Her old friends were scattered. Sophie, Baroness de la Tourette, had lost her lover in the last dreadful fighting on the Marne, and had gone back to visit her relatives in Ohio. Margy Eversham-Watson was at her country place in Sussex, his lordship having been struck with a bad attack of gout. Edna Hackabury, now Mrs. Fitz-Laing, was on the Riviera, waiting for her husband to return from a military expedition in the Near East. All these persons were unhappy in one way or another, and Beauty, who craved pleasure as a sunflower craves the light, seemed as if trying to flee from her world. A horrible world! She told Lanny how, sitting at dinner next to Premier Orlando, that genial statesman had declared himself displeased that so lovely a woman had waited eighteen years between children. In his family it was different, he gravely assured her; his wife never got up from her accouchement bed without being pregnant again.
More and more she was coming to rely upon Emily Chattersworth, a tower of strength in times such as these. Emily had money enough and force of will enough to make a world of her own. Emily had learned the rules, and persons who didn’t know them and obey them got no share of her hospitality. In her home you met intellectual people and heard serious talk of the problems of the day, as well as of literature and art and music. Beauty would remark sadly that she was coming to an age where it was necessary for her to be intellectual; she would go to one of Emily’s soirees, and listen while more brilliant persons talked, and come home and tell Lanny whom she had met and what compliments they had paid her.
Lanny accompanied her when he could find time. He realized that Mrs. Emily was performing an important service in bringing people together in gracious ways. When the American delegates and advisers met the French, it was always for business, and too frequently the discussions ended with bitterness. But in the drawing room of a woman of the world they could discuss the same problems with urbanity and humor; their shrewd hostess would be watching, ready to help the conversation past a dangerous corner. Here the women came; and the Americans found it easier to like the French when they met their women.
Mrs. Emily was fond of Lanny Budd, who from childhood had learned to behave in a drawing room. She considered him extraordinarily fortunate in his present role, and permitted him to bring members of the staff to her affairs without special invitation, an honor she granted to few. She came to have lunch with his friends at the Crillon, and this too was a distinction. Professor Alston remarked that many women had money, but few knew how to use it; if there were more persons like Emily Chattersworth in the world there wouldn’t be so many like Jesse Blackless.
II
The British and the French were taking unto themselves those portions of Asia Minor which had oil, phosphates, and other treasures, or through which oil pipelines had to travel to the sea. Since the Fourteen Points had guaranteed the inhabitants of these lands the mastery of their own destinies, the subtle statesmen had racked their vocabularies to find some way of taking what they wanted while seeming not to. They had evolved a new word, or rather a new meaning for an old word, which was “mandate.” The scholars at the Crillon had an anecdote with which to divert their minds from sorrowful contemplations. Some diplomat newly arrived in Paris had inquired: “What’s going to be done about New Guinea and the Pacific islands?” and the answer was: “They are to be administered by mandatories.” “Who is Mandatories?” inquired the newcomer.
Mister Mandatories—or was it Lord Mandatories?—was going to take over Syria and Palestine and Iraq, the Hejaz and Yemen and the rest of those hot lands which had been promised to the people of the young Emir Feisal. The brown replica of Christ had taken off his multicolored silk robes, his turban and veil, and put on the ugliest of black morning coats, in the hope of impressing the Peace Conference with his civilized condition—but all in vain. Behind the scenes Grand Officer Zaharoff had spoken, and Clemenceau was obeying; Henri Deterding, master of Royal Dutch Shell, had spoken, and Lloyd George was obeying.
One portion of the former Turkish empire had no oil or other mineral treasures of consequence; it had only peasants, who were being slaughtered daily by Turkish soldiers, as they had been off and on, mostly on, for ages. To stop this slaughter there was needed another Mandatory—a kind, idealistic, high-minded Mandatory, who cared nothing about oil nor yet about pipelines, but who loved poor peasants and the simple life. The British and French brought forward a proposal in the name of humanity and democracy: an elderly gentleman named Uncle Samuel Mandatory was to take charge of Armenia, and doughboys singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” would drive out the Turks and keep them out.
This proposal was sprung, and President Wilson promised to consider it and give his decision promptly. There was a rush call to the staff for everything they had on Armenia, and a hundred reports on history, geography, language, population, resources, production, trade, government, had to be dug out and read, digested, summarized, headlined, so that a busy statesman could get the whole thing in his mind in ten minutes’ reading. Professor Alston had to do his part, and Lanny had to help—which was the reason he missed a musical evening at Mrs. Emily’s town house.
Beauty attended; and shortly before midnight she telephoned her son at the hotel. “Lanny, the most amazing thing has happened.”
He knew from the tone of her voice that she was upset. “What is it?”
“I can’t tell you over the phone. You must come here.”
“But I’m not through with my job.”
“Isn’t it something that can wait till morning?”
“It’s for the Big Boss himself.”
“Well, I must see you. I’ll wait up.”
“Any danger?” His first thought, of course, was of Kurt.
“Don’t try to talk now. Come when you can.”
III
So Lanny rather stinted the Armenians, and maybe let more of them die. So many poor peasants were dying, in so many parts of the world—there came a time when one just gave up. He omitted from his report some of the Armenian charges and some of the Turkish admissions, and slipped into his big trench coat, ran downstairs, and hopped into a taxi.
His fair blond mother was waiting in one of those bright-colored silk dressing gowns from China—this time large golden dragons crawling clockwise round her. She had taken to smoking under the strain of the past year, and evidently had done it a lot, for the air in the room was hazy and close. Beauty deserved her name almost as much as formerly, and never more so than when tenderness and concern were in her sweet features. After opening her door she looked into the passage to see if anyone had followed her son, then led him into her boudoir before she spoke.
“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.
Also they demanded the Sarre, with its valuable coal mines, to make up for those which the Germans had deliberately destroyed. The French had suffered all this bitter winter; other winters were coming, and who were going to suffer—the French, or the Germans who had invaded France, blown towns and cities to dust and rubble, carried away machinery and flooded mines? The French army held both the Sarre and the Rhineland, and General Foch was omnipresent at the Peace Conference, imploring, scolding, threatening, even refusing to obey Clemenceau, his civilian chief, when he saw signs of weakening on this point upon which the future of la patrie depended.
The British Prime Minister very generously took the side of the American President in this controversy. Alston said it was astonishing how reasonable Lloyd George could be when it was a question of concessions to be made by France. England was getting Mesopotamia and Palestine, Egypt and the German colonies; Australia was getting German New Guinea, and South Africa was getting German Southwest Africa. All this had been arranged by the help of the blessed word “mandatory,” plus the word “protectorate” in the case of Egypt. But where was the blessed word that would enable the French to fortify the west bank of the Rhine? That was not to be found in any English dictionary.
Lanny got an amusi
ng illustration of the British attitude through his friend Fessenden, a youth who was gracious and likable, and infected with “advanced” ideas. Lanny had been meeting Fessenden off and on for a couple of months, and they had become one of many channels through which the British and Americans exchanged confidences. Among a hundred other questions about which they chatted was the island of Cyprus, which Britain had “formally” taken over from Turkey early in the war. What were they going to do with it? “Self-determination of all peoples,” ran the “advanced” formula; so of course the people of Cyprus would be asked to whom they wished to belong. Young Fessenden had been quite sure that this would be done; but gradually he became less so, and the time came when he avoided the subject. When it became apparent that the island was “annexed” for good, young Fessenden in a burst of friendship confessed to Lanny that he had mentioned the matter to his chief and had been told to stop talking nonsense. If the British let the question of “self-determination” be raised, what would become of Gibraltar, and of Hong Kong, and of India? A young man who wanted to have a diplomatic career had better get revolutionary catchwords out of his head.
VI
Such was the atmosphere in which Mrs. Emily Chattersworth and her friend Beauty Detaze set out to change French opinion on the subject of the blockade. They had resolved upon getting persons influential in French society to gather in Mrs. Emily’s drawing room and hear an appeal from Mr. Herbert Hoover, who had been in charge of Belgian relief and now had been put in charge of all relief by the Supreme Council. The persons whom Mrs. Emily planned to invite were many of them intimate friends, frequenters of her salon for years; but when she broached this proposal to them, they were embarrassed, and certain that it couldn’t be done.
World's End (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 65