I
A TELEPHONE call for Lanny at the Crillon. He answered, and let out a whoop. “Where are you? Oh, glory! Come right up.” He hung up the receiver. “It's Rick! He got leave!” Lanny rushed out to the lift, to wait for his friend; grabbed him and hugged him, then held him off at arm's length and examined him. “Gee, Rick, you look grand!”
The young flying officer had grown to man's stature. His khaki uniform was cut double in front, making a sort of breastplate of cloth; on the left breast was a white badge, indicating that he had a flying certificate, and high up on both sleeves were eagle wings. His skin was bronzed and his cheeks rosy; flying hadn't hurt him. With his wavy black hair cut close and a brown service cap on top he was a handsome fellow; and so happy over this visit — they were going to see Paris together, and Paris was the world!
“Gee, Rick, how did you manage it?”
“I had done some extra duty, so I had it coming.”
“How long have you got?”
“Till tomorrow night.”
“And how is it, Rick?”
“Oh, not so bad.”
“You've been fighting?”
“I've got two boches that I'm sure of.”
“You havent been hurt?”
“I had one spill — turned over in mud; but fortunately it was soft.”
Lanny led him to the room, and Robbie was glad to see him, of course; he set up the drinks, and Rick took one — they all drank in the air force, too much, he said, it was the only way they could keep going. Lanny drank soda, but said nothing about it. He sat, devouring that gallant figure with his eyes; so proud of his friend, thinking that he, Lanny, would never do anything as exciting and wonderful as that; his father wouldn't let him, his father wanted him to stay at home and make munitions for other men to use. But at least he could hear about it, and live it vicariously. He asked a stream of questions, and Rick answered casually, not much about himself, but about the squadron and what they were doing.
Of course Rick knew what was in his younger friend's mind, the adoration, the hero-worship; and of course it pleased him. But he wouldn't give a sign of it, he'd take it just as he took the job; nothing special, all in the day's work.
Rick could tell now what the censor wouldn't let him put on paper. He was stationed with General Allenby's Third Army, which lay in front of Vimy Ridge. He belonged to what was called the “corps wing,” the group of fliers who served a particular body of troops. Observation planes equipped with two-way radios, or with photographic apparatus, went out to observe enemy positions, and fighting planes went along to protect them. Rick flew a machine known as a “Sopwith one-and-a-half strutter.” It was a single-seater, such planes being lighter and faster, and the competition of the German Fokkers had forced it. Both sides now had what were called “interrupter gears”; that is, the action of the machine gun was synchronized with the propeller, so that the stream of bullets went through the whirling blades without hitting. So you didn't have to aim your gun, but just your plane; your job was to get on the other fellow's tail, and see him straight through your sights, and then cut loose. You would see two fighting planes maneuvering for position, darting this way and that, diving, rolling over, executing every sort of twist and turn. That sight was seen over Paris pretty nearly every day, and Lanny hadn't missed it.
His friend told many things about this strange new job of fighting in the air. In the sector where he flew, it was hard to distinguish the trenches, for the entire ground was a chaos of shell-craters. He flew at a speed of ninety miles an hour, and at a height of twelve hundred and fifty feet. When you came down suddenly from that height, you had headache, earache, even toothache, but it all passed away in three or four hours. The most curious thing was that you could hear the whine of the bullet before it reached you, and if you ducked quickly you might dodge it. Somehow that gave Lanny the biggest thrill of anything he had heard about the war; a mile and a half a minute, a quarter of a mile above the earth, and playing tag with bullets!
II
England and France were getting ready for the big spring “push”; everybody knew where it was to be, but it was a matter of good form not to name places. “Be silent,” read the signs all over Paris; “enemy ears are listening.” Rick said the air push was on all the time; the two sides were struggling incessantly for mastery. The English had held it pretty much through 1916; now it was a local matter, varying from place to place and from week to week. The Fokkers were fast, and their men fought like demons. The problem of the English was to train fliers quickly enough; they were used up faster than they could be sent across.
Rick stopped after he had said that; for it wasn't good form to reveal anything discouraging. But now and then he would mention a name. “Aubrey Valliance — you remember that fellow with the straw-colored hair you raced with, swimming? He was downed last week, poor chap. We don't know what happened — he just didn't come back.” Lanny got the picture of those bright-cheeked English schoolboys, eighteen or nineteen, some younger, having told a fib about their ages. They would volunteer, and have a few tests of eyesight and sense of balance, and then be rushed to a training camp, listen to a few lectures, go up a few times with an instructor to be taught the rudiments, then go up alone and practice this and that, maybe a week, maybe less, thirty hours of flying, or even as-few as twenty — and then off to France.
“Replacements,” they were called; half a dozen would arrive in a truck at night and be introduced to their fellows; you hardly had time to remember their names. They would look on the bulletin board and see themselves scheduled to fly at dawn. They would have a drink, and a handshake, or maybe a salute. They would say: “Very good, sir,” and step into their seats; the propellers would begin to roar, and away they would go, one after another. Maybe eight would go out, and only six would come back; you would wait, and listen, trying not to show your concern; after a certain period there was no use thinking about them any more, for the plane had only so much petrol, and no way to get any more. If the chap was down in enemy territory, you wouldn't know whether he was alive or dead; unless he had put up an extra-good fight, in which case an enemy flier might bring a bundle containing his boots and cap and pocketbook, and drop them onto the camp.
“Don't you ever get afraid, Rick?” asked Lanny. That was after Robbie had gone out to keep his engagements, and the two were alone.
Rick hesitated. “I guess I do; but it's no good thinking about. You've a job to do, and that's that.”
Lanny recalled Mrs. Emily Chattersworth's mother, that very old lady who had told about the American Civil War. One of her stories had to do with a young Confederate officer whose knees were shaking before a battle, and someone accused him of being scared. “Of course I'm scared,” he said; “if you were half as scared as I am you'd have run away long ago.”
Rick said that was about it. He said that now and then there was some youngster whose nerves came near to breaking, and you had to figure out how to buck him up and get him started. The hardest job was that of the ground officer who had to send chaps out, knowing they weren't fit; but there was no choice, they had to keep up with the Germans. Apparently things weren't any better with them, because the score was about even. You'd soon know if they had the edge.
III
The pair went for a walk on the boulevards. Paris in wartime; every sort of uniform you could imagine, and Rick pointing them out to his friend: English Tommies out for a lark; Australians and New Zealanders, tall fellows with looped-up hats; Highlanders in kilts — the Germans called them “ladies from hell”; Italians in green; French zouaves with baggy knee-pants; African colonials, who fought fiercely, but looked bewildered in a great city. The poilus had a new uniform of gray-blue; the picturesque kepi rouge and the baggy red pants had offered too good a target.
The two had lunch together; war bread, and very small portions of sugar, but anything else you could pay for. It was a special occasion, and Lanny wanted to spend all he had. He liked to be seen with this handsome young officer; his pacifist impulses weakened when put to such a test. He talked about Kurt, wishing he might be with them, instead of being on the other side of no man's land — or perhaps up in the air, fighting Rick! “I know he's in the army, but I've no idea where,” said Lanny.
“We wouldn't get 'along so well,” said the Englishman. “I always had the idea that German culture was a lot of wind and bluff.” Rick went on like that at some length, saying that the reputation of Goethe was due to the fact of the Germans' wanting so badly to have a world poet; Goethe wasn't really so much. Lanny listened, thinking his own thoughts. If Kurt were here, would he say that Shakespeare was a barbarian, or something like that? It was going to take a long time to wipe the bitterness of this war out of the hearts of men. If America came in, what would happen to Lanny's own heart?
There is a saying: “Speak of angels and they flap their wings.” The two friends came back from their stroll, and there was a letter for Lanny with a Swiss stamp on it, forwarded from Juan. “Kurt!” he exclaimed, and opened it quickly. His eyes ran over it. “He's been wounded!” Then he read aloud:
“Dear Lanny: It has been a long time since I have written. I have been very busy, and circumstances do not permit me to unbosom myself. Please believe that our friendship is not going to be ended, even by the news which I now read from abroad. I am now in hospital. It is not serious and I hope soon to be well again. It may not be possible for me to write for some time, so this is just to say Hello, and hope that you will not let anything interrupt your musical studies and the reading of the world's great poets. Ever your friend, Kurt.”
The envelope showed that it had been opened by the censor. It was always a gamble whether any particular sentence might cause a letter to be destroyed. You had to read between the lines. The “news from abroad” of course meant America's coming into the war — which seemed certain, President Wilson having summoned a special session of Congress to meet in a few days. Kurt was telling Lanny that he hoped he wouldn't take part in fighting Germany.
“We mustn't let ourselves hate him, Rick,” said the American.
The other answered: “The fighting men don't hate one another — not very often. What we hate is the damnable Kultur which has produced all these atrocities; also the rulers who impose it upon a credulous people.”
Lanny could accept that; but would Kurt accept it? That was going to be a problem!
IV
Robbie was in the midst of conferences with the representatives of a half a dozen armaments concerns; but he found an hour to go with the pair to the exposition at the Petit Palais. It was a matter of amour propre with the French that not even a world war should stop the development of genius in their country; art lovers would come to see what was new in taste and culture even though bombs might be raining upon them from the sky. The younger painters of France were most of them putting camouflage on guns and ships; but they had found time for sketches of war scenes. The older ones had gone on with their work, like Archimedes making scientific discoveries during the siege of Syracuse.
Battle pictures, of course, had always been found in every salon. Painters loved to portray thrilling conflicts: horses trampling men, sabers flashing, carbines spitting flame. Now there was a new kind of war, hard to know how to deal with. So much of it was fought at long distances, and with great machines — and how were you to make them dramatic? How were you to keep a picture of an airplane or a machine gun from looking like a photograph in L'Illustration? A general on horseback was an established figure of la gloire; but what could you do with a man in a tank or a submarine?
The answer of Marcel Detaze had been to go off in solitude and paint the figure of a woman in sorrow. Whether men were mutilated by sabers or by shrapnel made little difference to the wives and sweethearts of France; so said this young painter, and apparently the art lovers agreed with him. “Sister of Mercy” had been hung in an excellent position, and there were always people standing in front of it, and their faces showed that Marcel had conveyed something to their souls. Lanny listened to their comments, and little thrills crept up and down his spine. Even Robbie was moved; yes, the fellow had talent, you didn't have to be a “highbrow” to be sure of it.
Too bad that Beauty couldn't be on hand to share the sensation. She would have taken her friends, and stood and listened to what the crowds were saying; presently somebody would have glanced at her, and then at the picture, and then back at her again, in excitement and a little awe, and the blood would have started climbing to Beauty's cheeks, and even to her forehead; it would have been one of life's great moments. Call it vanity, but she was like that; “professional beauties” were amateur actresses, performing upon a larger stage with the help of newspapers and illustrated magazines. “I'll send her a ticket and tell her to come,” said Robbie, who found her foibles diverting.
A further idea occurred to him, and he said to his son: “Do you remember what Beauty once told you about a painting that made my father angry?” Yes, that was one of the things Lanny wasn't going to forget — not in this incarnation! He said so, and Robbie inquired: “Would you be interested to see it?”
The youth was staggered. Somehow the idea seemed rather horrible. And with Rick along too! But he told himself that this was an old-fashioned attitude, unworthy of a connoisseur of art. Surely Rick would feel that way about it. So Lanny replied: “I would, of course.”
“I've been told where it was. If it's been sold, maybe you can find out where it's gone.” Robbie gave the name of one of the fashionable dealers on the Rue de la Paix, and told him to ask for the “Lady with a Blue Veil,” by Oscar Deroulé. “You don't have to say that you know anything about it,” added the father.
The two fellows set out. Lanny had to make some explanation, for of course Rick would recognize the portrait. Lanny couldn't say that he was an illegitimate son, and that this painting was to blame for it — no, that would be too much for even the coldest-blooded connoisseur! He said: “My mother posed for several painters when she was young, and I guess my father thinks I'm old enough to know about it now.”
“Well, you surely can't blame the painters,” was Rick's consoling reply.
V
The decorous and black-clad picture dealer found nothing out of the way in the fact that two young gentlemen wanted to see the “Lady with a Blue Veil” by Oscar Deroule. It was his business to show pictures; a clerk went down some stairs and brought it up, and set it on a stand for them to look at, and then went to attend to another customer. So they had it to themselves, and no need to repress their feelings. “Oh, my God!” exclaimed Rick; and Lanny's heart hit him several blows underneath his throat.
There was Mabel Blackless, as she was in those days, just ripened into womanhood, a creature of such loveliness as made men catch their breath. The painter who had done her was a lover of the flesh, and had set himself to exploiting its lusciousness; the creams and whites and pinks, the velvety texture, the soft curves, the delicately changing shadows. Beauty was seated upon a silk-covered couch, half supported by one arm. There was a light blue veil across her hips, and the shower of her hair fell over one shoulder, half hiding a breast; she was in bright sunlight, and the fine strands gleamed like gold — not such an easy thing for a painter to get.
These were the modern days — they always are — and when a woman went swimming at Juan, she put on a fairly light bathing suit, and when it was wet it clung tightly, so really there wasn't so much in the picture that Lanny didn't know already. One thing he had never seen was her breasts, with nipples of delicate pink; he couldn't help thinking: “So that is where I was nourished!” He thought: “God, what a strange thing life is!” He confronted once more that most bewildering of ideas: “I was her accident! If it hadn't happened, where would I have been?”
He looked at the date in the corner of the painting; it was 1899, and he knew it was just before Robbie had come along and started him upon his strange journey into the present. Now, by the magic of art, the son could stand and look at the past; but no magic would enable him to look into the future, and know what he was going to do with his own power to create life. Were there baby souls waiting in the unknown, for him to decide whether or not they were to be?
His friend saw how deeply stirred he was; the blood had a way of mounting into Lanny's cheeks, just as you saw recorded in the portrait of his mother. Rick tried to ease him down by discussing the work from the technical point of view. Finally he allowed himself to remark: “If I owned that painting I don't think I'd ever marry. I'd expect too much!”
Lanny's reply was: “I think I'm the one who ought to own it.” He recalled his father's wish to buy him something; and now he knew what it was going to be. When the dealer rejoined them he inquired: “What is the price of this painting?”
The man looked at him, and then pretended to look on the back of the painting. The artist was not a well-known one, and the price was thirty-two hundred francs, or six hundred and forty dollars. “I will take it,” Lanny said. “I will pay you two hundred francs down, and if you send the painting to the Hotel Crillon this evening, I will have the rest.” The dealer knew then that he should have asked a higher price, but it was too late.
When Lanny told his father what he had done, the latter was much amused. “Do you want to take it to America?”
Lanny laughed in turn. “I thought Beauty and I ought to have it. I'll send it to her, and she can stick it away with Marcel's work.”
“It's a queer sort of a present,” said Robbie, “but if it's what you want, O.K. There are half a dozen paintings of Beauty somewhere in the world, and you might hunt them up.” Then the shrewd businessman added: “Buy options for two years, and you'll get some bargains that'll surprise you. The franc has been pegged, but it won't hold after the war!”
VI
The tongues of the two young men were loosened and they talked about love. Lanny told of his happiness with Rosemary, now almost a year past. He didn't have a right to say how far they had gone — but he found that Rosemary had told Rick's sister, and she in turn had told Rick. These young people had few secrets; their “emancipation” took the form of voluminous talk, and it was a mark of enlightenment to employ the plainest words.
When Lanny said he hadn't been able to be interested in any other girl, Rick told him it was hard luck that he had aimed too high. “I mean,” he added, hastily, “from the English point of view. Her family puts on a lot of side. Of course, it's all bally rot; perhaps we'll sack the lot of them before this war is over.”
Lanny told what his father had said to Zaharoff, that it might end as it had in Russia; to which Rick replied in his free and easy way that he'd take his chances with a new deal. He informed his friend that the Codwilliger family was planning for Rosemary to marry the oldest grandson of the very old Earl of Sandhaven; the grandson was the future heir, since his father had been killed in the same siege of Gallipoli where Rosemary's father had been wounded. Lanny could see how useless it was for him to hope — that is, of course, from the English point of view. He gathered the impression that he had been greatly honored by having had the future mother of an earl for a temporary sweetheart.
It was Rick's turn to open his heart. “I've been meaning to tell you, Lanny — I'm married.”
“What?” cried the other, amazed.
“The night before I left for France. It's quite a long story. If you want to hear it — ”
“Oh, do I, Rick!”
The baronet's son had come to London to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps, and at the home of one of his school friends had met a girl just his age, a student at a college not far from his training camp. They had hit it off together, and used to meet whenever Rick had free time. “We talked about love,” he said, “and I told her I'd never had a girl. Of course all the chaps want to have one before they go to the front — and all the girls want to have them, it seems. She said she'd try it with me, and we were both quite happy — only of course there wasn't very much time.”
Rick paused. “And then?” said Lanny.
“Well, I knew I was going across in a week or so; and Nina — her name is Nina Putney — told me she wanted to have a baby. I mightn't come back — lots of the fellows have been downed on their first flight.”
“I know,” said Lanny.
“I said: 'What will you do, alone?' And she said: 'I know what I want. I can take care of it somehow.' She has a sister who's an interior decorator, and would take her in. You know people don't pay so much attention to illegitimacy in wartime; they make excuses. And Nina broke down — she said she had to have something to remember me by. I couldn't very well say no.”
“Is she going to have it?”
“So she writes me.”
“You married her before that?”
“I thought I ought to tell the pater; if he was going to have a grandchild, he'd want to be sure about it. He looked up the family and found out they were all right — I mean, what he calls all right-so then he said we ought to get married. So we got a special license and went over to the church, the night before I reported for duty.”
“Oh, Rick, what a story! Do you think she's a girl you'll be happy with?”
“I suppose we've as good a chance as most couples. Nina's game, and says she'll never hold me to it. She swears she wasn't trying to rope me in, and if I ever say it, she'll drop me flat.” The young flying officer smiled a rather wry smile.
“You're supposed to be something of a catch, aren't you, Rick — I mean from the English point of view?”
Rick could talk about the social position of the Codwilliger family, but not of the Pomeroy-Nielsons. “The pater says we'll lose The Reaches if they keep piling war taxes on him. And what price a baronet if you have to live in lodgings?”
VII
Lanny was excited, of course. He wanted to know about Nina, and what she looked like — Rick had a little picture, which showed a slender, birdlike person with an eager, intense expression. Lanny admired her, and Rick was pleased. Lanny asked what she was studying, and about her family — her father was a barrister, but not a successful one; she would be one of these new women who had careers of their own, kept their own names, and so on. None of this clinging sort.
Lanny said that his father was taking him to London soon. Could he meet her? Rick said: “Of course.”
“Could I give her a present, do you suppose? Would she like some picture that we could pick up for her?”
“You'd better wait,” laughed the other, “and see what happens to me. If I'm put out, you'd better give her a baby basket.”
“I'll give her both!” Lanny had recently become aware of the fact that his father had a pile of money.
“No Caliph of Bagdad business!” countered his friend. “You pick out a book that may keep her from being lonely, and write something in it, so she can remember you when you marry an oil princess in Connecticut.”
“There isn't any oil in Connecticut, Rick.”
“Well, nutmegs then. Your father says it's called the Nutmeg State. You'll make a whole crop of new princesses out of this war. They'll be bored, and they'll be crazy about you because you speak French, and dance, and have culture — you'll rank with a marquis or a Russian grand duke in exile.”
Lanny was amused by this picture of himself in New England. He wanted to say: “They'll find out that I'm a bastard.” But his lips were sealed.
Half a day, a night, and another day; never had thirty hours moved with such speed! They went to the Comedie Française, and sat in a box; they had a meal at midnight, and Robbie ordered an extra bottle of wine. They strolled on the boulevards in the morning, luxuriating in the sunshine, watching the crowds and gazing at the fine things for sale. Lanny bought a stock of chocolates, the one thing Rick admitted the chaps in the air force would appreciate. They picked up an old-fashioned open carriage with a bony but lively horse, and were driven about the Bois and the main boulevards, looking at historic buildings and remembering what they could of events. Rick knew a little about everything; he had all his old assurance, his worldly manner which impressed his younger friend so greatly.
Robbie came back to the hotel, feeling good, because Zaharoff's factotum had given way, and the other companies were giving way, and Robbie was collecting signatures on dotted lines. Lanny had to ask him not to be too exultant until Rick was gone. “You know how it is, he's giving his life, maybe, while we're making money.”
“All right,” said the salesman, with one of his chuckles. “I'll be good; but you tell Rick that if his old man wants to sell The Reaches, you'll buy it!” No use asking Robbie to shed any tears over the English aristocracy. They had had their day, and now the American businessmen were to have theirs. Gangway!
However, Robbie was very decent when the time for parting came. He had a big package delivered to Rick's room, and told him not to open it until he got back to camp. He told Lanny it contained cigarettes; the baronet's son would be the darling of the corps wing for a time. Robbie shook hands with him, and said “Cheerio,” in the approved English fashion.
Lanny went to the train, and had tears in his eyes, he just couldn't help it. It would have been very bad form for Rick to have them; he said: “Thanks, old chap, you've been perfectly bully to me.” And then: “Take care of yourself, and don't let the subs get you.”
“Write me a post card every now and then,” pleaded Lanny. “You know how it is, if I don't hear from you, I'll worry.”
“Don't do that,” said Rick. “Whatever comes, that's what comes.” It was the nearest a modern man could approach to having a philosophy.
“Well, look out for the Fokkers — get them first!”
“Right-o!” The whistle blew, and Rick bolted, just in time for the train and for the honor of the Royal Flying Corps. Lanny stood, with tears flowing freely. “Good-by, Rick! Good-by!” His voice died into a sort of sob as the train moved on, and the face of Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson disappeared, perhaps forever. That was the dreadful thing about wartime, you couldn't part from anybody without the thought: “I'll probably not see him again!”
VIII
The youth kept talking about this depressing idea until it worried his father. “You know, kid,” he remarked, “you just can't be too soft in this world. It's painful to think of people getting killed, and I don't know the answer, except that maybe we put too much value on human life; we try to make more out of it than nature allows. This is certain, if you're too sensitive, and suffer too much, you wreck your own happiness, and maybe your health, and then what are you worth to yourself or anybody else?”
That was something to think about, and the youngster put his mind on it. What was the use of practicing the arts, of understanding and loving them, if you didn't dare let yourself feel? Manifestly, the purpose of art was to awaken feelings; but Robbie said you had to put them to sleep, or at any rate retire into a cave with them. Build yourself like a tortoise, with a hard shell around you, so that the world couldn't get hold of you to make you suffer!
Lanny voiced that, and the reply was: “Maybe it's a bad time for art right now. As I read history I see these periods come pretty frequently and last a long time, so you have to arm yourself somehow; unless, of course, you want to be a martyr, and die on a cross, or something like that. It makes good melodrama, or maybe great tragedy, but it's doggone uncomfortable while it's happening.”
They were in their room, packing to leave for England; and Robbie said: “Sit down and let me tell you something I heard today.” He lowered his voice, as if he thought that someone might be hiding in their room. Enemy ears are listening!
“Your friend is going off to fight the German Fokkers, and you're unhappy because they may get him. He's told you the Fokkers are fast and light, and that helps them, and may doom him. Do you know why they are so fast and light?”
“He says they're putting aluminum into them.”
“Exactly. And where do they get it? What's it made from?”
“It's made out of bauxite, I know.”
“And has Germany got any?”
“I don't know, Robbie.”
“Few people know things like that; they don't teach them in the schools. Germany has very little, and she wants it badly, and pays high prices for it. Do you know who has it?”
“Well, I know that France has a lot, because Eddie Patterson drove me to the place where it's being mined.” Lanny remembered this trip to a town called Brignolles, back from the coast; the reddish mineral was blasted from tunnels in a mountain, and brought down to the valley in great steel buckets rolling on a continuous wire cable. Lanny and his friend had been admitted to the place and had watched the stuff being dumped into lines of freight cars. It had been Lanny's first actual sight of big industry — unless you included the perfume factories in Grasse, where peasant women sat half buried in millions of rose leaves, amid an odor so powerful that a little of it sent you out with a headache.
Robbie went on with his story. “To make bauxite into aluminum takes electric power. Those lines of freight cars that you saw were taken to Switzerland, which has cheap power from its mountain streams. There the aluminum is made; and then it goes — can you guess?”
“To Germany?”
“It goes to whatever country bids the highest price for it; and Germany is in the market. So if your friend is brought down by a faster airplane, you'll know the reason. Also you'll know why your father keeps urging you not to tear your heart out over this war.”
“But, Robbie!” The son's voice rose with excitement. “Something ought to be done about a thing like that!”
“Who's going to do it?”
“But it's treason!”
“It's business.”
“Who are the people that are doing it?”
“A big concern, with a lot of stockholders; its shares are on the market, anybody can buy them who has the money. If you look up the board of directors, you'll find familiar names — that is, if you follow such things. You find Lord Booby, and you say: 'Zaharoff!' You see the Due de Pumpkin, and you say: 'Schneider,' or perhaps 'de Wendel.' You see Isaac Steinberg, or some such name, and you say: 'Rothschild.' They have their directors in hundreds of different companies, all tied together in a big net — steel, oil, coal, chemicals, shipping, and, above all, banks. When you see those names, you might as well butt your brains out against a stone wall as try to stop them, or even to expose them — because they own the newspapers.”
“But, Robbie,” protested the youth, “doesn't it make any difference to those men whether the Germans take France?”
“They're building big industry, and they'll own it and run it. Whatever government comes in will have to have money, and will make terms with them, and business will go on as it's always done. It's a steam roller; and what I'm telling my son is, be on it and not under it!”
IX
The English and the French had made for themselves a sort of chicken run across the English Channel; a wide lane, fenced with heavy steel netting hung from two lines of buoys, and protected by mines. Back and forth through that lane went the troopships, the hospital ships, the freighters, the packet boats with passengers. Up and down the lines patrolled torpedo boats and destroyers, mine sweepers and trawlers; lookouts swept the sea with glasses, and gunners stood by their quick-firers, ready at a moment's notice to swing them into action. Overhead were airplanes humming, and silver blimps slowly gliding. The submarine campaign was at its peak, and the Allies were going back to the ancient system of convoys for merchant ships. They were doing it here, with fleets of slow-moving vessels laden with coal for France, escorted by armed trawlers.
At night the destroyers raced up and down, their searchlights flashing, making the scene bright almost as day. But the packet boats showed no lights, and passengers were not allowed on deck; you went on board after dark, and were escorted to your stateroom, and advised to sleep with your clothes on, and be sure to practice adjusting the life preserver which was overhead in your berth. Your porthole was sealed tightly with a dark cover, and to open it or show a light was a prison offense. You heard the sounds of departure, and felt the vibration of the screw and the tossing of the vessel. You slept, if your nerves were sound, and when you woke up you were in England, if your luck was reasonably good.
London in wartime was full of bustle, serious but not afraid. “Never say die,” was the motto. England would follow her usual rule of losing every battle but the last. The theaters and the cinemas were crowded. Everybody was at work, both men and women; hours were long and wages high; the people of the slums had enough to eat for the first time in their lives. Lanny wondered: was that the solution to the problem of poverty and unemployment — to put everybody at work trying to blow some other people up?
Robbie had important men waiting to see him. There was no way for Lanny to help him; no more codes or ciphers now — whatever cablegrams you sent had to be in plain words, and signed by your full name; better not use any words the censor didn't know, and not too many figures. Robbie told a story about a man who tried to cable that he had purchased 12 462 873 sables; the military intelligence department got busy to find out how he had managed to get more sables than there were in the world.
Lanny had two young ladies to call on. Rosemary first, of course. She had got her heart's desire, and was working as a nurse. They called her a “student,” but there wasn't much difference in these days, you went right to work, and learned by doing. She was in a big hospital which until recently had been a school. Her hours were long, and leave was hard to get; but when you are the granddaughter of an earl, you can manage things in England, even in wartime.
Toward sundown he went to meet her, expecting to see her in a nurse's costume of white; but she had changed to a blue chiffon dress and a little straw hat with blue cornflowers in it. The sight of her started something to tingling inside him. How lovely life could be, even with death ruling the world!
They walked in a near-by park, and she tried her best to be cool and matter of fact. But there was something between her and this young American that wasn't easy to control. They sat on a bench, and Lanny looked at her, and saw that she was afraid to meet his eyes, and that her lips were trembling.
“Have you missed me a little, Rosemary?”
“More than a little.”
“I haven't been able to think about anybody else.”
“Let's not talk about it, Lanny.”
So he chatted for a while, telling her about Rick's brief holiday in Paris. He talked about his coming trip to America, and the reasons for it. “My father says we're surely coming into the war.” Congress was then in session, and a fierce debate was going on; there might be a vote at any hour.
“Better late than never,” replied Rosemary. The English in those days had become extremely impatient with the letter-writing of President Wilson.
“You mustn't blame me for it,” said he. “But if we do come in, things will change quickly.” He waited a reasonable time, then asked, with a smile: “If we do, Rosemary, will that make any difference in the way your parents feel about us colonials?”
“All that's so complicated, Lanny. Let's talk about nice agreeable things.”
“The nicest agreeable thing I know is sitting on a park bench with the twilight falling about her and an evening star right in front of her eyes, and I haven't the least desire to talk about anything else. Tell me, darling: has there been any other man in your heart in the past eleven months?”
“There are hundreds of them, Lanny. I'm trying to help our poor boys back to life — or ease them out of it not too horribly.”
“I know, dear,” he said. “I've lived in the house with a war casualty for more than two years. But one can't work all the time, surely; one has to have a little fun.”
Lanny didn't know England very well. He knew that the “lower orders” lay around in the parks in broad daylight; but just how dark did it have to be for a member of the nobility to permit a young man to take her hand, or put his arm around her on a park bench? He tried gently, and she did not repel him. Presently they were sitting close together, and the old mysterious spell renewed itself. Perhaps an hour passed; then he said: “Can't we go somewhere, Rosemary?”
Robbie had said: “Take her to one of the cheaper hotels; they don't ask questions.” Robbie was practical on the subject of sex, as upon all others. He said there were three things a young fellow had to look out for: he mustn't get any girl into trouble; he mustn't get mixed up with any married woman unless he was sure the husband didn't care; and he mustn't get any disease. When Lanny had reassured him on these points, he said: “If you don't show up tonight, I won't worry.”
X
So Lanny and Rosemary went strolling; and when they came to a place where they weren't apt to meet any of their fashionable friends, they went in, and he registered as Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and paid in advance, and no questions were asked. When they lay in the embrace which was so full of rapture for them both, they forgot the sordid surroundings, they forgot everything except that their time was short. Lanny was going out to face the submarines on the open ocean, and Rosemary was going to France, where the screaming shells paid no heed to a red cross on a woman's arm.
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a flying.” Thus the English poet. The German has said: “Pflücket die Rose, Eh' sie verblüht.” So there was one thing about which the two nations could agree. In countless cheap hotels in Berlin, as in London, the advice was being followed; and the wartime custom was no different in Paris — if you could accept the testimony of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had stood on the field of Eylau, observing the heaps of the slaughtered and remarking: “One night in Paris will remedy all that.”
Their happiness was long-enduring, and nothing in the outside world was permitted to disturb it. Not even loud banging noises, all over the city — one of them very close by. Lanny made a joke of it: “I hope that's not some morals police force after us.” The girl explained that those were anti-aircraft warnings, made by “maroons,” a kind of harmless bomb made of heavy paper wrapped with twine.
They lay still in the dark and listened. Presently came louder explosions, and some of them were near, too. “Anti-aircraft guns,” said Rosemary; she knew all the sounds. There came dull, heavy crashes, and she told him those were the bombs. “You don't have to worry unless it's a direct hit.”
“You surely can't worry if it is,” said Lanny. It was his first time under fire, and he wanted to take it in the English manner.
“About as much risk as in a thunderstorm,” said Rosemary. “The silly fools think they can frighten us by wrecking a house here and there and killing half a dozen harmless people in their beds.”
“I suppose those'll be planes?” asked the youth.
“From occupied Belgium. The Zepps have stopped coming entirely.”
The uproar grew louder, and presently there was a sharp cracking sound, and some of the glass in the window of their room fell onto the floor. That was getting sort of close! “A piece of shrapnel,” said Rosemary. “They don't have much force, because the air resistance stops them.”
“You know all about it!” smiled Lanny.
“Naturally; I help to fix people up. I'll have some new cases in the morning.”
“None tonight, I hope, dear.”
“Kiss me, Lanny. If we're going to die, let it be that way.”
The uproar died away even more suddenly than it had come; they slept awhile, and early in the morning, when they got up, Lanny found a fragment of a shell near the broken window. It wasn't much more than an inch square, but had unpleasantly jagged edges. He said: “I'll keep it for a souvenir, unless you want it.”
“We get plenty of them,” replied the student nurse.
“Maybe it's a Budd.” He knew, of course, that the British were using Budd shrapnel. “I'll see if my father can tell.”
“They gather up the pieces and use them again,” explained Rosemary.
That was her casual way. She told him to phone her or wire her as to when he would be sailing. She didn't know if she could get another leave, but she would try.
They went outside, and heard newsboys shouting, and saw posters in large letters: “U.S.A. in War!” “America Joins!” While the scion of Budd Gunmakers had been gathering rosebuds with the granddaughter of Lord Dewthorpe, the Senate of the United States had voted a declaration to the effect that a condition of war already existed between that country and Germany.
XI
It was a pleasant time to be in London. There were celebrations in the streets, and the usually self-contained islanders were hunting for some American, so that they could shake him by the hand and say: “Thanks, old chap, this is grand, we're all brothers now, and when will you be coming over?” Lanny asked his father if this would help him in getting contracts; Robbie said they'd expect him to give the patents now — but no such instructions had come from Newcastle, Connecticut!
Lanny went to call on Nina Putney, still a student in college in spite of being married. He took her to lunch, and they had a long talk. She was a brunette, slender and delicate, with sensitive, finely cut features. She seemed more like a French girl than an English one; she was like Lanny, eager and somewhat impetuous; she said what she felt, and then perhaps wished she hadn't. The two could get along easily, because they shared the same adoration, and wanted to talk about it.
Nina told about her meeting with the most wonderful of would-be fliers, whose dream had since come true. He might be in the air now — oh, God, at this moment he might be in a death duel with one of the German Fokkers, so light and fast because they were made of aluminum manufactured in Switzerland from French bauxite! Lanny didn't tell the young bride about that; but a shadow hung over their meeting, and what could he say? He couldn't deny the mortal danger, or that it would last, day after day. No comfort that an airman came back alive, because he would be going out again so soon.
Business as usual! Lanny and Nina promised to write to each other, for Rick's sake, and she would tell him whatever news she got. America would hurry up, and this dreadful war would be won, and they would all live happy ever after. So, good-by, Nina, and take good care of that baby, and you're to have a basket, and remember, Budd's will stand back of you!
Robbie said he'd have all his affairs wound up in a couple of days, and no use to linger and be a target even for Budd shrapnel. He had engaged a stateroom, and Lanny, the lady-killer, might gather as many rosebuds as possible in that brief interim. He phoned to Rosemary, and she said, yes, she'd get away once more, even if they fined her for it. They went to the same hotel and got the same room — the pane of glass patched with brown paper. Once more they were happy, after the fashion that war permits — amor inter arma; concentrating on one moment, refusing to let the mind roam or the eye peer into the future.
In the morning, clinging to him, the girl said: “Lanny, you've been; a darling, and I'll never forget you. Write me, and let me know how things go, and I'll do the same.”
No more than that. She wouldn't talk about marriage; she would go on patching broken English bodies, and he would visit the home of his fathers, and come back as a soldier, or perhaps to sell armaments — who could say? “Good-by, dear; and do help us to win!”
So Lanny was through; and it was a good time to be leaving. The British were beginning their spring offensive, which would be drowned in mud and hung on barbed wire and mowed down by machine guns in the usual depressing way. The French had a new commander, Nivelle, and he would lead them into a slaughter that would bring the troops to the verge of mutiny. Away from all that!
They took a boat train at night, and went on board a steamship in darkness and silence. They knew they were being towed out into a harbor, and that tugs were pulling steel nets with buoys out of the way. But they couldn't see a thing, because the deck was covered with a shroud of burlap. They sat outside for a long while, listening to the sounds of the sea and conversing in whispers; not much chance to sleep, and nothing you could do. Everyone tried hard to seem unconcerned. Some men shut themselves up in their cabins and drank themselves insensitive; others played cards in the saloon and pretended not to care about death.
“Westward the star of empire takes its way,” said Robbie. He was telling his son that they were off to God's country, the place to stay in, to believe in. He was telling him not to miss the granddaughter of an earl too much; there were plenty of delightful democratic maidens at home. He was saying that Europe was worn out; it would owe all its money to America, and collecting it would be fun. Yes, they were sitting pretty — unless by chance there should come a pale streak of foam out there on the starlit ocean, and a shattering explosion beneath them!