Philip Wylie - The Other Horseman

Mr. Corinth said, “Yes, I mean that America. That America—and you can multiply your picture by five, ten if you want. Because I don’t believe the heart and the guts and the brains of America are as destructible as you seem to. I don’t believe an American—a bricklayer, a doctor, a motorman, a factory worker, a farmer, or even a banker—is soft inside. We’ve started something here—barely started it. I don’t think we’ll quit. We’re not the type. I do not believe that my American, standing outside his house, which has burned down, in the presence of his dead brother, with no bank account, and his kids needing food, will simply fold up and say, ‘I’m through. What’s the use!’ I don’t see the end of things as they used to be as being the end of everything, the way you do.

“Maybe the age of big business exploitation of natural resources is ended. Maybe the age of titanic private fortunes is gone. Who did the exploiting? Who had the fortunes? All the Americans? No. A hundredth of one per cent. You probably have a million, Wilson. I have. You take it away—and I’ll make another. Stop me from collecting that much—and I’ll still make plenty, while I have my plant. Destroy the plant—and I’ll borrow money from you to build another. Take away my domestic market and I’ll sell my damned paint in Timbuktu. Take the money from the Timbuks and I’ll trade paint for ivory and sell the ivory for piano keys or beads. Make the beads and keys out of plastic and I’ll teach the natives how to crochet—and sell that.

“You know what I mean. When everything that science and ingenuity can discover and invent has been applied to human welfare and living in every nook and cranny of the earth, when the astronomers have proved that there isn’t a potential buying population on Mars, then I’ll be content to fold up and say that business is due for a collapse, that business thenceforward will consist of nothing but repair and replacement. Until then, I’ll be in business—or guys like me. Great God! We were born out of England, and England is old and growing tired. Asking her eldest son to take over the world trade and the family control. Talking about union. Begging the prodigal to care for her old age.

“The Americans are not listening yet. Americans are still worrying because there are no more empty places on the U. S. map to find gold in. No more frontiers. Americans are trying to sell themselves on a premature senescence. Why, we haven’t started our adolescence! The next frontier is the planet. We’ve somehow got to thinking that the national bank balance is the sum total of available money for all future time. How the hell did we build up that balance from zero when the Pilgrims landed? Work. Invention. Trade. More products to sell. Higher wages. Has that got to stop? We’re at the beginning of our time, Wilson. We can spread our culture, our ideals, and our business interests, after this shambles, clean across the globe! You make a few loans in the Dakotas. You buy into a business in Pennsylvania. After the war, Wilson, unless you lose your head, you’ll have bonds printed in Chinese—good bonds—and you’ll own a piece of a railroad in Tibet. You’ll be in on a good thing in the coal fields in the Antarctic and you’ll have a hunk of a toll bridge in Afghanistan. You and a British corporation will be making a mint with electric refrigeration in India, and I will be selling a cold-proofing material not yet invented to the mining and lumbering cities in Siberia.

“Money isn’t money, Wilson. Money is just a crystallized form of human energy. And human energy springs into existence from ideas. A depression isn’t a disappearance of wealth—it’s a mental and spiritual funk. If money is real, then there’s no such thing today as the Hitler war machine—because the Germans didn’t have a dime. Brother, we aren’t started! And I tell you, this fight—the last one, maybe, for aeons—is to clear away the old ego-national debris for the coming of a world working together. The Germans want to accomplish exactly that—by enslaving the world. We’ll do it, though, by paying good wages, putting in voting machines, and teaching ’em to drink sodas and root for the Dodgers. So help me Christ, Wilson, every time I get to thinking about you isolationist bastards in this particular sense, I get mad enough to spit!”

At that point in the discourse Jimmie noticed a figure in the foyer. His nerves lunged. He rose unostentatiously and slipped from the room.

Audrey was closing a wet umbrella, under which she had run from the parking yard to the club entrance. The doorman took the umbrella and helped her remove a transparent raincoat. She shook droplets from her hair, saw Jimmie, and smiled. “I came here looking for you!”

“Let’s go in the trophy room. Nobody there, as a rule. And your dad is on the porch.”

“Is he? All right.”

He followed her into the place. Cases of silver cups gleamed dully there. A sailfish on the wall forever held at sword’s point the august head of a moose. Jimmie pulled the two most comfortable chairs into the least conspicuous corner, and brought an ash stand, and they sat down. He was trembling unashamedly. For a minute they looked at each other.

Audrey spoke. “I got tired of waiting—again.”

She sounded genuine. She seemed thinner and paler, as if waiting had caused her severe strain. That was the trouble with her act. She believed it; consequently, its effects upon her were real. The fact that it was an act now seemed to Jimmie a very great tragedy. Tragic, because the sight of her made him realize how extraordinary she would be if only she were sincere and unselfish.

Jimmie ignored her words about waiting. “I got to know your dad—a little—hanging around here.”

“You did? You mean, he talked to you?” She thought for a moment. “What did he want? It must have been something .”

“Wanted to know about life—and death—in the RAF.”

He had expected that she would understand. Instead, she frowned. “He did? That’s odd! Indulging the more carnivorous side of his nature, I guess. Some people have no scruples!”

“He wasn’t carnivorous. He was charming.”

“Oh, he can be charming. He has a hideous facility for reading people. And, once read, he analyzes them—and uses their vanities and their avarices to manipulate them.

People usually mistake that process for charm.”

“Mmmm. He was upset though. On account of your brother.”

She drew a violent breath. “My—brother!”

Then Jimmie was startled. “You didn’t know?”

“What about my brother? Has Larry turned up? Have they—?”

Jimmie told her.

When he finished, she was crying. “I’m so glad,” she said. “So glad! Even if he—well, even if we don’t ever see him again. We’ll at least know. He would be a pilot! He would be a night fighter, too. The very most formidable thing he could find to do. He was a great kid, Jimmie. He was capricious and vain, in a way, and ferocious. But he had a will like the current in a magnet. Once he switched it on it never stopped or weakened and it snapped up everything that came near. That was why he—left—so young. I suppose he went on in school. He’d do that, too! I never thought he would—because he was young, and because my family assumed so automatically that he would go to hell. You know. It poisons you. And some people—most people—believe that everyone who turns from their chosen course is rotten and crazy. Father believes that, especially. Jimmie! You can imagine how glad I am!”

He could see how glad she was. False and theatrical though she might be about herself and about him, she was undeniably honest about her brother.