X
This made it necessary for Irma to come to a decision which she had postponed to the last moment. Was she going to take the palace for another year? She had got used to it, and had a competent staff well trained; also she was established as a hostess, and it seemed a shame to lose all this momentum. But, on the other hand, money was growing scarcer and scarcer. The dreadful depression—Lanny had shown her the calculations of an economist that it had cost the United States half a dozen times the cost of the World War. Thanks to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, interest payments on industrial bonds were being met, but many of Irma’s "blue chip" stocks were paying no dividends, and she was telling her friends that she was living on chocolate, biscuits, and Coca-Cola—meaning not that these were her diet, but her dividends.
She had Shore Acres on her hands with its enormous overhead; she had had to cut down on her mother, and the mother in turn had notified all the help that they might stay on and work for their keep, but there would be no more salaries. Even so, the food bill was large, and the taxes exorbitant—when were taxes not? Mrs. Barnes’s letters conveyed to her daughter a sense of near destitution.
"You don’t really care very much for this palace, do you, Lanny?" So asked the distressed one, lying in the pink satin splendor of the bed in which Madame de Maintenon was reputed to have entertained the Sun King.
"You know, dear, I don’t undertake to tell you how to spend your money."
"But I’m asking you."
"You know without asking. If you spend more money than you have, you’re poor, no matter what the amount is."
"Do you think if we come back to Paris after the depression, I’ll be able to start as a hostess again?"
"It depends entirely upon how much of your money you have managed to hold on to."
"Oh, Lanny, you’re horrid!" exclaimed the hostess.
"You asked for it," he chuckled.
Nearly a year had passed since the Queen Mother had seen her grandchild, and that was something to be taken into consideration. Her satisfaction would be boundless; and it would be a pleasure to meet all those New York friends and hear the gossip. Lanny could stand it if it wasn’t for too long. And what a relief to Uncle Joseph Barnes, trustee and manager of the Barnes estate, to know that his charge wouldn’t be drawing any checks for a year!
"Lanny, do you suppose that Johannes can really afford to take care of us all that time?"
"He could go alone if he preferred," replied the son of Budd’s. "As a matter of fact, I suspect the rascal has more money now than ever before in his life. He makes it going and coming; whether times are good or bad; whether the market goes up or down."
"How does he manage it, Lanny?"
"He’s watching all the time, and he keeps his money where he can shift it quickly. He’s a bull in good times and a bear in bad."
"It’s really quite wonderful," said Irma. "Do you suppose we could learn to do things that way?"
"Nothing would please him more than to teach us; but the trouble is you have to put your mind on it and keep it there."
"I suppose it would get to be a bore," admitted Irma, stretching her lovely arms and yawning in the pink satin couch of the Grand Monarque’s official mistress.
XI
The young couple ran down to Juan, and Irma and Beauty held a sort of mothers' conference on the problems of their future. Beauty was keen on yachting trips; she found them a distinguished mode of travel; she had learned her geography and history that way, and Irma might do the same. But the important thing was the safety they afforded. Beauty didn’t care how much Red and Pink talk her young people indulged in, provided that outside Reds and Pinks couldn’t get at them, to borrow their money, get them to start schools or papers or what not, and involve them in fights with Fascists and police. Carry them off to sea and keep them—and perhaps find some lovely tropical island where they could settle down and live in peace and harmony until the cycle of revolutions and counter-revolutions had been completed! Let the yacht serve as a supply ship to bring the latest musical compositions and whatever else they had read of; but no Communist or Socialist agitators, no Fascists or Nazis marching, shouting, brandishing guns and daggers! "Do you suppose they have mosquitoes in the South Seas?" inquired the soft pink Beauty Budd.
She persuaded Irma that this was the way to keep her temperamental husband happy and safe. Paris was a frightfully dangerous place right now; look at the way Jesse was carrying on, rushing about from one meeting to another, making hysterical speeches, calling the Nazis all the bad names in the French language! A copy of L’Humanité came every day to Bienvenu, and Beauty would look into it sometimes, thinking that it was her duty to keep track of her brother’s doings; it made her quail, for she knew what fury it would arouse in the Hitlerites, and she knew how many rich and important persons in France sympathized with them. The Croix de Feu, the Jeunesse Française and other groups were preparing to meet force with force; the great banks and other vested interests would surely not permit their power to be destroyed without a fight, and it would be far more bloody and terrible than what had happened in Germany. "Let’s get away from it," pleaded Beauty. "Stay until the storm blows over, and we can judge whether it’s safe to return."
Irma was persuaded, and they sat down and composed between them a letter to Nina, tactfully contrived to be read by Rick without giving him offense. There wasn’t any danger in England—at least, none that Rick would admit—and the word "escapist" was one of his strongest terms of contempt. To Rick the cruise was presented as an ideal opportunity to concentrate upon the writing of a new play. On Nina’s part it would be an act of friendship to come and make a fourth hand at bridge. To Alfy it would offer lessons in geography and history, plus a chance to fight out his temperamental differences with Marceline. If the parents didn’t want to take the youngster from school so early, he could cross to New York by steamer and spend the summer with the party.
They read this letter to Lanny, who said it was all right, but he could do better as concerned his chum. Lanny was cooking up in his head a marvelous scheme. He was guessing the psychology of a Jewish money-master who had just witnessed the seizing of his country by a bunch of gangsters. It was bound to have made a dent in his mind, and dispose him to realize that he and the other capitalists were living and operating inside the crater of a volcano. Lanny was planning to lay a subtle and well-disguised siege to one of the wealthiest of Jews, to persuade him that some form of social change was inevitable, and to get his help to bring it about in orderly fashion. It was the plan which Lanny had already discussed with Rick, to start a weekly paper of free discussion, not pledged to any party or doctrine, but to the general tendency towards co-operative industry conducted under the democratic process.