Robbie came into the city by appointment, and in the office of the Barnes estate, he and Irma and Lanny sat down to a conference with Uncle Joseph Barnes and the other two trustees. Robbie had a briefcase full of figures setting forth the condition of Budd Gunmakers, a list of directors pledged to him, the voting shares which he controlled, and those which he could purchase, with their prices. The trustees presented a list of their poorest-paying shares, and weighed them in the balance. Under the will the trustees had the right to say no; but they realized that this was a family matter, and that it would be a distinguished thing to have Irma’s father-in-law become president of a great manufacturing concern. Also, Irma had developed into a young lady who knew what she wanted, and said it in the style of the days before parliamentary control of the purse had been established.
“There’s no use going into it unless you go heavily enough to win,” cautioned Uncle Joseph.
“Of course not,” said Irma, promptly. “We have no idea of not winning.” L’état, c’est moi!
“If you pay more than the market for Budd stocks, it will mean that you are reducing the principal of your estate; for we shall have to list them at market value.”
“List them any way you please,” said Irma. “I want Robbie to be elected.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Barnes, timidly, “you might make up the principal by reducing your expenditures for a while.”
“All right,” assented Her Majesty—“but it will be time enough to do that when you get me a bit more income.”
II
Johannes went to Newcastle to visit the Robbie Budds. The firm of R and R had many problems to talk out, and when Irma and Lanny arrived the pair were deeply buried in business. Robbie considered Johannes the best salesman he had ever known, bar none, and was determined to make a place for him with Budd’s. If Robbie won out, Johannes would become European representative; if Robbie lost, Johannes would become Robbie’s assistant on some sort of share basis. Robbie had a contract with the company which still had nearly three years to run and entitled him to commissions on all sales made in his territory. These matters Robbie put before his friend without reserve; he did it for medico-psychological reasons as well as financial—he wanted to get Johannes out of his depression, and the way to do it was to put him to work.
Robbie added: “Of course, provided there’s anything left of business.” America was in the throes of an extraordinary convulsion known as “the New Deal,” which Robbie described as “government by college professors and their graduate students.” They were turning the country upside down under a scheme called “N.R.A.” You had to put a “blue eagle” up in your window and operate under a “code,” bossed by an army general who swore like a trooper and drank like the trooper’s horse. New markets for goods were being provided by the simple process of borrowing money from those who had it and giving it to those who hadn’t. One lot of the unemployed were put to work draining swamps to plant crops, while another lot were making new swamps for wild ducks. And so on, for as long as Robbie Budd could find anybody to listen to him.
Everybody in Newcastle was glad to see the young couple again; excepting possibly Uncle Lawford, who wasn’t going to see them. The only place they had met was in church, and Irma and Lanny were going to play golf or tennis on Sunday mornings—Grandfather being out of the way. Or was he really out of the way? Apparently he could only get at them if they went to a medium! Lanny remarked: “I’d like to try the experiment of sleeping in his bed one night and see if I hear any raps.” Irma said: “Oh, what a horrid thought!” She had come to believe in the spirits about half way. Subtleties about the subconscious mind didn’t impress her very much, because she wasn’t sure if she had one.
The usual round of pleasure trips began. They motored to Maine, and then to the Adirondacks. So many people wanted to see them; Irma’s gay and bright young old friends. They had got used to her husband’s eccentricities, and if he wanted to pound the piano while they played bridge, all right, they would shut the doors between. He didn’t talk so “Pink” as he had, so they decided that he was getting sensible. They played games, they motored and sailed and swam, they flirted a bit, and some couples quarreled, some traded partners as in one of the old-fashioned square dances. But they all agreed in letting the older people do the worrying and the carrying of burdens. “I should worry,”—meaning that I won’t—and “Let George do it,”—so ran the formulas. To have plenty of money was the indispensable virtue, and to have to go to work the one unthinkable calamity. “Oh, Lanny,” said Irma, after a visit where an ultra-smart playwright had entertained them with brilliant conversation—“Oh, Lanny, don’t you think you could get along over here at least part of the time?”
She wanted to add: “Now that you’re being more sensible.” She didn’t really think he had changed his political convictions, but she found it so much pleasanter when he withheld them, and if he would go on doing this long enough it might become a habit. When they passed through New York he didn’t visit the Rand School of Social Science, or any of those summer camps where noisy and mostly Jewish working people swarmed as thick as bees in a hive. He was afraid these “comrades” might have learned what had been published about him in the Nazi papers; also that Nazi agents in New York might report him to Göring. He stayed with his wife, and she did her best to make herself everything that a woman could be to a man.
It worked for nearly a month; until one morning in Shore Acres, just as they were getting ready for a motor-trip to a “camp” in the Thousand Islands, Lanny was called to the telephone to receive a cablegram from Cannes, signed Hansi, and reading: “Unsigned unidentifiable letter postmarked Berlin text Freddi ist in Dachau.”
III
Their things were packed and stowed in the car, and the car was waiting in front of the mansion. Irma was putting the last dab of powder on her nose, and Lanny stood in front of her with a frown of thought upon his face: “Darling, I don’t see how I can possibly take this drive.”
She knew him well, after four years of wifehood, and tried not to show her disappointment. “Just what do you want to do?”
“I want to think about how to help Freddi.”
“Do you suppose that letter is from Hugo?”
“I had a clear understanding with him that he was to sign the name Boecklin. I think the letter must be from one of Freddi’s comrades, some one who has learned that we helped Johannes. Or perhaps some one who has got out of Dachau.”
“You don’t think it might be a hoax?”
“Who would waste a stamp to play such a trick upon us?”
She couldn’t think of any answer. “You’re still convinced that Freddi is Göring’s prisoner?”
“Certainly, if he’s in the concentration camp, Göring knows he’s there, and he knew it when he had Furtwaengler tell me that he couldn’t find him. He had him sent a long way from Berlin, so as to make it harder for us to find out.”
“Do you think you can get him away from Göring if Göring doesn’t want to let him go?”
“What I think is, there may be a thousand things to think of before we can be sure of the best course of action.”
“It’s an awfully nasty job to take on, Lanny.”
“I know, darling—but what else can we do? We can’t go and enjoy ourselves, play around, and refuse to think about our friend. Dachau is a place of horror—I doubt if there’s any so dreadful in the world today, unless it’s some other of the Nazi camps. It’s an old dilapidated barracks, utterly unfit for habitation, and they’ve got two or three thousand men jammed in there. They’re not just holding them prisoners—they’re doing what Göring told me with his own mouth, applying modern science to destroying them, body, mind, and soul. They’re the best brains and the finest spirits in Germany, and they’re going to be so broken that they can never do anything against the Nazi regime.”
“You really believe that, Lanny?”
“I am as certain of it as I am of anything in human af
fairs. I’ve been studying Hitler and his movement for twelve years, and I really do know something about it.”
“There’s such an awful lot of lying, Lanny. People go into politics, and they hate their enemies, and exaggerate and invent things.”
“I didn’t invent Mein Kampf, nor the Brownshirts, nor the murders they are committing night after night. They break into people’s homes and stab them or shoot them in their beds, before the eyes of their wives and children; or they drag them off to their barracks and beat them insensible.”
“I’ve heard those stories until I’ve been made sick. But there are just as many violent men of the other side, and there have been provocations over the years. The Reds did the same thing in Russia, and they tried to do it in Germany—”
“It’s not only the Communists who are being tortured, darling; it’s pacifists and liberals, even church people; it’s gentle idealists, like Freddi—and surely you know that Freddi wouldn’t have harmed any living creature.”
IV
Irma had to put down her powder-puff, but was still sitting on the stool in front of her dressing-table. She had many things that she had put off saying for a long time; and now, apparently, was the time to get them off her mind. She began: “You might as well take the time to understand me, Lanny. If you intend to plunge into a thing like this, you ought to know how your wife feels about it.”
“Of course, dear,” he answered, gently. He could pretty well guess what was coming.
“Sit down.” And when he obeyed she turned to face him. “Freddi’s an idealist, and you’re an idealist. It’s a word you’re fond of, a very nice word, and you’re both lovely fellows, and you wouldn’t hurt anybody or anything on earth. You believe what you want to believe about the world—which is that other people are like you, good and kind and unselfish—idealists, in short. But they’re not that; they’re full of jealousy and hatred and greed and longing for revenge. They want to overthrow the people who own property, and punish them for the crime of having had life too easy. That’s what’s in their hearts, and they’re looking for chances to carry out their schemes, and when they come on you idealists, they say: ‘Here’s my meat!’ They get round you and play you for suckers, they take your money to build what they call their ‘movement.’ You serve them by helping to undermine and destroy what you call capitalism. They call you comrades for as long as they can use you, but the first day you dared to stand in their way or interfere with their plans, they’d turn on you like wolves. Don’t you know that’s true, Lanny?”
“It’s true of many, I’ve no doubt.”
“It would be true of every last one, when it came to a showdown. You’re their ‘front,’ their stalking horse. You tell me what you heard from Göring’s mouth—and I tell you what I’ve heard from Uncle Jesse’s mouth. Not once but a hundred times! He says it jokingly, but he means it—it’s his program. The Socialists will make their peaceable revolution, and then the Communists will rise up and take it away from them. It’ll be easy because the Socialists are so gentle and so kind—they’re idealists! You saw it happen in Russia, and then in Hungary—didn’t I hear Károlyi tell you about it?”
“Yes, dear—”
“With his own mouth he told you! But it didn’t mean much to you, because it isn’t what you want to believe. Károlyi is a gentleman, a noble soul—I’m not mocking—I had a long talk with him, and I’m sure he’s one of the most high-minded men who ever lived. He was a nobleman and he had estates, and when he saw the ruin and misery after the war he gave them to the government. No man could do more. He became the Socialist Premier of Hungary, and tried to bring a peaceful change, and the Communists rose up against his government—and what did he do? He said to me in these very words: ‘I couldn’t shoot the workers.’ So he let the Communist-led mob seize the government, and there was the dreadful bloody regime of that Jew—what was his name?”
“Béla Kun. Too bad he had to be a Jew!”
“Yes, I admit it’s too bad. You just told me that you didn’t invent Mein Kampf and you didn’t invent the Brownshirts. Well, I didn’t invent Béla Kun and I didn’t invent Liebknecht and that Red Rosa Jewess who tried to do the same thing in Germany, nor Eisner who did it in Bavaria, nor Trotsky who helped to do it in Russia. I suppose the Jews have an extra hard time and that makes them revolutionary; they haven’t any country and that keeps them from being patriotic. I’m not blaming them, I’m just facing the facts, as you’re all the time urging me to do.”
“I’ve long ago faced the fact that you dislike the Jews, Irma.”
“I dislike some of them intensely, and I dislike some things about them all. But I love Freddi, and I’m fond of all the Robins, even though I am repelled by Hansi’s ideas. I’ve met other Jews that I like—”
“In short,” put in Lanny, “you have accepted what Hitler calls ‘honorary Aryans.’” He was surprised by his own bitterness.
“That’s a mean crack, Lanny, and I think we ought to talk kindly about this problem. It isn’t a simple one.”
“I want very much to,” he replied. “But one of the facts we have to face is that the things you have been saying to me are all in Mein Kampf, and the arguments you have been using are the foundation stones upon which the Nazi movement is built. Hitler also likes some Jews, but he dislikes most of them because he says they are revolutionary and not patriotic. Hitler also is forced to put down the idealists and the liberals because they serve as a ‘front’ for the Reds. But you see, darling, the capitalist system is breaking down, it is no longer able to produce goods or to feed the people, and some other way must be found to get the job done. We want to do it peaceably if possible; but surely the way to do it cannot be for all the men who want it done peaceably to agree to shut up and say nothing, for fear of giving some benefit to the men of violence!”
V
They argued for a while, but it didn’t do any good; they had said it before, many times, and neither had changed much. In the course of four years Irma had listened attentively while her husband debated with many sorts of persons, and unless they were Communists she had nearly always found herself in agreement with the other persons. It was as if the ghost of J. Paramount Barnes were standing by her side telling her what to think. Saying: “I labored hard, and it was not for nothing. I gave you a pleasant position, and surely you don’t wish to throw it away!” The ghost never said, in so many words: “What would you be without your money?” It said: “Things aren’t so bad as the calamity-howlers say; and anyhow, there are better remedies.” When Lanny, vastly irritated, would ask: “What are the remedies?” the ghost of the utilities king would fall silent, and Irma would become vague, and talk about such things as time, education, and spiritual enlightenment.
“It’s no good going on with this, dear,” said the husband. “The question is, what are we going to do about Freddi?”
“If you would only tell me any definite thing that we can do!”
“But that isn’t possible, dear. I have to go there and try this and that, look for new facts and draw new conclusions. The one thing I can’t do, it seems to me, is to leave Freddi to his fate. It’s not merely that he’s a friend; he’s a pupil, in a way. I helped to teach him what he believes; I sent him literature, I showed him what to do, and he did it. So I have a double obligation.”
“You have an obligation to your wife and daughter, also.”
“Of course, and if they were in trouble, they would come first. But my daughter is getting along all right, and as for my wife, I’m hoping she will see it as I do.”
“Do you want me to come with you again?”
“Of course I want you; but I’m trying to be fair, and not put pressure upon you. I want you to do what seems right to you.”
Irma was fond enough of having her own way, but wasn’t entirely reconciled to Lanny’s willingness to give it to her. Somehow it bore too close a resemblance to indifference. “A woman wants to be wanted,” she would say.
“Don�
��t be silly, darling,” he pleaded. “Of course I want your help. I might need you badly some time. But ought I drag you there against your will, and feeling that you’re being imposed on?”
“It’s a horrid bore for me to be in a country where I don’t understand the language.”
“Well, why not learn it? If you and I would agree not to speak anything but German to each other, you’d be chattering away in a week or two.”
“Is that what I do in English, Lanny?” He hastened to embrace her, and smooth her ruffled feelings. That was the way they settled their arguments; they were still very much in love, and when he couldn’t bring himself to think as she did, the least he could do was to cover her with kisses and tell her that she was the dearest woman in the world.
The upshot of the discussion was that she would go with him again, but she had a right to know what he was going to do before he started doing it. “Of course, darling,” he replied. “How else could I have your help?”
“I mean, if it’s something I don’t approve of, I have a right to say so, and to refuse to go through with it.”
He said again: “Haven’t you always had that right in our marriage?”
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