Пользователь - WORLD'S END

"But Robbie argues that if he invents a machine gun" - the boy stopped suddenly, as if doubting his own argument.

"Every invention has an intellectual element," conceded the other. "But the machine gun is obviously intended to limit the privileges and possessions of other men. Just now it is being used by the oil kings to make it impossible to get any oil except on their terms. And isn't that a sort of revolution?"

Having thus disposed of Robert Budd as a "Red," the elderly ex-diplomat went on to deal with him as a pacifist; remarking, with the same gentle smile, that it had been long since kings were men of brawn, riding at the head of their retainers and splitting skulls with a battle-ax. The invention of machinery had produced a new kind of men, who sat in offices and dictated orders which put other men at work. If they felt that their interests required war they would have it; but they themselves would remain safe.

"Do you know any Latin?" asked M. Rochambeau; and when the answer was no, he quoted a verse of the poet Ovid, beginning: "Let others make war." The old gentleman suggested that these words might serve one of the great munitions families on its coat of arms. "Bella gerant alii!" He was too polite to name the Budd family, but Lanny got the point, and reflected that if his father had heard this conversation, he might have put M. Rochambeau on the prohibited list along with Uncle Jesse!

VII

Rosemary was back in England, and wrote now and then, letters cool and casual as herself. "I enjoyed our meeting so much," she said - just like that! You could hear Miss Noggyns or some other of those feminist ladies telling her: "Don't take it too seriously. That's the way women are made to suffer. Let the men do the suffering!"

So Lanny learned his own lessons. Don't wear your heart on your sleeve; don't make yourself too cheap. Among the fashionable young people at Juan was an American girl who gave evidence of being willing to console him; she was pretty, and svelte, as they all kept themselves, and her silks and satins and lawns and what not were cut to the latest pattern; she cast seductive glances at a handsome playmate, just emerged into manhood and conscious of it, blushing easily, and with strange messages flashing along his nerves. The world was at war, and nothing was certain, and young and old were learning to take their pleasures as they found them.

But Lanny had dreams of shining and wonderful things in love. He thought it over, and told his mother about this too willing miss, and Beauty asked: "Is she interested in what you are thinking? Does she say anything that appeals to you especially?" When the boy admitted that she hadn't so far, Beauty said: "Then what will you talk about? How will you keep from being bored?"

So he would go off and lose himself in his piano practice. He could find highly exciting things in music and poetry. His anthology contained a poem by Bobby Burns, who spoke with authority concerning sexual prodigality: "But, och! it hardens a' within, An' petrifies the feelin'." Lanny resolved to wait awhile, and maybe Rosemary would find that she missed him more than she had expected.

She wrote about Rick, who had finished his training and left for France. He had had two days' leave and had come home, looking splendid in his khaki uniform. He had been so happy at getting what he wanted. Not a word about sadness in going away, and Lanny understood that there hadn't been many words - that was the English way. "Cheerio! Business as usual!"

A few days later a card came from Rick himself. No address on it, except the number of his unit in the Royal Flying Corps. "Fine setup here. Wish I could write you all about it. Jolly lot of fellows. Hope I can keep up with them. Write me the news. How's old Sophocles? And when are the Americans coming in? Rick."

Lanny could picture these jolly fellows in their camp a few miles behind the lines. It would be about the same as the one he had visited on the rolling Salisbury Plain. Eager young chaps with cheeks of bright red; smooth-shaven, except for now and then a dapper little mustache; no "side," provided you belonged in the right class; taking whatever came with a laugh; willing to die a hundred deaths but not to shed one tear. The English magazines were full of pictures of them, some smiling, some grave, all handsome; each with a string of old English names: "Lieutenant Granville Fortescue Somers, R.F.C. Killed in action, Vimy. Oct. 17, 1916." So it went.

VIII

There was mourning all around Lanny Budd; women in black everywhere on the streets. Women in terror, trembling every time they heard a knock at the door; afraid to look at a newspaper with its stories of wholesale slaughter. Poor Sophie de la Tourette was visiting Sept Chкnes to help re-educate the victims; not really caring much about them, but feeling that she had to do something, because Eddie was doing something, everybody was doing it, you had to or you'd go crazy.

Letters came from the ambulance driver; his baroness brought them to Beauty, and Lanny had a chance to read them. The exciting occupation was having an unexpected effect upon a rather dull young American whose only previous achievements had been in billiard matches and motorboat races. He wanted Sophie to share his adventures, and wrote quite vivid prose.

He was sleeping in a half-demolished barn, and the French peasants' manure pile had become a leading feature of his life, the least unpleasant of the smells of war. He was living on bully beef, and a can of chicken from Chicago made a holiday. In front of him were the French trenches, and behind him the French artillery, and he tried to count the number of shots per minute, but it couldn't be done because they overlapped. You were on duty for a twenty-four-hour stretch, and the ambulance would be ordered out at any moment of the day or night. You drove without lights, in mud anywhere from three inches to three feet deep, and you heard all the familiar jokes about seeing a cap lying in the road and stooping to pick it up, and finding that there was a man under it, walking to town, or perhaps riding horseback. Keeping an ambulance right side up on such a road was really a lot of fun, and trying to see the shell holes at night made you wish you had a pet cat along. Sometimes the shell holes were made especially for your ambulance, and that was something you made bets about with your brancardier. You wore a helmet, "just in case."

"Have you seen Old Bill?" inquired Eddie, and enclosed one of Captain Bairnsfather's cartoons, with which the English at the front were teaching themselves to laugh at calamity. "Old Bill" was a Cockney with a large mustache and a serious expression; he was shown crouching in a shell hole with bombs going off all around him, and saying to his companion, angrily: "Well, if you knows of a better 'ole, go to it." And there was the elderly colonel who had come home for a brief leave and found that he couldn't get along outside the trenches. He had had one dug in his garden, and was sitting out in it on a rainy night, half covered with water, and with an umbrella over his head.

That was the sporting way to take war. The Americans living in France became ashamed of themselves and of their country. You just couldn't stay amid all that grief and desperate agony, and go on playing cards and dancing, going to the dressmaker and the hairdresser as you had done in the old days. It grew harder and harder for Lanny, and now and then he would find himself thinking: "I'll have to ask Robbie to turn me loose."

He helped himself a little by reading German books and playing German music, and remembering Kurt and the other warmhearted people he had met at Schloss Stubendorf. He hadn't heard from Kurt for quite a while, and could only wonder, did it mean that he had gone to the front and been killed, or had he too become disgusted with Americans - because they didn't do anything to stop the Allied blockade which was starving the women and children of the Fatherland? Lanny wrote another letter, in care of Mr. Robin, and received a reply from the oldest of the two little Robins: