A weary, weary ordeal! You couldn’t lounge or tilt back in a frail gilded chair a couple of hundred years old; you had to sit stiff and motionless and tell yourself it was a history lesson. But did you want to know all that history? Lanny would close his eyes and remember the beach at Juan, the blue water sparkling in the sunshine, and the little white sailboats all over the Golfe. He would summon up the garden with the masses of bougainvillaea in bloom; he would remember the piano, and yearn over those boxes of books which he had had shipped from the home of Great-Great-Uncle Eli and which some day he was going to have the delight of unpacking. Did he really want to be a person of distinction, live in the grand monde, and submit to endless, unremitting boredom?
He would open his eyes and watch the faces of the old men who were here deciding the destinies of the nations. Clemenceau sat shrunken into a little knot, the hands with the gray gloves folded over his stomach, the heavy lids covering his weary brown eyes. Was he asleep? Maybe so, but he had an inner alarm clock, for the moment anyone said anything against the interests of his beloved patrie he was all alert, bristling like the tiger he was named for. The pink, cherubic Lloyd George quite frankly dozed; he told one of the Americans that two things had kept him alive through the ordeal of the war—naps were one and the other was singing Welsh hymns.
Woodrow Wilson was unsparing of himself, and as the weeks passed his health caused worry to his associates. He was attending these Council sessions all day, and in the evenings the sessions of the League of Nations Commission. He was driving himself, because he had to sail on the fourteenth of February to attend the closing sessions of the Congress, and he was determined to take with him the completed draft of the Covenant of the League. A thousand cares and problems beset him and he was getting no sleep; he became haggard and there began a nervous twitching of the left side of his face. Lanny, watching him, decided never to aspire to fame.
The oratory became intolerable, so the Council picked out the talkers, and appointed them on what was called the “Clarification Commission,” where they could talk to one another. Altogether there were appointed fifty-eight commissions to deal with the multiplicity of problems, and these commissions held a total of 1646 sessions. But that didn’t remedy the trouble, because all the commissions had to report—and to whom? Where was the human brain that could absorb so many details? Hundreds of technical advisers assembling masses of information and shaping important conclusions—and then unable to find a way to make their work count!
All the problems of the world had been dumped onto the shoulders of a few elderly men; and the world had to crumble to pieces while one after another of these men broke down under the strain. There was that terrible influenza loose in Paris, striking blindly, like another war. It was the middle of winter, and winds came, storming across the North Sea, tempered somewhat by the time they got to Paris, but laden with sleet and snow. It would cover the mansard roofs and pile up on the chimney pots; it didn’t last many hours, and then the streets would be carpeted with slush, and the miasma that rose from it bore germs which had been accumulating through a thousand years of human squalor.
II
Early in February the Bolshevik government announced its willingness to send delegates to the Prinkipo conference. That put it up to President Wilson to act, if he was going to stand by his project. A few days later Alston told his secretary an exciting piece of news: the President had decided to name two delegates, one an American journalist, William Allen White, and the other Alston’s old-time mentor, George D. Herron!
The official announcement was made a day or two later and raised a storm of protest from the “best” people back home. The New York Times led off with an editorial blast exposing the Socialist ex-clergyman’s black record; the Episcopal bishop of New York followed suit, and the church people and the women’s clubs rushed to the defense of the American home. It was bad enough to propose sitting at a council table with bloody-handed thugs and nationalizers of women; but to send to them a man who shared their moral depravity was to degrade the fair name of Columbia the Gem of the Ocean. All this was duly cabled and printed in Paris, and reinforced the efforts of the Quai d’Orsay to torpedo the Prinkipo proposal.
Herron, who had gone back to his home in Geneva, now returned to Paris, deeply stirred by the opportunity which had come to him. No longer would he have to sit helpless and watch the world crumble. He saw himself arbitrating this ferocious class war which had spread over one-sixth of the globe and was threatening to wreck another huge section of Europe. He was busy day and night with conferences; the newspaper men swarmed about him, asking questions, not merely about Russia and the Reds, but about free love in relation to the Christian religion, and whatever else might make hot news for the folks at home.
The Socialist prophet was all ready to go to work. But how was he to do it? He had never held an official position, and came to Alston for advice. How did one set about working for a government? Where did one go? If he was to set out for Prinkipo, presumably he would have a staff, and an escort, and some funds. Where would he get them?
Alston advised him to see Mr. Lansing. That was easy, because the Secretary of State didn’t have much to do in Paris. Formal and stiff, his feelings had been mortally wounded because so few persons paid attention to him. But he didn’t want the attention of Socialist prophets; he looked on Herron as on some strange bird. He was as cold as the snowy night outside, as remote as the ceiling of his palatial reception room with the plaster cupids dancing on it. He had received no instructions about the conference, didn’t approve of it, and was sure it would prove futile.
President Wilson was driven day and night trying to get ready for his departure, and Herron could find nobody who knew or cared about the musical-comedy place called Prinkipo. The Supreme Council had passed a resolution, but unless there was someone to fight for it and keep on fighting, it would be nothing but so many words. Alston explained the intrigues of the French as he knew them. Herron, a simple man to whose nature deception was foreign, was helpless against such forces. People fought shy of him, perhaps because of the scandal freshly raked up, but mainly because he was believed to sympathize with the Reds. In a matter like that it was safer to lie low—and let Marshal Foch and Winston Churchill have their way.
III
Over at the Hotel Majestic was the British staff, almost as large as the American; and from the outset they had been coming over to make friends. The Americans did their best to keep on their guard, but it was difficult when they found how well informed and apparently sincere the Englishmen were. They had such excellent manners and soft agreeable voices—and, furthermore, you could understand what they said! A Frenchman, or a European speaking French, talked very rapidly, and was apt to become excited and wave his hands in front of you; but the well-chosen words of a cultivated Oxford graduate slid painlessly into your mind and you found yourself realizing how it had come about that they were the managers of so large a portion of the earth. If a territory was placed in the hands of such men, it stood a chance to be well governed; but what would happen if the Italians got it—to say nothing of the Germans or the Bolsheviks!
The British members of commissions of course had young secretaries and translators carrying heavy portfolios, and Lanny met them. They reminded him of Rick and those jolly English lads with whom he had punted on the Thames. One of them invited him to lunch at their hotel, an ornate structure which seemed to be built entirely of onyx; the dining room was twice as big as the Crillon’s, and in it you saw the costumes of every corner of the empire on which the sun never set. The English youth, whose name was Fessenden, had been born in Gibraltar, and was here because of his fluent Spanish and French. He was gay, and had the usual bright pink cheeks, and Lanny exchanged eager confidences with him; each was “pumping” the other, of course, but that was fair exchange and no robbery.
What was this business about Prinkipo? Lanny told how anxiously Dr. Herron was trying to find out. The English youth said
his government hadn’t appointed any delegates, so presumably they thought it was going to fizzle. One more of those “trial balloons.” Fessenden’s chief had said that the only way it might be made to work would be for President Wilson to drop everything else and go there and put it through. But of course he couldn’t do that. “Don’t you think perhaps he’s a bit too afraid of delegating authority? One man just can’t make so many decisions by himself.”
That was the talk all over Paris; three of the peace commissioners were figureheads, and Colonel House had been weakened by an attack of flu. That was no secret, and Lanny admitted it.
“All of us,” said the Englishman, “at least all the younger crowd, were hoping Wilson could put it over. Now we’re a bit sick about it.”
Lanny answered cautiously. “One hears so many things, one doesn’t know what to believe.”
“But there are definite things that you can be sure of. It seems as if your President just doesn’t know enough about Europe; he does things without realizing what they mean. At the outset he agreed to let the Italians have the Brenner! Shouldn’t he have asked somebody about that before he spoke? Of course it’s important for the defense of Italy; but if you’re going to distribute the world on the basis of strategic needs, where will you stop?”
“I don’t know much about the Brenner,” admitted Lanny.
“It’s a pass inhabited almost entirely by German people; and what is going to happen to them when the Italians take them over? Will they be compelled to send their children to Italian schools, and all that sort of rot?”
Lanny smiled, and said: “Well, you know it wasn’t we who signed that treaty with the Italians.”
“True enough,” admitted Fessenden. “But then it wasn’t we who brought up those Fourteen Points!”
That was why it was a pleasure to meet the English; you could speak frankly, and they didn’t flare up and deliver orations. It was true they wanted the Americans to pull some chestnuts out of the fire for them, but it was also true that they would meet you halfway in an effort to be decent. The best of them had really hoped that the American President was going to bring in a new order and were saddened now as they discovered how ill equipped he was for the tremendous task.
Lanny didn’t tell his English friend an appalling story which Alston’s associates were whispering. The Supreme Council was planning to recognize a new state in Central Europe called Czechoslovakia, to consist principally of territories taken from Germany and Austria. The Czechs, previously known as Bohemians, had a patriotic leader named Masaryk, who had been a professor at the University of Chicago and a personal friend of Wilson. An American journalist talking with Wilson had said: “But, Mr. President, what are you going to do about the Germans in this new country?”
“Are there Germans in Czechoslovakia?” asked Wilson, in surprise.
The answer was: “There are three million of them.”
“How strange!” exclaimed the President. “Masaryk never told me that!”
IV
Lanny was worried because he hadn’t had any letter from Kurt. After he had been in Paris a month, he wrote again, this time to Herr Meissner, asking that he would kindly drop a line to say how Kurt was. Lanny assumed that whoever the mysterious person in Switzerland might be who had been remailing Kurt’s letters to Lanny, Kurt’s father would be able to make use of him. Lanny followed his usual practice of not giving his own address, for fear the letter might come into the wrong hands; he just said that he was to be addressed at his mother’s home.
Lanny sent his letter in care of Johannes Robin, in Rotterdam, and there came in reply one from Hansi Robin, saying that his father had forwarded the letter as usual. Hansi was now fourteen, and his English was letter-perfect, although somewhat stilted. He told Lanny how his work at the conservatory was progressing, and expressed the hope that Lanny’s career in diplomacy was not going to cause him to give up his music entirely. He said how happy he was that his father had become a business associate of Lanny’s father and that they all hoped the adventure was going to prove satisfactory. Hansi said that his brother joined in expressing their high regard and sincere good wishes. Freddi, two years younger, added his childish signature to certify that it was true.
Lanny put that letter into his pocket, intending to forward it to his father the next time he wrote; and maybe that was the reason why for the next two or three days his thoughts were so frequently on Kurt Meissner. Lanny was sure that he would get a reply, for the comptroller-general was a business-like person, and it would be no trouble for him to dictate to his secretary a note, saying: “My son is well, but away from home,” or: “My son is ill,” or whatever it might be. Every time Lanny called for his mail he looked for a letter with a Swiss stamp.
And of course he thought about Schloss Stubendorf, and Kurt’s family, and Kurt himself, and wondered what four and a half years of war had done to him. What would he be doing now, or planning? Would he be able to go back to music after battle and wounds, and the wrecking of all his hopes? Around him Lanny saw men who had become adjusted to war and couldn’t get readjusted. Some were drinking, or trying to make up for lost time by sleeping with any woman they could pick up on the streets—and the streets were full of them. Would Kurt be like that? Or was Kurt dead, or mutilated as Marcel had been? What other reason could there be for his failure to communicate with the friend to whom he had pledged such devotion? Could it be that he now hated all Americans, because they had torn Germany’s prey from out of her jaws?
Such were Lanny’s thoughts while taking a walk. Such were his thoughts while he sat in the stuffy, overheated rooms at the Quai d’Orsay, attending exhausting sessions whenever a geographer was likely to be needed. While furious and tiresome quarrels were going on over the ownership of a hundred square miles of rocks or desert, he would turn his thoughts to the days when he and Kurt were diving and swimming off the Cap d’Antibes; or the holiday at the Christmas-card castle, which he saw always as he had seen it the first morning, with freshly fallen snow on its turrets shining in the newly risen sun. There were so many beautiful things in the world—oh, God, why did men have to make it so ugly? Why did they have to rage and scream and bluster, and tell lies so transparent that a geographer and even a secretary were made sick to listen.
Kurt was only a year older than Lanny, but he had seemed much more; he was so grave, so precise in his thinking, so decided in his purposes, that Lanny had honored him as a teacher. For nearly six years the American had kept that attitude; and now, when Kurt didn’t write to him, he was worried, puzzled, hurt. But he kept telling himself that he had no right to be. There was bound to be some reason, to be explained in good time.
V
The streets of Paris were full of picturesque and diverting sights: dapper young officers in Turkey-red pants, looking as if they had just stepped out of bandboxes; poilus trudging home from the front, unshaven, mudstained, bent with weariness; elegant ladies of fashion tripping from their limousines into jewelers’ and coiffeurs’; pathetic, consumptive-looking grisettes with blackened eyebrows and scarlet lips. The glory of La Ville Lumière was sadly dimmed, but there had to be ways for the foreigners to enjoy themselves. There were always crowds of them in the fashionable restaurants, no matter how often the prices were raised; always lines of people trying to get into every place of entertainment. So many had made money out of the war—and they had to have pleasure, even though their world might be coming to an end.
The strolling youth would note these things for a while, and then again be lost in thoughts about the problems of the peace. What was the conference going to do with Upper Silesia? That territory was full of coal mines and many sorts of factories; the French wanted to take it from Germany and give it to Poland—so that in the next war its coal would serve the purposes of France, and not of her hereditary and implacable foe. There was a commission to decide all that, and Professor Alston had been asked to attend it; when Lanny finished his walk he would hear arguments conce
rning the destiny of the Meissner family! A translator, of course, could take no open part, but he might be able to influence his chief by a whispered word, and his chief might influence the higher-ups in the same way.
So thinking, Lanny strolled on—into what was to prove the strangest adventure of his life up to that time. He had come to a street intersection and stood to let the traffic by. There came a taxi, close to the curb, and as it passed it was forced to slow up by another vehicle ahead. In the taxi sat a single passenger, a man, and at that moment he leaned forward, as if to speak to the driver. His profile came into clear view; and Lanny stared dumfounded. It was Kurt Meissner!
Of course it was absolutely impossible. Kurt, an artillery captain of the Germany army, riding in a Paris taxicab while the two countries were still formally at war! It must be somebody else; and yet from the first moment Lanny knew it wasn’t. It hadn’t been merely a physical recognition, it was some kind of psychic thing; he knew that it was Kurt as well as he knew that he himself was Lanny Budd. Could this be another apparition, like the one he had seen of Rick? Did it mean that Kurt was dead, or near to death, as Rick had been?
The cab was moving on, and Lanny came out of his daze. His friend was in Paris, and he must get hold of him! He wanted to shout: “Kurt! Kurt!”—but the traffic was noisy, and Lanny’s training kept him from making a public disturbance. He began to run, as fast as he could, dodging the pedestrians, and trying to keep his eye on that cab. Perhaps he could catch it at the next crossing; but, no, it was going on faster. Lanny was despairing, when he saw a vacant cab by the curb. He sprang in and cried: “Follow that cab! Quick!”
World's End (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 59
