“You imagine they would sentence a man to be hanged for that?”
“I don’t think anybody sentenced him. I think those soldiers just picked him up and started to hang him because they didn’t like what he was saying.”
“But that’s absurd, Lanny! Governments aren’t run on that basis!”
“I gathered that you didn’t think so much of the Polish government.”
No answering that argument; nothing to do but say that Americans were an irresponsible people, sometimes outright crazy. Kurt looked about him anxiously, thinking that a company of soldiers might arrive at any moment to apprehend them both. “We ought to get out of this town,” he said; but it wasn’t easy, for there was no train for a couple of hours. They found a sleigh which could be rented, and they had a cold and uncomfortable ride to the next town on the railroad. There again, Kurt was anxious; he even thought the Polish police or army might trace them to Stubendorf, whose Polish authorities would enjoy nothing more than having a serious offense to charge against the family of the Comptroller-General of the Schloss.
No, Kurt couldn’t take the Red menace with the gay insouciance of an American playboy. To Germans of the upper classes Bolschevismus was real—the newest-born child of Satan. The Reds had seized Bavaria, and had come very near to getting Berlin; they had plundered and killed, and were still boring like termites inside the foundations and walls of the German state structure. Here in Upper Silesia, the moment the French and German troops were withdrawn, there would be an attempted uprising of the miners and factory workers. The German Reds hated the German government and the Polish Reds hated the Polish government, and at any time they were ready to combine against both governments; that was their idea of how to end war—but to Kurt it would be worse than all the wars that had ever been fought in the world.
In short, Lanny was made to realize that what he had done was no joke, but something very serious, that must under no circumstances be mentioned to anyone in Stubendorf. Suppose there should come a revolution in Poland, and he should pick up a newspaper and see a picture of the Polish Trotsky or the Polish Bela Kun, and recognize it as the man for whom he had lighted two cigarettes!
“It might be convenient for you,” said the incorrigible American. “It might enable me to save your life!”
12
The Best-Laid Schemes
I
Lanny had written to his mother an account of his meeting with Walther Rathenau, and, as a result of this, when he and Kurt returned to Juan they found Beauty in a state of delightful excitement. She had taken the letter to Emily Chattersworth, who had pointed out the duty as well as opportunity which this circumstance held put to them. The world is supposed to be run by majestic statesmen who strut upon the stage and deliver resounding orations amid the explosion of flshlight bulbs; but everybody knows it is really run by clever women, who stay behind the wings and pull wires. The statesmen-puppets do what is subtly suggested to them, most of the time without knowing that they are being guided.
For three years now the rulers of Britain, France, and Germany had been locked in a tug-of-war, in which all three countries were exhausting themselves without any gains whatever. And now through some prank of fate they were coming to Cannes, right on Emily’s front doorstep, just over Beauty’s garden wall! The French Foreign Minister had been an habitué of Emily’s salon for many years; Beauty knew Lloyd George’s secretary, Philip Kerr—pronounce it Carr—soon to be the Marquess of Lothian—pronounce it as if you loathed him. And now Lanny had met Rathenau, who was to head the German delegation! Surely the hand of Providence was indicating to two American-French ladies that they should take charge of the Cannes conference and bring the affairs of Europe into some order!
The sessions were scheduled to be held in the Cercle Nautique, a one-story clubhouse of stucco with a magnificent facade and very elegant lofty rooms. There the resounding speeches would be made, the men with black boxes would gather to snap pictures, the journalists would peer and pry and beg for crumbs of news. But if you thought the real work would be done in that place, you would indeed be ignorant of the haut monde. After the uproar had died and the crowds had dispersed, the statesmen would slip away to some quiet nook, where a gracious hostess would serve tea and minuscule sandwiches, and by her presence would soothe their ruffled feelings. Presently they would be talking amiably to one another about the opposition at home and the impossibility of retaining office if they made too many concessions—so be a good fellow, now, and let us have this patch of desert, or that extra thousand million off the reparations account!
Beauty and Emily had spent their lives equipping themselves for this special service. They knew the vanities and foibles of each of the elderly gentlemen. They had heard the problems endlessly discussed, and if they didn’t understand them, at least they could talk as if they did. Each was complementary to the other, for Emily could handle the cultured ones, the highbrows, while Beauty understood the men of oil and guns and money. Kurt and Lanny had just been to Germany, and could explain that rather terrifying race, and help in the supreme achievement, which would be to induce the British and the French—especially the latter—to enter into social relations with their former foes.
Marie de Bruyne rejoined the household and was offered a share in the conspiracy. Marie wasn’t nearly so keen about meeting Germans as the American ladies were, but she saw that they were launched upon this adventure, and that the compliant Lanny was going to be dragged into it; she was shrewd enough, and in love enough, not to throw cold water upon his mother’s dreams. And then came Rick and Nina, according to the promise they had made some time earlier. A most fortunate circumstance for Rick, to be right in the center of a big story without any traveling expenses! Nina wasn’t much on politics, but she had two babies that she surely didn’t want to raise to be soldiers, and whatever prestige might belong to the wife of a future baronet she would use in helping persuade British diplomats to persuade French diplomats to attend tea parties with German diplomats.
II
The new villa, called “The Lodge,” wasn’t ready on time. What contractor ever did keep his word? When the Pomeroy-Nielsons arrived—crippled husband, lively little wife, two babies, and a maid—they had to be put up in a hotel for a couple of days, until the paint inside the house stopped smelling. Then the curtains had to be hung, and the furniture brought over from Cannes and put in place. Jolly fun fixing up a house—only two women never can agree where any piece of furniture ought to go, and there are some women who can’t agree with themselves and are forever deciding that the center table ought to be against the wall or vice versa. If the husband is a writer, he doesn’t care where you put the damn thing, if only it can be in the same place the next time he enters the room, and he wants the servants to understand that if they put his papers in order the only thing they have done is to make it impossible for him to find them.
Beauty left all those matters to Lanny, for she was at Sept Chênes most of the time, helping Emily to plan the pacification of Europe; sending the right letters and telegrams to key persons, calling in Sophie Timmons and other trusted friends and outlining to them the parts they were to play in the great world settlement. Lanny had to send a carefully worded telegram to the German Minister of Reconstruction, reminding him of their meeting and telling him that the home of Lanny’s mother on the Cap d’Antibes would be at all times open to him as a quiet and safe retreat.
It really was a critical occasion; the fashionable ladies weren’t exaggerating that. The German government was practically bankrupt, having no way to get foreign credit with which to meet the overdue reparations payments; and what action was France going to take? Poincaré and his Nationalists were clamoring for the occupation of Rhineland cities, while the British were making a supreme effort to persuade the French government that this course would bring ruin to them all. Britain had two million unemployed, and hardly any trade, and to risk another war might throw a large section of Europe into Bolshe
vism.
Such were the issues at stake when the great private trains came rolling into the Cannes station, discharging their loads of statesmen and experts. They came from cities of fog and snow turned black by discharges from millions of chimneypots; they stepped out into dazzling sunshine and balmy air, and were driven along avenues lined with palm trees, past houses of white or pink stucco with shutters painted a bright blue; they gazed over rocky shores on which the blue and green Mediterranean broke in long white lines of foam. A delightful place to spend a holiday: elegant hotels and easygoing, carefree people; theaters, operas, and casinos in which music resounded and dancing and gambling went on all night. The half-starved, half-frozen populations of the northern cities read about it in the papers and took it none too amiably. Why couldn’t these politicians do their conferencing at home, and save the cost of junkets to the playgrounds of the parasites?
A member of the British staff explained to Lanny that desire for a holiday had nothing to do with it; the statesmen got very little pleasure out of it. But their police and military authorites were afraid to have them gather in large cities in desperate times like these. Impossible to keep track of anarchists and troublemakers; to know at what moment a machine gun might be turned loose from a window, or a bomb be thrown from a housetop. But in small places like San Remo and Spa and Cannes the police could know who was in town, and stood some chance of protecting their important charges. France wanted no foreign statesmen to be assassinated within her borders. One could hardly say which would be the more awkward, for some Red fanatic to shoot a conservative statesman or for some misguided patriot to bomb a German.
III
Lanny got an inside view of this problem and the methods of handling it. He happened to walk into the village of Jaun to make some trifling purchase, and who should be sitting on a bench by the edge of the strip of sand but his crimson Saint Barbara! He saw her first and stopped; she didn’t fit the holiday crowd at a seaside resort, but sat staring out over the water as if she were quite alone. In the too bright sunlight her complexion had a jaundiced appearance, but nothing ever changed the sad dignity of her features; once more the romantic Lanny decided that he saw all the sorrows of mankind in that face, and wished that Marcel could come back to life and paint it.
Being now arrived at years of discretion, Lanny should have gone on about his business; but Barbara happened to turn and see him, and of course he had to greet her. It was natural for him to inquire: “What are you doing in this village?”
“I was staying in Cannes,” she replied, “but the police have just put me out.”
“What?” he exclaimed.
“They are afraid I will plant an infernal machine under their thieves’ conference.”
“You really mean they ordered you out of town?”
“They gave me just about ten minutes in which to pack my things. Worse than that, they drove out the working-class family with which I was staying; the man, who had a job, now has to go and look for one elsewhere.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Lanny.
“You may, if you stay and talk to me,” replied the woman, grimly. It made Lanny a bit hot under his collar of gray Oxford cloth. He would have liked to say: “Won’t you come and stay for a while at Bienvenu?” but he knew of course that this would knock Beauty’s plans higher than a kite. Instead he sat down by the woman, and said, a trifle embarrassed: “Look here, you may be a bit short of funds. Are you?”
The other flushed with embarrassment. “Oh, I couldn’t let you do that!”
“Why not? You are working for your cause, are you not?”
“But you don’t believe in my cause!”
“Don’t be too sure about that. I believe in your honesty at least; and, as you know, I don’t have to work very hard for my money.”
A dangerous thing for Lanny to say, and a dangerous course for him to embark upon. If once you start subsidizing a saint, how can you know where you are going to stop? Saints rarely have means of support and, worse yet, they are apt to have friends in the same plight; their biographies are one series of hard-luck stories. The job of taking care of them should be left to the Lord, who has created locusts and wild honey for that purpose, and in extreme cases will send ravens, or manna, or miracles of loaves and fishes.
But Lanny was young, and in this respect would never grow up. He took out his purse and put three hundred-franc notes into Barbara Pugliese’s hand. The franc had lost two-thirds of the purchasing-power it had had before the war, so this wasn’t such a sumptuous gift as it seemed; but to the poor woman it was a fortune, and she stammered gratitude and embarrassment, which Lanny told her to forget.
“Have you any idea where to go?” he asked.
“I haven’t made any plans, because, frankly, I was stranded. I want to go back to Italy and continue my work, but my friends beg me to delay, on account of the great danger.”
“What danger?” he asked.
“Have you not heard what is going on in Italy? The employers are hiring gangs of ruffians to beat the friends of the people’s cause, and often to murder them. Hundreds of our devoted workers have fallen victims to these bravi.
“How terrible!” exclaimed Lanny.
“It is a consequence of the tragic division in the ranks of the workers. When they were in possession of the steel foundries, and it was a question of holding and operating them, the Socialist leaders hesitated and refused their support.”
“But how could they operate foundries without large capital?”
“The whole credit of the co-operative movement should have been put behind them, and they could have started to work at full capacity. But no, our Socialists are slaves to the idea of ‘legality’; they hope to get possession of industry through the state, by electing politicians. Our workers have seen, time after time, that politicians lose all their working-class ardor as soon as they are elected, and begin putting the bribes of the bourgeois into their pockets. You see how much the masters care about ‘legality’; they do not stop at organized assassination of those who dare to oppose their will. They have a new device now: their hirelings force the victims to swallow great quantities of castor oil mixed with benzine or iodine, which causes atrocious sufferings and leaves them physical wrecks for the rest of their lives. That is what is now going on all over Italy. I judge that your capitalist newspapers have not told you much about it.”
“Very little,” the young man admitted.
“These gangsters call themselves ‘Fascisti’; they have taken the ancient Roman lictors’ symbol, of the rods and the ax. They are patriots, you must understand, and it is in the name of the sacro egoismo of Italy that they incite the youth to wage street-wars and wreck the offices of co-operatives and workers’ newspapers. Do you remember that dark little wretch whom you watched in the trattoria in San Remo?”
“The Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon?” said Lanny, with a smile.
“The same. Well, he is now a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and one of these noble patriots that will restore the ancient glories of la patria. He calls his vile newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia, and every issue of it is smeared with the blood of martyrs. But that does not keep him from being persona grata to the police authorities of Cannes.”
“You mean he is here?”
“He comes as a journalist, to observe and report the conference; but he brings with him a band of his ruffians, each with a revolver on his hip. That of course is to protect him against Italians. The French police know that he is their man, he serves the same capitalist infamia as themselves. You see, my friend, the class struggle grows more desperate every hour, and one is forced to take sides even against one’s will. That is why you should ask yourself whether it is wise for you, a member of the privileged classes, to sit on a public bench in the company of a notorious agitator. If you decide that you have been making a mistake, rest assured that I will understand and not blame you.”
IV
The conferees opened their sessi
ons in the reception hall of the Cercle Nautique, and Walther Rathenau, master administrator, delivered an address full of figures, explaining the impossibilities under which the infant German republic was laboring. It was so convincing that the Allied representatives were annoyed, and in the middle of the address Lloyd George broke in: “If we listen to you much longer, we shall come to the conclusion that it is we who owe money!” That, of course, was for the record; it would be passed on to the newspapermen outside, and members of the Tory clubs in London would know that their Prime Minister was using the right sort of language to the recalcitrant foe.
The Allies were offering to accept 720,000,000 gold marks during the year, and 1,450,000,000 gold marks’ worth of goods of one sort or another, mostly to the French. The British were whispering to the Germans, begging them to take this offer at once, because of the great danger in which the Briand government stood from its enemies: But the stubborn Rathenau was insisting upon making his speech, and trying to get the cash payments reduced to a round 500,000,000 gold marks. There was the usual deadlock of wills.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the appeasers were working busily. Mr. Kerr, pronounced Carr, had made a hurried trip to Sept Chênes with a couple of his staff to talk matters over with a widely famed Riviera hostess. There was a large English colony in Cannes—in fact it was an English nobleman who had put his cachet upon the place and established it as the right one for the right people. There were many hostesses eager to serve their country, and ready to be vexed if preference was given an American; but this was an occasion when patriotic sacrifices would have to be made, and it seemed obvious that the French would come more freely to an American tea party, and meetings with Britons could thus be made to seem casual.
The arrangements amounted to a conspiracy against that son of the people, that orator with the silver tongue, the ragged black mustache, and the roomy paunch, Aristide Briand. They were going to surround him, flatter him, play upon his humanitarian sentiments, and persuade him to agree to a temporary moratorium, and not send his armies into the bankrupt German republic. The climax of their scheming was revealed by Emily Chattersworth with delighted chuckles; they were going to lure a French Premier into playing a game of golf with a British Prime Minister! That is the way they keep the political peace in the green and pleasant land across the Channel; the orators tear into one another across the long table which separates the rival front benches, and then they go off and play a foursome together, and afterward have a drink, and thus compromises are arranged and civil wars averted.
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