unless he made some money in it. To see a chance of profit and grab it was an automatic
reflex; and besides, if you had money you had enemies trying to get it away from you, and you
needed more of it in order to be really safe. Also you got allies and associates; you incurred
obligations to them, and when a crisis came they expected you to play a certain part, and if
you didn't you were a shirker. You were no more free to quit than a general is free to
resign in the midst of a campaign.
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
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.
