World's End

by Upton Sinclair

  Tears had come into Lanny’s eyes as he read, and were trickling down his cheeks. When he was through he, too, sat staring before him, not seeing anything, not knowing anything to say. He didn’t think that Marcel believed in prayers, or in blessings. Was it just a manner of speaking, or was it a cry wrung from him when his own forces were not enough to meet his need? Maybe he would be glad to go to war, and to get killed, as a way of escape from his grief.

  “It’s her own affair,” Robbie had said to his son. “It’s a mistake to urge people to any course, because then they hold you responsible for the consequences. Let her make her own decision.” So the boy didn’t say a word, just let the tears trickle.

  “Oh, Lanny, what shall I do?” whispered Beauty, at last. When he didn’t answer, she began to sob. “It’s monstrous that a man like Marcel should be dragged away to war!”

  “He doesn’t have to be dragged,” said the boy. “Don’t you see that he would go anyway? We can’t help that part of it. Most of the women of France will have that to endure.” Robbie had said this, and the boy knew it was right.

  But Beauty was a different kind of woman, belonging to the class which wasn’t supposed to suffer. So far she had refused to do so. That was why it seemed such a perfect solution of the problem to flee to America, in the care of a capable man who had no part in Europe’s hates and slaughters. That was undoubtedly the sensible way—as Robbie and Emily and all her friends kept assuring her. How provoking and unreasonable that a woman who had given her heart couldn’t get it back without finding it all bleeding and torn!

  “Tell me, what shall I do?” she repeated.

  “Robbie doesn’t want me to say any more about it,” the boy answered. “You know what I think.”

  “Harry is coming to take me to dinner,” persisted the mother. “What am I to say to him?”

  The boy remembered what his father had told him during the affaire Zaharoff. “Tell him the facts, Beauty.”

  VI

  Lanny returned to his other job. Robbie wrote out a long message to his father, advising him that Turkish officials were deeply involved in intrigues with Germany and the outcome might be a blockade of all Turkish ports. The British military mission advised that Britain would certainly want all the ground-type air-cooled machine guns it could get. Robbie advised against charging a higher price, except as part of a general boost in the price schedule. He recommended this latter more urgently than ever. Future quotations should be subject to increase depending upon raw-material prices certain to jump enormously.

  A long message which would take a good part of the afternoon; Robbie hated to put it off on the youngster, but Lanny said he had never done anything he enjoyed more. He would stick right there and make himself an expert, and when Robbie was willing to send a message without checking it, he would be as proud as if he’d got the tiny red ribbon of the Legion of Honor.

  So they went to work, Lanny at his table, and the father talking to harassed and exhausted military men. This went on until after seven o’clock, when Robbie said they’d eat, no matter what happened to Europe. “Let’s go to a place where real Parisians eat,” he suggested. “Fellow I know will be there.”

  They got into a taxi, and he gave an address on the Rue Montmartre. “We’re to meet a journalist; a man who has worthwhile connections, and often brings me tips. I give him a couple of hundred-franc notes. It’s the custom of the country.”

  It was a place Lanny had never heard of before. There were many tables on the sidewalk, but Robbie passed these by and strolled inside; he looked about, and went toward a table where sat a little man with heavy dark mustache and beard, pince-nez on a black silk cord, and a black tie. The man jumped up when he saw him. “Ah, M. Bood!” he exclaimed, trying to say it American fashion, but not succeeding.

  “Bon jour, M. Pastier,” replied Robbie, and introduced Lanny: “Mon secrétaire.” The man looked puzzled; for not many businessmen have secretaries fourteen years old. Robbie laughed, and added: “Aussi mon fils.”

  “Ah, votre fils!” exclaimed the Frenchman, exuberantly, and shook hands with the lad. “C’est le crown prince, hein?”

  “Je l’espeer,” replied Robbie; his French was no better than M. Pastier’s American.

  The other invited them to sit down. They ordered, and Robbie included a large bottle of wine, knowing that his acquaintance would assist them. The Frenchman was a voluble talker, and impressed Lanny greatly. The boy was too young to realize that persons in this profession sometimes pretend to know more than they can know. To listen to him you would have thought he was the intimate friend of all the prominent members of the cabinet, and had talked with several of them that afternoon.

  He reported that Germany had been making desperate efforts to detach France from her Russian engagements. “The German ambassador pleaded with friends of mine at the Quai d’Orsay. ‘There is and should be no need for two highly civilized nations to engage in strife. Russia is a barbarous state, a Tatar empire, essentially Asiatic.’ So they argue. They would prefer to devour us at a second meal,” added the Frenchman, his black eyes shining.

  “Naturellement,” said Robbie.

  “But we have an alliance; the word of France has been given! Imagine, if you can, the insolence of these Teutons—they demand of us the fortresses of Toul and Verdun, as guarantees of our abandonment of the Russian alliance. Is it probable that we built them for that?”

  “Pas probable,” assented the American.

  “When the French people hear that, they will rise as one man!” exclaimed the journalist, and illustrated with a vigorous rising of both arms.

  “What will your workers do, your Socialists?” asked Robbie. It was a question which troubled everybody.

  The other said: “Look,” and indicated with his eyes. “Over there at that table by the window. The question is being settled tonight.”

  The American saw eight or ten men sitting at dinner, talking among themselves. They might have been journalists like M. Pastier, or perhaps doctors or lawyers. At the head of the table was a large stoutish man with a heavy gray beard, a broad face, and grand-fatherly appearance. “Jaurès,” whispered the Frenchman.

  Lanny had heard the name; he knew it was one of the Socialist leaders, and that he made eloquent speeches in the Chamber of Deputies. What Lanny saw was a heavy-set old gentleman with baggy clothes, talking excitedly, with many gestures. “They are Socialist editors and deputies,” explained M. Pastier. “They have just returned from the conference at Brussels.”

  The three watched for a while, and others in the restaurant did the same. The Socialists were men of the people, deciding the affairs of the people, and there was no need for them to hide themselves. Lanny decided that their leader must be a kind old gentleman, but he look exhausted and harassed.

  “It is a grave problem for them,” explained the journalist; “for they are internationalists, and against war. But Jaurès spoke plainly to the Germans at Brussels—if they obey their Kaiser and march, there will be nothing for the French workers to do but defend their patrie. Have you seen L’Humanité this morning?”

  “I don’t patronize it,” said Robbie.

  “Jaurès speaks of ‘Man’s irremediable need to save his family and his country even through armed nationalism.’”

  “Too bad he didn’t discover that before he began advocating the general strike in case of war!”

  “Jaurès is an honest man; I say it, even though I have opposed him. I have known him for many years. Would you be interested to meet him?”

  “No, thanks,” said Robbie, coldly. “He’s a bit out of my line.” He led the conversation to the chances of British intervention in the expected war. He had his reasons for wanting to know about that; it would be worth many hundred-franc notes to Budd Gunmakers.

  After dinner father and son strolled along the boulevards and looked at the crowds. When they got to the Crillon, there was another cablegram. Lanny began insisting that he wasn’t at all t
ired; surely he could work till bedtime, and so on—when the telephone rang, and Robbie answered. “What?” he cried, and then: “Mon Dieu!” and: “What will that mean?” He listened for a while, then hung up the receiver and said: “Jaurès has been shot!”

  It was the boy’s turn to exclaim and question. “Right where we left him,” said the father. “Fellow on the street pushed the window curtains aside and put a couple of bullets into the back of his head.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “So Pastier reports.”

  “Who did it, Robbie?”

  “Some patriot, they suppose; somebody who thought he was going to oppose the war.”

  “What will happen now?”

  Robbie shrugged his shoulders, almost as if he had been a Frenchman. “It’s just one life. If war starts, there’ll be a million others. C’est la guerre, as the French say. Pastier says that Germany’s expected to declare war on Russia tomorrow; and if so, France is in.”

  VII

  It was hard upon a young fellow who had just assumed an important and responsible position to have to be distracted by the sex problem. Lanny learned how it interferes with business, and all the other serious things of life; he said a plague upon it—for the first time in his life, but not for the last. Here he was, the next morning, comfortably fixed by the window in his bedroom, with the code material and a long message from Connecticut, badly delayed by congestion of the cables. But instead of looking up the word “marketless,” he was sitting lost in thought, and presently interrupting his father’s reading of the mail. “Robbie, don’t you think one of us ought to see Beauty for a few minutes?”

  “Anything special?” asked the other, absentmindedly.

  “Harry told her last night that she’d have to make up her mind, or he’s going back to the States without her. She says it’s an ultimatum.”

  “Well, there’s a lot of ultimatums being served right now. One more hardly counts.”

  “Don’t joke, Robbie. She’s terribly upset.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Just sitting staring in front of her.”

  “Has she got a looking glass?”

  Lanny saw that his father was determined to keep out of it; so he looked up the word “marketless.” But before he started on the word “lightening,” he interrupted again. “Robbie, does it often happen that a woman thinks she is in love with two men and can’t decide which?”

  “Yes,” said the father, “it happens to both men and women.” He put down the letter he was reading and added: “It happened to me, when I had to decide whether I was going to get married or not.” It was the first time Robbie had ever spoken of that event to his son, and the boy waited to see if he’d say more. “I had to make up my mind, and I did. And now Beauty has to do it. It won’t hurt her to sit staring in front of her. She’s owed it to herself for a long while to do some serious thinking.”

  So Lanny looked up “lightening,” and three or four words more. But he couldn’t help trying once again. “Robbie, you don’t want me to give Beauty advice; but I’ve already given her some, and I know it’s counting with her. You don’t think it was good advice?”

  “It wasn’t what I’d give her; but it may be right for her. She’s a sentimental person, and it seems she’s very much in love with that painter fellow.”

  “Oh, really she is, Robbie. I watched them all the time on the yacht. Anybody could see it.”

  “But he’s a lot younger than she is; and that’s going to make a tragedy some day.”

  “You mean, Marcel will stop loving her?”

  “Not entirely, perhaps; he’ll be torn in half, just the way she is now.”

  “You mean he’ll get interested in some younger woman?”

  “I mean he’ll have to be a saint if he doesn’t; and I haven’t met any saints among French painters.”

  “You ought to know Marcel better, Robbie. He is one of the very best men I ever have met.”

  “I’m taking your word for him. But there’s a lot you still must learn, son. Beauty would be poor—that is, by the standards of everyone she knows or wants to know. And that’s awful hard on the affections. It gets worse and worse as you get older, too.”

  “You think it’s right for people to marry for money, then?”

  “I think there’s an awful lot of bunk talked on the subject. People fool themselves, and try to fool other people. I’ve watched marriages, scores of them, and I know that money was the important element in most. It was dressed up in fine words, of course; it was called ‘family,’ and ‘social position,’ and ‘culture,’ and ‘refinement.’”

  “But aren’t those things real?”

  “Sure they are. Each is like a fine house; it’s built on a foundation—and the foundation is money. If you build a house without any foundation, it doesn’t last long.”

  “I see,” said the boy. It impressed him greatly, like everything his father said.

  “Don’t let anybody fool you about money, son. The people who talk that nonsense don’t believe it themselves. They tell you that money won’t buy this, that, and the other thing. I tell you that money will buy an awful lot, especially if you’re a good shopper. You get my point?”

  “Oh, sure, Robbie.”

  “Take Edna Hackabury. Money bought her a yacht, and the yacht got her a lot of friends. Now she’s lost her yacht, and she and her captain will have to live on two thousand pounds a year; and how many of her old friends will come to see her? She’ll be embarrassed if they do, because she can’t keep up with them. She’ll find that she’s forced to get some cheaper friends.”

  “I know, Robbie, there are people like that; but others are interested in art, and music, and books, and so on.”

  “That’s quite true; and I’m glad to see that you prefer such friends. But when those friends grow old, and their blood flows slower, they’ll want a warm fire, and money will buy the fire. Money won’t buy them appreciation of books, but it will buy them books, and what’s the use of appreciation if you haven’t anything to use it on? No, son, the only way to be happy without money is to go and live in a tub, like Diogenes, or be a Hindu with a rag around your loins and a bowl to beg for rice. Even then you can’t live unless other people have cared enough for money to grow rice, and to market and transport it.”

  “Then you don’t think there’s anything we can do for Beauty?”

  “What I think, son, is that one or the other of us has got to work at that code; because this is a time of crisis, and a whole lot of women have worse troubles than trying to make up their minds which man they want.”

  VIII

  That was the first of August; and early in the day came the news that Germany had declared war on Russia. Soon afterward it was reported that both Germany and France had ordered general mobilization.

  The temper of Paris changed in an hour. Previously everything had been hushed; people anxious, frightened, horrified. But now the die was cast. It was war! That hateful Kaiser with his waxed mustaches, those military men who surrounded him, strutting and blustering—they had thrown Europe into the furnace. At least, that was the way the Paris crowds saw it; and business came to an end for the day, everybody rushed into the streets. Bugles sounding everywhere, drums rolling, crowds marching and cheering. They were singing the “Marseillaise” on every street corner; and “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre”—to which Americans sing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”; also the “Carmagnole,” which Americans do not know-all the old revolutionary songs of France, now become patriotic and respectable.

  Lanny finished his secretarial labors and went out to see the sights, the most stirring any boy could have imagined. Pink mobilization orders posted on kiosks and walls; young men assembling and marching to the trains; women and girls running beside them, singing, weeping hysterically, or laughing, borne up by the excitement of the throngs; people throwing flowers at them, putting roses in the soldiers’ red caps, in the hair of the girls. And the regiments
marching to the railroad stations, or being loaded into trucks—it wouldn’t be long before you could no longer find a taxicab or even a horse in Paris.

  And then back to the Hotel Crillon. The Champs-Élysées, that wide avenue, and the great open spaces, the Place de la Concorde, the Place du Carrousel, now like military encampments; regiments marching, horses galloping, artillery rumbling, people singing, shouting: “La guerre! La guerre!”

  Inside the hotel another kind of tumult, for it appeared that there were thousands of Americans in Paris, and they all wanted to get out quickly. Many were caught without funds; they wanted food and shelter, railroad tickets, steamer accommodations, everything all at once. They had been reading about a new kind of warfare, and had visions of squadrons of German airplanes dropping bombs upon Paris that afternoon. It seemed that every person who had ever met Robbie Budd was now asking him for advice, for the loan of money, for his influence in getting something from the embassy, from the consulate, from railroad and steamship and travel bureaus.

  When they couldn’t get hold of Robbie, they would go to his former wife, who had always been able to get anything from him. Beauty, who wanted to sit and stare in front of her and think, who wanted to weep without anybody seeing her ruined complexion, had to put on a few dabs of paint and powder, and her lovely blue Chinese morning robe with large golden pheasants on it, and receive her friends, and the friends of her friend Emily and her friend Sophie and her friend Margy, and tell them what Robbie said, that there wasn’t any immediate danger, that the embassy would advance money as soon as they had time to hear from Washington, that Robbie himself couldn’t possibly do anything, he was besieged by military men trying to buy things which he didn’t have and couldn’t make for months yet.

  They even fell upon Robbie’s newly appointed secretary, to ask what he knew and what he thought. Lanny had never had such an exciting time; it was like going to war himself. He would run to his father with something he thought especially urgent, and there would be that solid rock of a man, hearty, serene, smiling. He’d say: “Remember, son, there’ve been lots of wars in this old Europe, and this will pass like the others.” He’d say: “Remember, some of these are real friends, and some are spongers who won’t ever repay the money they’re trying to borrow.” He’d see Lanny standing at the window, watching the troops march by and the flags flying, listening to the drums beating and the crowds shouting; he’d see the color mounting in the boy’s cheeks and the light shining in his eyes, and he’d say: “Remember, kiddo, this isn’t your war. Don’t make any mistake and take it into your heart. You’re an American!”