Lanny made the mistake of taking his wife to one of these gatherings, and she didn’t enjoy it. In the first place, most of the arguing was done in German, which is rarely a very pleasant-sounding language unless it has been written by Heine; it appears to the outsider to involve a great deal of coughing, spitting, and rumbling in the back of the throat. Of course there were many who were able to speak English of a sort, and were willing to try it on Lanny’s wife; but they wished to talk about personalities, events, and doctrines which were for the most part strange to her. Irma’s great forte in social life was serenity, and somehow this wasn’t the place to show it off.
She commented on this to her husband, who said: "You must understand that most of these people are having a hard time keeping alive. Many of them don’t get enough to eat, and that is disturbing to one’s peace of mind."
He went on to explain what was called the "intellectual proletariat": a mass of persons who had acquired education at heavy cost of both mind and body, but who now found no market for what they had to offer to the world. They made a rather miserable livelihood by hack-writing, or teaching—whatever odd jobs they could pick up. Naturally they were discontented, and felt themselves in sympathy with the dispossessed workers.
"But why don’t they go and get regular jobs, Lanny?"
"What sort of jobs, dear? Digging ditches, or clerking in a store, or waiting on table?"
"Anything, I should think, so long as they can earn an honest living."
"Many of them have to do it, but it’s not so easy as it sounds.
There are four million unemployed in Germany right now, and a job usually goes to somebody who has been trained for that kind of work."
Thus patiently Lanny would explain matters, as if to a child. The trouble was, he had to explain it many times, for Irma appeared reluctant to believe it. He was trying to persuade her that the time was cruelly out of joint, whereas she had been brought up to believe that everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. If people didn’t get jobs and keep them, it must be because there was something wrong with those people; they didn’t really want to work; they wanted to criticize and sneer at others who had been successful, who had worked hard, as Irma’s father had done. He had left her secure. Who could blame her for wanting to stay that way, and resenting people who pulled her about, clamored in her ears, upset her mind with arguments?
It wasn’t that she was hard of heart, not at all. Some pitiful beggar would come up to her on the street, and tears would start into her eyes, and she would want to give him the contents of her well-filled purse. But that was charity, and she learned that Lanny’s friends all spurned this; they wanted a thing they called "justice." They required you to agree that the social system was fundamentally wrong, and that most of what Irma’s parents and teachers and friends had taught her was false. They demanded that the world be turned upside down and that they, the rebels, be put in charge of making it over. Irma decided that she didn’t trust either their capacity or their motives. She watched them, and announced her decision to her too credulous husband: "They are jealous, and want what we’ve got, and if we gave it to them they wouldn’t even say thank you!"
"Maybe so," replied the husband, who had suffered not a few disillusionments himself. "It’s no use expecting human beings to be better than they are. Some are true idealists, like Hansi and Freddi."
"Yes, but they work; they would succeed in any world. But those politicians, and intellectuals who want to be politicians but don’t know how — Lanny laughed; he saw that she was beginning to use her own head. "What you have to do," he cautioned, "is to consider principles and not individuals. We want a system that will give everybody a chance at honest and constructive labor, and then, see that nobody lives without working."
V
The daughter of J. Paramount Barnes was forced to admit that there was something wrong, because her dividends were beginning to fall off. In the spring she had been hearing about the little bull market, which had sounded fine; but during the summer and fall had come a series of slumps, no less than four, one after another. Nobody understood these events, nobody could predict them. You would hear people say: "The bottom has been reached now; things are bound to take a turn." They would bet their money on it— and then, next day or next week, stocks would be tumbling and everybody terrified.
There came a letter from Irma’s uncle Joseph, one of the trustees who managed her estate. He warned her about what was happening, and explained matters as well as he could; during the past year her blue-chip stocks had lost another thirty points, below the lowest mark of the great panic when she had been in New York. It appeared to be a vicious circle: the slump caused fear, and fear caused another slump. The elections in Germany had had a bad reaction in Wall Street; everybody decided there wouldn’t be any more reparations payments. Mr. Joseph Barnes added that there hadn’t really been any for a long time, and perhaps never had been, since the Germans first borrowed in Wall Street whatever they wished to pay. Irma didn’t understand this very well, but gave the letter to Lanny, who explained it to her—of course from his Pink point of view.
One thing Uncle Joseph made plain: Irma must be careful how she spent money! Her answer was obvious: she had been living on the Robins for half a year, and when she went back to Bienvenu they would resume that ridiculously simple life. You just couldn’t spend money when you lived in a small villa; you had no place to put things, and no way to entertain on a large scale. Lanny and his mother had lived on thirteen hundred dollars a month, whereas Irma had been accustomed to spend fifty times that. So she had no trouble in assuring her conscientious uncle that she would give heed to his advice. Her mother had decided not to come to Europe that winter; she was busy cutting down the expenses of the Long Island estate. Lanny read the letter and experienced the normal feelings of a man who learns that his mother-in-law is not coming to visit him.
VI
Heinrich Jung called Lanny on the telephone. "Would you like to meet the Führer?" he inquired.
"Oh, my gosh!" exclaimed Lanny, taken aback. "He wouldn’t be interested in me."
"He says he would."
"What did you tell him about me?"
"I said that you were an old friend, and the patron of Kurt Meissner."
Lanny thought for a moment. "Did you tell him that I don’t agree with his ideas?"
"Of course. Do you suppose he’s only interested in meeting people who agree with him?"
Lanny had supposed something of the sort, but he was too polite to answer directly. Instead he asked: "Did you say that I might become a convert?"
"I said it might be worth while to try."
"But really, Heinrich, it isn’t." "You might take a chance, if he’s willing."
Lanny laughed. "Of course he’s an interesting man, and I’ll enjoy meeting him."
"All right, come ahead."
"You’re sure it won’t injure your standing?"
"My standing? I went three times to visit him while he was a prisoner in the Landsberg fortress, and he is a man who never forgets a friend."
"All right, then, when shall we go?"
"The sooner the better. He’s in Berlin now, but he jumps about a lot."
"You set the time."
"Are you free this afternoon?"