World's End (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

  The youth had no trouble in guessing what that meant. He made the necessary excuses and reached the hotel as quickly as a taxi could bring him. He found his mother weeping uncontrolledly, and he guessed the worst, and was both relieved and puzzled when he learned that the Sûreté hadn’t yet got hold of Kurt, so far as Beauty knew. “Certainly they didn’t have him last night,” he argued. “And he may be out of the country after all.”

  “I just know he isn’t, Lanny! Something tells me!” Beauty sobbed on; her son hadn’t seen her in such a state of distress since the days when she was struggling with Marcel, first to keep him alive, and then to keep him from plunging back into the furnace of war.

  Suddenly she looked up, and the youth saw a frightened look in her eyes. “Lanny, I must tell you the truth! You must manage to forgive me!”

  “What do you mean, Beauty?”

  “Kurt and I are lovers.”

  Those were the most startling words that Lanny Budd had heard spoken up to that moment of his life. His jaw fell, and all he could think of to say was: “For God’s sake!”

  “I know you’ll be shocked,” the mother rushed on. “But I’ve been so lonely, so distraite since Marcel died. I’ve tried to tell myself that my baby was enough, but it isn’t so, Lanny. I’m just not made to live alone.”

  “I know, Beauty—”

  “And Kurt is in the same state. He’s lost his wife and baby, he’s lost his war, and his home—the Poles are going to have it, and he says he’ll never go back to be ruled by them. Don’t you see how it is with us?”

  “Yes, dear, of course—”

  “And did you think that Kurt and I could be shut up here in three rooms, and not talk about our hearts, or think about consoling each other?”

  “No, I must admit—”

  “Oh, Lanny, you were such a darling about Marcel—now you must manage to be it again! Kurt is the best friend you have, or he will be if you’ll let him. I know what you think—everybody will say it—that I’m old enough to be his mother; but you’ve always said that Kurt was older than his years, and you know that I’m much too young for mine. Kurt is twenty-two, and I’m only just thirty-seven—that’s the honest truth, dear, I don’t have to fib about it—”

  Lanny couldn’t keep from laughing, seeing this good soul desperately defending herself against all the gossips she had ever known. And taking a year or so from her own age and adding it to Kurt’s!

  “It’s all right, dear. I was a little taken aback at first—”

  “You don’t have to feel that you’ve lost either your mother or your friend, Lanny. We will both be to you just what we were before, if you will forgive us and let us.”

  “Yes, Beauty, of course—”

  “You mustn’t think that Kurt seduced me, Lanny!”

  The youth discovered himself laughing even more heartily. “Bless your dear heart! I’d be a lot more apt to think that you seduced Kurt!”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Lanny—it’s deadly serious to both of us. You must understand what a gap there’s been in my life ever since your father left me—or since I made him leave me. You’ll never know what it cost me.”

  “I’ve tried to guess it many times,” said the youth, and put his arm about her. “Cheer up, old dear, it’s perfectly all right. Come to think of it, it’s a brilliant idea, and I’m ashamed of my stupidity that I didn’t think of it. Are you two going to marry?”

  “Oh, that would be ridiculous, Lanny! What would people say? I’d be robbing the cradle!”

  “Does Kurt want to marry you?”

  “He thinks it’s a matter of honor. He thinks you’ll expect it. But tell him that’s out of the question. Some day soon I’ll be an old woman, and then I’d be ashamed of myself, to be a drag on his life. But I can make him happy now, Lanny. He’s been coming here nearly every day, and we’ve both been embarrassed to tell you.”

  “Well, I don’t think this was a very good time for you to turn into a prude,” said the youth, severely. “But anyhow, that’s done, and the question is how we’re going to get you two sinners out of the country.”

  III

  Beauty was like a person in a nightmare in which one is possessed by an agonizing sense of helplessness. She had no way to reach Kurt; he had given no address; he was under pledge, so he told her. He would come again—but when? And would he find police agents waiting for him in the hotel? Lanny must go downstairs and see if any suspicious-looking men were sitting in the lobby. Of course there are often men sitting in hotel lobbies, and how are you to say whether they look suspicious? Are police agents chosen because they look like police agents, or because they don’t?

  Beauty had to have help; and who was there but her son? She was terrified at the thought of involving him. Not on account of the Crillon—she didn’t care a sou for them, she said, let them look out for themselves! But if the police were to take Lanny with Kurt? If he were to be punished for her guilty love—so she persisted in regarding it, being a woman who had been brought up respectably, a preacher’s daughter, knowing the better even while she followed the worse!

  Somebody must stay in the room, to be there when Kurt came, to warn him and hide him until night. Then they must get him out of Paris, and the safest way seemed to be by car. Beauty would go out and buy one, hers having been commandeered in the spring of the previous year. She supposed it would now be possible to get one if you had the price. Gasoline was still rationed, but that too could be arranged with money. She had only a little in the bank, she always did; but Lanny had a supply, and could draw on his father’s account in an emergency. He offered to go out and attend to these matters; but the mother’s terror took a leap—the police might trace all this, and Lanny would be guilty of helping a spy! No, let him wait here; she would run the errands.

  Where would they go, he asked, and when she didn’t know, he suggested Spain. If you went to Switzerland you were traveling toward Germany, and the authorities would be on the alert; but Spain was a neutral country, a Latin country, and a natural place for a rich American lady to be motoring with a lover. Or had it better be a chauffeur? They discussed the problem. A lover would appeal to Latin gallantry, but probably a chauffeur in uniform would be passed by the guard at the border with fewer questions.

  Beauty had no passport, that evil device having been invented during the war, and she hadn’t been out of France all that time. She would have to apply for one, and have a little picture made. She decided she would go back to the name of Budd, a powerful name, and foreign, more suitable to a tourist. Kurt doubtless had a passport, forged or genuine; if it was under the name of Dalcroze, it would have to be changed. No use to discuss that until he came. In the meantime Beauty’s heart would be in her mouth every moment. Oh, why, why did the life of men have to be an affair of danger, of obsessing and incessant terror?

  Lanny promised to wait in the room, and positively not to leave it unless the hotel burned down. If a German officer were to arrive, what should be done with him? Hide him in the boudoir? Or send him out to walk in the parks? Lanny argued for the former. What chance was there of the Sûreté connecting Kurt with them? But Beauty was ready with an answer. Emily had named the other guests at that musicale. The agents would interview them, and ask the same questions they had asked Emily; surely some of them would remember Beauty! Perhaps already the police had her name and were on the way to question her! If her son were in the room, that would be all right; but Kurt must go out into the Parc Monceau, take a book, sit on a bench, and look like a poet; watch the rich children playing, and flirt with the bonnes like a Frenchman. “All right, all right,” said Lanny.

  IV

  He wrote his mother a check, and while she dressed they discussed makes of cars, probable prices, and routes to Spain; also the possibilities of Kurt’s evading the police or soldiers at the border, by paying a guide and climbing through the mountain passes. It would be the Basque country, which Beauty had traveled in happier days; but no day ever so happy a
s that one, if she lived to see it, when she and her new lover would be free in Spain. Again Lanny remembered his anthology. Young Lochinvar had come out of the east this time, and the steeds that would follow were swifter than any hero of Sir Walter Scott could ever have dreamed: sixty miles per hour on the roads and a hundred and fifty through the air—to say nothing of messages that traveled round the earth in the seventh part of a second.

  Beauty telephoned; she was making progress; was there any news? Lanny said no, and she hung up. Another hour, and she tried again; more progress, but still no news. So it went through the longest of days. She came back late and reported she had a car safely stored in a garage. All the formalities had been attended to; she had paid, five francs here, ten francs there, and petty functionaries had hastened to oblige her. She had a passport in the name of Mabel Budd. That had been arranged through an influential friend to whom she had explained that she didn’t want to be a widow any more; he had smiled, and offered to relieve her of the handicap forever. Many matters could be arranged in France if you were a beautiful woman and able to have clothes which did you justice.

  She had had the passport visaed for Spain, and had bought a map. With her to the hotel came a man carrying a large package containing a uniform for a tall chauffeur. They stowed it under the bed, where perhaps the Sûreté Génerale would overlook it. That completed everything that Beauty and her son could think of; all that was needed now was a chauffeur to put inside the uniform.

  Lanny, having done his part, must return to the Crillon and forget this dangerous business. If anyone questioned him, he was to say that he knew nothing about it whatever. The mother sat at the escritoire and wrote a note on hotel stationery: “Dear Lanny: I have gone away on a short trip; will wire you soon. Have a chance to sell some of Marcel’s paintings. Adieu.” That would be his alibi in case he should be questioned. When she got into Spain, she would wire him. If she or Kurt got into trouble, he must go to Emily Chattersworth and make a confession of the whole affair and beg for her help with the French authorities. Beauty kissed him many times, and told him he was a darling—no news to him.

  He went back to the question of Shantung, which now was destroying the peace of mind of the Crillon staff. His mother went to packing her belongings, and then to pacing the floor and smoking one cigarette after another. She couldn’t eat anything, she couldn’t think anything but: “Kurt! Kurt!” She saw him in a score of different places with the hands of French police agents being laid upon his shoulders. She saw herself weeping in Emily’s room, pleading for forgiveness, explaining how she had kept this dreadful secret from her friend for the friend’s own good. She saw herself on her knees before French officials, weeping, begging for mercy which they wouldn’t or couldn’t grant. Always she saw herself hating war, going to live in some part of the world where it wasn’t—but what part was that? Why had God made so many wretched creatures, born to trouble as the sparks fly upward? Because of a pious upbringing, Beauty had phrases like this in her mind.

  V

  All through the proceedings of the conference the little Japanese delegates had sat listening, polite but inscrutable. They had tried to get into the Covenant of the League a provision for “racial equality,” intended to get them access to California and Australia. That proposal having been turned down, they waited, studying the delegates and learning all they could. Which meant what they said and which could be bluffed or cajoled? Japan had taken the rich Chinese province of Shantung and meant to keep it unless it meant war with somebody. Would it, or wouldn’t it?

  The American staff was agog over this problem. If the Japanese had their way, it meant that the Fourteen Points had gone up in smoke. The patient, ever-smiling Chinese delegates haunted the Crillon corridors, morally and intellectually when not physically. Would “Mister Wilson” stand by them, or wouldn’t he? The staff couldn’t guess. They knew that “Mister Wilson” had been harried by seven unbroken weeks of wrangling, and was a badly exhausted man. Did he have one more fight left in him? Everybody speculated; and Lanny heard them as if in a dream. An absentminded and far from satisfactory secretary, he was excused because he was so worried about his mother’s illness. Every hour he would go to the phone. “How do you feel, Beauty?” She would say: “Not very well.”

  In the middle of the evening the mother called: “Come at once, please.” He went, and found her in a state of tension. Kurt had come, and now had gone to interview someone who had authority over him, to get permission to leave. He had said no more, except that he was sure he could get a passport into Spain. “He says he has friends there,” Beauty explained.

  Lanny hadn’t thought of that. Of course the Germans would be working through Spain as well as through Switzerland, and if they could buy or manufacture passports in one country, they could do it in another.

  Beauty was to meet Kurt at an agreed place on the street. “In one hour,” she said. “But let’s get out of here at once.”

  Her bags were packed and ready. Lanny paid the hotel bill, explaining that his mother had been called back to her home on the Riviera. The car had been phoned for and was at the door; the bellboys stowed the luggage, and Lanny tipped them generously. The couple stepped in, the car rolled away—and Beauty put her face into her hands and burst into sobbing. So much she had feared in that well-appointed family hotel; and nothing of it had happened!

  They drove slowly about the boulevards, still unlighted, as in war days. After a while Beauty told him to drive to the spot where Kurt was supposed to come. “Draw up to the curb,” she requested, and when he did so, she said: “Please go quickly.”

  “I don’t like to leave you here,” he objected.

  “I’ll lock the car. And I have a gun.”

  “I wanted to wait and see you off.”

  “Don’t you understand, Lanny? The police may be following Kurt! They would want to get his associates, too.”

  He had to admit that this was reasonable. Since she didn’t know how to drive, he asked: “What’ll you do if he doesn’t show up?”

  “I’ll lock the car and find some place to telephone you.”

  Lanny had hoped to see Kurt and give them both his blessing; but the most important thing was to calm his tormented mother. He got out, and said: “Tell him that if he isn’t good to you I’ll turn him over to the Sûreté.”

  She gave a little broken laugh. “Good-by, darling. Go quickly, please. Don’t hang around.”

  VI

  It was late, but Lanny returned to his desk, because documents were piling up and he was a conscientious secretary; also, he doubted if he could sleep. His mind was traveling the Route Nationale that ran south by west from Paris to the Bay of Biscay. He had never traveled it, but knew it would be good, for the safety of la patrie depended upon her roads. The distance was some five hundred miles, and if all went well they would cover that during the night and part of the next day; probably the border would be closed at night. There was a little town called Hendaye, and a bridge, and not far on the Spanish side was a popular resort called San Sebastián. Early in May it might be chilly, but those two had means to warm their hearts. No use thinking about possible mishaps—better to see Alston and work out the next day’s schedule.

  It was the day of a strange ceremony, the formal presentation of the peace treaty to the German delegation, taking place in the great hall of the Trianon Palace Hotel. The Allied delegates were received with drums and trumpets, which made more awe-inspiring the deathlike silence when the Germans were ushered in. Upon the table in front of their seats had been placed copies of an elaborate printed volume of close to a hundred thousand words, the Treaty about which the whole world had been talking and writing for half a year. The official text, in both French and English, was supposed to be the inspired word; but the Crillon heard strange rumors to the effect that numerous changes agreed upon at the last moment hadn’t been got in, and even that the French had fixed up some things to read the way they wanted them. Whose business had it
been to study the document line by line and compare it—with what? How could there be any checking up when three elderly gentlemen had met in the bedroom or study of one of them and kept no record, except for notes made by a trusted friend of Mr. Lloyd George who himself was not always to be trusted?

  Anyhow, there was the volume, and Clemenceau arose and made a brief speech to the Germans, informing them that they would have fifteen days in which to make their written observations. Said he: “This second treaty of Versailles has cost us too much not to take on our side all the necessary precautions and guarantees that the peace shall be lasting.”

  When it came the turn of Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau to answer, he did not rise, but sat motionless in the big leather chair. Perhaps this was because he was ill; but in that case he might have said so, and it appeared that his action was a studied discourtesy. The Allies had put into the treaty a statement to be signed by the Germans, assuming sole responsibility for the war. This filled the count with such fury that his voice shook and he could hardly utter the words: “Such a confession on my part would be a lie.”

  At the same time the Crillon gave out the news that President Wilson had made an agreement, jointly with Britain, to guarantee France in the event of another attack by Germany. The great master of words had searched his vocabulary once more, and this was not to be an “alliance,” but an “understanding”; and of course that made it different. Many of the advisers were in a state of excitement about it, and wherever two of them met there were arguments. “If the treaty were just,” declared Alston, “the whole world should help to defend it. But this treaty is going to cause another war; and do we want to obligate ourselves to be in it?” He pointed to the news from Germany, where the government had declared a week of national mourning in protest against the war-guilt declaration.