Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

His friends at the school saw him driving his fancy car, they saw him with his proud young wife; for though she came rarely, they knew her by sight and still more by reputation. And what would that do to youths at the age of susceptibility? Would it teach them to be loyal to some working-class girl, some humble, poorly dressed comrade in their movement? Or would it fill them with dreams of rising to the heaven where the elegant rich ladies were kept? Lanny, surveying his alluring spouse, knew that there was in all the world no stronger bait for the soul and mind of a man. He had taken that bait more than once in his life; also he knew something about the four Socialists who had become premiers of France, and knew that in every case it had been the hand of some elegant siren which had drawn him out of the path of loyalty and into that of betrayal.

There stood unused on the Bienvenu estate a comfortable dwelling, the Lodge, which Lanny had built for Nina and Rick. He begged them to come and occupy it this season; he had some important ideas he wanted to discuss. But Rick said the pater had been hit too hard by the slump, which seemed to have been aimed at landowners all over the world. Lanny replied with a check to cover the cost of the tickets; it had been earned by the sale of one of Marcel’s pictures, and there were a hundred more in the storeroom. Also, Lanny explained, the vegetable garden at Bienvenu had been enlarged, so as to give some of Leese’s cousins a chance to earn their keep. Come and help to eat the stuff!

Mother and father and the three children came; and after they had got settled, Lanny revealed what he had in mind: to get some more money out of the picture business (perhaps Irma would want to put some in) to found a weekly paper, with Rick as editor. They would try to wake up the intellectuals and work for some kind of co-operative system in Europe before it was too late. Lanny said he didn’t know enough to edit a paper himself, but would be what in America was called an "angel."

Rick said that was a large order, and did his friend realize what he was letting himself in for? The commercial magazine field was pretty crowded, and a propaganda paper never paid expenses, but cost like sin. Lanny said: "Well, I’ve spent my share on sin, and I might try something else for a change."

"One can’t publish a paper in a place like Cannes," declared Rick. "Where would you go?"

"I’ve wondered if it mightn’t be possible to bring out a paper in London, and at the same time in Paris in French?"

"You mean with the same contents?"

"Well, practically the same."

"I should say that might be done if the paper were general and abstract. If you expect to deal with current events, you’d find the interests and tastes of the two peoples too far apart."

"The purpose would be to bring them together, Rick. If they read the same things, they might learn to understand each other."

"Yes, but you’re trying to force them to read what they don’t want. The paper would seem foreign to both sides; your enemies would call it that and make it appear still more so."

"I don’t say it would be easy," replied the young idealist. "What makes it hard is exactly what makes it important."

"I don’t dispute the need," Rick said. "But it would cost a pile of money: A paper has to come out regularly, and if you have a deficit, it goes on and on."

"Would you be interested in it as a job?" persisted the other.

"I’d have to think it over. I’ve come down here with a mind full of a play."

That was the real trouble, as it turned out. There was no use imagining that anybody could edit a paper as a sideline; it was a full-time job for several men, and Rick would have to give up his life’s ambition, which was to become a dramatist. He had had just enough success to keep him going. That, too, was an important task: to force modern social problems into the theater, to break down the taboo which put the label of propaganda upon any effort to portray that class struggle which was the basic fact of the modern world. Rick had tried it eight or ten times, and said that if he had put an equal amount of energy and ability into portraying the sexual entanglements of the idle rich, he could have joined that envied group and had plenty of entanglements. But he was always thinking of some wonderful new idea which no audience would be able to resist; he had one now, and so the Franco-British weekly would have to wait until the potential editor had relieved his mind.

Lanny said: "If it’s a good play, maybe Irma and I will back it." He always included his wife, out of politeness, and the same motive would cause her to come along.

"That costs money, too," was Rick’s reply. "But at least, if the play falls flat, you don’t have to produce it again the next week and the week after."

Zaharoff was back at his hotel in Monte, and would send his car for Madame Zyszynski, and write notes expressing his gratitude to the family. He said he wished there were something he could do in return; and apparently he meant it, for when Robbie Budd came into possession of a block of New England-Arabian stock, he came to see the old man, who bought the stock at Robbie’s own price. It wasn’t a large amount, but Lanny said it was a sign that the duquesa really was "coming through."

Beauty was devoured by curiosity about these seances, and questioned Madame every time she came back; but the medium stuck to her story that she had no idea of what happened when she was in her trance. Evidently Tecumseh was behaving well, for when she came out she would find the sitter gracious and considerate. She always had tea with the maid of Sir Basil’s married daughter, and sometimes the great man himself asked questions about her life and ideas. Evidently he was reading along the lines of spiritualism, but he never said a word about himself, nor did he mention the duquesa’s name.

Beauty thought it was poor taste for a borrower to keep the owner so entirely in the dark; and perhaps the idea occurred to Sir Basil, for he called Lanny on the telephone and asked if he could spare time to run over and see him. Lanny offered to drive Madame on the next trip, and Zaharoff said all right; Lanny might attend the seance if it would interest him. That was certainly an advance, and could only mean that Zaharoff had managed to make friends with the Iroquois chieftain and his spirit band.

"All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." So Lanny’s stern grandfather had quoted, at the time when Lanny was making a scandal in Newcastle by falling in love with a young actress. The playboy thought of it now as he sat and watched this man who might be as old as Grandfather Samuel. His suave manners were a mask and his soul a bundle of fears. He had fought so hard for wealth and power, and now he sat and watched infirmity creeping over him and everything slipping out of his grasp. "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."

Secretiveness was the breath of the munitions king’s being. For nearly a year he had had Tecumseh and the spirits to himself, and if he had told anyone what was happening it hadn’t come to Lanny’s ears. But he couldn’t hold out indefinitely, because his soul was racked with uncertainties. Was it really the duquesa who was sending him messages? Or was it merely a fantasy, a cruel hoax of somebody or something unknown? Lanny had attended many seances, and was continually studying the subject. The old man had to know what he made of it.

The sitting itself was rather commonplace. Evidently the munitions king and the spirit of his dead wife had become established on a firm domestic basis. She came right away, as she would have done if he had called her from the next room. She didn’t have much to talk about—which probably would have been the case if her "grass" had not withered and blown away. The only difference was that Zaharoff would have known the "grass" for what it was; but this imitation grass, this mirage, this painting on a fog—what was it? She assured him that she loved him—of which he had never had any doubt. She assured him that she was happy—she had said it many times, and it was good news if it was she.