Пользователь - WORLD'S END

Blazing hot summer had come. It was before the Riviera had been discovered as a summer resort, but Lanny, now fifteen, went about all day in bathing trunks and loved it. Marcel sat in his studio in the same costume - with nobody to look at his scarred and battered body. He had taken to staying by himself; he painted or read all day, and ate his meals alone, and only came out after dark: Then he would take a long walk, or if there were visitors he cared about, he would sit on the veranda in the dark with them. Or he would sit alone and listen to Lanny playing the piano.

X

The war had lasted a year. Some thought it was a stalemate, and others thought that Germany was winning. She held her line in France, and let the Allies waste themselves pounding at it while she broke the Russian armies. She had launched gas warfare, a new device filling the world with dismay. She was answering the British blockade by submarine warfare; British waters were a "military area," and all vessels in them liable to be sunk without warning.

In May had come the attack upon the Lusitania, the incident which excited the greatest horror in the United States. This great passenger liner, with more than two thousand persons on board, was passing the Irish coast in a calm sea: two o'clock in the afternoon, and the passengers had come from lunch, and were walking the decks, or playing cards, reading or chatting, when a submarine rose from the depths and launched a torpedo, blowing a hole in the huge vessel's side. The sea rushed in and sank her in a few minutes, drowning some twelve hundred persons, including more than a hundred babies.

When Americans read about the sinking of merchant vessels, British or neutral, and the drowning of the crews, they didn't know any of the people, and their imagination didn't have much to take hold of. But here were people "everybody" knew - society people, rich people, some of them prominent and popular - writers like Justus Miles Forman and Elbert Hubbard, theatrical people like Charles Frohman and Charles Klein, millionaires like the Vanderbilts. Their friends had gone to the pier in New York to see them off, or to the pier to welcome them - and then they read this horror story. When the boatloads of survivors were brought in, the papers of the world were filled with accounts of families torn apart, of fathers and mothers giving their lives to save their little ones, of quiet heroism and serenity in the face of death.

Americans in France felt the shock even more intensely, for nearly everyone had friends, American or English, on board. Two of Mrs. Emily's oldest friends had given their lives to save children not their own. The sister of Edna Hackabury, now Mrs. Fitz-Laing, was among those of whom no word was heard. Beauty counted half a dozen persons of her acquaintance on the passenger list, and found only two on the list of survivors. Not much of the spirit of "neutrality" was left in the minds of ladies and gentlemen who discussed such matters over their afternoon tea.

Thus America was dragged into the center of the world debate. President Wilson protested, and the German government answered that submarines could not give warning without risking destruction, and manifestly could not take off passengers and crew. The Lusi tania had carried cartridges - so Germany charged, and the British denied it, and how was the truth to be known? The Germans agreed to sink no more such vessels, but they did not keep the promise. All passenger vessels carried cargo, and most merchant vessels carried passengers, and how could a submarine under war conditions make certain? The Germans demanded that President Wilson should resist the British attempt to starve the German people and should insist that American ships be allowed to carry to Germany food which Germany had bought and paid for. When President Wilson wrote letters denouncing German barbarity, the Allies were delighted; when he wrote letters denouncing British violations of American trade rights, all sympathizers with the Allies denounced him.

For a year Robbie had kept writing to his son, never failing to warn him against losing his head. Robbie was determined that no Budd should be drawn into Europe's quarrels; Budds were businessmen, and did not let themselves be used to pull anybody's chestnuts out of the fire. Robbie had been on the inside, and knew that every one of these nations was thinking about its own aggrandizement. Twice it happened that an employee was coming to France, and Robbie took the trouble to write a long letter and have it mailed in Paris, so that it wouldn't be opened by a censor. "Study and think and improve your mind, and keep it clear of all this fog of hatred and propaganda." Lanny did his best to obey - but it is not pleasant to differ from everybody you meet.

XI

For several months Marcel worked at his painting and burned up everything he produced. Lanny got up the courage to protest, and got his mother to back him. One day when he was at the studio he began begging to be allowed to see what was on the easel, covered up with a cloth. He was so much interested in his stepfather's development that he could learn even from his failures. "Please, Marcel! Right now!"

The painter said it was nothing, just a joke; he had been avoiding an hour of boredom. But that made Lanny beg all the harder - he was bored too, he said. So finally Marcel let him take off the cloth. He looked, and laughed out loud, and was so delighted that he danced around.

Marcel had painted himself lying on that bed in the hospital, head swathed in bandages, two frightened eyes looking out; and all around him on the bed crowded the little furies of pain, as he had watched them for so many months. It happened that Mr. Robin had sent Lanny a copy of a German weekly magazine, containing pictures of some of the national heroes, and Marcel had turned them into a swarm of little demons with instruments of torture in their claws. There was the stiff Prussian officer with his lean face, sharp nose, and monocle; there was Hindenburg with his shaven head and bull's neck; there was the Kaiser with his bristling mustaches; there was the professor with bushy beard and stern dogmatic face. The whole of German Kultur was there, and it was amazing, the different kinds of malice that Marcel had managed to pack into those faces, and still keep them funny.

Lanny argued harder than ever. If it gave him so much pleasure, why shouldn't the family share it? So they took it up to the house, where Jerry did a war dance, and M. Rochambeau forgot his usual gravity, and even Beauty laughed. Lanny said it ought to be shown somewhere, but Marcel said, nonsense, it was just a caricature, he didn't wish to be known as a cartoonist. But the elderly diplomat came to Lanny's support; he said there was a lot of German propaganda all over the world, and why shouldn't the French use their genius for ridicule? The four of them wrung this concession from the stubborn man of art - they might have a photograph of it and send copies to their friends.

They got a real photographer and had a big one made, and wrote on the bottom of the negative: "Soldier in Pain." Lanny sent one to his father, and one to Rick - whose father was now in charge of precautions against spies and saboteurs in his part of England. Beauty sent one to several of her friends; and the first thing she knew came a telegram from Mrs. Emily, saying that one of the big weekly papers in Paris offered two hundred francs for the right to reproduce the painting. When this magazine appeared there came a cablegram from one of the big New York newspapers offering a hundred dollars for the American rights; and on top of that a concern which was making picture post cards asked Marcel's price to let them use it.

The New York paper came out with a story about the painter, saying that he had been in an air crash, and this was his own experience. Marcel was annoyed for a while; he hated that sort of publicity. But to Beauty it was marvelous; it set everybody to talking about her husband, and visitors came to the house again, and she had an excuse to get out her pretty clothes. She had a vision of her husband becoming a famous and highly paid magazine illustrator; but Marcel said, to hell with it, and jammed his red silk skullcap down on his head and stalked off to the studio to brood there. So Beauty had to run to him, and fall on her knees and admit that she was a cheap and silly creature, and that Marcel was to paint whatever he wanted, and needn't see a single one of the curiosity seekers - they would disconnect the bell at the gate if he wished it.