Пользователь - o 3b3e7475144cf77c

a password to power.

On Wednesday night matters were worse, for the police were demoralized, and the hoodlums,

the apaches, went on the warpath. They smashed the windows of the shops in the Rue de

Rivoli and other fashionable streets and looted everything in sight. It wasn't a pleasant time for

visitors in Paris; Robbie was going to Amsterdam on business, so Irma and Lanny stepped into

their car and sped home.

But you couldn't get away from the class war in France. The various reactionary groups had

been organized all over the Midi, and they, too, had received their marching orders. They had

the sympathy of many in the various foreign colonies; anything to put down the Reds. Rick, after

hearing Lanny's story, said that la patrie was awaiting only one thing, a leader who would have

the shrewdness to win the "little man." So far, all the Fascist groups were avowedly reactionary,

and it would take a leftish program to win. Lanny expressed the opinion that the French man in

the street was much shrewder than the German; it wouldn't be so easy to hoodwink him.

Life was resumed at Bienvenu. Rick worked on his play and Lanny read the manuscript,

encouraged him, and supplied local color. In the privacy of their chamber Irma said: "Really,

you are a collaborator, and ought to be named." She wondered why Lanny never wrote a play of

his own. She decided that what he lacked was the impulse of self-assertion, the strong ego

which takes up the conviction that it has something necessary to the welfare of mankind.

Uncle Jesse had it, Kurt had it, Rick had it. Beauty had tried in vain to awaken it in her son,

and now Irma tried with no more success. "Rick can do it a lot better"—that was all she could

get.

Irma was becoming a little cross with this lame Englishman. She had got Lanny pretty well

cured of his Pinkness, but now Rick kept poking up the fires. There came a series of terrible

events in Austria—apparently Fascism was going to spread from country to country until it

had covered all Europe. Austria had got a Catholic Chancellor named Dollfuss, and a Catholic

army, the Heimwehr, composed mainly of peasant lads and led by a dissipated young prince.

This government was jailing or deporting Hitlerites, but with the help of Mussolini was getting

its own brand of Fascism, and now it set out to destroy the Socialist movement in the city of

Vienna. Those beautiful workers' homes, huge apartment blocks which Lanny had inspected

with such joy—the Heimwehr brought up its motorized artillery and blasted them to ruins,

killing about a thousand men, women, and children. Worse yet, they killed the workers'

movement, which had been two generations building.

A terrible time to be alive in. Lanny and Rick could hardly eat or sleep; they could only grieve

and brood over the tragedy of the time into which they had been born. Truly it seemed futile to

work for anything good; to dream of peace and order, justice or even mercy. This wholesale

slaughter of working people was committed in the name of the gentle and lowly Jesus, the

carpenter's son, the social rebel who had been executed because he stirred up the people! A

devout Catholic Premier ordering the crime, and devout Catholic officers attending mass

before and after committing it! And not for the first time or the last in unhappy Europe. Rick

reminded his friend of that cardinal in France who had ordered the St. Bartholomew massacre,

saying: "Kill them all; God will be able to pick out His Christians."

XI

Hot weather came to the Riviera, and the people whom Irma considered important went

away. Those who were poor, like the Dingles and the Robins, would stick it out and learn to

take a siesta. But Nina and Rick went back to England, and Emily Chattersworth moved her

servants to Les Forêts and invited Irma and Lanny to visit her and see the spring Salon and

the new plays. It was Irma's idea, to keep her husband's mind off the troubles of the world.

They went, and after they had played around for a couple of weeks, Irma had a letter from her

mother, begging them to come to Shore Acres and bring Baby Frances for the summer. Really

it was a crime to have that magnificent place and never use it; also it was grossly unfair that

one grandmother should have her heart's desire all the time and the other not at all. "I don't

believe that Beauty cares for the child anything like as much as I do," wrote the Queen Mother;

a sentence which Irma skipped when she read the letter aloud.

The couple talked over the problem. Irma was reluctant to take her precious darling on board

a steamer; she hadn't got over her memories of the Lindbergh kidnaping, and thought that an

ocean liner was an ideal place for a band of criminals to study a twenty-three-million-dollar

baby, her habits and entourage. No, it would be better to spend the summer in England's

green and pleasant land, where kidnapers were unknown. Let Mother be the one to brave the

ocean waves! Irma hadn't spent any money to speak of during the past year, and now interest

on bonds was being paid and dividends were hoped for. She said: "Let's drive about England,

the way we did on our honeymoon, and see if we can find some suitable place to rent."

Nothing is more fun than doing over again what you did on your honeymoon; that is, if

you have managed to keep any of the honeymoon feeling alive after five years. "There are so

many nice people there," argued the young wife. Lanny agreed, even though he might not have

named the same persons.

He knew that Rick's play was nearly done, and he wanted to make suggestions for the last

act. Then there would be the job of submitting it to managers, and Lanny would want to hear

the news. Perhaps it might be necessary to raise the money, and that wouldn't be so easy, for it

was a grim and violent play, bitter as gall, and would shock the fashionable ladies. But Lanny

meant to put up the money which he had earned in Germany—all of it, if necessary, and he

didn't want Irma to be upset about it. They were following their plan of keeping the peace by

making concessions, each to the other and in equal proportions.

They crossed the Channel and put up at the Dorchester. When their arrival was announced in

the papers, as it always would be, one of the first persons who telephoned was Wickthorpe,

saying: "Won't you come out and spend the week end?"

Lanny replied: "Sure thing. We're looking for a little place to rent this summer. Maybe you

can give us some advice." He said "little" because he knew that was good form; but of course it

wouldn't really be little.

"I have a place near by," responded his lordship. "I'll show it to you, if you don't mind."

"Righto!" said Lanny, who knew how to talk English to Englishmen.

When he told Irma about it, she talked American. "Oh, heck! Do you suppose it'll have tin

bathtubs?"

XII

But it didn't. It was a modern villa with three baths, plenty of light and air, and one of those

English lawns, smooth as a billiard table, used for playing games. There was a high hedge

around the place, and everything lovely. It was occupied by Wickthorpe's aunt, who was

leaving for a summer cruise with some friends. There was a staff of well-trained servants who

would stay on if requested. "Oh, I think it will be ducky!" exclaimed the heiress. She paid the price

to his lordship's agent that very day, and the aunt agreed to move out and have everything in

order by the next week end. Irma cabled her mother, and wrote Bub Smith and Feathers to get