Пользователь - WORLDS END

X

The Allied armies continued their grinding advance. The Hindenburg line was cracked and the Germans forced to retreat. First Bulgaria collapsed, then Turkey, then Austria; there came a revolution in Germany and the Kaiser fled to Holland - all that series of dramatic events, culminating in the day when everybody rushed into the streets of American cities and towns, shouting and singing and dancing, blowing horns and beating tin pans, making every sort of racket they could think of. The war was over! There wasn't going to be any more killing! No more bombs, shells, bullets, poison gas, torpedoes! The boys who were still alive could stay alive! The war to end war had been won and the world was safe for democracy! People thought all these things, one after another, and with -each thought they shouted and sang and danced some more.

Even at St. Thomas's Academy, the place of good manners, there was a celebration. Lanny got his father on the telephone; they laughed together, and Lanny cried a little. He sent a cablegram to his mother and one to Rick. People were behaving the same way in France, of course. Even those cold and aloof beings, the gentlemen of England, were rushing out into the streets embracing strangers. It had been a tough grind for the people of that small island; they hadn't been in such danger since the days of the Spanish Armada.

A couple of weeks later came Thanksgiving Day and Lanny went home. One of the first things his father said was: "Well, kid, I guess I'm going to have to go back to Europe pretty soon. There'll be a lot of matters to be cleared up."

Lanny's first thought was: You can cross the ocean and enjoy it! You can walk on deck and look for whales instead of submarines!

One needed time for that to sink in. Then he said: "Listen, Robbie - don't be surprised. I want you to take me with you."

"You mean - to stay?"

"I've thought it all over. I'll be a lot happier in France. I can get much more of what I want there."

"Aren't you happy here?"

"Everybody's been kind to me, and I'm glad I came. I had to know your people, and I wouldn't have missed the experience. But I have to see my mother, too. And she needs me right now. I don't think she's ever going to see Marcel again."

"You could visit her, you know."

"Of course; but I have to think of one place as home, and that's Juan."

"What about the business?"

"If I'm going to help you, it'll be over there. You'll be going back and forth, and I'll see as much of you one way as the other."

"You don't care about going to college?"

"I don't think so, Robbie. I've asked people about it and it isn't what I need. I was going through with it on account of the war, and to please you."

"Just what is it you want - if you know?"

"It isn't easy to put into words. More than anything else I want art. I've lived here a year and a half and I've heard almost no music. I haven't seen any good plays - of course I might see them in New York, but I haven't any friends there, all my best friends are in England and France."

"You'll be a foreigner, Lanny."

"I'll be a citizen of several countries. The world will need some like that."

"Just what exactly do you plan to do?"

"I want to feel my way. The first thing is to stop doing all the things that I don't want to do. I'm in a sort of education treadmill. I make myself like it, but all the time I know that I don't; and if I dropped it and went on board a ship with you I'd feel like a bird getting out of a cage. Don't misunderstand me, I don't want to loaf; but I'm nineteen, and I believe I can direct my own education. I want to have time to read the books I'm interested in. I want to meet cultured people, and know what's going on in the arts - music, drama, painting, everything. Paris is going to be interesting right now, with the peace conference. Do you suppose you can manage to get me a passport? I understand they let hardly anybody go." "I can fix that up all right, if you're sure it's what you want." "I want to know what you're doing, and I want to help you - I'll be your secretary, run your errands, anything. To be with you and meet the people you meet - don't you see how much more that's worth to me than being stuck in a classroom at St. Thomas's, hearing lectures on modern European history by some master who's a child in comparison with you? Everything they have is out of books, and I can get the same books and read them in a tenth of the time. I'll wager you that on the steamer going across I can learn more modern European history than I'd get in a whole term in school." "All right," said the father. "I guess it's no use trying to fit you into anybody else's boots."

XI

Lanny motored up to the school to pack his belongings, and say good-by to his masters and his fellow-pupils, who thought he was the luckiest youth in the state. Then he came home and started saying farewell to people at the country club and to the many members of the family. Most of all he wanted to see the Reverend Eli Budd; but fate had other plans about that. There came a telegram saying that the patriarch had passed away peacefully in his sleep, and that the funeral would be held two days later.

Lanny motored up to Norton with Robbie and his wife and an elderly widowed cousin who was visiting them. The Budd tribe had assembled from all over New England - there must have been two hundred of them in the little Unitarian church, where the deceased had been the minister for fifty years of his life. The Budd men were all grave and solid-looking, all dressed pretty much alike, whether they were munitions magnates or farmers, bankers or clergymen. They listened in silence while the present minister extolled the virtues of the departed, and when they came outside, where the first snowflakes of the year were falling, the older ones agreed that the Budd line was producing no more great men. When the will was opened, everyone was puzzled because the old man had left his library to his great-grandnephew, Lanning Prescott Budd. Some of them didn't know who that was, till the whisper went round that it was Robert Budd's bastard, who was now going back to France and would probably take the books with him.

Robbie had got the passports, and the steamer sailed two days later. The son went over to the office and said good-by to all the executives and secretaries who had been kind to him. He had had to see a good deal of his Uncle Lawford in the office, and he now went in and shook hands with that morose and silent man, who unbent sufficiently to say that he wished him well. Lanny called on his grandfather at his home, and the old gentleman, who had aged a lot under the strain of the war, didn't make any attempt to seem cheerful. He said he didn't know how Robbie could be expecting to drum up any more business in Europe now; they had munitions enough on hand to blow up the whole continent, and he wasn't sure but what they might just as well do so.

"There's going to be hell to pay at home," he warned. "All our workingmen have got too big for their breeches, and we've got to turn a lot of them off when we finish these government contracts. They've been watching that lunatic asylum in Russia, and they'll be ready to try it here when they find we've nothing more to give them. Better take my advice and learn something about business, so you can take care of yourself in a dangerous time."

"I'm planning to stick close to my father, sir, and learn all that he'll teach me."

"Well, if you listen to me you'll forget all this nonsense about music and stage plays. There are temptations enough in a young man's life without going out to hunt for them."

"Yes, Grandfather," said the youth, humbly. This was a rebuke, and he had earned it. "I don't think there'll be much pleasure-seeking in France for quite a while. They are a nation of widows and cripples, and most of the people I know are working hard trying to help them."

"Humph!" said Grandfather Samuel, who wasn't going to believe anything good about France if he could help it. He went on to talk about the world situation, which was costing him a lot of sleep. Forces apparently beyond control had drawn America into the European mess, and it wasn't going to be easy getting her out again. American businessmen would be compelled to sell more and more to foreigners. "We Budds have always been plain country people," declared the grandfather. "Not many of us know any foreign languages, and we distrust their manners and their morals. We can use someone who knows them, and can advise us - that is, if it's possible for anybody to live among them and not become as corrupt as they are."

"I'll bear your advice in mind, sir," replied the youth. "I have learned a great deal from my visit here, and I mean to profit by it."

That was all, but it was enough, according to the old gentleman's code. He wouldn't try to pin anyone down. Lanny had been to Bible class, and had had his chance at Salvation; whether he took it or not was up to him, and whatever he did would be what the Lord had predestined him to do. The Lord would be watching him and judging him - and so would the Lord's deputy, the president of Budd Gunmakers.

XII

There remained the partings from Robbie's own family. The two boys were sorry indeed to see him go, for he had been a splash of bright color in their precisely ordered lives. He found time for a heart-to-heart talk with Bess, the only person in Connecticut who shed tears over him. She pledged herself to write to him, and he promised to send her pictures of places in Europe where he went and of people he met. "Some day you'll come over there," he said; and she answered that Robbie would have to bring her, or she would come as a stowaway.

As for Esther, she kissed him, and perhaps was really sorry. He thanked her with genuine affection; he felt that he had done wrong and was to blame for the coldness which had grown between them. He would always admire her and understand her; she would always be afraid of him.

Father and son went to New York by a morning train. Robbie had business in the afternoon, and in the evening Lanny had another good-by to say. Through the newspapers he had been following the fortunes of a dramatic production called The Colonel's Lady, which had opened in Atlantic City the beginning of October and had scored a hit; it had run there for two weeks, and had then had a successful opening at the Metropole Theater. Lanny wanted to see it, and Robbie said, sure, they'd both go. Their steamer had one of those midnight sailings which allow the pleasure-loving ones a last fling on the Great White Way.

Lanny didn't want to meet "Phyllis Gracyn"; he just wanted to see her act. He got seats for the show, for which one had to pay a premium. They were well down in front, but Gracyn probably didn't see the visitors. They followed the fortunes of a French innkeeper's daughter who was fascinated by the brilliance of an American "shavetail," but wasn't able to resist the lure of a French colonel, whose jealous wife involved him with a German spy in order to punish him. Out of this came an exciting melodrama, which was going to hold audiences in spite of peace negotiations.

Lanny was interested in two things: first, the performance of Gracyn, which wasn't finished by any means, but was full of energy and "pep"; and, second, the personality of the young American officer. Evidently the play was one of those which had been written at rehearsals, and Gracyn had had a part in it. Lanny had taught her, and she had taught the author and the young actor; so there were many touches in which Lanny recognized himself - mannerisms, phrases, opinions about the war, items about the French, their attitude to the doughboys and the doughboys' to them. There were even a few third-hand touches of Sergeant Jerry Pendleton in this Broadway hit!