Пользователь - WORLD'S END

VII

There came a cablegram from Juan, making a happy little jingle, though this was probably not intentional: "Girl both well Marcel." Later came a letter - since one could not count upon the cable these days. Beauty had a lovely little baby girl, and had named her Marceline. The painter was exceedingly proud of himself, after the fashion of fathers. He had persuaded Beauty to the unprecedented course of nursing the baby herself; a matter of hygiene and morality upon which he laid much stress. He had got the idea out of Rousseau.

Then came a letter from Mrs. Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, announcing that she was the mother of a baby boy. Said Nina: "I won't say much about him, because everything about new babies has been said a million times already. I send a picture." So Lanny had a pair to set up on his bureau; he wrote to each of the mothers about the other, suggesting that they get in touch and start making a match.

Nina revealed that poor Rick had had another operation, his third; still hoping to get rid of pain in what was left of his knee. They were living at The Reaches. Sir Alfred was helping with war work, and riding around to places most of the time. They were saving food, because the submarine blockade was pinching England badly.

Lanny went home for Thanksgiving and read this letter to his father, who said that the submarines were being countered by the system of convoying ships. The U-boats didn't dare show themselves in the neighborhood of destroyers, because of the effectiveness of depth bombs. So with the help of the combined navies great fleets of vessels were crossing the Atlantic in safety. The top men at Budd's knew all about it, having to adjust their system of loading to the sailing dates of convoys.

Father and son talked also about the second Russian revolution, which had just occurred. The government of Kerensky, trying to go on with the war, had been overthrown by a group called Bolsheviks - a Russian word which nobody had ever heard before. These were out-and-out revolutionists, confiscating all property and socializing industry. Robbie said this overturn was the most terrible blow the Allies had yet received; it meant that Germany had won half the war, and the job of the United States had been doubled. "It may mean even more than that," he added. "Those forces of hatred and destruction exist everywhere, and they're bound to try the same thing in other countries."

"Do you suppose there are Bolsheviks in this country, Robbie?"

"Thousands of them; they're not all Russians, either. Your Uncle Jesse Blackless is some such crackpot. That's why I was determined he shouldn't get hold of you."

"You mean he's an active Red?"

"He used to be, and this may stir him up again. He may be behind these mutinies which have been happening in the French army."

"But that's crazy, Robbie. Don't they know the Germans would march straight in and take the country?"

"I suppose they figure that the same sort of agitation is going on among the German troops. If that fire once got to blazing, it might spread everywhere."

"Gosh! Do you suppose we have such people in Budd's?"

"If there are, they keep pretty quiet. Father and Lawford have ways to keep track of agitators."

"You mean we have spies?"

"Nobody can expect to run an industry unless he knows what's going on in it. This thing in Russia has set all the agitators crazy." Robbie thought for a moment, then added: "Those secret treaties of the Allies have put a powerful weapon into their hands. They say to the workers: 'Look what you're fighting for! Look what's being done to you!' "

"But you said that too, Robbie!"

"I know; but it's one thing for you and me to know such facts, and another for them to be in the hands of revolutionists and criminals."

"There's a chap in school who has a copy of those treaties and talks about them a lot. He says everything that you do."

"Watch out for him," replied the father - his sense of humor failing him for once. "Some older and shrewder persons may be using him. These are dangerous times, and you have to watch your step."

VIII

Lanny went back to school, and it wasn't long before he walked into the very trap against which his father had warned him. There was a Mrs. Riccardi, a well-to-do society lady of the town of Sand Hill who sometimes gave musicales in her home. She found out that Lanny had studied "Dalcroze," and begged him to come and tell her friends about it. Lanny brought Jack Bascome and Benny Cartright to this affair, and it wasn't long before Bascome was talking against the war to Mrs. Riccardi. He told her about the secret treaties, and gave her the pamphlet, and she passed it on to others. Of course rumors of this were bound to spread. The country was at war, and people who found fault with France and England were lending aid and comfort to the enemy, whether they realized it or not.

On a Sunday evening Lanny and his two "queeries," Benny and Jack, went by invitation to the home of this wealthy lady, and there was Mr. Baldwin, and another schoolmaster of aesthetic tastes, and several other persons, including a young Methodist preacher with the unfashionable name of Smathers. Lanny had never heard of him, but learned that he had been pastor of a church in Newcastle - in the working-class part of the city, known as "beyond the tracks." He was a gentle, mild-voiced person, and in the course of the evening Lanny learned that he had got into the newspapers when there had been a strike of the workers in the Budd plants, and he had helped to organize a relief kitchen for the wives and children, and had made speeches and been chased down an alley and clubbed by mounted police.

Of course Lanny ought to have known better than to ask questions of such a man. The man tried to avoid answering them, saying that he didn't wish to give offense to a member of the Budd family; but that was a challenge to Lanny's integrity; he had to declare that he couldn't possibly be offended by the truth. So Mr. Smathers said, all right, if he asked for it he could have it. The other members of the company gathered round to hear what this "radical" young minister might have to say to a son and heir of Budd Gunmakers.

What Mr. Smathers said was that Budd's didn't allow their workers to organize. They had refused to let the strikers speak on the streets and had suppressed their papers; they had had the town council pass a law forbidding the distribution of handbills. Later on they had shut down the strike headquarters and had the leaders arrested on various charges. They had brought in an army of guards, whom they had made into "deputy sheriffs," and provided with arms and ammunition - made by the Budd workers for their own undoing. So the strike had been broken, and now no one could talk union in any Budd plant; workers who breathed a word of it were instantly fired.

Could all that be true? asked Lanny; and the Reverend Mr. Smathers replied that everybody in Newcastle knew that it was true. The businessmen justified it by saying that it was necessary to keep the workers from being led into violence. "What that means," said the minister, "is that large-scale private industry will destroy what we in America call political democracy, and our liberties are doomed. It seems to me that is something about which American citizens ought to be making up their minds."

Lanny could only thank Mr. Smathers for speaking frankly, and say that he had lived abroad, and hadn't even heard about the strike, which had taken place in the summer of 1913, while he was at Hellerau. Strange to think of such things going on at the very time that he was learning to enact the role of one of Gluck's furies! Such a graceful and charming fury he had been - and taking it for granted that tragic and cruel things happened only in operas and dramas, and that you were doing your duty to mankind when you learned to enact them beautifully!