets. When he was in danger of being exposed in one of the ever-recurrent scandals, he had saved himself by turning informer on his fellows. He had purchased a chain of papers all over France, and now was getting radio stations, useful in support of his financial and political intrigues. He had become as conservative as even Denis could have wished; indeed, so eager to preserve his property that he was an easy mark for the Nazi blackmailers. A man so wealthy could no longer think about France, but only about his own fortune.

  Having told all this, and gone into detail about it, de Bruyne added: “I have to excuse myself now; I have an appointment with that fripon mongol”—that Mongolian rascal.

  V

  Next morning Beauty Budd arrived on the night train from Calais and Lanny went to meet her at the Gare du Nord; he was a dutiful son, and adored his full-blooming mother, even while he laughed at her foibles. There she was, descending from a wagon-lit; pink and gold fluffiness in a gray traveling-dress with fur boa to match. When he kissed her she said: “Don’t muss me any worse—I look a fright.” But Lanny, unfrightened, replied: “You are the eternal rose, and not one petal out of place.”

  Don’t ask how old she was—it would be too unkind. She was the mother of a son who would be thirty-five next month and she discouraged the celebration of these recurrent calamities. She was gradually reducing in her own mind the age at which she had borne him, and she had been cheered by reading in the newspapers about an Indian girl in Peru who had produced a son at the age of five. When you have been so beautiful that you have been named for it; when you have seen all the men in restaurants and hotel lobbies turn to stare at you; when you have been many times immortalized by the most celebrated painters—when you have enjoyed all these glories too long, you look into your mirror in the morning and the tears come into your eyes and you begin to work frantically with the tools of the cosmetician.

  For one thing, you have to choose between embonpoint and wrinkles; and fate had chosen for Beauty Budd. The cream-pitcher remained her worst enemy; while a million women in London and Paris strove in vain to get enough food, she failed mournfully in her efforts not to get too much. She was always trying new diets, but the trouble was they left her dizzy, and she had to have a few chocolates in between meals of one lamb chop with pear an
d cucumber salad minus dressing. She told about it, and then asked about the funeral. She had to reach for her delicate mouchoir, for Mama and Rahel had been her dear friends and yachting-companions, and she was the kindest of souls; if she had ever done harm to any human being it was because the social system was too complicated for her to understand the consequences of her actions.

  Robbie Budd had supported her upon a lavish scale, ever since he had fallen in love with her as a very young artist’s model in this city of pleasure. He had acknowledged her son, in spite of the opposition of his Puritan family. So how could she fail to do everything she could for him? By her combination of beauty, kindness, and social charm she had won the friendship of rich and important persons; and if Robbie wanted to meet them and make deals with them, why shouldn’t she lend her aid? Robbie never cheated anybody; what he sold was what they wanted to buy. If it was guns and ammunition, how could he help that? If now it was going to be planes, well, he would give them their choice, for peace or for war. Nobody could hate death and destruction more than Lanny’s mother; she had spoken boldly and had made enemies by it, but had not been able to change the destiny of this old Continent.

  Robbie was a married man, and a grandfather several times over. Beauty was a married woman, and a grandmother once, which was enough. She had her separate suite in the hotel, and when she met Robbie they shook hands as old friends and behaved with such propriety that the gossips had long ago lost interest in them. Beauty would have herself made presentable, and then she would get busy on the telephone, and soon would be in a round of events. Wives of retired capitalists and widows of elderly bankers would learn that Robbie Budd, the American munitions man, was in Paris, planning a new enterprise which might be of vital importance to French defense and incidentally might be paying dividends of twenty or thirty per cent in a year or two.