WORLD'S END

"Entrez," called Jesse Blackless, at their knock. He was sitting in an old dressing gown by the open window, working on a manuscript. Beside him was a table, looking like the one which Lanny remembered in the cabin on the Riviera; the remains of a meal, a tobacco pouch and a bad-smelling pipe, a great quantity of books and papers which apparently were never moved or dusted. The canvas cot which served as a bed was unmade, and there was an open book on the floor beside it, as if it had been laid there when the reader was ready to go to sleep. An overcoat thrown over a chair, an umbrella on it - in short, general disorder and the absence of the feminine touch. There were unframed paintings on the walls, but no easel and no smell of paint. Apparently Uncle Jesse had given up art for politics.

He looked startled when his nephew came in, followed by a strange gentleman. He put his manuscript away in a hurried manner and his eyes moved to the door, as if he expected a couple of gendarmes might follow.

"Hello, Uncle Jesse," said the youth.

"Hello," returned the other, not rising.

"Uncle Jesse, this is Professor Alston, my chief at the Crillon."

"How do you do?" said the painter; but he didn't offer to shake hands, and he didn't say: "Have a seat" - which, indeed, would have been difficult, since the only extra chair was piled with papers. His manner said: "What's this?"

"Uncle Jesse," explained Lanny, "Professor Alston asked me to bring him to you because he has an important proposition to put and he hopes you'll be kind enough to hear it."

The painter, of course, knew that his nephew had been avoiding him for years and that this had been at Robbie's orders. He knew also that the youth had taken a job with the peace-makers. He looked over the mild and bespectacled professor, whose physical vigor hadn't improved much under the strain of hard work in damp and chilly Paris. There was no abatement of the uncle's hostile manner as he said: "All right. What is it?"

Frankly, but at the same time tactfully, the scholar explained the efforts of the American commission to bring at least a partially sane peace out of an insane war. President Wilson was being opposed, not merely by all the jealousies and greeds and fears of Europe, but by the reactionary elements at home, the big-money interests and our newly awakened militarism. Just now there was a crisis over the subject of Russia and a decision might be taken at any hour. The President wanted to get the warring factions together in a council hall; while the French and British military men wanted invasions on a big scale.

"I don't know whether you have heard it or not," said Alston, "but Winston Churchill is in Paris now, for the purpose of urging a real war to put down Bolshevism. Foch has been demanding it from the day of the armistice, and the whole French General Staff is with him. Clemenceau is beginning to waver - and of course Lloyd George wavers all the time."

"What's the use of telling all this to me?" questioned Uncle Jesse.

The professor looked about him uneasily, and asked: "May I sit down? I have not been well."

The painter knew that he hadn't been a gentleman, and he stood up. "Have my chair," he said.

"This is all right," replied the other, and sat on the edge of the cot. Lanny pushed some books aside and rested on a corner of the table.

"Mr. Blackless, nobody in our staff at the Crillon wants any more war; and there's a group of us who are convinced that concessions have to be made and an armistice brought about in Russia before there can be any real peace. That doesn't mean that we are sympathetic to Bolshevism, but it does mean that we have studied the forces which brought on the revolution, and we don't consider it possible to set back the clock of history. My own position is entirely that of a scientist "

"What sort of a scientist?"

"I am a geographer and ethnologist, but just now I have been set the task of finding out what some of the peoples of Europe want."

"You have your hands full, Professor."

"No doubt of that; and I have the right to ask for the help of every well-meaning man."

"What leads you to think that I am well-meaning?"

"I think it of every man, Mr. Blackless, until he shows me otherwise. I assume that you don't want to see any more war in Europe."

"You assume incorrectly, Professor."

"You do want war?"

"I tell the workers to fight for their rights, and I hope they will do so until they have overthrown the capitalist system."

"But surely you can't think that the Russians can defeat the Allied armies, if they decide seriously to fight!"

"My answer is that if the Allied armies believed they could defeat the Russians, they'd be fighting right now. I take your visit as a sign that the Allied leaders are beginning to find out what the rank and file of their troops are thinking and saying. Lloyd George and Clemenceau will have to face it, and even Foch and the lineal descendant of the Duke of Marlborough."