“Could I give her a present, do you suppose? Would she like some picture that we could pick up for her?”
“You'd better wait,” laughed the other, “and see what happens to me. If I'm put out, you'd better give her a baby basket.”
“I'll give her both!” Lanny had recently become aware of the fact that his father had a pile of money.
“No Caliph of Bagdad business!” countered his friend. “You pick out a book that may keep her from being lonely, and write something in it, so she can remember you when you marry an oil princess in Connecticut.”
“There isn't any oil in Connecticut, Rick.”
“Well, nutmegs then. Your father says it's called the Nutmeg State. You'll make a whole crop of new princesses out of this war. They'll be bored, and they'll be crazy about you because you speak French, and dance, and have culture — you'll rank with a marquis or a Russian grand duke in exile.”
Lanny was amused by this picture of himself in New England. He wanted to say: “They'll find out that I'm a bastard.” But his lips were sealed.
Half a day, a night, and another day; never had thirty hours moved with such speed! They went to the Comedie Française, and sat in a box; they had a meal at midnight, and Robbie ordered an extra bottle of wine. They strolled on the boulevards in the morning, luxuriating in the sunshine, watching the crowds and gazing at the fine things for sale. Lanny bought a stock of chocolates, the one thing Rick admitted the chaps in the air force would appreciate. They picked up an old-fashioned open carriage with a bony but lively horse, and were driven about the Bois and the main boulevards, looking at historic buildings and remembering what they could of events. Rick knew a little about everything; he had all his old assurance, his worldly manner which impressed his younger friend so greatly.
Robbie came back to the hotel, feeling good, because Zaharoff's factotum had given way, and the other companies were giving way, and Robbie was collecting signatures on dotted lines. Lanny had to ask him not to be too exultant until Rick was gone. “You know how it is, he's giving his life, maybe, while we're making money.”
“All right,” said the salesman, with one of his chuckles. “I'll be good; but you tell Rick that if his old man wants to sell The Reaches, you'll buy it!” No use asking Robbie to shed any tears over the English aristocracy. They had had their day, and now the American businessmen were to have theirs. Gangway!
However, Robbie was very decent when the time for parting came. He had a big package delivered to Rick's room, and told him not to open it until he got back to camp. He told Lanny it contained cigarettes; the baronet's son would be the darling of the corps wing for a time. Robbie shook hands with him, and said “Cheerio,” in the approved English fashion.
Lanny went to the train, and had tears in his eyes, he just couldn't help it. It would have been very bad form for Rick to have them; he said: “Thanks, old chap, you've been perfectly bully to me.” And then: “Take care of yourself, and don't let the subs get you.”
“Write me a post card every now and then,” pleaded Lanny. “You know how it is, if I don't hear from you, I'll worry.”
“Don't do that,” said Rick. “Whatever comes, that's what comes.” It was the nearest a modern man could approach to having a philosophy.
“Well, look out for the Fokkers — get them first!”
“Right-o!” The whistle blew, and Rick bolted, just in time for the train and for the honor of the Royal Flying Corps. Lanny stood, with tears flowing freely. “Good-by, Rick! Good-by!” His voice died into a sort of sob as the train moved on, and the face of Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson disappeared, perhaps forever. That was the dreadful thing about wartime, you couldn't part from anybody without the thought: “I'll probably not see him again!”
VIII
The youth kept talking about this depressing idea until it worried his father. “You know, kid,” he remarked, “you just can't be too soft in this world. It's painful to think of people getting killed, and I don't know the answer, except that maybe we put too much value on human life; we try to make more out of it than nature allows. This is certain, if you're too sensitive, and suffer too much, you wreck your own happiness, and maybe your health, and then what are you worth to yourself or anybody else?”
That was something to think about, and the youngster put his mind on it. What was the use of practicing the arts, of understanding and loving them, if you didn't dare let yourself feel? Manifestly, the purpose of art was to awaken feelings; but Robbie said you had to put them to sleep, or at any rate retire into a cave with them. Build yourself like a tortoise, with a hard shell around you, so that the world couldn't get hold of you to make you suffer!
Lanny voiced that, and the reply was: “Maybe it's a bad time for art right now. As I read history I see these periods come pretty frequently and last a long time, so you have to arm yourself somehow; unless, of course, you want to be a martyr, and die on a cross, or something like that. It makes good melodrama, or maybe great tragedy, but it's doggone uncomfortable while it's happening.”
They were in their room, packing to leave for England; and Robbie said: “Sit down and let me tell you something I heard today.” He lowered his voice, as if he thought that someone might be hiding in their room. Enemy ears are listening!
“Your friend is going off to fight the German Fokkers, and you're unhappy because they may get him. He's told you the Fokkers are fast and light, and that helps them, and may doom him. Do you know why they are so fast and light?”
“He says they're putting aluminum into them.”
“Exactly. And where do they get it? What's it made from?”
“It's made out of bauxite, I know.”
“And has Germany got any?”
“I don't know, Robbie.”
“Few people know things like that; they don't teach them in the schools. Germany has very little, and she wants it badly, and pays high prices for it. Do you know who has it?”
“Well, I know that France has a lot, because Eddie Patterson drove me to the place where it's being mined.” Lanny remembered this trip to a town called Brignolles, back from the coast; the reddish mineral was blasted from tunnels in a mountain, and brought down to the valley in great steel buckets rolling on a continuous wire cable. Lanny and his friend had been admitted to the place and had watched the stuff being dumped into lines of freight cars. It had been Lanny's first actual sight of big industry — unless you included the perfume factories in Grasse, where peasant women sat half buried in millions of rose leaves, amid an odor so powerful that a little of it sent you out with a headache.
Robbie went on with his story. “To make bauxite into aluminum takes electric power. Those lines of freight cars that you saw were taken to Switzerland, which has cheap power from its mountain streams. There the aluminum is made; and then it goes — can you guess?”
“To Germany?”
“It goes to whatever country bids the highest price for it; and Germany is in the market. So if your friend is brought down by a faster airplane, you'll know the reason. Also you'll know why your father keeps urging you not to tear your heart out over this war.”
“But, Robbie!” The son's voice rose with excitement. “Something ought to be done about a thing like that!”
“Who's going to do it?”
“But it's treason!”
“It's business.”
“Who are the people that are doing it?”
“A big concern, with a lot of stockholders; its shares are on the market, anybody can buy them who has the money. If you look up the board of directors, you'll find familiar names — that is, if you follow such things. You find Lord Booby, and you say: 'Zaharoff!' You see the Due de Pumpkin, and you say: 'Schneider,' or perhaps 'de Wendel.' You see Isaac Steinberg, or some such name, and you say: 'Rothschild.' They have their directors in hundreds of different companies, all tied together in a big net — steel, oil, coal, chemicals, shipping, and, above all, banks. When you see those names, you might as well butt your brains out against a stone wall as try to stop them, or even to expose them — because they own the newspapers.”