Пользователь - WORLD'S END

Captain Finchley was pleased by this enthusiasm. "I wish more English boys felt that way," he remarked; "the failure of the recent recruiting is a cause of deep concern to all friends of the Empire."

Robbie Budd took the occasion to speak about the effect which this new kind of warfare was bound to have upon the position of Englishmen. It deprived them of the advantage of their island solitude. Planes were now flying the Channel, and the Americans had even devised a sort of catapult that could launch a plane from a ship. It was certain that in the next war bombs would be dropped upon munitions centers and factories; and guns that could be fired at planes and airships would surely have to be mounted at vital points. Lanny understood that his father was giving a sales talk - Captain Finchley was on the board which had to decide about the Budd gun with high-angle mountings. Robbie had told his son the previous evening that they were trying to "stall" him; they wouldn't say they would buy the gun, yet they were obviously worried by the idea of his taking it anywhere else.

IX

On their way back to town in the evening the four talked about what they had seen, and the likelihood of these dangerous contrivances being actually put to the test. Kurt Meissher was worried by a letter he had received from home; the situation in the Balkans was more serious than anybody in England seemed to realize. Robbie said, yes, but it was always that way; the English were an easygoing people and left problems for others to solve as much as possible. This was just one more crisis.

"But,'' exclaimed Kurt, "do the English or anybody else expect the Austrians to let Serbian hooligans incite the murder of Austrian rulers on Austrian soil?"

"The diplomats will get together and stop it," Robbie told him soothingly. Nothing to worry about.

"But it is said that the Russians are backing the Serbs!"

"I know; they're always shoving one another about. The Russians say: 'You let my Serbian friends alone.' The Germans say: 'You let my Austrian friends alone.' The French say: 'You let my Russian friends alone' - so it goes. They've been making faces at one another for hundreds of years."

"I know it, Mr. Budd - but they've been going to war, too."

"The world has been changing so fast that it no longer pays to go to war, Kurt. The nations couldn't finance a war; it would bankrupt them all."

"But," argued Kurt, "when people get angry enough, they don't stop to calculate."

"The masses don't, but they don't have the say any more. It's the financiers who decide, and they're first-class calculators. What's happened is, we've made weapons so destructive that nobody dares use them. Just to have them is enough." Robbie paused for a moment, and smiled. "Did Lanny ever tell you about his meeting with Zaharoff? The old man was worried by the thought that his armaments might some day be put to use; I suggested to him that the ideal of civilization was to spend all our energies making things we never meant to use." Robbie chuckled, and they all chuckled with him, though a bit dubiously.

A few days later Lanny set out for France to join his mother, and Robbie was packing up his Budd gun, preparatory to taking it to Germany, in an effort to wake the British up - or so he confided to his son. On that day King George was reviewing the might of the British navy off Spithead. His flagship was the Iron Duke, a dreadnought that could shoot away fifty thousand dollars in a single minute. Included in its armament were two twelve-pounder guns with high-angle mountings against airplanes. On that day . . .

It was the twentieth of July 1914.

1 О

La Belle France

I

MRS. EMILY CHATTERSWORTH was the widow of a New York banker who had once held great power, controlling railroads and trust companies and what not; he had become involved in some Congressional investigation - it had been a long time ago, and nobody remembered just what it was, but the newspapers had exhibited bad manners, and the banker had decided that his native land was lacking in refinement. His widow had inherited his fortune and, being still good-looking, was described by Sophie, Baroness de la Tourette, as "an island entirely surrounded by French suitors." Perhaps the country's laws regarding the property rights of married women were unsatisfactory to Mrs. Emily; anyhow, she had remained for years the sole mistress of Les Forкts, as her country estate was called.

The chвteau was in French Renaissance style, a four-story structure of gray stone, built at the head of a little artificial lake. There was an esplanade in front, resembling the docks of a port, complete with several small lighthouses; when the lights were turned on at night the effect was impressive. At the front of the house, beyond the entrance drive, was a garden, the central feature of which was a great fleur-de-lis made of gold and purple flowers. Surrounding the place were smooth lawns shaded by chestnut trees, and beyond them were dark forests of beeches, for which the place had been named. In them were deer and pheasants, and in the kennels were dogs used for hunting in the fall. Among other interesting things was an orchid house, in which you might examine the strange and costly products of the jungles of South America, for as long as you could stand the moist heat in which they throve.

The rooms of this chвteau were splendid, and had tapestries and works of art which connoisseurs came to study. Mrs. Emily knew what she had, and spoke of them with authority. She lived and entertained in the French manner, conducting what was called a salon - an arduous undertaking, a career all in itself. It meant inviting a number of celebrated men at regular intervals and giving them a chance to air their wit and erudition before others. Each one of these personages was conscious of his own importance, and resentful of the pretended importance of his rivals; to know who could get along with whom, and to reconcile all the vanities and jealousies, took skill and energy enough for a diplomat guarding the fate of nations.

Beauty Budd had very few pretensions to wit, and still fewer to erudition, but she possessed a treasure appreciated in any drawing room - she was easy to look at. She also possessed a full supply of womanly tact, and was naturally kind, and didn't quarrel with other ladies or try to take away their men. The weaker sex was supposed to do little talking at a salon; as among the fowls, it was the males who displayed the gorgeous plumage and made the loud noises. The company did not break up into groups, as was the custom in English and American drawing rooms. There would be a super-celebrity who would set the theme and do most of the expounding; the other celebrities would say their say, and the function of the hostess was to supervise and shepherd the conversation. The other ladies listened, and did not interrupt unless they were quite sure they had something supremely witty that could be uttered in a sentence or two. Generally they thought of it too late, and for that misfortune the French had a phrase, esprit de l 'escalier, that is to say, staircase wit.

Of course it was not possible for an American woman, however wealthy, to have a really first-class salon in France. The fashionables and the intellectuals of that land were clannish, and it took a full lifetime to learn the subtleties of their differentiations. There were royalist salons and republican salons, Catholic salons and free-thought salons, literary and art salons, each its own little world, with but slight interest in foreigners. However, an American could provide a way for her fellow-countrymen to meet such Frenchmen as were international-minded, and Mrs. Emily, a handsome and stately lady, was conscientious about performing this service.