“Just sitting staring in front of her.”
“Has she got a looking glass?”
Lanny saw that his father was determined to keep out of it; so he looked up the word “marketless.” But before he started on the word “lightening,” he interrupted again. “Robbie, does it often happen that a woman thinks she is in love with two men and can't decide which?”
“Yes,” said the father, “it happens to both men and women.” He put down the letter he was reading and added: “It happened to me, when I had to decide whether I was going to get married or not.” It was the first time Robbie had ever spoken of that event to his son, and the boy waited to see if he'd say more. “I had to make up my mind, and I did. And now Beauty has to do it. It won't hurt her to sit staring in front of her. She's owed it to herself for a long while to do some serious thinking.”
So Lanny looked up “lightening,” and three or four words more. But he couldn't help trying once again. “Robbie, you don't want me to give Beauty advice; but I've already given her some, and I know it's counting with her. You don't think it was good advice?”
“It wasn't what I'd give her; but it may be right for her. She's a sentimental person, and it seems she's very much in love with that painter fellow.”
“Oh, really she is, Robbie. I watched them all the time on the yacht. Anybody could see it.”
“But he's a lot younger than she is; and that's going to make a tragedy some day.”
“You mean, Marcel will stop loving her?”
“Not entirely, perhaps; he'll be torn in half, just the way she is now.”
“You mean he'll get interested in some younger woman?”
“I mean he'll have to be a saint if he doesn't; and I haven't met any saints among French painters.”
“You ought to know Marcel better, Robbie. He is one of the very best men I ever have met.”
“I'm taking your word for him. But there's a lot you still must learn, son. Beauty would be poor — that is, by the standards of everyone she knows or wants to know. And that's awful hard on the affections. It gets worse and worse as you get older, too.”
“You think it's right for people to marry for money, then?”
“I think there's an awful lot of bunk talked on the subject. People fool themselves, and try to fool other people. I've watched marriages, scores of them, and I know that money was the important element in most. It was dressed up in fine words, of course; it was called 'family,' and 'social position,' and 'culture,' and 'refinement.'”
“But aren't those things real?”
“Sure they are. Each is like a fine house; it's built on a foundation — and the foundation is money. If you build a house without any foundation, it doesn't last long.”
“I see,” said the boy. It impressed him greatly, like everything his father said.
“Don't let anybody fool you about money, son. The people who talk that nonsense don't believe it themselves. They tell you that money won't buy this, that, and the other thing. I tell you that money will buy an awful lot, especially if you're a good shopper. You get my point?”
“Oh, sure, Robbie.”
“Take Edna Hackabury. Money bought her a yacht, and the yacht got her a lot of friends. Now she's lost her yacht, and she and her captain will have to live on two thousand pounds a year; and how many of her old friends will come to see her? She'll be embarrassed if they do, because she can't keep up with them. She'll find that she's forced to get some cheaper friends.”
“I know, Robbie, there are people like that; but others are interested in art, and music, and books, and so on.”
“That's quite true; and I'm glad to see that you prefer such friends. But when those friends grow old, and their blood flows slower, they'll want a warm fire, and money will buy the fire. Money won't buy them appreciation of books, but it will buy them books, and what's the use of appreciation if you haven't anything to use it on? No, son, the only way to be happy without money is to go and live in a tub, like Diogenes, or be a Hindu with a rag around your loins and a bowl to beg for rice. Even then you can't live unless other people have cared enough for money to grow rice, and to market and transport it.”
“Then you don't think there's anything we can do for Beauty?” “What I think, son, is that one or the other of us has got to work at that code; because this is a time of crisis, and a whole lot of women have worse troubles than trying to make up their minds which man they want.”
VIII
That was the first of August; and early in the day came the news that Germany had declared war on Russia. Soon afterward it was reported that both Germany and France had ordered general mobilization.
The temper of Paris changed in an hour. Previously everything had been hushed; people anxious, frightened, horrified. But now the die was cast. It was war! That hateful Kaiser with his waxed mustaches, those military men who surrounded him, strutting and blustering — they had thrown Europe into the furnace. At least, that was the way the Paris crowds saw it; and business came to an end for the day, everybody rushed into the streets. Bugles sounding everywhere, drums rolling, crowds marching and cheering. They were singing the “Marseillaise” on every street corner; and “Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre” — to which Americans sing “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow”; also the “Carmagnole,” which Americans do not know-all the old revolutionary songs of France, now become patriotic and respectable.
Lanny finished his secretarial labors and went out to see the sights, the most stirring any boy could have imagined. Pink mobilization orders posted on kiosks and walls; young men assembling and marching to the trains; women and girls running beside them, singing, weeping hysterically, or laughing, borne up by the excitement of the throngs; people throwing flowers at them, putting roses in the soldiers' red caps, in the hair of the girls. And the regiments marching to the railroad stations, or being loaded into trucks — it wouldn't be long before you could no longer find a taxicab or even a horse in Paris.
And then back to the Hotel Crillon. The Champs-Élysées, that wide avenue, and the great open spaces, the Place de la Concorde, the Place du Carrousel, now like military encampments; regiments marching, horses galloping, artillery rumbling, people singing, shouting: “La guerre! La guerre!”
Inside the hotel another kind of tumult, for it appeared that there were thousands of Americans in Paris, and they all wanted to get out quickly. Many were caught without funds; they wanted food and shelter, railroad tickets, steamer accommodations, everything all at once. They had been reading about a new kind of warfare, and had visions of squadrons of German airplanes dropping bombs upon Paris that afternoon. It seemed that every person who had ever met Robbie Budd was now asking him for advice, for the loan of money, for his influence in getting something from the embassy, from the consulate, from railroad and steamship and travel bureaus.
When they couldn't get hold of Robbie, they would go to his former wife, who had always been able to get anything from him. Beauty, who wanted to sit and stare in front of her and think, who wanted to weep without anybody seeing her ruined complexion, had to put on a few dabs of paint and powder, and her lovely blue Chinese morning robe with large golden pheasants on it, and receive her friends, and the friends of her friend Emily and her friend Sophie and her friend Margy, and tell them what Robbie said, that there wasn't any immediate danger, that the embassy would advance money as soon as they had time to hear from Washington, that Robbie himself couldn't possibly do anything, he was besieged by military men trying to buy things which he didn't have and couldn't make for months yet.