and their brief-cases. A harum-scarum sort of affair, in which all sorts of blunders were made;
America was going to be a land of absurdities for many years, and the Robbie Budds would
have endless opportunities to ridicule and denounce. But business would begin to pick up and
people would begin to eat again—and not just the Budds.
Lanny didn't have any trouble, for the French banks weren't closed, and he had money to
spare for his refugees. If Irma's income stayed in hock they could go back to Bienvenu—the
cyclone cellar, she called it. She had never had to earn any money in her life, so it was easy for
her to take her husband's debonair attitude to it. If she lost hers, everybody else would lose
theirs, and you wouldn't have any sense of inferiority. Really, it was rather exciting, and the
younger generation took it as a sporting proposition. Irma would swing between that attitude
and her dream of an august and distinguished salon; when Lanny pointed out to her the
inconsistency of the two attitudes she was content to laugh.
VI
Rick came over to spend a few days with them; he was no longer so poor that he had to worry
about a trip to Paris, and it was his business to meet all sorts of people and watch what was
going on. A lame ex-aviator who would some day become a baronet, and who meanwhile had
made a hit as a playwright, was a romantic figure, even though he was extreme in his talk. The
ladies were pleased with him, and Irma discovered that she had what she might call a home-
made lion; she would tell the smartest people how Lanny had been Rick's boyhood chum, had
taken him to conferences all over Europe and helped to plan and even revise his plays; also
how she, Irma, had helped to finance
money back but a considerable profit. It was the first investment that had been her very own,
and she could be excused for being proud of it, and for boasting about it to her mother and her
several uncles.
Irma decided more and more that she liked the English attitude to life. Englishmen felt
intensely, as you soon found out, but they were content to state their position quietly, and even
to understate it; they didn't raise their voices like so many Americans, or gesticulate like the
French, or bluster like the Germans. They had been in the business of governing for a long
time, and rather took it for granted; but at the same time they were willing to consider the
other fellow's point of view, and to work out some sort of compromise. Especially did that seem
to be the case with continental affairs, where they were trying so hard to mediate between the
French and the Germans. Denis de Bruyne said:
they are disposing of French interests!"
The Conference on Arms Limitation was still in session at Geneva, still wrangling, exposing
the unwillingness of any nation to trust any other, or to concede what might be to a rival
nation's advantage. Rick, the Socialist, said: "There isn't enough trade to go round, and they
can't agree how to divide it." Jesse Blackless, the Communist, said: "They are castaways on a
raft, and the food is giving out; they know that somebody has to be eaten, and who will
consent to be the first?"
There was a lot of private conferring between the British and the French, and British officials
were continually coming and going in Paris. Rick brought several of them to the palace for
tea and for dancing, and this was the sort of thing for which Irma had wanted the palace; she
felt that she was getting her money's worth—though of course she didn't use any such crude
phrase. Among those who came was that Lord Wickthorpe whom she had met in Geneva last
year. He had a post of some responsibility, and talked among insiders, as he counted Rick and
the Budds. Irma listened attentively, because, as a hostess, she had to say something and
wanted it to be right. Afterward she talked with Lanny, getting him to explain what she hadn't
understood. Incidentally she remarked: "I wish you could take a balanced view of things, the
way Wickthorpe does."
"Darling," he answered, "Wickthorpe is a member of the British aristocracy, and is here to
fight for the Empire. He's got pretty much of everything he wants, so naturally he can take
things easy."
"Haven't you got what you want, Lanny?"
"Not by a darn sight! I want a better life for masses of people who aren't in the British
Empire, and for many in the Empire whom Wickthorpe leaves out of his calculations."
"But, Lanny, you heard him say: 'We're all Socialists now.'"
"I know, dear; it's a formula. But they write their definition of the word, and it means that
Wickthorpe will do the governing, and decide what the workers are to get. The slum-dwellers
in the East End will go on paying tribute to the landlords, and the ryots in India and the
niggers in South Africa will be sweated to make luxury for British bondholders."
