The Dowager Lady Wickthorpe kept house for her bachelor son. There was a younger brother whom Lanny had met at Rick’s, and he had married an American girl whom Irma had known in cafe society; so it was like a family party, easy and informal, yet dignified and impressive. It was much easier to run an estate and a household in England, where everything was like a grandfather’s clock which you wound up and it ran, not for eight days but for eight years or eight decades. There was no such thing as a servant problem, for your attendants were born, not made; the oldest son of your shepherd learned to tend your sheep and the oldest son of your butler learned to buttle. All masters were kind and all servants devoted and respectful; at least, that was how it was supposed to be, and if anything was short of perfection it was carefully hidden. Irma thought it was marvelous—until she discovered that she was expected to bathe her priceless self in a painted tin tub which was brought in by one maid, followed by two others bearing large pitchers of hot and cold water.
After the completion of this ceremony, she inquired: "Lanny, what do you suppose it would cost to put modern plumbing into a place like this?"
He answered with a grin: "In the style of Shore Acres?"— referring to his own bathroom with solid silver fixtures, and to Irma’s of solid gold.
"I mean just ordinary Park Avenue."
"Are you thinking of buying this castle?"
Irma countered with another question. "Do you suppose you would be happy in England?"
"I am afraid you couldn’t get it, darling," he evaded in turn. "It’s bound to be entailed." He assured her with a grave face that everything had to be handed down intact—not merely towers and oaks and lawns, but servants and sheep and bathing facilities.
XI
Neighbors dropped in from time to time, and Lanny listened to upper-class Englishmen discussing the problems of their world and his. They were not to be persuaded to take Adolf Hitler and his party too seriously; in spite of his triumph he was still the clown, the pasty-faced, hysterical tub-thumper, such as you could hear in Hyde Park any Sunday afternoon; "a jumped-up house-painter," one of the country squires called him. They were not sorry to have some effective opposition to France on the continent, for it irked them greatly to see that rather shoddy republic of politicians riding on the gold standard while Britain had been ignominiously thrown off. They were interested in Lanny’s account of Adolf, but even more interested in Göring, who was a kind of man they could understand. In his capacity as Reichsminister, he had come to Geneva and laid down the law as to Germany’s claim to arms equality. Wickthorpe had been impressed by his forceful personality, and now was amused to hear about the lion cub from the Berlin zoo and the new gold velvet curtains in the reception room of the Minister-Präsident’s official residence.
Lanny said: "The important thing for you gentlemen to remember is that Göring is an air commander, and that rearmament for him is going to mean fleets of planes. They will all be new and of perfected models."
Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, ex-aviator, had laid great stress upon this, but Lanny found it impossible to interest a representative of the British Foreign Office. To him airplanes were like Adolf Hitler; that is to say, something "jumped-up," something cheap, presumptuous, and altogether bad form. Britannia ruled the waves, and did it with dignified and solid "ships of the line," weighing thirty-five thousand tons each and costing ten or twenty million pounds. An American admiral had written about the influence of sea power upon history, and the British Admiralty had read it, one of the few compliments they had ever paid to their jumped-up cousins across the seas. Now their world strategy was based upon it, and when anyone tried to argue with them it was as if they all burst into song: "Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along the steep!"
Irma listened to the discussions, and afterward, as they drove back to London, they talked about it, and Lanny discovered that she agreed with her host rather than with her husband. She was irresistibly impressed by the dignity, stability, and self-confidence of this island nation; also by Lord Wickthorpe as the perfect type of English gentleman and statesman. Lanny didn’t mind, for he was used to having people disagree with him, especially his own family. But when he happened to mention the matter to his mother, she minded it gravely, and said: "Doesn’t it ever occur to you that you’re taking an awful lot for granted?"
"How do you mean, old darling?"
"Take my advice and think seriously about Irma. You’re making her a lot unhappier than you’ve any idea."
"You mean, by the company I keep?"
"By that, and by the ideas you express to your company, and to your wife’s."
"Well, dear, she surely can’t expect me to give up my political convictions as the price of her happiness."
"I don’t know why she shouldn’t—considering how we’re all more or less dependent upon her bounty."
"Bless your heart!" said Lanny. "I can always go back to selling pictures again."
"Oh, Lanny, you say horrid things!"
He thought that she had started the horridness, but it would do no good to say so. "Cheer up, old dear—I’m taking my wife off to New York right away."
"Don’t count on that too much. Don’t ever forget that you’ve got a treasure, and it calls for a lot of attention and some guarding."
BOOK FIVE
This Is the Way the World Ends
21. In Friendship’s Name
I
IRMA and Lanny guessed that the feelings of Fanny Barnes were going to be hurt because they weren’t bringing her namesake to see her; to make up for it they had cabled that they would come first to Shore Acres. The Queen Mother was at the steamer to meet them with a big car. She wanted the news about her darling grandchild, and then, what on earth had they been doing all that time in Germany? Everybody was full of questions about Hitlerland, they discovered; at a distance of three thousand miles it sounded like Hollywood, and few could bring themselves to believe that it was real. The newspapers were determined to find out what had happened to a leading German-Jewish financier. They met him at the pier, and when he wouldn’t talk they tried everyone who knew him; but in vain.
At Shore Acres, things were going along much as usual. The employees of the estate were doing the same work for no wages; but with seventeen million unemployed in the country, they were thankful to be kept alive. As for Irma’s friends, they were planning the customary round of visits to seashore and mountains; those who still had dividends would play host to those who hadn’t, and everybody would get along. There was general agreement that business was picking up at last, and credit for the boom was given to Roosevelt. Only a few diehards like Robbie Budd talked about the debts being incurred, and when and how were they going to be paid. Most people didn’t want to pay any debts; they said that was what had got the country into trouble. The way to get out was to borrow and spend as fast as possible; and one of the things to spend for was beer. Roosevelt was letting the people buy it instead of having to make it in their bathtubs.