I
The Redburys were at Saturday dinner. Their numbers indicated a party,
but in reality no one but the intimate family was present. Mr and Mrs
Redbury, their sons Hardy and David; Hardy’s wife Beatrice, and her
brother Sampson Phillips; the two daughters of the house, Hedda and Nell;
and Miss Swinley, the strictly English governess. Four members were
missing from the company: Con, the eldest Redbury, since several months
at the Front; Wilhelmina, the infant child of Hardy and Beatrice, who
had annoyed her grandfather and been banished to the nursery; Hedda’s
husband, Gustav Fürth, interned in England for being a German; and Max,
the boy who came between Hardy and David, interned in Germany for being
an Englishman.
The international situation round the table was one of extremest
delicacy. Otto Rothenburg had settled in England for business purposes,
and was naturalized directly after his marriage with Trudchen Wagner.
But he made no secret of his dislike of the English, and his contempt
of the semi-English; and had always petulantly insisted that _his_
household should be conducted on sound and hearty Teuton principles, of
which the main points were a diet of rich sufficiency for the elders,
and no nonsense and no discrimination for the tribe of children.
Though the quantity of these—six alive and two dead—indicated that he
did not confine his German ideas wholly to the table. Each of the six
played a chosen musical instrument—chosen by Herr Rothenburg himself,
be it remarked. The two girls had frequently been burdened by plaid
frocks; German was the language spoken as a matter of course at meals;
filial obedience and the good-night kiss were insisted upon; and there
was a frequent coming and going of relatives scattered over Germany
and Austria, with large gay packets of gingerbread tied up in silver
paper; or of polite unknowns bearing letters of introduction from the
Rothenburg relatives abroad; and very eager to be invited to a meal.
When Hedvig, at eighteen, was wedded to a German, her father was
delighted. Hedvig herself had never been consulted on the match. When
Gerhardt, at twenty-four, had displayed unexpected initiative and engaged
himself to Beatrice Phillips, Rothenburg fretted and objected and sulked,
and locked himself in the bathroom, and came out again when it was least
desirable that he should do so; and during a full six months rendered the
lives of all about him wholly unbearable. He was finally only reconciled
to the bride’s English birth and parentage by her large settlements. Max,
two years younger than Gerhardt, was, however, immediately despatched out
of danger to his Uncle Karl in Hanover, there to learn the business and
eventually to marry his Uncle Karl’s daughter Klara. Konrad’s enthusiasm
for territorial drill—well, with a stretch of the imagination, that could
be ascribed to his German blood revealing itself in a wistful passion
for the obligatory military service which could never be his; therefore,
Konrad, who of all the brood was his mother’s darling, was grudgingly
permitted to remain in London and read for the Bar. David, sent to a
day-school, was destined later for Heidelberg University, as a corrective
to any ultra-English notions which St Crispin’s may have put into his
head.
And then had occurred this most inconvenient war.
Herr Otto Rothenburg did not wait to be subtle about his change of front.
Immediately he scuttled for cover. He became in name, in sentiment and
in habit what he already was by law—a fine old English gentleman. His
household was revolutionized; he turned livid at the sound of a single
German word spoken; he clung to such English acquaintances as were
his, with a limpet-like fervour of affection which no coldness could
disconcert. He forbade all communication with relatives abroad; and
all mention of them. In short, Mr Otto Redbury was afraid. To their
mother’s utter bewilderment, Hedvig, Lenchen, Konrad and Gerhardt were
metamorphosed to Hedda, Nell, Con and Hardy. His fever reached its zenith
when Gustav Fürth, an unnaturalized German of military age, was arrested
and interned. And his daughter Hedda, penniless and unprotected, but in
the highest spirits, returned to the parental roof, with the obvious
and natural intention of remaining where she was for the duration of
the war. Once supremely her father’s good girl, Hedda was not at all
popular in this crisis. It was difficult airily to disavow all enemy
connection, with concerned enquiries emanating from all quarters as to
Fürth’s whereabouts and treatment. Supposing, too, that when she came
to the house, Beatrice should be offended at Hedda’s presence there ...
Beatrice, that never-to-be-sufficiently appreciated link with solid
British stock!
Beyond a little astonished realization at finding herself encircled by
alien enemies—her attitude conveyed that she had never noticed before
that the Rothenburgs were German—Beatrice had a nature too well-bred
and womanly—gentle-womanly, David was wont to call it—to have expressed
as yet any sort of resentment. She was very nice and tactful to Hedda
about “poor Gustav.” It was a miracle that Hardy could have been sensible
and far-seeing enough as to have married so successfully. Mr Redbury
propitiated her with a determination and unction that—again to quote
David—“fair gives one the sicks.” But then Mr Redbury was desperately
afraid.
“Bodadoes, Beatty, mein Schatz?” enquired Mrs Redbury, dumpy and
apple-cheeked and very harrassed by her husband’s perpetual amendment of
her accent, and by the awful trinity of Briton’s representatives present
in the dining-room.
And Beatrice blushed faintly and glanced apologetically at her brother
Samson, who looked as wooden as though a toast of the King had just been
proposed. Miss Swinley coughed, a delicate and pensive cough; something
had annoyed Miss Swinley that morning, and she was ripe for revenge.
“I met a vellow in de Zity dis morning,” said Mr Redbury, glaring at
his wife, “who vould by no means pelieve dat I vos bartly a voreigner.
‘Vot—you?—go on! all dese years I dake you for a bure-plooded Priton!’
He roared with laughter ven I told him my selige father was porn in
Amsterdam. He vouldn’t pelieve me. ‘Your vife,’ he said, ‘she speaks wiz
a slight aggsent. But you are von of us, Redbury, old man.’ He _vouldn’t_
pelieve me——” himself roaring with laughter, but still glaring at Trudchen.
“And when I told him how beautiful you were,” sang Hedda—David kicked her
to shut up. He could not bear it when the old man made an ass of himself.
“He wouldn’t believe me ...” Hedda chirrupped irrepressibly. The world
bereft of Gustav was so full of radiant possibilities that she could not
refrain from bursting out. For her, at least, the war was not entirely an
evil thing.
Mr Redbury spoke quite correct English, but his accent was not so
irreproachable as to justify the complete good faith of the “vellow in
the Zity.” And that “selige” had slipped in by mistake; and would prevent
him from being quite so privately nasty to his wife about “mein Schatz”
as he had anticipated.
A joint appeared on the table simultaneously with the post. One letter
bearing the “opened by Censor” label, black letters on white pasted
across the slit of the envelope, was handed by the servant to Mrs Redbury.
“Ach Gott! von der liebsten besten Anna!” as a second letter was revealed
under cover of the first.
Mr Redbury hissed out a venomous “Put it away!” which his wife, fumbling
and tearful over this communication from her beloved elder sister in
Berlin, neither heard nor heeded. Mr Redbury dared not insist, in front
of Rhoda, the parlour-maid—not to mention Beatrice, Samson Phillips and
Miss Swinley. Besides, though his sway might be peevishly unpleasant, it
never exacted the awed obedience yielded to a true despot. He quivered
with horror at the present predicament, as it dawned upon him that his
wife intended to read aloud the letter from Germany, in little bursts and
snatches of joy. David was encouraging her by eager questions—that boy
had no sense whatever. Mr Redbury began to talk very loud and fast.
“It makes me broud to see all the ghagi round my table”—he looked
unutterable compliments at Samson Phillips’ captain’s uniform, then
possessively at Hardy, who was short-sighted and had only been admitted
to Home Service; and at David, a public-school cadet. “If only Con vere
here, to gomblete our number; did I tell you, Captain Villips, zat my
eldest boy has been mentioned in disbatches for botting four Huns wiz his
_own_ rifle?”
“Glad to hear Con has a sense of property!” muttered David.
“Ei, die Arme!” cried Mrs Redbury, weeping. “Franz has been shot. You
remember little Franz, Otto? Ach verzeihen Sie—forgive me, Captain
Villips. Such a dear little boy, my sister’s youngest. He stayed with us
for a whole year, and learnt his lessons wiz Nell.”
Vindictively Mr Redbury carved all the gristle for Hedda, who had
a German husband. It was a vent to his feelings. He showed a nice
discrimination in reserving the juiciest bits for Beatrice; Miss
Swinley, he judged correctly, was past all such caressing treatment;
one could safely anticipate her month’s notice the very next morning.
Not that she was really necessary any longer to superintend Nell’s
studies. Nell was seventeen, and in the ordinary course of events,
would have been “out” next year. But Miss Swinley would spread a report
that her principles would not permit her to remain in a household so
pronouncedly pro-German.... To Mr Redbury’s jaundiced fancy, the tread
of the policeman sounded nearer. And he was never far away—that mythical
policeman.
“Oh, Mother, is there anything about Max?” asked Nell, her dark liquid
eyes wistful with anxiety for her favourite brother.
Mrs Redbury fluttered the thin foreign pages, crossed with pointed
scribble. “But yes—Max is well as can be hoped, and his Uncle Karl
makes enquiries that he is gomfortable. That good Karl! And—ach,
unglaublich!—his own nephew, Otto Salinger, is in a gonfinement camp over
here, and Karl asks if we, in return, vill find him out and be nice to
him? But yes, indeed; perhaps ze poor young man vould like some of my
Dampfnudeln; he vill surely be homesick. Otto, do you hear?”
Miss Swinley repeated her pensive cough. And Mr Redbury, wrathfully
ignoring the question of his unfortunate namesake, addressed himself
again to Captain Phillips.
“Ven do you think we shall knock them out definitely?” His loud tones
drowning Trudchen’s agitated twitter. “I have had a tip to lay in yards
and yards and yards of punting.”
Samson Phillips’ handsome, heavy features expressed bewilderment.
“Punting?”
“Rather overdone the bunting to-day, haven’t you, father?” David
suggested impertinently. It was flag-day for one of the minor Balkan
states, and Mr Redbury wore his expensive trophies duplicated and
tripled, with the air of a General bespattered with honourable medals.
Mr Redbury told an anecdote of the titled lady who had decorated him. And
then Beatrice asked:
“Do you really think we shall win the war so soon? It’s almost too good
to be true, isn’t it?” her pleasant, well-bred English voice was a relief
after so much duologue from her parents-in-law. “But I don’t think it’s
very nice of the Germans to use liquid fire, do you?”
Hardy beamed at her fondly through his glasses. “Not very nice of them,
no. Not drawing-room manners, is it, darling?” He was a man of quaint
appearance, a startlingly fair replica of Nell and David, who had the
dark melancholy eyes, aquiline cast of feature, and sensitive lips that
stamped them true Hebrew. But Hardy, with his light eyes, light hair,
light skin, and enormous nose, gave somewhat the impression of a Jew who
had been well bleached. Hedda’s colouring lay between the two extremes.
Con enjoyed the good looks of the family; blue eyes always afire with
mirth; tall, athletic figure; incarnate good-nature and high spirits, he
was adored by his men, and well-liked by his superior officers. As for
his mother—not Max nor Hardy nor David, nor Hedda nor Nell, could in sum
equal her love for this miracle of an eldest-born, now in the trenches.
“Are you laughing at me?” Beatrice remained quite serene. “Yes, please; I
will have some cream.”
“Die Anna writes zat zere is only a wee-little milk for each child in
Berlin; not enough to keep zem alive, she say.”
“Let zem die!” cried Mr Redbury, with a ferocity that was really foreign
to his nature—only he was afraid. “All the better. Let zem all die. Zey
only grow up to be Cherman soldiers fighting against humanity.”
Nell flashed out: “Oh, father, how can you?—little soft babies——” and
suddenly plunged back into silence, marvelling at her own temerity.
David as usual supported her in rebellion. “Not all German babies grow
up to be German soldiers. Some grow up to be English soldiers” ... his
ironic downward glance at his own uniform emphasized the remark.
“If Con were here, young ’un, he’d lick you for that,” and Hardy sent a
message of strong disapproval over his glasses at his cadet brother.
“Con’s different. However keen he may be on his regiment and England
and all that, he never talks fatuous drivel about wanting all the German
babies to die.”
“Vatuous trivel ...” shouted Mr Redbury.
“Dear me,” murmured Miss Swinley.
“I’m sure David doesn’t mean to be rude, father,” Beatrice put in mildly.
“We none of us want babies to die, but of course it’s nicer if it isn’t
English babies.”
David laughed. And his father ordered him from the table. Nell
immediately slipped from her seat and joined him at the door.
“Ach Lenchen!” sobbed Mrs Redbury. “And you haf not touched the pie on
your blate!”
“Gom back!” roared Mr Redbury. For there was always a possibility that
she might find favour in the eyes of Samson Phillips. He had noticed
with pleasure that a secret understanding seemed to exist between them;
frequently they whispered together.... “My son-in-law a Captain in
ze Zappers!”... Another link with safety. One might almost defy the
policeman then.
II
The parlour-maid accosted David at the foot of the stairs. “Young Mr
Marcus is in the schoolroom, sir. He said he would wait for you there.”
“Oh—thanks, Rhoda.”
“Hullo, Marcus. Not end of the term yet, is it? Scarlet fever again?”
“No. I’ve chucked Winborough.” Richard was lounging on the shabby
fender-seat, drumming with one heel against the side of the fireplace.
He was not looking well; dark marks under his eyes and a rather drawn
expression round the mouth caused David, who was observant, to scrutinize
him with some attention. He was rather surprised at this visit. On
the whole Richard was not wont to seek out his society with overmuch
enthusiasm. Richard’s friends were mostly sturdy athletes of the Greville
Dunne order, who summed up David as “sloppy” because he played the cello,
and hated games.
“Chucked Winborough? That’s pretty casual. What does your guv’nor say?”
“Said I could do as I liked about it.”
“Good Lord! mine would bellow the house down. He’s just slung me out of
the dining-room over some nonsense about German and English babies.”
David threw himself disconsolately in the battered old armchair. The
other boy glanced up with sudden interest.
“What’s your family’s attitude towards the war?”
“We’re all at sixes and sevens. Father’s more English than the English;
and mother sits and worries in alternate layers over Con and her own
people in Germany. Does not mention them, of course. Hardy is a genuine
patriot, I believe, without making much row about it. Of course being
married to Beatrice has influenced him. We hang the fact of Beatrice out
in the front garden like the clean washing.... Sickening. And all the
while there’s Max interned over there—and Gustave interned over here—also
unmentionable ... not that Hedda minds much. But father.... You should
see his face when visitors enquire after ‘poor Mr Fürth’—and they do it
as if they were treading on egg-shells. The etiquette of internment is as
yet very precarious. One isn’t at all sure if Gustave is to be exalted
as a martyr or mysteriously hushed up as though he were a convict—I say,
what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’m in for it too, that’s all.”
“Internment? You, Marcus? I—I’m sorry. I’d no idea....”
“All right. You needn’t do the egg-shell trick. I was born in Germany,
and father didn’t have me naturalized, that’s all.”
David was silent a moment, thoughtfully staring at his boots. “Has he
appealed?”
“Yes. No good. The Government has condoned too many cases, and the
Anti-German section are beginning to protest. So they’ve had to tighten
up again. We’ve got a let-off from deportation for grandfather and Aunt
Stella. Can’t expect more, with all these spy cases about.”
He went on in a very matter-of-fact voice: “I couldn’t stick Winborough
this term. Just knowing.—It’s absurd—I was as keen to lick the Germans
as ever—but how could _I_ join in when the fellows jawed about Huns and
wiping ’em off the face of the earth.... I felt crimson inside—beastly—as
though I were there on false pretences. And all the chaps of my age were
preparing to join up next year ... last term I was still one of them.
They couldn’t understand why.... It had to come out at last—the Head
knew all along, naturally. But we were playing the Meltonians in their
own field, twelve miles away—and I had to register and get permission,
show my photograph—all that mush. Like a ticket-of-leave man. The fellows
were awfully decent. They didn’t even cut me. Harrison, speaking for
the majority, went so far as to say it was rough luck, and they knew I
couldn’t help it”—Richard’s underlip twisted sardonically. “But they
weren’t quite sure, after that, what ought to be said in front of me ...
dead pauses when I strolled up to one group or another.... I came home at
half-term, last Monday, and I’m not going back.”
“So you’re out of it,” whispered David, still staring as though
fascinated at his boots. “Out of the fighting, and the need of fighting,
and the need to choose ... you lucky beggar. Oh, you lucky beggar....”
“I realize the fact that I’m out of it, thanks. But I don’t quite follow
your congratulations.”
“It’s that ... I’ve been in Germany, two or three times, once for six
months, and—Oh, Richard, what has _happened_ to the old Germany, the
Germany we knew, to change it so? I simply _can’t_ realize that they
commit atrocities in Belgium and sink hospital ships and mutilate
children, and are bragging and swaggering and blood-letting all over
Europe.... I can only remember the little things—the silly, comfortable
little things.... You follow the stream, and in a clearing in the heart
of the great blue pinewood you come bang on the sturdy old forest-house,
with antlers branching over the wooden doorway, and the coat-of-arms of
some royalty ... perhaps you may catch a glimpse of him in his green
hunting-coat ... tables with check blue and red cloths, and saucers of
wood-strawberries like tiny drops of blood—do you know the smell and
flavour of wood-strawberries?—and a flaxen peasant child who watches you
with enormous solemn eyes while you eat, and curtseys by clockwork for
hours after you’ve left her.... And all over the country the ridiculous
wooden signposts that say on one arm ‘Zum Biergarten,’ and on the other
‘Zum Aussichtspunkt,’ and never get tired of it—and you never get tired
of it either. Or of leaning out of your window in the early morning to
hear them play the Chorale, slow and pure and stately—and the ground is a
mist of blue bilberries—and the Rhine legends jostle each other on your
excursion, and you send off postcards on which everybody signs their
names—and everyone says good-day—and everyone is musical.”
“Good God, how awful,” was Richard’s _sotto voce_ comment on this list of
blisses.
David heard, and said rather impatiently: “You’ve been to Germany,
haven’t you? Can’t you understand what I mean?”
Richard ransacked his memory for a single incident or aspect of Dorzheim
which had found tender home in his heart, and discovered not one.
“All the little things ...” David murmured again, hands clasped behind
his head, and eyes mournfully brooding on the past. “Oh, I know I’m a
sentimental idiot, but I can’t shake it all off to command. Not at once.”
“If you feel like that, I don’t honestly see why you need join up.
’Tisn’t compulsory.”
“I’ve got to ... there’d be such a fuss with father—and he would never
forgive me. Max can’t, and Hardy’s married.... There’s only Con and
me. Con—well, you know him—he rings British wherever you sound him....
I’ve seen mother look at him as though wondering how he could ever have
happened to be her son. I don’t want Con to despise me—he’s always been
ripping to us younger ones. And then—oh, just because there’s a doubt
about us all, we can’t afford, as a family, to have a slacker about. If
our name had always been Redbury”—again that melancholy smile and shrug
of the shoulders, so typically Jewish.
“Have you changed it?”
“Dear old man, you didn’t commit the horrible error of asking our
parlour-maid for Mr David Rothenburg?”
“Yes, I did. Sorry. I believe Deb warned me, but I forgot. Does it
matter?”
“She may give notice to-morrow ... we live uncomfortably on a tight-rope
nowadays, and some of us haven’t learnt how to walk it yet. Poor mother,
for instance—she’s always side-slipping. Rhoda is fairly new, and father
deludes himself that she doesn’t know our guilty secret. I say, you
remember Miss Swinley?” The mischievous school-boy was uppermost in David
now—“and how proud she was of being descended from the Hereford Swinleys?
Well, now it’s got round to her how someone said publicly that of course
she’s really a German and everybody knows her real name is Schweinthal!”
Richard threw back his head and filled the room with his guffaws.
“Schweinthal—Swine-valley ... Swinley! Oh, that’s top-hole! She was
always so jolly full of swank and backbone. But all the same, Redbury,
I’m all at sea with these swarms of English county people that have
magically cropped up in our set during the last few weeks. No offence
meant to you, but who the deuce are the Lanes and the Silvertons and the
Mounts and the Gordons and the Meadowes?”
“All old familiar faces really. And I can tell you who the Mounts and
the Meadowes are, anyhow ... they’re each one-half of my cousins, the
Wiesenbergs. The elder and younger branch of the family have long been at
daggers drawn, and they’ve hailed the opportunity to split into two. And
the Mounts know nothing of the Meadowes, nor shall the Meadowes ever go
to meet the Mounts. My other cousin, whose father changed his name about
forty years ago, swears that he’ll change it back again from Holmes to
Hohenheim by way of protest to all the funk and flurry.”
“Quite a pleasing moment at our boarding-house last week, when two
Scandinavian ladies were introduced to each other and neither knew the
language.”
“But both broke into floods of delighted German? That’s what happens
these days when Swede meets Swede.”
“Aunt Stella says speaking German nowadays is as good a thrill as the
invention of a new sin, and far superior to secret drinking or smoking or
swearing.... You do it in a dark room, under your breath, looking over
your shoulder.”
“And in public you carefully mispronounce German towns and Generals,
in case it should be suspected that you pronounce them not wisely but
too well. Father’s getting quite a dab at throwing off his little jokes
about the Kayzer. Comic birthplaces are the fashion as well; two of the
Ladenbach girls, when the question crops up, have been instructed to say
they were born in a wagon-lit; and the boy Julius, on the steps of the
Venezuelan Consulate....”
“Looks as if Frau Ladenbach had dropped ’em about rather carelessly,”
chuckled Richard. He was glad he had come this afternoon. It was years
since he had been at all intimate with David Rothenburg, and the impulse
to seek him out had been the result of a strange weariness of all his
other friends who could not be taken for granted as understanding,
without elaborate foreword and explanation, all these present chaotic
conditions of Germans and semi-Germans....
“Come out,” David suggested. “It’s stuffy in here, and I want to take a
parcel of books round to—to some people quite near.... You can help me
carry ’em.”
In the hall Nell and Samson Phillips were talking in an earnest whisper.
Nell wore heavy golden furs flopping over her thick brown outdoor coat,
and a wide-brimmed golden hat. She was a very decorative figure in all
shades from sallow through ivory to rich umber; her thick skin, the
cream-dusky colour of honeysuckle, could certainly never flush to any
shade of pink; only when she was moved, her eyes glowed deeper. They
glowed now, at the sight of the two boys descending the staircase.
“Oh, Richard, where is Deb this afternoon? She said something about
coming here?”
“Did she? I believe she’s gone to that Russian singing woman, La
llorraine. Anyway, you’re going out, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Oh yes. Antonia Verity has invited me to a picture-show. I’m
waiting for her to call for me. But I thought if Deb came ... but it
doesn’t matter——” She glanced swiftly corner-wise at Samson Phillips, and
her look said plainly “I’m sorry.”... Then Mr Redbury came out of the
smoking-room into the hall.
“Vell, yong beople”—he beamed approval on Nell and Phillips—“I like to
see yong beople enchoying zemselves togezzer. How is your fazer, Marcus?
Vun doesn’t see much of him lately.” But he quickly changed the subject,
for Ferdinand Marcus was hardly more English than Mr Otto Redbury
himself, and therefore at present socially useless as an asset. “Ven are
you going to put on ghagi, hein? You’re ze same age as David, aren’t you?”
“Nearly,” said Richard.
“David vos so keen—ah, vell, we can’t all be as keen.... Vish I vos a
poy, and could choin up. Hey, Phillips, vill you take me as a regruit in
your rechiment? Vere are you two off to, Nell?”
“Pictures, father.”
“To ze bictures? Good. Enchoy yourselves. Look vell after her, Phillips.
She’s my only girl left, you see.”
“Your eldest daughter is living with you for the present, isn’t she, Mr
Redbury?” enquired the hoped-for son-in-law.
The prospectively bereaved father did not look grateful for the proffered
consolation of Hedda. “Run away to ze bictures, yong beople,” and
prepared to re-enter the smoking-room.
“Pictures, father, not _the_ pictures,” Nell, explained, speaking as
she always did, like a shy but rapid cascade, perpetually dammed. “Miss
Verity has invited me—she is fetching me. Not——” She dared not let him
continue in the belief that she was to be escorted by Samson.
“Two girls vun vay and two boys anuzzer, and leave an old fogey like me
to entertain the Gaptain? No, no, that’s a foolish arranchment. Vait for
your friend, Nell, and all go to the bictures togezzer.”
“Pictures, father. Not _the_ pictures. And I’m not sure if Antonia——”
“All be cholly togezzer,” her father commanded her, peevish at her second
attempt at protest.
“Gom in veneffer you get leave, Phillips. Always velcome. Good-pye,
yong Marcus. I hope to see you in ghaki next time;” and went into the
smoking-room, irascibly slamming the door after him.
“I’m hanged if I’ll be convivial to order,” said David. “’Bye, Nell!” he
nodded carelessly to Phillips. “Come along, Marcus.” On the steps they
passed Antonia Verity on her way to fetch Nell.
“Are you waiting for me, Nell? good child!” She rested her calm
lingering regard on Samson Phillips, who, stolidly planted against the
umbrella-stand, did not budge.
Nell wished she could run away, wished she were dead; anything to be
drastically removed from this awful predicament between two people who
did not know each other, of one of whom she was still deadly shy, the
other commanded by her father to be their escort.... What was she to
do? How long could they all stand like this glaring at one another?
The simple expedient of introducing Samson to Antonia never occurred
to Nell, who was very childish for her seventeen years. She just stood
with interlocked fingers, suffering.... “Perhaps if we wait long enough,
Captain Phillips will go away.... Is that how things, dreadful things,
come to an end?”
III
“Wonder he didn’t give me a white feather?” growled Richard, as they
walked up the street.
David’s eyes were blazing in his thin brown face.
“Hanging on to anything, anybody, English: Beatrice—Con at the Front ...
old Con.—And now he wants Samson Phillips; wants to shove Nell into the
fellow’s arms.... It’s so cursedly undignified, this crawling round the
feet of a country that stands about with folded arms, not wanting you.”
Richard was about to agree, when a peculiar thing happened to him. He
was made aware of the Soul of Otto Redbury.... He saw it very clearly,
small twitching pink nose of a rabbit—not at all unlike the Soul of
Gottlieb Schnabel, the little baker. Alongside of these two, his own
soul was an instant laid, then snatched away again ... queer company for
the soul of Richard Marcus; he found Redbury objectionable, and despised
Schnabel, but—he understood. Funny that David, who was supposed to be an
imaginative womanish creature, thrilling quickly to response, a nature
artistic and intuitive and all that sort of thing, should reveal himself
in certain cases so hard and blunt.
Richard said slowly: “It’s such a beastly position for all of them—all of
us,” he amended; but it still seemed a grotesque nightmare that he should
be one of the band whom he was unwillingly compelled to understand and
defend.
“It’s all very well to be down on your pater, Redbury, and of course one
rags about the change of names, and Swiss waiters and so on—but it’s so
utterly unnatural to have no country when your country is the one thing
in all the world that matters. As good patriots as any are drifting about
loose with nowhere to dump their load of patriotism. Oh, I know the stock
argument—they should have stuck to the place where they were born. Well,
a few thousands, a few tens of thousands haven’t done so; it’s no good
pretending that it was as important before nineteen-fourteen as now.”
“I suppose the English didn’t overflow and get stranded on No Man’s Land
in such numbers, because they could always colonize,” David conjectured.
“And now this war; we scramble for cover. And the safe people who have
settled for generations in one place, of one country, of unmixed blood,
laugh at us for scuttling. Do they ever think how easy it is—no merit,
but, God! how easy, to be born in England, wholly English, when they say
of the half and half brigade: ‘Let ’em get back to their own country—we
don’t want ’em!’? But they might have said that before 1914, to have
given them a chance to get back. They can’t get back now. Their own
so-called country doesn’t want ’em either.... Won’t have them; calls them
renegades, who have severed all ties, all obligations. And there they
are, absolutely helpless between the two. Belonging to both—no—belonging
to neither. Can claim protection from neither. They’re frightened, I
tell you, David. All this frantic jabber of the Hidden Hand—why, there
have been practically no cases where the naturalized German has been
proved guilty of plotting against England in the interests of the Hun.
One or two, perhaps, among thousands. But rejected by Germany, rejected
by England, dashed from one to the other—how can they help all those
little acts that revolt you as being ridiculous or—what do you call it?
undignified—ostentatiously planking down their names on subscription
lists, kow-towing to the English servants, change of name, and pretending
to be Dutch, and pitiful swanking of their English friends; even grabbing
at Samson Phillips to get him in the family at all costs.—All that isn’t
treachery, but ordinary childish human funk.”
“Why, at the worst, what can be done to them?”
“Nothing very bad. Nothing at all compared with what the men at the
Front have to go through; think I don’t know that?” Richard questioned
fiercely. “And yet they wouldn’t be funking if they belonged to a
country, and had a united cause to fight for. It’s not being able to
shout with the rest. It’s the bitter desolation, nowadays, of fighting
for one’s own hand....”
He became aware of David’s slow quizzical smile.
“The miracle of the Sleeping Beauty awakened,” he commented softly.
“If nothing else, the Great War has at least done this for one Richard
Marcus. Rather a drastic kiss, but astoundingly effective.”
“Shut up!” Richard kicked at a stone in the roadway. Head bent,
hands clenched in his pockets—as if he _wanted_ to think. As if he
welcomed this disconcerting upheaval of his imagination ... to be
able to understand Otto Redbury—what next? To stick up for a lot of
rotten Germans—Marcus of Winborough, champion half-back of the footer
team—Greville Dunne’s pal—average at his work, but a decent ordinary
all-round fellow, and no end keen on a commission in the R.F.C. Never
again, for him. Never again. Something had happened.... Richard walked
along savagely mourning for the self that had once fitted him so
easily.... Never again!
David noticed his dejection—and amusement softened into something
resembling tenderness for this strong bull-necked fellow, helpless in
the grip of his first individual problem. It must have been a bad shock
so to have galvanized him from matter-of-course unthinking acceptance
of a scheme of life which had been hitherto fair enough and good enough
... tread of many feet all marching in the same direction ... and now—No
Man’s Land.
There was little for David himself to learn about the by-ways and customs
of this nebulous territory—from his earliest childhood he had wandered
there. And he realized that it was not to the habitual thinkers that the
war and what it involved had made such a shattering difference—but to
those who had never thought before.... Poor old Richard ... all those
tumbled we’s and they’s of his utterance ... he hardly knew yet where he
belonged—too doggedly proud to include himself with the nation who did
not want him—yet jibbing at classification with the despised alien enemy.
Poor old Richard, it was rather a shame.
“At any rate, we’re both in the same boat,” David exclaimed, carried away
by a quick impulse to solace. Immediately his companion, in a manner of
speaking, toppled him out of the boat.
“No, we’re not. You’re born over here. You’re all right. You’d be English
if you weren’t a pro-German.”
“Damn it! I’m _not_ a pro-German. I’m a Jew.”
“What the——” Richard in his astonishment stopped dead on the pavement.
“Well?”
“What has being a Jew got to do with it? It’s a question of nationality,
not religion.”
“The Jews _are_ a nation. If it were only a theological difference, why
should that have affected such a very marked distinction of feature and
temperament? Going to Synagogue instead of to Church doesn’t alter the
curve of a nose. Of course we’re a nation apart, apart and scattered—but
racially the most united in the world. And that’s another of my private
reasons for wearing khaki—because the English have been good to the
Jews, have given them sanctuary and treated them as equals. They have a
claim on our services. While Germany has always behaved like a swine to
Judea.... I’m _not_ a pro-German, Marcus, but there’s a kinship between
English Jews and German Jews and Russian Jews and Italian and American
and Polish and Roumanian and Austrian Jews, that no war ever waged can
entirely destroy. I don’t want to see a Jew hurt—and, oh God! I don’t
want to hurt another Jew. We’re a race of artists and financiers and
wanderers—not of fighters.”
“I don’t know about that. Jehovah was a God of din and battle, wasn’t He?
I’m a bit foggy about the Old Testament, but I seem to remember that they
were always at it, hammer and tongs. And pater says that Jews are ardent
patriots by temperament.”
“Yes—with nowhere to put it. All countries, and no countries, and the
countries from which we’ve been driven, and the countries where we hope
to go back.... I’m sorry we can’t change over, you and I, Richard. The
feeling of persecution isn’t new to me.... I’ve got the sense of it in my
very bones.... I’ve been hounded with my ancestors from the East through
Russia ... through Central Europe....”
“Good Lord,” Richard broke in; “I believe you _enjoy_ feeling like that.”
And David laughed: “I believe I do. It’s our heritage—this succulent
style of melancholy, like seaweed swelling richly under water, compared
with which all other sorrow is like seaweed, hard and stale and crackly,
on the dry sand.”
“Can’t say that either is my style. I just get damned sick about things.
I’m damned sick at not being able to join up in the Flying Corps.”
“You’re only a semi-Jew, Marcus, in spite of the rich promise of your
face.”
“I _am_ only a semi-Jew; my mother was a Christian. And what’s wrong with
my face?” Richard demanded truculently. “I say—where are you taking me?”
as David swerved into a narrow street of tall dingy-looking buildings.
“It’s all right. I just want to bring them these books.” He ran up
some steps of a house with the “To Let” board forlornly plastering the
windows; and as the bell dangled broken from its socket, and no knocker
was in evidence, banged with his fist on the panels of the front door.
“Rum,” thought Richard.
A tall, heavy-featured girl opened the door, and in silence led them to
an unfurnished room littered with books and packing-cases and piles of
tinned food. A babble of tongues struck harshly upon the ear.... For a
second’s space of time Richard was walking up the wide twilit streets of
Dorzheim—a dado of pines lowering blackly on the horizon—crowds brushing
past, chattering—noisy guttural chatter from the pavements and cafés....
“You will see how many take off their hats to me....”
“This is my pal,” Redbury explained carelessly to the room at large.
“He’s one of us——”
All Richard’s being uprose in a growl of contradiction. “One of us?” Why,
these people were Germans—talking German, the whole gang of them—about
eight or nine.... If he had been a tom-cat, he would have stiffened his
fur and spat. As it was, he responded churlishly to salutations, and
retired to a window-seat in the corner, from there to watch from beneath
humped eyebrows the mysterious proceedings of these friends of David.
The atmosphere oppressed him with memory of all the rumours circulated
about German spies ... German Secret Service.... England honeycombed with
treachery.... What were they doing, in this empty house, talking German
with the passionate zest of tongues let loose from hours of irksome
restraint?... What was in those tins and cases?... How had they got hold
of the German newspapers and pamphlets lying about?... One of the group
was reading aloud a German letter now, and all listened tensely, some
still kneeling on the dusty boards with their arms full of books—all
except David and the heavy-looking girl and a boy with a flowing tie and
thick lips and incredibly close shaven head, who were engrossed in some
private discussion.... The girl produced a pile of music and their heads
bent closer over the score.
Confounded insolence this, in the very heart of London! Richard’s
mood wavered from indignation to a queer sort of panic at being thus
associated. He wondered if he ought to give information? No, he could
hardly do that, brought here in all good faith by David. But even
supposing that these people were bent on no actual harm—and commonsense
asserted that they were merely packing hampers for the German prisoners,
and at the same time enjoying a little licence of their native
speech—even then, how dared David suppose that he was “One of us” among
these—these Huns. Not a fibre of kinship in him stretched to meet them.
He was as utterly an alien here as....
As he had been at Winborough, this last term.
A sudden ache asserted itself for Greville Dunne’s grey eyes looking
straight from under the rim of his midshipman’s cap; for Greville’s
English voice, and divine lack of understanding for all things save what
was usual and fitting a young Britisher of eighteen should understand;
ache for Mrs Dunne and for the Dunnes’ cottage home in Kent—for Molly’s
tom-boy exuberance, and young Frank dashing into the chintz sitting-room
with his toboggan.
Only of course they would be blank to the badgering perplexities which
David Rothenburg——
In an effort to escape from the linked chain of thought, Richard took
up a journal lying on the ground near his feet. It was a month-old copy
of the _Tageblatt_. In little separate squares outlined in black were
the names of those who had fallen in action: “Thomas Spalding—Gefallen,
14ten Juni 1915.”... What was this palpable English name doing among
the list of German officers? Thomas Spalding? Richard speculated idly
on the anomaly, till fancy quickened to realization that this Thomas
Spalding was his own equivalent on the other side—over there a boy of
English parentage brought up in Germany, enlisted in the German army,
with his sympathies ... where? Over here, Richard Marcus, of German
parentage, brought up in England—Ah well, Thomas Spalding had more luck
than he. They had taken him in the army and he had been killed in action.
Nevertheless, who knows what he may have had to endure first, from taunts
and coldness and suspicion, outcast emotions pushed this way and that.
Inevitably the lot of those who are not entirely sons of the soil on
which they fight ... die ... “Thomas Spalding, Gefallen.”... Richard
stared at the brief announcement till a sting of tears rushed to his
eyes. He wished he could have had just one talk, one grip of the hand
with his unknown comrade, suddenly nearer and more vivid to him than
either Greville or David.
You and I, Thomas Spalding....