"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.