A World to Win

by Sinclair, Upton;

  Lanny never ceased to wonder just how the presence of the cousin had been allowed to come about. Had Reverdy been trapped into it by a sudden telephone call? Had Laurel planned it that way, to get his consent before he had time to realize what he was doing? Or had he, manlike, failed to consider the possibility that Laurel might develop into a rival for Lanny’s attention? Could it be that this solitary and easily bored man had thought of Laurel as a source of entertainment for himself? Somebody to talk to, and tell him stories, and play bridge with him? He, the conservative and old-fashioned Southerner, would surely not have read Man and Superman, and it might never have occurred to him that a lady of his family would be capable of trying to run off with her hostess’s intended. And especially no woman who had reached the age of thirty-four or thereabouts, which in the Old South meant that she was hopelessly committed to spinsterhood, and that any sign of marital aspirations would be the occasion for gales of ridicule from all the other members of her family.

  VI

  So here was this invalid passenger, caught in the oddest of domestic triangles; he called it “the three L’s”—Lanny, Lizbeth, and Laurel. The French had a name for it, la vie à trois; Lanny had been in it once before, in the Château de Bruyne, and then it had been less innocent but far more entertaining. In the present case he found that he had become a prisoner of love. Lizbeth was so sweet and so seemingly guileless that he would be unwilling to hurt her feelings, and would behave as she took it for granted that he must and would.

  It wasn’t so bad at the beginning. He had to get his strength back, and she was so happy to help. Food was important, and at mealtimes they wheeled him into the dining-saloon for company’s sake; a tray was put in his lap, and everybody took an interest in making sure that he got everything he wanted. Later, after he had made certain that he could stand up with his braces and that they would support his weight, a man-servant helped him to a seat and he could dine like the others. He had to do a lot of sleeping, so Lizbeth made no objection when he retired to his cabin, and if he stole part of his time there to read a book, she didn’t know it.

  What she expected was his social time. She wanted to be nurse and mother, little sister and companion. She wanted to watch him learning to get about with his crutches, and after a few days, to guide his experiments at standing and walking alone. She wanted to feel that she was useful to him, and that his success was her reward. When at last he was able to pace the deck, she wanted to hold his arm and pretend that she was aiding him. They stopped to lean on the railing and look over the dark blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. Flying fish rose from the ship’s path and scudded away close to the surface; she wanted to be the one to hear him explain that this was their war of escaping from pursuers. What a strange thing to think of, the infinitude of life in that sea, each fantastic kind preying upon the others to the best of its powers; a whole universe of cruelty without a single moral sentiment that any mind could detect!

  So Lanny philosophized, and apparently Lizbeth had never heard anything of that nature. They stood at the yacht’s bow, watching the porpoises diving and swinging this way and that in the water. He told her that this was play, and that the play spirit was all through nature; it was practice for living, an overflow of energy. He told her that these creatures were not fish, but mammals, which suckled their young; that seemed to her slightly shocking, but it was natural history, and doubtless that made it modest. He told her about this sea water, that it was full of all kinds of minerals, and on the coast of Texas a huge plant was being built for the extracting of magnesium from the Gulf of Mexico. She decided all over again that he was the most widely informed man she had ever known, and altogether wonderful.

  It was the same when he turned the dials of the radio, which perforce took the place of newspapers on this cruise. She would have preferred the latest jazz tunes, and, as he grew stronger, to dance with him; but he wanted to listen to news about battles in the snows of Russia, and she sat by and tried to be attentive. Lanny appeared to take an aloof attitude to the struggle; it didn’t make much difference who won, so she wondered why he cared to hear so many bloody details. The Germans were in the very suburbs of Moscow, and everybody seemed to think they were going to get all the way in; but suddenly they began to retreat, and then it was dreadful, because there was deep snow and bitter cold, and how anybody could live there was a mystery. How glad Lizbeth was that they were in this safe and warm place!

  Secretly she consulted the globe which stood in the yacht’s library, and found European Russia, and there was Moscow near the middle of it. She really wanted to understand these matters and be able to open her lips without making some “boner.” She was familiar with her father’s opinion, that the Communists were the greatest menace that had ever appeared in the world, and that anybody who was trying to put them down should have American sympathy. But apparently Lanny looked at it as an art expert; he remarked casually that Europe had always had wars, and one more didn’t matter much.

  Others would listen to these, broadcasts, and generally Laurel was among them. She would sit with her lips tight, never discussing any political subject; and on that very account Lizbeth suspected her of unorthodox thoughts. Laurel had left the family nest and gone off to New York; Laurel wrote things which she apparently didn’t care to show her relatives; she made remarks which were supposed to be witty, and then Lanny would laugh and Lizbeth would feel uneasy. More and more in her secret heart she was coming to distrust this cousin, and to wonder why her father had let her come. But of course she had to be polite.

  VII

  The southward course of the yacht took them past the Bahamas and between Cuba and Haiti; but they did not stop to see any of the sights of these places. Reverdy explained: “Althea is overdue at her post, so we plan to take her to China, and then loaf on the way home.” He added to Lanny: “If that is agreeable.” Of course Lanny said it was entirely agreeable.

  Althea was the medical missionary, and Lanny asked what port was her destination. The answer was: “Hongkong.” The name, like the sound of a bell, rang with that effect in Lanny’s mind. For something over three years the name had had a special meaning to him. In Munich at the time of the settlement between Chamberlain and Hitler, Lanny had happened to make the acquaintance of a young Rumanian who called himself an astrologer and had been honored by the Nazis in their peculiar way—which was to arrest him, shut him up in an elegant suite in the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel, feed him on the fat of the land, and order him to prepare horoscopes of the Führer and his entourage.

  Lanny didn’t have the slightest belief in astrology, so he hadn’t been worried when this mystical personage had taken his hand, gazed into his eyes, and declared: “You will die in Hongkong within three or four years.” Lanny had argued that he hadn’t any interest in Hongkong, or reason for going there; to which Herr Reminescu had responded firmly: “You will go.” Naturally it gave Lanny something of a jolt to be told now that he was going. He was especially attentive to the subject of precognition because of what had happened in the North Atlantic. He had disregarded one warning and wished he hadn’t; and could it be now that he was going from one doom to another? Could it be that he had provoked the fates by escaping, and that they were on his trail? Or was it all one doom? Certainly it was true that if he hadn’t met with the accident in the North Atlantic he would never have been on the way to South China.

  He didn’t say anything about the matter to Reverdy, because this was a pleasure trip, and talk about dooms and deaths was hardly in order. The only person on board to whom he had told the story was Laurel, and he didn’t know if she would remember it; some time he might ask her—if ever he had a chance for conversation alone with her. That didn’t seem likely, as matters were shaping up, for everybody on the Oriole, even the servants and the crew, appeared to take it for granted that the one person with whom Lanny was ever to be alone was the owner’s daughter. They were so pointed about it, they withdrew so obviously, that it became embarras
sing; the only way to keep a group together was to play cards or turn on the radio. The polite and well-bred cousin apparently fell in with this custom; she never favored Lanny with so much as a wink or a private smile. In his mind he kept asking her: “If that’s the way you are going to act, why on earth did you come?”

  VIII

  They approached Panama, and a plane, high overhead must have radioed the news, for an armed speedboat met them before they were in sight of land. Their papers were inspected and instructions given, for this was one of the most carefully guarded pieces of property on earth. If an enemy could knock it out, the American fleet would be cut into two halves, and neither half would be big enough for any military purpose. The Army now took charge of all vessels entering the Canal, and passengers and crew had to be below decks while the vessel was being towed through the locks. The passengers might come out and have a look at Gatun Lake, but that was just one more tropical lake with jungle-covered hills around it. The day happened to be hot, and the cabins were air cooled, so stay in them and read a book—or have your hair dressed if you were a lady.

  In the town of Panama they stopped for a load of Diesel oil, and the passengers, excepting Lanny, went ashore and were driven about to look at four-hundred-year-old ruins. Reverdy said it was one of the few ports at which it would be safe to stay ashore after sundown, because the Army had got rid of the mosquitoes. Reverdy’s mind was full of odds and ends of facts, and he pointed out the strange one that the Atlantic end of this canal was farther west than its Pacific end. Also, he said that the level of the western ocean was nine inches higher than the eastern, an effect of the earth’s eastward revolution. Items of information like that were one’s reward for traveling around the earth once a year.

  The travelers bought picture postcards and wrote messages to their friends at home. They sat in a night club—there were scores of them—and listened to a “spigotty” band playing the same hit tunes they had been getting over the radio, all the way from Baltimore south. The dancing was the same as you would see in the night spots of American cities, for nowadays the merchants of entertainment were combing Mexico and Cuba and points south for forms of sensuality to stir the jaded tastes of their patrons. The guests of the Oriole came back early and assured their invalid that he hadn’t missed much.

  There was a ten-thousand-mile journey before them, and they would take it pretty nearly straight, except for refueling and the restocking of their larder. The yacht had a cruising speed of nearly twenty miles an hour, which was unusual—but then Reverdy was an unusual man, who wanted what he wanted, and had had it made exactly to his order. Their round trip would be about equal to circumnavigating the globe at its equator. In earlier years, Reverdy had gone all the Way around, and that was how he had come to show up at Cannes. But now he had to make what he called “a dog’s journey,” there and back, and he hated the war for causing this inconvenience. Reverdy would have liked to see a part of the earth set apart as a dueling ground, where nations that wanted to fight could go and have it out, and leave the high seas to American millionaires in search of health and recreation.

  IX

  The guests settled down to an agreeable routine. Every morning Lizbeth studied with her tutor, that same middle-aged teacher of art whom she had employed in Baltimore. Since the pupil was a sociable soul they studied on the quarterdeck, under an ample awning, and with a steward bringing them iced fruit juices now and then. They studied different subjects at different hours, just as in school, and if at any time Lanny cared to join them it would be lovely; Miss Hayman would fall silent and let Mr. Budd do the talking, since obviously he knew so much more about everything.

  Thus a prospective fiancé had opportunity to investigate the mind of his almost-intended, and he observed that it was a literal mind; education consisted of storing up a set of facts, to be used later in cultured conversation. A young lady acquired “accomplishments,” and after she had got herself a husband she never used them and quickly forgot all but a few phrases. Lizbeth was supposed to have acquired a full quota before her debut, but she had picked an especially fastidious man and now was laboring to come up to his requirements. It seemed to the man pathetic in the extreme, and he would have liked to say: “My dear, that isn’t the way to do it!” She would have countered: “What is the way?”—and what could he have told her?

  Laurel had her coffee and toast brought to her cabin, and seldom appeared before lunchtime. She had a typewriter, and if you passed her door you would hear it clicking busily. Lanny would wonder: Was this another story about the Pension Baumgartner in Berlin? Or was it the beginning of the novel? Or might it by any chance be a sketch of life on board a pleasure yacht? This last ought to go well with any magazine editor. Lanny thought of titles: South Sea Idyll; Lotos Landing; Caribbean Courtship. All by “Mary Morrow,” of course!

  At mealtime, and when she was in company with the others, Laurel’s manner was one of careful courtesy. She made no effort to shine in conversation, and displayed none of that sharp wit by which Lanny had come to know her in the beginning. She appeared to have no special interest in “Mr. Budd,” and rarely looked in his direction. She deferred in all things to her uncle, and if her opinion was asked on any subject having to do with politics or international affairs, she would say: “Uncle Reverdy knows so much more about these matters than I do.” On that basis, anybody could get along on a private yacht!

  Dr. Althea Carroll was somewhere in her late twenties, Lanny guessed—that was as near as any gentleman would conic. She had a round, rather paleface and wore spectacles; her disposition was serious. It was explained that her mother had been a schoolmate of Mrs. Holdenhurst and they had kept up the friendship. Her father was a physician in the interior of China, and Althea had studied, first at Johns Hopkins University and then at the Medical School to fit herself as her father’s assistant. She was a devout Episcopalian, and reported that her church was far too worldly and too little interested in missionary work; she loved the Chinese people, and meant to do what she could to help both their bodies and their souls. She had a supply of medical books and magazines which she read whenever it was permissible.

  She was extremely careful never to be alone with the genial Mr. Budd, and Lanny had no conversation with her except when Lizbeth was present. There was a special reason for this, which he found out before long: the money for the support of the mission came in part from Lizbeth’s mother, and Althea owed her education to this charitable lady; therefore Lizbeth’s lightest desire was the woman doctor’s law, and she was careful to give no offense to anyone. The care of Lanny’s health had been assigned her as a duty, but she did not offer to make any examination, and the advice she gave was in Lizbeth’s presence, and with Lizbeth as intermediary. “You must see that he doesn’t walk too far and that he rests in between walks.”

  X

  Lanny observed with especial interest the habits of the owner of this floating winter resort. The wireless operator brought him market reports every day, and Reverdy studied these; he had elaborate charts which showed the movement of stock values over long periods, and apparently he never got tired of keeping these up-to-date. If he ever sent any orders, Lanny didn’t know it; perhaps he made imaginary investments, a purely intellectual exercise like a game of chess. He took his duties as skipper conscientiously, and every morning made a tour of the yacht, accompanied by the master; he pried into every corner, including the refrigerators and storerooms, the kitchen, the engineroom, the chartroom; he gave orders for the menus of both guests and crew, the course for the day, and many other details.

  Those duties done, he sat in a steamer chair on deck and read a mystery story, a “Whodunit.” There was a murder, and you were kept guessing until the last moment, and then were surprised to discover that some innocent-appearing person was a dangerous criminal. Lanny had sampled a few, and had made note that the murdered man or woman was always a person of wealth and social importance; the purpose of the criminal was to get hold of
some property—a jewel, a chest of gold, a will, or whatever it might be. There was a detective who spent his life solving such mysteries, and the reader put himself in this brilliant person’s place and thrilled with every step of his progress toward a solution.

  The world of the “Whodunits” was a world absorbed in property, the getting of it and protecting of it. The writing and publishing of such stories was a department of business; it, too, was a way of getting and keeping property, with the help of the copyright laws. Lanny thought he had seldom met a man so absorbed in property as Reverdy Holdenhurst, and it was easy to see why he was fascinated by the idea of crime. Did he put himself in the place of the murdered man, and imagine somebody murdering him, and wonder who it might be? The innocent-appearing Lanny surely didn’t want to be the one, so he was careful not to ask questions about how the cruise of the Oriole was financed; whether there was gold in the safe in the owner’s cabin, or whether it was done by express checks, or by credit established in places where the yacht had been putting in for many years.

  In the afternoon there was a siesta period, advisable in tropic climes; then came iced drinks, and they played cards on deck unless the breeze was too strong. This activity likewise had to do with property, and was a source of wonder as well as of boredom to Lanny. That people who owned millions of dollars should be trying to win one another’s pennies had always seemed to him slightly fantastic; but they did it, everywhere in the leisure-class world. They were so completely dominated by the motive of money-making that when they had exhausted themselves in the battles of reality they invented play forms of the same thing. Reverdy kept the score, and there was always a settlement at the end; he found satisfaction in winning a dollar or two from a guest while spending one or two hundred dollars a day entertaining him. A mad world my masters!