WORLD'S END

Leese and Rosine of course knew all about the love affair. To them it was romance, delight, the wine and perfume of life; they lived upon it as women in the United States were learning to live upon the romances, real and imaginary, of the movie stars of Hollywood. Beauty's servants talked about it, not merely among themselves, but with all the other servants of the neighborhood; everybody watched, everybody shared the tenderness, the delight; everybody said, what a shame the young painter was so poor!

Now Beauty received a card from Marcel, saying that, if anything should happen to him, he wanted her to have his paintings. "I don't know if they will ever be worth anything," he wrote; "but you have been kind to them, while to my relatives they mean nothing. Perhaps it might be well to move them to your house, where they would be safer. Do what you please about this."

Beauty, watching for every hint in his messages, clasped her hand to her heart. "Lanny, do you suppose that means he's going to some post of danger?"

"I don't know why it should," said the boy. "We have our own paintings insured, and certainly we ought to take care of his."

Beauty had been going to the little house and sitting there, remembering the times when she had been so happy, and reproaching herself because she had not appreciated her blessings. Now she went with Lanny to carry out Marcel's commission. There were more than a hundred canvases, each tacked upon a wooden frame, and stacked in a sort of shed-room at the rear of the house. One by one Lanny brought them out and studied them - all those aspects of Mediterranean sea and shore which he knew better than anything else. He exclaimed over the loveliness of them; he was ready to set himself up as an art critic against all the world. Beauty wiped the tears from her eyes and exclaimed over the wickedness of a war that had taken such a lover, and stopped such work, and even made it impossible for Sophie to come to the Riviera unless she walked! There was a group of paintings from the trip to Norway. Lanny had never seen these or heard of them, for it had been before he was told about Marcel. The boy had heard so much about this cold and shining country, and here it was by the magic of art. Here was more than fiords and mountains and saeters and ancient farmhouses with openings in the roofs instead of chimneys; here was the soul of these things, old, yet forever new, so long as men loved beauty and marveled at its self-renewal. Here, also, was Greece with its memories, and Africa with its grim desert men, muffled and silent. The Bluebird was being made over into a hospital ship right now; but its two cruises with the soap king would live - "well, as long as I do," said Lanny.

VI

The whereabouts of Marcel was supposed to be a secret, upon the preserving of which the safety of la patrie depended. But when you take thousands of young men from a neighborhood and put them into encampments not more than a hundred miles away, it soon becomes what the French call un secret de Polichinelle, something which everybody knows. The truck drivers talked when they came to the towns for supplies, and pretty soon Leese and Rosine were able to inform the family that the painter's regiment was on guard duty in the Alpes Maritimes.

Italy had declared for neutrality in this war; but it could not be forgotten that she had been a member of the so-called Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria. There was a powerful Italian party known as the Triplicists, who wanted to carry out the pledges, and in these days of quick political overturns France dared not leave her Provencal border unguarded. So Marcel had for a while what the British called a "cushy" job. But the trouble was that as the menace of the German steam roller increased, more and more men were being grabbed up and rushed to the north. Right away Beauty decided that she must visit that camp. She didn't wait to write, not knowing if the censor would let such a letter pass; she would just go to the place and lay siege to whatever authorities might be in command. Beauty had arts which she trusted, but which could not be exercised by mail.

The difficulty lay with transportation. They had their car, but Pierre Bazoche was in the army - oddly enough he was a sergeant, and gave orders to the beloved of his former employer. This seemed to the employer among the atrocities of war, but it amused Lanny, and he was sure it wouldn't worry Marcel. Pierre was a capable fellow, and his orders were doubtless proper.