Пользователь - WORLD'S END

"Well, you're asking if I want to be with you, or with Uncle Lawford. You know what I'll say to that."

"Then why not start in my office, and see everything in the plant from there, as I do?"

"Can you make sure I won't get in the way?"

"I'll make mighty darn sure of it," said the father. "If you get in my way, I'll tell you, and if you get in other people's way, they'll tell you."

"That's fair enough."

"All right then; here's my idea for the summer: have a desk in my room, and sit there and study munitions instead of sines and cosines or the names of English kings. When I interview callers you listen, and when I dictate letters, you get the correspondence and follow it back until you understand the deal. Study contracts and specifications, prices and discounts; get the blueprints, and what you don't understand ask me about. Learn the formulas for steel, and when you know enough to understand what you're seeing, go down to the shop and watch the procиss. When you know the parts of a gun, take it apart and see if you can put it together again. Go to the testing grounds and watch it work - all sorts of things like that."

Lanny listened in a glow. "Gee, Robbie, that's too much!"

"How far you get will depend on you. This much ought to be certain - in three months you'll know whether you're really interested and want to go on. Is that a deal?"

"You bet it is!"

"I'll tell my secretaries to give you whatever papers you ask for, and you'll make it your business to turn them back to the person you got them from. You mustn't touch the files yourself, because there can't be any blundering in them. If there's anything else you want, ask me, because everybody in the place is working under heavy pressure, and they wouldn't like you if you tripped them up. One thing you know already - you won't ever breathe a word to anybody about what you learn on this job."

II

For a while Lanny was like a sailorman who has dug up an old chest full of Spanish doubloons and jewels; he couldn't get enough of looking at them and running them through his hands. All those mysterious things that he had heard his father discussing with army officers and ministers of war were now unveiled to him. One of the first that came along was a lot of reports from the firms abroad that had leased Budd patents for the duration of the war; also the secret reports that Bub Smith was sending on the same subject. It was like being turned loose amid the private papers of Sherlock Holmes! Lanny dreamed of the day when he might be able to call Robbie's attention to some discrepancy in the reports of Zaharoff's companies, something that Robbie himself had overlooked in the rush of affairs. But he never had that luck.

His new job brought him the honor of an invitation to dine at his grandfather's. He and Robbie went together, and the old gentleman said: "Well, young man, I hear you have kept your promise." Just that, and no more.

They talked about the war developments, and ate a New England boiled dinner served by an old-maid servant under the direction of an old-maid relative. Later in the evening the grandfather said: "Well, young man, you have attended my Bible class. Have you learned anything?" Lanny said that he had; and at once the other launched on a discourse having to do with the one certainty of Salvation through Faith. He talked for five minutes or more; and then he turned to Robbie and remarked: "Well, number 17-B gun seems to be holding up pretty well in France."

Lanny was so absorbed in his new researches that he wanted to get to the office early, and wanted to stay at night when something kept his father. But Esther intervened again, and Robbie agreed - a growing youth ought not to work more than an eight-hour day, and Lanny ought to get some tennis and a swim in the pool at the country club before dinner. So it was ordered; and so the way was prepared for another stage in a young man's expanding career.

The Newcastle Country Club had purchased two large farms and built a one-story red brick clubhouse, close enough to town so that businessmen could motor out now and then for a round of golf before dinner on summer evenings. Besides the Budd people, there were officials of other manufacturing concerns, of utilities and banks and the bigger stores; several doctors and lawyers, the local newspaper publisher, and a few gentlemen of no special calling. The ladies came in the afternoon to play bridge, and in the evenings there were dances, and now and then some entertainment to relieve the boredom of people who knew one another too well. When you have lived all your life in a town, it may seem dull and commonplace; but when you are young, and a stranger, the commonest varieties of gossip take on the aspect of lessons in human nature.

There were several "sets" in this club: groups of persons who considered themselves superior to others, whether because they were richer, or because their families were older, or because they drank less, or because they drank more. There were a few who regarded themselves as clever; they were younger, and had the ideas called "modern." Since the western part of Connecticut is a suburb of New York, there were "smart" people, who did what they pleased and made cynical remarks about the "mores" of their grandfathers. You couldn't very well keep them out of a club, because some of them belonged to the "best" families.

Of course such a group would be interested in a handsome youth who had lived abroad, and spoke French fluently, and could talk about Cannes and Paris and London, Henley and Ascot and Long-champs. He played the piano, he danced well, and if he did not smoke or drink, that made him all the more an object of curiosity; the bored ladies imagined that he must be virginal, and they made themselves agreeable, and worried because he insisted upon staying in a dull office and couldn't be lured away for a tкte-а-tкte .

It was the practice of the club to give dramatic performances during the summer, in an open-air theater built in a woodland glade. There was a "dramatics committee," and hot arguments as to what sort of plays should be given. The smart crowd wanted modern things, full of talk about sex; the conservatives demanded and got something sentimental and sweet, suitable for the young people. In view of the conditions prevailing, they had given a war play called Lilac Time, which had been the success of the previous season in New York.

This summer everybody was supposed to be absorbed in war work. The businessmen went to their offices early and stayed late. The women spent their spare time rolling bandages, knitting socks and sweaters, or attending committee meetings where such activities were planned. But there were a few whom these efforts did not satisfy; perhaps their hearts were not in the killing of their fellow human beings, or in arousing the killing impulse in others. One could not say this, in the midst of all the patriotic fervors; what one said was that the cultural life of the community must not be allowed to lapse altogether, and that overworked executives who were forgoing their customary month of vacation ought to have some gracious form of entertainment.

So it was that the dramatics committee had summoned its courage and undertaken a production of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, which provides a variety of outdoor diversions and has charming music. The committee cast about for players suited to the various roles, and invited Lanny to become one of two lovelorn gentlemen who wander through a forest in the neighborhood of Athens. No one on the committee knew that Lanny himself had been a lovelorn gentleman for a couple of years. He still was - for only a few days ago he had received a letter from his erstwhile sweetheart, mentioning casually in the course of other news that she was about to be married to the grandson of the Earl of Sandhaven, who had been recalled from the "Mespot" front and was now attached to the War Office in London.