Пользователь - WORLDS END

Just recently had come a revolution in Mr. Harper's profession. The educational authorities had got together and set up a body called the College Entrance Examination Board, which was going to hold uniform examinations all over the country, good for any college the student might select. There were a quarter of a million college students, and six times as many high school students, so of course they had to be handled on a mass-production basis. It was part of the procиss of standardizing America; everybody was eating corn flakes out of the same kind of package, and all students of the year 1917 were going to get into college because they had read Washington Irving's Alhambra and George Washington's Farewell Address.

Lanny Budd was, so Mr. Harper declared, the most complicated problem he had ever tackled; he became quite enthusiastic over him, like a surgeon over an abdominal tumor with fascinating complications. From the point of view of the College Entrance Examination Board, Lanny quite literally didn't know anything. One by one the youth brought his burnt offerings and his wave offerings to the educational high priest and saw them rejected. Music? No, there are no credits for music. Greek dramatists? They teach those after you get into college, if at all. The same with Stendhal and Montaigne and Corneille and so on. Moliere, now, they use Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme - are you sure you remember the plot? Advanced French will count three units out of the fifteen you must have-but are you sure you can pass advanced French?

"Well, I've spoken French all my life," said Lanny, bewildered.

"I know; but you won't be asked to speak it, and very few of your examiners could understand you if you did. How do you say 'a tired child'?"

"Un enfant fatiguй."

"And how do you say 'a beautiful day'?"

"Un beau jour."

"Well, now, why do you put one adjective ahead of the noun and the other after it?"

The uneducated youth looked blank. "I really don't know," said he. "I just do it."

"Exactly. But the examination paper will ask you to state the rule, or give the list of exceptions, or whatever it may be. And what will you do?"

"I guess I'll have to go back to France," said Lanny.

II

Mr. Harper decided that by heroic efforts it might be possible for this eccentric pupil to be got ready for the third year of prep school in the fall. Private academies were not so crowded as public high schools, and were better able to handle exceptional cases. But the first thing was to buckle down to plane and solid geometry, and to ancient and medieval history. Yes, said Mr. Harper, Sophocles and Euripides might help, but what really counted was facts. If a candidate were to tell a board of examiners that the Greek spirit was basically one of tragedy, how would they know whether he was spoofing them? But if he said that the naval battle of Salamis was won in the year 480 в.с. by the Athenian Themistocles, there was something that couldn't be faked.

"All right," Lanny said, "I'll go to it." That was what his father wanted, and his grandfather, and his stepmother; that was the test of character, the way to get on in America. So he put his textbooks on the little table by the open window of his room, with the door shut so that nobody would disturb him, and set to work to ram the contents of those books into his mind - names, places, and dates, and no foolish unprofitable flights of the imagination; rules, formulas, and facts, and no superfluous emotions of pity or terror.

The only company he had was the mocking-bird. This slender and delicate creature, gray with a little white, liked to sit on the topmost spray of the cherry tree and pour out its astonishing volume of song. A mystery when it slept; for no matter how late Lanny might work, it was singing in the moonlight, and if he opened his eyes at dawn, it was already under full steam. It imitated the cries of all the other birds; it said "meeauw" like the catbird, and "flicker, flicker, flicker," like the big yellow-hammer. But mostly it improvised. Of course it said no words, because it couldn't form the consonants; but as you listened you were impelled to make up words to correspond to its rhythm and melody. Sometimes they came tripping fast: "Sicady, sicady, sicady, sicady." Then the singer would stop, and and say very deliberately: "Peanuts first. Peanuts first."

Lanny was so determined to make good that he wanted to study all the time; but Esther wouldn't have that. In the middle of the afternoon, after Mr. Harper had come and heard him recite and had laid out the next day's work - then he must quit, and go with the other young people for tennis, and for what he now learned to call a "swim" instead of a "bathe." Five days in the week he could work, mornings and evenings; and on Saturdays there would be a picnic, or a sailing party, and in the evening a dance. He had so many cousins of all degrees that he wouldn't have to go out of the family for company and diversion.

They were an astonishing lot of people, these Budds. The earlier generations had married young, and the women had accepted all the children the Lord had sent them - ten, or sometimes twenty, and then the women would die off, and the men would start again. In these modern days, of course, everything was changed; one or two children was the rule, and a woman like Esther, who had three, felt that she had gone out of her way to serve the community. But still there were a great many Budds, and others with Budd for their first or middle name. Grandfather Samuel had six daughters and four sons living; Samuel's oldest brother, a farmer, was still thriving at the age of eighty, and had had seventeen children, and most of them still alive, preaching and practicing the Word of the Lord their God, that their days might be long in the land which the Lord their God had given them.

Most of those who were not preaching the Word were employed by Budd Gunmakers Corporation in one capacity or another, and just now were working at the task of making the days of the Germans as short as possible. The Germans had their own God, who was working just as hard for his side - so Lanny read in a German magazine which the kind Mr. Robin took the trouble to send him. How these Gods adjusted matters up in their heaven was a problem which was too much for Lanny, so he put his mind on the dates of ancient Greek and Roman wars.

III

On Sunday mornings the earnest student would dress himself in a freshly pressed palm beach suit and panama hat, and at five minutes before ten o'clock would be among those who thronged into the First Congregational Church. This building occupied a prominent position on the central "square" of Newcastle; a large, two-story structure, built of wood and painted white, with a high-pitched roof and rows of second-story windows resembling those of a private residence. What told you it was a church was the steeple which rose from the front center; a square tower, with a round cylinder on top of that, then a smaller cube and then a very sharp and tall pyramid on that. Topping all was a lightning rod; but no cross - that would have meant idolatry, the "Whore of Babylon" - in short, a Catholic church. There were stairs inside the steeple, and windows so that you could look out as you climbed. Robbie said the original purpose was so that the townsmen could keep watch against the Pequot Indians; but there was a twinkle in his eye, so Lanny wasn't sure.

The men's Bible class was one of the features of Newcastle life. It is not in every town that you can meet the leading captain of industry face to face once a week, and have a chance to ask him a question. So many took advantage of this opportunity that the class was held in the main body of the church. Many of the leading businessmen attended, most of the Budd executives old and young, and everyone who hoped ever to be an executive. It was a business as well as a cultural event.

Did the teacher of this remarkable class have any cynical ideas as to what caused so many hard-working citizens of his town to give up their golf and tennis and listen to the expounding of ancient Jewish morality and Swiss and Scottish theology? Doubtless he did, for his faith in his Lord and Master did not extend to the too many children of this Almighty One. It was enough for Samuel Budd that they came; having them at his mercy for one hour, he pounded the sacred message into them. If they did not take their chance, it was because the Lord had predestined them to everlasting damnation, for reasons which were satisfactory fo Him and into which no mortal had any business trying to pry. If they chose to sit with blank faces and occupy their minds with how to get a raise in salary, or how to get their wives invited to the Budd homes, or what make of new car they were going to purchase - that also had been arranged by an inscrutable Divine Providence, and all that a deacon of the stern old faith could do was to quote the texts which the Lord had provided, together with such interpretations as the Holy Spirit saw fit to reveal to him at ten o'clock on Sunday morning.

IV

The regular service followed the men's Bible class; which meant that the ladies had an extra hour in which to curl their hair and set on top of it their delicate confections of straw and artificial flowers. The war hadn't changed the fashions, nor the fact that there were fashions; all that elegance which had fled from Paris and London was now in Newcastle. The chauffeurs drove back to the homes for the ladies, and they entered with primness and piety, but now and then a sidelong glance to be sure that gentlemen standing in the sunshine on the steps were properly attentive.

That little heathen, Lanny Budd, had never attended a church service before, except for a wedding or a funeral; but he did not reveal that fact. The rule was the same as for a dinner party: watch your hostess and do what she does. He stood up and sang a hymn, from a book which Esther put into his hand, the number of the hymn having been announced twice by the minister. Then he bowed his head and closed his eyes while the Reverend Mr. Saddleback prayed. "Thou knowest, О Lord," was his opening formula; after which he proceeded to tell the Lord many things which the Lord knew, but which the congregation presumably didn't. Also he asked the Lord to do many things for the congregation, and it seemed to Lanny that the Lord must know about these already.

A well-trained choir sang a florid and elaborate anthem, this being Newcastle's substitute for grand opera. A collection was taken up, and Grandfather Budd passed the plate among the richest pew holders up front, and kept an eagle eye upon the bills which they dropped in. Finally Mr. Saddleback preached a sermon. Lanny had hoped that he would explain some of the difficult points of Fundamentalist doctrine, but instead he explained the will of the Lord with regard to Kaiser Wilhelm and his Kultur. "And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you." The Reverend Mr. Saddleback turned his pulpit into a Sinai, and thundered such awful words, and they seemed a direct message to Budd Gunmakers Corporation, which in the spring of that year 1917 had enlisted all its lathes and grinding machines, its jigs and dies and other tools, in the allied services of the United States government and the Lord God Almighty.

V

Lanny took time off to write letters home and tell his mother and Marcel how things were going with him. To cheer them up he went into detail about the martial fervors which surrounded him. Beauty sent him affectionate replies, and told him that Marcel was painting a portrait of Emily Chattersworth, and wouldn't let her pay him for it; it was his thanks for what she was doing for the poilus. Marcel was in a state of increasing suspense and dread, because of the failure of the French offensive in Champagne, in which his old regiment had been nearly wiped out. Beauty couldn't say much about it, but doubtless Robbie would have inside news; and he did.

Also Lanny wrote to Rick and to his wife. From the former he had a cheerful post card, beginning "Old Top," as usual. From Nina he learned that Rick had made a dangerous forced landing, but fortunately behind the English lines; he was a highly skilled flier now, what they called an "ace." Also Nina said that the baby was real and was making itself known. She told him about her examinations, and he told about those for which he was being prepared. In his letters he permitted himself to have a little fun with them.

He wrote the Robin boys in the same strain, and they told him about their school work, which for some strange reason they loved. He wondered if it was a characteristic of the Jews that they enjoyed hard labor; if so, it gave them an unfair advantage over other races. Lanny found that they bore that reputation in Newcastle; they had little stores in the working-class districts of the town, and kept them open until late hours, and now and then were fined for selling things on the Sabbath - the Puritan Sabbath, that is. They sent their children to the schools, where they persisted in winning prizes; there were so many of them crowding into Harvard that they had been put on an unadmitted quota. Members of the New England aristocracy would say to their complacent sons: "If you don't buck up and work, I'll send you to Harvard to compete with the Jews." Lanny wrote that to the Robins, knowing that it would make them chirp.

The salesman of electrical apparatus in Rotterdam forwarded another of Lanny's letters to Kurt; a very careful one, in which Lanny told all about his studies, but didn't mention the U.S.A. He just said: "I have gone to visit my father's home. Write me there." Kurt knew about Newcastle; and in due course a letter came, by way of Switzerland, as usual. Kurt said that he was well, and had gone back to his duties, and was glad to hear that his friend was keeping his mind on matters of permanent interest and benefit. That was all; but Lanny could read between those lines, and understand that even though Kurt was now fighting America, he didn't want Lanny to be fighting Germany!

Midsummer; and Nina wrote again. Rick had had a week's leave, and had come home; she had been to The Reaches with him - and, oh, so happy they had been! So happy they might be all their lives, if only this cruel slaughter would end! The baronet and his wife had been kind to her, and Rick was a darling - they had boated and bathed and played croquet. And the heavenly nights, with music on the river, and starlight trembling on the water, and love in their hearts! It all came over Lanny in a wave of melancholy longing; he too had had love in his heart, and had it still - but the granddaughter of Lord Dewthorpe was the poorest of correspondents, and her letters were skimpy, matter of fact, and wholly lacking in charm. Taking care of wounded men all day left one tired and unromantic, it appeared. Old England had had too much of war, and now it was New England's turn.

VI

Perhaps the letter from Nina, and Lanny's continual thinking about it, may have had something to do with the strange experience which befell him a few nights later. When Lanny went to bed he was tired in both mind and body, and usually fell asleep at once, and rarely wakened until the maid tapped on his door. But now something roused him; at least, he insisted that he was awake, fully awake, and no amount of questioning by others could shake his certainty. He lay there, and it seemed that the first faint gray of dawn was stealing into the room - just enough light so that you could know it was a room, and that there were objects in it. The mocking-bird hadn't noticed the light, and the crickets had gone to sleep, and the stillness caught Lanny's attention; it seemed abnormal.