Пользователь - WORLDS END

Robbie thought it was; and so the whole situation was forced into the open. Lanny talked to his father, not merely about Marcel, but about Baron Livens-Mazursky, and Dr. Bauer-Siemans, and the Hackaburys, and Isadora, and Anatole France, and all the rest; he had to make Robbie understand how he came to know so much about love, and why he was taking it upon himself to keep a French painter from losing his beautiful blond mistress. Robbie didn't have much use for either Frenchmen or painters, but he was very much for Lanny, and couldn't help being tickled by this odd situation, a sensitive, idealistic kid undertaking to make a hero out of his mother's lover - and seeming very likely to get away with it. It was clear that Beauty was still half in love with her painter; the other half in love with the idea of becoming a respectable American lady, wife of a man who could give her security and position. Which would she choose?

II

It was a time for showdowns. In the crash of kingdoms and empires, human blunders and failures shrank to smaller proportions. Beauty took her son into a room apart, and told him a story which so far she had kept from nearly everyone she knew. She couldn't look him in the eyes, and blushed intensely - her throat, her cheeks, her forehead. "Your father and I have never been married, Lanny. The story that we are divorced is one that I made up to protect you and me. I didn't want people to know that you are illegitimate, and make it a handicap to your life."

She rushed on to pour out the details, defending both herself and Robbie. They had met in Paris when they were very young, and they had loved each other truly, and had planned to marry. But Beauty had been an artist's model, and had been painted in the nude. Lanny would understand that, he knew what art was; one of the pictures had been exhibited in a salon, and was much admired. But some malicious person had sent a photograph of it to Robbie's father, the head of an old and proud family of Puritan New England. It had meant only one thing to him, that Beauty was an indecent woman; he was a harsh and domineering man, and was he going to have his son marrying a painter's model, and having her picture in the newspapers naked instead of in the usual bridal costume? That was what he said, and he laid down the law: if Robbie married such a woman his father would disown and disinherit him.

Robbie wanted to do it, even so, but Beauty wouldn't let him; she loved him and wouldn't wreck his life. They had lived together without marriage; the father had consented to ignore his son's mistress, something not so unusual, even for Puritans in New England. It was hard on Lanny, but they hadn't meant for him to happen - Lanny had been an accident, said his mother at the climax of her confusion and blushes.

She had thought she would never have the courage to tell this story to her son; she took it for granted that he would receive it with shame, and perhaps with anger toward her. But Lanny had by now seen so much of lawless love, and heard about so much more, that the distinctions were blurred in his mind. He said it didn't worry him to be illegitimate; it hadn't hurt his health, and it wouldn't hurt his feelings if somebody called him a bastard - he had read about them in Shakespeare and had got the impression that they were a lively lot. What did give him shivers was the idea of having been an "accident." "Where would I have been, and what would I have been, if you and Robbie hadn't had me?"

Tears came into the mother's bright blue eyes; she saw that he was trying to spare her; he was being a darling, as usual. She hastened to explain the situation which now confronted her, the reasons why her decision was so important. If she were to marry Harry Murchison, that would cover all her past and make her a "respectable" woman; it wouldn't make Lanny legitimate, but it would keep anybody from bothering about it - and anyhow Robbie intended to acknowledge him as his son.

Lanny could understand all that; but he said: "What good will it do you to be respectable if you aren't happy?"

"But, Lanny!" she exclaimed. "I mean to be happy with Harry."

"Maybe," said he; "but I don't believe you'll ever forget that you left Marcel without any cause. Suppose he goes and jumps off the Cap?"

"Oh, Lanny, he won't do that!"

"How can you be sure? And then, suppose that France mobilizes? Marcel will have to go to war, won't he?"

Beauty turned pale; that was the horror she couldn't bring herself to face. The boy, seeing that he had the advantage, pushed harder. "Could you bear to leave him if you knew he had gone to fight for his country?" All Beauty could do was to bury her face in her arms and weep. Lanny said: "You better wait and see what happens."

III

They wouldn't have to wait long. Surely nobody could complain of the slowness of events at the end of July 1914! First it was Russia mobilizing one and a quarter million men; then it was the German Kaiser serving an ultimatum to the effect that Russia had to cease mobilizing. Paris buzzed like a beehive at swarming time; for France was Russia's ally and was bound to go to war if Russia was attacked.

Robbie had said that the governments would find him, and they did. By one means or another, word spread that the representative of Budd's was staying at the Hotel Crillon, in a front suite with a pleasant view up the Champs-Йlysйes. Military gentlemen representing most of the governments of Europe came to enjoy that view, and partake of the array of drinks which Robbie had upon the sideboard in his reception room - all going onto the expense account of a munitions salesman. The immaculately uniformed gentlemen came to find out what stocks Budd's had on hand at present - of guns and ammunition, of course, not of whiskies, brandies, and liqueurs.

Robbie would smile suavely, and say that he regretted that Budd's was such a very small plant, and had practically no stocks on hand. "You know how it is, I begged your General So-and-So to place an order last year. I warned you all what was coming."

"Yes, we know," the military gentlemen would reply, sorrowfully. "If the decision* had rested with us, we should have been prepared. But the politicians, the parliaments" - they would shrug their shoulders. "What could we do?"

Robbie knew all about politicians and parliaments; in his country they were called Congress and had steadily refused to vote what the safety of the country required. Now, of course, there would be a quick change, the purse strings would be loosened. The policy of Budd's was fixed; it was "first come, first served" to all the world. The terms in this present crisis would be fifty percent of the purchase price to be placed in escrow with the First National Bank of Newcastle, Connecticut, before the order was accepted; the balance to be placed in escrow a week before the completion of the order, to be paid against bills of lading when shipment was made. Munitions makers had grown suddenly exacting, it appeared. Robbie added confidentially - to everyone - that he had cabled his firm recommending an immediate increase of fifty percent in its entire schedule of prices: this to meet inevitable rises in the cost of materials and labor.

The visitors would depart; and while the next lot cooled their heels in the lobby, the salesman would take off the heavy alligator-skin belt which he always wore, slip a catch, and draw out several long strips of parchment with fine writing on them. He would sit at his portable typewriter, the newest contraption created by Yankee ingenuity, and would study the parchment strips and proceed to type out a cablegram in code.

That secret code had been one of the thrills of Lanny's life for several years. It was changed every time Robbie made a trip, and there were only two copies of it in existence; the other was in the possession of Robbie's father. The one other person who knew about it was the confidential clerk who devised it, and who did the decoding for the president of the company. The belt in which Robbie kept his own copy was never off his person except when he was in the bathtub or in swimming; usually he swam from a boat, and before he sank down among the fishes he would make sure there were no agents of foreign governments near by.

Robbie had talked quite a lot about ciphers and codes. Any cipher could be "broken" by an expert; but a code was safe, because it gave purely arbitrary meanings to words. The smartest expert could hardly find out that "Agamemnon" meant Turkey, or that "hippo-griff" meant the premier of Rumania. Robbie would use the cable company's code-book for the ordinary phrases of his message: "I have promised immediate delivery," or "I advise acceptance," and so on; but crucial words, such as names of countries, of individuals he was dealing with and the goods they were ordering, were in the private code. These precautions had been adopted after a deal had been lost because Zaharoff had a man in the office of Budd Gun-makers and was getting copies of Robbie's messages.

Seeing how overwhelmed his father was, Lanny asked if he could help; and the father said: "It's too bad you don't know how to type."

"I can find the letters on the keyboard," replied the boy, "and you don't hit 'em so fast yourself."

"You'll find it's pretty poor fun."

"If I'm really helping you, I'll think it's the best fun there is."

So Robbie wrote his cablegram in English, and showed the boy how to look up phrases in the regular code-book, and underlined those words which would be in his own list. While Robbie interviewed a friend of Captain Bragescu, just arrived from Rumania, Lanny worked patiently by the "hunt and peck" method, producing a long string of ten-letter words: "California Independed Hilarioust Scorpionly Necessands," and so on. Lanny's grandfather, who had tried hard not to let him be born, and who so far had refused to recognize the failure of that effort, would learn from this painstaking service that the government of Holland was anxious over the possibility of invasion, and would pay thirty percent premium for delivery of twenty thousand carbines during the month of August.

By the time Robbie's interview was concluded, the message was ready, and he went over it and found only two or three errors, and said it was a great help; which of course made the boy as proud as Punch. Robbie burned the original message, and let the ashes drop into the toilet bowl. Then Lanny asked: "Do you ever add anything out of code?"

"Sometimes," replied the father. "Why?"

"Just say: 'Lanny coded this.' "

Robbie chuckled, but he said: "Wait till he sells the guns and gets the money!"

IV

The cablegram dispatched, the pair went for a stroll, to get some fresh air into their lungs before lunch. The other delegations could wait, said Robbie; no sense in killing yourself - anyhow, Budd's was loaded up with orders; in the past couple of weeks they had accumulated a "backlog" for six months. For years Robbie had been urging the family to expand the plant; Robbie's eldest brother, Lawford, who was in charge of production, had opposed it, but finally their father had adopted Robbie's program. Now he wouldn't have to worry any more.

"What's he worrying about?" asked Lanny, and Robbie answered: "Bankers! Once you let Wall Street get its claws into you, you cease to be a family institution."

It was Friday, the last day of July. Newsboys were shouting la guerre again. Germany had declared martial law. She was going to war with somebody, and it could only be with France's ally. People appeared to have lost interest in the ordinary tasks; they stopped on street corners, or in front of bistros, kiosks, and tobacco shops, to talk about the meaning of events. People spoke to you who wouldn't ordinarily have done so. "They're scared," said Robbie. "That brings human beings together."