Пользователь - WORLD'S END

"Somebody in England."

She didn't tell him more. Did that mean that she wasn't altogether pleased with her choice? They sat for a while, watching the tree shadows in the moonlight, which had become suddenly melancholy; the concertina was playing adagio lamentoso.

"What was the matter, Lanny? Did you think I was a gold digger, or something horrid?"

"No, dear," said he, truthfully. "I was afraid I mightn't be fair to you."

"Couldn't you have left that to me?"

"Perhaps I should have. It's hard to be sure what's right."

"I wouldn't have made any claims on you - honestly not. I've learned to take care of myself, and I mean to." They were silent once more; then she put her hand on his and said: "I'm truly sad about it."

"Me too," he replied; and again they watched the wavering shadows of the trees.

III

They talked about the relationship of the sexes, so much in the thoughts of young people in these days. They had thrown overboard the fixed principles of their forefathers, and were groping to find a code which had to do with their own happiness, the thing they really believed in. If you were going to have babies, that was another matter; but so long as you couldn't afford to have babies, and didn't mean to - what then?

Lanny told about his two adventures; and Penelope said: "Oh, those were horrid girls! I would never have treated you like that, Lanny."

"There's something to be said for both of them. The English girl belongs to a class and she owes a duty to her family. Don't your parents feel that way?"

"A stockbroker isn't so much in England - unless he's a big one, and my father isn't. He has other people to take care of besides me; that's why I went out on my own. So long as I earn my way, I think I've a right to run my own life. At any rate, I'm doing it."

"Have you ever had an affair?" he made bold to inquire.

She answered that she had loved a youth in the business school she had attended. His parents were well-to-do, and wouldn't let him marry. "I guess we didn't really care enough for each other to make a fight for it," she said. "Anyhow, we didn't. It messes things all up when one has more money than the other. That's why I was afraid to let you know that I liked you so much, Lanny. A girl can generally start things up if she wants to."

"I haven't much money," said he, quickly.

"I know, you say that. But you have what looks like it to a girl on the salary our Foreign Office pays. I waited, hoping you would speak, but you didn't."

It was a dangerous conversation. Their hearts were bared to each other and their feelings were stirred; it wouldn't have taken much to "start things up." But something like an alarm bell was ringing in the young man's soul. This was a lovely girl, and she was entitled to a square deal. It might be that she would call off her engagement and take a chance with him; from vague hints he guessed that the man in London was in business, and was not glamorous to her. But to break with him would be a serious step. If Lanny caused her to do it, he would be under obligations - and was he prepared to keep them? The Peace Conference was drawing to its close and their ways would part. Did he want to invite Penelope to Juan? If so, what would become of her job and her boasted independence? On the other hand, would he follow her to London?

No, he hadn't intended anything so serious. He had been thinking about a little pleasure, in the mood of these days, when men and women had the feeling that life was cheating them. Penelope said something like that; she was leaning closer to him, practically in his arms, and all he had to do was to close them.

"Listen, dear," he said; and his tone forecast what he was going to say: "If we do this, we'll get fond of each other, and then we'll be unhappy."

"Do you think so, darling?"

"You may be thinking you can go back to that chap at home. But perhaps you'll find you don't care for him any more, and you'll make yourself miserable, and him too."

"I've thought about it a lot, Lanny. We do what we think is right - and then we go off and spend many a lonely hour wondering if we didn't make a mistake."

"I'm judging by the way I am with that English girl I told you about."

"You can't forget her?"

"I've tried to, and I ought to, but I just don't."

"I suppose that's what's the matter between us," reflected Penelope. "There's a German poem that tells about a youth who loved a maiden who had chosen another."

"I know - Heine. And whom it just touches, his heart breaks in two."

"I don't suppose there'll ever be a remedy for that," said the girl.

They sat listening to the concertina player, who was evidently a returned poilu; he played their songs, which Lanny knew from Marcel and the other mutil й s. Many of them dealt with love, and as a rule were sad; the toughest old campaigner would sit with a mist of tears in his eyes, hearing about the girl he had left behind him and wouldn't see again. Lanny told Penelope what was in these songs, and with echoes of them in their ears they strolled to the car and drove back to the city. Afterward, it was just as she had said - they both wondered if they hadn't made a mistake.

IV

The Germans were continuing their bombardment of the treaty, and were getting the help of liberal and "radical" groups all over the world. The statesmen in Paris who had pledged themselves to "open covenants openly arrived at" were now doing their best to keep the terms of this treaty from reaching the public; the text was unobtainable in America, and even in France, but you could buy a copy for two francs in Belgium, and protests against it arose more loudly every day in the neutral lands. The British Labour Party denounced it, which meant many votes and had a disturbing effect upon the "mercurial" Prime Minister. He began wobbling again and caused an amusing situation.

Through all the battles, it had been the Presbyterian President against the cynical Tiger, with Lloyd George holding the balance of power, and generally giving the decision to the Tiger. But now, here was the little Welshman fighting the Tiger, and President Wilson having the decision - and he too giving it to the Tiger! This amazed the people at the Majestic. One of the staff, Mr. Keynes, said that Lloyd George had set out to bamboozle the American President and had succeeded too well; now, when he set out to "debamboozle" him, it couldn't be done. The agile-minded little Welshman was helpless before the stiff "Covenanter" temperament, which had to convince itself that what it did was divinely inspired, and then, having acquired that conviction, had to stand by it, no matter how many votes it might cost.

Lanny heard the President's side from Davisson and others who were defending him in hot arguments with Alston. At the time when Wilson had needed Lloyd George's help it had been refused. Now the treaty had been presented to the enemy, and it was a question of making him sign it. What time was this for the Allies to start weakening? Clemenceau couldn't give way, for he had Foch on his back, and Poincarй watching for the moment to trip him. All that could be brought about was another deadlock, such as they had had two months ago, and starting the whole weary wrangle all over again.

One aspect of the problem could be mentioned only in whispers. General Pershing wasn't sure how long he could control his troops. His armies were melting away. All over France, Belgium, Switzerland, were not merely doughboys but also officers who had quit in disgust. No need for Jerry Pendleton to hide, or for Lanny to worry about him any more! And if the Germans should refuse to sign the treaty, would the men still under arms consent to march and fight? Congress had been summoned in special session, and there was a resolution before the Senate declaring that a state of peace existed with Germany. Just as easy as that!

Clemenceau and Marshal Foch wouldn't yield an inch; no, not an inch; but having said that and sworn it, they began to yield, a fraction of an inch here and a fraction there. Germany was going to be admitted to the League of Nations after all. And there was going to be a plebiscite for a part of Upper Silesia - not the part containing Schloss Stubendorf, alas, but the part with the coal mines, which the Poles wanted so badly, and which the French wanted to use against Germany the next time. So it went, and each small concession was a bite out of the body and soul of France; the screams were loud and terrifying - and Lanny, most of whose life had been lived among the French, couldn't make up his mind whether to listen to his boyhood friends, or to these new ones who talked so impressively about justice, chivalry, democracy, and other abstractions.

It was a complex problem that taxed the mental powers of the ablest minds in the world, and would continue to be argued about by historians. Professor Davisson and others to whose arguments Lanny listened declared that these were not questions of right and wrong, of morality or immorality, but of statesmanship. Of course it wasn't just that Germany should be shut off from East Prussia; but wouldn't it be equally unjust if Poland should be shut off from the sea? The real question was, which course would provide for international security. Said Davisson: "The main lines of this settlement have been established by the procиsses of history. It is fighting against these procиsses not to recognize the successor states, especially Poland and Czechoslovakia, and give them the territory and resources to maintain and defend themselves."

There were those who went even farther, driven by the mood of war; they insisted that the Allied armies should have marched to Berlin, to let the Germans know what war is really like, and cure them of their fondness for it. The peace terms should now provide for the dividing of Germany into a number of small states, as in the days before Bismarck. The Prussians were a tribe incapable of understanding any ideal save that of conquest, and it should be made impossible for them to use the peace-loving Germans of Bavaria and the Rhineland in their adventures. Lanny didn't associate with persons who held such views, because Alston and his group considered them outside the pale; but he met them among his mother's friends, and among those who came to Mrs. Emily's. They seemed to know a lot of history.

V

Bullitt and Steffens had journeyed to Russia on a mission, of a sort contrived by statesmen who wish to keep themselves free either to accept the results, in which case it was an official mission; or to reject the results, in which case the statesmen had nothing to do with the mission and didn't even know about it. In the case of the expedition to Russia, Wilson and Lloyd George had chosen the latter course; and now what were the expeditioners going to do?

Lincoln Steffens had already had his experience of martyrdom, and was having it still. He had written too sympathetically about various "radicals" in trouble, and as a result no magazine of any circulation was willing to have his name appear in its pages. Here he was, a highly trained journalist in Paris, enjoying contacts such as no other had; every day he collected marvelous stories - and could do nothing with them but hand them over to less competent men.

Lanny sat in Stef’s room, listening to some of these tales, when in came Bill Bullitt; bouncing, eager young newspaper fellow, now being suddenly matured and sobered. His was an old and wealthy family of Philadelphia, and young men of exalted social position perhaps have their own way too easily, and are impatient of neglect and frustration. Also, they can afford the luxury of moral scruples. It made young Bullitt furious when Lloyd George would send for him, and pump his mind of everything he had seen and heard in the land of the Soviets, express deep appreciation of the service which Bullitt had performed - and then get up in Parliament and officially lie about him. The young aristocrat was like a man who strolls in a lovely garden, picking the fruit and tasting it, and suddenly falls through the sod and discovers that the garden is made over a charnel pit. When Lanny first met him, Bill had just scrambled out, his eyes and mouth full of horrors. He was hating it in a blind fury, and determined to expose it to the world.