Пользователь - WORLD'S END

"Lanny, I met Kurt at Emily's!"

"Oh, my God!" exclaimed the youth.

"The first person I saw, standing at her side."

"Does she know who he is?"

"She thinks he's a musician from Switzerland."

"Who brought him?"

"I didn't ask. I was afraid to seem the least bit curious."

"What was he doing?"

"Meeting influential Frenchmen - at least that's what he told me."

"You had a chance to talk to him?"

"Just a moment or two. When I went in and saw him, I was pretty nearly bowled over. Emily introduced him as M. Dalcroze. Imagine!"

"What did you say?"

"I was afraid my face had betrayed something, so I said: 'It seems to me I have met M. Dalcroze somewhere.' Kurt was perfectly calm - he might have been the sphinx. He said: 'Madame's face does seem familiar to me.' I saw that he meant to carry it off, so I said: 'One meets so many people,' and went on to explain to Emily why you hadn't come."

"And then?"

"Well, I strolled on, and old M. Solicamp came up to me and started talking, and I pretended to listen while I tried to think what to do. But it was too much for me. I just kept quiet and watched Kurt all I could. By and by Emily called on him to play the piano and he did so - very well, I thought."

"Whatever he does he does well."

Beauty went on to name the various persons with whom she had observed their friend in conversation. One was the publisher of one of the great Paris dailies; what could a German expect to accomplish with such a man? Lanny didn't try to answer, because he had never told his mother that Kurt was handling money. She continued: "Toward the end of the evening I was alone with him for just a minute. I said: 'What are you expecting to accomplish here?' He answered: 'Just meeting influential persons.' 'But what for?' 'To get in a word for our German babies. I pledge you my honor that I shall do nothing that can bring harm to our hostess.' That was all we had time for."

"What do you mean to do?"

"I don't see what I can do. If I tell Emily, I am betraying Kurt. If I don't tell her, won't she feel that I've betrayed her?"

"I'm afraid she may, Beauty."

"But she didn't meet Kurt through us."

"She met him because I told him about her, and he found some way to get introduced to her under a false name."

"But she won't ever know that you mentioned her."

"We can't tell what she'll know. We're tying ourselves up in a knot of intrigue and no one can guess what new tangles may develop."

A look of alarm appeared on the mother's usually placid features. ''Lanny, you're not thinking that we ought to give Kurt up!"

"Telling Mrs. Emily wouldn't be quite the same as giving him up, would it?"

"But we promised him solemnly that we wouldn't tell a soul!"

"Yes, but we didn't give him permission to go and make use of our friends."

A complicated problem in ethics, and in etiquette too! They discussed it back and forth, without getting very far. Lanny said that Mrs. Emily had expressed herself strongly against the blockade of Germany; she would, no doubt, be deeply sympathetic to what Kurt was doing, even while she might disapprove his methods.

The mother replied: "Yes, but don't you see that if you tell her you make her responsible for the methods. As it is, she's just a rich American lady who's been deceived by a German agent. She's perfectly innocent, and she can say so. But if she knows, it's her duty to report him to the authorities, and she's responsible for what may happen from now on."

Lanny sat with knitted brows. "Don't forget," he remarked, "you're in that position yourself. It ought to worry you."

Said Beauty: "The difference is that I'd be willing to lie about it; but I don't believe Emily would."

IV

When in doubt, do nothing - that seemed to be the wise rule. They had no way to communicate with Kurt, and he didn't make any move to enlighten them. Was he arguing the same way as Beauty, that what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them? It was obvious that in trying to promote pro-German ideas among highly placed persons in Paris he was playing a desperately dangerous game, and the fewer dealings he had with friends the better for the friends.

Many ladies in fashionable society become amateur psychologists, and learn to manipulate one another's minds and to extract information without the other person's knowing what they are after - unless, perchance, the other person has also become an amateur psychologist. Beauty went to see her friend in the morning; and of course it was natural for her to refer to the handsome young pianist, to comment on his skill, and to ask where her friend had come upon him. Emily explained that M. Dalcroze had written that he was a cousin of an old friend in Switzerland who had died several years ago, and that he had come to Paris to study with one of the great masters at the conservatory.

"I asked him to come and play for me," said the kindly hostess. "He's really quite an exceptional person. He plans to be a composer and has studied every instrument in the orchestra - he says that you have to be able to play them if you are going to compose for them."

"How interesting!" said Beauty, and she wasn't fibbing. "Where is he staying?"

"He tells me he's with friends for a few days. He's getting his mail at poste restante."

Said the guileless friend: "I only had a chance for a few words with him, but I heard him talking with someone about the blockade of Germany."

"He feels deeply about it. He says it is sowing the seeds of the next war. Of course, being an alien, he can't say much."

"I suppose not."

"It's really a shocking thing, Beauty. The more I hear about it the more indignant I become. I was talking to Mr. Hoover the other day; he has been trying for four months to get permission for a small German fishing fleet to go out into the North Sea - but in vain."

"How perfectly ghastly!" exclaimed Lanny's mother.

"I am wondering if I shouldn't get some influential French people to come here some evening and hear Mr. Hoover tell about what it means to the women and children of Central Europe."

"I've thought of the same idea, Emily. You know Lanny talks about that blockade all the time. The people at the Crillon are so wrought up about it."

"Our French friends just can't bring themselves to realize that the war is over."

"Or perhaps, as Professor Alston says, they're fighting the next one. We women let the men have their way all through, but I really think we ought to have something to say about the peace."

"I know just how you feel," said the grave Mrs. Emily, who had had Beauty weeping on her shoulder more than once during the days of Marcel's long-drawn-out agony.

"Let's you and me take it up, Emily, and make them let those women and children have food!" It was farther than Beauty had meant to go when she set out on this visit; but something in the deeps of her consciousness rose up unexpectedly. A woman with a loving nature may try her best to dance and be merry while other women are bearing dead babies, and while living babies are growing up with twisted skeletons; but all of a sudden comes a rush of feeling from some unknown place and she finds herself exclaiming, to her own surprise: "Let's do something!"

V

The discussions among the four elder statesmen were continuing day and night and reaching a new pitch of intensity. They were dealing with questions which directly concerned France; and the French are an intense people - especially where land or money is involved. There was one strip of land which was precious to the French beyond any price: the left bank of the river Rhine, which would save them from the terror which haunted every man, woman, and child in the nation. They wanted the Rhineland; they were determined to have it, and nothing could move them; they could argue about it day and night, forever and forever, world without end; they never wearied - and they never gave up.