"You'll shoot them yourself?"
"You bet your life!"
"No!" said the painter with a smile. "You'll hire other men, as you always do. And if they turn the guns against you, what then?"
"I'll be on the watch for them! One of them was fool enough to forewarn me!"
"History has forewarned you, Robbie Budd, but you won't learn. The French Revolution told you that the days of divine right were over; but you've built a new system exactly like the old one in its practical results - blind squandering at the top, starvation and despair at the bottom, an insanity of greed ending in mass slaughter. Now you see the Russian revolt, but you scorn to learn from it!"
"We've learned to shut the sons-of-bitches up in their rat-holes, and let them freeze and starve, or die of typhus and eat their own corpses."
"Please, Robbie!" interposed the son. "You're getting yourself all worked up - "
Said the painter: "Typhus has a way of spreading beyond national boundaries; and so have ideas."
"We can quarantine disease; and I promise you, we're going to put the right man in the White House, and step on your Red ideas and smash the guts out of them."
"Listen, Robbie, do be sensible! You're wasting an awful lot of energy."
"Stay in France, Jesse Blackless, and spit your poison all over the landscape; but don't try it in America - not in Newcastle, I warn you!"
"I'm not needed there, Robbie. You're making your own crop of revolutionists. Class arrogance carries its own seeds of destruction."
"Listen, Uncle Jesse, what do you expect to accomplish by this? You know you can't convert my father. Do you just want to hurt each other?"
Yes, that was it. The two stags had their horns locked, and each wanted to butt the other, drive him back, beat him to the earth, mash him into it; each would rather die than give an inch. It was an old, old grudge; they had fought like this when they had first met, more than twenty years ago. Lanny hadn't been there, Lanny hadn't been anywhere then, but his mother had told him about it. Now it had got started again; the two stags couldn't get their horns apart, and it might mean the death of one or both!
"You and your gutter-rats imagining you can run industry!" snarled Robbie.
"If you're so sure we can't, why are you afraid to see us try? Why don't you call off your mercenaries that are fighting us on twenty-six fronts?"
"Why don't you call off your hellions that are spreading treason and hate in every nation?"
"Listen, Uncle Jesse! You promised Robbie you'd let me alone, but you're not doing it."
"They don't let anybody alone," sneered the father. "They don't keep any promises. We're the bourgeoisie, and we have no rights! We're parasites, and all we're fit for is to be 'liquidated'!"
"If you put yourself in front of a railroad train, it's suicide, not murder," said the painter, with his twisted smile. He was keeping his temper, which only made Robbie madder.
Said he, addressing his son: "Our business is to clear the track and let a bunch of gangsters drive the train into a ditch. History won't be able to count the number they have slaughtered."
"Oh, my God!" cried Uncle Jesse - he too addressing the youth. "He talks about slaughter - and he's just finished killing ten million men, with weapons he made for the purpose! God Almighty couldn't count the number he has wounded, and those who've died of disease and starvation. Yet he worries about a few counter-revolutionists shot by the Bolsheviks!"
VII
Lanny saw that he hadn't accomplished anything, so he sat for a while, listening to all the things his father didn't want him to hear. This raging argument became to him a symbol of the world in which he would have to live the rest of his life. His uncle was the uplifted fist of the workers, clenched in deadly menace. As for Robbie, he had proclaimed himself the man behind the machine gun; the man who made it, and was ready to use it, personally, if need be, to mow down the clenched uplifted fists! As for Lanny, he didn't have to be any symbol, he was what he was: the man who loved art and beauty, reason and fair play, and pleaded for these things and got brushed aside. It wasn't his world! It had no use for him! When the fighting started, he'd be caught between the lines and mowed down.
"If you kill somebody," Uncle Jesse announced to the father, "that's law and order. But if a revolutionist kills one of your gangsters, that's murder, that's a crime wave. You own the world, you make the laws and enforce them. But we tell you we're tired of working for your profit, and that never again can you lead us out to die for your greed."
"You're raving!" said Robbie Budd. "In a few months your Russia will be smashed flat, and you'll never get another chance. You've shown us your hand, and we've got you on a list."
"A hanging list?" inquired the painter, with a wink at the son.
"Hanging's not quick enough. You'll see how our Budd machine guns work!"
Lanny had never seen his father in such a rage. He was on his feet, and kept turning away and then back again. He had had several drinks, and that made it worse; his face was purple and his hands clenched. A little more and it might turn into a physical fight. Seeing him getting started on another tirade, Lanny grabbed his uncle by the arm and pulled him from his seat. "Please go, Uncle Jesse!" he exclaimed. "You said you would let me alone. Now do it!" He kept on, first pulling, then pushing. The uncle's hat had been hung on a chair, and Lanny took it and pressed it into his hand. "Please don't argue any more - just go!"
"All right," said the painter, half angry, half amused. "Look after him - he's going to have his hands full putting down the Russian revolution!"
"Thanks," said Lanny. I’ll do my best."
"You heard what I had to say to him!"
"Yes, I heard it."
"And you see that he has no answer!"
"Yes, yes, please go!" Lanny kept shoving his exuberant relative out into the hall.
A parting shot: "Mark my words, Robbie Budd - it's the end of your world!"
"Good-by, Uncle Jesse!" and Lanny shut the door.
VIII
He came back into the room. His father was staring in front of him, frowning darkly. Lanny wondered: was the storm going to be turned upon him? And how much of it was left!
"Now, see here!" exclaimed the elder. "Have you learned your lesson from this?"
"Yes, indeed, Robbie; more than one lesson." Lanny's tone was full of conviction.
"You put yourself in the hands of a fanatic like that, and he's in a position to blackmail you, to do anything his crazy fancy may suggest."
"Please believe me, Robbie, I wasn't doing anything for Uncle Jesse. I was trying to help a friend."
"How far will a man go to help a friend? You were bucking the French government!"
"I know. It was a mistake."
"A man has to learn to have discretion; to take care of himself. You want friends, Lanny - but also you want to know where to draw a line. If people find out they can sponge on you, there's no limit to it. One wants you to sign a note and bankrupt yourself. One gets drunk and wants you to sober him up. One is in a mess with a woman, and you have to get her off his neck. You're a soft-shell crab, that every creature in the sea can bite a chunk out of. Nobody respects you, nobody thinks of anything but to use you."
"I'll try to learn from this, Robbie." Lanny really meant it; but his main thought was: Soothe him down; cool him off!
"You have a friend who's a German," continued the father. "All right, make up your mind what it means. As long as you live, Germany's going to be making war on France, and France on her. It doesn't matter what they call it, business or diplomacy, reparations, any name - Germany's foes will be trying to undermine her and she will be fighting back. If Kurt Meissner is going to be a musician, that's one thing, but if he's going to be a German agent, that's another. Sooner or later you've got to make up your mind what it means to have such a friend - and your mother's got to make up her mind what it means to have such a lover."
"Yes, Robbie; you're right. I see it clearly."
"And those Reds you've been meeting - I don't doubt they're clever talkers, more so than decent people, perhaps. But think what must be in the minds of revolutionists when they waste their time upon a young fellow like you! You have money, and you're credulous - you're their meat, laid out on the butcher's block! Maybe those Russians are going to survive awhile; maybe the Allies are too exhausted to put them down. They can live as long as they can plunder other people's wealth. And you have to make up your mind, are you going to let them use you, and laugh at you while they play you for a sucker? What else can you be to them - a parasite, the son of Robbie Budd the bloated capitalist, the merchant of death! Don't you see that you're everything in the world they hate and want to destroy?"
"Yes, Robbie, of course. I've no idea of having anything more to do with them."
"Well, for Christ's sake, mean that and stick to it! Go on down to Juan and fix up the house and play the piano!" The youth couldn't keep from laughing. "That's the program!" He put his arm about his father - knowing him well, and realizing how ashamed of himself he would be for having lost his temper and roared at a man who wasn't worth it.
Lanny was beginning to feel gay. A great relief to be out of jail - and also not to have to take any worse scolding than this. "The treaty's signed, Robbie!" he exclaimed. "And we've a League of Nations to keep things in order!"
"Like heck we have!" replied the father.
"Pax nobiscum! E pluribus unum! God save the king! And now let's get this room in order!" Lanny took the suitcase which he had brought from the Prйfecture, and put it on the bed and began sorting out the precious papers, like the good secretary he had learned to be. "Tomorrow night I leave for the Cфte d'Azur, and lie on the sand and get sunburned and watch the world come to an end!"
