X
Lanny Budd was interested in this news, and no less in the envoy who brought it. What an eccentric little man, he thought. Why should a scholarly person, of breeding and presumably of means, take the side of those underworld figures against his own class? He took it only partly, as Lanny soon began to understand; there appeared to be a war between his heart and his head, and you could almost watch this conflict going on. Stef would become eager and excited, and then would check himself. “If I go too fast,” he would say, “people won't listen to me. And, besides, I may be wrong.” He would proceed to put some “ifs” and “buts” into his discourse.
Steffens was like Herron, a pacifist and a moralist first of all. He wanted a revolution, but one of the mind and spirit; he was pained by the thought that it might have to be bloody and violent. Did we want such an overturn in western Europe? Could we pay the price?
Jesse Blackless, for his part, was sure that we were going to pay it, whether we wanted to or not. There developed an argument between the two men, to which Lanny listened with close attention. The painter foretold how the Allied armies would continue to decay, and the Red movement would spread to Poland and Germany, and from there to Italy and France. The painter knew it was coming; he knew the very men who were preparing to do the job. Stef looked at Jesse's nephew with a twinkle in his little blue-gray eyes and said: “It's nice to have a religion, Budd. Saves all the trouble of having to think.”
A curious experience to Lanny to hear Bolshevism referred to as a “religion,” even in jest. But he understood when the reporter described the wave of fervor which had seized upon the people of Russia, victims of many centuries' oppression, sunk in unspeakable degradation — and now suddenly finding themselves masters of a mighty empire, and setting to work to make it into a workers' and peasants' co-operative. People were hungry, they were ragged, half-frozen all winter, but in their eyes was a feverish light and in their hearts was hope, vision, a dream of the future. From the unformed, unregarded mass, from soldiers and sailors and factory workers and peasants, had come new leadership, new statesmanship. . . .
Steffens had talked for hours with Lenin: that studious, shrewd little man who had watched the storm gathering and seized the proper hour to strike. “From now on we proceed to build Socialism,” he had said quietly, the day after the coup. As Steffens described him, he knew more about the Allied statesmen than they new about themselves. He understood the forces confronting the Soviets; and while the bourgeois world sent armies against him, he would send fanatics, men and women who hated capitalism so much that they were willing to give their lives to undermine and destroy it. “Men like your Uncle Jesse,” said Stef, with his sly smile; and Lanny understood, even better than Stef could have imagined.
Lanny was sorry that he had to leave. He summoned his courage and asked if Mr. Steffens would have lunch with him at the Crillon. The other advised him to think it over for a day and then call him. “Colonel House is the only other member of the staff who would have the courage to invite me just now!”
XI
The young fellow who had attempted to kill Clemenceau had been tried and sentenced to death, but the Premier had been persuaded to commute his sentence. The one who had killed Jaurès had been held in prison for nearly five years, because the authorities were afraid to try him during wartime. Now the trial was held, and the lawyers who defended him did so by seeking to prove that Jaurès had been disloyal to his country. So it became in effect a trial of the Socialist leader, and he was found guilty, while the assassin, whose name, oddly enough, was Villain, was acquitted.
The result was a mighty demonstration of protest by the workers of Paris, culminating in a parade in which the red flag was carried for the first time since the armistice. Lanny stood on the street corner and watched it go by, in company with his new friend Steffens. Each of them had his thoughts and did not say them all. Lanny saw his Uncle Jesse marching in the front ranks, looking very determined — but doubtless quaking inside, because no one knew if the police would try to stop the parade, and it might be a killing matter if they did. The nephew thought: “Kurt had something to do with this”; and again: “I wonder if he's watching.”