Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

Irma, who was money-conscious, thought at once: "He’s come to get us to put up for his campaign." Lanny didn’t have much money since his father had got caught in the slump. Irma resolved: "I won’t help him. I don’t approve of it." She had discovered the power of her money during the Wall Street crisis, and was learning to enjoy it.

But then another point of view occurred to her. Maybe it would be a distinguished thing to have a relative in the Chamber, even if he was a Communist! She wasn’t sure about this, and wished she knew more about political affairs. Now and then she had that thought about various branches of knowledge, and would resolve to find out; but then she would forget because it was too much trouble. Just now they had told her that she musn’t get excited about anything, because excitement would spoil her milk. A nuisance, turning yourself into a cow! But it was pleasant enough here in the sunshine, being entertained with novel ideas.

Lanny apparently agreed with his uncle that what the Russians were doing was important—for them. The dispute was over the question whether the same thing was going to happen in France and England and America. Lanny maintained that these countries, being "democracies," could bring about the changes peaceably. That was his way; he didn’t want to hurt anybody, but to discuss ideas politely and let the best ideas win. However, Uncle Jesse kept insisting that Lanny and his Socialist friends were aiding the capitalists by fooling the workers, luring them with false hopes, keeping them contented with a political system which the capitalists had bought and paid for. Lanny, on the other hand, argued that it was the Reds who were betraying the workers, frightening the middle classes by violent threats and driving them into the camp of the reactionaries.

So it went, and the young wife listened without getting excited. Marriage was a strange adventure; you let yourself in for a lot of things you couldn’t have foreseen. These two most eccentric families, the Budds and the Blacklesses! Irma’s own family consisted of Wall Street people. They bought and sold securities and made fortunes or lost them, and that seemed a conventional and respectable kind of life; but now she had been taken to a household full of Reds and Pinks of all shades, and spiritualist mediums and religious healers, munitions makers and Jewish Schieber, musicians and painters and art dealers—you never knew when you opened your eyes in the moming what strange new creatures you were going to encounter before night. Even Lanny, who was so dear and sweet, and with whom Irma had entered into the closest of all intimacies, even he became suddenly a stranger when he got stirred up and began pouring out his schemes for making the world over—schemes which clearly involved his giving up his own property, and Irma’s giving up hers, and wiping out the hereditary rights of the long-awaited and closely guarded Frances Barnes Budd!

Uncle Jesse stayed to lunch, then went his way; and after the nap which the doctor had prescribed for the nursing mother, Irma enjoyed the society of her stepfather-in-law—if there is a name for this odd relationship. Mr. Parsifal Dingle, Beauty’s new husband, came over from the villa to call on the baby. Irma knew him well, for they had spent the past summer on a yacht; he was a religious mystic, and certainly restful after the Reds and the Pinks. He never argued, and as a rule didn’t talk unless you began a conversation; he was interested in things going on in his own soul, and while he was glad to tell about them, you had to ask. He would sit by the bassinet and gaze at the infant, and there would come a blissful look on his round cherubic face; you would think there were two infants, and that their souls must be completely in tune.

The man of God would close his eyes, and be silent for a while, and Irma wouldn’t interrupt him, knowing that he was giving little Frances a "treatment." It was a sort of prayer with which he filled his mind, and he was quite sure that it affected the mind of the little one. Irma wasn’t sure, but she knew it couldn’t do any harm, for there was nothing except good in the mind of this gentle healer. He seemed a bit uncanny while sitting with Madame Zyszynski, the Polish medium, in one of her trances; conversing in the most matter-of-fact way with the alleged Indian spirit. "Tecumseh," as he called himself, "was whimsical and self-willed, and would tell something or refuse to tell, according to whether or not you were respectful to him and whether or not the sun was shining in the spirit world. Gradually Irma had got used to it all, for the spirits didn’t do any harm, and quite certainly Mr. Dingle didn’t; on the contrary, if you felt sick he would cure you. He had cured several members of the Bienvenu household, and it might be extremely convenient in an emergency.

Such were Irma’s reflections during the visits. She would ask him questions and let him talk, and it would be like going to church. Irma found it agreeable to talk about loving everybody, and thought that it might do some people a lot of good; they showed the need of it in their conversation, the traces they revealed of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Mr. Dingle wanted to change the world, just as much as any Bolshevik, but he had begun with himself, and that seemed to Irma a fine idea; it didn’t threaten the Barnes fortune or the future of its heiress. The healer would read his mystical books, and magazines of what he called "New Thought," and then he would wander about the garden, looking at the flowers and the birds, and perhaps giving them a treatment—for they too had life in them and were products of love. Bienvenu appeared to contain everything that Mr. Dingle needed, and he rarely went off the estate unless someone invited him.

The strangest whim of fate, that the worldly Beauty Budd should have chosen this man of God to accompany her on the downhill of life! All her friends laughed over it, and were bored to death with her efforts to use the language of "spirituality." Certainly it hadn’t kept her from working like the devil to land the season’s greatest "catch" for her son; nor did it keep her from exulting brazenly in her triumph. Beauty’s religious talk no more than Lanny’s Socialist talk was causing them to take steps to distribute any large share of Irma’s unearned increment. On the contrary, they had stopped giving elaborate parties at Bienvenu, which was hard on everybody on the Cap d’Antibes—the tradesmen, the servants, the musicians, the couturiers, all who catered to the rich. It was hard on the society folk, who had been so scared by the panic and the talk of hard times on the way. Surely somebody ought to set an example of courage and enterprise—and who could have done it better than a glamour girl with a whole bank-vault full of "blue chip" stocks and bonds? What was going to become of smart society if its prime favorites began turning their estates into dairy farms and themselves into stud cattle?

There came a telegram from Berlin: "Yacht due at Cannes we are leaving by train tonight engage hotel accommodations. Bess." Of course Lanny wouldn’t follow those last instructions. When friends are taking you for a cruise and paying all your expenses for several months, you don’t let them go to a hotel even for a couple of days. There was the Lodge, a third house on the estate; it had been vacant all winter, and now would be opened and freshly aired and dusted. Irma’s secretary, Miss Featherstone, had been established as a sort of female major-domo and took charge of such operations. The expected guests would have their meals with Irma and Lanny, and "Feathers" would consult with the cook and see to the ordering of supplies. Everything would run as smoothly as water down a mill-race; Irma would continue to lie in the sunshine, read magazines, listen to Lanny play the piano, and nurse Baby Frances when one of the maids brought her.