Пользователь - WORLDS END

That didn't satisfy this good Samaritan. He wanted to know if there wasn't some place where he could purchase food, and the woman told him where to find a shop. It proved to be a miserable place, with flyspecked peppermints and gumdrops in the window. He bought a loaf of bread, a tin of beans, and a rusty one of salmon, his guess at a balanced diet. When he got back to the cottage he found that there was no tin-opener, and he had to break into the tins with a knife and a block of wood. When he put the food before the girl, she wolfed it like a famished animal, leaving only part of the bread.

Lanny looked about him. He had read a poem called "The Cottar's Saturday Night." He hadn't been quite sure what a "cottar" was, but now he was in the home of one. It didn't bear much resemblance to the poem. A dark-colored clay had been stuffed into chinks of the walls, and the floor was of planks, very old and worn. The fireplace was black with the smoke of ages. There was another bed like the one the girl was lying on, and a table apparently knocked together by amateur hands, and three stools, each with three peg legs. There was also a row of shelves with a few pans and dishes, and some ancient clothing hanging on the walls, and a water bucket on the floor. That was about all.

One place on the floor was wet, and the woman saw Lanny's eyes resting upon it. "It's the roof," said she. "The blurry landlord won't have it fixed." Lanny asked who was the landlord, and the reply was: "Sir Alfred." It gave the boy a start. "Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson?" The woman answered: "Aye, he's the stingy one, he'll do nowt for ye, not if the house was to blow down."

VI

So Lanny had something to think about on his short walk to The Reaches. He wasn't sure if he ought to mention the matter to his hosts, but he decided that they'd be apt to hear about it, and would think it unnatural that he had kept silence. Lanny went to Rick and told him; good old Rick, who never got embarrassed about anything. Rick said: "It's that good-for-nothing old laborer, Higgs. He's a sot that spends every penny he can get his hands on for drink. What can you do for such a family? The pater's been talking of getting rid of him for a long time, and he should have done it." Rick added that he'd tell his father; but he didn't invite Lanny to the conference. Lanny had an uncomfortable feeling, as if he had opened a closed door and a family skeleton had tumbled out.

The Pomeroy-Nielsons thanked him for his good deed, and Rick took the trouble to explain matters further. The land on which those cottages stood belonged to the family, but the tenants worked for other people. "Most of them are behind with their rent," said Rick, "because the pater's reluctant to press them as other landlords do. The old tenements are nothing but a nuisance, and he has often thought of razing them and plowing the land." The son of the family added, with one of his dry smiles, that of course that wouldn't go very far toward solving the housing question; but you couldn't expect a man to be an authority on both art and economics.

Lady Pomeroy-Nielson was a stoutish, motherly person who looked after the boys and made them change their shoes when they got wet. She was kind, and told Lanny that she would take the poor child a basket of food. "But I fear it won't do much good," she added, "unless I stay and see it eaten. That Higgs is a rough fellow, and he'll take anything he can get his hands on and sell it for a drink."

Rick discussed with his guest the problem of poverty in England's green and pleasant land. He declared that when human beings got below a certain level, it was very difficult to help them; drink and drugs took the place of food and they finished themselves off. Lanny said his father had explained that to him, but he had thought it applied only to city slums; it had never occurred to him that there might be slums in the country. Rick said there could be little difference between country and city; if there was an over-supply of labor in one it shifted immediately to the other. In the hop-picking season, hundreds of thousands of people from London's East End spread out over the country looking for work, and if they found conditions a bit better on the land, some of them would stay.

It was an insoluble problem - as Rick, and Rick's father, and Lanny's father agreed; but all the same Lanny couldn't forget the feel of the pitiful thin body that he had lifted, the waxen skin, and the frantic look in the girl's eyes when food was held out to her. Nor could he drive from his mind the impolite thought that, if he were an English landed gentleman, he would have his lovely green lawn a trifle less perfectly manicured, and spend the money on keeping the roofs of his cottages in repair.

VII

There had come a cablegram from Robbie; he was sailing from New York on the Lusitania, and would be at the Hotel Cecil on a certain day. Of course a summons from Robbie took precedence over all other affairs. Lanny went to town the night before, and telephoned the steamship office to find out at what hour the steamer was due. The boy was sitting in the lobby, reading a book, but looking up every few minutes, and when the familiar sturdy figure appeared in the doorway, he sprang up to welcome his father. It was a hot July morning, and perspiration glistened on Robbie's forehead, but he looked well and vigorous as always, and everything he wore was fresh and spotless.

It had been four or five months since his last trip, and they had a lot of news to swap. At lunch Lanny told about Greece and Africa, and the scene on board the Bluebird. Then he told about his adventures in the slums of London and of Berkshire. The father said: "That's the curse of England. The most depressing thing I ever saw in my life was the people of London's slums spread out on Hamp-stead Heath on a bank holiday; men and women lying together on the ground in broad daylight."

Robbie Budd had come on an interesting errand. The firm had completed a new gun on high-angle mountings, to be used for protection against airplanes; the season's best-seller in the armaments trade, he predicted. It would mean another battle with Zaharoff, because Vickers already had one, but it wasn't nearly so good and couldn't be fired so fast. "Are we going to wipe him out?" asked the boy. eagerly; and Robbie said they would if there was such a thing as justice in the world. He said this with one of his boyish grins, and added his fear that there wouldn't be any in England for Budd's.

They made themselves comfortable in their suite. Robbie got a bottle of whisky out of his suitcase, and ordered soda and ice - the London hotels were quite "American" now, and ice was one of the signs. For Lanny there was ginger beer, the father having asked him to wait many years before he touched liquor, or smoked, or learned to play poker. He said he wished he had waited longer himself. Lanny was interested to note in how many ways parents expected their children to be wiser than themselves.

Robbie telephoned the manager of Budd's London office, and while waiting for him to arrive, they talked about the English and their Empire. Lanny knew the country now and took a personal interest in it, but he found that his father didn't share his enthusiasm. Robbie had been in business competition with the English, which was different from being a guest in their well-conducted homes. "They are sharp traders," he said, "and that's all right, but what gets your goat is the mask of righteousness they put on; nobody else sells armaments for the love of Jesus Christ." The Empire, he added, was run by a little group of insiders in "the City" - the financial district. "There are no harder-fisted traders anywhere; power for themselves is what they are out for, and they'll destroy the rest of the world to get and keep it."

Lanny had got the impression that they liked Americans; but Robbie said: "Not so. All that talk about 'Hands across the sea,' don't let it fool you for a moment. They're jealous of us, and the best thing they can think of about us is that we're three thousand miles away."

Lanny told about a talk with Sir Alfred, in which the baronet had deplored the great amount of graft in American political life, and had expressed satisfaction because they had nothing of the sort in Britain. "They have a lot more," said the munitions salesman, "only they call it by polite names. In our country when the political bosses want to fill their campaign chest, they put up some rich man for a high office - a 'fat cat' they call him - and he pays the bills and gets elected for a term of years. In England the man pays a much bigger sum into the party campaign chest, and he's made a marquess or a lord, and he and his descendants will govern the Empire forever after - but that isn't corruption, that's 'nobility'!"

You could see the effect of such a system in the armaments industry, Robbie went on to explain; and he didn't have to do any guessing, he was where he could watch the machinery working. "I've come to England with a better gun than Vickers is making; but will the British Empire get that gun? I'm going to do my best, but I'll make a private wager that it'll be the Germans who come across first. The reason is Zaharoff and his associates. They're the besL blood, so called, in England. On the board of Vickers are four marquesses and dukes, twenty knights, and fifty viscounts and barons. The Empire will do exactly what they say - and there won't be any 'graft' involved."

VIII

Robbie went about his important affairs, while Lanny learned to know the pictures in the National Gallery. Also he met Kurt's uncle, a stout and florid gentleman who told him about rubber plantations in the Dutch East Indies, and took them to lunch at a place where they could have a rijstafel. Rick came to town over the week-end, and they went to the opera and concerts, and to a cricket match. They had lunch with Robbie, who was glad Lanny had picked two such intelligent fellows as friends; he said he would take them to a place that would give them a thrill - the War Planes Review now being held on Salisbury Plain. Robbie had been invited by an army captain who had to do with his negotiations.

The boys were delighted, of course. They had been hearing a lot about the picturesque idea of battles fought in the air. The four of them were up early in the morning, and took a train for Salisbury, some eighty miles west of London, where Captain Finchley had a car to meet them and bring them to the camp. They spent the whole day wandering about seeing the sights. The Royal Flying Corps had put up sheds for seventy planes, and most of them were in the air or lined up on the field, a spectacle the like of which had never before been seen. The officers, of course, were proud of the enterprise and might of Britain.

The largest and newest of the machines was a Farman, and the men dubbed it "the mechanical cow." It was a frail-looking structure, a biplane spreading nearly forty feet across, the wing frames of light spruce and the surface of canvas, well coated and waterproofed. The flier sat in the open, and of course a mighty gale-blew around him when he was in the air, so he was muffled up and wore a big helmet. The principal service expected of him was to obtain information as to enemy troop movements and the position of artillery; some planes were provided with wireless sets, others with photographic apparatus. That lone fellow up there was going to be pretty busy, for he also had a carbine and a couple of revolvers with which to defend himself; or he might have an explosive bomb attached to a wire cable, the idea being to get above an enemy plane and run the cable over him.

Many planes were diving and swooping, acquiring the needed skill. Some were learning a new art called "flying in formation"; others were practicing dropping objects upon stationary targets. The visitors watched them until their eyes ached, and the backs of their necks. Every now and then a new plane would take off, and the moment when it left the ground always came to the beholder as a fresh miracle: man's dream of ages realized, the conquest of the last of the elements. The visitors were introduced to some of the pilots, well-padded fellows who of course made it a matter of pride to take it all in the day's work; going up was no miracle to them, and flying around was, to tell the truth, a good deal of a bore, once you got the hang of it. One place in the sky was exactly like another, and the ground beneath was no more exciting than your parlor rug. They were practicing night flying - and that, they admitted, was something that kept you awake. Also, they were very proud because they had succeeded in "looping the loop" in a biplane, for the first time in history.