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 way to get in touch with the underworld of the Midi; so before stepping onto the steamer, Bub had got himself a load of Red literature, and all the way across had been boning up as if for a college entrance examination. He had "passed" with Lanny, and then with Raoul and the other comrades, who naturally had no suspicions of anybody coming from Bienvenu. It was somewhat awkward, because Bub was also maintaining relations with the French police; but Lanny didn’t know just what to do about it. It was one more consequence of trying to live in the camps of two rival armies getting ready for battle.
IV
Hearing and thinking so much about the Lindbergh case had had an effect upon Irma’s maternal impulses; she decided that she couldn’t do any more traveling without having at least a glimpse of Baby. She proposed that they hop into the car and run down to Bienvenu—the weather was hot there, and they could have a swim, also. The young Robins hadn’t seen Baby for more than a year; so come along! Hansi had been motored to Paris by Bess, in her car; now the couples "hopped" into two cars, and that evening were in Bienvenu, with Irma standing by the bedside of her sleeping darling, making little moaning sounds of rapture and hardly able to keep from waking the child.
The next two days she had a debauch of mother emotions, crowding everything into a short time. She didn’t want anybody else to touch the baby; she washed her, dressed her, fed her, played with her, walked with her, talked to her, exclaimed over every baby word she managed to utter. It must have been bewildering to a twenty-seven-month child, this sudden irruption into her well-ordered life; but she took it serenely, and Miss Severne permitted some rules to be suspended for a brief period.
Lanny had another talk with Bub Smith, keeper of the queen’s treasure and sudden convert to the cause of social justice. Bub reported on his experiences at the school, and expressed his appreciation of the work being done there; a group of genuine idealists, he said, and it was a source of hope for the future. Lanny found it a source of hope that an ex-cowboy and company guard should have seen the light and acknowledged his solidarity with the workers.