Пользователь - WORLD'S END

"Let's get down to the problem," he said. "I can't take you to my rooms, because I share them with two other fellows. I can't take you to my uncle, because the police may have him already."

"That is true."

"Wherever we go, we'll have to take somebody into our confidence. It wouldn't be decent to introduce you under a false name. One can't play a trick like that on one's friends."

"I suppose hot."

"I believe Mrs. Chattersworth would be sympathetic, but she has so much company, and you'd have to meet people, otherwise the servants would think it strange."

"The servants will make trouble anywhere."

"I might get a car and drive you down to Juan; but the servants know you, and have heard my mother and me talking about you during the war."

"That's out."

"I thought of Isadora Duncan, who's in Paris. She's an internationalist and has queer people around her all the time. But the trouble is, she's irresponsible. They say she's drinking - the war just about drove her crazy."

There was a pause while he thought some more. "I believe our best guess is my mother. She's not very good at keeping secrets, but she'd surely keep this one because it means danger for me also."

"Where is she?"

"In an apartment in a small hotel. Most of the time she's invited out to meals, but she has breakfast sent to her rooms. She has no servant except a maid, and could find some excuse to get rid of her. That's the one way I can think of to get you hidden."

"But, Lanny, would your mother be willing to have a strange man in her apartment?"

"You aren't a stranger; you're my friend, and my mother knows how dear you are to me. It would be inconvenient, of course; but it's a matter of life or death."

"But don't you see, Lanny - the hotel people would be sure that she had a lover. There couldn't be any other assumption."

"They don't pay so much attention to that in Paris; and Beauty knows what it is to be gossiped about. You see, she lived with Marcel for years before they were married. All her friends know that story, and you might as well know it too."

"I only saw your mother for a few hours, Lanny, but I thought she was a wonderful person."

"She's been through a lot since then, and it's left her.sort of distracted and at loose ends. She's only recently got reconciled to the idea that she's never going to see her husband again. Now she's figuring how the world may be persuaded to recognize his genius. He really had it, Kurt."

The gusts of icy rain were blowing into their faces from across the river, and Lanny turned into a side street. "The hotel is up here," he said.

"You mean to take me there without telling her?"

"I'll phone and make sure she's alone. She won't want you left out in this rain, that I know. Tomorrow the three of us will have to figure out some way to get you out of France."

31

In the Enemy's Country

I

PRESIDENT WILSON was back in the United States, taking up the heaviest of all his burdens, that of persuading the American people to accept his League of Nations. He had wrought them into a mood of military fervor, and the war had ended too suddenly. In the November elections, a few days before the armistice, they had chosen a majority of reactionary Republicans, determined to have no more nonsense about idealism but to think about America first, last, and all the time. President Wilson invited the opposition chieftains to a dinner party, and they came, but neither good food nor moral fervor moved them from their surly skepticism. Wilson had, so he told the world, a "one-track mind." Now he was traveling on that track, and the Senate leaders were digging a wide and deep ditch at the end of it.

Of course the election results were known in Paris, and were one of the factors undermining the President's position. Both Lloyd George and Clemenceau had consulted their people and had their full consent to the program of "making Germany pay." Their newspapers were taunting the American President with the fact that his people were not behind him; now they printed the news about his failures in Washington, and on that basis went ahead to remake the world nearer to their hearts' desire.

Already they had fourteen little wars going - one for each of the Fourteen Points, said Professor Alston, bitterly. They were getting ready for the really big war, the Allied invasion of Russia. The blockade was screwed down tighter than ever; the Allies refused to lift it even from Poland and the new state of Czechoslovakia, for fear that supplies might get into Germany, or that Red agents might get out through the cordon s an itaire.

Clemenceau got out of his sick bed and resumed his place in command of the conference. He sat slumped in his chair, a pitiful, shrunken figure - but try to take anything from under his claws, and hear the Tiger snarl! This statesman aged in bitterness had performed a strange mental feat, transferring all that he had of love to an abstraction called la patrie. Individual Frenchmen he despised, along with all other human creatures; he humiliated and browbeat his subordinates in public, and poured the acid of his wit upon the pretense of idealism in any person in public life. But France was glory, France was God, and for her safety he was willing to destroy everything else in Europe and indeed in the world.

Colonel House was representing the President. The "little white mouse" didn't have a one-track mind, and hadn't come to Europe unprepared; he knew the age-long hatreds which made life a torment on that continent. He was trying to placate and persuade, and was sending long cablegrams to his chief about his great failures and his small successes. The staff at the Crillon watched and whispered, and the hundred and fifty registered newspaper correspondents from America hung about on the outskirts, gathering rumors and sending long wireless messages about secret covenants being secretly arrived at.

II

Meanwhile Lanny was taking all the time his chief could spare to run over to his mother's hotel and try to solve the embarrassing problem of his German friend. First he had the bright idea that Jerry Pendleton was the trustworthy person who would take this charge of dynamite off his hands. Jerry was going back to his regiment; surely he could take with him a Swiss musician friend, and find some pretext, a concert, or something, to get him into Koblenz. Let him entertain the regiment! After that it would be easy for him to disappear into Germany, for the American lines were loosely held and peasants and others came freely into Koblenz.

Lanny even worked up a likely story for the lieutenant to tell about how he had met this musician; he phoned to the Hotel du Pavillon - one of the "Y" shelters, where Jerry had been staying - and to his vexation learned that his friend had departed, leaving no address. Next morning came a post card marked Cannes. After all that scolding at the French, and all those doubts and fears, Jerry had gone running off to his girl!

Lanny's mother wasn't surprised. Lovers were like that, she declared: full of agonies and uncertainties, embarrassments and extravagances, impulses and remorses; quarreling bitterly, parting forever, and making it up next day. You just couldn't tell what unlikely sort of partner anyone would pick, or what crazy thing he or she would do. Lanny could understand that a man who had been drilled and disciplined for a year and a half, and had fought through one of the greatest battles in history, was apt to be restless and moody - and very much in need of feminine society.

Lanny sent his friend a telegram: "Don't fail to see me before you return to duties." A couple of days later he was bowled flat by a letter from the lieutenant, saying that he was never going to return to his duties, and that Uncle Sam could come and get him if and when he could find him. Jerry was going to marry his Cerise, and settle down to helping run a boarding house without boarders. "Tell those old buzzards to hurry up and sign the peace," said the ex-tutor from Kansas, "so that tourists can begin coming back to the Riviera!"