WORLD'S END

"All that I want to know is that I don't have to look forward to such things for the rest of my life. You are Beauty's brother, and if you decide to behave yourself as a decent human being, I'm ready to treat you that way. But if you choose to identify yourself with the scum of the earth, with the most dangerous criminals alive - all right, that's your privilege, but then I have to say: 'Keep away from me and mine.' "

"You are within your rights." Uncle Jesse spoke in the same cold tones as his not quite brother-in-law. "If you will arrange it with your son to keep away from me, you may be sure that I will never again invade his life, or yours."

VI

That was a fair demand and a fair assent; if only those two could have let it rest there! But they were like two stags in the forest, which might turn away and walk off in opposite directions - but they don't! Instead they stand and stare, paw the ground, and cannot get each other out of their minds.

The painter was moved to remark: "You may hang on to your dream of keeping modern thought from your son; but I assure you, Robbie, the forces against you are stronger than you realize."

To which the man of business was moved to answer, with scorn: "Leave that to my son and me, if you please! When Lanny learns that 'modern thought' means class hate, greed, and murder, he may decide to remain an old-fashioned thinker like his father."

"The fond father's dream throughout the ages!" exclaimed the other, in a tone of pity, even more exasperating than one of ridicule. "Let my son be exactly like me in all things! Let him think exactly what I think - and so he will be perfect! But the world is changing, and not all the fathers leagued together can stop it, or keep the sons from knowing about it."

"My son has his own mind," said the father. "He will judge for himself."

"You say that," answered the revolutionist, "but you don't feel nearly as secure as you pretend. Why else should you be so worried when someone presents a new idea to Lanny's mind? Don't you suppose he notices that? Don't you suppose he asks himself what it means?"

That was touching Robbie Budd on the rawest spot in his soul. The idea that anybody could claim to know Lanny better than his father knew him! The idea that the youth might be hiding things, that doubts and differences might be lurking in his mind, that the replica of Robbie's self might be turning traitor to him! In the father's subconscious mind Lanny remained a child, a budding youth, something that had to be guarded and cherished; so the feelings that stirred the father's soul were not so different from the jealous rage of the forest monarch over some sleek and slender doe.

"You are clever, Jesse," said he; "but I think Lanny understands the malice in your heart.",

"I'm sorry I can't call you clever," retorted the other. "Your world is coming to an end. The thousands of your wage slaves have some other purpose than to build a throne for you to sit on."

"Listen, Uncle Jesse," interposed Lanny. "What's the use of all this ranting? You know you can't convince Robbie - "

But the stags brushed him aside; they weren't interested in him any more, they were interested in their battle. "We'll be ready for them any time they choose to come," declared Robbie. "We make machine guns!"

"You'll shoot them yourself?"

"You bet your life!"

"No!" said the painter with a smile. "You'll hire other men, as you always do. And if they turn the guns against you, what then?"

"I'll be on the watch for them! One of them was fool enough to forewarn me!"

"History has forewarned you, Robbie Budd, but you won't learn. The French Revolution told you that the days of divine right were over; but you've built a new system exactly like the old one in its practical results - blind squandering at the top, starvation and despair at the bottom, an insanity of greed ending in mass slaughter. Now you see the Russian revolt, but you scorn to learn from it!"

"We've learned to shut the sons-of-bitches up in their rat-holes, and let them freeze and starve, or die of typhus and eat their own corpses."

"Please, Robbie!" interposed the son. "You're getting yourself all worked up - "

Said the painter: "Typhus has a way of spreading beyond national boundaries; and so have ideas."

"We can quarantine disease; and I promise you, we're going to put the right man in the White House, and step on your Red ideas and smash the guts out of them."

"Listen, Robbie, do be sensible! You're wasting an awful lot of energy."

"Stay in France, Jesse Blackless, and spit your poison all over the landscape; but don't try it in America - not in Newcastle, I warn you!"

"I'm not needed there, Robbie. You're making your own crop of revolutionists. Class arrogance carries its own seeds of destruction."

"Listen, Uncle Jesse, what do you expect to accomplish by this? You know you can't convert my father. Do you just want to hurt each other?"