Hansi and Bess were having their own meals, with one of Leese’s relatives to work for them, and presently this girl began to report that they weren’t having enough to eat; they had given their last franc to some hungry comrade, and were even taking out of the house food which they had obtained on credit. Beauty would invite them over to a meal, and they would come; because, after all, you can’t play music if you don’t eat, and it wouldn’t do for Hansi to faint in the middle of concerts which they were giving for the benefit of refugees. Beauty broke down and wept, and Bess wept, and they had a grand emotional spree; but there wasn’t a word they could say to each other, literally not a word, without getting into an argument.
Beauty wanted to say: "My God, girl, don’t you know about Europe? I’ve lived here more years than I like to tell, and I can’t remember the time when there weren’t people fleeing from oppression somewhere. Even before the war, it was revolutionists from Russia, and Jews, and people from the Balkans, and from Spain, and from Armenia—I forget most of the places. Do you think you can solve all the problems of the world?"
Bess wanted to reply: "It is your bourgeois mind." But you can’t say that to your hostess, so she would content herself with the statement: "These are my comrades and this is my cause."
II
Lanny and Irma went back to Paris, and it was the same there. The refugees had Lanny’s address—the first arrivals got it from Uncle Jesse, and the rest from one another. It was an extremely fashionable address, and it was incomprehensible to any comrade in distress that a person who lived, even temporarily, in the palace of the Duc de Belleaumont could fail to be rolling in wealth, and be in position to help him, and all his comrades, and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts back in the homeland, and bring them all to Paris and put them up in one of the guest suites of the palace— or at least pay for the rent of a garret. It was a situation trying to the tempers and to the moral sense of many unfortunate persons. Not all of them were saints, by any means, and hunger is a powerful force, driving people to all sorts of expedients. There were Reds who were not above exaggerating their distress; there were common beggars and cheats who would pretend to be Reds, or anything whatever in order to get a handout. As time went on such problems would grow worse, because parasites increase and multiply like all other creatures, and are automatically driven to perfect the arts by which they survive.
Lanny had been through this and had learned costly and painful lessons from the refugees of Fascism; but now it was worse, because Hitler was taking Mussolini’s arts and applying them with German thoroughness. Also, Lanny’s own position was worse because he had a rich wife, and no refugee could be made to understand how, if he lived with her, he couldn’t get money from her. He must be getting it, because look at his car, and how he dressed, and the places he went to! Was he a genuine sympathizer, or just a playboy seeking thrills? If the latter, then surely he was a fair mark; you could figure that if you didn’t get his money, the tailors and restaurateurs and what not would get it; so keep after him and don’t be troubled by false modesty.
Irma, like Beauty, had a "bourgeois mind," and wanted to say the things which bourgeois ladies say. But she had discovered by now what hurt her husband’s feelings and what, if persisted in, made him angry. They had so many ways of being happy together, and she did so desire to avoid quarreling, as so many other young couples were doing. She would repress her ideas on the subject of the class struggle, and try by various devices to keep her weak-minded partner out of the way of temptation. The servants were told that when dubious-looking strangers called, they were to say that Monsieur Budd was not at home, and that they didn’t know when he would return. Irma would invent subtle schemes to keep him occupied and out of the company of Red deputies and Pink editors.
But Lanny wasn’t altogether without understanding of subtleties. He had been brought up with bourgeois ladies, and knew their minds, and just when they were engaged in manipulating him, and what for. He tried to play fair about it, and not give too much of Irma’s money to the refugees, and not so much of his own that he would be caught without funds. This meant that he, too, had to do a lot of dodging and making of excuses to the unfortunates; and then he would feel ashamed of himself, and more sick at heart than ever, because the world wasn’t what he wanted it to be, nor was he the noble and generous soul he would have preferred to believe himself.
III
In spite of the best efforts in the world, Lanny found it impossible to keep out of arguments with the people he met. Political and economic affairs kept forcing themselves upon him. People who came to the house wanted to talk about what was happening in Germany, and to know what he thought—or perhaps they already knew, and were moved to challenge him. Nobody had been better trained in drawing-room manners than Beauty Budd’s son, but in these times even French urbanity would fail; people couldn’t listen to ideas which they considered outrageous without giving some signs of disapproval. Gone were the old days when it was a gossip tidbit that Mr. Irma Barnes was a Pink and that his wife was upset about it; now it was a serious matter, and quite insufferable.
"I thought you said you were not a Communist," remarked Madame de Cloisson, the banker’s wife, with acid in her tone.
"I am not, Madame. I am only defending those fundamental liberties which have been the glory of the French Republic."
"Liberties which the Communists repudiate, I am told!"
"Even so, Madame, we do not wish to make ourselves like them, or to surrender what we hold dear."
"That sounds very well, but it means that you are doing exactly what they would wish to have done."
That was all, but it was enough. Madame de Cloisson was a grande dame, and her influence might mean success or failure to an American woman with social ambitions. Irma didn’t hear this passage at arms, but some kind friend was at pains to tell her about it, and she knew that it might cancel the efforts she had been making during the past year. But still she didn’t say anything; she wanted to be fair, and she knew that Lanny had been fair—he had told her about his eccentricities before he asked for her, and she had taken him on his own terms. It was her hard luck that she hadn’t realized what it would mean to have a husband dyed a shade of Pink so deep that the bourgeois mind couldn’t tell it from scarlet.
IV
The new Reichstag was summoned promptly. It met in Potsdam, home of the old glories of Prussia, and Hitler applied his genius to the invention of ceremonies to express his patriotic intentions and to arouse the hopes of the German Volk. All the land burst out with flags—the new Hakenkreuz flag, which the Cabinet had decreed should replace that of the dying Republic. Once more the beacons blazed on the hilltops, and there were torchlight parades of all the Nazi organizations, and of students and children. Hitler laid a wreath on the tomb of his dead comrades. Hindenburg opened the Reichstag, and the ceremonies were broadcast to all the schools. The "Bohemian corporal" delivered one of his inspired addresses, in which he told his former Field Marshal that by making him Chancellor he had "consummated the marriage between the symbols of ancient glory and of young might."