The Other Horseman

by Philip Wylie

  "They had faith in the Americans. They believed that if the Americans understood what was roaring and clanking toward them out of Europe, the Americans could be trusted to act. Unlike you, Wilson, they didn't try to skid over, and ignore, the hideous implications of thing. They didn't advise that a comfortable course could lead to a comfortable future. They advised that the facts were such and such, and the future, whatever it was, would certainly be uncomfortable. These Minute Men of Truth--whose every fact you called an unholy lie and a trick to lead us into war--these unpopular people who yelled, 'To Arms!' received no compensation, got no orders, had no millionaires to back 'em, no political big shots in their pockets--nothing!

  "The bill of goods they felt impelled to offer was most unpalatable. Their sales talk had no appeal for people who just wanted to be left alone. They fought their Lexingtons and Concords, and when, for instance, by a single vote in Congress, America kept its army, these were the men who passed out cold on their desks with relief. A spontaneous little army--without leaders--because every man jack in it was a leader. An army that Hitler's wizards in the Munich geopolitik bureau had not foreseen. Volunteers who could not give their blood, because there was no tangible attack, but who lent to the psychological attack such fury that the ruinous Hun policy of division and destruction, which was already swinging through America, began to backfire.

  "I think someday a psychological history of this war will be written. And when that is done, the early heroes, the first strategical geniuses, the original guarantors of ultimate victory, will be these writers, these editors, these statesmen--who licked Mein Kampf with its own weapon: the pen. One angry person, one Hitler, one John Brown, one Christ, one Joan of Arc, can change human history. A few hundred angry men and women have changed America right under your nose, Wilson! America can be grateful in the future--that these people rose up like the embattled farmers and did as brave a job on a subtler front."

  "America in what future?" Mr. Wilson asked sarcastically. "America with two or three hundred billions of debts? America in the middle of a wrecked world? America without trade, because no one has the wherewithal to buy? America with--if your private panic is right--a million dead sons and cities in ruins? America bankrupt in a depression that makes the last one look like a boom? America geared for war in a world that has at last quit fighting? That America, you mean?"

  Mr. Corinth said, "Yes, I mean that America. That America--and you can multiply your picture by five, ten if you want. Because I don't believe the heart and the guts and the brains of America are as destructible as you seem to. I don't believe an American--a bricklayer, a doctor, a motorman, a factory worker, a farmer, or even a banker--is soft inside. We've started something here--barely started it. I don't think we'll quit. We're not the type. I do not believe that my American, standing outside his house, which has burned down, in the presence of his dead brother, with no bank account, and his kids needing food, will simply fold up and say, 'I'm through. What's the use!' I don't see the end of things as they used to be as being the end of everything, the way you do.

  "Maybe the age of big business exploitation of natural resources is ended. Maybe the age of titanic private fortunes is gone. Who did the exploiting? Who had the fortunes?

  All the Americans? No. A hundredth of one per cent. You probably have a million, Wilson. I have. You take it away--and I'll make another. Stop me from collecting that much--and I'll still make plenty, while I have my plant. Destroy the plant--and I'll borrow money from you to build another. Take away my domestic market and I'll sell my damned paint in Timbuktu. Take the money from the Timbuks and I'll trade paint for ivory and sell the ivory for piano keys or beads. Make the beads and keys out of plastic and I'll teach the natives how to crochet--and sell that.

  "You know what I mean. When everything that science and ingenuity can discover and invent has been applied to human welfare and living in every nook and cranny of the earth, when the astronomers have proved that there isn't a potential buying population on Mars, then I'll be content to fold up and say that business is due for a collapse, that business thenceforward will consist of nothing but repair and replacement.

  Until then, I'll be in business--or guys like me. Great God! We were born out of England, and England is old and growing tired. Asking her eldest son to take over the world trade and the family control. Talking about union. Begging the prodigal to care for her old age.

  "The Americans are not listening yet. Americans are still worrying because there are no more empty places on the U. S. map to find gold in. No more frontiers. Americans are trying to sell themselves on a premature senescence. Why, we haven't started our adolescence! The next frontier is the planet. We've somehow got to thinking that the national bank balance is the sum total of available money for all future time. How the hell did we build up that balance from zero when the Pilgrims landed? Work. Invention.

  Trade. More products to sell. Higher wages. Has that got to stop? We're at the beginning of our time, Wilson. We can spread our culture, our ideals, and our business interests, after this shambles, clean across the globe! You make a few loans in the Dakotas. You buy into a business in Pennsylvania. After the war, Wilson, unless you lose your head, you'll have bonds printed in Chinese--good bonds--and you'll own a piece of a railroad in Tibet. You'll be in on a good thing in the coal fields in the Antarctic and you'll have a hunk of a toll bridge in Afghanistan. You and a British corporation will be making a mint with electric refrigeration in India, and I will be selling a cold-proofing material not yet invented to the mining and lumbering cities in Siberia.

  "Money isn't money, Wilson. Money is just a crystallized form of human energy.

  And human energy springs into existence from ideas. A depression isn't a disappearance of wealth--it's a mental and spiritual funk. If money is real, then there's no such thing today as the Hitler war machine--because the Germans didn't have a dime. Brother, we aren't started! And I tell you, this fight--the last one, maybe, for aeons--is to clear away the old ego-national debris for the coming of a world working together. The Germans want to accomplish exactly that--by enslaving the world. We'll do it, though, by paying good wages, putting in voting machines, and teaching 'em to drink sodas and root for the Dodgers. So help me Christ, Wilson, every time I get to thinking about you isolationist bastards in this particular sense, I get mad enough to spit!"

  At that point in the discourse Jimmie noticed a figure in the foyer. His nerves lunged. He rose unostentatiously and slipped from the room.

  Audrey was closing a wet umbrella, under which she had run from the parking yard to the club entrance. The doorman took the umbrella and helped her remove a transparent raincoat. She shook droplets from her hair, saw Jimmie, and smiled. "I came here looking for you!"

  "Let's go in the trophy room. Nobody there, as a rule. And your dad is on the porch."

  "Is he? All right."

  He followed her into the place. Cases of silver cups gleamed dully there. A sailfish on the wall forever held at sword's point the august head of a moose. Jimmie pulled the two most comfortable chairs into the least conspicuous corner, and brought an ash stand, and they sat down. He was trembling unashamedly. For a minute they looked at each other.

  Audrey spoke. "I got tired of waiting--again."

  She sounded genuine. She seemed thinner and paler, as if waiting had caused her severe strain. That was the trouble with her act. She believed it; consequently, its effects upon her were real. The fact that it was an act now seemed to Jimmie a very great tragedy. Tragic, because the sight of her made him realize how extraordinary she would be if only she were sincere and unselfish.

  Jimmie ignored her words about waiting. "I got to know your dad--a little--

  hanging around here."

  "You did? You mean, he talked to you?" She thought for a moment. "What did he want? It must have been something."

  "Wanted to know about life--and death--in the RAF."

  He had expected that she would understand.
Instead, she frowned. "He did? That's odd! Indulging the more carnivorous side of his nature, I guess. Some people have no scruples!"

  "He wasn't carnivorous. He was charming."

  "Oh, he can be charming. He has a hideous facility for reading people. And, once read, he analyzes them--and uses their vanities and their avarices to manipulate them.

  People usually mistake that process for charm."

  "Mmmm. He was upset though. On account of your brother."

  She drew a violent breath. "My--brother!"

  Then Jimmie was startled. "You didn't know?"

  "What about my brother? Has Larry turned up? Have they--?"

  Jimmie told her.

  When he finished, she was crying. "I'm so glad," she said. "So glad! Even if he--

  well, even if we don't ever see him again. We'll at least know. He would be a pilot! He would be a night fighter, too. The very most formidable thing he could find to do. He was a great kid, Jimmie. He was capricious and vain, in a way, and ferocious. But he had a will like the current in a magnet. Once he switched it on it never stopped or weakened and it snapped up everything that came near. That was why he--left--so young. I suppose he went on in school. He'd do that, too! I never thought he would--because he was young, and because my family assumed so automatically that he would go to hell. You know. It poisons you. And some people--most people--believe that everyone who turns from their chosen course is rotten and crazy. Father believes that, especially. Jimmie! You can imagine how glad I am!"

  He could see how glad she was. False and theatrical though she might be about herself and about him, she was undeniably honest about her brother.

  "I can see, Audrey. What I can't understand is, why your father didn't tell you what he had found out."

  "Jimmie. Go get me that magazine! I can't bear not to know right now how he looks!"

  He brought the magazine from the library. Audrey had removed the traces of her tears and moved their chairs arm to arm. For a long time she stared at the photograph of

  "Lawrence Wilton." It was not large, but the features were quite clear. "It is Larry, all right," she said slowly. "Only--he's changed. He looks--softer. Not in character, but in his feelings."

  "Why," Jimmie repeated, "didn't your father tell you? He was tremendously moved that night."

  "No doubt. One decent hour with his conscience--alone. Oh, he didn't tell Mother, I suppose, because he can get a certain revenge on her that way. Revenge for her endless nagging and irritability. And, I suppose, he didn't like his mental picture of the swoon she'd go into. Mother would probably try to get the governor to get the State Department to get Larry right straight out of the RAF."

  "I don't know your mother."

  "She's been ill. Not faking, I believe." Audrey shrugged. "How is it with you, Jimmie?"

  He told her. Told her about his father, and Biff, and Sarah. He found that telling her was like putting down a painfully heavy load and resting. She listened with such concentration, such changes of expression, and yet with such complete and uninterrupting attention, that Jimmie described his inward life, explored it, complained about it, for almost half an hour in a single stretch.

  At the end she said, "No wonder you're low!" She smiled. "I heard about the great toss-out-the night it happened. A man who was there came over to Dan and Adele's--"

  "It wasn't on a Wednesday! Or a Friday, either!"

  Audrey's eyes shone briefly. "No. I'm over there a lot--now. Anyhow, this man repeated most of your eloquence. I didn't know, Jimmie, that you'd been--wounded."

  "Let's skip that part."

  "Can't I even see?"

  That was like the more familiar Audrey. "No."

  "All right." She performed an exorbitant pout, and dissolved it. "You've made me very happy anyhow--about Larry. Very happy. It was worth all the weeks I've been through. Just that, alone. Let's talk about something different. Biff, for example. He is a cad, you know."

  "I'm beginning to think so."

  Audrey nodded, slowly, up and down. "Yep. Cad. The very kind the lady novelists write about. A hero--also. The novelists seldom stop to think that, in the case of superheroism--" she barely glanced at him--"there is a compensatory caddishness.

  Generated, at times, by doting women. At other times, by too much adrenaline in the pride."

  "Damn it, you sound like Willie!"

  "Oh," she responded equably. "Willie said that first."

  "You've seen him?"

  "Frequently. I'd about die if I didn't. He's my second love--next to you."

  "He hasn't said anything to me about seeing you."

  "Of course not, you thickhead! I forbade him."

  "Oh."

  There was a pause. Audrey ended it. "I hear your dad has squabbled with your mother. Things are messy at your house. Biff'll be home in a day or two--in good condition. Sarah's in the dumps again. Quite a little party. It shows, according to Willie, that your family regrets pushing you off the threshold."

  "I didn't want to go--entirely. I was just beginning to hope that they were still human. Then--whammo!"

  "I know. Biff's a cad about women, but someday he'll give his time to some noble, if flashy, cause. Your father is really a good egg. Bank-struck. It's like being stage-struck-

  -only, with different boards."

  "So your father said."

  She assented with a grim nod. "Oh, he can recognize homely virtue. Just--never achieve it. Too complex. Sarah--I dunno. She's a gorgeous, miserable creature. She must have been terrific the day she read my diaries--"

  Jimmie started. "Willie told you that!"

  "We have no secrets. He told me also you threatened the--the"--she was mocking-

  -"extreme penalty to shut her up. Very chivalrous. Never had the male of my species offer to kill for me, before. I was positively touched. And greatly relieved, believe me!"

  "I was out of my head with rage--"

  "--and acted very--what we call 'British,' no doubt. I recall Sarah's Harry. A merry-eyed, curly-haired youth with a fine figure, if a girl may say so, and a talent for staying violently alive all night long. What did Sarah have to say on the angle that he was part Jewish? News, incidentally, to me."

  "Sarah didn't have anything to say. Never mentioned it. Mother told me."

  Audrey nodded again. "I remember, too, your mother, in the period when she was pouring ice water on that romance. Buckets of it. I thought, then, that she was going to unscrupulous lengths. She practically locked Sarah in the house, and she tore around Muskogewan grafting little abscesses on the reputation of the boy. At the time I presumed the tales were true. Musicians have a way of getting around--too much. Maybe they weren't, though. He didn't have that roving look. Or the sultry one, like Biff. Just--

  gay. I--" She broke off.

  "You what?" Her manner changed, stepped up its intensity.

  "Jimmie! Do you suppose it's possible that--that Sarah never knew her passion was part non-Aryan? I mean to say--"

  "Good God!" Jimmie studied the idea. " He'd tell her."

  The girl shrugged. "Maybe not. Maybe he thought she knew. After all, in New York, where he lives, it's no secret. His middle name's Jewish, and the family he's related to helped finance the Revolutionary War. I remember reading that in a publicity story about the band he plays in. Suppose your mother got hold of the fact--"

  "She did. She said so. Dad went to New York and came back with the information."

  "--and never told Sarah. Just sabotaged the thing on other grounds. The evidence would support the theory. Damn it, Jimmie, that would be a dirty trick!"

  "Still--Sarah gave him up."

  Audrey was sitting straight in her chair. Her eyes flashed. "Wait! Let's think!

  Your mother finds out your sister's boy friend is partly Jewish. Your sister doesn't know.

  Your mother is positive that it would make no difference whatever to your sister. So--she improvises. She turns the town against the lad. She makes Sarah fear that, if she marr
ied Harry, everybody would hate her and that Harry would probably desert her. That sort of stuff. Besides which, your mother works personally on the poor gal, day and night, to make her sign off. The pressure gets unbearable and Sarah, who is not an iron woman, finally does sign off--against her will, nature, desire, hope, wish, et cetera."

  "It could be," Jimmie said slowly. "Shall we phone her up?"

  Audrey smiled. "Efficient business man! 'Do it now!' It's a delicate topic, Jimmie.

  Lemme think. Maybe we ought to phone up Harry, first. See if he's still carrying the torch, too. After all, he may have gone the way of all flesh."

  "A point."

  Fifteen minutes later, excited, feeling at the same time a benighted fool, Jimmie was in a phone booth waiting for Mr. Meade to be summoned. He could hear a dance band playing faintly in the Chicago hotel he had called. Not faint was the pressure of Audrey's chin on his shoulder. She had crowded into the booth with him--and unscrewed the bulb there, for "privacy."

  Ìn a moment Jimmie heard a man's voice, young, worried, suspicious. "Yes? This is Harry Meade. Is Muskogewan calling me?"

  Jimmie swallowed. "Yeah. Hello, Harry. Look. This is going to seem like a cockeyed call to you. My name is Jimmie Bailey. Sarah's brother. I just got back from England--"

  The voice rose in pitch. Audrey could hear the words and the alarm in them. "Is something the matter with Sarah?"

  Jimmie laughed. "No!"

  "Then--!"

  "Listen, mug! I'm her brother and I've just found out she's nuts about you."

  "So what," said Harry bitterly.

  "So your family sicks dogs on me."

  ' I'm trying to call back the dogs, if you'll give me a chance. Listen. I'm a right guy. Are you?"

  "I try to be. Go on."

  "You sound like it. Harry, did you ever tell Sarah that you were partly Jewish?"

  There was a long pause. Very long. A voice incredibly strained. "Didn't she know that--all the time?"

  "I dunno, Harry. I'm going to find out. Only I wanted to be sure first that you were still--interested in her."