IT WAS going to be some time before Lanny Budd would see his father again. The warring nations would have their “missions” in New York for the purpose of buying military supplies; Robbie's headquarters would be there, and he would make a great deal of money. The various governments would float bonds in the United States, and persons who believed in their financial stability would buy the bonds, and the money would be spent for everything that was needed by armies. Robbie explained these matters in his letters, and said that England and France had placed enough orders with Budd's to justify great enlargements of the plant.
Robbie wrote cautiously, being aware that mail would be read by the French censor. “Remember what I told you about your own attitude, and do not let anybody sway you from it. This is the most important thing for your life.” That was enough for Lanny; he did his best to resist the tug of forces about him. Robbie sent magazines and papers with articles that would give him a balanced view; not marking the articles — that would have made it too easy for the censor — but writing him a few days later to read pages so-and-so.
“One thing I was wrong about,” the father admitted. “This war is going to last longer than I thought.” When Lanny read that, the giant armies were locked in an embrace of death on the river Aisne; the French trying to drive the Germans still farther back, the Germans trying to hold on. They fought all day, and at night food and ammunition were brought up in camions and carts, and the armies went on fighting. Battles lasted not days but weeks, and you could hardly say when one ended and the next began. The troops charged and retreated and charged again, fighting over ground already laid waste. They dug themselves in, and when rain filled up the trenches they stayed in them, because it was better to be wet than dead.
It was the same on the eastern front also. The Russian steam roller had made some headway against the Austrians, but in East Prussia it had got stuck in the swampy lands about the Masurian Lakes. The Russians had been surrounded and slaughtered wholesale; but many had got away, and fresh armies had come up and they were pushing back and forth across the border, one great battle after another.
It was going to be that way for a long time — the fiercest fighting, inspired by the bitterest hatreds that Europe had known for centuries. Each nation was going to mobilize its resources from every part of the world; resources of man power, of money, of goods, and of intellectual and moral factors. Each side was doing everything in its power to make the other odious, and neither was going to have any patience with those who were lukewarm or doubting. A mother and son from America who wanted to keep themselves neutral would be buffeted about like birds in a thunderstorm.
II
Traveling by himself to a new post of duty, Marcel was free of censorship for a day or two. He wrote on the train and mailed in Paris an eloquent and passionate love letter, inspired by their recent day and night together. It filled Beauty with joy but also with anguish, for it told her that this treasure of her heart was going to one of the most terrible of all posts of danger. He was to receive several weeks of intensive training to enable him to act as observer in a stationary balloon.
He had suggested this post as one for which his career as a painter fitted him especially. His ability to distinguish shades of color would enable him to detect camouflage. He had studied landscapes from mountain tops, and could see things that the ordinary eye would miss. “You must learn to be happy in the thought that I shall be of real use to my country” — so he wrote, and perhaps really believed it, being a man. What Beauty did was to crumple the letter in her hands, and sink down with her face upon it and wet it with her tears.
After that there was little peace in Bienvenu. Beauty went about with death written on her face; Lanny would hear her sobbing in the night, and would go to her room and try to comfort her. “You chose a Frenchman, Beauty. You can't expect him to be anything else.” The boy had been reading an anthology of English poetiy, which Mr. Elphinstone had left behind when he went home to try to get into the army. Being young, Lanny sought to comfort his mother with noble sentiments expressed in immortal words. “I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.”
So he quoted; but it only seemed to make Beauty mad. “What do you mean, 'honour'? It's nothing but the desire of powerful men to rule over others. It's a trick to get millions of people to follow them and die for their glory.”