The gusts of icy rain were blowing into their faces from across the river, and Lanny turned into a side street. “The hotel is up here,” he said.
“You mean to take me there without telling her?”
“I'll phone and make sure she's alone. She won't want you left out in this rain, that I know. Tomorrow the three of us will have to figure out some way to get you out of France.”
31
In the Enemy's Country
I
PRESIDENT WILSON was back in the United States, taking up the heaviest of all his burdens, that of persuading the American people to accept his League of Nations. He had wrought them into a mood of military fervor, and the war had ended too suddenly. In the November elections, a few days before the armistice, they had chosen a majority of reactionary Republicans, determined to have no more nonsense about idealism but to think about America first, last, and all the time. President Wilson invited the opposition chieftains to a dinner party, and they came, but neither good food nor moral fervor moved them from their surly skepticism. Wilson had, so he told the world, a “one-track mind.” Now he was traveling on that track, and the Senate leaders were digging a wide and deep ditch at the end of it.
Of course the election results were known in Paris, and were one of the factors undermining the President's position. Both Lloyd George and Clemenceau had consulted their people and had their full consent to the program of “making Germany pay.” Their newspapers were taunting the American President with the fact that his people were not behind him; now they printed the news about his failures in Washington, and on that basis went ahead to remake the world nearer to their hearts' desire.
Already they had fourteen little wars going — one for each of the Fourteen Points, said Professor Alston, bitterly. They were getting ready for the really big war, the Allied invasion of Russia. The blockade was screwed down tighter than ever; the Allies refused to lift it even from Poland and the new state of Czechoslovakia, for fear that supplies might get into Germany, or that Red agents might get out through the cordon sanitaire.
Clemenceau got out of his sick bed and resumed his place in command of the conference. He sat slumped in his chair, a pitiful, shrunken figure — but try to take anything from under his claws, and hear the Tiger snarl! This statesman aged in bitterness had performed a strange mental feat, transferring all that he had of love to an abstraction called la patrie. Individual Frenchmen he despised, along with all other human creatures; he humiliated and browbeat his subordinates in public, and poured the acid of his wit upon the pretense of idealism in any person in public life. But France was glory, France was God, and for her safety he was willing to destroy everything else in Europe and indeed in the world.
Colonel House was representing the President. The “little white mouse” didn't have a one-track mind, and hadn't come to Europe unprepared; he knew the age-long hatreds which made life a torment on that continent. He was trying to placate and persuade, and was sending long cablegrams to his chief about his great failures and his small successes. The staff at the Crillon watched and whispered, and the hundred and fifty registered newspaper correspondents from America hung about on the outskirts, gathering rumors and sending long wireless messages about secret covenants being secretly arrived at.
II
Meanwhile Lanny was taking all the time his chief could spare to run over to his mother's hotel and try to solve the embarrassing problem of his German friend. First he had the bright idea that Jerry Pendleton was the trustworthy person who would take this charge of dynamite off his hands. Jerry was going back to his regiment; surely he could take with him a Swiss musician friend, and find some pretext, a concert, or something, to get him into Koblenz. Let him entertain the regiment! After that it would be easy for him to disappear into Germany, for the American lines were loosely held and peasants and others came freely into Koblenz.
Lanny even worked up a likely story for the lieutenant to tell about how he had met this musician; he phoned to the Hotel du Pavillon — one of the “Y” shelters, where Jerry had been staying — and to his vexation learned that his friend had departed, leaving no address. Next morning came a post card marked Cannes. After all that scolding at the French, and all those doubts and fears, Jerry had gone running off to his girl!
Lanny's mother wasn't surprised. Lovers were like that, she declared: full of agonies and uncertainties, embarrassments and extravagances, impulses and remorses; quarreling bitterly, parting forever, and making it up next day. You just couldn't tell what unlikely sort of partner anyone would pick, or what crazy thing he or she would do. Lanny could understand that a man who had been drilled and disciplined for a year and a half, and had fought through one of the greatest battles in history, was apt to be restless and moody — and very much in need of feminine society.
Lanny sent his friend a telegram: “Don't fail to see me before you return to duties.” A couple of days later he was bowled flat by a letter from the lieutenant, saying that he was never going to return to his duties, and that Uncle Sam could come and get him if and when he could find him. Jerry was going to marry his Cerise, and settle down to helping run a boarding house without boarders. “Tell those old buzzards to hurry up and sign the peace,” said the ex-tutor from Kansas, “so that tourists can begin coming back to the Riviera!”
Lanny was much worried about this, for he knew that desertion in wartime was a serious matter. He took occasion to bring up the subject with one of the military men at the Crillon, and learned that the army had been severe with the A.W.O.L.'s at the outset, but was becoming less so every day as a matter of sheer necessity. Men who had submitted cheerfully to the draft now considered that their duty was done, and wanted to go home before some other fellow got their girls and their jobs; there were so many deserters in Paris that the M.P.'s couldn't bring them in nor the guardhouses hold them. Lanny wrote his friend for heaven's sake to take off his uniform and not show himself in public places until after the peace was signed. Then, presumably, the army would go home and forget him!
Lanny and his mother had also discussed Johannes Robin, prosperous speculator in cast-off armaments. He journeyed frequently to Paris and other places; surely he must know persons at the border, and could arrange to import a competent Swiss musician to play duets with his son! Lanny composed a nice sociable letter, telling the news about himself and his parents, and saying that he hoped to see Mr. Robin when he came to the city, and did he have any plans to come? So tactful was this letter that Mr. Robin missed the point and replied even more sociably, telling how happy his whole family was to hear from Lanny, and all about what they were doing and thinking. Only at the end did he mention that he had no plans to come to Paris just now, but that when he did, Lanny would be sure to hear from him. What Lanny said was: “Damn!”
III
On account of her secret “house guest,” Madame Detaze was compelled to receive her friends in the parlor of the hotel, a circumstance which sooner or later was bound to awaken their curiosity. Only two persons, her brother and her son, were accustomed to come up unannounced; the next afternoon, when Lanny entered his mother's drawing room, he found his Uncle Jesse seated there. Kurt wasn't visible, so Lanny assumed that he must be hidden in Beauty's boudoir. The youth couldn't get away from the feeling that he was playing a part in a stage comedy. Suppose the German captain of artillery should happen to be seized by a fit of coughing or sneezing — there would be quite a job of explaining to Beauty's brother!