Пользователь - WORLDS END Страница 8

Robbie turned upon the mother. "You see! That snake in the grass, imposing upon the credulity of a child!"

He couldn't blame Lanny, of course. He controlled his anger, and explained that these people were subtle and posed as being idealists, when in their hearts were hatred and jealousy; they poisoned the minds of the young and impressionable.

Beauty began to cry, so the father talked more quietly. "I have always left Lanny's upbringing to you, and I have no fault to find with what you've done, but this is one thing on which I have to put down my foot. The black sheep of your family - or perhaps I had better say the red sheep of your family - is certainly not going to corrupt our son."

"But, Robbie," sobbed the mother, "I hadn't the least idea that Jesse was going to call."

"All right," said Robbie. "Write him a note and tell him it's not to happen again and Lanny is to be let alone."

But that caused more weeping. "After all, he's my brother, Robbie. And he was kind to us; he was the only one who didn't raise a row."

"I've no quarrel with him, Beauty. All I want is for him to keep away from our son."

Beauty wiped her eyes and her nose; she knew that she looked ugly when she wept and she hated ugliness above all things. "Listen, Robbie, try to be reasonable. Jesse hasn't been here for half a year, and the last time he came Lanny didn't even know it. It will probably be as long before he'll be moved to come again. Can't we just tell Lanny not to have anything to do with him? I'm sure this child isn't interested in him."

"No, really, Robbie!" The boy hastened to support his mother. "If I'd had any idea that you objected, I'd have made some excuse and gone away."

So the father was persuaded to leave it that way; the lad gave his promise that never again would he let his Uncle Jesse take him anywhere, and there would be no more slumming tours with anybody. The concern of his father, who was usually so easygoing, made an indelible impression on the boy. Robbie behaved as if his son had been exposed to leprosy or bubonic plague; he probed Lanny's mental symptoms, looking for some infected spot which might be cut out before it had time to spread. Just what had Jesse Blackless said, and what had that Pugliese woman said?

Some inner voice told Lanny not to mention the remark about graft in the munitions industry; but he quoted his uncle's explanation of why there had to be poor people - because there were rich people.

"There's a sample of their poison!" exclaimed the father, and set out to provide Lanny with the proper antidote. "The reason there are poor is because most people are shiftless and lazy and don't save their money; they spend it on drink, or they gamble it away, and so of course they suffer. Envy of the good fortune of others is one of the commonest of human failings, and agitators play upon it, they make a business of preaching discontent and inciting the poor to revolt. That is a very great social danger, which many people fail to realize."

Robbie became a bit apologetic now for having lost his temper and scolded Lanny's mother in Lanny's presence. The reason was that it was his duty to protect a child's immature mind. Lanny, who adored his handsome and vigorous father, was grateful for this protection. It was a relief to him to be told what was true and thus be saved from confusion of mind. So in the end everything became all right again; storm clouds blew over, and tears were dried, and Beauty was beautiful as she was meant to be.

4

Christmas-Card Castle

I

THERE had come to the Frau Robert Budd a formal and stately letter, almost a legal document, from the comptroller-general of Castle Stubendorf in Silesia, saying in the German language that it would give him pleasure if der junge Herr banning Budd might be permitted to visit his home during the Christmas holidays. Der junge Herr danced with delight and carried the letter around in his pocket for days; the Frau Budd replied on fashionable notepaper that, she was pleased to accept the kind invitation on behalf of her son. The hour arrived, and Lanny's smoking and his warm clothes were packed into two suitcases, and Leese prepared fried chicken and bread and butter sandwiches, just in case the dining car might run out of food. In a nice new traveling suit, and with a heavy overcoat and a French copy of Sienkiewicz's With Fire and Sword, Lanny was ready for an expedition to the North Pole.

Since Robbie had gone back to Connecticut, the mother bore the responsibility for this journey. All the way into Cannes she renewed her adjurations and Lanny his promises: he would never step from the train except at the proper stations; he would never allow anyone to persuade him to go anywhere; he would keep his money fastened with a safety pin in the inside pocket of his jacket; he would send a telegram from Vienna, and another from the station of the castle; and so on and so on. Lanny considered all this excessive, because he had just celebrated his fourteenth birthday and felt himself a man cf the world!

He brushed away his tears, and saw Beauty and the chauffeur and the familiar Cannes station disappear. The sights of the Riviera sped by: Antibes, Nice, Monaco, Monte Carlo, Menton, and then suddenly it was Italy, and the customs men coming through the train, asking politely if you had anything to declare. Then the Italian shore, and the train plunging through short smoky tunnels, and out into sight of little blue bays and fisherboats with red sails. Presently came Genoa, a mass of tall buildings piled up on a steep shore. The train went inland and wound through a long valley, and ahead were the southern Alps shining white. In the morning they were in Austria, and everywhere was snow; the houses having steeply pitched roofs weighted with heavy stones and the inns having carved and gilded signs.

A wonderful invention, these international sleeping cars; among the many forces which were binding Europe together, mingling the nations, the cultures, the languages. There were no restrictions upon travel, except the price of the ticket; you paid and received a magical document which entitled you to go to whatever places you had chosen. On the way you met all sorts of people, and chatted with them freely, and told them about your affairs, and heard about theirs. To travel far enough was to acquire an education in the business, politics, manners, morals, and tongues of Europe.

II

As his first traveling companions the fates assigned to Lanny two elderly ladies whose accent told him they were Americans. From them he learned that in the land which he considered his own there was a state as well as a city of the name of Washington; this state lay far in the northwest and provided the world with quantities of lumber and canned salmon. In the city of Seattle these two ladies had taught classes of school children for a period of thirty years, and all that time had been saving for the great adventure of their lives, which was to spend a year in Europe, seeing everything they had been reading about all their lives. They were as naive about it and as eager as if they had been pupils instead of teachers; when they learned that this polite boy had lived in Europe all his life, they put him in the teacher's seat.

At Genoa the ladies departed, and their places were taken by a Jewish gentleman with handsome dark eyes and wavy dark hair, carrying two large suitcases full of household gadgets. He spoke French and English of a sort, and he too was romantic, but in an oddly different way. The ladies from the land of lumber had been brought up where everything was crude and new, so their interest was in the old things of Europe, the strange types of architecture, the picturesque costumes of peasants. But this Jewish gentleman - his name was Robin, shortened from Rabinowich - had been brought up among old things, and found them dirty and stupid. His job was to travel all over this old Europe selling modern electrical contraptions.

"Look at me," said Mr. Robin; and Lanny did so. "I was raised in a village near Lodz, in a hut with a dirt floor. I went to school in another such hut, and sat and scratched my legs and tried -to catch the fleas, and chanted long Hebrew texts of which I did not understand one word. I saw my old grandmother's head split open in a pogrom. But now I am a civilized man; I have a bath in the morning and put on clean clothes. I understand science, and do not have any more nonsense in my head, such as that I commit a sin if I eat meat and butter from the same dish. What I earn belongs to me, and I no longer fear that some official will rob me, or that hoodlums will beat me because my ancestors were what they call Christ-killers. So you see I am glad that things shall be new, and I do not have the least longing for any of the antiquities of this continent."

It was a novel point of view to Lanny; he looked out of the car window and saw Europe through the eyes of a Jewish "bagman." The nations were becoming standardized, their differences were disappearing. An office building was the same in whatever city it was erected; and so were the trams, the automobiles, the goods you bought in the shops. Said the salesman of electrical curling irons: "If you look at the people on this train, you will see that they are dressed much alike. The train itself is a standard product, and by means of it we travel from town to town selling products which are messengers of internationalism."

Lanny told where he was going, and how Kurt Meissner said that art was the greatest of international agents. Mr. Robin agreed with that. Lanny mentioned that he had a van Gogh in the dining room of his home, and it developed that Mr. Robin lived in Holland, and knew about that strange genius who had been able to sell only one painting in his whole lifetime, though now a single work brought hundreds of dollars. Said Mr. Robin: "How I wish that I knew such a genius now alive!"

This salesman of gadgets was a curious combination of shrewdness and naivete. He would have got the better of you in a business deal, and then, if you had been his guest, he would have spent twice as much money on you. He was proud of how he had risen in the world, and happy to tell a little American boy all about it. He gave him his business card and said: "Come arid see me if you ever come to Rotterdam." When he took up his heavy cases and departed,

Lanny thought well of the Jews and wondered why he didn't know more of them.

III

From Vienna the traveler enjoyed the society of a demure and sober little Frдulein a year or two younger than himself; she was returning from her music studies in Vienna, and had eyes exactly the color of bluebells and a golden pigtail at least two inches in diameter hanging down her back. Such a treasure was not entrusted to the chances of travel alone, and Frдulein Elsa had with her a governess who wore spectacles and sat so stiff and straight and stared so resolutely before her that Lanny decided to accompany Sienkie-wicz to Poland of the seventeenth century, and share the military exploits of the roistering Pan Zagloba and the long-suffering Pan Longin Podbipienta.

But it is not easy to avoid speaking to people who are shut up in a little box with you all day long. With true German frugality the pair had their lunch, and it was difficult to eat it and not offer their traveling companion so much as one or two Leibnitzkeks. Lanny said politely: "No, thank you," but the ice was broken. The governess asked where the young gentleman was traveling to, and when he said he was to spend the holidays at Schloss Stubendorf, a transformation took place in her demeanor. "Ach, so?" cried she, and was all politeness, and a comical eagerness to find out whose guest he was to be. Lanny, too proud of himself to be a snob, hastened to say that he did not know the Graf or the Grafin, but had met the youngest son of the comptroller-general and was to be the guest of his family.

That sufficed to make pliable the backbone of Frдulein Grobich. Ja, wirklich, the Herr Heinrich Karl Meissner had a post of great responsibility, and was a man of excellent family; the Frдulein knew all about him, because the husband of the Frдulein's sister had begun his career in the office of Schloss Stubendorf. She began to tell about the place, and her conversation was peppered with Durch-lauchts and Erlauchts, Hoheits and Hochwohlgeborens. It was a great property, that of the Graf, and the young gentleman was fortunate in going there zu Weihnachten, because then the castle would be open and the great family would be visible. Frдulein Grobich was thrilled to be in the presence of one who was soon to be in the presence of the assembled Adel of Stubendorf.

She wanted to know how Lanny had met the son of the Herr Comptroller-General; when he said at Hellerau, the governess exclaimed: "Ach, Elsa, der junge Herr hat den Dalcroze-Rhytkmus studiert!" This was permission to enter into conversation with the shy little girl; the bright blue eyes were turned upon him, and the soft well-modulated voice asked questions. Of course nothing pleased him more than to talk about Hellerau; he couldn't offer a demonstration in the crowded compartment, and his German was but a feeble stammering compared with the eloquence which filled his soul.

As for the soul of Frдulein Grobich, what filled it was a sound and proper German respect for rank and position, the phenomenon which was most to impress Lanny during his visit. What you heard about in Silesia was Ordnung. Everyone had his place, and knew what it was; each looked up to those above him with a correctly proportioned amount of reverence, unmingled with any trace of envy. As the guest of an important official, Lanny would share the dignity of his host. The shy little maid and her vigilant governess gave him the first taste of this agreeable treatment, and he was sorry when he had to say his Lebewohls.

IV

There was a local train waiting on a siding. It had only two cars, and Lanny had to crowd himself into a seat with a farmer who had been to town to sell some of his cattle. He had a large red face and much beer on his breath, and was extremely sociable, telling the little foreign boy about the crops of the district and its important landmarks. When he learned that the boy had come all the way from France to visit the son of Herr Comptroller-General Meissner, he was even more impressed than the governess, and tried to crowd himself up and leave more room for "die Herrschaft" as he began to call the young stranger. From then on he waited for die Herrschaft to ask questions, so as to be sure he was not presuming.

The little train was winding up a valley; it had turned dark, and presently the farmer pointed out the lights of the castle on a distant height. There was a whole town built around it, said the farmer, and everything belonged to the Graf, who was referred to as Seine Hochgeboren. There were vast forests filled with stags and buffalo and wild boar which Seine Hochgeboren and his guests hunted. Six weeks ago Seine Majestдt der Kaiser himself had visited the place, and there had been the greatest hunt that anyone in the district could remember. Now everything was covered with heavy snow and no more hunting was done; the creatures came to the feed racks, ·where hay "was put out for them so that they would not starve.