I
he would have been there to watch every moment. But Irma had her new white elephant on
her hands, and had to get some use of it; several weeks would have to pass before she would
feel justified in going away and leaving its staff of servants idle. Meanwhile, she must invite
people to come, at any hour from noon to midnight. Supposedly she was doing it because she
wanted to see them, but the real reason was that she wanted them to see her. And having
offered them hospitality, she was under obligation to accept theirs; she would be forever on
the go, attending social affairs or getting ready for future affairs.
Always she wanted company; and Lanny went along, because it had been his life's custom to
do what he didn't want to do rather than to see a loved one disappointed and vexed. His wife
was attaining her uttermost desire, she was standing on the apex of the social pyramid; and
what could it mean to her to climb down and go off to London to watch a dozen actors and
actresses rehearsing all day on an empty stage, the women in blouses and the men with their
coats off on a hot day? The fact that one of these women was Phyllis Gracyn didn't increase her
interest, and Lanny mustn't let it increase his too much!
He persuaded the young Robins to stay for a while; he much preferred their company to that
of the fashionable folk. They would play music every morning, and at odd times when social
duties permitted. Nothing was allowed to interfere with Hansi's violin practice; it was his task
to master one great concert piece after another—which meant that he had to fix in his head
hundreds of thousands of notes, together with his own precise way of rendering each one.
Nobody who lived near him could keep from being touched by his extraordinary
conscientiousness. Lanny wished he might have had some such purpose in his own life,
instead of growing up an idler and waster. Too late now, of course; he was hopelessly spoiled!
II
Sitting in the fine library of the Duc de Belleaumont, filled with the stored culture of France,
Lanny had a heart-to-heart talk with his half-sister, from whom he had been drifting apart in
recent years. She was one who had expected great things of him, and had been disappointed.
It wasn't necessary that he should agree with her, she insisted; it was only necessary that he
should make up his mind about anything, and stick to it. Lanny thought that he had made up
his mind as to one thing: that the Communist program, applied to the nations which had
parliamentary institutions, was a tactical blunder. But it would be a waste of time to open up
this subject to Bess.
She had something else she wanted to talk about: the unhappiness which was eating like a
cancer into the souls of the members of the Robin family. They had become divided into three
camps; each husband agreeing with his own wife, but with none of the other members of the
family; each couple having to avoid mentioning any political or economic problem in the
presence of the others. With affairs developing as they now were in Germany, that meant
about every subject except music, art, and old-time books. Johannes read the
Hansi and Bess read the
hated the very sight of the other papers and wouldn't believe a word that was in them. Poor
Mama, who read no newspaper and had only the vaguest idea what the controversy was about,
had to serve as a sort of liaison officer among her loved ones.
There was nothing so unusual about this. Lanny had lived in disagreement with his own
father for the greater part of his life; only it happened that they both had a sense of humor,
and took it out in "joshing" each other. Jesse Blackless had left home because he couldn't agree
with his father; now he never discussed politics with his sister, and always ended up in a
wrangle with his nephew. The majority of radicals would tell you the same sort of stories; it
was a part of the process of change in the world. The young outgrew their parents—or it might
happen that leftist parents found themselves with conservative-minded children. "That will be
my fate," opined the playboy.
In the Robin family the problem was made harder because all the young people took life so
seriously; they couldn't pass things off with teasing remarks. To all four of them it seemed
obvious that their father had enough money and to spare, and why in the name of Karl Marx
couldn't he quit and get out of the filthy mess of business plus politics in which he wallowed?
Just so the person who has never gambled cannot understand why the habitué hangs on, hell-
bent upon making up his night's losses; the teetotaler cannot understand the perversity
which compels the addict to demand one more nip. To Johannes Robin the day was a blank
