Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

The couple talked over the problem. Irma was reluctant to take her precious darling on board a steamer; she hadn’t got over her memories of the Lindbergh kidnaping, and thought that an ocean liner was an ideal place for a band of criminals to study a twenty-three-million-dollar 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?"

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."

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."