"The truth is, Lanny, I have no idea what they did before the armistice. I suppose they were doing everything they could to help the Fatherland. But now they are trying to soften the French government by promoting political opposition. We have such troubles to deal with at home, and why shouldn't the French have their share?"
"That's all right with me," said the French-American, with a grin.
X
They had come to the embankment of the Seine, and were walking along the
"Let's get down to the problem," he said. "I can't take you to my rooms, because I share them with two other fellows. I can't take you to my uncle, because the police may have him already."
"That is true."
"Wherever we go, we'll have to take somebody into our confidence. It wouldn't be decent to introduce you under a false name. One can't play a trick like that on one's friends."
"I suppose hot."
"I believe Mrs. Chattersworth would be sympathetic, but she has so much company, and you'd have to meet people, otherwise the servants would think it strange."
"The servants will make trouble anywhere."
"I might get a car and drive you down to Juan; but the servants know you, and have heard my mother and me talking about you during the war."
"That's out."
"I thought of Isadora Duncan, who's in Paris. She's an internationalist and has queer people around her all the time. But the trouble is, she's irresponsible. They say she's drinking - the war just about drove her crazy."
There was a pause while he thought some more. "I believe our best guess is my mother. She's not very good at keeping secrets, but she'd surely keep this one because it means danger for me also."
"Where is she?"
"In an apartment in a small hotel. Most of the time she's invited out to meals, but she has breakfast sent to her rooms. She has no servant except a maid, and could find some excuse to get rid of her. That's the one way I can think of to get you hidden."
"But, Lanny, would your mother be willing to have a strange man in her apartment?"
"You aren't a stranger; you're my friend, and my mother knows how dear you are to me. It would be inconvenient, of course; but it's a matter of life or death."
"But don't you see, Lanny - the hotel people would be sure that she had a lover. There couldn't be any other assumption."
"They don't pay so much attention to that in Paris; and Beauty knows what it is to be gossiped about. You see, she lived with Marcel for years before they were married. All her friends know that story, and you might as well know it too."
"I only saw your mother for a few hours, Lanny, but I thought she was a wonderful person."
"She's been through a lot since then, and it's left her.sort of distracted and at loose ends. She's only recently got reconciled to the idea that she's never going to see her husband again. Now she's figuring how the world may be persuaded to recognize his genius. He really had it, Kurt."
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
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.
