Between Two Worlds, Page 3

  Such was Lanny’s plan. He remembered Newcastle, Connecticut, and his stern old Puritan grandfather who manufactured machine guns and ammunition and conducted a Sunday morning Bible class. On the Sunday after the Armistice he had expounded a text from the hundred and twenty-second Psalm: “Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.” The grandson learned that one of the carpenters working on the place was a skilled wood-carver, and he brought this man into the drawing-room and had him cut the first half of this text in old English letters on the thick edge of the heavy mantel.

  After the work was done, Lanny happened to read one of his great-great-uncle’s books on ancient Greece, and learned that the poet Aristophanes had said “Euphemia ’sto,” which is “Peace be here,” or “Peace to this house.” It was one point on which the Greek and the Hebrew spirits had met; it was a longing in the hearts of all decent people the world over. But Lanny had derived from his six months’ adventure in diplomacy the conviction that the decent people were still a long way from getting what they wanted. The best that anyone could do for the present was to build him a not too costly home in some part of the earth where there was no gold, oil, coal, or other mineral treasure, and which was not near a disputed boundary or strategic configuration of land or water. There with reasonable luck he might have peace within his own walls, and perhaps think some thoughts which might be helpful to a hate-tormented world.

  2

  Kennst Du das Land?

  I

  The “season” was coming once more to the Riviera; and all over Europe and the Americas individuals and families were realizing that it was possible once again to get passports and to travel freely, en prince if you had the price. Swedish lumber merchants and Norwegian operators of whaling fleets, Dutch traders in coffee and rubber and tin, Swiss holders of electrical shares, British owners of coal and iron mines, French masters of munitions plants which had magically escaped bombing through a devastating war—such lucky persons now heard at the family breakfast table laments about damp fogs and icy gales, and were reminded of a land where the lemon trees bloom, in the dark arbors the golden oranges glow, a soft wind is wafted from the blue heaven, the myrtle stands still and the laurel high—kennst du es whol?

  So once more the white yachts began to appear off the little harbors of Cannes and Nice, and the long blue express trains from Paris were crowded with passengers. Perhaps half of them were Americans, who for five years and more had been reading about Europe twice every day, but had been denied their customary cultural holidays. Now again there were luxurious steamers, and no submarines to challenge their crossing. Tourists took sight-seeing busses to the war zones, visiting those towns whose names had become historic, even though they were mispronounced. Sight-seers roamed over battle-fields whose dreadful smells had not yet been washed away. They peered into blasted trenches with human hands and booted feet sticking out of the debris. They gathered trench helmets and shell cases to be taken home and used as book-ends or umbrella-stands.

  And when these thrills began to pall, there was the Côte d’Azur, the beautiful, the romantic, unscarred by war; its rocky shores and cliffs and winding valleys, its ever-blue sea and ever-shining sun. Here you wore sport clothes and strolled on fashionable promenades, staring at great personages about whom you had read in the newspapers: kings and their mistresses, Asiatic potentates and their boys, Russian grand dukes escaped from the Bolsheviks, and a miscellany of statesmen and prizefighters, journalists and jockeys, masters of industry and stars of stage and screen. In the evening you could put on your finery and rub elbows with these celebrated ones in the gambling casinos, and even hope to pick up acquaintance with them in the so-called American bars.

  This latter institution had moved into what promised to be permanent exile; for at home a strange new phenomenon had developed out of the war, a throw-back to old-time Puritanism. It had begun as a war measure, to save foodstuffs, and now was being riveted upon the country by means of a constitutional amendment that could never be repealed, so everybody said. As the awful reality of Prohibition dawned upon the pleasure-seeking classes, they had but one impulse, to purchase steamer tickets for the land of wine, women, and song. When the steamer had passed the three-mile limit off Sandy Hook the corks began to pop and the joy to flow, and first-class passengers swore solemn oaths that never, never would they return to the land of the Pilgrims’ pride. How often they said it made little difference, because they had forgotten it all next morning.

  II

  Of course not all the visitors to the Riviera were like that. People of cultivated taste came to enjoy the warm climate and lovely scenery. Up in the hills behind Cannes were villas belonging to English and Americans who came regularly each winter and lived decorous lives. Among these was Mrs. Emily Chattersworth, who had turned her estate into a home for the re-education of French mutilés. Marcel had gone up there and entertained them by making sketches on a blackboard, and after Lanny’s return to Bienvenu one of his first duties had been to pay these poor fellows a call. He was interested in their progress, and also he wanted to see the portrait which Marcel had made of Mrs. Emily.

  It had a central position in the drawing-room of Sept Chênes, and showed a tall and stately lady, with entirely white hair, standing by a small table which you could see in this room. So she had stood in the early days of the war, when she had called the American residents together and urged them to active sucor of the refugees and the wounded. The face in the portrait was grave, not to say stern, and the pose and feeling of the picture were so real that the lips seemed about to open and say, as Lanny had heard them say more than once: “My friends, we have accepted the hospitality of France, and if there is such a thing as gratitude in the world, we owe it now to her people.” To Lanny it was as if he heard also the voice of Marcel declaring the debt that la patre was paying to the chatelaine by the agency of his fine portrait.

  A year had passed since victory had been secured, and the hostess could feel that she had done her duty. The crippled men who had learned new trades were sent back to their homes, and those whose cases were hopeless were placed in government care. Sept Chênes, like Bienvenu, was done over, and the owner came to spend the winter. When Lanny heard of it he went to call, and told the great lady how much he thought of the portrait, and she in turn told him how the reputation of Marcel Detaze was spreading among art lovers. “What are you going to do with all those beautiful paintings, Lanny?”

  He answered that his mother was intending to arrange for an exhibition as soon as she returned; and this brought up a subject by which their friend’s mind was deeply intrigued. “What on earth is Beauty doing in Spain?”

  The young man hadn’t been a budding diplomat for six months to no purpose. He was prepared for the question, and smiled lightly. “She’ll be home soon, and will tell you about it.”

  “You mean you’re not going to tell me?”

  Lanny kept on smiling. “I think she wants to have the fun.”

  “But what on earth? Is it something sensational?”

  “Why should you think that?”

  He had learned a lot about the feminine soul, and one thing was its intense preoccupation with matters of the heart. Here was this stately lady, almost sixty—he knew it to the day because her mother had once told him she had been born in Baltimore to the tramping of the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, marching to the American Civil War. In fifty-eight and three-quarter years the infant Emily Sibley had become what the French call a grande dame; presiding over a salon and matching wits with the keenest minds in France. She had cultivated an impressive manner, she dressed with studied care, and provided for herself a semi-royal background; but here she was possessed by an itch of curiosity, revealing to Lanny the soul of a child who simply couldn’t endure to be kept in the dark about what had happened to her intimate friend Mabel Blackless, alias Beauty Budd, alias Madame Detaze, veuve.

  Lanny told her about Baby Marceline and his own researches into the
development of the musical sense in infants. He told about Robbie Budd, and the progress of his oil venture in southern Arabia. This involved the fate of Emir Feisal, that dark-skinned replica of Christ whom Lanny had met at Mrs. Emily’s town house during the Peace Conference. The young Emir was again in Paris, pleading to be allowed to rule his native land; his friend Lawrence had gone into hiding, for shame at the breach of trust. Mrs. Emily ought to have been deeply interested in them both; but instead she broke in: “Tell me the truth, Lanny—has Beauty married again?”

  He had to resume his gay smile. “There’s a reason why she wants to tell you herself, and when you hear it you’ll understand.”

  “Such a woman! Such a woman! I never know what to expect of her.”

  “Well, at least she doesn’t bore you,” replied Lanny, his smile widening to a grin. Many others did, he knew.

  III

  With the coming of cold weather, Beauty and Kurt had motored to the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Beauty had been away from her baby and her home a full year, and couldn’t stand it much longer. She was still afraid to bring Kurt into France; but she got him comfortably settled in another cottage, this time with a Catalan woman to do his cooking and cleaning up. Then she sent a wire to Lanny and took a train for Cannes.

  Stepping from that train she looked just as lovely as on the first day that Lanny could remember. In the sunshine her hair still had glints of gold, and it wasn’t gilt. She wore a light gray traveling dress and a little hat like a flower-basket turned upside down. When the youth had seen her last she had grown slender because she was too badly frightened to eat; but now her natural gaiety had come back, and all her colors—also that torment of womankind which you politely called “plumpness.” Lanny would have to start scolding her again, and keep the cream pitcher on his own side of the table.

  Beauty saw that both her offspring were brown and well; the baby shy, and not pleased to have a stranger seize her and cover her with kisses. To call her “Maman” awakened no memories and gave no pleasure. The mother was anxious; had she lost the affection of her darling forever? Lanny told her to chase the puppies around the patio, and she and the baby would be friends in half an hour; and so it proved.

  Beauty inspected the new architecture and interior decoration and gave it her approval. A lovelier home could not be desired: when would she be able to live in it? She hadn’t been able to write about her anxieties, and now she poured them out. Should she risk bringing Kurt here? Or should she take him to New York or some other remote place until his record had been forgotten?

  They shut themselves up in her boudoir for a long conference. Lanny, manlike, was disposed to minimize the danger. The war was over; the intelligence department of the French army must have been demobilized along with the rest; there wouldn’t be so many agents seeking for men who traveled on false passports, and if one were caught it would be a matter for criminal, not military, law. Officials could be reached by influence, or, in the last extreme, by money.

  “But what about Leese?” argued the mother. “She’s bound to recognize Kurt, and she knows that he’s German.”

  “I’ve fixed that all up,” said the worldly-wise youth. “I told her I was building the new studio for my friend the Swiss boy who had visited us before the war. Did she remember Kurt? She said she had thought he was a German. I explained that he came from the German part of Switzerland. La Suisse and la Silésie don’t sound very different to her, and she has got the new idea well fixed in her mind.”

  Lanny went on to tell about Emily Chattersworth and the curiosity that was troubling her so greatly. She also had met Kurt, so it would be necessary to make a confidante of her. Lanny drove his mother to Sept Chênes, and left the pair together, while he sat out in the sunshine on the piazza, reading a novel he had chosen from his new library, Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance, which his great-great-uncle had talked about. A fervor for social perfection had seized upon the young idealists of New England before the Civil War, and they had tried living in a colony. It hadn’t worked, but it was fun, at any rate in a book. Lanny would read for a while, and then stop and wonder how Mrs. Emily was taking the still stranger romance which she was hearing from the lips of its heroine.

  IV

  “This much I have guessed,” the mistress of Sept Chênes was saying. “It’s a man!”

  “I seem to be built that way,” replied Beauty, sorrowfully. “Honestly, Emily, I hadn’t the remotest idea it could happen to me again. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life grieving for Marcel. But men have suffered so dreadfully in this war—”

  “And you met one who couldn’t live without you?” There was mischief in the eyes of the salonnière.

  “Don’t tease me, Emily. It’s a tragic story, and you’ll see how helpless I was. But first you have to swear on your knees that you won’t breathe a word of it to anyone; you must really mean that, because it might be a matter of life and death—to say nothing of a perfectly frightful scandal. The man was a German agent.”

  “Oh, mon dieu!” exclaimed the other.

  “I need your friendship as I never did before. Maybe you will decide not to have anything to do with me, but at least you will keep my secret until I release you.”

  “You have my word,” said the older woman.

  “You remember the summer that Lanny was in Hellerau, before the war. One of the boys he met there was a German named Kurt Meissner; his father is what they call the comptroller-general of a great estate, Schloss Stubendorf, in Upper Silesia, which is now a part of Poland. I don’t know if you will recall that Lanny went to spend Christmas with that family.”

  “I believe I do,” replied Emily, and added: “You’ve been robbing the cradle?”

  “No—you may say I’ve been robbing the grave.”

  “Well, I knew it would be something unusual. Go on.”

  “This boy was older than Lanny, and had a great influence over him. He was serious and hard-working, in the German fashion. He was studying to become a composer of music, and he had all the different instruments and was learning to play them. He was a moral boy, and Lanny looked up to him as being a sort of inspired character, and always talked about trying to be as good as Kurt, and so on. They kept exchanging letters, and Lanny let me read them, so I knew him quite well.”

  “And you were falling in love with him?”

  “I never thought of any man but Marcel. Kurt was Lanny’s friend and I thought he was helping Lanny to be a good boy, and I used to hold him up as an example. Then the war came, and Kurt became an officer in the German army. He and Lanny kept in touch, because Lanny had a friend in Holland and Kurt had one in Switzerland who forwarded letters for them. After the Armistice, when Lanny and I met in Paris, he was unhappy because he hadn’t got word from Kurt, and thought he must have been killed in the last fighting, like Marcel. Lanny wrote to Kurt’s father in Stubendorf, but no answer came. He went on worrying half-way through the Peace Conference; and then one day, walking on the Rue de la Paix, he saw his friend riding in a taxi.”

  “A German officer?”

  “In civilian clothes. Lanny knew he must be there on a forged passport. He followed him and made himself known. Kurt tried not to recognize him, but finally admitted what he was doing. Of course it would have meant shooting if he had been caught. Lanny didn’t tell me, he didn’t tell anyone; he just went on doing his work at the Crillon, and keeping that secret locked in his heart.”

  “How perfectly awful, Beauty!”

  “That went on until late one night Kurt got word to Lanny that the French police had raided the headquarters of the group for which Kurt was working. The poor fellow had been walking the streets for twenty-four hours before he called Lanny; and they went on walking on a rainy winter night while Lanny tried to think of some place to take him. He thought of you—but you had so many servants, they decided you couldn’t hide anyone. They thought of my brother Jesse, who is some sort of Red, as you know; but the police were watchi
ng Jesse—this was right after Clemenceau had been shot. When Kurt was about exhausted, Lanny decided there was nothing to do but bring him to my hotel. After midnight I heard a tap on my door, and there were the pair of them, and what could I do?”

  “You mean you kept that man in your apartment?”

  “If I had sent him out on the street, it would have been to certain death; and I had seen so much killing. I thought the war was over, and we were supposed to be making peace.”

  “What was he doing in Paris, Beauty?”

  “He was trying to influence French and Allied opinion for the lifting of the blockade against Germany. You remember how it was—we were so indignant about the starving of German women and children.”

  “But what could a German agent do along that line?”

  “He had large sums of money at his disposal. He won’t talk about it, but from hints I have picked up I gather that he accomplished a good deal. He managed to meet some influential people. Don’t you begin to guess anything, Emily?”

  Mrs. Chattersworth had been listening to the troubles of a harum-scarum friend; it hadn’t dawned on her that they might have anything to do with herself. But now suddenly a bolt of lightning flashed in her mind. “Beauty Budd! That Swiss musician?”

  “Yes, Emily,” said the anxious culprit. “That Swiss musician was Kurt Meissner.”

  V

  The time had come to which Lanny’s mother had been looking forward over a period of six months. Sooner or later she was going to have to make a clean breast of these matters to Emily, and with forebodings in her heart she had rehearsed the scene. Now, when it actually confronted her and she saw the look of horror on Emily’s face, she couldn’t bear to let her speak, but rushed on desperately: