In fact, it was to be doubted if ever since the days of the slave trade such a package of excitement had arrived by sea in the little harbor of Newcastle, Connecticut. The news of Lanny’s marriage to America’s newest heiress had been released by Mrs. Barnes as soon as the yacht had left London, and it hadn’t taken many hours to reach the home of Budd Gunmakers Corporation. Soon it had become known that the yacht was coming here, and fashionable society was sitting up in watchtowers. Several of the smartest set had met Irma Barnes in New York, and these distributed their information and helped to keep curiosity alive.
Irma was the brightest star in the constellation, but by no means the only one of the first magnitude. For more than thirty years the tongues of gossip had been busy with the personality of Beauty Budd. She had never been to Newcastle; in fact she had never visited her native land in all those years. Now she was coming, and was to be received in the Budd home—the fiction of a marriage and divorce being maintained. This had to be done, if only on account of Irma; impossible for the family to admit that there was anything wrong with the mother-in-law of their new fairy princess!
Also in this constellation was Beauty’s son, whom you might call a variable star; a dark one when he had passed below Newcastle’s horizon, he was now shining brightly, even though by reflected light. There is a phenomenon of the heavens known as a double star: a dark one and a bright one revolve about each other, and thousands of eyes are kept glued upon them in the hope of gleaning new items of information concerning the nature and behavior of celestial bodies.
And then the Robin family. Hansi might be likened to a shining meteor which sweeps through the night sky and sweeps away again. No one could be certain how long he would last, but meanwhile he was a portent, and Newcastle would not forget the explosion he had caused by picking up and dragging off in his train one of the brightest planets of the Newcastle Country Club system. Hansi’s father also was a sun in his own right, and marked on the map of many Newcastle stargazers. To drop an overworked simile, Johannes was an important financier, and many of the town’s leading businessmen held stock in his enterprises; these solid citizens didn’t go in for society flubdub, but were glad to meet and converse with a man of ability and experience.
II
The party was taken to the Robbie Budd home for tea, and members of the family were on hand to welcome them. Not old Samuel, for he rarely went out now, and not even after thirty years could he be persuaded to meet the woman who had seduced his son. But others of the tribe were less stiff-necked, and the younger generation was possessed by curiosity. From this tea party the news spread quite literally with the speed of lightning, for in every home except the very poorest in Newcastle this force had been harnessed and taught to serve the public welfare. “What hath God wrought?” the inventor of the process had piously inquired, and the answer was that God had wrought a means whereby gossip might be distributed over a small city with astonishing celerity. “What does she look like?” and “What was she wearing?” and “What did she say?” and “How did Esther greet her?” and “Is she going to keep them in her house?”
The press had fair warning, and it was a red-letter day for local correspondents; the stories they sent over the wire would not stop until they had reached Key West and San Diego and Walla Walla. Lanny Budd, who had had such a blissful time for two months in the haunts of the whale and the eider duck, now discovered suddenly what this marriage was going to mean. On the wharf were several men with square black boxes which made snapping noises when a button was pressed; already they had snapped the yacht, and now it was necessary for Irma and her husband to line up, and then Hansi and Bess with them. The local photographers wanted the whole party. Meanwhile the reporters were plying Irma and Lanny with questions: where had they been, what sort of weather had they had, what had they done, where were they going to live, what did they think about Europe and America, and which did they prefer?
You had to be polite to them, for they represented the most powerful force in the land, and could make you or break you. If you were wise you would employ a skilled publicity man to tell you what to say, and to be present at interviews and smooth over the rough places. Irma’s mother had engaged one in New York, but now Irma was taken by surprise, and Lanny couldn’t help her very much, his experience having been slight. Robbie had arranged for a collective interview at his home, but deadlines know no decorum, so Lanny had to try to think in a hurry what the great public might like to read about a bride with twenty-three million dollars, and also about the lucky young “socialite” who had got her. What would have pleased the public most was a bulletin to the effect that she was pregnant; but that being barred, Lanny said that they had played music on the deck most of the time, they had a piano on rubber wheels, also a violin, a clarinet, and a soprano voice. He didn’t mention the mouth-organ; but, as it happened, one of the reporters dug that out of the crew, and made an amusing item about life on a German millionaire’s yacht.
Somehow the word got about that the sons and daughters-in-law of Johannes Robin were Reds, and that the spouse of Irma Budd was decidedly tinged with pink. Wasn’t there a story about his having been kicked out of Italy five years ago? The ordinary press associations didn’t refer to this, for it was not their practice to mention dangerous thoughts unless the carriers of them had got arrested or something like that; but there were “tabs” in New York which would publish anything “spicy,” and there were men who specialized in collecting personal details about celebrities and broadcasting them over the radio. Lanny found that he had become almost overnight a shining mark for these gentry. They didn’t intend to be mean to him; he was just an amiable playboy who had been catapulted suddenly into the spotlight and had, at a conservative estimate, thirty million pairs of eyes fixed upon his daily and nightly doings.
III
Esther Budd considered it her duty to invite the entire party to her home, which had plenty of room. But the guests had talked the matter over in advance and decided otherwise. The young people would come, but the middle-aged, the mothers and fathers, would stay on board the yacht, where they were comfortable and wouldn’t be in danger of spoiling the good times. Mama Robin didn’t care for fashionable society; she knew perfectly well that these smart people would be laughing at her stumbling English, and she preferred her own little nook where she had everything the way she wanted it. As for Beauty, she knew that she was being forced upon Esther, and desired to make the strain as light as possible. Also there was the obstacle of Beauty’s husband, whose private wire to heaven would please the daughter of the Puritans no more than that of Roger Williams had pleased her forefathers of three centuries earlier.
The Robbie Budds gave a reception in their home the second evening after the yacht’s arrival, and all the members of the party came to that, and met the social elite of Newcastle valley. The doors of the country club were opened to the visitors, and there were dinners and festive events. Irma had telegraphed for her staff, and her chauffeur was on hand with her car, her social secretary, and her maid; her wardrobe trunks were brought out of the hold of the yacht, and without a moment’s delay she fell into the routine which had been dropped when she fled from Rome. Everything was done to make smooth her path, and she would emerge from her boudoir ready for the world to gaze at her, and certain that it would. Lanny, too, might enjoy the same assurance; he had nothing to do but display himself as the winner and keeper of the most precious prize in the lottery of high life.
As usual, one half of him liked it, and the other half was skeptical. He had not forgotten how all these people had recieved him when he had come among them as a lad; not unkindly, but with watchful caution, and then with amusement or indignation, according to their temperaments, when they saw him following the footsteps of his mother in the primrose path of dalliance. Now he returned in glory, and his sins which had been scarlet became white as snow. Now he was the glass of fashion and the mold of form, the observed of all observers, the model for you
th to follow—in short, he had “made good,” and young and old hastened to lay their tributes at his feet. The girls of Newcastle who had been sub-debs during the war now had new names and were the “young matrons” of the country club; they recalled themselves to him, and noting his elegant manners and brilliant conversation, compared him sadly with the rather dull young businessmen whom fate had assigned to them. If only they had been clever enough to realize how an ugly duckling can grow into a swan!
The same thing happened to Mabel Blackless, alias Beauty Budd, alias Madame Detaze, alias Mrs. Parsifal Dingle. Shining in the reflected glory of her son and daughter-in-law, she was really phenomenal. Her years were almost fifty, but she had devoted a great part of them to keeping herself beautiful, and had acquired no little skill. Had she set out to punish Esther by making a conquest of the town? She treated Robbie as an old friend, and in fact treated all Newcastle that way; her manner seemed to say: “Yes, we have lived together in our thoughts for a long time, and I know that you have not appreciated me, but I don’t hold it against you, for there were three thousand miles of ocean between us and you couldn’t be expected to understand me and my ways. But I have always known about yours, and you are being so kind to me and my darling boy and his lovely young bride, and we all hope you will love us and see that the evil gossip about us was not true.” It was a symptom of the change in the times that Beauty Budd could “get away with” all that, and that a town with so many Protestant churches presented her with the keys of its country club.
IV
One of Lanny’s first duties was to take his bride to call upon his grandfather. The president of Budd Gunmakers was now eighty-two, and failing; his cheeks hung in pouches, and there were folds of loose skin under his chin; his hand trembled so that he had a hard time drinking a glass of water. But he still hung onto his power; those shaking hands held a great business, and no important decision was made without his knowledge. His sons tried to spare him, but he wouldn’t let them. His old home was unchanged, and his old servants; his Sunday morning Bible class for men was now conducted by an assistant, but the old gentleman came and listened to make sure that there was no departure from the principles set forth in that Brief Digest of the Boston Confession of Faith which he had handed to his grandson at their first encounter.
The old man lifted himself carefully from his chair in honor of the lovely young woman who was escorted into his study. He had heard all about her, looked her over carefully, and made sure that she was well formed and healthy. “Welcome, my dear,” he said; and then to Lanny: “You waited quite a while, young man!”
“I only just met her at the beginning of this year,” said Lanny, with a grin. “She was worth waiting for.”
The head of the Budd tribe couldn’t dispute that statement. His vast plant had to work several years to gain the profits this young whippersnapper had picked up by walking off with a girl. It seemed preposterous, but it was a fact and had to be faced. “We are happy to welcome you into the Budd tribe,” said the old Puritan; it was a condescension, and the new granddaughter expressed her gratitude and said that everybody was being very kind to her. He was looking at her steadily, but that didn’t worry her, for she knew that he couldn’t be displeased with what he saw.
“Well, my boy, I hear that you have turned into quite a businessman of late.”
“It wouldn’t seem very much to you, sir, but it has been convenient for me. It’s partly due to the fact that my late stepfather’s work has been winning so much attention. It really looks as if the paintings which he left would bring more than a million dollars.”
“You don’t say so! Make people pay for them—they will think a lot more of them.”
“Yes, sir. That appears to be the way. It is too bad that some way can’t be found so that painters may reap some of that benefit during their lifetimes.”
“Unfortunately, paintings are out of my line,” said the aged Puritan. (“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”)
“Have you seen any of the pictures which I have purchased for clients in Newcastle, sir?”
“I haven’t seen them, but they have told me that they are pleased; and a satisfied customer comes back for more business.”
“So I have observed.”
“Well, Irma?” The old gentleman turned again to the bride. “You have come into the Budd family, and I hope that you will not regret it.”
“I am sure I never will, Grandfather.”
“And I hope you will do your duty. Remember the injunction of Holy Writ, to be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. In my time, and in the days of my forefathers, large families were the rule, and the modern practice of birth control was unknown.”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“May I hope that you will not interfere with God’s will in that respect?”
“Yes, Grandfather; I have no intention of doing so.”
“You are not doing so?” The president of Budd Family looked from one to the other. He wanted an explicit answer; Irma was blushing.
“We are not doing so,” declared. Lanny. “As a matter of fact we have reason to think that the desired event has already happened.”
“Indeed!” said the old gentleman, with the widest smile that Lanny remembered to have seen on his rather forbidding countenance. “That is very good news, and I will see that your child has a place in my will. Not that he will have any need of it,” he added, to Irma; “but every little helps.”
Many years had passed since Lanny had sat in the Bible class of the old munitions manufacturer; but the teacher knew what he had taught, even if the pupil had forgotten what he had learned. Said Samuel Budd to his grandson: “Do you remember the words which the aged Saul spoke to young David?”
“I remember some of them, Grandfather.”
“‘Swear now therefore unto me by the Lord, that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me, and that thou wilt not destroy my name out of my father’s house.’ That is the voice of the Lord speaking to you both.”
V
The great plant of Budd’s was pouring out smoke from many chimneys. Business was booming as it hadn’t boomed since the war. Under the watchful eyes of the Lord’s deputy one department after another had been reorganized and retooled, and now they were making everything from thimbles to elevators. And they were finding markets for them all over the world; American money was being lent to all nations and the money was being spent for American products. Lanny had listened to his father talking to Johannes about it; the Bolivian government had borrowed a total of some forty million dollars in Wall Street, and Johannes didn’t think much of Bolivian credit; but it didn’t seem to make any difference, the public absorbed one issue of bonds after another, the money was being spent for American products, and Budd’s was getting its share. It meant new office buildings going up in Bolivian cities, it meant Bolivian citizens ascending in Budd elevators, and when these got out of order they would be repaired with Budd wrenches.
More than that, if the Bolivians got to fighting with the Paraguayans, both sides would come to Budd’s; for the munitions part of the business hadn’t been abolished. They kept it going on faith, or perhaps lack of faith in human nature, which couldn’t go on indefinitely without wars. It was a patriotic service to make the jigs and dies for a new and better machine gun which might be needed by the American government; the public didn’t appreciate that service now, but it would when the time came. Lanny remembered a remark of Bub Smith, the ex-cowboy, that a gun was like a certain toilet necessity, you didn’t need it often but when you did you needed it bad. Lanny didn’t pass this Texas humor on to his wife, but he told her in a general way about the patriotic principles of the Budd tribe which had been taught to him all his life.
The old gentleman had suggested that Irma should see the plant; he wanted her to know that there were real th
ings in the world, and how they were made. So Lanny took her through and showed her the sights which had so thrilled him as a youth. The girls who sat by the assembly lines were putting different gadgets together, and probably they were different girls, but their behavior was the same. Somehow or other they knew that the elegant pair strolling down the aisle and staring at them were the young lord and lady about whom they had read in the papers; but their job gave them little chance to observe costumes and manners. They would sit for hour after hour, day after day, year after year, making precisely ordained motions; millions of products would slide off the lines, and Lanny’s and Irma’s “seed” had just been promised a share of the profits in the name of the Lord. If there was anything wrong with all that, what could Lanny do about it? How could he even explain it to his wife?
She was immensely impressed by what she saw. The business of forming holding companies was purely a paper one, so all that Irma had seen at her father’s office was rows of clerks sitting at typewriters and adding-machines and cardfiles. But here was something tangible, and it made the Budd family important and aristocratic, and made Lanny much less of a “come-down.” She had seen him adopted into this old family, and she too had been adopted, and her seed had been blessed; it had been embarrassing, but she knew that it was out of the Bible and therefore respectable. Irma was happy in the thought of telling her uncles and aunts about it, and they would realize that this was no misalliance. After all, J. Paramount Barnes had begun life as an errand boy, but Lanny’s forefathers had been building this great plant for generations. To be sure, they didn’t make so much money as her father had done, but money wasn’t everything, no matter what you might say.