Пользователь - WORLDS END

Lanny was interested to see the effect of all this upon his English friend. Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, young man of the world whose "note" was sophistication and whose motto was nil admirari, was stirred to eloquence by the idea of military aviation. He remarked to Lanny's father that after all England wasn't as backward as the Americans might have thought. He began asking technical questions of Captain Finchley and the fliers; he wanted to know if it wouldn't be possible to mount a machine gun in a plane, and they told him that the French were trying it. "That would be a fight to put a man on his mettle!" exclaimed Rick; a surprising remark from a youth who had been heard to speak of army men as "troglodytes."

Captain Finchley was pleased by this enthusiasm. "I wish more English boys felt that way," he remarked; "the failure of the recent recruiting is a cause of deep concern to all friends of the Empire."

Robbie Budd took the occasion to speak about the effect which this new kind of warfare was bound to have upon the position of Englishmen. It deprived them of the advantage of their island solitude. Planes were now flying the Channel, and the Americans had even devised a sort of catapult that could launch a plane from a ship. It was certain that in the next war bombs would be dropped upon munitions centers and factories; and guns that could be fired at planes and airships would surely have to be mounted at vital points. Lanny understood that his father was giving a sales talk - Captain Finchley was on the board which had to decide about the Budd gun with high-angle mountings. Robbie had told his son the previous evening that they were trying to "stall" him; they wouldn't say they would buy the gun, yet they were obviously worried by the idea of his taking it anywhere else.

IX

On their way back to town in the evening the four talked about what they had seen, and the likelihood of these dangerous contrivances being actually put to the test. Kurt Meissher was worried by a letter he had received from home; the situation in the Balkans was more serious than anybody in England seemed to realize. Robbie said, yes, but it was always that way; the English were an easygoing people and left problems for others to solve as much as possible. This was just one more crisis.

"But,'' exclaimed Kurt, "do the English or anybody else expect the Austrians to let Serbian hooligans incite the murder of Austrian rulers on Austrian soil?"

"The diplomats will get together and stop it," Robbie told him soothingly. Nothing to worry about.

"But it is said that the Russians are backing the Serbs!"

"I know; they're always shoving one another about. The Russians say: 'You let my Serbian friends alone.' The Germans say: 'You let my Austrian friends alone.' The French say: 'You let my Russian friends alone' - so it goes. They've been making faces at one another for hundreds of years."

"I know it, Mr. Budd - but they've been going to war, too."

"The world has been changing so fast that it no longer pays to go to war, Kurt. The nations couldn't finance a war; it would bankrupt them all."

"But," argued Kurt, "when people get angry enough, they don't stop to calculate."

"The masses don't, but they don't have the say any more. It's the financiers who decide, and they're first-class calculators. What's happened is, we've made weapons so destructive that nobody dares use them. Just to have them is enough." Robbie paused for a moment, and smiled. "Did Lanny ever tell you about his meeting with Zaharoff? The old man was worried by the thought that his armaments might some day be put to use; I suggested to him that the ideal of civilization was to spend all our energies making things we never meant to use." Robbie chuckled, and they all chuckled with him, though a bit dubiously.

A few days later Lanny set out for France to join his mother, and Robbie was packing up his Budd gun, preparatory to taking it to Germany, in an effort to wake the British up - or so he confided to his son. On that day King George was reviewing the might of the British navy off Spithead. His flagship was the Iron Duke, a dreadnought that could shoot away fifty thousand dollars in a single minute. Included in its armament were two twelve-pounder guns with high-angle mountings against airplanes. On that day . . .

It was the twentieth of July 1914.

1 О

La Belle France

I

MRS. EMILY CHATTERSWORTH was the widow of a New York banker who had once held great power, controlling railroads and trust companies and what not; he had become involved in some Congressional investigation - it had been a long time ago, and nobody remembered just what it was, but the newspapers had exhibited bad manners, and the banker had decided that his native land was lacking in refinement. His widow had inherited his fortune and, being still good-looking, was described by Sophie, Baroness de la Tourette, as "an island entirely surrounded by French suitors." Perhaps the country's laws regarding the property rights of married women were unsatisfactory to Mrs. Emily; anyhow, she had remained for years the sole mistress of Les Forкts, as her country estate was called.

The chвteau was in French Renaissance style, a four-story structure of gray stone, built at the head of a little artificial lake. There was an esplanade in front, resembling the docks of a port, complete with several small lighthouses; when the lights were turned on at night the effect was impressive. At the front of the house, beyond the entrance drive, was a garden, the central feature of which was a great fleur-de-lis made of gold and purple flowers. Surrounding the place were smooth lawns shaded by chestnut trees, and beyond them were dark forests of beeches, for which the place had been named. In them were deer and pheasants, and in the kennels were dogs used for hunting in the fall. Among other interesting things was an orchid house, in which you might examine the strange and costly products of the jungles of South America, for as long as you could stand the moist heat in which they throve.

The rooms of this chвteau were splendid, and had tapestries and works of art which connoisseurs came to study. Mrs. Emily knew what she had, and spoke of them with authority. She lived and entertained in the French manner, conducting what was called a salon - an arduous undertaking, a career all in itself. It meant inviting a number of celebrated men at regular intervals and giving them a chance to air their wit and erudition before others. Each one of these personages was conscious of his own importance, and resentful of the pretended importance of his rivals; to know who could get along with whom, and to reconcile all the vanities and jealousies, took skill and energy enough for a diplomat guarding the fate of nations.

Beauty Budd had very few pretensions to wit, and still fewer to erudition, but she possessed a treasure appreciated in any drawing room - she was easy to look at. She also possessed a full supply of womanly tact, and was naturally kind, and didn't quarrel with other ladies or try to take away their men. The weaker sex was supposed to do little talking at a salon; as among the fowls, it was the males who displayed the gorgeous plumage and made the loud noises. The company did not break up into groups, as was the custom in English and American drawing rooms. There would be a super-celebrity who would set the theme and do most of the expounding; the other celebrities would say their say, and the function of the hostess was to supervise and shepherd the conversation. The other ladies listened, and did not interrupt unless they were quite sure they had something supremely witty that could be uttered in a sentence or two. Generally they thought of it too late, and for that misfortune the French had a phrase, esprit de l 'escalier, that is to say, staircase wit.

Of course it was not possible for an American woman, however wealthy, to have a really first-class salon in France. The fashionables and the intellectuals of that land were clannish, and it took a full lifetime to learn the subtleties of their differentiations. There were royalist salons and republican salons, Catholic salons and free-thought salons, literary and art salons, each its own little world, with but slight interest in foreigners. However, an American could provide a way for her fellow-countrymen to meet such Frenchmen as were international-minded, and Mrs. Emily, a handsome and stately lady, was conscientious about performing this service.

She would give dinner parties, also in the French manner, the hostess sitting midway between the ends of the table, putting the most important guest directly across from her, and then shading off to persons of least importance, who sat at the ends. There was a French phrase for that too, le bout de table. At dinner parties you did not chat with the person on either hand, but listened to those whose importance had been indicated by their seating. One of these was privileged to hold forth for a few minutes on any subject, and then he was expected to let the hostess indicate another performer. A cultivated people had been centuries evolving this routine, and to them it was extremely important.

II

There wasn't much place for children in Les Forкts, and they were rarely invited. But Mrs. Emily had met Lanny on the Riviera, and knew that he could be counted upon to wipe his feet before treading the heavy red velvet carpets which covered the entrance hall and went up the central stairway. He would stand for a long time looking at a painting in silence, and if he asked a question it would be an intelligent one. He never interrupted the conversation of his elders, and had listened to so many conversations that he was almost an elder himself. Mrs. Emily had suggested to Beauty that he might come and stay until they both were ready to return to Juan-les-Pins.

So here was Lanny, playing tennis with the children of the steward who managed the estate, swimming in the lake, riding the fine, high-strung horses, playing not too loudly upon a sonorous piano, and reading in a library where a pale and black-clad scholar had spent a lifetime cataloguing and watching over treasures. Here was a person worth listening to, and glad to have an audience. A week with M. Priedieu meant as much to Lanny Budd as a term in college. The old gentleman helped to orientate him in the world of books, making known to him the writers from whom he could find out about other writers; it was like giving him a map of the forests, so that he could go out and explore for himself.

Another educational influence was Mrs. Emily's mother, who was history. She had been a "Baltimore belle," and told how beautiful she used to be and how the beaux had swarmed about her. Now she was in her mid-seventies, and had lovely golden curls which looked quite natural; Lanny was surprised when his mother told him how once the sprightly old lady had rocked with laughter and thrown her curls into her plate of soup. She was painted all pink and white over her many wrinkles, and was automatically driven to exercise charm upon anything that came along in trousers.

Lanny fell under her spell, and she told him how her daughter Emily had been born amid the sounds of battle; the Fifth New York regiment, marching through Baltimore on its way to defend Washington at the outbreak of the American Civil War, had fired upon the citizens. "That fixes her age at fifty-three, so she doesn't like to have it told on her, and you must keep it a secret; but Emily herself won't be able to keep it much longer unless she consents to dye her hair. Dear me, how I do rattle on!" said Mrs. Sally Lee Sibley; and she added: "What a hideous and ruinous thing that war was, and how lucky we are who don't have to see such things!"