IV
Lanny told himself that he was observing this réunion professionally; he was going to make a report. Every day for seven weeks and more he had been translating reports, revising reports, filing reports. And now he was going to report on the sentiments of the working classes of Paris. Should he say that they no longer had any feelings of enmity against the sales boches, but that all their fury was turned against Clemenceau and his government? Hardly that — for it was obvious that this was a special group, who had come to listen to the sort of speeches they enjoyed. And even they were not unanimous. Every now and then there were cries of dissent; a man would leap up and shout contradictions and others would howl him down. More than once there was uproar and confusion, men seizing the impromptu orator and pulling him into his seat; if he resisted, there would be fist-fighting, and perhaps chairs wielded as a convenient weapon. It appeared that much of the opposition was organized; there were groups of protestants looking for trouble. They were the Camelots du Roi, the royalists of France; their inspirer a raging journalist named Maurras, who in the paper which he edited did not hesitate to call for riots and murders.
Lanny, as he listened, kept thinking of the French revolution. Jean Marat, “friend of the people,” living in the sewers of Paris to escape his enemies, had come forth to deliver just such speeches, denouncing the aristocrats and demanding their blood. Here too one saw the tricoteuses, grandmotherly-looking old women who sat knitting, and at the same time listening attentively; every once in a while one of them would open her mouth and scream: “Mort aux traitres/” — and without missing a single stitch.
Lanny watched the faces. Sinister and dark they seemed, but full of pain, so that he was divided between fear and pity. He knew there were whole districts of Paris which were vast “cabbage patches,” in which the poor were housed in dingy, rotting buildings centuries old. They had suffered privations so that Zaharoff and his friends might have their war to the finish; and now, with production almost stopped and trade disorganized while diplomats and statesmen wrangled — could it be expected that they would not complain?
Among those packed against the walls of the salle was a youth whose violent gestures caught Lanny's attention. You could know that he was a workingman by the fact that he wore a corduroy suit and a cotton shirt with no collar or tie. His face was emaciated, unshaven, and unkempt, but there was a light in his eyes as of one seeing visions. He was so wrought up by the oratory that his lips kept moving, as if he were repeating the phrases he heard; his hands were clenched, and when at the end of a climax he shouted approval, he shook not one but both fists in the air.
Lanny tried to imagine what life must seem to a youth like that. He was about Lanny's age, but how different in his fate! He wouldn't know much about the forces which moved the world; he would know only suffering, and the fact that it was caused by those in authority, the rulers and the rich. Maybe that wasn't the truth, but he would think it was, and Lanny would have a hard time contradicting him. The well-educated young Englishwoman, whose father was a stockbroker at home, had called Jesse Blackless a “vicious person”; and maybe he was that, but all the same, Lanny knew that what his uncle was saying was true. When he raged at the Clemenceau government because it had stopped in Berne a shipment of Red Cross medical supplies intended for the ailing children in Austria, Lanny knew it had happened, and that Mr. Herbert Hoover, most conservative of businessmen, was uttering in the Hotel Crillon censure fully as severe — and far more profane.
When the meeting was over, Lanny saw the young workingman elbowing his way to the front. He went onto the stage and grabbed Jesse Blackless by the hands and shook them. The painter patted him on the back, and Lanny wondered, was this unkempt youth a friend of his uncle's, a member of his group, or just a convert, or a prospect? Lanny continued to reflect upon it, only half hearing the shocked comments of Penelope Selden, his lady friend.
They got into a taxi to drive to the Majestic, and on the way she forgot politics and put. her hand in his. They danced together in the onyx-lined ballroom; a gay and festive scene, with half the men and many of the women wearing uniforms. They too had suffered, and been under strain; they too needed relaxation from heavy duties, and it wasn't fair to blame them for dancing. But Lanny was haunted by the faces of the angry workers; he was haunted by the millions of children who were growing up stunted and deformed, because of things which these dancing ladies and gentlemen had done and were still doing.
The young English girl, with soft brown hair and merry eyes and disposition, was pleasant to hold in your arms. Lanny held her for an hour, dancing with no one else; she made plain that she liked him, and he had got the impression that she would be his for the asking. So many of the women were in a reckless mood, in these days of deliverance from anxieties too greatly prolonged. Lanny couldn't very well say to her: “I've had an unhappy love affair, and I've sworn off the sex business for a while.” What he said was: “Don't you think maybe your chief could do something with Lloyd George, if he told him about this meeting, and what a fury the people are in? Really, you know, it's a very bad state of affairs!”
V
Lieutenant Jerry Pendleton showed up in Paris, having got a week's leave. He had won promotion in the Argonne Forest by the method of being luckier than other sergeants of his outfit. In his new uniform he looked handsome and dignified, and Lanny at first thought he was the same gay and buoyant red-head from whom he had parted back at Camp Devens. But soon he noticed that Jerry had a tendency to fall silent, and there would come a brooding, somber look. Apparently going to war did something to a man. Lanny had been expecting to be entertained with accounts of hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach; but his former tutor said: “Let's not talk about it, kid. All I want is to go home and try to forget.”
“Aren't you going down to see Cerise?”
“I haven't enough time.”
Lanny knew that wasn't true, for Jerry could have taken the night express and been in Cannes in the morning. The youth let the subject drop; but later, after he had told about his misadventure with Gracyn in Connecticut, the lieutenant warmed up and revealed what was troubling his mind. “The plain truth is, I just don't like the French. I'm sore at the whole damn country.”
“What have they done to you?”
“It's just that we're so different, I guess. I'm always stumbling on things I dislike. I realize I don't know Cerise very well, and I'm never going to be allowed to know her until I've married her; and then what will I find out?”
“My mother married a Frenchman, and they were very happy.”
“Your mother lived here a long time and probably knew how to choose. I've seen so many things in France that I want to get away from. Manure-piles!”