I
But Cliffe Kennedy was indubitably to blame. No one could spend so much
time with Cliffe as Deb had done of late, without echoing his tendency
to achieve a climax at whatever cost. His sense of dramatic effect
abhorred a vacuum. Deb had caught the trick, that was all. She was always
impressionable. “I have treated you with the respect due to a good girl
...” and then the pause—and, spoken almost mechanically, her curtain line.
“Well—he asked for it!”
The drawback to these histrionic displays in ordinary life, however,
is lack of the aforesaid curtain. Certainly it should have fallen
at that juncture: “You see, I have not been good ...” and Act III a
fortnight later.... Meanwhile, Deb and Samson remained looking at one
another, in Mrs Phillips’ boudoir, her head proudly tilted, so that the
little three-cornered face was fore-shortened to an upcurling of black
eye-lashes, and mouth a mutinous half-crescent, the corners trembling
to a smile sternly chidden back again—“This is serious!”—but the
irrepressible desire persisted.... Samson’s expression was such a marvel
of Pharisaic indignation and disgust.
“So much for the charity of a good man’s love! Why, supposing it had been
true and I wanted him to forgive me?”
In Samson Phillips’ mind was no doubt of the statement which had
shattered his rock-embedded belief in the immaculate chastity of a well
brought up Jewish girl of his own set.... The argument: “Why should she
say such a thing if it weren’t true?” was too obviously undeniable for
admittance. And Deb could have explained to him neither the contagious
peculiarity of Mr Cliffe Kennedy, nor the fact that the Phillips’ family
and the thrice persistent proposal had rendered her hysterical.
Well—now at least she was free. Samson would never again desire her for
his wife. Mrs Phillips would never again invite her to dinner. Although
Deb had chosen a drastic method of dealing with undesirable invitations
to dinner or to the altar—“do they have altars in a Synagogue? I forget
... but oh, I wish he would speak before I laugh!”
But Samson’s principles, against which in sheer despair she had flung her
falsehood, stood rigid and undamaged, like so many spear-tipped railings.
Henceforth, Deb was to him an outcast. He looked at her ... and then he
went to the door and called his mother, and told her Deb was not feeling
very well and wanted to return home at once.
Mrs Phillips gathered from his expression that “that girl” had flouted
him again. Deb was sent home in a taximeter and an atmosphere of
black disgrace. Samson’s one look had reminded her of a Roundhead
soldier—Oliver Cromwell himself. What a fate to have escaped—Cromwell’s
wife, Cromwell’s family. And a Jewish Cromwell into the bargain!
“But will he tell—anybody?”
“What does it matter!”
An impulse of sheer mischief—then swift contrition—intense relief—and the
usual shoulder-shrug. This was the wheel of Deb’s psychology. Several
days later she told Antonia of the debâcle. Antonia had meanwhile been
out of town, driving her Major-General.
“Samson would never have done for you, of course. But you encouraged him,
Deb. Why?”
“I didn’t,” sunnily; “I just wanted to try if I could make myself good
enough. And I pulled it off—for a fortnight.”
“And then, in one well-chosen lie—Deb, I love you very dearly, but your
creed is beyond all following. It seems to me to consist mainly of a lot
of trouble for nothing.”
“I just wanted to try,” Deb repeated. “I _might_ have been good enough,
you know. And if the clock had struck while I was pulling that face, I’d
have stopped like that. So Nurse used to say.”
“Meaning—if you had fallen in love with a good man at the psychological
moment of trying to be good. You’re too accommodating altogether, my
child. Suppose it were a bad man, and the clock struck while you were
pulling _that_ face?”
Deb went to the mirror, and tried on the two faces, one after another.
“Which becomes me best?” she demanded anxiously, “Puritan or rogue? Oh,
Antonia, it was such fun busting the Phillips’ illusion. I shall never
have such fun again.”
II
Samson was sent to the Front shortly afterwards. And Beatrice confided in
her mother-in-law, Trudchen Redbury, her amazement that any girl could
so far lose her reason as thrice to refuse a match like Samson Phillips:
“She must have said something to upset him badly, that last time—but he
won’t say what; he seemed heart-broken, poor fellow ... and going off
like that, too, without any hope. How _could_ she?”
Trudchen also wondered how Deb possibly _could_ ... and discussed the
matter with Otto, who was thus at last brought face to face with the
failure of his cherished notion of a marriage between his little daughter
Nell, and an officer in the British army: “He vanted Ferdinand’s Teporah?
Ach wass! but I thought she and that yong Gennedy——” He remembered how
the insolent pair had “called” on the Redburys one Sunday afternoon, for
all the world as tho’ they were engaged. And then had followed Cliffe’s
confidence in the train ... the name left chivalrously blank ... and not
feeling at all friendly towards Deb, who had robbed him of an English
son-in-law, Otto, by sudden malignant inspiration, inserted her name into
the blank, and was instantly convinced of the correctness of his guess:
“So! and _zat_ vos vy she refused Villips!”
Otto sucked at his lips, very gravely ... genuinely shocked and buffeted
by the revelation that a maiden of the same race and class and upbringing
as his own daughter, could so step aside from virtue. But then he ceased
sucking, blew out his cheeks ... and ruminated....
That poor Ferdinand: with all his eccentric notions of rearing a young
girl, one must yet be sorry for him. His daughter was no better than
a—than a—Otto hesitated between a rich selection of epithets in two
languages.
One must be sorry for Ferdinand. But it was a pity that he should not
know that there was a cause why one was sorry for him—(Ferdie had always
been the successful partner in the days when Nash, Marcus and Rothenburg
had still existed as a firm).... Bread and water and a locked room would
do the minx good.
And in addition to all this, Otto was sufficiently akin in spirit to both
Cliffe and Deb to relish the notion of dramatic tidings—himself as a sort
of Messenger in Greek drama.
“If I do not tell Ferdinand Marcus, then zertainly another will do so——”
Which again would be a pity. Otto decided not to risk forestalment.
III
At the first shiver of Autumn, grandfather had a bad bronchial cold,
which meant the luxury of a fire in his bedroom. During such a period
all the Marcuses were usually to be found in enjoyment of this available
private warmth, as a rest from the perpetual conviviality of the lounge
or drawing-room fires. True, it meant that grandfather’s company was
thrown in with the fire—but Stella and Ferdie were used to him, and Deb
and Richard thought him rather funny.
Otto, when he paid his visit, was received by the three generations of
male Marcus. He requested that Richard be ejected, with that lack of
ceremony towards his juniors which was so deplorable in the old-fashioned
relative.
“All right, Uncle Otto—I wasn’t going to stay, anyway. Where’s David?”
David was in a training-camp. And: “Has that boy of yours nossing to do
but pite his head off all day long, Marcus?” when the door had slammed on
Richard.
“As much to do as your son-in-law Fürth,” shouted Hermann with irascible
emphasis. “Or perhaps you do not visit him often enough to ascertain his
occupations? Herr Je! Rothenburg, he was a good enough Schiddach for your
daughter Hedvig five years ago....”
Otto did not like being addressed as Rothenburg. Especially as a door
behind the cupboard communicated with another bedroom. He glanced
uneasily that way....
“There is no policeman there,” his host reassured him. “Our neighbour
is a rabbit who calls himself a Special Constable, that is all. And I
am convinced, lieber Rothenburg, that your naturalization papers are
ready on your person and in complete order. Or—let me see—you are one
of those that have changed their names ... Redbury, is it?” the old
scoundrel chuckled hoarsely. “Redbury!—poor old Fritzie Rothenburg
of Nuremburg—your late uncle and my friend—that would have amused
him—Redbury! But you must correct me if I forget.”
And all this, in vengeance for the implied belittling of Richard.
The S.C. could be heard moving about among his furniture ... and Otto’s
manner had not that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere—he
accompanied the old man’s loud discourse by an agonized hushing, which
Hermann heeded no more than a drone of a bluebottle. From offensive
English he lapsed into friendly—too friendly—German, enquiring
affectionately after all Otto’s relatives in Berlin, Mainz, Köln and
Frankfurt, mentioning each person by name and address. And when Otto
affected ignorance of the existence of these, he laughed and coughed,
and coughed so much that he was perforce reduced to gasping watery-eyed
silence, which gave Otto his chance at last for a patriotic panegyric
which he trusted would reach the “S.C.,” and so nullify any evil effects
of Hermann’s malice. “—My son is in the drenches, and my pones will one
day lie in English ground. My money I give for England, and England, I
bray, may still find a use for an old man’s services, isn’t it?”
“Ach wass!” impatiently interrupting the peroration. “You have been
learning by heart the recruiting posters. I would advise a little less
noise about patriotism, lieber Freund. You look like an enemy spy who has
yet to learn not to overdo his business. It may bring you into awkward
situations.” Otto turned yellow and his fingers twitched. “Besides, a man
who cannot be loyal to his own country——”
“England is my country!” cried Otto hysterically.
“Stuss!” and Hermann subsided contemptuously. While Ferdie broke in: “You
have neither of you any sense at all. It is quite possible, papa, not
only to be from prudence, but also in thought and from affection, loyal
to an adopted country, where one has lived, and planted one’s hopes, and
brought up one’s children. Would one bring up one’s children to serve
England before even war was in sight—if still one cared about Germany?
But to shout it about—that is tactless nowadays. They do not love the
sound of our voices—unpleasant—yes, certainly—but natural. Let us then
rather keep quiet, you and I, Redbury. Papa I respect for making no
professions where he cannot honestly feel them—but he also should keep
quiet. You are discourteous to a country of whom you are the guest. And
also you make things very uncomfortable for us your family.”
“I have no fear,” snapped the old autocrat, sitting very upright.
“But I have then, for Stella and Deb and Richard. So when I feel
pessimist, when my opinion is not likely to be a popular opinion, I keep
it to myself. For the difference between us and the British-born is this:
there is, alas, no bias on our judgments. That pleasant happy bias! ah,
it must be reposeful to let one’s judgment roll with the bias; but the
bias is lodged in the nature, and the nature springs from the soil, and
the soil of England is not ours—we who belong to no country, and are
therefore doomed to see things exactly as they are. I tell you, Redbury,
I would give ten years of my life to possess that cheery confidence that
stupidly, and oh, how splendidly, through the blackest reverses, through
the silliest muddles and incompetence, still goes on with their eternal
Britannia rules the waves and Britons never, never, never shall be
slaves....”
“If you had a son in the drenches,” repeated Otto virtuously.
And Ferdie sighed and said no more. In spite of all the daily suspense
and anxiety, how he envied the Redburys their possession of Con. He had
not yet forgiven himself the mistake which resulted in Richard’s present
mooching, slouching existence, not keen to go back to school—not worth
while to enter a profession—waiting for his eighteenth birthday to bring
him behind barbed wire.
“Ferdinand,” said Otto Redbury, interrupting the other man’s reverie, “I
have gom on a very serious errand....”
IV
When Stella and Deb came in to boil the kettle for tea, half-an-hour
later, the Messenger was gone. Ferdie was staring into the fire, his
fuzzy grey head bent down almost to his knees. And Hermann’s thin lips
wore a cynical smile ... he had waited for these results of Deb’s
upbringing, since a spoilt grandchild of eight years was first brought to
Munich for his inspection.
“Deb—come here!”
Deb looked astonished. She could scarcely ever remember her father
shouting at her. But to Stella the sound was familiar. The Teuton
disciplinarian always begins by losing control of his voice. Ferdie, in
supreme emotion, was reverting to type....
“Did you spend a night——” he choked—then started off again: “Did you spend
a night with that man Kennedy at his cottage in the country?—Yes or no?”
“What’s the fuss about?” asked Deb, in Richard’s most casual manner. She
thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her lilac jersey, tilted back
her chin ... and wished devoutly she could run away.
“Yes or no?” roared her father.
“There was no harm in it.”
“_Yes or no?_”
“No....”
Sheer whimpering terror, this; not of the bellow which shook the very
furniture, but of the blaze in Ferdie’s wontedly mild brown eyes.
“You did not?” the relief was so overwhelming, his instant trust in her
word so pathetic, that Deb for very shame quickly revoked her lie.
“Not in the way you mean. Why are you so ready to believe ... girls and
men in our set—the look of things doesn’t matter so tremendously any more
... doesn’t matter at all—No, do listen to me——” She was honestly fighting
down an inclination to sulk—a defiant silence, she would have interpreted
the attitude—“I do know what it looks like to you, that I stopped down
there with Cliffe that night—but really and truly,” with an appealing
little smile—“I’m still Daddy’s good girl?”
“Then why,” asked Ferdie, avoiding her smile—“why did you encourage and
then refuse Captain Phillips?”
“Oh——” Deb stared mentally at these two bits of her—yes, her silliness,
which entangled produced such a formidable appearance against her. Could
she put herself right again? Not without help. She turned with quick
confidence to her aunt.
“Auntie Stel——” and stopped as though at a shock.
“I suppose you had just enough decency left not to deceive an honest
man!” Stella’s voice sounded as though it had been filed. She crossed
from Deb’s side to her brother, the action clearly defining where her
support was ranged.
“Ferdie,” she whispered, for he had sunk back to a despondent, shrunken
heap in the arm-chair; and his knees shook as she laid her hand on
them—“Ferdie, old boy....”
“Little Deb ...” he murmured. Well, Ferdie had always been a
sentimentalist. And the girl, hearing, would have flung herself at him,
even then, her arms tightly round his neck, to cajole and explain,
explain by familiar hugs and kisses ... but Stella was between them. And
grandfather, still with that wooden smile jerking up the ends of his
moustache. One expected it from grandfather, but Auntie Stel, always so
young and jolly—Not quite the words—“juvenile and vivacious” expressed
it better, somehow: “Run along and enjoy yourselves, kiddies....” Why
was Stella’s look at her now like the sting of a wasp? ... that came
of treating a grown-up chummily, and as an equal. Never again. After
all, she _was_ only a maiden aunt ... couldn’t tell her so ... even in
extremes one couldn’t say the beastliest thing of all—evidently _they_
could, though—no code of honour.... Grown ups!
Deb hunched her shoulders in moody exasperation. Even if she _had_ ...
done it, she never dreamt of this rasping encounter with authority.
She, who had even honoured her immediate family by bragging about their
tolerance and general amiability: “Dad’s an old darling and Auntie Stel a
sport, and nobody minds grandfather....”
She said: “Samson Phillips was a prig.”
“You will not quickly find another man for husband, my dear Deborah,”
Hermann Marcus rumbled menacingly. “You would have been wiser to strive
to please Captain Phillips.”
Stella turned and sprang, buried her claws in his words. “Husband!—do you
suppose she wants a _husband_? She’s had what she wants. Look at her!”
This, then, was what had lain in waiting all these years between herself
and Deb—what extreme of love or hatred. That Deb should have her good
time—that was well enough; Stella did not grudge it her; Stella helped
her to it. But that Deb should stand there, in triumphant insolent
knowledge of—the thing itself—the older woman could not bear that. Her
starved senses yapped their rage and envy. Into Deb’s very poise as she
remained silent and aloof in the middle of the room, Stella thought
to read pity of her, the virgin, virgin by fate and by tyranny, by
cowardice even, not by desire.... Deb, little Deb the child, Ferdie’s
baby daughter, had trodden strange ground, and by reason of this she was
altered, baffling, mysterious, immune from scolding, forbearing to taunt
because she could afford forbearance—what did she want with Aunt Stella’s
partisanship? she had taken what Aunt Stella had not dared to take....
“Look at her!”
“Is there any reason,” grandfather demanded impatiently, “why I should
sacrifice my tea to look at an extremely badly-brought-up, dishonourable
and wicked young lady who ought to have been married and out of the way
long ago if she had owned a father who could properly attend to her
interests. You cannot reproach me, lieber Ferdinand, that I have not
warned you, over and over again, what would be the result of your loose
and wicked lack of discipline——”
“Well, you didn’t do so very much better with your daughter, did you?”
cried Deb, resenting the attack on her father’s easy kindness, but
forgetting that her defence of him involved a slur on Stella.
“I’ve kept my good name at least, thank you, Deb; you’ve disgraced
yourself and us, running to lick the hand of any man who chose to call. I
hope your father will put a stop to it for the future, anyhow.”
“He?” Hermann Marcus laughed, and Ferdinand, performing the proverbial
action of shutting the stable door, went further and slammed it with all
his force.
“You will attend to me, Deb, yes? I have made a mistake in trusting
you. I let you do as you please, go where you please, without asking
questions, without interfering. I hoped so to make you happy. For the
future all that will be changed. You will not go out in the evenings, nor
to stay with your friends. You will account for your time spent to me or
to your Aunt Stella. I will see to it that you take lessons in something,
to occupy you usefully. Less pocket-money and no latchkey—perhaps so we
can bring you back to a sense of self-respect. Also I will ask to examine
your correspondence. Be sure that it is not with pleasure that I give
these orders——” He halted, hearing a poignantly mocking echo of his old
prophecy to Dorothea: “It will be all right—When one is happy, one is
also good——”
“I have made the worst mistake with you,” he concluded harshly.
“Then I won’t pay for it. I’ll run away—I’m not going to be spied on and
treated like a baby now, after you’ve let me do just exactly as I like
for years. Why weren’t you strict all along? I thought you were really
broad-minded—that you really thought a girl had wants and claims ... that
a girl is human ... and the marrying her off business is extinct, and
that going wrong doesn’t matter so much, after all.” She was half-crying
now, but gulped fiercely, and went on: “You let me suppose that you’d
understand if I did—anything. But you’re just exactly the same when
it comes to it—the old-fashioned parent, ready with the old-fashioned
curse. Well, then, you should have looked after me in the old-fashioned
way. You should have done before all that you say you’ll do now—examined
my letters and disapproved of my friends and questioned my comings and
goings. What do you suppose suddenly jerks a girl back, when she has read
everything, discussed everything, seen everything——? Books and plays,
jabber, and other people’s example—answerable to nobody. Why, they’re
only preparation for—for ... the rest! It wasn’t as if I was answerable
to anybody; you never bothered. I’d rather have been kept ignorant and
innocent—much rather, dad. It isn’t fair to bring me up in the new way,
and then expect me to be good in the old way.”
“And it is not fair to be for ever instructed by one’s children how one
should rightly have behaved towards them!” Ferdinand was now at the end
of his patience. “First Richard and then you: ‘Why didn’t you do this?
Why didn’t you do that?’ God in Heaven, is the parent a beast of burden
that all your troubles and wrongdoings should be piled on to his back?
And supposing I had scolded and worried you and forbidden—then it would
have been again: ‘You have ruined my life—a little more liberty, and
I need not have been driven to—to—behave like a street-girl!’ Always
the parent’s fault—you are shirkers, you who are so proud to call
yourselves a New Generation—putting all responsibility on heredity,
education, pre-natal influence—I know not what, so long as you safely
escape self-reproach—so long as you safely escape the crying of your own
conscience.”
“Conscience is religion. I’m not religious. If I were—but you never
bothered about that either. I’m not Jewess nor Christian—I’m nothing at
all—nothing—you never bothered.”
“We did bother; yes indeed, but we were afraid of bothering too much. We
wanted you to feel free.”
“Well then—why?—now?”—wavering to a softer mood. When her father spoke
with just that fondness ... turning aside her head to blink back the
tears, she caught sight of his old silk handkerchief, plum and navy-blue
dabbed together, knotted round the bed-post in the same way as he was
wont to knot it round his neck, as long as she could remember.... And
suddenly Ferdie was dead—and she saw that loop with the dangling ends,
and it struck her painfully that she would never again see it round
Ferdie’s neck, plum and blue stem to that genial rubicund face with the
kind eyes ... Dad was dead ... everybody dies....
Whether she had been vouchsafed a swift keyhole peep at an
inevitable future, or if the vision were merely a childish drench of
sentiment—whichever it was, it sent Deb straight past grandfather’s
sarcastic smile and Aunt Stella’s antagonism, to her knees beside
Ferdie’s chair—snuggled up against him—Thank God, he was not dead yet!
“Dad—_mayn’t_ I explain?”
He just touched her black urchin head so near his hand, but said nothing.
“It’s ... men,” Deb began. Such a maze of by-ways and turnings, and
no centre. Could she ever hope to drag his understanding in the wake
of her intricate journeyings ... and with the others present? “It was
the same in our old set before we gave up Daisybanks, before the war.
There were always men about, then; when they took me on the river in the
evenings, in a narrow punt, or in taxis—or behind screens on the landings
at dances ... screens put there generally by the hostess—what are they
put there for? ‘Enjoy yourselves, children!’—Dad, what did you _think_
then? You can’t possibly have imagined they all wanted to marry me, that
they each wanted to marry every girl they took behind screens or up
dark corridors—in the Empress Rooms or the Portman Rooms or the Grafton
Galleries or Princes? But you must have thought something!”
But the trend of Ferdie’s ideas had always run on generalizations ... and
generalizations would not suffice now to content this daughter of his,
turning up to him such a glowing, inquisitive little face.
“I was pleased that you should have admirers——” slowly—“Flirtation is only
natural to a young girl.”
“Admirers! flirtation! _that_, yes, but they—they used to kiss us—they
said things—when they got excited.... They—Oh——” she rummaged desperately
after words—“You—you grown-ups of to-day, you took away the chaperon and
put up a screen on the landing instead.—It all means something—leads
somewhere—and then you lose your tempers when you hear—when we.... And
I didn’t! I didn’t do anything—this time.... But I must have something
to go by; you must spell us out the rules once and for all. You’re
broad-minded, you encourage us—expose us; and at the end of it all, last
century’s row comes tumbling on our heads. If grandfather _was_ a beast
to Auntie Stel——” a darted sun-flash of mischief at the gathering storm on
the opposite side of the fireplace—“at least he was a consistent beast;
allowed her to know nothing and do nothing. You’ve stuck half-way—you let
me know everything and do nothing. One day, I suppose, a girl will be
allowed to know everything and do everything—lucky her!”
The storm on the opposite side of the mantelpiece broke into thunder:
“Klatsch! klatsch! klatsch! talk! talk! talk!—Had it been Stella to be
found out in shame——”
“Leave me out of it, papa. And you too, Deb,” Stella threw in curtly,
without turning from the window where she stood looking out into the
dripping dusk. “I’m not ambitious to figure as an edifying example.”
“Had it been Stella,” Hermann persisted, not in the least heeding her
protest, “My first business, as her father, would be interview the young
man and see to it that he is made aware of his immediate duty towards
her. But that, of course, does not strike Ferdinand. He prefers to sit
like an old maid at a tea-party and discuss the so happy occasion!”
Ferdie, rather dazed, passed a hand across his forehead, wet with
perspiration. “True—yes—I must see him at once,” he muttered. For a few
moments he had forgotten the indestructible fact of Deb’s dishonour.
“See—Cliffe? Ask him to marry me? Dad—dad, you can’t.... He’d laugh
... they’d all laugh. It—it isn’t done, in our set. We—I’ve told you—I
thought you believed me—no earthly possible reason why he should marry
me. That night at the cottage ... dad, I’ve _told_ you—there was nothing.
You mustn’t go to Cliffe,” in a sheer panic at the ridiculous situation
thus threatened, she scrambled up from her knees, and confronted
Ferdinand, also on his feet by now—“You shan’t go to Cliffe. There was
nothing!” she repeated doggedly. “Don’t you believe me?”
“You did stop at his cottage that night—alone with him?” The Inquisition
commenced anew.
“Yes.”
“Why—what for—if there was nothing?”
“I don’t know. No special reason. One does—nowadays.”
“‘Nowadays’ has as broad a back as the parent, it seems,” wearily.
“‘Nowadays’ must shoulder everything. But only not human nature, Deb. I
have had experience of human nature, that even ‘nowadays’ cannot alter.”
Thoroughly exasperated, Deb wrenched herself away from all hope of
convincing them.... “I haven’t—I didn’t—but I might as well have, and I
wish I had!” was her sobbed-out threshold defiance.
* * * * *
... “My tea,” grandfather reminded Stella, after a long silence.