Читать книгу This Above All - Eric Knight - Страница 16

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The trouble with it was, Prentiss Saintby thought, you always felt as if America were a holiday world. It wasn’t really, he reasoned. It was only because of its foreignness. Foreign lands always seemed to be living in perpetual holidays. Probably because ordinarily it was only during holidays that one went to foreign lands.

He docketed the thought neatly, and looked from the car window. The town looked like a horrible jumble of purpose: a too-new skyscraper with modernistic coffee shop under its lee, then ramshackle, wooden-fronted shops within a stone’s-throw; motorcars that gleamed smugly like this one, then rusty rattletraps with mudguards tied up with baling wire, and driven by people who wore that unending clothing of blue overall-ish stuff.

That blue seemed like the uniform of the working class in this land. Funny, somebody had that once in a story—Wells, that was it—writing about a future world. Workers all in blue garb, nobles in something else—probably purple.

But it was quite gay in a way, that blue—deep color of new ones, then all the varying degrees of lighter blue that came from repeated launderings. The people seemed quite happy and well-fed, though.

He grasped at another thought. It was like a mixture of New York and the cowboy cinemas he’d watched when a boy. That was it. A lot of people still wore those very large cowboy hats. It made the city look a little masqueradish—but the men didn’t seem to be at all self-conscious about wearing them.

He turned his eyes ahead. There was the bullethead of the Negro chauffeur. The hair was cropped, but you could see the spots where the kinky whorls would grow if it were longer.

That was another part of America. Negroes. They seemed quite jolly chaps—interesting servants. He had heard they were somewhat of a problem. They didn’t seem like a problem to him, the ones he’d seen—the porters on the train coming west.

His eyes went beyond to the road. There was a tangle of streetcar tracks and paving bricks. Yet the car flowed over them with the same milk-smooth motion. He smiled and looked at the man beside him.

“It rides beautifully, Mr. Lachran,” he said.

The man nodded, energetically and gladly.

“You can’t get a better one,” he said. “It’s a British car, you know.”

“Oh, yes? I hadn’t noticed.”

That was another part of America—being lost in the moves of conversation. Back home, in England, you could understand the words a man said, understand what he meant behind the words, and understand what he thought behind his meaning. Here, you had to listen so carefully to the pronunciation that you only understood the words. You lost everything else concentrating on that.

And people were different. That was a thing you had to understand. For instance, when he’d said the car rode nicely—you couldn’t expect that such a remark would bring a delight so obvious to the other man. Yet it had—a childish sort of delight. Lachran was quite childish in many ways—an open sort of aged childishness.

On the other hand, that might be one of the things hard to understand about America. It might be a mask. It could well be. The man wasn’t an idiot. No man got to Lachran’s power—a real czar in his own field—by being an idiot.

Saintby sighed. He wished fervently that Lachran were a Britisher, and then he could understand him really, see the real man behind all the exteriors.

“Yes,” Lachran said, slowly. “We can turn out stuff on a line; but we can’t touch you chaps when it comes to a handmade job.”

“Perhaps that is true,” Saintby said, carefully.

“It is true,” Lachran grated. “And its your strength—and your weakness. You don’t seem to have the mind for mass-production—and you’re going to have to learn it if you want to exist—in this war, you are.”

“I suppose that is true.”

“You’re darned right it’s true. It’s all right making something good when you’ve got all the time in the world in which to make it—and all the time in the world in which to use it. But what’s the use hand-finishing a thing you’re going to send out to be blown up maybe next week? Huh?”

“Perhaps it’s our national temperament to do our best always, no matter what we’re doing,” Saintby said, a little stiffly.

“Sure you do. Sure. That’s what we like about you Britishers. But you can’t do it with everything.”

Lachran turned away, and leaned forward to tap on the glass. The car was gliding through formal shrubbery to a low, wooden building.

“Right in there! Right in there!” he shouted, irascibly.

“Mr. Lachran, it say ...”

“God dammit, I said right in there!”

The Negro grinned happily and nosed the car into a vacant space among the others. As Saintby got out he saw its bonnet almost touched the sign that said: “No Parking. Bureau of Police.”

“Oh, I say,” he said. “You’re in a forbidden space.”

Lachran turned, almost in surprise.

“That?” he said. “We don’t pay any attention to those things.”

They went up the steps into the wooden building. In the large hall the attendants came forward quickly, like acolytes. Lachran greeted them happily.

“How do you like this?” he asked.

Saintby stared about him. The place was like a hunting lodge. Heads of strange antlered animals studded the walls. There was a dark gloominess to the room.

“Very nice,” he said.

“I thought you’d like it,” Lachran said, happily. “It was built on the idea of an old Scotch hunting lodge—something of that sort. Everyone says its quite British, anyway.”

“Oh, distinctly,” Saintby said.

They went from the hall through dark doors to a veranda, and then Saintby drew his breath. Coming from the gloominess, with the mixed impressions of the city still touching his mood, he was struck by the new scene. What he saw was like another world. A gay, crowded world. There was the seclusion of the veranda, with its white napery and silver. Below were people on lawns of immaculate turf, sitting at tables under gay striped umbrellas. To the left was a blue-tiled swimming pool. To the right, tennis courts. Farther beyond, a polo field. Beyond that, granite mountains rising jagged to blue heights.

“Oh, I say,” Prentiss said. “This is a spot!”

Lachran breathed deeply and happily.

“Yes, it’s pretty good,” he said. “Does it remind you of the old country?”

Prentiss Saintby drew a deep breath. You could say the place was Monte Carlo, Hurlingham, Switzerland and an unbelievable Hollywood musical comedy all in one. But the man seemed to be waiting his answer with almost pathetic anxiety.

“Why, yes,” he said. “It’s just like home.”

Lachran went happily to his seat. As he followed, Prentiss Saintby justified the outrageousness of his lie. If the man expected him to say it, why not give him the pleasure? And it was unimportant. The business—that was the thing. If he could only get the man to hard tacks—but he seemed exasperatingly determined to put off everything as long as he could. That’s why he’d been sent to the West.

Prentiss sat at the table and looked out over the scene. It was a vibration of color—flowered walks, strange blossoming bushes, the striped umbrellas, the dresses of the women, the assorted hues of bathing suits at the pool, the white of tennis flannels, the moving red and yellow spots of the shirts on the polo field.

He saw color first—and then he saw youth; a world of youth. Everyone seemed young. It was almost unbelievable. As far as he could see there was not a person who wasn’t young. It was almost a heaven of youth—sun-tanned, well-fed, handsome youth. He—and Lachran—who looked down on it, were the only unyoung ones. It was fitting that they should be detached, isolated.

“You know,” Lachran said, conversationally, “my father started this club.”

“Oh, indeed?” Prentiss encouraged.

“Yeh. There were a lot of Johnny Bulls here then. Younger sons of lords and dukes and so on. They came out here for hunting and what not, and stayed on. Why, they used to call this town Little England.”

“Oh, indeed?”

“Yeh. That’s why there’s so many things of English character round here. You’d enjoy staying here.”

Prentiss fingered the fork before him.

“It’s tremendously pleasant,” he said. “And it would be nice to stay here. Except that—well, this is wartime for us, you know. And there’s nothing I’d like better than to stay here—except of course to get business done. Now if you could give me any idea of a basis of ...”

“Now don’t worry,” Lachran said, almost impatiently. “Don’t worry. You saw how things are. They’re working on it, and I’m turning it over in my mind, and when I get it all set—it won’t be a basis of discussion. It’ll be something that’ll just make you happy.”

“But of course, there’s an element of time ...”

“That’s all right. This isn’t a case of hand to mouth. You fellows have got plenty for this year. It’s a steady supply for one year, two years from now you want. And I can give it to you. But just don’t push me! Don’t push me!”

Saintby looked at the table. Suddenly, now, he knew the hardness of this man behind the bluff friendliness. There was stubbornness in the last words—almost a pugnacious belligerence. Lachran had spoken almost as one would to a servant. And he—he was the British Government.

Then it was as if Lachran himself had recognized the hardness of his words and tone. For he was smiling.

“Besides,” he said, laughingly, “I like you. I like to have you round. If I came over to your country, wouldn’t you want to be hospitable to me?”

“I rather suppose so.”

“Well, there you are. You’re in my country. You mustn’t begrudge me the chance to show you round. You know—when you’re here, you’re in the best goddam part of all these United States. You can travel high and low, north and south, but you’re never going to find a finer part of these United States than right here. They talk of God’s country. Well, this is God’s country.”

“Yes, indeed.”

Prentiss sank into his thoughts. Obviously it was no use trying to nudge the old man along—he wouldn’t be hurried. And you had to treat him with gloves. He was too powerful to be antagonized.

And it had been a false move trying to talk business before lunch. Almost elemental, that. Wait until a man was fed before talking business.

Prentiss looked up, and found Lachran smiling at him—his heavy-lined old face suddenly shrewd and wise.

“So you’ve decided not to try to hurry me any more,” he said.

Prentiss drew in his breath. It was as if the old man had been able to see all the tickings and workings of his mind. He opened his mouth to speak, and then saw the funniness of it. He began laughing. Lachran’s face broke into a wide beam.

“Am I so transparent?” Prentiss said.

Lachran shook his finger in a gesture of warmth.

“I’ve got you Johnny Bulls’ number every time,” he said, happily.

“Have you really?”

“Yes. And you know what? That’s why I like you. You take a Dago or a Dutchman. I wouldn’t trust ’em any further than I could throw an elephant—and I wouldn’t give ’em the smell off my shirt. But you Britishers—you make me laugh.”

“Laugh?”

Lachran waved his hand in a gesture. Looking at the old, smiling face, Prentiss suddenly felt like a schoolboy.

“Let’s have lunch—and just put your mind on that,” Lachran said. “And when we’re set to do business, I’ll let you know. How’s that?”

“All right,” Prentiss smiled.

“That’s fine. Where in the hell is that—hey! Maurice!”

“Here, sir.”

The waiter came quietly from the doorway. Prentiss freed his mind from a sort of conscience that forbade him to enjoy anything in America while Britain was at war, and settled to the contentment of a good lunch. There was a fine chowder—wonderful name, chowder. And excellent trout.

Lachran chatted on, happily. Prentiss found him easy to listen to.

“There’s all the trout you want in those mountains,” Lachran said. “If you like to fish ...”

“I wish I had time.”

“Well, if you like to.”

Lachran gazed at the mountains silently for a time. Then he nodded his head. He waved his hand.

“You know,” he said. “In my time, I’ve climbed over those goddam mountains from end to end—and sometimes my belly flat as a griddle-cake.”

“Yes?”

“Yeh! Look, you see that peak up there—the far one beyond the saddle?”

Prentiss looked into the clear air to where the finger pointed in the blue range.

“My mother cooked up in a lumber camp there.”

“Yes.”

Lachran paused, and Prentiss did not answer. The old man seemed to be far away. He went on again.

“And the only woman for two hundred and fifty miles around. She come out here as a school teacher from Kansas to marry a feller. They got married and he died o’ lungs a year later. But she didn’t sit down and she didn’t go back. By God, she up and hunted a job. They were starting lumbering up there, and she went as cook.

“ ‘Why,’ the boss said. ‘This isn’t no place for a lady like you.’ ‘I need the job,’ she said. He says: ‘I mean with all these men around. They’re a tough bunch.’ ‘You just give me a tent,’ she says, ‘and I won’t have a minute’s trouble with any man on the job.’

“And, by God, she didn’t. Not in all the two years she was up there. She used to say afterwards, though, she began to get a bit worried. Got so’s she wasn’t sure whether it was because of the inherent nobility of lumberjacks, or because she was so homely she didn’t inspire anyone to make a leer at her. Of course, that was kidding. Then she met my father up there.

“He hauled lumber down—made a fortune before he was thirty and lost it again. He lost it when they hit gold up there. He went back to lumbering—hauling to the mines. There was no steel then. All wood shoring. He made another fortune and lost it by the time he was forty. Made two fortunes and lost ’em both before he was forty. The railroad, the second time. Railroads cleaned him out. When I was seventeen, we were flat broke—we lived up in a shack right up there where the foothill boulevard is now. And by the time I was twenty—I had half his fortune back. By God, I did. I cleaned some of them out, too. By God, I made some o’ them say yessir and nosir before I was through!”

Lachran nodded as if he were dozing. Prentiss felt a moment of mental clarity—as if for a brief moment he was seeing behind the outrageous façade of this country club in the too-clear sunshine, seeing behind the man’s American veil of accent and speech and manner, to something vital and real and truly American. Although what “truly American” was he didn’t know. Only it was something that—that wasn’t pseudo-British. It was something very different from British. It was curious, he thought, that he should like and understand Americans much better when they had this “different” American quality than when they were so much like a bad imitation of Britishers.

He looked at the old man, musing. It was a hard face—almost a cruel face. Lined and discolored as if from years of hard living, hard drinking—pouched eyes, coarse stubbly steel-gray hair. Yet there was an engaging quality to the man that was almost childish in substance.

Prentiss looked up at the blue mountains, beyond the polo field with its fringe of artificial-looking trees.

“What was it like,” he said, “in the old days?”

Lachran looked up. Then he grinned, in a grim sort of way. He flung out his hand toward the mountains.

“There was the whole goddam country,” he said. “The whole—goddam—country.”

He stopped, as if that explained it all.

“Yes?” Prentiss said, with rising inflexion.

Lachran looked up at him, almost astonished.

“Well,” he said, impatiently, “that meant everything. Millions! There was millions in it—just waiting. Waiting for anyone smart enough and tough enough to come and take it. And a man took what he wanted ...”

Then he shook his head, slowly.

“... But he only held what he was able. You took what you wanted—but you only held what you was able. That’s how it was.”

“And you were able to hold it, eh?”

“I held it. And I licked some of the sons o’ bitches that had it coming to them.”

“In the gold fields?”

“In anything. There was money in anything those days—if you were tough. And I was tough. Why look—right up there. I remember coming over that ridge one day, and there was four of ’em, sitting on their horses there waiting. I knew I couldn’t run, so I had to go forward. I was only twenty-two then. But I went right up and said: ‘What the hell do you want?’ And they said: ‘Lachran. You’re putting a flume in up there, and we don’t like it. We want that water.’

“And there they sat, with their hands on their guns. So I just says: ‘Get the hell off of here before I run you off!’ They looked at me like they thought I was crazy. One of ’em says: ‘Lachran, I don’t know whether you’re crazy or just plain tough.’ So I sat there with my hands crossed on the pommel, and I says: ‘Start figuring that out for yourselves, and figure it quick.’ And they just turned round and hauled out of there.”

The old man laughed, and looked up at Prentiss.

“So they must have figured I was tough, eh?”

“I should say so,” Prentiss said. “Four of them with pistols.”

Lachran laughed.

“Ah, I was tough then. I could lick anything in this valley—and then haul him up one side of the mountains and throw him down the other. I was tough.”

He nodded to himself, and then looked up quickly at Prentiss.

“You ought to see some of that country, Mr. Saintby. It’s real scenery for you. Do you like hunting?”

“I do—but I feel at this time ...”

“Oh, don’t give that a thought.”

Lachran halted and, his face suddenly beaming, he waved his hand agitatedly to a girl below. The girl swung a tennis racket in each hand in greeting.

“That’s Mary,” Lachran said. “My brother’s granddaughter.”

He looked up at the steward.

“Sure coffee,” he said. “And Mr. Saintby—or he’ll probably take tea.”

“Well, tea ...”

“I feel sure that you’ll like our tea, sir,” the steward said. “We don’t—boil linen bags with it.”

“That’s right,” Lachran said. “Maurice is a Britisher, too. Aren’t you, Maurice?”

“Yes, sir,” the steward said. “From Chichester.”

“Oh, indeed,” Prentiss said. “Beautiful place.”

“Thank you, sir. Then I may make you some tea?”

Prentiss thought of the processions of evil tea—at hotels, on trains, that he’d had in America. Always prepared so that one tasted the inevitable linen sack in which Americans kept doles of tea.

“If I could have a good cup ...”

“Yes, sir.”

Lachran looked up, slyly.

“If you like tea—I’ve got a Chinese cook up on the ranch. If you like tea, you’re his friend for life. He’ll spend half his waking hours making tea for you.”

“Indeed?”

“Well, you might as well. You can’t do anything till I’m set. You’ve got to wait around here until I do get set. You might as well be up there as at that hotel. You know, some day I’ll do something about that. I’ve been saying we need a good hotel for the last six years. I’ll do it, too.”

Lachran stopped suddenly and grinned.

“Hello, Mary!”

“Hi!”

The girl came onto the veranda, lifting one of the rackets in salutation.

“This is Mr. Saintby, Mary. He’s a Britisher—over here on business.”

Prentiss looked up. She was a striking young woman. Like all the others below, she seemed youth and health gloriously triumphant. As if their bodies were leaping up to the sun—tall, sunburned. The white of her tennis clothes made the tan seem more deeply golden. A curious sort of white jockey cap held in her black hair.

“Hello.”

She turned away, as if ignoring him.

“Did you eat?” Lachran began.

“Long ago. I had a date with the pro, and that Cecil Hawkins is still taking a lesson. She knows it’s time, but she’s just doing it to make me mad. She’s a pill.”

Prentiss noted a juvenile quality in the young woman’s petulance.

“You’re coming up to the ranch tomorrow, aren’t you? You know, that Hawkins girl and her mother are coming.”

“Oh, gosh, what do you want to ask her mother for? She’s worse than Cecil.”

“Well, it’ll give you a chance to trim the tar out of her again.”

“That’ll be nothing new,” the girl said.

“Then I’ll see you. Mr. Saintby, here. He’s coming up for a while, too.”

The girl turned, quickly.

“Do you play tennis?”

Prentiss wondered why he didn’t deny his acquiescence to Lachran’s invitation.

“Well, I have played,” he said. He felt the need for something better. “I played in the tournament at Nice two years ago.”

The young woman’s eyes lightened.

“You did? Nice? That’s fine. There’s Johnny now—I’ll have to run. See you again, then.”

“Yes,” Prentiss said.

He was adjusting his mind quickly. There seemed something wicked, somehow, in playing tennis while all this ghastly war went on—as if a man were carousing on a grave. And yet, as Lachran said, it was merely a question of waiting, and one might just as well wait in comfort as go through days of dragging disagreeableness.

He looked up. He saw Lachran looking at him with a smile that was either one of great age and wisdom—or one of childishness.