Пользователь - WORLD'S END

"I know, dear," he said. "I've lived in the house with a war casualty for more than two years. But one can't work all the time, surely; one has to have a little fun."

Lanny didn't know England very well. He knew that the "lower orders" lay around in the parks in broad daylight; but just how dark did it have to be for a member of the nobility to permit a young man to take her hand, or put his arm around her on a park bench? He tried gently, and she did not repel him. Presently they were sitting close together, and the old mysterious spell renewed itself. Perhaps an hour passed; then he said: "Can't we go somewhere, Rosemary?"

Robbie had said: "Take her to one of the cheaper hotels; they don't ask questions." Robbie was practical on the subject of sex, as upon all others. He said there were three things a young fellow had to look out for: he mustn't get any girl into trouble; he mustn't get mixed up with any married woman unless he was sure the husband didn't care; and he mustn't get any disease. When Lanny had reassured him on these points, he said: "If you don't show up tonight, I won't worry."

X

So Lanny and Rosemary went strolling; and when they came to a place where they weren't apt to meet any of their fashionable friends, they went in, and he registered as Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and paid in advance, and no questions were asked. When they lay in the embrace which was so full of rapture for them both, they forgot the sordid surroundings, they forgot everything except that their time was short. Lanny was going out to face the submarines on the open ocean, and Rosemary was going to France, where the screaming shells paid no heed to a red cross on a woman's arm.

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a flying." Thus the English poet. The German has said: " Pf l ь cket die Rose, Eh' sie verbl ь ht ." So there was one thing about which the two nations could agree. In countless cheap hotels in Berlin, as in London, the advice was being followed; and the wartime custom was no different in Paris - if you could accept the testimony of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had stood on the field of Eylau, observing the heaps of the slaughtered and remarking: "One night in Paris will remedy all that."

Their happiness was long-enduring, and nothing in the outside world was permitted to disturb it. Not even loud banging noises, all over the city - one of them very close by. Lanny made a joke of it: "I hope that's not some morals police force after us." The girl explained that those were anti-aircraft warnings, made by "maroons," a kind of harmless bomb made of heavy paper wrapped with twine.

They lay still in the dark and listened. Presently came louder explosions, and some of them were near, too. "Anti-aircraft guns," said Rosemary; she knew all the sounds. There came dull, heavy crashes, and she told him those were the bombs. "You don't have to worry unless it's a direct hit."

"You surely can't worry if it is," said Lanny. It was his first time under fire, and he wanted to take it in the English manner.

"About as much risk as in a thunderstorm," said Rosemary. "The silly fools think they can frighten us by wrecking a house here and there and killing half a dozen harmless people in their beds."

"I suppose those'll be planes?" asked the youth.

"From occupied Belgium. The Zepps have stopped coming entirely."

The uproar grew louder, and presently there was a sharp cracking sound, and some of the glass in the window of their room fell onto the floor. That was getting sort of close! "A piece of shrapnel," said Rosemary. "They don't have much force, because the air resistance stops them."

"You know all about it!" smiled Lanny.

"Naturally; I help to fix people up. I'll have some new cases in the morning."

"None tonight, I hope, dear."

"Kiss me, Lanny. If we're going to die, let it be that way."

The uproar died away even more suddenly than it had come; they slept awhile, and early in the morning, when they got up, Lanny found a fragment of a shell near the broken window. It wasn't much more than an inch square, but had unpleasantly jagged edges. He said: "I'll keep it for a souvenir, unless you want it."

"We get plenty of them," replied the student nurse.

"Maybe it's a Budd." He knew, of course, that the British were using Budd shrapnel. "I'll see if my father can tell."

"They gather up the pieces and use them again," explained Rosemary.

That was her casual way. She told him to phone her or wire her as to when he would be sailing. She didn't know if she could get another leave, but she would try.

They went outside, and heard newsboys shouting, and saw posters in large letters: "U.S.A. in War!" "America Joins!" While the scion of Budd Gunmakers had been gathering rosebuds with the granddaughter of Lord Dewthorpe, the Senate of the United States had voted a declaration to the effect that a condition of war already existed between that country and Germany.

XI

It was a pleasant time to be in London. There were celebrations in the streets, and the usually self-contained islanders were hunting for some American, so that they could shake him by the hand and say: "Thanks, old chap, this is grand, we're all brothers now, and when will you be coming over?" Lanny asked his father if this would help him in getting contracts; Robbie said they'd expect him to give the patents now - but no such instructions had come from Newcastle, Connecticut!

Lanny went to call on Nina Putney, still a student in college in spite of being married. He took her to lunch, and they had a long talk. She was a brunette, slender and delicate, with sensitive, finely cut features. She seemed more like a French girl than an English one; she was like Lanny, eager and somewhat impetuous; she said what she felt, and then perhaps wished she hadn't. The two could get along easily, because they shared the same adoration, and wanted to talk about it.

Nina told about her meeting with the most wonderful of would-be fliers, whose dream had since come true. He might be in the air now - oh, God, at this moment he might be in a death duel with one of the German Fokkers, so light and fast because they were made of aluminum manufactured in Switzerland from French bauxite! Lanny didn't tell the young bride about that; but a shadow hung over their meeting, and what could he say? He couldn't deny the mortal danger, or that it would last, day after day. No comfort that an airman came back alive, because he would be going out again so soon.

Business as usual! Lanny and Nina promised to write to each other, for Rick's sake, and she would tell him whatever news she got. America would hurry up, and this dreadful war would be won, and they would all live happy ever after. So, good-by, Nina, and take good care of that baby, and you're to have a basket, and remember, Budd's will stand back of you!

Robbie said he'd have all his affairs wound up in a couple of days, and no use to linger and be a target even for Budd shrapnel. He had engaged a stateroom, and Lanny, the lady-killer, might gather as many rosebuds as possible in that brief interim. He phoned to Rosemary, and she said, yes, she'd get away once more, even if they fined her for it. They went to the same hotel and got the same room - the pane of glass patched with brown paper. Once more they were happy, after the fashion that war permits - amor inter arma; concentrating on one moment, refusing to let the mind roam or the eye peer into the future.

In the morning, clinging to him, the girl said: "Lanny, you've been; a darling, and I'll never forget you. Write me, and let me know how things go, and I'll do the same."

No more than that. She wouldn't talk about marriage; she would go on patching broken English bodies, and he would visit the home of his fathers, and come back as a soldier, or perhaps to sell armaments - who could say? "Good-by, dear; and do help us to win!"