Man Triumphant Ii

: Greener Than You Think

36. Everything I had visualized in the broker's office turned out too

pessimistically accurate. Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates

was nothing but a mailing address in one of the most forlorn of

Manhattan buildings, long before jettisoned by the tide of commerce. The

factory, no bigger than a very small house, was a brokenwindowed affair

whose solid brick construction alone saved it from total demolition at

he playful hands of the local children. The roof had long since fallen

in and symbolical grass and weeds had pushed their way through cracks in

the floor to flourish in a sickly and surreptitious way.



The whole concern, until my stock purchase, had been the chattel and

creature of one Button Gwynnet Fles. In appearance he was such a genuine

Yankee, lean and sharp, with a slight stoop and prying eyes, that one

quite expected a straw to protrude from between his thin lips or have

him draw from his pocket a wooden nutmeg and offer it for sale. After

getting to know him I learned this apparent shrewdness was a pure

defense mechanism, that he was really an artless and ingenuous soul who

had been taught by other hands the swindle he practiced for many years

and had merely continued it because he knew no way of making an honest

living. He was, like myself, unattached, and disarmed whatever lingering

suspicions of him I might have by offering to share his quarters with me

until I should have found suitable accommodations.



The poor fellow was completely at my mercy and I not only forbore,

generously, to press my advantage, but made him vicepresident of the

newly reorganized concern, permitting him to buy back a portion of the

stock he had sold. The boom in the market having sent our shares up to

an abnormal 1/2, we flooded our brokers with selling offers, at the same

time spreading rumors--by no means exaggerated--of the firm's

instability, buying back control when Consolidated Pemmican reached its

norm of 1/16. We made no fortunes on this transaction, but I was enabled

to look ahead to a year on a more comfortable economic level than ever

before.



But it was by no means in my plans merely to continue to milk the

corporation. I am, I hope, not without vision, and I saw Consolidated

Pemmican under my direction turned into an active and flourishing

industry. Its very decrepitude, I reasoned, was my opportunity; starting

from scratch and working with nothing, I would build a substantial

structure.



One of the new businesses which had sprung up was that of personally

conducted tours of the grass. After the experience of Gootes and myself,

parachute landings had been ruled out as too hazardous, but someone

happily thought of the use of snowshoes and it was on these clumsy means

that tourists, at a high cost and at less than snail's pace, tramped

wonderingly over the tamed menace.



My thought then, as I explained to Fles, was to reactivate the factory

and sell my product to the sightseers. Food, high in calories and small

in bulk, was a necessity on their excursions and nourishing pemmican

high in protein quickly replaced the cloying and messy candybar. We made

no profit, but we suffered no loss and the factory was in actual

operation so that no snoopers could ever accuse us of selling stock in

an enterprise with a purely imaginary existence.



I liked New York; it accorded well with my temperament and I wondered

how I had ever endured those weary years far from the center of the

country's financial life, its theaters and its great human drama. Give

me the old Times Square and the East Fifties any day and you can keep

Death Valley and functional architecture. I was at home at last and I

foresaw a future of slow but sure progress toward a position of

eminence and respectability. The undignified days of Miss Francis and Le

ffacase faded from my mind and I was aware of the grass only as a cause

for selling our excellent pemmican.



I won't say I didnt read the occasional accounts of the weed appearing

in Time or the newspapers, or watch films of it in the movies with

more than common interest, but it was no longer an engrossing factor in

my life. I was now taken up with larger concerns, working furiously to

expand my success and for a year after leaving the Intelligencer I

doubt if I gave it more than a minute's thought a day.





37. The band of salt remained an impregnable bulwark. Where the winter

rains leached it, new tons of the mineral replaced those washed away.

Constant observation showed no advance; if anything the edge of the

grass impinging directly on the salt was sullenly retreating. The

central bulk remained, a vast, obstinate mass, but most people thought

it would somehow end by consuming itself, if indeed this doom were not

anticipated by fresh scatterings of salt striking at its vitals as soon

as the rains ceased.



No more than any other reader, then, was I disquieted by the following

small item in my morning paper:



FREAK WEED STIRS SPECULATION



San Diego, Mar 7. (AP) An unusual patch of Bermuda grass discovered

growing in one of the city parks' flower beds here today caused an

excited flurry among observers. Reaching to a height of nearly four

feet and defying all efforts of the park gardeners to uproot it, the

vivid green interloper reminded fearful spectators of the plague

which over ran Los Angeles two years ago. Scientists were

reassuring, however, as they pointed out that the giantism of the

Los Angeles devil grass was not transmissible by seed and that no

stolons or rhizomes of the abnormal plant had any means of traveling

to San Diego, protected as it is by the band of salt confining the

Los Angeles growth.



I was even more confident, for I had seen with my own eyes the shoots

grown by Miss Francis from seeds of the inoculated plant. A genuine

freak, this time, I thought, and promptly forgot the item.



Would have forgotten it, I should say, had I not an hour later received

a telegram, RETURN INSTANTLY CAN USE YOUR IMPRESSIONS OF NEW GRASS

LEFFACASE. I knew from the fact he had only used nine of the ten words

paid for he considered the situation serious.



The answer prompted by impulse would, I knew, not be transmitted by the

telegraph company and on second thought I saw no reason why I should not

take advantage of the editor's need. Business was slack and I was

overworked; a succession of petty annoyances had driven me almost to a

nervous breakdown and a vacation at the expense of the New Los Angeles

Daily Intelligencer sounded pleasantly restful after the serious work

of grappling with industrial affairs. Of course I did not need their

paltry few dollars, but at the moment some of my assets were frozen and

a weekly paycheck would be temporarily convenient, saving me the bother

of liquidating a portion of my smaller investments.



Besides, if, as was barely possible, this new growth was in some

unbelievable way an extension of the old, it would of course ruin our

sales of pemmican to the tourists and it behooved me to be on the spot.

I therefore answered: CONSIDER DOUBLE FORMER SALARY WIRE TRANSPORTATION.

Next day the great transcontinental plane pouterpigeoned along the

runway of the magnificent New Los Angeles airport.



I was in no great hurry to see the editor, but took a taxi instead to

the headquarters of the American Alpinists Incorporated where there was

frank worry over the news and acknowledgment that no further

consignments of pemmican would be accepted until the situation became

more settled. I left their offices in a thoughtful mood. Pausing only to

wire Fles to unload as much stock as he could--for even if this were

only a temporary scare it would undoubtedly affect the market--I finally

drove to the Intelligencer.



Knowing Le ffacase I hardly expected to be received with either

cordiality or politeness, but I was not quite prepared for the actual

salute. A replica of his original office had been devised, even to the

shabby letters on the door, and he was seated in his chair beneath the

gallery of cartoons. He began calmly enough when I entered, speaking in

a low, almost gentle tone, helping himself to snuff between sentences,

but gradually working up into a quite artistic crescendo.



"Ah, Weener, as you yourself would undoubtedly put it in your inimitable

way, a bad penny always turns up. I could not say canis revertit suam

vomitem, for it would invert a relationship--the puke has returned to

the dog.



"It is a sad thought that the listless exercise which eventuated in your

begetting was indulged in by two whose genes and chromosomes united to

produce a male rather than a female child. For think, Weener, if you had

been born a woman, with what gusto would you have peddled your flaccid

flesh upon the city streets and offered your miserable dogsbody to the

reluctant use of undiscriminating customers. You are the paradigmatic

whore, Weener, and I weep for the physiological accident which condemns

you to sell your servility rather than your vulva. Ah, Weener, it

restores my faith in human depravity to have you around to attempt your

petty confidence tricks on me once more; I rejoice to find I had not

overestimated mankind as long as I can see one aspect of it embodied in

your 'homely face and bad complexion,' as the great Gilbert so mildly

put it. I shall give orders to triplelock the pettycash, to count the

stampmoney diligently, to watch all checks for inept forgery. Welcome

back to the Intelligencer and be grateful for nature's mistakes, since

they afford you employment as well as existence.



"But enough of the friendly garrulousness of an old man whose powers are

failing. Remove your unwholesomelooking person from my sight and convey

the decrepit vehicle of your spirit to San Diego. It is but a gesture; I

expect no coherent words from your clogged and sputtery pen; but while I

am sufficiently like yourself to deceive the public into thinking you

have written what they read, I am not yet great enough scoundrel to do

so without your visiting the scene of your presumed labors. Go--and do

not stop on the way to draw expensemoney from the cashier for she has

strict orders not to pay it."



Jealousy, nothing but jealousy, I thought, first of my literary ability

and now of my independence of his crazy whims. I turned my back

deliberately and walked slowly out, to show my contempt for his

rantings.



In my heart, now, there was little doubt the new grass was an extension

of the old and it didnt take more than a single look at the overrun park

to confirm this. The same creeping runners growing perceptibly from

instant to instant, the same brilliant color, the same towering central

mass gorged with food. I could have described it line by line and blade

by blade in my sleep. I wasted no more time gazing at it, but hurried

away after hardly more than a minute's inspection.



I could take no credit for my perceptivity since everyone in San Diego

knew as well as I that this was no duplicate freak, but the same, the

identical, the fearsome grass. But a quite understandable conspiracy had

been tacitly entered into; the knowledge was successfully hushed until

property could be disposed of before it became quite worthless. The

conspiracy defeated itself, however, with so many frantic sellers

competing against each other and the news was out by the time the first

of my new columns appeared in the Intelligencer.



The first question which occurred to those of us calm enough to escape

panic was, how had the weed jumped the saltband? It was answered

simultaneously by many learned professors whose desire to break into

print and share the front page with the terrible grass overcame their

natural academic reticence. There was no doubt that originally the

peculiar voracity of the inoculated plant had not been inherited; but

it was equally uncontroverted that somehow, during the period it had

been halted by the salt, a mutation had happened and now every wind

blowing over the weed carried seeds no longer innocent but bearing

embryos of the destroyer.



Terror ran before the grass like a herald. The shock felt when Los

Angeles went down was multiplied tenfold. Now there was no predictable

course men could shape their actions to avoid. No longer was it possible

to watch and chart the daily advance of a single body so a partially

accurate picture could be formed of what might be expected tomorrow.

Instead of one mass there were countless ones; at the whim of a chance

wind or bird, seeds might alight in an area apparently safe and

overwhelm a community miles away from the living glacier. No place was

out of range of the attack; no square foot of land kept any value.



The stockmarket crashed, and I congratulated myself on having sent Fles

orders to sell. A day or two later the exchanges were closed and,

shortly after, the banks. Business came to a practical standstill. The

great industries shut down and all normal transactions of daily life

were conducted by means of barter. For the first time in threequarters

of a century the farmer was topdog; his eggs and milk, his wheat and

corn and potatoes he could exchange for whatever he fancied and on his

own terms. Fortunately for starving citydwellers his appetite for

manufactured articles and for luxuries was insatiable; their

automobiles, furcoats, costumejewelry, washingmachines, files of the

National Geographic, and their periodfurniture left the city flat for

the farm, to come back in the more acceptable form of steaks, butter,

fowl, and turnips. The whole elaborate structure of money and credit

seemed to disappear overnight like some tenuous dream.



The frenzied actions of the humanbeings had no effect on the grass. The

saltband still stood inviolate, as did smaller counterparts hastily laid

around the earlier of the seedborne growths, but everywhere else the

grass swept ahead like a tidalwave, its speed seemingly increased by the

months of repression behind. It swallowed San Diego in a gulp and

leaped beyond the United States to take in Baja California in one swift

downward lick. It sprang upon the deserts, whose lack of water was no

deterrent, now always sending little groups ahead like paratroopers or

fifthcolumnists; they established positions till the main body came up

and consolidated them. It curled up the high mountains, leaving only the

snow on their peaks unmolested and it jumped over struggling rivers with

the dexterity of a girl playing hopscotch.



It lunged eastward into Arizona and Nevada, it swarmed north up the San

Joaquin Valley through Fresno and spilled over the lip of the High

Sierras toward Lake Tahoe. New Los Angeles, its back protected by the

Salton Sea, was, like the original one, subjected to a pincer movement

which strangled the promising life from it before it was two years old.



Forced to move again, Le ffacase characteristically demanded the burden

fall upon the employees of the paper, paying them off in scrip on the

poor excuse that no money was available. I saw no future in staying with

this sinking ship and eager to be back at the center of things--Fles

wrote me that the large stock of pemmican which had been accumulating

without buyers could now be very profitably disposed of--I severed my

connection for the second time with the Intelligencer and returned to

my proper sphere.



This of course did not mean that I failed to follow each step of the

grass; such a course would have been quite impossible since its every

move affected the life and fortune of every citizen. By some strange

freak it spared the entire coast north of Santa Barbara. Whether it had

some disinclination to approach saltwater--it had been notably slow in

its original advance westward--or whether it was sheer accident, San

Luis Obispo, Monterey and San Francisco remained untouched as the cities

to the south and east were buried under grassy avalanches. This odd

mercy raised queer hopes in some: perhaps their town or their state

would be saved.



The prostration of the country which had begun with the first wave of

panic could not be allowed to continue. The government moved in and

seized, first the banks and then the railroads. Abandoned realestate was

declared forfeit and opened to homesteading. Prices were pegged and

farmers forced to pay taxes in produce.



Although these measures restored a similitude of life to the nation, it

remained but a feeble imitation of its previous self. Many of the idle

factories failed to reopen, others moved with painful caution. Goods,

already scarce, disappeared almost completely and at the same time a

reckless disregard of formerly sacred symbols seized upon the people.

The grass was coming, so what good was the lot on which they were paying

installments? The grass was coming, so why gather together the dollars

to meet the interest on the mortgage? The grass was coming--what was the

use of depositing money in the bank which would probably go bust

tomorrow?



The inflation would have been worse had it not been for the pegged

prices and other stern measures. The glut on the labor market was

tremendous and wages reached the vanishing point in a currency which

would buy little. Suddenly, the United States, which had so long boasted

of being the richest country in the world, found itself desperately

poor.



Government work projects did little to relieve the suffering of the

proletariat. Deaths from malnutrition mounted and the feeble strikes in

the few operating industries were easily and quickly crushed by starving

strikebreakers ashamed of their deed yet desperately eager to feed their

hungry families. Riots broke out in New York and Detroit, but the police

were fortunately wellfed and the arms wielding the blackjacks which

crushed the skulls of the undernourished rioters were stout.



There was a sweeping revival of organized religion and men too broke to

afford the neighborhood movie flocked to the churches. Brother Paul, now

on a national hookup, repeated his exhortations to all Christians,

urging them to join their Savior in the midst of the grass. There was

great agitation for restraining him; more reserved pastors pointed out

that he was responsible for increasing the national suicide rate, but

the Federal Communications Commission took no action against him,

possibly because, as some said, it was cheaper to let a percentage of

the surplus population find an ecstatic death than to feed it.



On political maps the United States had lost not one foot of territory.

Population statistics showed it harbored as many men, women, and

children as before. Not one tenth of the national wealth had been

destroyed by the grass or a sixth of the country given up to it, yet it

had done what seven wars and many vicissitudes had failed to do: it

brought the country to the nadir of its existence, to a hopeless

despondency unknown at Valley Forge.



At this desperate point the federal government decided it could no

longer temporize with the clamor for using atomic power against the

grass. All the arguments so weighty at first became insignificant

against the insolent facts. It was announced in a Washington

pressconference that as soon as arrangements could be made the most

fearful of all weapons would be employed.





38. No one doubted the atomicbomb would do the trick, finally and

conclusively. The searing, volcanic heat, irresistible penetration,

efficient destructiveness and the aftermath of apocalyptic radiation

promised the end of the grass.



When I say no one, of course I mean no clearthinking person of vision

with his feet on the ground who didnt go deliberately out of his way to

look for the dark side of things. Naturally there were crackpots, as

there always are, who opposed the use of the bomb for various untenable

reasons, and among them I was not surprised to find Miss Francis.



Though her pessimistic and unpopular opinions had been discredited time

and again, the newspapers, possibly to enliven their now perpetually

gloomy columns with a little humor, gave some space to interviews which,

with variations predicated on editorial policy, ran something like

this:



Will you tell our readers what you think of using the atom bomb

against the grass?



I think it at the very best a waste of time; at the worst, extremely

dangerous.



In what way, Miss Francis?



In every way. Did you ever hear of a chain-reaction, young man? Or

radioactivity? Can you conceive, among other possibilities--and

mind, this is merely a possibility, a quite unscientific guess

merely advanced in the vain hope of avoiding one more folly--of the

whole mass becoming radioactive, squaring or cubing its speed of

growth, or perhaps throwing before it a lethal band miles wide? Mind

you, I'm not anticipating any of this, not even saying it is a

probability; but these or similar hazards may well attend this

illconsidered venture.



You speak strongly, Miss Francis. None of the rather fantastic

things you predict followed Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Bikini.



In the first place, I tried, with apparent unsuccess, to make it

clear I'm not predicting. I am merely mentioning possibilities. In

the second place, we don't know exactly what were the aftereffects

of the previous bombs because of a general inability to correlate

cause and effect. I only know that in every case the use of the

atomic bomb has been followed at greater or lesser intervals by

tidal waves, earthquakes and other 'natural' phenomena. Now do not

quote me as saying the Hilo tidal wave was the result of the

Nagasaki bomb or the Chicagku earthquake, the Bikini; for I didnt. I

only point out that they followed at roughly equal intervals.



Then you are opposed to the bomb?



Common sense is. Not that that will be a deterrent.



What would you substitute for it?



If I had a counteragent to the grass ready I would not be wasting

time talking to reporters. I am working on one. When it is found, by

me or another, it will be a true counteragent, changing the very

structure and habit of Cynodon dactylon as the Metamorphizer

changed it originally. External weapons, by definition, can at

best, at the very best, merely stop the grass--not render it

innocuous. Equals fighting equals produce only deadlocks.



And so on. The few reputable scientists who condescended to answer her

at all and didnt treat her views with dignified silence quickly

demonstrated the absurdity of her objections. Chainreactions and

radioactive advanceguard! Sundaysupplement stuff, without the slightest

basis of reasoning; not a mathematical symbol or laboratory experiment

to back up these fictional nightmares. And not use external weapons,

indeed! Was the grass to be hypnotized then? Or made to change its

behaviorpatterns through judicious sessions with psychoanalysts

stationed along its periphery?



Whether because of Miss Francis' prophesies or not, it would be futile

to deny that a certain amount of trepidation accompanied the decision to

use the bomb. Residents of Arizona wanted it dropped in California; San

Franciscans urged the poetic justice and great utility of applying it to

the very spot where the growth originated; all were in favor of the

devastation at the farthest possible distance from themselves.



Partly in response to this pressure and partly in consideration of other

factors, including the possibility of international repercussions, the

Commission to Combat Dangerous Vegetation decided on one of the least

awesome bombs in the catalogue. Just a little bomb--hardly more than a

toy, a plaything, the very smallest practicable--ought to allay all

fears and set everyone's mind at rest. If it were effective, a bigger

one could be employed, or numbers of smaller ones.



This much being settled, there was still the question of where to

initiate the attack. Edge or heart? Once more there was controversy, but

it lacked the enthusiasm remembered by veterans of the salt argument; a

certain lassitude in debate was evident as though too much excitement

had been dissipated on earlier hopes, leaving none for this one. There

was little grumbling or soreness when the decision was finally confirmed

to let fall the bomb on what had been Long Beach.



When I read of the elaborate preparations being made to cover the great

event, of the special writers, experts, broadcasters, cameramen, I was

thankful indeed I was no longer a newspaperman, arbitrarily to be

ordered aloft or sent aboard some erratic craft offshore on the bare

chance I might catch a comprehensive or distinctive enough glance of the

action to repay an editor for my discomfort. Instead, I sat contentedly

in my apartment and listened to the radio.



Whether our expectations had been too high or whether all the

eyewitnesses became simultaneously inept, I must say the spot broadcast

and later newspaper and magazine accounts were uniformly disappointing.

It was like the hundredth repetition of an oftentold story. The flash,

the chaos, the mushroomcloud, the reverberation were all in precise

order; nothing new, nothing startling, and I imagine the rest of the

country, as I did, turned away from the radio with a distinct feeling of

having been let down.



First observation through telescope and by airplanes keeping a

necessarily cautious distance, showed the bomb had destroyed a patch of

vegetation about as large as had been expected. Though not spectacular,

the bombing had apparently been effective on a comparatively small

segment and it was anticipated that as soon as it was safe to come close

and confirm this, the action would be repeated on a larger scale. While

hundreds more of the baby bombs, as they were now affectionately called,

were ordered and preparations made systematically to blast the grass out

of existence, the aerial observers kept swooping in closer and closer

with cameras trained to catch every aspect of the damage.



There was no doubt an area of approximately four square miles had been

utterly cleaned of the weed and a further zone nine times that size had

been smashed and riven, the grass there torn and mangled--in all

probability deprived of life. Successive reconnoitering showed no

changes in the annihilated center, but on the tenth day after the

explosion a most startling observation of the peripheral region was

made. It had turned a brilliant orange.



Not a brown or yellow, or any of the various shades of decay which

Bermuda in its original form took on at times, but a glowing and

unearthly, jewellike blaze.



The strange color was strictly confined to the devastated edge of the

bombcrater; airmen flying low could see its distinction from the rest of

the mass clear and sharp. In the center, nothing; around it, the weird

orange; and beyond, the usual and accustomed green.



But on second look, not quite usual, not quite accustomed. The

inoculated grass had always been a shade or two more intense than

ordinary Cynodon dactylon; this, just beyond the orange, was still

more brilliant. Not only that, but it behaved unaccountably. It writhed

and spumed upward in great clumps, culminating in enormous, overhanging

caps inevitably suggesting the mushroomcloud of the bomb.



The grass had always been cautious of the sea; now the dazzling growth

plunged into the saltwater with frenzy, leaping and building upon

itself. Great masses of vegetation, piers, causeways, isthmuses of grass

offered the illusion of growing out of the ocean bottom, linking

themselves to the land, extending too late the lost coast far out into

the Pacific.



But this was far from the last aftereffect. Though attention had

naturally been diverted from the orange band to the eccentric behavior

of the contiguous grass, it did not go unobserved and about a week after

its first change of color it seemed to be losing its unnatural hue and

turning green again.



Not the green of the great mass, nor of the queer periphery, nor of

uninspired devilgrass. It was a green unknown in living plant before; a

glassy, translucent green, the green of a cathedral window in the

moonlight. By contrast, the widening circle about it seemed subdued and

orderly. The fantastic shapes, the tortured writhings, the unnatural

extensions into the ocean were no longer manifest, instead, for miles

around the ravaged spot where the bomb had been dropped, the grass burst

into bloom. Purple flowers appeared--not the usual muddy brown, faintly

mauve--but a redviolet, brilliant and clear. The period of generation

was abnormally shortened; seed was borne almost instantly--but the seed

was a sport.



It did not droop and detach itself and sink into the ground. Instead,

tufted and fluffy, like dandelion seed or thistledown, it floated upward

in incredible quantities, so that for hundreds of miles the sky was

obscured by this cloud bearing the germ of the inoculated grass.



It drifted easily and the winds blew it beyond the confines of the

creeping parent. It lit on spots far from the threatening advance and

sprouted overnight into great clumps of devilgrass. All the anxiety and

panic which had gone before was trivial in the face of this new threat.

Now the advance was no longer calculable or predictable; at any moment a

spot apparently beyond danger might be threatened and attacked.



Immediately men remembered the exotic growth of flowers which came up to

hide some of London's scars after the blitz and the lush plantlife

observed in Hiroshima. Why hadnt the allwise scientists remembered and

taken them into account before the bomb was dropped? Why had they been

blind to this obvious danger? Fortunately the anger and terror were

assuaged. Observers soon discovered the mutants were sterile, incapable

of reproduction. More than that: though the new clumps spread and

flourished and grew rapidly, they lacked the tenacity and stamina of the

parent. Eventually they withered and dwindled and were in the end no

different from the uninoculated grass.



Now a third change was seen in the color band. The green turned

distinctly blue and the sharp line between it and the rest of the weed

vanished as the blueness shaded out imperceptibly over miles into the

green. The barren spot made by the bomb was covered; the whole mass of

vegetation, thousands of square miles of it, was animated by a surging

new vigor, so that eastward and southward the rampant tentacles jumped

to capture and occupy great new swaths of territory.



Triumphantly Brother Paul castigated the bombardiers and urged

repentance for the blasphemy to avert further welldeserved punishment.

Grudgingly, one or two papers recalled Miss Francis' warning. Churches

opened their doors on special days of humiliation and fasting. But for

most of the people there was a general feeling of relief; the ultimate

in weapons had been used; the grass would wear itself out in good time;

meanwhile, they were thankful the effect of the atomicbomb had been no

worse. If anything the spirit of the country, despite the great setback,

was better after the dropping of the bomb than before.



I was so fascinated by the entire episode that I stayed by my radio

practically all my waking hours, much to the distress of Button Fles.

Every report, every scrap of news interested me. So it was that I caught

an item in a newscast, probably unheard by most, or smiled aside, if

heard. Red Egg, organ of the Russian Poultry Farmers, editorialized,

"a certain imperialist nation, unscrupulously pilfering the technical

advance of Soviet Science, is using atomic power, contrary to

international law. This is intolerable to a peace-loving people

embracing 1/6 of the earth's surface and the poultrymen of the

Collective, Little Red Father, have unanimously protested against such

capitalist aggression which can only be directed against the Soviet

Union."



The following day, Red Star agreed; on the next, Pravda reviewed the

"threatening situation." Two days later Izvestia devoted a column to

"Blackmail, Peter the Great, Suvarov and Imperialist Slyness."

Twentyfour hours after, the Ministerial Council of the Union of Soviet

Republics declared a state of war existed--through no action of its

own--between the United States and the Soviet Union.





39. At first the people were incredulous. They could not believe the

radio reports were anything but a ghastly mistake, an accidental

garbling produced by atmospheric conditions. Historians had told them

from their schooldays of traditional Russian-American friendship. The

Russian Fleet came to the Atlantic coast in 1862 to escape revolutionary

infection, but the Americans innocently took it as a gesture of

solidarity in the Civil War. The Communist party had repeated with the

monotony of a popular hymntune at a revival that the Soviet Union asked

only to be let alone, that it had no belligerent designs, that it was,

as Lincoln said of the modest farmer, desirous only of the land that

"jines mine." At no point were the two nations' territories contiguous.



Agitators were promptly jailed for saying the Soviet Union wasnt--if it

ever had been--a socialist country; its imperialism stemming directly

from its rejection of the socialist idea. As a great imperialist power

bursting with natural resources it must inevitably conflict with the

other great imperialist power. In our might we had done what we could to

thwart Russian ambition; now they seized the opportunity to disable a

rival.



Congressmen and senators shredded the air of their respective chambers

with screams of outrage. In every speech, "Stab in the back" found an

honorable if monotonous place. Zhadanov, boss of the Soviet Union since

the death of the sainted Stalin, answered gruffly, "War is no minuet. We

do not wait for the capitalist pigs to bow politely before we rise to

defend the heritage of Czar Ivan and our own dear, glorious, inspiring,

venerated Stalin. Stab in the back! We will stab the fascist lackeys of

Morgan, Rockefeller and Jack and Heinze in whatever portion of the

anatomy they present to us."



As usual, the recurring prophets who hold their seances between

hostilities and invariably predict a quick, decisive war--in 1861 they

gave it six weeks; in 1914 they gave it six weeks; in 1941 they gave it

six weeks--were proved wrong. They had been overweeningly sure this

time: rockets, guided missiles or great fleets of planes would sweep

across the skies and devastate the belligerents within three hours of

the declaration of war--which of course would be dispensed with. Not a

building would remain intact in the great cities nor hardly a civilian

alive.



But three hours after Elmer Davis--heading an immediately revived Office

of War Information--announced the news in his famous monotone, New York

and Chicago and Seattle were still standing and so, three days later,

were Moscow and Leningrad and Vladivostok.



Astonishment and unbelief were nationwide. The Empire State, the

Palmolive Building, the Mark Hopkins--all still intact? Only when

commentators, rummaging nervously among old manuscripts, recalled the

solemn gentlemen's agreement never to use heavierthanaircraft of any

description should the unthinkable war come, did the public give a

heartfelt sigh of relief. Of course! Both the Soviet Union and the

United States were nations of unstained honor and, rather than recall

their pledged word, would have suffered the loss of a dozen wars.

Everyone breathed easier, necks relaxed from the strain of scanning the

skies; there would be neither bombs, rockets, nor guided missiles in

this war.



As soon as the conviction was established that the country was safe from

the memory of Hiroshima, panic gave place to relief and for the first

time some of the old spirit was manifest. There was no rush to

recruitingstations, but selectiveservice, operating smoothly except in

the extreme West, took care of mobilization and the war was accepted, if

not with enthusiasm, at least as an inescapable fate.



The coming of the grass had not depleted nor unbalanced the country's

resources beyond readjustment, but it had upset the sensitive workings

of the national economy. This was tolerable by a sick land--and the

grass had made the nation sick--in peacetime; but "war is the health of

the state" and the President moved quickly.



All large industries were immediately seized, as were the mines and

means of transportation. A basic fiftyfivehour workweek was imposed. A

new chief of staff and of naval operations was appointed and the young

men went off to camp to train either for implementing or repelling

invasion. Then came a period of quiet during which both countries

attacked each other ferociously over the radio.





40. In the socialistic orgy of nationalizing business, I was

fortunate; Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates was left in the

hands of private initiative. Better than that, it had not been tied

down and made helpless by the multiplicity of regulations hampering the

few types of endeavor remaining nominally free of regimenting

bureaucracy. Opportunity, long prepared for and not, I trust,

undeserved, was before me.



In the pass to which our country had come it seemed to me I could be of

most service supplying our armed forces with fieldrations. Such an

unselfish and patriotic desire one would think easy of realization--as I

so innocently did--and I immediately began interviewing numberless

officers of the Quartermaster's Department to further this worthy aim.



I certainly believe every corporation must have its rules, otherwise

executives would be besieged all day by timewasters. The United States

government is surely a corporation, as I always used to say in

advocating election of a business administration, and standard

procedures and regulations are essential. Still, there ought to be a

limit to the number and length of questionnaires to fill out and the

number of underlings to interview before a serious businessman can get

to see a responsible official.



After making three fruitless trips to Washington and getting

exhaustively familiar with countless tantalizing waitingrooms, I became

impatient. The man I needed to see was a Brigadier General Thario, but

after wasting valuable days and hours I was no nearer reaching him than

in the beginning. I had filled out the necessary forms and stated the

nature of my business so often I began to be alarmed lest my hand refuse

to write anything else and I be condemned for the rest of my life to

repeat the idiotic phrases called for in the blank spaces.



I am afraid I must have raised my voice in expressing my exasperation to

the young lady who acted as receptionist and barrier. At any rate she

looked startled, and I think pressed a button on her desk. A pinkfaced,

whitemustached gentleman came hastily through the door behind her. The

jacket of his uniform fitted snugly at the waist and his bald head was

sunburnt and shiny.



"What's this? What's this? ... going on here?"



I saw the single star on his shoulderstraps and ventured, "General

Thario?"



He hid his white mustache with a forefinger pink as his cheeks. "Yes.

Yes. But you must have an appointment to speak to me. That's the rule,

you know. Must have an appointment." He appeared extremely nervous and

harassed, his eyes darting back to the refuge of his office, but he was

evidently held to the spot by whatever distress animated his

receptionist.



"General Thario," I persisted firmly, "I quite appreciate your

viewpoint, but I have been trying for days to get such an appointment

with you on a matter of vital concern and I have been put off every time

by what I can only describe as redtape. I am sorry to say so, General

Thario, but I must repeat, redtape."



He looked more worried than before and his eyes ranged over the room for

some escape. "Know just how you feel," he muttered, "Know just how you

feel. Horrible stuff. Swaddled in it here. Simply swaddled in it.

Strangled." He cleared his throat as though to disembarrass it of a

garrote. "But, uh, hang it, Mr--"



"Weener. Albert Weener. President of Consolidated Pemmican and Allied

Concentrates Incorporated."



"--Well, you know, Mr. Weener ... man your position ... appreciate

absolute necessity certain amount of routine ... keep the cranks out,

otherwise swarming with them, simply swarming ... wartime precautions

... must excuse me now ... terribly rushed ... glad to have met--"



Swallowing the rest of the sentence and putting his hand over his mouth

lest he should inadvertently regurgitate it, he started for his office.

"General Thario," I pleaded, "a moment. Consider our positions reversed.

I have long since established my identity, my responsibility. I want

nothing for myself; I am here doing a patriotic duty. Surely enough of

the routine you mention has been complied with to permit me to speak to

you for five or ten minutes. Do for one moment as I say, General, and

put yourself in my place. Think of the discouragement you as a citizen

would feel to be hampered, perhaps more than is necessary."



He took his hand down from his mouth and looked at me out of blue eyes

so pale as to be almost colorless. "But hang it, you know, Mr Weener ...

highly irregular. Sympathize completely, but consider ... don't like

being put in such a position ... why don't you come back in the

morning?"



"General," I urged, flushed with victory, "give me ten minutes now."



He collapsed. "Know just how you feel ... wanted to be out in the field

myself ... no desk soldier ... lot of nonsense if you ask me. Come in,

come in."



In his office I explained the sort of contract I was anxious to secure

and assured him of my ability to fulfill its terms. But I could see his

mind was not intent upon the specifications for fieldrations. Looking up

occasionally from a dejected study of his knees, he kept inquiring, in

elliptical, practically verbless questions, how many men my plant

employed, whether I had a satisfactory manager and if a knowledge of

chemistry was essential to the manufacture of concentrates; evading or

discussing in the vaguest terms the actual business in hand.



However, he seemed very friendly and affable toward me personally once

the chill air of the waitingroom had been left behind and as Button Fles

had advised me insistently to entertain without regard to expense any

officials with whom I came in contact, I thought it politic to invite

him to dinner. He demurred at first, but at length accepted, instructing

his secretary to phone his wife not to expect him home early. I

suggested Mrs Thario join us, but he shook his head, muttering, "No

place for women, Mr Weener, no place for women." Whether this referred

to Washington or the restaurant where we were going or to his life

largely was not clear.



Wartime Washington was in its usual chaotic turmoil and it was

impossible to get a taxi, so we had to walk. But the general did not

seem at all averse to the exercise. It seemed to me he rather enjoyed

returning the salutes with the greatest punctilio and flourish. On our

way we came to one of the capital's most famous taverns and I thought I

detected a hesitancy in his stride.



Now I am not a drinking man myself. I limit my imbibing to an occasional

glass of beer on account of the yeast it contains, which I consider

beneficial. I hope, however, I am no prig or puritan and so I asked

casually if he would care to stop in for an appetizer.



"Well, now you mention it, Mr Weener ... hum ... fact is ... don't mind

if I do."



While I confined myself to my medicinal beverage the general conducted a

most remarkable raid on the bar. As I have hinted, he was in demeanor a

mild appearing, if not indeed a timid man. In the course of an hour's

conversation no word of profanity, such as is affected by many military

men, had crossed his lips. The framed photograph of his wife and

daughters on his desk and his respectful references to women indicated

he was not the type of soldier who lusts for rapine. But seated before

that dull mahogany bar, whatever inhibitions, whatever conventional

shackles, whatever selfdenials and repressions had been inculcated fell

from him swiftly and completely. He barked his orders at the bartender,

who seemed to know him very well, as though he were addressing a parade

formation of badly disciplined troops.



Not only did General Thario drink enormously, but he broke all the rules

I had ever heard laid down about drinking. He began with a small, squat

glass, which I believe is called an Oldfashioned glass, containing half

cognac and half ryewhisky. He followed this with a tall tumbler--"twelve

full ounces ... none of your eightounce thimbles ... not trifled

with"--of champagne into which the bartender, upon his instructions and

under his critical eye, poured two jiggers of tropical rum. Then he

wiped his lips with a handkerchief pulled from his sleeve and began with

a serious air on a combination of benedictine and tequila. The more he

imbibed, the longer, more complete and more coherent his sentences

became. He dropped his harassed air; his abdomen receded, his chest

expanded, bringing to my notice for the first time the rows of ribbons

which confirmed his earlier assertion that he was not a desk soldier.



He was sipping curacao liberally laced with applejack when he suggested

we have our dinner sent in rather than leave this comfortable spot. "The

fact of the matter is, Mr Weener--I'm going to call you Albert if you

don't mind--"



I said I didnt mind with all the heartiness at my command.



"The fact of the matter is, Albert, I have devoted my unfortunate life

to two arts: the military and the potatory. As you may have noticed,

most of the miserable creatures on the wrong side of a bar adopt one of

two reprehensible courses: either they treat drinking as though the aim

of blending liquids were to imitate some French chef's fiddlefaddle--a

dash of bitters, a squirt of orange, an olive, cherry, or onion wrenched

from its proper place in the saladbowl, a twist of lemonpeel, sprig of

mint or lump of sugar and an eyedropperful of whisky; or else they

embrace the opposite extreme of vulgarity and gulp whatever rotgut is

thrust at them to addle their undiscerning brains and atrophy their

undiscriminating palates. Either practice is foreign to my nature and

philosophy. I believe the happiest combinations of liquors are simple

ones, containing no more than two ingredients, each of which should be

noble--that is to say, drinkable in its own right."



He raised his fresh glass, containing brandy and arrack. "No doubt you

have observed a catholicity in my taste; I range through the whole gamut

from usquebaugh to sake, though during the present conflict for obvious

patriotic reasons, I cross vodka from my list, while as a man born south

of the Mason-Dixon Line, sir, I leave gin to Nigras."



I must say, though somewhat startled by his manner of imbibing, I was

inclined to like General Thario, but I was impatient to discuss the

matter of a contract for Consolidated Pemmican. Every time I attempted

to bring the subject round to it he waved me grandly aside. "Dinner," he

confirmed, when the waiters brought in their trays. "Yes; no drink is

complete without a little bit of the right food to garnish it. Eating in

moderation I approve of; but mark my words, Albert, the man who takes a

meal on an empty stomach is digging his grave with his teeth."



If he would not talk business I could only hope his amiability would

carry over till I saw him again in his office tomorrow. I settled down

as far as I could, simply to enjoy his company. "You may have been

surprised at my referring to my life as unfortunate, Albert, but it is a

judicious adjective. Vilely unfortunate. I come of a military family,

you know; you will find footnotes mentioning the Tharios in the history

of every war this country has had."



He finished what was in his glass. "My misfortunes, like Tristram

Shandy's, began before my birth--and in the same way, exactly the same

way. My father was a scholar and a gentleman who dreamed his life away

over the campaigns of the great captains instead of attempting to become

a great captain himself. I do not condemn him for this: the organization

of the army is such as to encourage impracticality and inadvertence, but

the consequences were unfortunate for me. He named me after his favorite

heroes, Stuart Hannibal Ireton Thario, and so aloof was he from the

vulgarities of everyday life that it was not until my monogram was

ordered painted upon my first piece of luggage that the unfortunate

combination of my initials was noted. Hannibal and Ireton promptly

suppressed in the interests of decency, nevertheless at West Point my

surname was twisted by fellow classmates into Lothario, giving it a

connotation quite foreign to my nature. I lived down both vexations only

to encounter a third. Though Ireton remained successfully concealed, the

Hannibal leaked out and when, during the World War, I had the misfortune

to lead a company which was decimated"--his hand strayed to the ribbons

on his chest--"behind my back the enlistedmen called me Cannibal

Thario."



He began discussing another drink. "Of one thing I'm resolved: my son

shall not suffer as I have suffered. I did not send him to West Point so

he might win decorations on the field of valor and then be shunted off

to sit behind an unsoldierly desk. I broke with tradition when I kept

him from a military career, quite on purpose, just as I was thinking of

his welfare and not some silly foible of my own when I called him by the

simplest name I could find."



"What is your son's name?" I was constrained to ask.



"George," he answered proudly, "George Thario. There is no nickname for

George as far as I know."



"And he's not in the army now?" I queried, more in politeness than

interest.



"No, and I don't intend he shall be." The general's pink face grew

pinker with his vehemence. "Albert, there are plenty of dunderheads and

duffers like me in the country who are good for nothing better than

cannonfodder. Let them go and be killed. I'm willing enough--only an

idiotic General Staff has booted me into the Quartermaster Corps for

which I am no more fitted than to run an academy for lady marines--but

I'm not willing for a fine sensitive boy, a talented musician like

George to suffer the harsh brutalities of a trainingcamp and

battlefield."



"The draft ..." I began tentatively.



"If George had a civilian position in an essential industry--say one

holding a contract with the army for badly needed fieldrations...."



"I should like to meet your son," I said. "I have been looking around

for some time for a reliable manager...."



"George might consider it." General Thario squinted his glass against

the light. "I'll have him stop by your hotel tomorrow."



The little radio behind the bar, which had been mumbling to itself for

hours, spoke loudly. "We interrupt this program to bring you a

newsflash: Eire has declared war on the Soviet Union. I repeat, war has

been declared on the Union of Soviet Republics by Eire. Keep tuned to

this station for further details. We return you now to our regular

program."



There was an absent pattering of applause and General Thario stood up

gravely, glass in hand. "Gallant little Eire--or, if I may be permitted

once the indulgence of using the good old name we know and love so

well--brave old Ireland. When the world was at war, despite every

provocation, she stayed peaceful. Now that the world is disgracefully

pacific--and you have all heard foreign ministers unanimously declaring

their countries neutral--so fast did they rush to the microphones that

they were still panting when they went on the air--when the whole world

was cautious, Ireland, true to her traditions, joined the just cause.

Gentlemen, I give you our fighting ally, Eire."



Departing from his usual custom, he drank the toast in one gulp, but no

one else in the room paid any attention. I considered this lack of

enthusiasm for a courageous gesture quite unworthy and meditated for a

moment on the insensitivity into which our people seemed to have sunk.



As the evening went on, the general grew more and more affable and, if

possible, less and less reticent. He had, he assured me, been the

constant victim, either of men or of circumstances. At the military

academy he had trained for the cavalry only to find himself assigned to

the tank corps. He had reconciled himself, pursued his duties with zeal,

and was shunted off to the infantry, where, swallowing chagrin, he had

led his men bravely into a crossfire from machineguns. For this he got

innumerable decorations and a transfer to the Quartermaster's

Department. His marriage to the daughter of an influential politician

should have assured peacetime promotion, but the nuptials coincided with

an election depriving the family's party of power.



Now another war had come and he was a mere brigadier pigeonholed in an

unimportant office with juniors broadly hinting at his retirement while

classmates were leading divisions and even army corps to glorious

victory on the field of battle. At least, they would have been leading

them to glorious victory if there had been any action at all.



"Invade," insisted General Thario, becoming sufficiently stirred by his

fervor to lapse into sober incoherence. "Invade them before they invade

us. Aircraft out ... gentlemen's agreement ... quite understand ... well

... landingbarges ... Bering Sea ... strike south ... shuttle

transports ... drive left wing TransSiberian ... holding operation by

right and center ... abc ..."



No doubt it was a pity he was deprived of the opportunity to try these

tactics. I was one of the few who had not become a military theoretician

upon the outbreak of the war, but to my lay mind his plan sounded

feasible. Nevertheless, I was more interested in the possible contract

for food concentrates than in any strategy, no matter how brilliant. I'm

afraid I showed my boredom, for the general abruptly declared it was

time to go home.





41. I was a little dubious that after all the drinking and confidences

he would remember to send his son around, and to tell the truth, in the

calm morning, I felt I would not be too sorry if he didnt, for he had

not given me a very high opinion of that young man. What on earth

Consolidated Pemmican could do with a musician and a draftevader as

generalmanager--even if the title, as it must be, were purely

honorary--I couldnt imagine.



I had been long up, shaved and breakfasted and had attended to my

correspondence, before the telephone rang and George Thario announced

himself at my disposal.



He was what people call a handsome young man. That is, he was big and

burly and slow and his eyelashes were perceptible. His hair was short

and he wore no hat, but lounged about the room with his hands, thumbs

out, in his jacketpockets, looking at me vaguely through the curling

smoke from a bent pipe. I had never seen anyone look less like a

musician and I began to wonder if his father had been serious in so

describing him.



"I don't like it," he announced abruptly.



"Don't like what, Mr Thario?" I inquired.



"Joe to you," he corrected. "Mister from you to me belies our

prospective relationship. Just call me Joe."



"I thought your name was George."



"Baptismal--whim of the Old Man's. But it's a stuffy label--no

shortening it, you know, so the fellows all call me Joe. Chummier. Don't

like the idea of evading the draft. Shows a lack of moral courage. By

rights I ought to be a conchie, but that would just about kill the Old

Lady. She's in a firstclass uproar as it is--like to see me in the

frontlines right now, bursting with dulce et decorum. I don't believe it

would bother the Old Man any if I sat out the duration in a C O camp,

but it'd hurt his job like hell and the poor old boy is straining his

guts to get into the trenches and twirl a theoretical saber. So I guess

I'm slated to be your humble and obedient, Mr Weener."



"I'll be delighted to have you join our firm," I said wryly, for I felt

he would be a completely useless appendage. In this I am glad to say I

did him an injustice, for though he never denied his essential lack of

interest in concentrates and the whole process of moneymaking, he proved

nevertheless--at such times as he chose to attend to his duties--a

faithful and conscientious employee, his only faults being lack of

initiative and a tendency to pamper the workers in the plant.



But I have anticipated; at the moment I looked upon him only as a

liability to be balanced in good time by the asset of his father's

position. It was therefore with irritation I listened to his insistence

on my coming to the Thario home that afternoon to meet his mother and

sisters. I had no desire for purely social intercourse, last evening's

outing being in the nature of a business investment and it seemed

superfluous to be forced to extend courtesies to an entire family

because of involvement with one member.



However great my reluctance I felt I couldnt afford to risk giving

offense and so at fouroclock promptly I was in Georgetown, using the

knocker of a door looking like all the other doors on both sides of the

street.



"I'm Winifred Thario and youre the chewinggum man--no, wait a minute,

I'll get it--the food concentrate man who's going to make Joe essential

to the war effort. Do come in, and excuse my rudeness. I'm the youngest,

you know, except for Joe, so everybody excuses me." Her straight, blond

hair looked dead. The vivacity which lit her windburned face seemed a

false vivacity and when she showed her large white teeth I thought it

was with a calculated effort.



She led me into a livingroom peopled like an Earlyvictorian

conversationpiece. Behind a low table, in a rockingchair, sat a large,

fullbosomed woman with the same dead hair and weatherbeaten cheeks, the

only difference being that the blondness of her hair was mitigated by

gray and in her face were the tiny broken red lines which no doubt in

time would come to Winifred.



"This is Mama," said Winifred, accenting the second syllable strongly

and contriving at once to be vivacious and reverent.



Mama inclined her head toward me without the faintest smile, welcoming

or otherwise, placing her hand as she did so regally upon the teacozy,

as upon a royal orb.



"Mrs Thario," I said, "I am delighted to meet you."



Mama found this beneath her condescension.



"And this is Constance, the general's firstborn," introduced Winifred,

still retaining her liveliness despite Mama's low temperature. Constance

was the perfect connectinglink between Winifred and her mother, not yet

gray but soon to be so, without Winifred's animation, but with the same

voluntary smile showing the same white teeth. She rose and shook my hand

as she might have shaken a naughty puppy, with a vigorous sidewise jerk,

disengaging the clasp quickly.



"And this," announced Winifred brightly, "is Pauline."



To say that Pauline Thario was beautiful would be like saying Mount

Everest is high. In her, the blond hair sparkled like newly threshed

straw, the teeth were just as white and even, but they did not seem too

large for her mouth, and her complexion was faultless as a cosmetic ad.

She was an unbelievably exquisite painting placed in an appropriate

frame.



And yet ... and yet the painting had a quality of unreality about it, as

though it were the delineation of a madonna without child, or of a nun.

There was no vigor to her beauty, no touch of the earthiness or of

blemish necessary to make the loveliness real and bring it home. She did

not offer me her hand, but bowed in a manner only slightly less distant

than her mother's.



I sat down on the edge of a petitpoint chair, thoroughly illatease. "You

must tell us about your pills, Mr Weener," urged Winifred.



"Pills?" I asked, at a loss.



"Yes, the thingamyjigs youre going to have Joe make for you," explained

Constance.



Mama made a loud trumpeting noise which so startled me I half rose from

my seat. "Damned slacker!" she exclaimed, looking fiercely right over my

head.



"Now, Mama--bloodpressure," enjoined Pauline in a colorless voice.



Mama relapsed into immobility and Winifred went on, quite as if there

had been no explosion. "Are you married, Mr Weener?"



I said I was not.



"Then here's our chance for Pauline," decided Winifred. "Mr Weener, how

would you like to marry Pauline?"



I could do nothing but smile uncomfortably. Was this the sort of

conversation habitually carried on in their circle or were they quite

mad? Constance mentioned with apparent irrelevance, "Winifred is so

giddy," and Pauline smiled at me understandingly.



But Winifred went on, "Weve been trying to marry Pauline off for years,

you know. She's wonderful to look at, but she hasnt any sexappeal."



Mama snorted, "Damned vulgar thing to have."



"Would you like some tea, Mr Weener?" asked Constance.



"Tea! He looks like a secret cocacola guzzler to me! Are you an American

Mr Uh?" Mama demanded fiercely, deigning for the first time to address

me.



"I was born in California, Mrs Thario," I assured her.



"Pity. Pity. Damned shame," she muttered.



I was partially relieved from my uneasiness by the appearance of George

Thario, who bounded in, waved lightly at his sisters and kissed his

mother just below her hairline. "My respectful duty, Mama," he greeted.



"Damned hypocrisy. You did your duty youd be in the army."



"Bloodpressure," warned Constance.



"Have they made you thoroughly miserable, Mr Weener? Don't mind

them--there's something wrong with all the Tharios except the Old Man.

Blood gone thin from too much intermarriage."



"Just like incest," exclaimed Winifred. "Don't you think incest's

fascinating, Mr Weener? Eugene O'Neill and all that sort of thing?"



"Morbid," objected Constance.



"Damned nonsense," grunted Mama.



"Cream or lemon, Mr Weener?" inquired Constance. Mama, moved by a

hospitable reflex, filled a grudging cup.



"Cream, please," I requested.



"Turn it sour," muttered Mama, but she poured the cream and handed the

cup to Constance who passed it to Pauline who gave it to me with a

gracious smile.



"You just mustnt forget to keep Pauline in mind, Mr Weener; she would be

a terrific help when you become horribly rich and have to do a lot of

stuffy entertaining."



"Really, Winifred," protested Constance.



"Help him to the poorhouse and a damned good riddance."



I spent another uneasy fifteen minutes before I could decently make my

departure, wondering whether I hadnt made a mistake in becoming involved

with the Tharios at all. But there being no question of the solidity of

the general's position, I decided, since it was not afterall incumbent

upon me to continue a social connection with them, to bear with it and

confine my acquaintance as far as possible to Joe and his father.





42. As soon as the contracts were awarded the struggle began to obtain

necessary labor and raw materials. We were straining everything to do a

patriotic service to the country in time of war, but we came up against

the competition for these essentials by ruthless capitalists who had no

thought but to milk the government by selling them supplies at an

enormous profit. Even with the wholehearted assistance of General Thario

it was an endless and painful task to comply with, break through, or

evade the restrictions and regulations thrown up by an uncertain and

slowmoving administration, restrictions designed to aid our competitors

and hamper us. Yet we got organized at last and by the time three

Russian marshals had been purged and the American highcommand had been

shaken up several times, we had doubled the capacity of our plant and

were negotiating the purchase of a new factory in Florida.



I set aside a block of stock for the general, but its transfer was a

delicate matter on account of the indefatigable nosiness of the

government and I approached his son for advice. "Alberich!" exclaimed

Joe incomprehensibly. "Just wrap it up and mail it to him. Mama, God

bless her, takes care of all financial transactions anyway." And

doubtless with great force, I thought.



Such directness, I pointed out, might have embarrassing repercussions

because of inevitably smallminded interpretation if the facts ever

became public. We finally solved the problem by putting the gift in

George Thario's name, he making a will leaving it to the general. I

informed his father in a guarded letter of what we had done and he

replied at great length and somewhat indiscree