That meant almost as much work as getting out a paper, but it was taken off the editors’ hands by Rahel and Freddi. They went to visit the Tiptons, and the head of that household agreed to bake a ham and roast a turkey and provide all the necessary fixings. The head was a large stout lady, extraordinarily agile, and as full of conversation and fun as her husband. “I’ll take charge of everything,” she said, “but don’t let him know it.” By “him” she meant the man with the white mustaches. “He thinks he runs things but he doesn’t,” she explained with a wink that women would understand.
At the appointed hour a table was spread in the dining-room of the mansion, and there were heaps of sliced turkey and ham, several kinds of bread sliced and buttered, potato salad, celery, cranberry jelly out of cans, pickles, jellied fruits, salted almonds and cashew nuts, olives, chocolates, and other delicacies that belong on such a table. There was a great bowl of grape and pineapple juice with a cake of ice floating in it; also a steaming urn of coffee. The deceased Emily Chattersworth was paying for all this, and she would have enjoyed it.
The authors came, bringing their wives or their lady friends. The well-to-do came in their own cars and the poor were met at the station. Some were short and stout and some were lean and spectacled, some were smooth shaven and some had fancy little beards. Always they tried to look important, and their conversation was highly intellectual, even when it was shop. Most of them knew one another, but they didn’t know this outfit and were curious about it; they looked closely at everything.
The place wasn’t elegant, but it looked as if it was meant to be permanent, and that was the important thing. So many fly-by-night propositions tried to take up the time and energy of authors, especially those who had “names.” All of these men had promised to write for the bureau, and several were already at work.
Sir Eric, who had interviewed them all, acted as host and introduced them to the others. They had seen a picture of Lady Nielson in the papers, and most of them had read something by Mary Morrow, though they hadn’t seen her before and didn’t know where she came from. The vague Mr. Budd was presumably the business manager or something like that. They didn’t know that the tall, thin Jewish lad was a nephew of Hansi Robin; if they had they would have paid more attention to him, at least to ask if he also was a musician.
Hansi was coming but not Bess; she had a committee meeting that Sunday evening, and she said that what Lanny was doing was bourgeois futility. Another million dollars that might as well be spent on chorus girls! Johannes’s chauffeur drove Hansi, and they had a flat tire and arrived late, after all the turkey was gone; fortunately Hansi was a reformed-style Jew and could eat ham. He had brought his fiddle, which he did only on occasions where he wanted to do his host special honor.
After the meal they sat around and chatted for a while, and then Sir Eric got up to make a few remarks. He thought they would be interested to hear from members of the new group about the ideas which were moving them. He apologized for coming, as a foreigner, to set up an educational enterprise in America; but the world had become one so fast that Britain and America were next-door neighbors. It was a fact that London was now as near to New York as Edgemere, New Jersey, had been when the American nation was founded; Peiping or Moscow was as near to New York as Philadelphia had been in those days. Also, the fates had tied London and New York together; they were allies whether they liked it or not.
The speaker went on to declare that the group was hoping to do a scientific job; not merely to talk about world peace and to yearn for it, but to work for it and get it. It was surely scientific to believe that world wars had causes. Given any set of phenomena, science set out to find the cause for them; that was just as true of wars as of cancer, and surely world wars killed many more people than cancer. They wanted to bring the best brains of the world to work on the problem of the causes of modern wars, and how to remove these causes or reduce their impact.
“It is our belief,” said Rick, “that the main driving force to war in these modern days is economic; it is the result of a competitive economy and the race for raw materials and foreign markets. A profit economy cannot market all its products at home, for it does not pay its workers enough. A profit economy is a drive to expansion, and so it becomes a drive to war. After the war is won, there will be unlimited production until the wreckage is repaired; then again there will be overproduction and crisis.
“If this idea is correct, the public should surely have a chance to consider it. But the fact is that if you write along this line, no matter how well you write, you cannot get publication in any but a small-circulation paper. You cannot get it into any big daily; you cannot get it into the Saturday Evening Post, or Collier’s, or the Reader’s Digest—and so on down the line. All the big-circulation media are Big Business enterprises and they are committed to the Big Business side of every question.
“What we are trying to do is set up one or more media whereby the unpopular aspects of the war-versus-peace problem can get an airing, and to make it possible for independent men and women to live while doing such writing. Whether we shall be able to get mass circulation is a question; we propose to make a try for it, and we believe that our success would make a tremendous difference in the future of both America and Britain, which from now on have to sink or swim together. It will do us Britons very little good to put an end to profiteering in our country if you in America permit it to go on growing like a giant upas tree.”
VII
That was Sir Eric’s story; and then he introduced Mary Morrow. That small, birdlike lady wore a simple blue dress, and she had not smeared any goo on her lips or paint on her cheeks. She was so much wrapped up in what she was thinking that she had a tendency to speak too fast; having had this pointed out to her, she would stop, pause for a moment, and then make another slow start. What she said was:
“There is an aspect of the peace problem that especially concerns us women. If you read the books of our opponents, the defenders of war, or those who tell us that we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that wars are inevitable, you will learn that nations have to expand because their populations have expanded, and they have to have more room—Lebensraum, the Germans call it. If you lived in Germany, as I did, you would hear these same gentlemen advocating large families—in order that the nation might be able to expand.
“I agree with everything that Sir Eric has said about the economic causes of modern wars, but I think that overpopulation is another cause and I know that we have the remedy right at hand. It is birth control, or what they are now calling planned parenthood. All you have to do is to let the women know about it, and the women will do the rest. No woman with even the beginning of a mind wants to kill herself with continuous child-bearing, as our Puritan and pioneer foremothers did. But when we try to talk about that subject you know well what opposition we encounter from the Roman Catholic Church, and from legislators who have been elected by its influence. This, it seems to me, is a challenge to the integrity of every writer in the world.
“If you investigate you find that the Catholic legislators themselves use the technique of contraception in their private lives—the size of their families reveals that, and polls have shown that more than fifty per cent of Catholic women defy the dogmas of their Church in this respect. But the dogmas serve to keep the information from the poor, who need it most; they cause the laboring population to reproduce unduly, and then when there is starvation in Italy or Spain or Poland or Bavaria or other Catholic lands, you hear rumbles of discontent and threats of revolution, and so the politicians and the military gentlemen decide that the country must expand, it must take some of the land of its neighbors, who are in the very same fix. They don’t say that they must get some of their superfluous men killed off and keep some of their women childless, but that is what they do when they go to war, and they have to do it every generation or so in order to keep their evil system going. The surplus populations of Europe used to come to America, but now we
have our own surplus, and our own threat of hard times and social discontent always hanging over our heads.”
There was a scattering of applause when Mary Morrow ceased, and it was apparent that there were no victims of superstition in this gathering. Lady Nielson said a few words, just by way of welcome, and then she suggested that questions were in order. A woman writer asked if it was their program to give a hearing to all sides or only to their own; Rick answered, “We have discussed that problem. It sounds good to say that we are conducting an open forum, and if we had the circulation and the resources, say, of the Reader’s Digest it would be fun to do it. The Reader’s Digest is a cleverly baited trap for its eight or ten million subscribers. It publishes interesting articles on every harmless subject; but when it comes to the profit system and its evil practices and consequences, there is silence. I think our proper answer is that when the Reader’s Digest and Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post become open forums, we will too. But meantime our space is small, and costs a lot of time and money and labor, and we use it to provide an antidote to the widely circulated poison of the profit-takers.”
The woman writer suggested that sometimes opposition had the effect of stimulating interest. Rick said, “Yes, of course. Both Time and Life occasionally print some saucy letter from our side. They do it by way of a joke, and to show how secure they feel in their citadel of power. We might do that also. I personally feel quite secure in my ability to answer the partisans of privilege.”
VIII
Lanny and Laurel had brought their furniture from the New York apartment they were giving up, including Lanny’s piano, and now he played the accompaniments for Hansi. This great virtuoso could play the most difficult music, but when he wished to entertain a mixed company he would choose a bit of Salonmusik, which they would enjoy. Now he chose Raff’s Cavatina, which gave him a chance to reveal his passionate tones; and when they applauded, he gave them one of Fritz Kreisler’s charming imitations of Corelli. After that Rick asked him to say what he thought about the peace enterprise, and Hansi replied modestly that he was no orator, but he had known these friends for a long time and believed what they believed; he would come any time they asked him and play over the radio for them, and would try to persuade other musicians to do the same. That was handsome, and calculated to reassure a group of writers who were embarking on a voyage with a captain and crew they didn’t know very well.
After that everybody loosened up, and ideas were exchanged freely. When they took their departure they all appeared to be satisfied, and some of the prosperous ones took the unprosperous into their cars, which was according to the code of comradeship. When the last had departed the five conspirators—they were counting Freddi now—sat, according to custom, discussing their guests, what they looked like as well as what they had said.
The way for men to learn things is to listen to the women, and it was truly amazing what Laurel with her quick-darting brown eyes and Nina with her blue ones had observed. That Mrs. Edgerton, for example! She and her husband had been traveling about Edgemere with a real-estate agent, looking for some place to live. When they had arrived at The Willows, the husband had been carrying two suitcases, and the wife had gone upstairs to change her clothes. She had descended in state, wearing pink crepe de chine, far too showy for an informal occasion and too expensive for her husband’s income—though of course she might have money of her own. As to looks, it must be admitted that she had them; a stately figure, real blond hair, and placid perfect features that might have served a sculptor as a model for a Juno. Unfortunately she was conscious of what she had and spent most of her time posing; she would give the men a chance to observe her placid full face and then her perfect profile. “I’m afraid she’s not thinking about much else,” said Nina.
“I’m afraid also that she takes her social position seriously,” added Laurel. “She accepted Rahel as a lady caterer, but she took Comrade Tipton for the butler and didn’t relish being introduced to him.”
“Don’t be mean,” said Lanny, and his lady answered quickly, “A woman like that can ruin a man, or take him out of the movement. If you don’t believe it I’ll go out and buy a costume like that and let you see what it costs!”
IX
Yes, when it comes to women, it is better to take the word of women, who make it their business to know. The morning after this enjoyable party Lanny went into his wife’s room, where she was supposed to be getting her things unpacked and in order, and he found her sitting on the bed, her eyes inflamed, and tears in them which she couldn’t keep away. “For heaven’s sake!” he exclaimed. “What is the matter?”
She tried to tell him it was nothing; she didn’t want to talk about it, but he insisted, and finally she said, “It’s Flo.”
“Listen, darling,” he said. “It’s silly to hide things from me. You know I’m no worshiper of the family ideal, and I’ll never hold you responsible for your sister’s doings. Why don’t you tell me, and maybe I can help.”
“There’s nothing anybody can do, Lanny. It’s just utterly, utterly horrible!”
“What has she done—robbed a bank? Is she in jail?”
“She ought to be!” She handed him a letter which had just come from the other sister, the rich one in Baltimore. Lanny sat on the bed beside his wife and read it, and before he had got very far he gave a whistle and exclaimed, “Holy smoke!” The letter read:
“Dear Laurel: Perhaps you have heard from Flo telling you that she has made what she calls a catch. She is married to an old man who was one of our leading physicians. He is close to eighty and quite well-to-do. He has been living for years with two sisters, almost as old as himself, and Flo took the job of housekeeper, and I suppose she managed to seduce the old man. Naturally, the sisters opposed the idea of a marriage, so then the fight was on. Flo took him to a justice of the peace, and then drove him back to the town house and left him. With the marriage certificate in her handbag, she drove to their place in the country, where she knew there were many sorts of valuables; she loaded the car with everything it would hold—jewels, paintings, antique furniture, and other heirlooms—and took it out and sold it. She is proud of the exploit. She said, ‘I got that much away from them anyhow!’
“Incredible as it may seem, the infatuated old man stands by her, and the sisters, being gentlewomen, will not make a public scandal. They have moved out of their home, and now Flo has everything. The story is all over town, and you can imagine how I feel, living in the midst of it, knowing that my friends are talking about nothing else. You are lucky to be a couple of hundred miles away. Myself, I would be glad to-be a couple of hundred thousand.”
Lanny couldn’t help laughing as he read; perhaps that was the best way to take it. He repeated the pungent motto: “God gave us our relatives, thank God we can choose our friends.” But that didn’t keep the tears out of Laurel’s eyes. “Those poor women, Lanny—to be turned out of their home by an adventuress!”
“She did to them exactly what her stepmother had done to her. She acted on the principles of the American Indian.” Laurel, it developed, didn’t know about the principles of the American Indian, so he explained that whenever a white man had wronged an Indian, the Indian avenged himself on the next white man he met.
“Darling,” he said, “there’s no sense in your tearing your heart out. You have absolutely nothing to do with it, and nobody with any sense is going to blame you. You have to tell yourself that it’s the very thing you are fighting—wholesale greed. The higher the stakes in the gamble, the greater the pressure on frail human nature, and the crazier people go. It’s the automatic effect of inequality of wealth, and the longer it continues the worse it gets. In the end it will destroy our whole society if it’s permitted to continue.”
That was the way to make it tolerable, to present it as a thesis in economics, a part of their crusade. Laurel would turn her shame into social rage; she would identify the two outraged old ladies with all the robbed and oppressed of t
he earth. It didn’t fit quite accurately, because even in a co-operative society there would be no way to prevent the use of sex for purposes of parasitism—so long as men were fools and women were predatory! But at least you could keep from bringing women up as Flo had been brought up, to regard useful service as a disgrace and vanity and display as glamour.
X
A marriage in Lanny’s family also! There came a letter from Beauty, telling him the news that Marceline had met an American lieutenant recuperating in Cannes and had fallen in love with him, something she had vowed would never happen to her again. But she was a new woman now, not so centered upon herself. He was a nice fellow, what there was of him; he walked with a limp and had lost his right arm. But Marceline had plenty of money, and they would get along. This time there was to be a proper wedding, and how Beauty wished that her only son could be present!
A letter from Parsifal was enclosed. He didn’t write often, only when he had something he thought worth saying. Now he had a curious story, about a British Indian official who had been returning home on account of the breakdown of his health and had stopped in Cannes for the winter. Parsifal had told him about God—not Jehovah of the thunders, Lord God of battles, but the loving Father who was in his heart—and this latter God had greatly assisted the gentleman’s health. With him he had brought two talking myna birds, alert and lively creatures like crows, about ten inches long, shiny black, with white patches on their wings and yellow bills and legs. They lived on fruit, and had been kept alive on the steamer voyage with grapes and other fruits frozen in the ship’s refrigerator. Here on the Riviera, the nights being sometimes chilly, they had to be tied up in paper sacks every night, with little holes for ventilation; they seemed to enjoy this greatly and made a terrible fuss when taken out of the sacks, presumably because they didn’t know it was daylight.