World's End

by Upton Sinclair

  It was Rick’s turn to open his heart. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Lanny—I’m married.”

  “What?” cried the other, amazed.

  “The night before, I left for France. It’s quite a long story. If you want to hear it—”

  “Oh, do I, Rick!”

  The baronet’s son had come to London to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps, and at the home of one of his school friends had met a girl just his age, a student at a college not far from his training camp. They had hit it off together, and used to meet whenever Rick had free time. “We talked about love,” he said, “and I told her I’d never had a girl. Of course all the chaps want to have one before they go to the front—and all the girls want to have them, it seems. She said she’d try it with me, and we were both quite happy—only of course there wasn’t very much time.”

  Rick paused. “And then?” said Lanny.

  “Well, I knew I was going across in a week or so; and Nina—her name is Nina Putney—told me she wanted to have a baby. I mightn’t come back—lots of the fellows have been downed on their first flight.”

  “I know,” said Lanny.

  “I said: ‘What will you do, alone?’ And she said: ‘I know what I want. I can take care of it somehow.’ She has a sister who’s an interior decorator, and would take her in. You know people don’t pay so much attention to illegitimacy in wartime; they make excuses. And Nina broke down—she said she had to have something to remember me by. I couldn’t very well say no.”

  “Is she going to have it?”

  “So she writes me.”

  “You married her before that?”

  “I thought I ought to tell the pater; if he was going to have a grandchild, he’d want to be sure about it. He looked up the family and found out they were all right—I mean, what he calls all right—so then he said we ought to get married. So we got a special license and went over to the church, the night before I reported for duty.”

  “Oh, Rick, what a story! Do you think she’s a girl you’ll be happy with?”

  “I suppose we’ve as good a chance as most couples. Nina’s game, and says she’ll never hold me to it. She swears she wasn’t trying to rope me in, and if I ever say it, she’ll drop me flat.” The young flying officer smiled a rather wry smile.

  “You’re supposed to be something of a catch, aren’t you, Rick—I mean from the English point of view?”

  Rick could talk about the social position of the Codwilliger family, but not of the Pomeroy-Nielsons. “The pater says we’ll lose The Reaches if they keep piling war taxes on him. And what price a baronet if you have to live in lodgings?”

  VII

  Lanny was excited, of course. He wanted to know about Nina, and what she looked like—Rick had a little picture, which showed a slender, birdlike person with an eager, intense expression. Lanny admired her, and Rick was pleased. Lanny asked what she was studying, and about her family—her father was a barrister, but not a successful one; she would be one of these new women who had careers of their own, kept their own names, and so on. None of this clinging sort.

  Lanny said that his father was taking him to London soon. Could he meet her? Rick said: “Of course.”

  “Could I give her a present, do you suppose? Would she like some picture that we could pick up for her?”

  “You’d better wait,” laughed the other, “and see what happens to me. If I’m put out, you’d better give her a baby basket.”

  “I’ll give her both!” Lanny had recently become aware of the fact that his father had a pile of money.

  “No Caliph of Bagdad business!” countered his friend. “You pick out a book that may keep her from being lonely, and write something in it, so she can remember you when you marry an oil princess in Connecticut.”

  “There isn’t any oil in Connecticut, Rick.”

  “Well, nutmegs then. Your father says it’s called the Nutmeg State. You’ll make a whole crop of new princesses out of this war. They’ll be bored, and they’ll be crazy about you because you speak French, and dance, and have culture—you’ll rank with a marquis or a Russian grand duke in exile.”

  Lanny was amused by this picture of himself in New England. He wanted to say: “They’ll find out that I’m a bastard.” But his lips were sealed.

  Half a day, a night, and another day; never had thirty hours moved with such speed! They went to the Comédie Française, and sat in a box; they had a meal at midnight, and Robbie ordered an extra bottle of wine. They strolled on the boulevards in the morning, luxuriating in the sunshine, watching the crowds and gazing at the fine things for sale. Lanny bought a stock of chocolates, the one thing Rick admitted the chaps in the air force would appreciate. They picked up an old-fashioned open carriage with a bony but lively horse, and were driven about the Bois and the main boulevards, looking at historic buildings and remembering what they could of events. Rick knew a little about everything; he had all his old assurance, his worldly manner which impressed his younger friend so greatly.

  Robbie came back to the hotel, feeling good, because Zaharoff’s factotum had given way, and the other companies were giving way, and Robbie was collecting signatures on dotted lines. Lanny had to ask him not to be too exultant until Rick was gone. “You know how it is, he’s giving his life, maybe, while we’re making money.”

  “All right,” said the salesman, with one of his chuckles. “I’ll be good; but you tell Rick that if his old man wants to sell The Reaches, you’ll buy it!” No use asking Robbie to shed any tears over the English aristocracy. They had had their day, and now the American businessmen were to have theirs. Gangway!

  However, Robbie was very decent when the time for parting came. He had a big package delivered to Rick’s room, and told him not to open it until he got back to camp. He told Lanny it contained cigarettes; the baronet’s son would be the darling of the corps wing for a time. Robbie shook hands with him, and said “Cheerio,” in the approved English fashion.

  Lanny went to the train, and had tears in his eyes, he just couldn’t help it. It would have been very bad form for Rick to have them; he said: “Thanks, old chap, you’ve been perfectly bully to me.” And then: “Take care of yourself, and don’t let the subs get you.”

  “Write me a post card every now and then,” pleaded Lanny. “You know how it is, if I don’t hear from you, I’ll worry.”

  “Don’t do that,” said Rick. “Whatever comes, that’s what comes.” It was the nearest a modern man could approach to having a philosophy.

  “Well, look out for the Fokkers—get them first!”

  “Right-o!” The whistle blew, and Rick bolted, just in time for the train and for the honor of the Royal Flying Corps. Lanny stood, with tears flowing freely. “Good-by, Rick! Good-by!” His voice died into a sort of sob as the train moved on, and the face of Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson disappeared, perhaps forever. That was the dreadful thing about wartime, you couldn’t part from anybody without the thought: “I’ll probably not see him again!”

  VIII

  The youth kept talking about this depressing idea until it worried his father. “You know, kid,” he remarked, “you just can’t be too soft in this world. It’s painful to think of people getting killed, and I don’t know the answer, except that maybe we put too much value on human life; we try to make more out of it than nature allows. This is certain, if you’re too sensitive, and suffer too much, you wreck your own happiness, and maybe your health, and then what are you worth to yourself or anybody else?”

  That was something to think about, and the youngster put his mind on it. What was the use of practicing the arts, of understanding and loving them, if you didn’t dare let yourself feel? Manifestly, the purpose of art was to awaken feelings; but Robbie said you had to put them to sleep, or at any rate retire into a cave with them. Build yourself like a tortoise, with a hard shell around you, so that the world couldn’t get hold of you to make you suffer!

  Lanny voiced that, and the reply was: “Maybe it’s a
bad time for art right now. As I read history I see these periods come pretty frequently and last a long time, so you have to arm yourself somehow; unless, of course, you want to be a martyr, and die on a cross, or something like that. It makes good melodrama, or maybe great tragedy, but it’s doggone uncomfortable while it’s happening.”

  They were in their room, packing to leave for England; and Robbie said: “Sit down and let me tell you something I heard today.” He lowered his voice, as if he thought that someone might be hiding in their room. Enemy ears are listening!

  “Your friend is going off to fight the German Fokkers, and you’re unhappy because they may get him. He’s told you the Fokkers are fast and light, and that helps them, and may doom him. Do you know why they are so fast and light?’

  “He says they’re putting aluminum into them.”

  “Exactly. And where do they get it? What’s it made from?”

  “It’s made out of bauxite, I know.”

  “And has Germany got any?”

  “I don’t know, Robbie.”

  “Few people know things like that; they don’t teach them in the schools. Germany has very little, and she wants it badly, and pays high prices for it. Do you know who has it?”

  “Well, I know that France has a lot, because Eddie Patterson drove me to the place where it’s being mined.” Lanny remembered this trip to a town called Brignolles, back from the coast; the reddish mineral was blasted from tunnels in a mountain, and brought down to the valley in great steel buckets rolling on a continuous wire cable. Lanny and his friend had been admitted to the place and had watched the stuff being dumped into lines of freight cars. It had been Lanny’s first actual sight of big industry—unless you included the perfume factories in Grasse, where peasant women sat half buried in millions of rose leaves, amid an odor so powerful that a little of it sent you out with a headache.

  Robbie went on with his story. “To make bauxite into aluminum takes electric power. Those lines of freight cars that you saw were taken to Switzerland, which has cheap power from its mountain streams. There the aluminum is made; and then it goes—can you guess?”

  “To Germany?”

  “It goes to whatever country bids the highest price for it; and Germany is in the market. So if your friend is brought down by a faster airplane, you’ll know the reason. Also you’ll know why your father keeps urging you not to tear your heart out over this war.”

  “But, Robbie!” The son’s voice rose with excitement. “Something ought to be done about a thing like that!”

  “Who’s going to do it?”

  “But it’s treason!”

  “It’s business.”

  “Who are the people that are doing it?”

  “A big concern, with a lot of stockholders; its shares are on the market, anybody can buy them who has the money. If you look up the board of directors, you’ll find familiar names—that is, if you follow such things. You find Lord Booby, and you say: ‘Zaharoff!’ You see the Duc de Pumpkin, and you say: ‘Schneider,’ or perhaps ‘de Wendel.’ You see Isaac Steinberg, or some such name, and you say: ‘Rothschild.’ They have their directors in hundreds of different companies, all tied together in a big net—steel, oil, coal, chemicals, shipping, and, above all, banks. When you see those names, you might as well butt your brains out against a stone wall as try to stop them, or even to expose them—because they own the newspapers.”

  “But, Robbie,” protested the youth, “doesn’t it make any difference to those men whether the Germans take France?”

  “They’re building big industry, and they’ll own it and run it. Whatever government comes in will have to have money, and will make terms with them, and business will go on as it’s always done. It’s a steam roller; and what I’m telling my son is, be on it and not under it!”

  IX

  The English and the French had made for themselves a sort of chicken run across the English Channel; a wide lane, fenced with heavy steel netting hung from two lines of buoys, and protected by mines. Back and forth through that lane went the troopships, the hospital ships, the freighters, the packet boats with passengers. Up and down the lines patrolled torpedo boats and destroyers, mine sweepers and trawlers; lookouts swept the sea with glasses, and gunners stood by their quick-firers, ready at a moment’s notice to swing them into action. Overhead were airplanes humming, and silver blimps slowly gliding. The submarine campaign was at its peak, and the Allies were going back to the ancient system of convoys for merchant ships. They were doing it here, with fleets of slow-moving vessels laden with coal for France, escorted by armed trawlers.

  At night the destroyers raced up and down, their searchlights flashing, making the scene bright almost as day. But the packet boats showed no lights, and passengers were not allowed on deck; you went on board after dark, and were escorted to your stateroom, and advised to sleep with your clothes on, and be sure to practice adjusting the life preserver which was overhead in your berth. Your porthole was sealed tightly with a dark cover, and to open it or show a light was a prison offense. You heard the sounds of departure, and felt the vibration of the screw and the tossing of the vessel. You slept, if your nerves were sound, and when you woke up you were in England, if your luck was reasonably good.

  London in wartime was full of bustle, serious but not afraid. “Never say die,” was the motto. England would follow her usual rule of losing every battle but the last. The theaters and the cinemas were crowded. Everybody was at work, both men and women; hours were long and wages high; the people of the slums had enough to eat for the first time in their lives. Lanny wondered: was that the solution to the problem of poverty and unemployment—to put everybody at work trying to blow some other people up?

  Robbie had important men waiting to see him. There was no way for Lanny to help him; no more codes or ciphers now—whatever cablegrams you sent had to be in plain words, and signed by your full name; better not use any words the censor didn’t know, and not too many figures. Robbie told a story about a man who tried to cable that he had purchased 12,462,873 sables; the military intelligence department got busy to find out how he had managed to get more sables than there were in the world.

  Lanny had two young ladies to call on. Rosemary first, of course. She had got her heart’s desire, and was working as a nurse. They called her a “student,” but there wasn’t much difference in these days, you went right to work, and learned by doing. She was in a big hospital which until recently had been a school. Her hours were long, and leave was hard to get; but when you are the granddaughter of an earl, you can manage things in England, even in wartime.

  Toward sundown he went to meet her, expecting to see her in a nurse’s costume of white; but she had changed to a blue chiffon dress and a little straw hat with blue cornflowers in it. The sight of her started something to tingling inside him. How lovely life could be, even with death ruling the world!

  They walked in a near-by park, and she tried her best to be cool and matter of fact. But there was something between her and this young American that wasn’t easy to control. They sat on a bench, and Lanny looked at her, and saw that she was afraid to meet his eyes, and that her lips were trembling.

  “Have you missed me a little, Rosemary?”

  “More than a little.”

  “I haven’t been able to think about anybody else.”

  “Let’s not talk about it, Lanny.”

  So he chatted for a while, telling her about Rick’s brief holiday in Paris. He talked about his coming trip to America, and the reasons for it. “My father says we’re surely coming into the war.” Congress was then in session, and a fierce debate was going on; there might be a vote at any hour.

  “Better late than never,” replied Rosemary. The English in those days had become extremely impatient with the letter-writing of President Wilson.

  “You mustn’t blame me for it,” said he. “But if we do come in, things will change quickly.” He waited a reasonable time, then asked, with a smile: “
If we do, Rosemary, will that make any difference in the way your parents feel about us colonials?”

  “All that’s so complicated, Lanny. Let’s talk about nice agreeable things.”

  “The nicest agreeable thing I know is sitting on a park bench with the twilight falling about her and an evening star right in front of her eyes, and I haven’t the least desire to talk about anything else. Tell me, darling: has there been any other man in your heart in the past eleven months?”

  “There are hundreds of them, Lanny. I’m trying to help our poor boys back to life—or ease them out of it not too horribly.”

  “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.”