World's End

by Upton Sinclair

  “Surely, Grandfather. Robbie wishes me to prepare for St. Thomas’s, and he’s going to get me a tutor.”

  “Do you really intend to work?”

  “I always work hard when I get down to it. I wanted to be able to read music at sight, and I have stayed at it until I can read most anything.”

  “These are serious times, and few of us have time for music.”

  “I’m going to learn whatever my tutor wishes, Grandfather.”

  “Very well; I’ll look to hear good reports.”

  There was a pause. Then the old man turned to his son. “Robert,” said he, “I’ve been looking into this vanadium contract, and it strikes me as a plain hold-up.”

  “No doubt,” said Robbie. “But we’re getting our costs plus ten percent, so we don’t have to worry.”

  “I don’t like to pass a swindle like this on to the government.”

  “Well, the dealers have their story. Everybody’s holding up everybody all along the line.”

  “I think you’d better go down to New York and inquire around.”

  “If you say so. I have to go anyhow, on account of that new bomb-sight design.”

  “It seems to be standing the tests?”

  They went on for quite a while, talking technical details. Lanny was used to such talk, and managed to learn something. In this case he learned that an elderly businessman who got his church doctrine and polity from eighteen hundred years ago, and his chin whiskers and chandeliers from at least a hundred years ago, would change a bomb-sight or the formula for a steel alloy the moment his research men showed him evidence of an improvement.

  At last the grandfather said: “All right. I have to get back to work.”

  “You’re carrying too much of a load, Father,” ventured Robbie. “You ought to leave some of these decisions to us young fellows.”

  “We’ll be over the peak before long. I’ll hold up this vanadium deal for a day, and you run up to New York. Good-by, young man”—this to Lanny—“and see that you come to my Bible class.”

  “Surely, Grandfather,” replied the youth. But already the elder’s eyes were turning toward that pile of papers on his desk.

  The other two went out and got into the car, and Robbie started to drive. Lanny waited for him to speak; then he discovered that the vibration of the seat was not from the engine, but was his father shaking with laughter.

  “Did I do the right thing, Robbie?”

  “Grand, kid, perfectly grand!” Robbie shook some more, and then asked: “Whatever put it into your head to talk?”

  “Did I say too much?”

  “It was elegant conversation—but what made you think of it?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. I just decided that people aren’t kind enough to each other.”

  The father thought that over. “Maybe it was worth trying,” he admitted.

  20

  The Pierian Spring

  I

  Norman Henry Harper was the name of Lanny’s tutor. He didn’t in the least resemble the elegant and easygoing Mr. Elphinstone, nor yet the happy-go-lucky Jerry Pendleton. He was a professional man, and performed his duties with dignity. He prepared young men to pass examinations. He already knew about the examinations; he found out about each young man as quickly as possible, and then, presto—A plus B equals C—the young man had passed the examination. To the resolution of this formula Mr. Harper devoted his exclusive attention; his equipment and procedure were streamlined, constructed upon scientific principles, as much so as a Budd machine gun.

  Nor was this comparison fantastic; on the contrary, the more you considered it, the more apposite it appeared. Experts on military science had been writing for decades about the perpetual war going on between gunmakers and armorplate makers; and in the same way there were educators, whose business it was to cram knowledge into the minds of youth, and there was youth, perversely resisting this process, seeking every device to “get by.” The educators had invented examinations, and the students were trying to circumvent them. Being provided by their parents with large sums of money, it was natural that they should use it to get expert help in this never-ceasing war. And so had developed the profession of tutoring.

  This was America that Lanny had come to live in, and he wanted to know all about it. He listened to what Mr. Harper said, and afterwards put his mind on it and tried to figure out what it meant. A young man wanted to get into “prep school” as quickly as possible, in order that he might get through “prep school” as quickly as possible, in order that he might get into college as quickly as possible, in order that he might get out of college as quickly as possible. Mr. Harper didn’t say any of that—for the reason that it didn’t need saying. If it wasn’t so, what was he here for?

  Mr. Harper was about forty years of age, a brisk and businesslike person who might have been one of the Budd salesmen; he was getting bald, and plastered what hairs were left very carefully over the top of his head. For about half his life he had been studying college entrance examinations. It would be an exaggeration to say that he could tell you every question which had been asked in any college of the United States during twenty years; but his knowledge approached that encyclopedic character. He knew the personalities of the different professors, and what exam questions they had used for the last few years, and so he could make a pretty good guess what questions were due for another turn. He would hold up his hand in the middle of a conversation; no, no use to know that, they never asked anything like that.

  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 process 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. Molière, 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 fatigué.”

  “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 bu
ckle 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 B.C. 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 ore 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 to 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, O 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 shed
deth 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.