It was good to have Robbie at hand in a time like this; self-possessed as ever, a firm rock of counsel, also a checkbook open to friends in trouble. He and Beauty and Lanny settled down to a conference; and presently Harry Murchison came into it — forcing himself in, by taking his problem to Robbie. They had met once before and were on friendly terms, Harry being the sort of fellow that Robbie approved.
“Mr. Budd,” said he, “I don't know why you and Beauty parted, and I'm not interested; but I know you're still her friend, and she listens to you, and I wish you'd give her sensible advice. I want to marry her — right now — today — and take her out of this hell that's starting here. She can have a new life in America; I'll do most anything she asks, give her anything she can think of. As for Lanny, I'll take care of him, or you can — I like the boy, and we'll be the best of friends if he'll let me. Surely that's a fair offer!”
Robbie thought it was; and so the whole situation was forced into the open. Lanny talked to his father, not merely about Marcel, but about Baron Livens-Mazursky, and Dr. Bauer-Siemans, and the Hackaburys, and Isadora, and Anatole France, and all the rest; he had to make Robbie understand how he came to know so much about love, and why he was taking it upon himself to keep a French painter from losing his beautiful blond mistress. Robbie didn't have much use for either Frenchmen or painters, but he was very much for Lanny, and couldn't help being tickled by this odd situation, a sensitive, idealistic kid undertaking to make a hero out of his mother's lover — and seeming very likely to get away with it. It was clear that Beauty was still half in love with her painter; the other half in love with the idea of becoming a respectable American lady, wife of a man who could give her security and position. Which would she choose?
II
It was a time for showdowns. In the crash of kingdoms and empires, human blunders and failures shrank to smaller proportions. Beauty took her son into a room apart, and told him a story which so far she had kept from nearly everyone she knew. She couldn't look him in the eyes, and blushed intensely — her throat, her cheeks, her forehead. “Your father and I have never been married, Lanny. The story that we are divorced is one that I made up to protect you and me. I didn't want people to know that you are illegitimate, and make it a handicap to your life.”
She rushed on to pour out the details, defending both herself and Robbie. They had met in Paris when they were very young, and they had loved each other truly, and had planned to marry. But Beauty had been an artist's model, and had been painted in the nude. Lanny would understand that, he knew what art was; one of the pictures had been exhibited in a salon, and was much admired. But some malicious person had sent a photograph of it to Robbie's father, the head of an old and proud family of Puritan New England. It had meant only one thing to him, that Beauty was an indecent woman; he was a harsh and domineering man, and was he going to have his son marrying a painter's model, and having her picture in the newspapers naked instead of in the usual bridal costume? That was what he said, and he laid down the law: if Robbie married such a woman his father would disown and disinherit him.
Robbie wanted to do it, even so, but Beauty wouldn't let him; she loved him and wouldn't wreck his life. They had lived together without marriage; the father had consented to ignore his son's mistress, something not so unusual, even for Puritans in New England. It was hard on Lanny, but they hadn't meant for him to happen — Lanny had been an accident, said his mother at the climax of her confusion and blushes.
She had thought she would never have the courage to tell this story to her son; she took it for granted that he would receive it with shame, and perhaps with anger toward her. But Lanny had by now seen so much of lawless love, and heard about so much more, that the distinctions were blurred in his mind. He said it didn't worry him to be illegitimate; it hadn't hurt his health, and it wouldn't hurt his feelings if somebody called him a bastard — he had read about them in Shakespeare and had got the impression that they were a lively lot. What did give him shivers was the idea of having been an “accident.” “Where would I have been, and what would I have been, if you and Robbie hadn't had me?”
Tears came into the mother's bright blue eyes; she saw that he was trying to spare her; he was being a darling, as usual. She hastened to explain the situation which now confronted her, the reasons why her decision was so important. If she were to marry Harry Murchison, that would cover all her past and make her a “respectable” woman; it wouldn't make Lanny legitimate, but it would keep anybody from bothering about it — and anyhow Robbie intended to acknowledge him as his son.
Lanny could understand all that; but he said: “What good will it do you to be respectable if you aren't happy?”
“But, Lanny!” she exclaimed. “I mean to be happy with Harry.”
“Maybe,” said he; “but I don't believe you'll ever forget that you left Marcel without any cause. Suppose he goes and jumps off the Cap?”
“Oh, Lanny, he won't do that!”
“How can you be sure? And then, suppose that France mobilizes? Marcel will have to go to war, won't he?”
Beauty turned pale; that was the horror she couldn't bring herself to face. The boy, seeing that he had the advantage, pushed harder. “Could you bear to leave him if you knew he had gone to fight for his country?” All Beauty could do was to bury her face in her arms and weep. Lanny said: “You better wait and see what happens.”
III
They wouldn't have to wait long. Surely nobody could complain of the slowness of events at the end of July 1914! First it was Russia mobilizing one and a quarter million men; then it was the German Kaiser serving an ultimatum to the effect that Russia had to cease mobilizing. Paris buzzed like a beehive at swarming time; for France was Russia's ally and was bound to go to war if Russia was attacked.
Robbie had said that the governments would find him, and they did. By one means or another, word spread that the representative of Budd's was staying at the Hotel Crillon, in a front suite with a pleasant view up the Champs-Élysées. Military gentlemen representing most of the governments of Europe came to enjoy that view, and partake of the array of drinks which Robbie had upon the sideboard in his reception room — all going onto the expense account of a munitions salesman. The immaculately uniformed gentlemen came to find out what stocks Budd's had on hand at present — of guns and ammunition, of course, not of whiskies, brandies, and liqueurs.
Robbie would smile suavely, and say that he regretted that Budd's was such a very small plant, and had practically no stocks on hand. “You know how it is, I begged your General So-and-So to place an order last year. I warned you all what was coming.”
“Yes, we know,” the military gentlemen would reply, sorrowfully. “If the decision* had rested with us, we should have been prepared. But the politicians, the parliaments” — they would shrug their shoulders. “What could we do?”
Robbie knew all about politicians and parliaments; in his country they were called Congress and had steadily refused to vote what the safety of the country required. Now, of course, there would be a quick change, the purse strings would be loosened. The policy of Budd's was fixed; it was “first come, first served” to all the world. The terms in this present crisis would be fifty percent of the purchase price to be placed in escrow with the First National Bank of Newcastle, Connecticut, before the order was accepted; the balance to be placed in escrow a week before the completion of the order, to be paid against bills of lading when shipment was made. Munitions makers had grown suddenly exacting, it appeared. Robbie added confidentially — to everyone — that he had cabled his firm recommending an immediate increase of fifty percent in its entire schedule of prices: this to meet inevitable rises in the cost of materials and labor.