Futility by William Gerhardie Page A

examine very carefully the requirements of the various families and hangers-on.
    First, there was Fanny’s family in Germany. Now Fanny, once definitely married to Nicholas, should have more moral courage to face the situation. Those spendthrift brothers in the Guards must be told to chuck the army and enter a commercial life. Militarism was no honourable profession. The sisters should marry. For all I knew they might long ago have married men with considerable means, but have kept it quiet from their sister, so as to continue to draw allowances from Nicky.
    Now Zina’s family came next. The number of its mere hangers-on was preposterous. Of course, those two ancient grandfathers were already tottering and their end was nigh. The flappers who strummed on the piano were growing up. A few of them might be conveniently married off to suitable and financially independent young men. Zina’s father, assisted by Eisenstein, might make a better job of his doctoring; though to begin with, he should receive medical treatment himself.
    Then …
    I thought. There was no “then.” I had disposed of them all. There were indeed fewer cases than I had expected. I had disposed of them as I had gone along. Of course, Baron Wunderhausen, after he had married Sonia, was not really disposed of, perhaps on the contrary. But this was an isolated case into which I need not enter, at any rate just yet.
    Perhaps I was young and absurd. But
was
I absurd? What was wrong with my proposition?
    What thoughtful mind would accuse me of absurdity ifit only cared to look at the thing squarely? The people were helpless—children.
    Of course, I would have to do it all tactfully, slowly, discreetly. But really, was it not a worthy mission? To arbitrate; to
settle
things. I felt as President Wilson must have felt years later when he was laying down the principles of a future League of Nations.…
    I stood before Nina the following day, bursting with the desire to lay it all down before her all in a heap, as it were, but holding myself back with an effort, conscious of the danger of precipitate action. “Let us sit down, Nina,” I said, fingering a large folded sheet of paper. I held another even larger sheet, rolled up under my arm. “You see, Nina, we young people must help the old people out of their muddles. They are obviously unfit to help themselves.”
    “I have done what I could,” she answered. “I have been down to Moscow, but of course I admit I only acted as Fanny Ivanovna’s envoy.”
    “Exactly. You have failed?”
    “I didn’t enjoy plenipotentiary powers, as they call it.”
    “Quite so. Now listen to me, Nina.” And I proceeded to lay before her the principles on which I said I was going to reshape their lives: each one would have to give up something for the benefit of the whole, and each one would similarly receive a compensation of some kind in that future life of theirs: in short, as I had mapped it out the night before. I now unfolded my chart and diagram, and she bent over them and our heads nearly touched as we went into this complicated question very thoroughly and seriously indeed. I could barely suppress the look of pride that every now and then would steal over my face. I explained and propounded with something of the insolence of a creator, an artist and a prophet, and she listenedto me, all absorbed in my scheme, following the diagram, I thought, with marvellous intuition.
    “Ah, yes. I understand,” she murmured. “That’s good. This couldn’t be better. Ah, there you kill two birds with one stone … oh, three birds!”
    Then Nina rose.
    “Well, what d’you think of it!” I said with undisguised triumph in my look. And looking at me with a quaint and sudden seriousness that astonished me immensely (to the detriment of my triumphant look), she answered:
    “All this is very well, but … pray what
business is it all of yours
!”
    I expostulated. I told her how eager I had been to help. But she laughed.