World's End

by Upton Sinclair

  X

  So Lanny and Rosemary went strolling; and when they came to a place where they weren’t apt to meet any of their fashionable friends, they went in, and he registered as Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and paid in advance, and no questions were asked. When they lay in the embrace which was so full of rapture for them both, they forgot the sordid surroundings, they forgot everything except that their time was short. Lanny was going out to face the submarines on the open ocean, and Rosemary was going to France, where the screaming shells paid no heed to a red cross on a woman’s arm.

  “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a flying.” Thus the English poet. The German has said: “Pflücket die Rose, Eh’ sie verblüht.” So there was one thing about which the two nations could agree. In countless cheap hotels in Berlin, as in London, the advice was being followed; and the wartime custom was no different in Paris—if you could accept the testimony of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had stood on the field of Eylau, observing the heaps of the slaughtered and remarking: “One night in Paris will remedy all that.”

  Their happiness was long-enduring, and nothing in the outside world was permitted to disturb it. Not even loud banging noises, all over the city—one of them very close by. Lanny made a joke of it: “I hope that’s not some morals police force after us.” The girl explained that those were anti-aircraft warnings, made by “maroons,” a kind of harmless bomb made of heavy paper wrapped with twine.

  They lay still in the dark and listened. Presently came louder explosions, and some of them were near, too. “Anti-aircraft guns,” said Rosemary; she knew all the sounds. There came dull, heavy crashes, and she told him those were the bombs. “You don’t have to worry unless it’s a direct hit.”

  “You surely can’t worry if it is,” said Lanny. It was his first time under fire, and he wanted to take it in the English manner.

  “About as much risk as in a thunderstorm,” said Rosemary. “The silly fools think they can frighten us by wrecking a house here and there and killing half a dozen harmless people in their beds.”

  “I suppose those’ll be planes?” asked the youth.

  “From occupied Belgium. The Zepps have stopped coming entirely.”

  The uproar grew louder, and presently there was a sharp cracking sound, and some of the glass in the window of their room fell onto the floor. That was getting sort of close! “A piece of shrapnel,” said Rosemary. “They don’t have much force, because the air resistance stops them.”

  “You know all about it!” smiled Lanny.

  “Naturally; I help to fix people up. I’ll have some new cases in the morning.”

  “None tonight, I hope, dear.”

  “Kiss me, Lanny. If we’re going to die, let it be that way.”

  The uproar died away even more suddenly than it had come; they slept awhile, and early in the morning, when they got up, Lanny found a fragment of a shell near the broken window. It wasn’t much more than an inch square, but had unpleasantly jagged edges. He said: “I’ll keep it for a souvenir, unless you want it.”

  “We get plenty of them,” replied the student nurse.

  “Maybe it’s a Budd.” He knew, of course, that the British were using Budd shrapnel. “I’ll see if my father can tell.”

  “They gather up the pieces and use them again,” explained Rosemary.

  That was her casual way. She told him to phone her or wire her as to when he would be sailing. She didn’t know if she could get another leave, but she would try.

  They went outside, and heard newsboys shouting, and saw posters in large letters: “U.S.A. IN WAR!” “AMERICA JOINS!” While the scion of Budd Gunmakers had been gathering rosebuds with the granddaughter of Lord Dewthorpe, the Senate of the United States had voted a declaration to the effect that a condition of war already existed between that country and Germany.

  XI

  It was a pleasant time to be in London. There were celebrations in the streets, and the usually self-contained islanders were hunting for some American, so that they could shake him by the hand and say: “Thanks, old chap, this is grand, we’re all brothers now, and when will you be coming over?” Lanny asked his father if this would help him in getting contracts; Robbie said they’d expect him to give the patents now—but no such instructions had come from Newcastle, Connecticut!

  Lanny went to call oh Nina Putney, still a student in college in spite of being married. He took her to lunch, and they had a long talk. She was a brunette, slender and delicate, with sensitive, finely cut features. She seemed more like a French girl than an English one; she was like Lanny, eager and somewhat impetuous; she said what she felt, and then perhaps wished she hadn’t. The two could get along easily, because they shared the same adoration, and wanted to talk about it.

  Nina told about her meeting with the most wonderful of would-be fliers, whose dream had since come true. He might be in the air now—oh, God, at this moment he might be in a death duel with one of the German Fokkers, so light and fast because they were made of aluminum manufactured in Switzerland from French bauxite! Lanny didn’t tell the young bride about that; but a shadow hung over their meeting, and what could he say? He couldn’t deny the mortal danger, or that it would last, day after day. No comfort that an airman came back alive, because he would be going out again so soon.

  Business as usual! Lanny and Nina promised to write to each other, for Rick’s sake, and she would tell him whatever news she got. America would hurry up, and this dreadful war would be won, and they would all live happy ever after. So, good-by, Nina, and take good care of that baby, and you’re to have a basket, and remember, Budd’s will stand back of you!

  Robbie said he’d have all his affairs wound up in a couple of days, and no use to linger and be a target even for Budd shrapnel. He had engaged a stateroom, and Lanny, the lady-killer, might gather as many rosebuds as possible in that brief interim. He phoned to Rosemary, and she said, yes, she’d get away once more, even if they fined her for it. They went to the same hotel and got the same room—the pane of glass patched with brown paper. Once more they were happy, after the fashion that war permits—amor inter arma; concentrating on one moment, refusing to let the mind roam or the eye peer into the future.

  In the morning, clinging to him, the girl said: “Lanny, you’ve been a darling, and I’ll never forget you. Write me, and let me know how things go, and I’ll do the same.”

  No more than that. She wouldn’t talk about marriage; she would go on patching broken English bodies, and he would visit the home of his fathers, and come back as a soldier, or perhaps to sell armaments—who could say? “Good-by, dear; and do help us to win!”

  So Lanny was through; and it was a good time to be leaving. The British were beginning their spring offensive, which would be drowned in mud and hung on barbed wire and mowed down by machine guns in the usual depressing way. The French had a new commander, Nivelle, and he would lead them into a slaughter that would bring the troops to the verge of mutiny. Away from all that!

  They took a boat train at night, and went on board a steamship in darkness and silence. They knew they were being towed out into a harbor, and that tugs were pulling steel nets with buoys out of the way. But they couldn’t see a thing, because the deck was covered with a shroud of burlap. They sat outside for a long while, listening to the sounds of the sea and conversing in whispers; not much chance to sleep, and nothing you could do. Everyone tried hard to seem unconcerned. Some men shut themselves up in their cabins and drank themselves insensitive; others played cards in the saloon and pretended not to care about death.

  “Westward the star of empire takes its way,” said Robbie. He was telling his son that they were off to God’s country, the place to stay in, to believe in. He was telling him not to miss the granddaughter of an earl too much; there were plenty of delightful democratic maidens at home. He was saying that Europe was worn out; it would owe all its money to America, and collecting it would be fun. Yes, they were sitting pretty—unless by chance there
should come a pale streak of foam out there on the starlit ocean, and a shattering explosion beneath them!

  BOOK FOUR

  Land of the Pilgrims’ Pride

  19

  Old Colonial

  I

  The city of Newcastle, Connecticut, lies at the mouth of the Newcastle River, and has a comfortable harbor, not muddy except in springtime. It has a highway bridge across the harbor, and beyond it a railroad bridge, both having “draws” so that ships may go up. The Budd plant lies above the bridges, and has a railroad spur running into it. Above the plant are salt marshes, which the progenitor of the family had the forethought to buy for a few dollars an acre. Everybody called him crazy at the time, but as a result of his forethought his descendants had both land and landings, by the simple process of putting a steam dredge at work running channels into the marsh and piling earth on both sides. In the year 1917 you could not have bought an acre of this salt marsh for ten thousand dollars.

  As a result, the city had only one direction in which to grow; which meant that rents were high and working-class districts crowded. The families which had owned farms in that direction had either sold them, and moved away and been forgotten, or else they had leased the land, in which case they constituted the aristocracy of Newcastle, owning stock in banks and department stores, water and gas and electric companies, street railways and telephones. As a further result, Newcastle had remained a small city, and many of the workers in Budd’s lived in near-by towns and came to the plant on “trolley cars.”

  In fact only a small part of Budd’s itself was at Newcastle. Farther up the river were dams, and here the company made cartridges and fuses. The dams had locks, and motor barges took raw materials up and brought finished products down. This enabled Lanny’s grandfather to say that he disapproved of the modern tendency toward congestion in great cities. Also it enabled him to get much cheaper labor.

  In the state of Ohio, once known as the “Western Reserve” and settled largely by people from Connecticut, the Budds had a powder plant. In the state of Massachusetts they had recently bought a six-story cotton mill with a dam and power plant, the concern having gone into bankruptcy because of competition in Georgia and the Carolinas; this plant was now making hand grenades. In a somewhat smaller furniture factory they were setting up a cartridge plant. In the salt marshes of Newcastle ground was being made for new structures which would enable them to double their output of machine guns. So it went; the government was advancing the money to concerns which had the skill and could turn out instruments of war quickly.

  All these deals had been arranged and plans laid months in advance, and many contracts were signed before war had been declared or funds voted by Congress. By the time Lanny arrived at Newcastle, all the men of the Budd family were under heavy pressure, working day and night, and talking about nothing but the war and the contribution they were making to it. Nearly everyone in the town was in the same mental state, and this afforded an opportunity for a stranger to slip in unobserved, and have time to adjust himself to an unknown world. Nobody would bother him; indeed, unless he made a noise they would hardly know he was there.

  II

  Until recently Robbie and his family had occupied an old Colonial house in the residential part of Newcastle. But there was a transformation going on all over New England. Motorcars had become so dependable, and hard-surfaced roads so good, that it was getting to be the fashion to buy a farm and turn it into a country estate; your friends did the same, and collectively built a country club with a golf course, and thus had the advantages of town and country life. You got blooded rams, bulls, and boars; you produced milk and strawberries and asparagus. You were called a “gentleman farmer,” and not merely had fresh air, space, and privacy, but you tried to make it pay, and if you succeeded you bragged to all your friends.

  The population of such districts consisted of a “gentry,” and a great number of tenants and servants, all contented and respectable, and all voting Tory, though it was called “Republican.” What Lanny saw of “New” England turned out to be much like Old England. The scenery resembled that “green and pleasant land,” where he had enjoyed long walks in the springtime three years ago. There were country lanes and stone walls and small streams with mill dams, and old farmhouses and churches that were shown as landmarks. To be sure, some of the trees were different, high-arching white elms and flowering dogwood soon to be in party costume; also, the dialect of the country people was different—but these were details.

  The new house of the Robbie Budds stood at the head of an archway of elms more than a hundred years old. The farmhouse originally on the spot had been moved to one side and made into a garage with chauffeur’s and gardener’s quarters above. A new house had been built, modern inside, but keeping the “old Colonial” pattern. It had two stories and a half, and what was called a “gambrel” roof, starting at a steep pitch, and, when it got halfway up, finishing at a flatter pitch. In front of the house were big white columns which went above the second story; at one side were smaller columns over a porte-cochere.

  Inside, the house was plain, everything painted white. The furniture was of a sort Lanny had never seen before; it also was “old Colonial,” and he was to hear conversation about it, and learn the difference between “highboys” and “lowboys,” and what a “court cupboard” was, and a “wing-chair,” and a “ball and claw.” Everything in the house had its proper place and to move it was bad manners. This had been explained to Lanny by his father; Esther had strict ideas of propriety. He should not play the piano loudly, at least not without asking if he would disturb anyone. He would make things easier if he would go to church with the family. Above all, he must be careful not to speak plainly about anything having to do with the relationship of men and women; Esther tried her best to be “modern” but she just couldn’t, and it was better not to put any strain upon her. Lanny promised.

  III

  He had seen pictures of her, so he knew her when he saw her standing at the head of the stairs, with the big grandfather’s clock behind her. It was an important moment for her as well as for him, and both of them realized it. She was becoming a stepmother, one of the most difficult of human relationships; she was taking a stranger into her perfectly ordered home, one from a culture foreign to hers and greatly suspected. He was young and he was weak, yet he had a power which could not be disregarded, having entered her husband’s life ahead of her and sunk deep roots into his heart.

  Esther Remson Budd was thirty-five at this time. She was a daughter of the president of the First National Bank of Newcastle, a Budd institution. She had lived most of her life in the town, and her ideas of Europe were derived from a summer of travel with teachers and members of her class in a young ladies’ finishing school. She was one of the most conscientious of women, and gave earnest thought to being just and upright. She was not cold, but made herself seem so by subjecting to careful consideration everything she did and said. She was charitable, and active in the affairs of the First Congregational Church, in which her father-in-law taught a men’s Bible class every Sunday morning. She guided her three children lovingly but strictly, and did her best to use wisely the powers which wealth and social position gave her.

  To Esther at the age of twenty-one Robbie Budd had been a figure of romance. He went abroad frequently, met important people, and came home with contracts, the report of which spread widely—for hardly a person in that town could prosper except as Budd’s prospered, and when Robbie sold automatics to Rumania, the merchants of Newcastle ordered a fresh stock of goods, and Esther’s father bought her an electric coupé, a sort of showcase to drive about town in. Everybody she knew wanted her to marry Robbie; most of the girls had tried and failed, and knew there was some mystery, some story of a broken heart.

  The time came when Robbie took Esther for a long drive and told her about the mysterious woman in France, the artists’ model who had been painted in the nude by several men—a strange kind of promi
scuity, wholly outside the possibilities of Newcastle, which in its heart was still a Puritan village. There was a child, but the woman refused to marry him and wreck his life. He had ended the unhappy affair, which was then about five years old; he had done so because he saw it preyed upon his father’s mind, it could not possibly be fitted into the lessons imparted to the men’s Bible class. Robbie would ask Esther to marry him, but only after she knew about this situation, and understood that he had a son and would not disown him.

  The two families were, working busily to make this match. Did the president of Budd’s give his friend, the president of the First National Bank, some hint of the problem? Or did the latter guess what might have happened to a handsome and wealthy young businessman in Paris? Anyhow, Esther’s father had a talk with her, of a sort unusual in Puritan New England. He told her the facts of life as concerning future husbands. Among the so-called “eligible” men of the town, those slightly older than herself and able to support her in the position to which she had been accustomed, she would have difficulty in finding one who had not had to do with some woman. The difference between Robbie Budd and most others was that they didn’t consider it necessary to tell their future brides about the wild oats they had sown.

  Esther asked for time to think all this over, and in the end she and Robbie were married. It had been thirteen years now, and they had three children, and Esther was as near to happiness as any of the “young matrons” she knew. Robbie played golf while his wife went to church, and he drank more liquor than she considered wise; but he was indifferent to the charms of the country club’s seductresses, he let her have her way entirely with the children, and he gave her more money than she had use for. On the whole she could count herself a fortunate wife.

  But now came this one wild oat of her husband, to be transplanted into her garden and to grow there. She was compelled to face the circumstances which had brought this about. If Lanny was going into an army, it obviously ought to be the American army; and if he came to America, and was denied his father’s home, that would be a repudiation and an affront. To say that Robbie had had a previous marriage in France was one of those conventional lies that were hardly lies at all. Women would smile behind their fans, and whisper; but after all there has to be a statute of limitations on scandals.