baby, her habits and entourage. No, it would be better to spend the summer in England's
green and pleasant land, where kidnapers were unknown. Let Mother be the one to brave the
ocean waves! Irma hadn't spent any money to speak of during the past year, and now interest
on bonds was being paid and dividends were hoped for. She said: "Let's drive about England,
the way we did on our honeymoon, and see if we can find some suitable place to rent."
Nothing is more fun than doing over again what you did on your honeymoon; that is, if
you have managed to keep any of the honeymoon feeling alive after five years. "There are so
many nice people there," argued the young wife. Lanny agreed, even though he might not have
named the same persons.
He knew that Rick's play was nearly done, and he wanted to make suggestions for the last
act. Then there would be the job of submitting it to managers, and Lanny would want to hear
the news. Perhaps it might be necessary to raise the money, and that wouldn't be so easy, for it
was a grim and violent play, bitter as gall, and would shock the fashionable ladies. But Lanny
meant to put up the money which he had earned in Germany—all of it, if necessary, and he
didn't want Irma to be upset about it. They were following their plan of keeping the peace by
making concessions, each to the other and in equal proportions.
They crossed the Channel and put up at the Dorchester. When their arrival was announced in
the papers, as it always would be, one of the first persons who telephoned was Wickthorpe,
saying: "Won't you come out and spend the week end?"
Lanny replied: "Sure thing. We're looking for a little place to rent this summer. Maybe you
can give us some advice." He said "little" because he knew that was good form; but of course it
wouldn't really be little.
"I have a place near by," responded his lordship. "I'll show it to you, if you don't mind."
"Righto!" said Lanny, who knew how to talk English to Englishmen.
When he told Irma about it, she talked American. "Oh, heck! Do you suppose it'll have tin
bathtubs?"
XII
But it didn't. It was a modern villa with three baths, plenty of light and air, and one of those
English lawns, smooth as a billiard table, used for playing games. There was a high hedge
around the place, and everything lovely. It was occupied by Wickthorpe's aunt, who was
leaving for a summer cruise with some friends. There was a staff of well-trained servants who
would stay on if requested. "Oh, I think it will be ducky!" exclaimed the heiress. She paid the price
to his lordship's agent that very day, and the aunt agreed to move out and have everything in
order by the next week end. Irma cabled her mother, and wrote Bub Smith and Feathers to get
everything ready and bring Baby and Miss Severne and the maid on a specified date. Jerry
Pendleton would see to the tickets, and Bub would be in charge of the traveling, Feathers being
such a featherbrain.
So there was a new menage, with everything comfortable, and no trouble but the writing of a
few checks and the giving of a few orders. A delightful climate and many delightful people; a
tennis court and somebody always to play; a good piano and people who loved music; only a few
minutes' drive to the old castle, where Lanny and his wife were treated as members of the
family, called up and urged to meet this one and that. Again Lanny heard statesmen discussing
the problems of the world; again they listened to what he had to tell about the strange and
terrifying new movement in Germany, and its efforts to spread itself in all the neighboring
countries. Englishmen of rank and authority talked freely of their empire's affairs, telling what
they would do in this or that contingency; now and then Lanny would find himself thinking:
"What wouldn't Göring pay for this!"
Zoltan had been in Paris, and now came to London. It was the "season," and there were
exhibitions, and chances to make sales. An art expert, like the member of any other profession,
has to hear the gossip of his monde; new men are coming in and old ones going out, and prices
fluctuating exactly as on the stock market. Lanny and his partner still had money in Naziland,
and lists of pictures available in that country, by means of which they expected to get their
money out. Also, there was the London stage, and Rick to go with them to plays and tell the
news of that world. There was the fashion rout, with no end of dances and parties.
Dressmakers and others clamored to provide Irma with costumes suited to her station; they
would bring them out into the country to show her at any hour of the day or night.
Good old Margy Petries, Dowager Lady Eversham-Watson, had opened her town house,
and begged the young couple to make it their headquarters whenever they came to town; she
telegraphed Beauty and Sophie to bring their husbands and come and have a good old-
fashioned spree. When Mrs. Barnes arrived, she, too, was "put up"; that was the custom in
Kentucky, and Margy still called herself a blue-grass-country girl, even at the age of fifty-five.
So it was just like Bienvenu at the height of midwinter; so many things going on that really
you had a hard time choosing, and would rush from one event to the next with scarcely time to
catch your breath. It was extremely difficult for Lanny to find time to brood over the fate of the
world; and that was what his wife had planned. She saw that she was winning out, and was
happy, and proud of her acumen. Until one Saturday noon, arriving at their villa for a week
end, Lanny found a telegram from Bienvenu, signed "Rahel" and reading:
"Letter from Clarinet in place you visited most distressing circumstances he implores help
am airmailing letter."
26
Out of This Nettle, Danger
I
THE argument started as soon as Irma read the telegram and got its meaning clear. She
knew exactly what would be in her husband's mind; she had been thinking about it for more
than a year, watching him, anticipating this moment, living through this scene. And she knew
that he had been doing the same. They had talked about it a great deal, but she hadn't
uttered all of her thoughts, nor he of his; they had dreaded the ordeal, shrinking from the
things that would be said. She knew that was true about herself, and guessed it was true about
him; she guessed that he guessed it about her—and so on through a complication such as
develops when two human souls, tied together by passionate love, discover a basic and
fundamental clash of temperaments, and try to conceal it from each other and even from
themselves.
Irma said: "Lanny, you can't do it! You can't, you can't!" And he replied: "Darling, I have to!
If I didn't I couldn't bear to live!"
So much had been said already that there was nothing to gain by going over it. But that is
the way with lovers' quarrels; each thinks that if he says it one time more, the idea will
penetrate, it will make the impression which it so obviously ought to make, which it has
somehow incomprehensibly failed to make on previous occasions.
Irma protested: "Your wife and child mean nothing to you?"
Lanny answered: "You know they do, dear. I have tried honestly to be a good husband and
father. I have given up many things that I thought were right for me, when I found they were
wrong for you. But I can't give up Freddi to the Nazis."
"A man is free to take up a notion like that—and then all his family duties become nothing?"
"A man takes up a notion like that when there's a cause involved; something that is more
precious to him than his own life."
"You're going to sacrifice Frances and me for Freddi!"
"That's rather exaggerated, darling. You and Frances can stay quite comfortably here while I
go in and do what I can."
"You're not asking me to go with you?"
"It's a job for someone who believes in it, and certainly not for anyone who feels as you do. I
have no right to ask it of you, and that's why I don't."
"What do you suppose will be my state of mind while you are in there risking your life with
those dreadful men?"
"It will be a mistake to exaggerate the danger. I don't think they'll do serious harm to an
American."
"You know they have done shocking things to Americans. You have talked about it often."
"What happened in those cases was accidental; they were mix-ups in street crowds and
public places. You and I have connections in Germany, and I don't think the authorities will
do me any harm on purpose."
"Even if they catch you breaking their laws?"
"I think they'll give me a good scare and put me out."
"You know you don't believe that, Lanny! You're only trying to quiet me down. You will be in
perfectly frightful danger, and I will be in torment."
She broke down and began to weep. It was the first time he had seen her do that, and he was a
soft-hearted man. But he had been thinking it over for a year, and had made up his mind that
this would be the test of his soul. "If I funk this, I'm no good; I'm the waster and parasite I've
always been called."
There was no way to end the argument. He couldn't make her realize the importance of the
matter to him; the duty he owed to what he called "the cause." He had made Freddi Robin
into a Socialist; had taught him the ideal of human brotherhood and equality, what he called
"social justice." But Irma hated all these high-sounding words; she had heard them spoken by so
many disagreeable persons, mostly trying to get money, that the words had become poison to
her. She didn't believe in this "cause"; she believed that brotherhood was rather repulsive, that
equality was another name for envy, and social justice an excuse for outrageous income and
inheritance taxes. So her tears dried quickly, and she grew angry with herself for having shed
them, and with him for making her shed them.
She said: "Lanny, I warn you; you are ruining our love. You are doing something I shall
never be able to forgive you for."
All he could answer was: "I am sorry, darling; but if you made me give up what I believe is
my duty, I should never be able to forgive either you or myself."
II
The airmail letter from Juan arrived. Freddi's message had been written in pencil on a small
piece of flimsy paper, crumpled up as if someone had hidden it in his mouth or other bodily
orifice. It was faded, but Rahel had smoothed it out and pasted the corners to a sheet of
white paper so that it could be read. It was addressed to Lanny and written in English. "I am in
a bad way. I have written to you but had no reply. They are trying to make me tell about other
people and I will not. But I cannot stand any more. Do one thing for me, try to get some poison
to me. Do not believe anything they say about me. Tell our friends I have been true."
There was no signature; Freddi knew that Lanny would know his handwriting, shaky and
uncertain as it was. The envelope was plain, and had been mailed in Munich; the handwriting
of the address was not known to Lanny, and Rahel in her letter said that she didn't know it
either.
So there it was. Irma broke down again; it was worse than she had imagined, and she knew
now that she couldn't keep Lanny from going. She stopped arguing with him about political
questions, and tried only to convince him of the futility of whatever efforts he might make.
The Nazis owned Germany, and it was madness to imagine that he could thwart their will
inside their own country. She offered to put up money, any amount of money, even if she had to
withdraw from social life. "Go and see Göring," she pleaded. "Offer him cash, straight out."
But Rick—oh, how she hated him all of a sudden!—Rick had persuaded Lanny that this was not
to be done. Lanny wouldn't go near Göring, or any of the other Nazis, not even Kurt, not even
Heinrich. They wouldn't help, and might report him and have him watched. Göring or
Goebbels would be sure to take such measures. Lanny said flatly: "I'm going to help Freddi to
escape from Dachau."
"Fly over the walls, I suppose?" inquired Irma, with bitterness.
"There are many different ways of getting out of prison. There are people in France right now
who have managed to do it. Sometimes they dig under the walls; sometimes they hide in
delivery wagons, or are carried out in coffins. I'll find somebody to help me for a price."
"Just walk up to somebody on the street and say: 'How much will you charge to help me get a
friend out of Dachau?' "
"It's no good quarreling, dear. I have to put my mind on what I mean to do. I don't want to
delay, because if I do, Freddi may be dead, and then I'd blame myself until I was dead, too."
So Irma had to give up. She had told him what was in her heart, and even though she would
break down and weep, she wouldn't change; on the contrary, she would hold it against him
that he had made her behave in that undignified fashion. In her heart she knew that she
hated the Robin family, all of them; they were alien to her, strangers to her soul. If she could
have had her way she would never have been intimate with them; she would have had her own
yacht and her own palace and the right sort of friends in it. But this Socialism business had
made Lanny promiscuous, willing to meet anybody, an easy victim for any sort of pretender,
any slick, canting "idealist"—how she loathed that word! She had been forced to make
pretenses and be polite; but now this false "cause" was going to deprive her of her husband and
her happiness, and she knew that she heartily despised it.
It wasn't just love of herself. It was love of Lanny, too. She wanted to help him, she wanted
to take care of him; but this "class struggle" stepped in between and made it impossible; tore
him away from her, and sent him to face danger, mutilation, death. Things that Irma and her class
were supposed to be immune from! That was what your money meant; it kept you safe, it gave
you privilege and security. But Lanny wanted to throw it all away. He had got the crazy
notion that you had no right to money; that having got it, you must look down upon it, spurn
