And then Laurel Creston. A curious contrast between the life of a peasant child in the Austrian part of Poland under the rule of the benighted Habsburgs, and that of a landowner’s daughter on the Eastern Shore of the proud “Free State” of Maryland! At the age of five little Laurel had been taught how to hold a pencil, and to sit very primly at a table and speak with proper manners; she had three lovely dollies, also a French governess. But oddly enough her life was blighted by the same curse of alcohol which plagued the Polish peasant child; her father was a “drinking man,” and she had seen him in a condition which frightened her, and had seen her mother in tears. She did not know any person in the drawing-room of Bienvenu, not even the kind old gentleman who was asking her questions.
When the two women were taken back to childhood at the same time there resulted amusing scenes, for not only did they not recognize each other, but each found it incomprehensible that the other should claim to be a child. When Parsifal told them they were fifteen, Madame was a kitchen maid in the city of Krakow, and Laurel was at boarding school in the Roland Park district of Baltimore; they were both old enough to know the date, and Madame said that it was 1890, while Laurel in a polite but positive manner declared that it was 1923, and that a gentleman from Vermont by the name of Calvin Coolidge had recently become President of the United States. Both the women were in a passive state of mind, and did not address each other, but replied only to Parsifal’s questions.
Incidently this told Lanny something he had wondered about—that Laurel Creston was thirty-one years of age. He didn’t say anything about it when she came out of the trance, for it was her secret if she wanted to keep it. He thought her courageous to trust anybody to delve into her past life. Aloud, he commented upon the light which these tests threw upon the technique of the Freudians, whose rise to prosperity he had watched during his lifetime. He had known people to devote years to recording dreams and reciting them, and listening to fantastic interpretations of them; if you had the money you could spend many thousands that way, and perhaps it kept you out of mischief—but Lanny had never yet known a person who had been cured of anything by it. Here, by this simple method of hypnotism which the doctors had “discarded,” you could have the early mind before you, and live with it and question it as long as you pleased.
Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
27
With Hell at Agreement
I
The Côte d’Azur was almost as favorable a place as Paris for the activities of a presidential agent. The appeasers swarmed there, and Cannes was a sort of half-way station between Italy and Spain—two nations which called themselves neutral, and whose citizens therefore could come and go freely, carrying out the errands of the enemy. Smart society buzzed with gossip concerning the doings of Serrano Suñer and Señor Juan March, of Count Ciano and General Balbo, of Charles Bedaux and half a dozen English lords who came visiting and intriguing.
What part was Mussolini going to play in this war? He was one-third of the “Axis”—Japan having been taken in. Lanny’s friends on the Riviera agreed that Il Duce was bound to have a share of the spoils, and you could pretty nearly tell how the war was going by his attitude. Bedaux reported that the Germans didn’t want him in, Italy being far more useful as a neutral; Britain and France were reluctant to interfere with her trade and she could ship arms to Germany and get coal in return. Britain sought to buy arms from her, but Mussolini wanted too high a price, and went on bringing German coal in Italian ships; the British were threatening to stop this traffic and the argument was growing hot. A division of the French army was at Mentone, ready to block the road along the Riviera, and troops were guarding all the passes through the Alpes Maritimes. Taking no chances!
And Franco—what was he going to do? He was bound to the Axis by ties of gratitude, also by a debt in marks and lire which it might take him several lifetimes to pay. His ships could carry copper and iron ore and mercury to Italy, and he would hold over the Allies the threat of seizing Gibraltar. Would he dare? Lanny cultivated his Spanish friends and picked up the gossip that fell from their dinner tables. They considered that the Führer had compromised his cause by his deal with Red Russia, and thus Spain was no longer bound by her signature to the Anti-Comintern Pact. Their country, like Italy, could be more useful as a neutral; they whispered concerning U-boat bases on the Bay of Biscay, Spanish vessels smuggling fuel to U-boats at sea, and radio stations set up by their German friends in Spanish and Portuguese harbors.
Then, too, there was news from the Near East, the Balkans and Turkey and the Arab lands. Couriers came by ships, and messages by secret wireless; it was all supposed to be hush-hush to the last degree, but somehow things leaked, and if you went to the right social gatherings and helped to get the right persons drunk, you could pick up surprising information. Lanny was kept busy writing reports, so many that he became uneasy about mailing them to the American Embassy in Paris. He took to addressing them to an inconspicuous “Mr. W. C. Bullitt, 2 rue Gabriel, Paris.” He never mailed one in Juan, but drove into Cannes and dropped them into some inconspicuous box; now and then for one of special importance he would visit the larger city of Nice.
II
Outwardly it was a gay life the son of Budd-Erling lived. All his friends were glad that he had become what they called sensible, and was enjoying himself as his wealth and family position entitled him to do. World events made little difference to the expatriates of the Riviera; they had come here to get away from care, and they stayed away. Business was booming at home and money was plentiful; they spent it on elegant pleasures, and resented even the slightest inconveniences. The Sitzkrieg was something far-off, to be read about in the papers and discussed over the “apéro.”
What fighting there was took the form of scouting, mostly on dark nights; some of the poilus earned their two-and-a-half cents a day by donning black leather suits, well greased to make them slippery, and stealing out in front of their Maginot Line, armed with knives which they had sharpened to razor keenness. They would surprise an enemy outpost and slit the throats of a few Fridolins, as they were calling the boches in this war; meantime, somewhere else along the line, some Fridolins would be doing the same to a few poilus. It was like the Indian fighting which had gone on in America for a couple of centuries, and which Europe knew from the Leatherstocking Tales, and saw now and then in the cinema.
The only way that war could come to the Riviera was from Italy; and why worry about that? The Italians were here, some in uniforms and some in sport suits; they were charming fellows, glad to help out at a dinner party or on a dance floor. To be sure, they demanded Nice as a part of their birthright, and suggested that they might have to take Cannes and the Cap for greater security; but what difference would that make to American residents, or even to British and French? They were gentlemen, and would conduct themselves as such; they would put down the Reds, and the trains would run on time, which they surely were not doing at present. The Italians were tireless in giving assurances to their friends; and every evening you could hear the voice of the American poet, Ezra Pound, speaking in English from a station on the Italian Riviera, ridiculing the idea that the ignorant rabble was fitted to govern any country, and hailing Fascism and its “corporate state” as the form of the future society.
III
The psychic experiments continued, and Lanny had opportunity to become further acquainted with the mind of Laurel Creston. It was, he discovered, both receptive and keen. He had known few intellectual women in his life, the ladies of his circle having been interested in only one branch of learning, which might be called applied psychology, though commonly it went by the less pretentious name of gossip. This science had to do with what was going on inside the minds of the other ladies and gentlemen of their acquaintance, it being necessary to the life of gregarious creatures to know which way the flock is going to fly or the herd to run.
Laurel had been interested to find out all she could about the world she lived in, and now she was finding out about her own instrument of investigation. What was her mind, and how many minds had she? What were these trances into which she fell so easily, and where was her conscious mind at the time? She wished she might have had two minds, one to sit and watch while the other entered the trance. As it was, she would ask questions, and study Parsifal’s notes, and pounce on this point or that, and suggest new tests to settle some uncertainty.
Also, she began digging into the library which Lanny had accumulated on the subject. It was a small library, but some of the books were not small. She read the Myers tome, and the two volumes of Gurney, and Janet’s two on Psychological Healing, something like twelve hundred pages. Laurel studied them, one by one, and had some of the experiments repeated on herself. She read Osty and Gelet and William MacDougall, and her wonder grew that the scientific world should remain so indifferent to the universe hidden in the subconscious mind of man. She wanted to write on the subject; and Lanny said, “Go to it; but the popular magazines won’t be interested, and if it’s a book it won’t sell. Psychic research is a form of self-indulgence of the well-to-do.”
Said Laurel: “I can earn my living writing fiction, and it has never taken all my time.”
She would take a pad of paper and a pencil, a steamer chair and a cushion, and find herself a sunny spot on the grounds of the estate; then no one would see her again until lunchtime. She never told what she was writing; Lanny guessed it was some anti-Nazi stories which she would publish under a pen name after she had left here. She excused herself from social affairs, and the few people who met her thought of her as one more of the queer people who had been turning up at Bienvenu ever since it had started: painters, poets, musicians, dancers, religious healers, mediums, even ghosts—so they said. Lanny understood that the new medium was carrying out the request which he had made of her in Switzerland, and was impressed by the strictness with which she kept the bargain.
IV
Laurel Creston couldn’t have been in any doubt as to what Lanny himself was up to. He didn’t talk; but when he went to have lunch with Juan March, or dinner at the California home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Beauty would ask whom he had met and what they had said. Laurel never asked questions, even when she and Lanny were alone. That was rarely, because she avoided it, and the experiments were always shared by Parsifal. The lady from Baltimore, no amateur in applied psychology, was aware of the mistress of this household watching everything that went on.
More than once the mother asked: “Lanny, are you falling in love with Laurel?” and he would reply: “No, old dear, not in the least. I am interested in her work.” Then came a time when Beauty surprised him with a different remark: “Lanny, I’ve been thinking it over, and I wonder if Laurel isn’t the sort of woman you ought to marry. She’s interested in all the things that you are; and I suppose you’ll never be happy with anybody but a bluestocking.”
He gave his usual provoking answer: “I’m not planning to marry, darling; I’m getting along very nicely right now—and so is Laurel, so far as I can see.”
“A man never sees very far into a woman’s heart,” was the mother’s reply. “No woman remains an old maid if she can help it.”
You would have had to know the mistress of Bienvenu to realize what a condescension this represented on her part; it was the first time in Lanny’s love life that his mother had ever recommended a girl or woman who wasn’t at least moderately rich. It was a triumph of Parsifal Dingle’s ideas over those of the beau monde, the grand monde, the monde d’élite. Lanny was amused, but also touched, and somewhat troubled—for he had been less than frank when he said that he wasn’t in love with Laurel Creston. What he was doing was scolding himself for getting mixed up with this infernal business of sex once again. He had thought it absurd to be half in love with two women, and now, apparently, he was one-third in love with three! Laurel, he admitted, had turned out to be a lovely woman; but so had Lizbeth, and so had Priscilla Hoyle, to his great surprise. How happy could I be with one of them, were t’other two charmers away!
V
It is an old saying, that propinquity is the major part of love; and right now Laurel had the propinquity! The lonely widower confronted daily not merely her charms but her mind, and more important yet, her character. She was honest, she was straightforward, she was concerned with the search for truth. She was, very certainly, the woman whom Trudi would have picked out for him; and the Trudi-ghost was still the most important single influence’ in Lanny’s life. The Trudighost was conscience, and stood watch over his choices. It said: “The cause comes first. The cause is everything. The cause is the future—all mankind, long after you and I are gone and our very names forgotten.”
Daily he went over the same round of thoughts: “What would I do if I asked her to marry me, and she consented? Where would I hide her, and how would we live?” It was the old problem, to which there was no answer. Keep her in Bienvenu, as Beauty had in mind? As a spiritualist medium, she was a freak, to whom the smart world paid no attention except to smile; she was one of Parsifal Dingle’s whims, and Lanny was not held responsible. But as Lanny’s wife she would be the future mistress of the estate and a personage; everybody would want to meet her, and gossip about her would spread through the smart world. Would the Nazi agents overlook a man who had been the Führer’s guest so many times, and made it his carte d’entrée into Nazi circles on the Riviera, and in Berlin, Paris, London, New York? Undoubtedly they would have checked his story in Germany; and how long would it be before somebody would begin asking questions about the mysterious medium who had been at the Berghof and subsequently had vanished off the face of the earth?
No, it was obvious that if Lanny wanted to have Laurel for a wife, he would have to hide her. But where? Certainly in no place frequented by the people from whom he collected information. She would have to stay in an obscure apartment, and never appear in public as his wife. Trudi had done that, but would Laurel be willing to do it? And how about her anti-Nazi stories, and magazines and checks coming from abroad? A clandestine life had been possible in peacetime, but now the war multiplied its difficulties. Lanny could think of a hundred slips that might be made—and one would be enough to ruin his work.
Laurel spoke of returning to New York after the psychic work had been completed; and that started Lanny on another set of imaginings. He could get a car and they could have a delightful honeymoon through the Southern states. But then where would they live? Take an apartment in some unfashionable part of New York, and have Laurel rent a post-office box under her real name? But how long would it be before her literary friends would become curious about a woman writer who never invited anyone to the place where she slept? Would she love him enough never to see anybody, even when he was in Europe for months at a time? Suppose she were to fall ill, or to meet with an accident.
Or suppose her writings became so successful that the Gestapo would order its agents in New York to track her down and find out who her associates were, and where she got her strikingly correct information? Any data the Gestapo really wanted it would get; and Lanny must never for a moment forget that they had Laurel Creston on their wanted list in Berlin. They had her writings to date, including a lot of unpublished manuscripts; and they had plenty of men who knew the English language, also the art of letters, and were capable of comparing the writings of Laurel Creston with those of Mary Morrow, and of any other pen name she could invent.
Forrest Quadratt, for example! Put half a dozen short stories into his hands, and he could very soon say whether they were written by the same author. And with a suave personality and unlimited funds, how long would it take him to plant an employee in a certain magazine office, or to take a publisher’s secretary out to dinner? Once they had spotted Laurel and her post-office box, how long would it be before they had her telephone tapped and a dictaphone in her apartment, and had the name and record of the
gallant who came to visit her now and then, or who met her on street corners and drove her to some road-house in Jersey?
VI
The weeks passed, and the psychic wonders multiplied, and so did the reports of P.A. 103. From the Italians he learned of the bitter feud between Ribbentrop and Ciano, promising no good to the Axis. Mussolini’s son-in-law charged that the champagne salesman had promised him three years in which to get Italy ready for war, but now he had broken the promise and gone ahead to grab everything in sight. Italy was dreaming of Nice and Corsica and Tunisia, but wasn’t yet strong enough to take them, and now feared that the Führer meant to grab Tunisia himself. Italy would fool him, all the Italians agreed. The moment France showed signs of breaking, Il Duce would leap in—and he was nearer.
As for Spain, she would almost certainly move if Italy did, and would take Tangier. As for Gibraltar, the understanding was that Italy was going to bomb it for her, and in return would have submarine bases on the Spanish coast. The British Mediterranean fleet would be reduced by this means, and then Mussolini could supply munitions and a Spanish army could invade the Rock from the land. The salons of the Riviera appeasers buzzed with talk of these enterprises. Realizing that they couldn’t get their way at home without outside help, many Frenchmen had come to the opinion of Denis de Bruyne, that the will of their political enemies had to be broken by military defeat.
Russia had gone to war with Finland, claiming that that little country was in the hands of the Fascists and was being fortified and prepared as a base for an attack upon Russia. At first the Red armies did very badly, and all the world of fashion rejoiced, and became ardent in sympathy for a little nation struggling for its liberties. In the Scandinavian lands, in Britain and France, even in far-off America, there arose a clamorous demand for aid to the Finns. The Rightists found this a heaven-sent chance to attain their goal of war upon the Soviet Union. Three years ago the cry of airplanes for Republican Spain had enfuriated them, but now they set up their own cry of airplanes for Finland—even though France hadn’t enough to defend herself against the foe at her gates.
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