“All right,” Lanny said, “I'll go to it.” That was what his father wanted, and his grandfather, and his stepmother; that was the test of character, the way to get on in America. So he put his textbooks on the little table by the open window of his room, with the door shut so that nobody would disturb him, and set to work to ram the contents of those books into his mind — names, places, and dates, and no foolish unprofitable flights of the imagination; rules, formulas, and facts, and no superfluous emotions of pity or terror.
The only company he had was the mocking-bird. This slender and delicate creature, gray with a little white, liked to sit on the topmost spray of the cherry tree and pour out its astonishing volume of song. A mystery when it slept; for no matter how late Lanny might work, it was singing in the moonlight, and if he opened his eyes at dawn, it was already under full steam. It imitated the cries of all the other birds; it said “meeauw” like the catbird, and “flicker, flicker, flicker,” like the big yellow-hammer. But mostly it improvised. Of course it said no words, because it couldn't form the consonants; but as you listened you were impelled to make up words to correspond to its rhythm and melody. Sometimes they came tripping fast: “Sicady, sicady, sicady, sicady.” Then the singer would stop, and and say very deliberately: “Peanuts first. Peanuts first.”
Lanny was so determined to make good that he wanted to study all the time; but Esther wouldn't have that. In the middle of the afternoon, after Mr. Harper had come and heard him recite and had laid out the next day's work — then he must quit, and go with the other young people for tennis, and for what he now learned to call a “swim” instead of a “bathe.” Five days in the week he could work, mornings and evenings; and on Saturdays there would be a picnic, or a sailing party, and in the evening a dance. He had so many cousins of all degrees that he wouldn't have to go out of the family for company and diversion.
They were an astonishing lot of people, these Budds. The earlier generations had married young, and the women had accepted all the children the Lord had sent them — ten, or sometimes twenty, and then the women would die off, and the men would start again. In these modern days, of course, everything was changed; one or two children was the rule, and a woman like Esther, who had three, felt that she had gone out of her way to serve the community. But still there were a great many Budds, and others with Budd for their first or middle name. Grandfather Samuel had six daughters and four sons living; Samuel's oldest brother, a farmer, was still thriving at the age of eighty, and had had seventeen children, and most of them still alive, preaching and practicing the Word of the Lord their God, that their days might be long in the land which the Lord their God had given them.
Most of those who were not preaching the Word were employed by Budd Gunmakers Corporation in one capacity or another, and just now were working at the task of making the days of the Germans as short as possible. The Germans had their own God, who was working just as hard for his side — so Lanny read in a German magazine which the kind Mr. Robin took the trouble to send him. How these Gods adjusted matters up in their heaven was a problem which was too much for Lanny, so he put his mind on the dates of ancient Greek and Roman wars.
III
On Sunday mornings the earnest student would dress himself in a freshly pressed palm beach suit and panama hat, and at five minutes before ten o'clock would be among those who thronged into the First Congregational Church. This building occupied a prominent position on the central “square” of Newcastle; a large, two-story structure, built of wood and painted white, with a high-pitched roof and rows of second-story windows resembling those of a private residence. What told you it was a church was the steeple which rose from the front center; a square tower, with a round cylinder on top of that, then a smaller cube and then a very sharp and tall pyramid on that. Topping all was a lightning rod; but no cross — that would have meant idolatry, the “Whore of Babylon” — in short, a Catholic church. There were stairs inside the steeple, and windows so that you could look out as you climbed. Robbie said the original purpose was so that the townsmen could keep watch against the Pequot Indians; but there was a twinkle in his eye, so Lanny wasn't sure.
The men's Bible class was one of the features of Newcastle life. It is not in every town that you can meet the leading captain of industry face to face once a week, and have a chance to ask him a question. So many took advantage of this opportunity that the class was held in the main body of the church. Many of the leading businessmen attended, most of the Budd executives old and young, and everyone who hoped ever to be an executive. It was a business as well as a cultural event.
Did the teacher of this remarkable class have any cynical ideas as to what caused so many hard-working citizens of his town to give up their golf and tennis and listen to the expounding of ancient Jewish morality and Swiss and Scottish theology? Doubtless he did, for his faith in his Lord and Master did not extend to the too many children of this Almighty One. It was enough for Samuel Budd that they came; having them at his mercy for one hour, he pounded the sacred message into them. If they did not take their chance, it was because the Lord had predestined them to everlasting damnation, for reasons which were satisfactory fo Him and into which no mortal had any business trying to pry. If they chose to sit with blank faces and occupy their minds with how to get a raise in salary, or how to get their wives invited to the Budd homes, or what make of new car they were going to purchase — that also had been arranged by an inscrutable Divine Providence, and all that a deacon of the stern old faith could do was to quote the texts which the Lord had provided, together with such interpretations as the Holy Spirit saw fit to reveal to him at ten o'clock on Sunday morning.