VIII
Lanny rented a car and motored Zoltan out to have lunch with Emily Chattersworth at her estate, Les Forêts, where she spent the greater part of each year, a very grand place of which Lanny had memories from childhood. On this lawn under the great beech-trees he had listened to Anatole France exposing the scandals of the kings and queens of old-time France. In this drawing-room he had played the piano for Isadora Duncan, and had been invited to elope with her. Here also he had played accompaniments for Hansi, the day when Hansi and Bess had met and fallen irrevocably in love.
The white-haired chatelaine wanted to hear the news of all the families. She was interested in the story of Zaharoff and the duquesa, whom she had known. Emily had had a seance with Madame Zys-zynski, but hadn’t got any significant results; it must be because she was hostile to the idea, and had frightened the spirits! She preferred to ask Zoltan’s opinion of the Salon, which she had visited. Having a couple of paintings which no longer appealed to her taste, she showed them to the expert and heard his estimate of what they might bring. She told him not to hurry; she had lost a lot of money, as everybody else had, but apparently it was only a paper loss, for the stocks were still paying dividends. Lanny advised her not to count on that.
A young Pink wouldn’t come to Paris without calling at the office of Le Populaire and exchanging ideas with Jean Longuet and Leon Blum. Lanny knew what they thought, because he read their paper, but they would want to hear how the workers' education movement was going in the Midi, and what the son of an American industrialist had seen in the Soviet Union. From a luncheon with Longuet, Lanny strolled to look at picture exhibitions, and then climbed the Butte de Montmartre to the unpretentious apartment where Jesse Blackless was in the midst of composing a manifesto to be published in L’Humanite, denouncing Longuet and his paper as agents and tools of capitalist reaction. When Jesse learned that his nephew had been to Odessa he began to ply him with questions, eager for every crumb of reassurance as to the progress of the Five-Year Plan.
Jesse lived here with his companion, a Communist newspaper employee. Theirs was a hard-working life with few pleasures; Jesse had no time to paint, he said; the reactionaries were getting ready to shut down upon the organized workers and put them out of business. The next elections in France might be the last to be held under the Republic. Lanny’s Red uncle lived under the shadow of impending class war; his life was consecrated to hating the capitalist system and teaching others to share that feeling.
He was going into this campaign to fight both capitalists and Socialists. Lanny thought it was a tragedy that the labor groups couldn’t get together to oppose enemies so much stronger than themselves. But there couldn’t be collaboration between those who thought the change might be brought about by parliamentary action and those who thought that it would have to be done by force. When you used the last phrase to Jesse Blackless, he would insist that it was the capitalists who would use force, and that the attitude of the workers was purely defensive; they would be attacked, their organizations overthrown—the whole pattern had been revealed in Italy.
Lanny would answer: "That is just quibbling. The Communists take an attitude which makes force inevitable. If you start to draw a gun on a man, he knows that his life depends upon his drawing first."
Could capitalism be changed gradually? Could the job be done by voting some politicians out of office and voting others in? Lanny had come upon a quotation of Karl Marx, admitting that a gradual change might be brought about in the Anglo-Saxon countries, which had had parliamentary institutions for a long time. Most Reds didn’t know that their master had said that, and wouldn’t believe it when you told them; it seemed to give the whole Bolshevik case away. Jesse said that quoting Marx was like quoting the Bible: you could find anything you wanted.
They went on arguing, saying little that they hadn’t said before. Presently Francoise came in, and they stopped, because she didn’t share the carefree American sense of humor, and would get irritated with Lanny. He told her the good things about the Soviet Union; and soon came Suzette, her young sister, married to one of the murderous taxi drivers of Paris. Uncle Jesse said this gargon had the right solution of the social problem: to run over all the bourgeois, while using Suzette to increase the Red population. They had a second baby.
The women set to work to prepare supper, and Lanny excused himself and walked back to the Crillon to meet his father. When Robbie asked: "What have you been doing?" he answered: "Looking at pictures." It was the truth and nothing but the truth—yet not the whole truth!
IX
One other duty: a visit to the Chateau de Bruyne. Lanny had promised Marie on her deathbed that he would never forget her two boys. There wasn’t much that he could do for them, but they were friendly fellows and glad to tell him of their doings. He phoned to the father, who came and motored him out. Denis de Bruyne, though somewhat over seventy, was vigorous; his hair had become white, and his dark, sad eyes and pale aristocratic features made him a person of distinction. He was glad to see Lanny because of the memories they shared.
On the way they talked politics, and it was curious to note how the same world could appear so different to two different men. Denis de Bruyne, capitalist on a modest scale, owner of a fleet of taxicabs and employer of Suzette’s husband—though he didn’t know it—agreed with Jesse Blackless that the Communists were strong in Paris and other industrial centers and that they meant to use force if they could get enough of it. Denis’s conception of statesmanship was to draw the gun first. He was a Nationalist, and was going to put up money to keep Jesse and his sort from getting power. Lanny listened, and this was agreeable to an entrepreneur who was so certain of his own position.
Denis de Bruyne was worried about the state of his country, which was in a bad way financially, having counted upon German reparations and been cheated out of most of her expectations. A French Nationalist blamed the British business men and statesmen; Britain
was no true ally of France, but a rival; Britain used Germany to keep France from growing strong. Why did American business men further this policy, helping Germany to get on her feet, which meant making her a danger to France? Foreign investors had lent Germany close to five billion dollars since the end of the war: why did they take such risks?
Lanny replied: "Well, if they hadn’t, how would Germany have paid France any reparations at all?"
"She would have paid if she had been made to," replied Denis. He didn’t say how, and Lanny knew better than to pin him down. The men who governed France hadn’t learned much by their invasion of the Ruhr and its failure; they still thought that you could produce goods by force, that you could get money with bayonets. It was useless to argue with them; their fear of Germany was an obsession. And maybe they were right—how could Lanny be sure? Certainly there were plenty of men in Germany who believed in force and meant to use it if they could get enough of it. Lanny had met them also.