WORLD'S END

The mask was up, and Lanny knew what his father meant when he said that Zaharoff was a coward. The magnate who was supposed to hold the fate of Europe in his hands had shrunk, and had become a tormented old man whose hands trembled and who wanted to break down and beg people not to go to war - or perhaps beg God to forgive him if they did.

But when Lanny made this remark to his father afterward, the father laughed. He said: "Don't fool yourself, kid! The old hellion will fight us twice as hard for the next contract."

BOOK TWO

_{A Little Cloud}

7

The Isles of Greece

I

ROBBIE went to Bucharest, and then back to Connecticut, and the vacant place in Lanny's life was taken by Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Hackabury and their yacht Bluebird.

They arrived several days late, because they had a bad passage across the Atlantic. But their friends didn't have to worry, for they had sent frequent messages. The message from Madeira said: "Ezra sick." The message from Gibraltar said: "Ezra sicker." The one from Marseille said: "Ezra no better." When finally the Bluebird showed up in the Golfe Juan and the soap manufacturer and his wife were brought ashore, he had to be helped out of the launch by two of his sailors in white ducks. He was a large, florid-faced man, and when the color went out of his skin it made you think of that celebrated painting - futurist, cubist, or whatever it was - "The Woman Who Swallowed the Mustard-Pot."

They got him into the car, and then to Bienvenu. He asked them to put him in a lawn swing, so as to "taper him off"; he insisted that the columns of the veranda were trying to hit him. He was one of those fellows who make jokes even when they have to moan and groan them. He was afraid to take even a drink of water, because the drops turned to rubber and bounced out of his stomach. All he wanted was to lie down and repeat, over and over: "Jesus, how I hate the sea!"

Nobody could have afforded a better contrast to Mr. Hackabury than the lady he had chosen for his partner. The sea and the wind hadn't disturbed so much as one glossy black hair of her head. Her skin was white and soft, her coloring was of pastel shades which she never changed; in fact, she didn't have to do a thing for herself, so the other women enviously declared. She didn't have to be witty, hardly even to speak; she just had to be still, cool, and statuesque, and now and then smile a faint mysterious smile. At once the men all started to compare her to Mona Lisa and throw themselves at her feet. She was somewhat under thirty, at the height of her charms; she knew it, and was kind in a pitying way to this large, crude Middle Westerner who had had his sixty-third birthday and who made soap for several million kitchens in order to provide her with the background and setting she required.

Edna Hackabury, nйe Slazens, was the daughter of a clerk in the office of an American newspaper in Paris. Being poor and the possessor of a striking figure, she had served as a model for several painters, one of them Jesse Blackless, Beauty's brother. She had married a painter, and when he became a drunkard, had divorced him. It was Beauty Budd who had helped to make a match for her with a retired widower, traveling in Europe with a man secretary and looking for diversion after a lifetime of immersion in soap.

Edna's beauty had swept the manufacturer off his feet; he had married her as quickly as the French laws permitted, and had taken her on a honeymoon to Egypt, and then back to the town called Reubens, Indiana. Reubens had been awe-stricken by this elegant creature from Paris, but Edna had not reciprocated its sentiments; she hadn't the remotest intention of living there. She stayed just long enough to be polite, and to make sure that her three stepsons, all married men with families, understood the soap business and would work hard to provide her with the money she required. Then she began pointing out to her husband the folly of wasting their lives in this "hole" when there were so many wonderful things to be enjoyed in other parts of the world.

So they set forth, and when they got to New York, Edna tactfully broached the idea that, instead of traveling in vulgar promiscuity on steamships and trains, they should get a yacht, and be able to invite their chosen friends to whatever place might take their fancy. Ezra was staggered; he was a bad sailor, and hadn't the least notion why it was "vulgar" to meet a lot of other people. But his wife assured him that he would soon get his sea legs, and that when he met the right people, he would lose interest in the wrong ones. The money was his, wasn't it? Why not get some fun out of it, instead of leaving it to children and grandchildren who wouldn't have the least idea what to do with it?