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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

it, and thwart the very purposes for which it existed, the reasons why your forefathers had

worked so hard! If that was not madness, who could find anything that deserved the name?

III

All social engagements were called off while this duel was fought out. Irma said that she had a

bad headache; but as this affliction had not been known to trouble her hitherto, the rumor

spread that the Irma Barneses were having a quarrel; everybody tried to guess what it could be

about, but nobody succeeded. Only three persons were taken into the secret; Rick, and the

mothers of the two quarrelers. Rick said: "I wish I could help you, old chap; but you know

I'm a marked man in Germany; I have written articles." Lanny said: "Of course."

As for Fanny Barnes, she considered it her duty to give Lanny a lecture on the wrongness of

deserting his family on account of any Jew or all of them. Lanny, in turn, considered it his

duty to hear politely all that his mother-in-law had to say. He knew it wasn't any good

talking to her about "causes"; he just said: "I'm sorry, Mother, but I feel that I have incurred

obligations, and I have to repay them. Do what you can to keep Irma cheerful until I get

back." It was a rather solemn occasion; he might not come back, and he had a feeling that his

mother-in-law would rind that a not altogether intolerable solution of the problem.

As for Beauty, she wasn't much good in this crisis; the sheer horridness of it seemed to

paralyze her will. She knew her boy's feeling for the Robin boys, and that it couldn't be

overcome. She knew also that he suspected her concern about Irma's happiness as being not