CHAPTER I
“Let her go,” said Ferdinand Marcus. “I want my daughter to have a good time.”
Aunt Stella assented. “Why shouldn’t she go? Anything for a change, when one is twenty-three. Anything for excitement. And she can come to no harm. Besides, Richard is invited too.”
“No harm,” chirruped her brother. “Liberty for the young! We have missed enough, Stella, you and I, through old-fashioned prejudices.”
Old Hermann Marcus did not join in the conversation. He sat heavy and immovable; his faded blue eyes, under their fierce ridges, travelling contemptuously from his son to his daughter. Weaklings! short-sighted weaklings, with their foolish chatter of “liberty for the young.” Was this the way to bring up one’s children, with authority trailing like a slack rope along the floor? What was to become of the old, if the young were allowed to live for their own pleasure? Where would he be now, he, Hermann Marcus, crippled with rheumatism, financially insolvent, approaching his eightieth birthday, if Ferdinand and Stella had not been trained, very carefully trained, to unquestioning obedience and duty?
He was impotent where Ferdinand’s children were concerned. His day of authority was over. But—“a good time,” he muttered. “They will see....” He called loudly to Stella to bring him at once the English papers, which would not arrive at the Swiss hotel for fully an hour yet. Hermann Marcus was perfectly aware of this.
“But everyone knows for a positive fact that Shakespeare is the greatest writer of all. Why, who has ever heard of your Goethe, outside Germany?”
“And who has ever read your Shakespeare, inside England?” Lothar retorted, with the horrid glee of a person who has made a remark with an unpleasant amount of truth in it. His spectacles gleamed, two round, triumphant dazzles in the sunset which streamed through the closed windows of his study.
Richard repeated stubbornly, but without conviction: “Everyone knows Shakespeare is the greatest writer.” His defence of Shakespeare was strictly impersonal; he had no vehement sentiments on the subject; the whole argument bored him. But on principle, when a German boy asserts that Goethe is greater than Shakespeare, the English boy can have no option but to make reply that Shakespeare is greater than Goethe.
“It shall be decided one day,” Lothar grimaced ominously.
And Richard had an inspiration. “Shakespeare has been translated into German, because you jolly well couldn’t get on without him. I’ve never seen Goethe properly put into English. That about proves I’m right.”
“There was no Englander great enough to translate a man so great. I do not say,” Lothar explained conscientiously, “that I have not of the works of your Shakespeare also with much benefit an exhaustive study made. Let us converse on them. Do you then prefer Macbess or Otello?”
“Macbeth,” Richard muttered at a venture, and walked restlessly to the window; fidgeted with the beaded blind-cord, to signify that he expected better entertainment from his host than this irritating controversy. He wished his sister had not been so quick to accept Mrs Koch’s invitation to visit her at Dorzheim. To be dragged away in the middle of the extra July of summer holiday which an epidemic of scarlet fever at school had procured him; dragged away from a jolly hotel in Switzerland, to this stupid, little, dead-and-alive German town; finally, to be expected to chum up with Lothar von Relling, merely because they were “of the same age”—it was a bit thick!
Deb could quite well have come alone, if this was her idea of enjoyment.
He wondered why Lothar was crossing and uncrossing his legs in their bright striped stockings, and breathing heavily as though about to unburden himself of a confidence.
“Have you a heart’s dearest, you?”
Richard Marcus was fifteen. A normal boy, muscular, pugnacious, taciturn. The question drew from him a shout of laughter.
“What should I do with one, if I had it?”
“You English boys are babies all,” Lothar said, unexpectedly scornful. “You play always your stupid games, rather than write verses to the loved one. Ach, but she ...” he whirled his hearer along an incoherent tide of description: “a wonder, a dream, a night of scented dusk,” that mysterious goddess who seemed but recently to have emerged from the nebulous glamour which encircles all womanhood for the Teuton yet in his teens.
“Are you engaged to her?” yawned Richard, who by the merest fraction preferred these confidences to the Goethe-Shakespeare debate.
“Betrothed? But not possible. I am already betrothed to Frieda-Marie. Our peoples betrothed us a great many years ago. It is wearisome, but——” Lothar shrugged his plump shoulders—“it is suitable. We are of one faith. Her father, the Herr Sanitäts-Rath Hauffe, will withdraw his sanction if he outfinds anything of my faithlessness.”
Richard swung round and surveyed with disfavour Lothar’s vague features under their bush of upstanding tow. “Do you mean there’s really anything for him to find out about you and the other girl, or are you swanking?”
“Only that I schwärm—I swarm with love for her. I watch in the streets, and once I drop at her feet a fair rose costing fifty pfennig. She knows nothing of my passion. But what goes me that on? It is more beautiful, more ideal, so.” Suddenly he slid from lofty altitudes. “One has also one’s emotions away from these. One is flesh. One is not altogether air....” He spattered a few inky hints regarding the demands of his adolescence. From a pink, chubby face his spectacles glittered knowingly, inviting his companion to betrayal of like perplexities. But Richard preserved that admirable stolidity for which his looks were so well adapted: powerful jaw, big nose, dark head well thrust forward from the short neck and broad shoulders; and, rather obscured by allthese pugnacities, a pair of pleasant, humorous light-grey eyes, from which now, however, he had chased all expression save of blank idiocy. Not likely he would give himself away to Master Lothar! Richard wondered if there were a German boy good form enough to know that Lothar was bad form, and to ostracize him as such. Unlikely; the fellow would hardly be as cocksure if he had once been put in his place. All this blither about Goethe and girls.... “Do you mean to marry this person?” interrupting the other’s critical appraisement of a lady professionally well-known in Dorzheim, appraisement to which Lothar had essayed to impart the personal note.
“I have explained,” patiently, “I am plighted to Frieda-Marie. She is a good Christian maiden. She learns cooking. She has a respectable gift-along. Why do you smile?”
“Your English is so funny.”
“I have not yet had the pleasure of hearing your German,” politely sarcastic. For Richard had felt in honour bound not to reveal to Dorzheim that his knowledge of their tongue, though faulty, was fluent enough, as was natural in a grandson of Hermann Marcus of Munich.
“I will take me a wife when I am twenty-seven. First must I be through with my examinations. Then do I perform my military service. You also? No?”
“Oh, we don’t have to fag with that sort of thing in England.”
“It is for the Fatherland. Also one is attractive in uniform. One dashes. One lives. Me, I must betray a several of maidens before I can afford one to keep.”
Richard scowled discouragement. “You’re not sixteen yet, are you?”
“At sixteen one is no longer a child. One cannot go mad....” To Richard’s horror, Lothar suddenly buried has head in his arms, shuddering violently.... “That I were dead! that I were dead!” he moaned.
The English boy stared at him. These outbursts of confidence, alternately sentimental and morbid, seemed to emphasize his growing sense of having been brought into a world completely alien. He sent a swift thought to his chum, Greville Dunne, now on board a training-ship; wished old Greville were here. Foreign kids were unbalanced, hysterical; they read too much; brooded too much; talked too much.... Lothar had no right to unburden himself to a stranger, ofdifferent nationality and hostile outlook. Richard began to be afraid he had given an impression of too ready sympathy.
Lothar raised his head and announced solemnly: “Swine-hound that I am, believe that I preserve a reverence supreme for my Loved One!” His eyes were swamped in facile tears. “I have no father,” he added, after an uncomfortable pause; “and you, you have no mother, I hear.”
“Oh, that’s all right, thanks,” Richard’s shoulders were expressive of sullen embarrassment. “Got a stamp collection?”
“I will show you my botany-box.” And Lothar littered the blue and red check table-cloth with his specimens of pressed leaves and flowers, neatly labelled. Presently he reverted to the subject of Frieda-Marie. It appeared as though he were trying unsuccessfully to tell Richard something....
“Pity that she should be so blonde. The Ideal One is a brunette. She is a witch; a black velvet pansy. Hark, I will describe her to you.”
A full five minutes elapsed, however, before Richard awoke to the fact that the concrete sum of Lothar’s lyrical ecstasies made up a personality closely resembling that of his sister.
“Good Lord! Deb!”
“But at last! Since an hour have I tried to reach your understanding.”
“Couldn’t you say straight out that you meant Deb, instead of making an inventory of her?”
This was too great a strain on Lothar’s English. “She was mine from the first moment I saw her feet on the pavement my window outside press,” he breathed.
“Look here—do you want to marry Deb?”
“You come me always with that!” peevishly. “I tell you I am betrothed to Frieda-Marie. I cannot marry your sister. She is only a Jewess.”
“I like your cheek! Then what’s the good of you?”
“I can worship her.”
“Umph!”
“You also, you admire her?”
“She’s not so dusty.”
Again Lothar had to confess himself vanquished. He lugged down an English-German dictionary from the shelf, and conscientiously looked up ‘dusty.’
“Nicht so staubig—ach!... Hark, there is Mama who calls us. Doubtless you are fetched to go home.”
They ran down the polished stairs, Richard grinning at the notion of being “fetched.”
In the drawing-room Felix Koch was apologizing profusely for his wife’s absence, while Frau von Relling plied him with coffee and cream cakes anddelicatessensandwiches.
“You will be welcome whenever you come again to play with my Lothar,” she condescended to Richard. Then sighed heavily: “My big boy!” and took Lothar’s hand and fondled it. Lothar received the caress with an expression which was decorously demure. “Smug little humbug!” reflected Richard.
“Indeed, Herr Koch, it is well that the dear Marianna did not call to-day, as it is possible that your honoured Frau Mama might be drinking coffee with me presently.”
“So?” Koch nodded gloomily. His wife and his mother were not on speaking terms; and all the town knew why. He had committed an unprecedented folly in marrying the pretty daughter of a shopkeeper in Bingen.
Frau von Relling continued: “Doubtless the dear Marianna is busy with the entertainment of the little English Miss.” Then eagerly: “Has she received any offers yet?”
“She has only been with us three days,” Koch replied. And added with a mysterious inflection, “But Salzmann has sent to Frankfurt for his brother.”
“And how many bouquets?”
“Eleven. And two chocolate-boxes.”
“Has Herr Sigismund Koch shown her a little attention?”
The man bent upon his questioner a look of displeasure. “Sigismund knows well he has no concern with any young Miss who is my guest!”
For, though partners in the same bank, he and his younger brother were not on speaking terms. They had quarrelled violently a little while before the death of their father, Emil Koch, founder of the bank, who, with more sense of humour than can usually be accredited to his nation, had left it to them as a joint and firmly-knit inheritance.
Frau von Relling hastened to cover up her intentional piece of malice. “Of course not, of course not. And the dear Marianna will be arranging a Klatsch to introduce the beautiful Miss to Dorzheim?”
“Next Thursday; you will honour us——?”
“Will Wanda be present?” Frau von Relling played nervously with her son’s fingers, which she still retained.
“I believe your Fräulein sister-in-law has been invited, but——”
“In that case——” Frau von Relling rose with dignity. She was not on speaking terms with her sister-in-law: a question of a funeral-wreath.... Amid such complications did the society of Dorzheim walk precariously.
Felix gave a murmur which placed his sympathies definitely on the side of Frau von Relling, and at the same time deplored these needless feuds in an otherwise attached family. Then with Richard he took formal leave.
“We are the only Jews in Dorzheim with whom the von Rellings have traffic,” he remarked, as they walked home through the little manufacturing town. “But you will count now how many hats are raised to me. The Kochs have ever been deeply respected even among the Christians who bank with us.” He beamed with naïve pleasure at each salutation; and looked sharply at Richard to see if the latter were indeed taking note.
Twilight in the streets; and the sky was a dark, thick blue. Crowds of men were already jostling out of the workshops where the cutting, polishing and setting of precious stones formed the principal industry of Dorzheim. Swarthy giants from some legend of forest and charcoal and red-glowing cavern, they did not immediately disperse, but stood about muttering on the pavements, with a scowl for the passer-by who brushed their group too closely. Somewhere a great brazen bell was clanging. It was all rather unreal....
“We shall shortly have trouble with these fellows,” remarked the banker to Richard. “Those infernal socialists with their talk——”
Richard was again attacked by a melancholy sense of complete isolation from his surroundings. What was he doing here? He, Marcus, of the Winborough fifth—in this gabled, German burgher town, grotesque to him as an old steel-engraving in a musty folio. Ring of sombre fir-shaggy hills tipped against the sky; ornamental bridges like toys across the river, which ran alongside the one broad street; warm aroma of coffee from the shops, blending with a mournful resinous fragrance that drifted down with the wind from the woods; clusters of people round the small iron tables dotted outside the restaurants; and behind the large open windows of these, dim groups sprawling through a dense smoke-heavyatmosphere; chatter and bellow and screech; gibberish which was yet disconcertingly comprehensive to Richard. He revolted against his very understanding of their language. They were not his people; Lothar, with his flaxen hair and his botany-box and his repellant morbidity; this trotting little man, counting the hats that were raised—ah, there was another! ... and another! ... like clockwork, up went the hand to the brim.... Three elongated boys in capes, whistling “Die Wacht am Rhein”—
“Lieb Vaterland, kannst ruhig sein,Still steht und treu—”
“Lieb Vaterland, kannst ruhig sein,Still steht und treu—”
“Lieb Vaterland, kannst ruhig sein,Still steht und treu—”
“Lieb Vaterland, kannst ruhig sein,
Still steht und treu—”
No, these were not his people; this was not his land. Richard stiffened himself against any insidious process of adaptation to circumstances. Daisybanks, Lansdowne Terrace, London, England—that was his address, when he was not at Winborough. Good enough for him. Switzerland was all right, of course ... the hotel was under English management, and one just went about with one’s own set, and behaved much as usual, except that there were mountains. His spirit approved of a Continent moulded on sternly British lines.
And then Deb had dragged him into—this!
A question stirred in his mind! Nationality—was it a fact of any importance, then, to make so much difference when put to the test?... He shoved the question away again. Why fuss? This sort of misery—for it was misery—would not pursue him further than across the map of Germany. Let him get back to his own folk; he was homesick, that was all. England became above all desirable as a place where you were jolly and ordinary; took things for granted; no need to think;—there was a quality of purposeful concentration about these German people that oppressed Richard uneasily; why were they so absorbed and ponderous over the minutest detail?
Again Herr Koch jerked off his hat. “Did you see who saluted me? No other than Sanitäts-Rath Maximilian Hauffe. He could quite well have pretended not to see me; there was no lamp where he passed us. But I tell you the Kochs are esteemed in Dorzheim. That was his daughter Frieda-Marie along with him.”
Richard looked back, interested to catch a glimpse of Lothar’s betrothed. She looked back at the same time.... A plump rosy face; swing and dangle of two golden plaits.
Outside the door of their house they were joined by Mrs Koch and Deborah. Felix inserted his latchkey and preceded them into the hall.
“Na, was Frau Ladenberg amiable? Did you like her?” he inquired of Deb.
“Not—not very much.”
“Not? But she is English; she is your countrywoman.”
With infinite pains and pride had this sole Englishwoman in Dorzheim been excavated for the girl’s benefit. Deb felt acutely the reproach in his tones. The meeting ought to have been at least as momentous as that of Stanley and Livingstone in the desert. Deb herself, after only three days spent in thickly Teutonic company, had been quite excited at the prospect of drinking coffee with Herr Ladenberg’s wife from Manchester. She recognized now how unreasonable she had been to have expected instant affinity merely on the negative grounds that neither she nor Elly Ladenberg happened to be German.
At the same moment, Marianna was enquiring of Richard: “Well, and have you made a great friendship with Lothar von Relling?”
“No,” said Richard, who invariably curtailed speech to its utmost brevity.
“No? But you are almost of the same age!”
Richard grunted, and escaped to his room to dress for that meal which, neither dinner, tea, nor supper, mingled the richness and biliousness of all three.
Felix went into the sitting-room and flung himself on the sofa. Deb and his wife followed him in. The girl went straight to the window, and with some difficulty succeeded in opening it; the decent German window protesting loudly, as it had every right to do. She leant out, cooling her hot cheeks. She had behaved disgracefully that afternoon....
Marianna Koch glanced at her. Then at Felix. An elusive meanness flickered from her narrow light-brown eyes; at the comers of her pretty, fretful mouth. She was very unlike the accepted Saxon type of large blonde beauty. There had been a scandalous babble of tongues in Dorzheim when Felix Koch had first brought her back from a brief holiday he had spent in Bingen. Little worldling that she was, she had yet contrived to trap him in manner incongruously reminiscent of a Grimm’s fairy-tale. The broad window above the ironmonger’sshop; the wistful maiden, youngest of three sisters, who daily stationed herself there, hairbrush held in her hand, a light-brown, feathery cloud surrounding her pale face.... He was cured of his infatuation now, after two years’ subjection, but could still recall it with painful vividness at a thought flung backwards to that window and the magic it had framed for him. Marianna! ... but she was common and petty, and snobbish and quarrelsome; she had married him solely because he was a banker, a fine gentleman. He had a suspicion lately that she would like to be rid of him; yes, now, when he had barely placated a bitterly offended mother; when, with his reputation for sobriety and prudence, he had made a fool of himself in sight of all Dorzheim. If it had been Sigismund!... It was a constant smart to the vanity of Felix that Sigismund was still highly eligible, whereas he——
He was not even sure that his wife was not deceiving him.
In which case Sigismund would laugh. And Herr Sanitäts-Rath Hauffe would perhaps omit to raise his hat as punctiliously.
Koch’s eyes wandered to Deb, in her bluish lilac crêpe dress; harem skirt that clung as though in well-cut adoration ... the nape of her neck showed astoundingly bare; in Dorzheim it was considered smart to wear something called a jabot, and to prop the chin and ears with a high erection of lace and whalebone; in Dorzheim the dressmakers were commissioned to destroy line, not create it—as in the case of a harem skirt. She was obviously not quite “good class” this girl; probably some sort of an artist, though he had gathered her people were wealthy. “These English!”—one could account for everything by that contemptuous phrase.... And Deb had immensely gratified him that morning at breakfast by remarking: “One might easily mistake you for an Englishman, Herr Koch!”... Yes, he liked the girl; was quite glad that Marianna had taken a fancy to her recently in Switzerland, and had insisted on bringing her back for a visit. It relieved the tension of their constant bickering; and it gave him a hearer on whom to impress his status in Dorzheim. Then, too, one acquired importance in the little town, when one had guests from England. Relations from Frankfurt, yes—but guests from England were almost unheard of.
And nobody need know that Marianna had practically run away from him to Montreux. She was anæmic, needed aholiday; that sufficed for public explanation. He had recalled her with a promise of a fur coat. He had not yet given her the fur coat.
“I can smell Rindbraten,” remarked Felix appreciatively, from the sofa. “Do we have it for evening-eating? Stuffed? There was some left over from mid-day, was there not? I trust, Marianchen, that you made it clear to Emma it was not for her?”
He was smitten with gloom at the thought of the servant browsing overhisRindbraten. His wife reassured him. And she added, with slow emphasis: “I tried on some sable coats at Elly Ladenberg’s. Her husband had sent for sample styles from Köln. There was one—four thousand marks. It hung well on me. The Ladenberg has already chosen another with a fox collar. Mine has a brocade lining.”
“Yours?” Felix chaffed her. “Ei, ei, how quickly we go. It is now summer.”
“That is the time for a good bargain in fur.”
“Four thousand marks is too much.”
“Not for the best.”
“My mother says——”
“Your mother hates me. She would like to see me wear cotton in a snowstorm. She would die of spite if she saw the Frau Sanitäts-Rath Maximilian Hauffe envying me my beautiful sables.”
She paused to see if her last artful thrust at his besetting weakness had at all moved her husband. He thundered, to hide his uneasiness: “I tell you, four thousand marks is too much. You are beggaring me.You!”
The woman’s eyes grew larger and brighter. She smiled at Deb, who was trying to slip from the room unperceived. “But where are you going? Felix, the child is running away because she thinks we are quarrelling.”
Felix laughed uproariously at the notion.
“I was going to lie down before supper,” Deb explained quickly. “I’m rather tired.”
“There is no couch in your room. Here, you had better to rest beside my husband. Make room for her then, clumsy bear!” She laughed a sharp little trill. “How shocked she is! Heavens, what have I asked her to do? Surely with a respectable old married man.... Come, Felix, be a little gallant. Our English Miss is afraid of you. Na, she was boldenough this afternoon, having a fine flirt with Meester von Sittart.”
“She thinks you are another jealous Huldah von Sittart, Marianna. Did that old woman make ugly grimaces at you, Fräulein Deb? We must be careful where there are handsome husbands from America. But with old Felix Koch—Come, I will be asleep, that will put you at your ease.” He rolled over with his face to the wall, and affected to snore loudly.
Marianna applauded the performance. Her teasing eyes informed Deb that she was a stiff little fool, putting a wholly idiotic construction on what was mere playful friendliness on the part of her host and hostess. So Deb lay down beside Felix.... It struck her suddenly that the wife has the supreme advantage over the girl in almost any conjunction of circumstances.
Frau Koch moved to the door. “Sleep well, dear children!” It was uttered in the mock-solemn spirit of a benison. But Deb was aware of malice in the woman’s stealthy little smile; more than malice—enmity. To her or to Felix?—She would have sprung upright again, save for the feeling that in lying down she had committed herself ... to what, she did not know. But she did know very definitely, as the door closed gently behind Marianna, that she had made a mistake, and that it was useless to try and repair it. Deb was to suffer all her life from an illusion that one step backward would not avail her after one step forward had already been taken.
... Felix had his back still turned to her. But he had abandoned the farcical pretence of snoring. They could not lie much longer in this absurd silence, back to back, solemn, motionless.... Deb began to laugh softly. It was really rather ridiculous, except—except that Marianna’s face had frightened her.
Should she jump up now—and run? No, that would give alarming point to the situation. Probably Felix had no intentions——
He turned sharply, pulled her round towards him, kissed her and kissed her. And he was thinking: “If this was what Marianna wanted, then there and there—and there——” The girl did not matter. She was not like a German Mädchen who has been nicely brought up and carefully guarded for matrimony. Her people had let her come here, to complete strangers.And she wore collarless blouses and had flirted conspicuously with von Sittart.
... Her throat—how long and thick and dusky white ... what a firm column for that three-cornered, weary little face.
Marianna was, he felt sure, just outside the closed door. What was her motive in all this? That when it came to it, when he found her out, she should also have an accusing finger to point?—“Can you wonder, my friends? First he does not give me a fur coat, and then he makes shameless love to the guest under my roof....”
Felix Koch was pale with anger and humiliation. While he had joined his wife in chaffing Deb, he had been inclined to shout aloud: “Who is the man? Who is he? What do you think I am made of, forcing this upon me?—After you have been six weeks in Switzerland away from me—and yesterday you were tired after the journey—too tired! ... and I—and I.... Now, this insult!”
He had controlled himself, curious to see what she would do next. He was not going to control himself any more. Let Marianna, if indeed she stood poised on tiptoe, just outside, her light eyes flickering spitefully, let Marianna realize how little he cared for her rebuffs, last night, and the night before.... Fur coats? Wives did not get fur coats unless they earned them better.
Deb did not try to break away from the cramping pressure of his arms. She recognized that she had been to blame; had been—careless, somewhere, she was not quite sure where. But she too had now a dim sense of Marianna’s object in inviting her, of Marianna’s pinched smile outside the door.
... This man was rather handsome, viewed from the close range which usually brings distortion of features. She tried to laugh under his stinging kisses, to pick up the spirit of burlesque where they had dropped it.... “Pretty child,” he muttered; “pretty neck—no wonder she leaves it always unclothed.”
“Herr Koch—you promised—I said I wanted to rest——”
“Felix, then.”
“I want to rest, Felix——” She took advantage of a momentary relaxation of his arms, to snuggle down into the cushions, as a baby might; to close her eyes with a semblance of trustful drowsiness ... her lips were half parted, her breathing regular; one curled-up fist pushed against her cheek. At any moment she might just drop off to sleep....
Would he leave her alone now? Was she safe under this guise of silly, innocent confidence? Any sophisticated recognition of his attempt to start a surreptitious affair with her, would have been fatal.
Felix Koch, like all South Germans, was a sentimentalist. Church spires by moonlight, or a slumbering infant, were unfailing bell-pulls to his softer nature. Gently he touched her hair with his fingers. “Sleep then, pretty child, there is nothing to fear,” he murmured, profoundly moved by this self-evidence of the rake’s reverence for purity. It was all the easier to assume, since he did not really care for Deb.
Deb thought: “And so one must love a man, to like being kissed by him?... Or is it only because he is married that I can’t like it?”
She had been in love, of course; not the conventional once and once only, but twice. A glamorous episode with a young Territorial Captain, Con Rothenburg, eldest son of her father’s partner. And later on, a man whose age doubled hers: the doctor who had taken over the practice while the Marcus’ old family practitioner went round the world for his health. This was a less complete attachment than with Con, for Doctor Steele was not even aware of her tremulous passion; nor with what conscientious honesty she prevented herself from deliberately seeking to contract the ailments which would have ensured his attendance. It had occurred to her, while his hand was on her racing pulse: “How easy it would be for him just to bend down and kiss me. So easy that it doesn’t seem fair he shouldn’t. So easy—he could forget it at once; and I should always remember....” But Doctor Steele had relinquished his locum tenency, and disappeared, leaving Deb with no such memory.
There had been other—minor adventures. A great many. So irresistibly did she attract them, that one might fancy her reincarnated from some famous harlot of old history. And besides, she involuntarily invited them because she was so plainly on the look-out. Yet she was on the look-out not for minor adventures, but for the big thing; the thing to engross her existence; to dwarf its lesser trickiness; to drench her quick nervous soul with peace; provide employment for her restless, life-bitten brain. If Deb had been an artist, the big thing had been easier to find. She was an artist, but in appreciation only; non-creative. Or if Deb had been religious....Religion attacked her imagination as little as the winged Victory, rushing like wind down the steps of the Louvre. She knew that the masterpiece was there; she had not seen it herself; others had seen it; she hoped one day to see it. Meanwhile—she could do without it, and not feel the loss.
So, a pilgrim without a staff, she had roamed....
But this special incident ought not to have occurred. Instinct told her there was a certain type of girl to whom it could not have occurred. She had always hoped she was this girl; sheathed in a sort of hard, transparent whiteness from which anything that was not the one big thing would infallibly slide off, without giving the occupant of this convenient armour the slightest trouble.
Of late, however, she had been growing suspicious of her powers to ward off an accumulation of petty experiences.
Experiences?—but she wanted experience.
She tried to trace back the initial carelessness—yes, carelessness was the only word for it—which had led to her present plight. She ought to have gone to her room to lie down, in spite of Marianna’s sneers. Yet that would have seemed a ridiculous affectation of prudery, especially as that very afternoon.... Ah, here the fault, then!... But she had not really flirted with Ralph von Sittart; the ladies of Dorzheim had misread that spurt of revolt which had suddenly lit her to flame; revolt from their disapproval of her; revolt from the stiff chairs on which each one stiffly sat, with her stiff neck upheld in whalebone.... Rather than make one of them, she had preferred to squat upon the bearskin in front of the tall, white, frozen stove; bend down her unfettered neck to rub her cheek caressingly against the animal’s beautiful head—Oh, it had been an exhibition of bad manners, certainly; even cheap bad manners ... bearskins and tigerskins were a bohemianism which London had long discarded; but these German women could be shocked by nothing more subtle than the effronteries of five seasons ago. And Deb had to shock them, in the impish mood which possessed her, for which Elly Ladenberg (néeHarrison) was perhaps primarily responsible. “You haven’t brought your needle-work?” “I haven’t got any,” laughed Deb. “Then you have finished your present for Frau Koch?” in a discreet undertone. Deb learnt that it was the sacred custom here for any young girl staying with amarried lady, to stitch a most elaborate piece of embroidery as a thank-offering for her hostess.
The information depressed her. She enquired if it would not be possible to obtain the same effect of overpowering gratitude, by sending to an expensive shop in London.
“You can see for yourself that it would not do. The sentiment would not be the same.”
“Curse the sentiment,” murmured Deb mournfully, disappointed of an ally.
... The word was passed round that the English girl was, to say the least of it, eccentric. Anything sensational might be expected of her.
Deb responded flauntingly to their expectations. Impossible anyway to efface herself from the conspicuous position she occupied as “Frau Koch’s visitor.” Guests were rare in Dorzheim; no jolly, casual happening, but a solemn event which exacted a whole code of ceremonial. And even then the visitors were usually somebody’s relations. But all of a sudden a strange girl—from that mad country—even Frau Koch confessing to a minimum of previous acquaintance.... “The poor Marianna tells me she had no idea that the father would permit it.” “Odd, very odd. Has she money, do you know?” “Oh, surely; her dresses are of the best material, even though they are fashioned in a style ... dearest Frau Bergmann—that skirt!”
And then Ralph von Sittart had strolled into the party; handsome, middle-aged German-American, who propped up his indolence by an elderly wife’s income. And it had been a well-nigh hysterical relief for Deb to hear English spoken.... Frau von Sittart’s face ... the whispers ... and all the knitting-needles clacking....
She had behaved outrageously. But only under the goad of alert protest to her entire personality, to her slightest act. She was in a false position from the start. She should not have come. She had only come because of John Thorpe’s mother and the ear-trumpet....
At this stage of her attempts to track consequences to their motive lair, Deb became aware that her feet were being plagued by pins and needles, and that she most desperately desired towriggle. She judged that it would be safe now to awake from slumber ... it must be a full half-hour that she and Felix Koch were lying motionless side by side. She opened her eyes, raised herself on one elbow, sighed deeply, as one who yields up a pleasant dreamland. Then only did she perceive that all this pantomime was unnecessary; her companion was quite peacefully asleep.
Deb slithered off the couch, tip-toed to the door, closed it soundlessly behind her. No one was in the hall. She ran upstairs, and knocked at the door of her brother’s room.
Richard, in his shirt-sleeves, was standing in front of the looking-glass; and with a brush ferociously brandished in either hand, was frustrating his hair’s racial inclination to curl.
“Are you dressing for supper? The others don’t, you know.”
“No reason for me to be a barbarian, if they are, is it?”
“When in Rome——”
“Do as the Romansdon’t—if they’re Germans!”
“Richard—we had awful trouble at home sometimes to get you to dress in the evenings.”
He grinned. “Had you? I shouldn’t be surprised if you had it again.” After a pause, he enquired: “How long d’you want to stop here, Deb?”
“In Dorzheim? Don’t you like it?”
He considered a moment. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Lots of reasons. Can’t be bothered to think ’em all out.”
“We ought to stay a fortnight, now they’ve invited us, and we’ve come.”
“All right.”
Deb sat down on the bed. Immediately the great inflated pillow that acted as eiderdown almost submerged her in its rising billows. She struck them down passionately—
“Richard.”
“Um?”
“Don’t leave me alone with Felix Koch, if you can manage it....”
She was prepared for a brotherly outburst: “D’you mean to say the fellow dared——” But Richard laid down his brushes, and took up his collar, with a total absence of all emotion. “Oh, all right.”